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Title: 'Twixt Land & Sea

Author: Joseph Conrad

Release Date: September, 1997  [EBook #1055]
[This file was first posted on August 21, 1997]
[Most recently updated: June 26, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, 'TWIXT LAND & SEA ***




Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk



'Twixt Land & Sea Tales




Contents


A Smile of Fortune
The Secret Sharer
Freya of the Seven Isles




A SMILE OF FORTUNE--HARBOUR STORY




Ever since the sun rose I had been looking ahead.  The ship glided
gently in smooth water.  After a sixty days' passage I was anxious
to make my landfall, a fertile and beautiful island of the tropics.
The more enthusiastic of its inhabitants delight in describing it
as the "Pearl of the Ocean."  Well, let us call it the "Pearl."
It's a good name.  A pearl distilling much sweetness upon the
world.

This is only a way of telling you that first-rate sugar-cane is
grown there.  All the population of the Pearl lives for it and by
it.  Sugar is their daily bread, as it were.  And I was coming to
them for a cargo of sugar in the hope of the crop having been good
and of the freights being high.

Mr. Burns, my chief mate, made out the land first; and very soon I
became entranced by this blue, pinnacled apparition, almost
transparent against the light of the sky, a mere emanation, the
astral body of an island risen to greet me from afar.  It is a rare
phenomenon, such a sight of the Pearl at sixty miles off.  And I
wondered half seriously whether it was a good omen, whether what
would meet me in that island would be as luckily exceptional as
this beautiful, dreamlike vision so very few seamen have been
privileged to behold.

But horrid thoughts of business interfered with my enjoyment of an
accomplished passage.  I was anxious for success and I wished, too,
to do justice to the flattering latitude of my owners' instructions
contained in one noble phrase:  "We leave it to you to do the best
you can with the ship." . . . All the world being thus given me for
a stage, my abilities appeared to me no bigger than a pinhead.

Meantime the wind dropped, and Mr. Burns began to make disagreeable
remarks about my usual bad luck.  I believe it was his devotion for
me which made him critically outspoken on every occasion.  All the
same, I would not have put up with his humours if it had not been
my lot at one time to nurse him through a desperate illness at sea.
After snatching him out of the jaws of death, so to speak, it would
have been absurd to throw away such an efficient officer.  But
sometimes I wished he would dismiss himself.

We were late in closing in with the land, and had to anchor outside
the harbour till next day.  An unpleasant and unrestful night
followed.  In this roadstead, strange to us both, Burns and I
remained on deck almost all the time.  Clouds swirled down the
porphyry crags under which we lay.  The rising wind made a great
bullying noise amongst the naked spars, with interludes of sad
moaning.  I remarked that we had been in luck to fetch the
anchorage before dark.  It would have been a nasty, anxious night
to hang off a harbour under canvas.  But my chief mate was
uncompromising in his attitude.

"Luck, you call it, sir!  Ay--our usual luck.  The sort of luck to
thank God it's no worse!"

And so he fretted through the dark hours, while I drew on my fund
of philosophy.  Ah, but it was an exasperating, weary, endless
night, to be lying at anchor close under that black coast!  The
agitated water made snarling sounds all round the ship.  At times a
wild gust of wind out of a gully high up on the cliffs struck on
our rigging a harsh and plaintive note like the wail of a forsaken
soul.



CHAPTER I



By half-past seven in the morning, the ship being then inside the
harbour at last and moored within a long stone's-throw from the
quay, my stock of philosophy was nearly exhausted.  I was dressing
hurriedly in my cabin when the steward came tripping in with a
morning suit over his arm.

Hungry, tired, and depressed, with my head engaged inside a white
shirt irritatingly stuck together by too much starch, I desired him
peevishly to "heave round with that breakfast."  I wanted to get
ashore as soon as possible.

"Yes, sir.  Ready at eight, sir.  There's a gentleman from the
shore waiting to speak to you, sir."

This statement was curiously slurred over.  I dragged the shirt
violently over my head and emerged staring.

"So early!" I cried.  "Who's he?  What does he want?"

On coming in from sea one has to pick up the conditions of an
utterly unrelated existence.  Every little event at first has the
peculiar emphasis of novelty.  I was greatly surprised by that
early caller; but there was no reason for my steward to look so
particularly foolish.

"Didn't you ask for the name?" I inquired in a stern tone.

"His name's Jacobus, I believe," he mumbled shamefacedly.

"Mr. Jacobus!" I exclaimed loudly, more surprised than ever, but
with a total change of feeling.  "Why couldn't you say so at once?"

But the fellow had scuttled out of my room.  Through the
momentarily opened door I had a glimpse of a tall, stout man
standing in the cuddy by the table on which the cloth was already
laid; a "harbour" table-cloth, stainless and dazzlingly white.  So
far good.

I shouted courteously through the closed door, that I was dressing
and would be with him in a moment.  In return the assurance that
there was no hurry reached me in the visitor's deep, quiet
undertone.  His time was my own.  He dared say I would give him a
cup of coffee presently.

"I am afraid you will have a poor breakfast," I cried
apologetically.  "We have been sixty-one days at sea, you know."

A quiet little laugh, with a "That'll be all right, Captain," was
his answer.  All this, words, intonation, the glimpsed attitude of
the man in the cuddy, had an unexpected character, a something
friendly in it--propitiatory.  And my surprise was not diminished
thereby.  What did this call mean?  Was it the sign of some dark
design against my commercial innocence?

Ah!  These commercial interests--spoiling the finest life under the
sun.  Why must the sea be used for trade--and for war as well?  Why
kill and traffic on it, pursuing selfish aims of no great
importance after all?  It would have been so much nicer just to
sail about with here and there a port and a bit of land to stretch
one's legs on, buy a few books and get a change of cooking for a
while.  But, living in a world more or less homicidal and
desperately mercantile, it was plainly my duty to make the best of
its opportunities.

My owners' letter had left it to me, as I have said before, to do
my best for the ship, according to my own judgment.  But it
contained also a postscript worded somewhat as follows:

"Without meaning to interfere with your liberty of action we are
writing by the outgoing mail to some of our business friends there
who may be of assistance to you.  We desire you particularly to
call on Mr. Jacobus, a prominent merchant and charterer.  Should
you hit it off with him he may be able to put you in the way of
profitable employment for the ship."

Hit it off!  Here was the prominent creature absolutely on board
asking for the favour of a cup of coffee!  And life not being a
fairy-tale the improbability of the event almost shocked me.  Had I
discovered an enchanted nook of the earth where wealthy merchants
rush fasting on board ships before they are fairly moored?  Was
this white magic or merely some black trick of trade?  I came in
the end (while making the bow of my tie) to suspect that perhaps I
did not get the name right.  I had been thinking of the prominent
Mr. Jacobus pretty frequently during the passage and my hearing
might have been deceived by some remote similarity of sound. . .
The steward might have said Antrobus--or maybe Jackson.

But coming out of my stateroom with an interrogative "Mr. Jacobus?"
I was met by a quiet "Yes," uttered with a gentle smile.  The "yes"
was rather perfunctory.  He did not seem to make much of the fact
that he was Mr. Jacobus.  I took stock of a big, pale face, hair
thin on the top, whiskers also thin, of a faded nondescript colour,
heavy eyelids.  The thick, smooth lips in repose looked as if glued
together.  The smile was faint.  A heavy, tranquil man.  I named my
two officers, who just then came down to breakfast; but why Mr.
Burns's silent demeanour should suggest suppressed indignation I
could not understand.

While we were taking our seats round the table some disconnected
words of an altercation going on in the companionway reached my
ear.  A stranger apparently wanted to come down to interview me,
and the steward was opposing him.

"You can't see him."

"Why can't I?"

"The Captain is at breakfast, I tell you.  He'll be going on shore
presently, and you can speak to him on deck."

"That's not fair.  You let--"

"I've had nothing to do with that."

"Oh, yes, you have.  Everybody ought to have the same chance.  You
let that fellow--"

The rest I lost.  The person having been repulsed successfully, the
steward came down.  I can't say he looked flushed--he was a
mulatto--but he looked flustered.  After putting the dishes on the
table he remained by the sideboard with that lackadaisical air of
indifference he used to assume when he had done something too
clever by half and was afraid of getting into a scrape over it.
The contemptuous expression of Mr. Burns's face as he looked from
him to me was really extraordinary.  I couldn't imagine what new
bee had stung the mate now.

The Captain being silent, nobody else cared to speak, as is the way
in ships.  And I was saying nothing simply because I had been made
dumb by the splendour of the entertainment.  I had expected the
usual sea-breakfast, whereas I beheld spread before us a veritable
feast of shore provisions:  eggs, sausages, butter which plainly
did not come from a Danish tin, cutlets, and even a dish of
potatoes.  It was three weeks since I had seen a real, live potato.
I contemplated them with interest, and Mr. Jacobus disclosed
himself as a man of human, homely sympathies, and something of a
thought-reader.

"Try them, Captain," he encouraged me in a friendly undertone.
"They are excellent."

"They look that," I admitted.  "Grown on the island, I suppose."

"Oh, no, imported.  Those grown here would be more expensive."

I was grieved at the ineptitude of the conversation.  Were these
the topics for a prominent and wealthy merchant to discuss?  I
thought the simplicity with which he made himself at home rather
attractive; but what is one to talk about to a man who comes on one
suddenly, after sixty-one days at sea, out of a totally unknown
little town in an island one has never seen before?  What were
(besides sugar) the interests of that crumb of the earth, its
gossip, its topics of conversation?  To draw him on business at
once would have been almost indecent--or even worse:  impolitic.
All I could do at the moment was to keep on in the old groove.

"Are the provisions generally dear here?" I asked, fretting
inwardly at my inanity.

"I wouldn't say that," he answered placidly, with that appearance
of saving his breath his restrained manner of speaking suggested.

He would not be more explicit, yet he did not evade the subject.
Eyeing the table in a spirit of complete abstemiousness (he
wouldn't let me help him to any eatables) he went into details of
supply.  The beef was for the most part imported from Madagascar;
mutton of course was rare and somewhat expensive, but good goat's
flesh--

"Are these goat's cutlets?" I exclaimed hastily, pointing at one of
the dishes.

Posed sentimentally by the sideboard, the steward gave a start.

"Lor', no, sir!  It's real mutton!"

Mr. Burns got through his breakfast impatiently, as if exasperated
by being made a party to some monstrous foolishness, muttered a
curt excuse, and went on deck.  Shortly afterwards the second mate
took his smooth red countenance out of the cabin.  With the
appetite of a schoolboy, and after two months of sea-fare, he
appreciated the generous spread.  But I did not.  It smacked of
extravagance.  All the same, it was a remarkable feat to have
produced it so quickly, and I congratulated the steward on his
smartness in a somewhat ominous tone.  He gave me a deprecatory
smile and, in a way I didn't know what to make of, blinked his fine
dark eyes in the direction of the guest.

The latter asked under his breath for another cup of coffee, and
nibbled ascetically at a piece of very hard ship's biscuit.  I
don't think he consumed a square inch in the end; but meantime he
gave me, casually as it were, a complete account of the sugar crop,
of the local business houses, of the state of the freight market.
All that talk was interspersed with hints as to personalities,
amounting to veiled warnings, but his pale, fleshy face remained
equable, without a gleam, as if ignorant of his voice.  As you may
imagine I opened my ears very wide.  Every word was precious.  My
ideas as to the value of business friendship were being favourably
modified.  He gave me the names of all the disponible ships
together with their tonnage and the names of their commanders.
From that, which was still commercial information, he condescended
to mere harbour gossip.  The Hilda had unaccountably lost her
figurehead in the Bay of Bengal, and her captain was greatly
affected by this.  He and the ship had been getting on in years
together and the old gentleman imagined this strange event to be
the forerunner of his own early dissolution.  The Stella had
experienced awful weather off the Cape--had her decks swept, and
the chief officer washed overboard.  And only a few hours before
reaching port the baby died.

Poor Captain H- and his wife were terribly cut up.  If they had
only been able to bring it into port alive it could have been
probably saved; but the wind failed them for the last week or so,
light breezes, and . . . the baby was going to be buried this
afternoon.  He supposed I would attend--

"Do you think I ought to?" I asked, shrinkingly.

He thought so, decidedly.  It would be greatly appreciated.  All
the captains in the harbour were going to attend.  Poor Mrs. H- was
quite prostrated.  Pretty hard on H- altogether.

"And you, Captain--you are not married I suppose?"

"No, I am not married," I said.  "Neither married nor even
engaged."

Mentally I thanked my stars; and while he smiled in a musing,
dreamy fashion, I expressed my acknowledgments for his visit and
for the interesting business information he had been good enough to
impart to me.  But I said nothing of my wonder thereat.

"Of course, I would have made a point of calling on you in a day or
two," I concluded.

He raised his eyelids distinctly at me, and somehow managed to look
rather more sleepy than before.

"In accordance with my owners' instructions," I explained.  "You
have had their letter, of course?"

By that time he had raised his eyebrows too but without any
particular emotion.  On the contrary he struck me then as
absolutely imperturbable.

"Oh!  You must be thinking of my brother."

It was for me, then, to say "Oh!"  But I hope that no more than
civil surprise appeared in my voice when I asked him to what, then,
I owed the pleasure. . . . He was reaching for an inside pocket
leisurely.

"My brother's a very different person.  But I am well known in this
part of the world.  You've probably heard--"

I took a card he extended to me.  A thick business card, as I
lived!  Alfred Jacobus--the other was Ernest--dealer in every
description of ship's stores!  Provisions salt and fresh, oils,
paints, rope, canvas, etc., etc.  Ships in harbour victualled by
contract on moderate terms--

"I've never heard of you," I said brusquely.

His low-pitched assurance did not abandon him.

"You will be very well satisfied," he breathed out quietly.

I was not placated.  I had the sense of having been circumvented
somehow.  Yet I had deceived myself--if there was any deception.
But the confounded cheek of inviting himself to breakfast was
enough to deceive any one.  And the thought struck me:  Why!  The
fellow had provided all these eatables himself in the way of
business.  I said:

"You must have got up mighty early this morning."

He admitted with simplicity that he was on the quay before six
o'clock waiting for my ship to come in.  He gave me the impression
that it would be impossible to get rid of him now.

"If you think we are going to live on that scale," I said, looking
at the table with an irritated eye, "you are jolly well mistaken."

"You'll find it all right, Captain.  I quite understand."

Nothing could disturb his equanimity.  I felt dissatisfied, but I
could not very well fly out at him.  He had told me many useful
things--and besides he was the brother of that wealthy merchant.
That seemed queer enough.

I rose and told him curtly that I must now go ashore.  At once he
offered the use of his boat for all the time of my stay in port.

"I only make a nominal charge," he continued equably.  "My man
remains all day at the landing-steps.  You have only to blow a
whistle when you want the boat."

And, standing aside at every doorway to let me go through first, he
carried me off in his custody after all.  As we crossed the
quarter-deck two shabby individuals stepped forward and in mournful
silence offered me business cards which I took from them without a
word under his heavy eye.  It was a useless and gloomy ceremony.
They were the touts of the other ship-chandlers, and he placid at
my back, ignored their existence.

We parted on the quay, after he had expressed quietly the hope of
seeing me often "at the store."  He had a smoking-room for captains
there, with newspapers and a box of "rather decent cigars."  I left
him very unceremoniously.

My consignees received me with the usual business heartiness, but
their account of the state of the freight-market was by no means so
favourable as the talk of the wrong Jacobus had led me to expect.
Naturally I became inclined now to put my trust in his version,
rather.  As I closed the door of the private office behind me I
thought to myself:  "H'm.  A lot of lies.  Commercial diplomacy.
That's the sort of thing a man coming from sea has got to expect.
They would try to charter the ship under the market rate."

In the big, outer room, full of desks, the chief clerk, a tall,
lean, shaved person in immaculate white clothes and with a shiny,
closely-cropped black head on which silvery gleams came and went,
rose from his place and detained me affably.  Anything they could
do for me, they would be most happy.  Was I likely to call again in
the afternoon?  What?  Going to a funeral?  Oh, yes, poor Captain
H-.

He pulled a long, sympathetic face for a moment, then, dismissing
from this workaday world the baby, which had got ill in a tempest
and had died from too much calm at sea, he asked me with a dental,
shark-like smile--if sharks had false teeth--whether I had yet made
my little arrangements for the ship's stay in port.

"Yes, with Jacobus," I answered carelessly.  "I understand he's the
brother of Mr. Ernest Jacobus to whom I have an introduction from
my owners."

I was not sorry to let him know I was not altogether helpless in
the hands of his firm.  He screwed his thin lips dubiously.

"Why," I cried, "isn't he the brother?"

"Oh, yes. . . . They haven't spoken to each other for eighteen
years," he added impressively after a pause.

"Indeed!  What's the quarrel about?"

"Oh, nothing!  Nothing that one would care to mention," he
protested primly.  "He's got quite a large business.  The best
ship-chandler here, without a doubt.  Business is all very well,
but there is such a thing as personal character, too, isn't there?
Good-morning, Captain."

He went away mincingly to his desk.  He amused me.  He resembled an
old maid, a commercial old maid, shocked by some impropriety.  Was
it a commercial impropriety?  Commercial impropriety is a serious
matter, for it aims at one's pocket.  Or was he only a purist in
conduct who disapproved of Jacobus doing his own touting?  It was
certainly undignified.  I wondered how the merchant brother liked
it.  But then different countries, different customs.  In a
community so isolated and so exclusively "trading" social standards
have their own scale.



CHAPTER II



I would have gladly dispensed with the mournful opportunity of
becoming acquainted by sight with all my fellow-captains at once.
However I found my way to the cemetery.  We made a considerable
group of bareheaded men in sombre garments.  I noticed that those
of our company most approaching to the now obsolete sea-dog type
were the most moved--perhaps because they had less "manner" than
the new generation.  The old sea-dog, away from his natural
element, was a simple and sentimental animal.  I noticed one--he
was facing me across the grave--who was dropping tears.  They
trickled down his weather-beaten face like drops of rain on an old
rugged wall.  I learned afterwards that he was looked upon as the
terror of sailors, a hard man; that he had never had wife or chick
of his own, and that, engaged from his tenderest years in deep-sea
voyages, he knew women and children merely by sight.

Perhaps he was dropping those tears over his lost opportunities,
from sheer envy of paternity and in strange jealousy of a sorrow
which he could never know.  Man, and even the sea-man, is a
capricious animal, the creature and the victim of lost
opportunities.  But he made me feel ashamed of my callousness.  I
had no tears.

I listened with horribly critical detachment to that service I had
had to read myself, once or twice, over childlike men who had died
at sea.  The words of hope and defiance, the winged words so
inspiring in the free immensity of water and sky, seemed to fall
wearily into the little grave.  What was the use of asking Death
where her sting was, before that small, dark hole in the ground?
And then my thoughts escaped me altogether--away into matters of
life--and no very high matters at that--ships, freights, business.
In the instability of his emotions man resembles deplorably a
monkey.  I was disgusted with my thoughts--and I thought:  Shall I
be able to get a charter soon?  Time's money. . . . Will that
Jacobus really put good business in my way?  I must go and see him
in a day or two.

Don't imagine that I pursued these thoughts with any precision.
They pursued me rather:  vague, shadowy, restless, shamefaced.
Theirs was a callous, abominable, almost revolting, pertinacity.
And it was the presence of that pertinacious ship-chandler which
had started them.  He stood mournfully amongst our little band of
men from the sea, and I was angry at his presence, which,
suggesting his brother the merchant, had caused me to become
outrageous to myself.  For indeed I had preserved some decency of
feeling.  It was only the mind which--

It was over at last.  The poor father--a man of forty with black,
bushy side-whiskers and a pathetic gash on his freshly-shaved chin-
-thanked us all, swallowing his tears.  But for some reason, either
because I lingered at the gate of the cemetery being somewhat hazy
as to my way back, or because I was the youngest, or ascribing my
moodiness caused by remorse to some more worthy and appropriate
sentiment, or simply because I was even more of a stranger to him
than the others--he singled me out.  Keeping at my side, he renewed
his thanks, which I listened to in a gloomy, conscience-stricken
silence.  Suddenly he slipped one hand under my arm and waved the
other after a tall, stout figure walking away by itself down a
street in a flutter of thin, grey garments:

"That's a good fellow--a real good fellow"--he swallowed down a
belated sob--"this Jacobus."

And he told me in a low voice that Jacobus was the first man to
board his ship on arrival, and, learning of their misfortune, had
taken charge of everything, volunteered to attend to all routine
business, carried off the ship's papers on shore, arranged for the
funeral--

"A good fellow.  I was knocked over.  I had been looking at my wife
for ten days.  And helpless.  Just you think of that!  The dear
little chap died the very day we made the land.  How I managed to
take the ship in God alone knows!  I couldn't see anything; I
couldn't speak; I couldn't. . . . You've heard, perhaps, that we
lost our mate overboard on the passage?  There was no one to do it
for me.  And the poor woman nearly crazy down below there all alone
with the . . . By the Lord!  It isn't fair."

We walked in silence together.  I did not know how to part from
him.  On the quay he let go my arm and struck fiercely his fist
into the palm of his other hand.

"By God, it isn't fair!" he cried again.  "Don't you ever marry
unless you can chuck the sea first. . . . It isn't fair."

I had no intention to "chuck the sea," and when he left me to go
aboard his ship I felt convinced that I would never marry.  While I
was waiting at the steps for Jacobus's boatman, who had gone off
somewhere, the captain of the Hilda joined me, a slender silk
umbrella in his hand and the sharp points of his archaic,
Gladstonian shirt-collar framing a small, clean-shaved, ruddy face.
It was wonderfully fresh for his age, beautifully modelled and lit
up by remarkably clear blue eyes.  A lot of white hair, glossy like
spun glass, curled upwards slightly under the brim of his valuable,
ancient, panama hat with a broad black ribbon.  In the aspect of
that vivacious, neat, little old man there was something quaintly
angelic and also boyish.

He accosted me, as though he had been in the habit of seeing me
every day of his life from my earliest childhood, with a whimsical
remark on the appearance of a stout negro woman who was sitting
upon a stool near the edge of the quay.  Presently he observed
amiably that I had a very pretty little barque.

I returned this civil speech by saying readily:

"Not so pretty as the Hilda."

At once the corners of his clear-cut, sensitive mouth dropped
dismally.

"Oh, dear!  I can hardly bear to look at her now."

Did I know, he asked anxiously, that he had lost the figurehead of
his ship; a woman in a blue tunic edged with gold, the face perhaps
not so very, very pretty, but her bare white arms beautifully
shaped and extended as if she were swimming?  Did I?  Who would
have expected such a things . . . After twenty years too!

Nobody could have guessed from his tone that the woman was made of
wood; his trembling voice, his agitated manner gave to his
lamentations a ludicrously scandalous flavour. . . . Disappeared at
night--a clear fine night with just a slight swell--in the gulf of
Bengal.  Went off without a splash; no one in the ship could tell
why, how, at what hour--after twenty years last October. . . . Did
I ever hear! . . .

I assured him sympathetically that I had never heard--and he became
very doleful.  This meant no good he was sure.  There was something
in it which looked like a warning.  But when I remarked that surely
another figure of a woman could be procured I found myself being
soundly rated for my levity.  The old boy flushed pink under his
clear tan as if I had proposed something improper.  One could
replace masts, I was told, or a lost rudder--any working part of a
ship; but where was the use of sticking up a new figurehead?  What
satisfaction?  How could one care for it?  It was easy to see that
I had never been shipmates with a figurehead for over twenty years.

"A new figurehead!" he scolded in unquenchable indignation.  "Why!
I've been a widower now for eight-and-twenty years come next May
and I would just as soon think of getting a new wife.  You're as
bad as that fellow Jacobus."

I was highly amused.

"What has Jacobus done?  Did he want you to marry again, Captain?"
I inquired in a deferential tone.  But he was launched now and only
grinned fiercely.

"Procure--indeed!  He's the sort of chap to procure you anything
you like for a price.  I hadn't been moored here for an hour when
he got on board and at once offered to sell me a figurehead he
happens to have in his yard somewhere.  He got Smith, my mate, to
talk to me about it.  'Mr. Smith,' says I, 'don't you know me
better than that?  Am I the sort that would pick up with another
man's cast-off figurehead?'  And after all these years too!  The
way some of you young fellows talk--"

I affected great compunction, and as I stepped into the boat I said
soberly:

"Then I see nothing for it but to fit in a neat fiddlehead--
perhaps.  You know, carved scrollwork, nicely gilt."

He became very dejected after his outburst.

"Yes.  Scrollwork.  Maybe.  Jacobus hinted at that too.  He's never
at a loss when there's any money to be extracted from a sailorman.
He would make me pay through the nose for that carving.  A gilt
fiddlehead did you say--eh?  I dare say it would do for you.  You
young fellows don't seem to have any feeling for what's proper."

He made a convulsive gesture with his right arm.

"Never mind.  Nothing can make much difference.  I would just as
soon let the old thing go about the world with a bare cutwater," he
cried sadly.  Then as the boat got away from the steps he raised
his voice on the edge of the quay with comical animosity:

"I would!  If only to spite that figurehead-procuring bloodsucker.
I am an old bird here and don't you forget it.  Come and see me on
board some day!"

I spent my first evening in port quietly in my ship's cuddy; and
glad enough was I to think that the shore life which strikes one as
so pettily complex, discordant, and so full of new faces on first
coming from sea, could be kept off for a few hours longer.  I was
however fated to hear the Jacobus note once more before I slept.

Mr. Burns had gone ashore after the evening meal to have, as he
said, "a look round."  As it was quite dark when he announced his
intention I didn't ask him what it was he expected to see.  Some
time about midnight, while sitting with a book in the saloon, I
heard cautious movements in the lobby and hailed him by name.

Burns came in, stick and hat in hand, incredibly vulgarised by his
smart shore togs, with a jaunty air and an odious twinkle in his
eye.  Being asked to sit down he laid his hat and stick on the
table and after we had talked of ship affairs for a little while:

"I've been hearing pretty tales on shore about that ship-chandler
fellow who snatched the job from you so neatly, sir."

I remonstrated with my late patient for his manner of expressing
himself.  But he only tossed his head disdainfully.  A pretty dodge
indeed:  boarding a strange ship with breakfast in two baskets for
all hands and calmly inviting himself to the captain's table!
Never heard of anything so crafty and so impudent in his life.

I found myself defending Jacobus's unusual methods.

"He's the brother of one of the wealthiest merchants in the port."
The mate's eyes fairly snapped green sparks.

"His grand brother hasn't spoken to him for eighteen or twenty
years," he declared triumphantly.  "So there!"

"I know all about that," I interrupted loftily.

"Do you sir?  H'm!"  His mind was still running on the ethics of
commercial competition.  "I don't like to see your good nature
taken advantage of.  He's bribed that steward of ours with a five-
rupee note to let him come down--or ten for that matter.  He don't
care.  He will shove that and more into the bill presently."

"Is that one of the tales you have heard ashore?" I asked.

He assured me that his own sense could tell him that much.  No;
what he had heard on shore was that no respectable person in the
whole town would come near Jacobus.  He lived in a large old-
fashioned house in one of the quiet streets with a big garden.
After telling me this Burns put on a mysterious air.  "He keeps a
girl shut up there who, they say--"

"I suppose you've heard all this gossip in some eminently
respectable place?" I snapped at him in a most sarcastic tone.

The shaft told, because Mr. Burns, like many other disagreeable
people, was very sensitive himself.  He remained as if
thunderstruck, with his mouth open for some further communication,
but I did not give him the chance.  "And, anyhow, what the deuce do
I care?" I added, retiring into my room.

And this was a natural thing to say.  Yet somehow I was not
indifferent.  I admit it is absurd to be concerned with the morals
of one's ship-chandler, if ever so well connected; but his
personality had stamped itself upon my first day in harbour, in the
way you know.

After this initial exploit Jacobus showed himself anything but
intrusive.  He was out in a boat early every morning going round
the ships he served, and occasionally remaining on board one of
them for breakfast with the captain.

As I discovered that this practice was generally accepted, I just
nodded to him familiarly when one morning, on coming out of my
room, I found him in the cabin.  Glancing over the table I saw that
his place was already laid.  He stood awaiting my appearance, very
bulky and placid, holding a beautiful bunch of flowers in his thick
hand.  He offered them to my notice with a faint, sleepy smile.
From his own garden; had a very fine old garden; picked them
himself that morning before going out to business; thought I would
like. . . . He turned away.  "Steward, can you oblige me with some
water in a large jar, please."

I assured him jocularly, as I took my place at the table, that he
made me feel as if I were a pretty girl, and that he mustn't be
surprised if I blushed.  But he was busy arranging his floral
tribute at the sideboard.  "Stand it before the Captain's plate,
steward, please."  He made this request in his usual undertone.

The offering was so pointed that I could do no less than to raise
it to my nose, and as he sat down noiselessly he breathed out the
opinion that a few flowers improved notably the appearance of a
ship's saloon.  He wondered why I did not have a shelf fitted all
round the skylight for flowers in pots to take with me to sea.  He
had a skilled workman able to fit up shelves in a day, and he could
procure me two or three dozen good plants--

The tips of his thick, round fingers rested composedly on the edge
of the table on each side of his cup of coffee.  His face remained
immovable.  Mr. Burns was smiling maliciously to himself.  I
declared that I hadn't the slightest intention of turning my
skylight into a conservatory only to keep the cabin-table in a
perpetual mess of mould and dead vegetable matter.

"Rear most beautiful flowers," he insisted with an upward glance.
"It's no trouble really."

"Oh, yes, it is.  Lots of trouble," I contradicted.  "And in the
end some fool leaves the skylight open in a fresh breeze, a flick
of salt water gets at them and the whole lot is dead in a week."

Mr. Burns snorted a contemptuous approval.  Jacobus gave up the
subject passively.  After a time he unglued his thick lips to ask
me if I had seen his brother yet.  I was very curt in my answer.

"No, not yet."

"A very different person," he remarked dreamily and got up.  His
movements were particularly noiseless.  "Well--thank you, Captain.
If anything is not to your liking please mention it to your
steward.  I suppose you will be giving a dinner to the office-
clerks presently."

"What for?" I cried with some warmth.  "If I were a steady trader
to the port I could understand it.  But a complete stranger! . . .
I may not turn up again here for years.  I don't see why! . . . Do
you mean to say it is customary?"

"It will be expected from a man like you," he breathed out
placidly.  "Eight of the principal clerks, the manager, that's
nine, you three gentlemen, that's twelve.  It needn't be very
expensive.  If you tell your steward to give me a day's notice--"

"It will be expected of me!  Why should it be expected of me?  Is
it because I look particularly soft--or what?

His immobility struck me as dignified suddenly, his imperturbable
quality as dangerous.  "There's plenty of time to think about
that," I concluded weakly with a gesture that tried to wave him
away.  But before he departed he took time to mention regretfully
that he had not yet had the pleasure of seeing me at his "store" to
sample those cigars.  He had a parcel of six thousand to dispose
of, very cheap.

"I think it would be worth your while to secure some," he added
with a fat, melancholy smile and left the cabin.

Mr. Burns struck his fist on the table excitedly.

"Did you ever see such impudence!  He's made up his mind to get
something out of you one way or another, sir."

At once feeling inclined to defend Jacobus, I observed
philosophically that all this was business, I supposed.  But my
absurd mate, muttering broken disjointed sentences, such as:  "I
cannot bear! . . . Mark my words! . . ." and so on, flung out of
the cabin.  If I hadn't nursed him through that deadly fever I
wouldn't have suffered such manners for a single day.



CHAPTER III



Jacobus having put me in mind of his wealthy brother I concluded I
would pay that business call at once.  I had by that time heard a
little more of him.  He was a member of the Council, where he made
himself objectionable to the authorities.  He exercised a
considerable influence on public opinion.  Lots of people owed him
money.  He was an importer on a great scale of all sorts of goods.
For instance, the whole supply of bags for sugar was practically in
his hands.  This last fact I did not learn till afterwards.  The
general impression conveyed to me was that of a local personage.
He was a bachelor and gave weekly card-parties in his house out of
town, which were attended by the best people in the colony.

The greater, then, was my surprise to discover his office in shabby
surroundings, quite away from the business quarter, amongst a lot
of hovels.  Guided by a black board with white lettering, I climbed
a narrow wooden staircase and entered a room with a bare floor of
planks littered with bits of brown paper and wisps of packing
straw.  A great number of what looked like wine-cases were piled up
against one of the walls.  A lanky, inky, light-yellow, mulatto
youth, miserably long-necked and generally recalling a sick
chicken, got off a three-legged stool behind a cheap deal desk and
faced me as if gone dumb with fright.  I had some difficulty in
persuading him to take in my name, though I could not get from him
the nature of his objection.  He did it at last with an almost
agonised reluctance which ceased to be mysterious to me when I
heard him being sworn at menacingly with savage, suppressed growls,
then audibly cuffed and finally kicked out without any concealment
whatever; because he came back flying head foremost through the
door with a stifled shriek.

To say I was startled would not express it.  I remained still, like
a man lost in a dream.  Clapping both his hands to that part of his
frail anatomy which had received the shock, the poor wretch said to
me simply:

"Will you go in, please."  His lamentable self-possession was
wonderful; but it did not do away with the incredibility of the
experience.  A preposterous notion that I had seen this boy
somewhere before, a thing obviously impossible, was like a delicate
finishing touch of weirdness added to a scene fit to raise doubts
as to one's sanity.  I stared anxiously about me like an awakened
somnambulist.

"I say," I cried loudly, "there isn't a mistake, is there?  This is
Mr. Jacobus's office."

The boy gazed at me with a pained expression--and somehow so
familiar!  A voice within growled offensively:

"Come in, come in, since you are there. . . . I didn't know."

I crossed the outer room as one approaches the den of some unknown
wild beast; with intrepidity but in some excitement.  Only no wild
beast that ever lived would rouse one's indignation; the power to
do that belongs to the odiousness of the human brute.  And I was
very indignant, which did not prevent me from being at once struck
by the extraordinary resemblance of the two brothers.

This one was dark instead of being fair like the other; but he was
as big.  He was without his coat and waistcoat; he had been
doubtless snoozing in the rocking-chair which stood in a corner
furthest from the window.  Above the great bulk of his crumpled
white shirt, buttoned with three diamond studs, his round face
looked swarthy.  It was moist; his brown moustache hung limp and
ragged.  He pushed a common, cane-bottomed chair towards me with
his foot.

"Sit down."

I glanced at it casually, then, turning my indignant eyes full upon
him, I declared in precise and incisive tones that I had called in
obedience to my owners' instructions.

"Oh!  Yes.  H'm!  I didn't understand what that fool was saying. .
. . But never mind!  It will teach the scoundrel to disturb me at
this time of the day," he added, grinning at me with savage
cynicism.

I looked at my watch.  It was past three o'clock--quite the full
swing of afternoon office work in the port.  He snarled
imperiously:  "Sit down, Captain."

I acknowledged the gracious invitation by saying deliberately:

"I can listen to all you may have to say without sitting down."

Emitting a loud and vehement "Pshaw!" he glared for a moment, very
round-eyed and fierce.  It was like a gigantic tomcat spitting at
one suddenly.  "Look at him! . . . What do you fancy yourself to
be?  What did you come here for?  If you won't sit down and talk
business you had better go to the devil."

"I don't know him personally," I said.  "But after this I wouldn't
mind calling on him.  It would be refreshing to meet a gentleman."

He followed me, growling behind my back:

"The impudence!  I've a good mind to write to your owners what I
think of you."

I turned on him for a moment:

"As it happens I don't care.  For my part I assure you I won't even
take the trouble to mention you to them."

He stopped at the door of his office while I traversed the littered
anteroom.  I think he was somewhat taken aback.

"I will break every bone in your body," he roared suddenly at the
miserable mulatto lad, "if you ever dare to disturb me before half-
past three for anybody.  D'ye hear?  For anybody! . . . Let alone
any damned skipper," he added, in a lower growl.

The frail youngster, swaying like a reed, made a low moaning sound.
I stopped short and addressed this sufferer with advice.  It was
prompted by the sight of a hammer (used for opening the wine-cases,
I suppose) which was lying on the floor.

"If I were you, my boy, I would have that thing up my sleeve when I
went in next and at the first occasion I would--"

What was there so familiar in that lad's yellow face?  Entrenched
and quaking behind the flimsy desk, he never looked up.  His heavy,
lowered eyelids gave me suddenly the clue of the puzzle.  He
resembled--yes, those thick glued lips--he resembled the brothers
Jacobus.  He resembled both, the wealthy merchant and the pushing
shopkeeper (who resembled each other); he resembled them as much as
a thin, light-yellow mulatto lad may resemble a big, stout, middle-
aged white man.  It was the exotic complexion and the slightness of
his build which had put me off so completely.  Now I saw in him
unmistakably the Jacobus strain, weakened, attenuated, diluted as
it were in a bucket of water--and I refrained from finishing my
speech.  I had intended to say:  "Crack this brute's head for him."
I still felt the conclusion to be sound.  But it is no trifling
responsibility to counsel parricide to any one, however deeply
injured.

"Beggarly--cheeky--skippers."

I despised the emphatic growl at my back; only, being much vexed
and upset, I regret to say that I slammed the door behind me in a
most undignified manner.

It may not appear altogether absurd if I say that I brought out
from that interview a kindlier view of the other Jacobus.  It was
with a feeling resembling partisanship that, a few days later, I
called at his "store."  That long, cavern-like place of business,
very dim at the back and stuffed full of all sorts of goods, was
entered from the street by a lofty archway.  At the far end I saw
my Jacobus exerting himself in his shirt-sleeves among his
assistants.  The captains' room was a small, vaulted apartment with
a stone floor and heavy iron bars in its windows like a dungeon
converted to hospitable purposes.  A couple of cheerful bottles and
several gleaming glasses made a brilliant cluster round a tall,
cool red earthenware pitcher on the centre table which was littered
with newspapers from all parts of the world.  A well-groomed
stranger in a smart grey check suit, sitting with one leg flung
over his knee, put down one of these sheets briskly and nodded to
me.

I guessed him to be a steamer-captain.  It was impossible to get to
know these men.  They came and went too quickly and their ships lay
moored far out, at the very entrance of the harbour.  Theirs was
another life altogether.  He yawned slightly.

"Dull hole, isn't it?"

I understood this to allude to the town.

"Do you find it so?" I murmured.

"Don't you?  But I'm off to-morrow, thank goodness."

He was a very gentlemanly person, good-natured and superior.  I
watched him draw the open box of cigars to his side of the table,
take a big cigar-case out of his pocket and begin to fill it very
methodically.  Presently, on our eyes meeting, he winked like a
common mortal and invited me to follow his example.  "They are
really decent smokes."  I shook my head.

"I am not off to-morrow."

"What of that?  Think I am abusing old Jacobus's hospitality?
Heavens!  It goes into the bill, of course.  He spreads such little
matters all over his account.  He can take care of himself!  Why,
it's business--"

I noted a shadow fall over his well-satisfied expression, a
momentary hesitation in closing his cigar-case.  But he ended by
putting it in his pocket jauntily.  A placid voice uttered in the
doorway:  "That's quite correct, Captain."

The large noiseless Jacobus advanced into the room.  His quietness,
in the circumstances, amounted to cordiality.  He had put on his
jacket before joining us, and he sat down in the chair vacated by
the steamer-man, who nodded again to me and went out with a short,
jarring laugh.  A profound silence reigned.  With his drowsy stare
Jacobus seemed to be slumbering open-eyed.  Yet, somehow, I was
aware of being profoundly scrutinised by those heavy eyes.  In the
enormous cavern of the store somebody began to nail down a case,
expertly:  tap-tap . . . tap-tap-tap.

Two other experts, one slow and nasal, the other shrill and snappy,
started checking an invoice.

"A half-coil of three-inch manilla rope."

"Right!"

"Six assorted shackles."

"Right!"

"Six tins assorted soups, three of pate, two asparagus, fourteen
pounds tobacco, cabin."

"Right!"

"It's for the captain who was here just now," breathed out the
immovable Jacobus.  "These steamer orders are very small.  They
pick up what they want as they go along.  That man will be in
Samarang in less than a fortnight.  Very small orders indeed."

The calling over of the items went on in the shop; an extraordinary
jumble of varied articles, paint-brushes, Yorkshire Relish, etc.,
etc. . . . "Three sacks of best potatoes," read out the nasal
voice.

At this Jacobus blinked like a sleeping man roused by a shake, and
displayed some animation.  At his order, shouted into the shop, a
smirking half-caste clerk with his ringlets much oiled and with a
pen stuck behind his ear, brought in a sample of six potatoes which
he paraded in a row on the table.

Being urged to look at their beauty I gave them a cold and hostile
glance.  Calmly, Jacobus proposed that I should order ten or
fifteen tons--tons!  I couldn't believe my ears.  My crew could not
have eaten such a lot in a year; and potatoes (excuse these
practical remarks) are a highly perishable commodity.  I thought he
was joking--or else trying to find out whether I was an unutterable
idiot.  But his purpose was not so simple.  I discovered that he
meant me to buy them on my own account.

"I am proposing you a bit of business, Captain.  I wouldn't charge
you a great price."

I told him that I did not go in for trade.  I even added grimly
that I knew only too well how that sort of spec. generally ended.

He sighed and clasped his hands on his stomach with exemplary
resignation.  I admired the placidity of his impudence.  Then
waking up somewhat:

"Won't you try a cigar, Captain?"

"No, thanks.  I don't smoke cigars."

"For once!" he exclaimed, in a patient whisper.  A melancholy
silence ensued.  You know how sometimes a person discloses a
certain unsuspected depth and acuteness of thought; that is, in
other words, utters something unexpected.  It was unexpected enough
to hear Jacobus say:

"The man who just went out was right enough.  You might take one,
Captain.  Here everything is bound to be in the way of business."

I felt a little ashamed of myself.  The remembrance of his horrid
brother made him appear quite a decent sort of fellow.  It was with
some compunction that I said a few words to the effect that I could
have no possible objection to his hospitality.

Before I was a minute older I saw where this admission was leading
me.  As if changing the subject, Jacobus mentioned that his private
house was about ten minutes' walk away.  It had a beautiful old
walled garden.  Something really remarkable.  I ought to come round
some day and have a look at it.

He seemed to be a lover of gardens.  I too take extreme delight in
them; but I did not mean my compunction to carry me as far as
Jacobus's flower-beds, however beautiful and old.  He added, with a
certain homeliness of tone:

"There's only my girl there."

It is difficult to set everything down in due order; so I must
revert here to what happened a week or two before.  The medical
officer of the port had come on board my ship to have a look at one
of my crew who was ailing, and naturally enough he was asked to
step into the cabin.  A fellow-shipmaster of mine was there too;
and in the conversation, somehow or other, the name of Jacobus came
to be mentioned.  It was pronounced with no particular reverence by
the other man, I believe.  I don't remember now what I was going to
say.  The doctor--a pleasant, cultivated fellow, with an assured
manner--prevented me by striking in, in a sour tone:

"Ah!  You're talking about my respected papa-in-law."

Of course, that sally silenced us at the time.  But I remembered
the episode, and at this juncture, pushed for something
noncommittal to say, I inquired with polite surprise:

"You have your married daughter living with you, Mr. Jacobus?"

He moved his big hand from right to left quietly.  No!  That was
another of his girls, he stated, ponderously and under his breath
as usual.  She . . . He seemed in a pause to be ransacking his mind
for some kind of descriptive phrase.  But my hopes were
disappointed.  He merely produced his stereotyped definition.

"She's a very different sort of person."

"Indeed. . . . And by the by, Jacobus, I called on your brother the
other day.  It's no great compliment if I say that I found him a
very different sort of person from you."

He had an air of profound reflection, then remarked quaintly:

"He's a man of regular habits."

He might have been alluding to the habit of late siesta; but I
mumbled something about "beastly habits anyhow"--and left the store
abruptly.



CHAPTER IV



My little passage with Jacobus the merchant became known generally.
One or two of my acquaintances made distant allusions to it.
Perhaps the mulatto boy had talked.  I must confess that people
appeared rather scandalised, but not with Jacobus's brutality.  A
man I knew remonstrated with me for my hastiness.

I gave him the whole story of my visit, not forgetting the tell-
tale resemblance of the wretched mulatto boy to his tormentor.  He
was not surprised.  No doubt, no doubt.  What of that?  In a jovial
tone he assured me that there must be many of that sort.  The elder
Jacobus had been a bachelor all his life.  A highly respectable
bachelor.  But there had never been open scandal in that
connection.  His life had been quite regular.  It could cause no
offence to any one.

I said that I had been offended considerably.  My interlocutor
opened very wide eyes.  Why?  Because a mulatto lad got a few
knocks?  That was not a great affair, surely.  I had no idea how
insolent and untruthful these half-castes were.  In fact he seemed
to think Mr. Jacobus rather kind than otherwise to employ that
youth at all; a sort of amiable weakness which could be forgiven.

This acquaintance of mine belonged to one of the old French
families, descendants of the old colonists; all noble, all
impoverished, and living a narrow domestic life in dull, dignified
decay.  The men, as a rule, occupy inferior posts in Government
offices or in business houses.  The girls are almost always pretty,
ignorant of the world, kind and agreeable and generally bilingual;
they prattle innocently both in French and English.  The emptiness
of their existence passes belief.

I obtained my entry into a couple of such households because some
years before, in Bombay, I had occasion to be of use to a pleasant,
ineffectual young man who was rather stranded there, not knowing
what to do with himself or even how to get home to his island
again.  It was a matter of two hundred rupees or so, but, when I
turned up, the family made a point of showing their gratitude by
admitting me to their intimacy.  My knowledge of the French
language made me specially acceptable.  They had meantime managed
to marry the fellow to a woman nearly twice his age, comparatively
well off:  the only profession he was really fit for.  But it was
not all cakes and ale.  The first time I called on the couple she
spied a little spot of grease on the poor devil's pantaloons and
made him a screaming scene of reproaches so full of sincere passion
that I sat terrified as at a tragedy of Racine.

Of course there was never question of the money I had advanced him;
but his sisters, Miss Angele and Miss Mary, and the aunts of both
families, who spoke quaint archaic French of pre-Revolution period,
and a host of distant relations adopted me for a friend outright in
a manner which was almost embarrassing.

It was with the eldest brother (he was employed at a desk in my
consignee's office) that I was having this talk about the merchant
Jacobus.  He regretted my attitude and nodded his head sagely.  An
influential man.  One never knew when one would need him.  I
expressed my immense preference for the shopkeeper of the two.  At
that my friend looked grave.

"What on earth are you pulling that long face about?" I cried
impatiently.  "He asked me to see his garden and I have a good mind
to go some day."

"Don't do that," he said, so earnestly that I burst into a fit of
laughter; but he looked at me without a smile.

This was another matter altogether.  At one time the public
conscience of the island had been mightily troubled by my Jacobus.
The two brothers had been partners for years in great harmony, when
a wandering circus came to the island and my Jacobus became
suddenly infatuated with one of the lady-riders.  What made it
worse was that he was married.  He had not even the grace to
conceal his passion.  It must have been strong indeed to carry away
such a large placid creature.  His behaviour was perfectly
scandalous.  He followed that woman to the Cape, and apparently
travelled at the tail of that beastly circus to other parts of the
world, in a most degrading position.  The woman soon ceased to care
for him, and treated him worse than a dog.  Most extraordinary
stories of moral degradation were reaching the island at that time.
He had not the strength of mind to shake himself free. . . .

The grotesque image of a fat, pushing ship-chandler, enslaved by an
unholy love-spell, fascinated me; and I listened rather open-
mouthed to the tale as old as the world, a tale which had been the
subject of legend, of moral fables, of poems, but which so
ludicrously failed to fit the personality.  What a strange victim
for the gods!

Meantime his deserted wife had died.  His daughter was taken care
of by his brother, who married her as advantageously as was
possible in the circumstances.

"Oh!  The Mrs. Doctor!" I exclaimed.

"You know that?  Yes.  A very able man.  He wanted a lift in the
world, and there was a good bit of money from her mother, besides
the expectations. . . Of course, they don't know him," he added.
"The doctor nods in the street, I believe, but he avoids speaking
to him when they meet on board a ship, as must happen sometimes."

I remarked that this surely was an old story by now.

My friend assented.  But it was Jacobus's own fault that it was
neither forgiven nor forgotten.  He came back ultimately.  But how?
Not in a spirit of contrition, in a way to propitiate his
scandalised fellow-citizens.  He must needs drag along with him a
child--a girl. . . .

"He spoke to me of a daughter who lives with him," I observed, very
much interested.

"She's certainly the daughter of the circus-woman," said my friend.
"She may be his daughter too; I am willing to admit that she is.
In fact I have no doubt--"

But he did not see why she should have been brought into a
respectable community to perpetuate the memory of the scandal.  And
that was not the worst.  Presently something much more distressing
happened.  That abandoned woman turned up.  Landed from a mail-
boat. . . .

"What!  Here?  To claim the child perhaps," I suggested.

"Not she!"  My friendly informant was very scornful.  "Imagine a
painted, haggard, agitated, desperate hag.  Been cast off in
Mozambique by somebody who paid her passage here.  She had been
injured internally by a kick from a horse; she hadn't a cent on her
when she got ashore; I don't think she even asked to see the child.
At any rate, not till the last day of her life.  Jacobus hired for
her a bungalow to die in.  He got a couple of Sisters from the
hospital to nurse her through these few months.  If he didn't marry
her in extremis as the good Sisters tried to bring about, it's
because she wouldn't even hear of it.  As the nuns said:  'The
woman died impenitent.'  It was reported that she ordered Jacobus
out of the room with her last breath.  This may be the real reason
why he didn't go into mourning himself; he only put the child into
black.  While she was little she was to be seen sometimes about the
streets attended by a negro woman, but since she became of age to
put her hair up I don't think she has set foot outside that garden
once.  She must be over eighteen now."

Thus my friend, with some added details; such as, that he didn't
think the girl had spoken to three people of any position in the
island; that an elderly female relative of the brothers Jacobus had
been induced by extreme poverty to accept the position of
gouvernante to the girl.  As to Jacobus's business (which certainly
annoyed his brother) it was a wise choice on his part.  It brought
him in contact only with strangers of passage; whereas any other
would have given rise to all sorts of awkwardness with his social
equals.  The man was not wanting in a certain tact--only he was
naturally shameless.  For why did he want to keep that girl with
him?  It was most painful for everybody.

I thought suddenly (and with profound disgust) of the other
Jacobus, and I could not refrain from saying slily:

"I suppose if he employed her, say, as a scullion in his household
and occasionally pulled her hair or boxed her ears, the position
would have been more regular--less shocking to the respectable
class to which he belongs."

He was not so stupid as to miss my intention, and shrugged his
shoulders impatiently.

"You don't understand.  To begin with, she's not a mulatto.  And a
scandal is a scandal.  People should be given a chance to forget.
I dare say it would have been better for her if she had been turned
into a scullion or something of that kind.  Of course he's trying
to make money in every sort of petty way, but in such a business
there'll never be enough for anybody to come forward."

When my friend left me I had a conception of Jacobus and his
daughter existing, a lonely pair of castaways, on a desert island;
the girl sheltering in the house as if it were a cavern in a cliff,
and Jacobus going out to pick up a living for both on the beach--
exactly like two shipwrecked people who always hope for some
rescuer to bring them back at last into touch with the rest of
mankind.

But Jacobus's bodily reality did not fit in with this romantic
view.  When he turned up on board in the usual course, he sipped
the cup of coffee placidly, asked me if I was satisfied--and I
hardly listened to the harbour gossip he dropped slowly in his low,
voice-saving enunciation.  I had then troubles of my own.  My ship
chartered, my thoughts dwelling on the success of a quick round
voyage, I had been suddenly confronted by a shortage of bags.  A
catastrophe!  The stock of one especial kind, called pockets,
seemed to be totally exhausted.  A consignment was shortly
expected--it was afloat, on its way, but, meantime, the loading of
my ship dead stopped, I had enough to worry about.  My consignees,
who had received me with such heartiness on my arrival, now, in the
character of my charterers, listened to my complaints with polite
helplessness.  Their manager, the old-maidish, thin man, who so
prudishly didn't even like to speak about the impure Jacobus, gave
me the correct commercial view of the position.

"My dear Captain"--he was retracting his leathery cheeks into a
condescending, shark-like smile--"we were not morally obliged to
tell you of a possible shortage before you signed the charter-
party.  It was for you to guard against the contingency of a delay-
-strictly speaking.  But of course we shouldn't have taken any
advantage.  This is no one's fault really.  We ourselves have been
taken unawares," he concluded primly, with an obvious lie.

This lecture I confess had made me thirsty.  Suppressed rage
generally produces that effect; and as I strolled on aimlessly I
bethought myself of the tall earthenware pitcher in the captains'
room of the Jacobus "store."

With no more than a nod to the men I found assembled there, I
poured down a deep, cool draught on my indignation, then another,
and then, becoming dejected, I sat plunged in cheerless
reflections.  The others read, talked, smoked, bandied over my head
some unsubtle chaff.  But my abstraction was respected.  And it was
without a word to any one that I rose and went out, only to be
quite unexpectedly accosted in the bustle of the store by Jacobus
the outcast.

"Glad to see you, Captain.  What?  Going away?  You haven't been
looking so well these last few days, I notice.  Run down, eh?"

He was in his shirt-sleeves, and his words were in the usual course
of business, but they had a human note.  It was commercial amenity,
but I had been a stranger to amenity in that connection.  I do
verily believe (from the direction of his heavy glance towards a
certain shelf) that he was going to suggest the purchase of
Clarkson's Nerve Tonic, which he kept in stock, when I said
impulsively:

"I am rather in trouble with my loading."

Wide awake under his sleepy, broad mask with glued lips, he
understood at once, had a movement of the head so appreciative that
I relieved my exasperation by exclaiming:

"Surely there must be eleven hundred quarter-bags to be found in
the colony.  It's only a matter of looking for them."

Again that slight movement of the big head, and in the noise and
activity of the store that tranquil murmur:

"To be sure.  But then people likely to have a reserve of quarter-
bags wouldn't want to sell.  They'd need that size themselves."

"That's exactly what my consignees are telling me.  Impossible to
buy.  Bosh!  They don't want to.  It suits them to have the ship
hung up.  But if I were to discover the lot they would have to--
Look here, Jacobus!  You are the man to have such a thing up your
sleeve."

He protested with a ponderous swing of his big head.  I stood
before him helplessly, being looked at by those heavy eyes with a
veiled expression as of a man after some soul-shaking crisis.
Then, suddenly:

"It's impossible to talk quietly here," he whispered.  "I am very
busy.  But if you could go and wait for me in my house.  It's less
than ten minutes' walk.  Oh, yes, you don't know the way."

He called for his coat and offered to take me there himself.  He
would have to return to the store at once for an hour or so to
finish his business, and then he would be at liberty to talk over
with me that matter of quarter-bags.  This programme was breathed
out at me through slightly parted, still lips; his heavy,
motionless glance rested upon me, placid as ever, the glance of a
tired man--but I felt that it was searching, too.  I could not
imagine what he was looking for in me and kept silent, wondering.

"I am asking you to wait for me in my house till I am at liberty to
talk this matter over.  You will?"

"Why, of course!" I cried.

"But I cannot promise--"

"I dare say not," I said.  "I don't expect a promise."

"I mean I can't even promise to try the move I've in my mind.  One
must see first . . . h'm!"

"All right.  I'll take the chance.  I'll wait for you as long as
you like.  What else have I to do in this infernal hole of a port!"

Before I had uttered my last words we had set off at a swinging
pace.  We turned a couple of corners and entered a street
completely empty of traffic, of semi-rural aspect, paved with
cobblestones nestling in grass tufts.  The house came to the line
of the roadway; a single story on an elevated basement of rough-
stones, so that our heads were below the level of the windows as we
went along.  All the jalousies were tightly shut, like eyes, and
the house seemed fast asleep in the afternoon sunshine.  The
entrance was at the side, in an alley even more grass-grown than
the street:  a small door, simply on the latch.

With a word of apology as to showing me the way, Jacobus preceded
me up a dark passage and led me across the naked parquet floor of
what I supposed to be the dining-room.  It was lighted by three
glass doors which stood wide open on to a verandah or rather loggia
running its brick arches along the garden side of the house.  It
was really a magnificent garden:  smooth green lawns and a gorgeous
maze of flower-beds in the foreground, displayed around a basin of
dark water framed in a marble rim, and in the distance the massed
foliage of varied trees concealing the roofs of other houses.  The
town might have been miles away.  It was a brilliantly coloured
solitude, drowsing in a warm, voluptuous silence.  Where the long,
still shadows fell across the beds, and in shady nooks, the massed
colours of the flowers had an extraordinary magnificence of effect.
I stood entranced.  Jacobus grasped me delicately above the elbow,
impelling me to a half-turn to the left.

I had not noticed the girl before.  She occupied a low, deep,
wickerwork arm-chair, and I saw her in exact profile like a figure
in a tapestry, and as motionless.  Jacobus released my arm.

"This is Alice," he announced tranquilly; and his subdued manner of
speaking made it sound so much like a confidential communication
that I fancied myself nodding understandingly and whispering:  "I
see, I see." . . . Of course, I did nothing of the kind.  Neither
of us did anything; we stood side by side looking down at the girl.
For quite a time she did not stir, staring straight before her as
if watching the vision of some pageant passing through the garden
in the deep, rich glow of light and the splendour of flowers.

Then, coming to the end of her reverie, she looked round and up.
If I had not at first noticed her, I am certain that she too had
been unaware of my presence till she actually perceived me by her
father's side.  The quickened upward movement of the heavy eyelids,
the widening of the languid glance, passing into a fixed stare, put
that beyond doubt.

Under her amazement there was a hint of fear, and then came a flash
as of anger.  Jacobus, after uttering my name fairly loud, said:
"Make yourself at home, Captain--I won't be gone long," and went
away rapidly.  Before I had time to make a bow I was left alone
with the girl--who, I remembered suddenly, had not been seen by any
man or woman of that town since she had found it necessary to put
up her hair.  It looked as though it had not been touched again
since that distant time of first putting up; it was a mass of
black, lustrous locks, twisted anyhow high on her head, with long,
untidy wisps hanging down on each side of the clear sallow face; a
mass so thick and strong and abundant that, nothing but to look at,
it gave you a sensation of heavy pressure on the top of your head
and an impression of magnificently cynical untidiness.  She leaned
forward, hugging herself with crossed legs; a dingy, amber-
coloured, flounced wrapper of some thin stuff revealed the young
supple body drawn together tensely in the deep low seat as if
crouching for a spring.  I detected a slight, quivering start or
two, which looked uncommonly like bounding away.  They were
followed by the most absolute immobility.

The absurd impulse to run out after Jacobus (for I had been
startled, too) once repressed, I took a chair, placed it not very
far from her, sat down deliberately, and began to talk about the
garden, caring not what I said, but using a gentle caressing
intonation as one talks to soothe a startled wild animal.  I could
not even be certain that she understood me.  She never raised her
face nor attempted to look my way.  I kept on talking only to
prevent her from taking flight.  She had another of those
quivering, repressed starts which made me catch my breath with
apprehension.

Ultimately I formed a notion that what prevented her perhaps from
going off in one great, nervous leap, was the scantiness of her
attire.  The wicker armchair was the most substantial thing about
her person.  What she had on under that dingy, loose, amber wrapper
must have been of the most flimsy and airy character.  One could
not help being aware of it.  It was obvious.  I felt it actually
embarrassing at first; but that sort of embarrassment is got over
easily by a mind not enslaved by narrow prejudices.  I did not
avert my gaze from Alice.  I went on talking with ingratiating
softness, the recollection that, most likely, she had never before
been spoken to by a strange man adding to my assurance.  I don't
know why an emotional tenseness should have crept into the
situation.  But it did.  And just as I was becoming aware of it a
slight scream cut short my flow of urbane speech.

The scream did not proceed from the girl.  It was emitted behind
me, and caused me to turn my head sharply.  I understood at once
that the apparition in the doorway was the elderly relation of
Jacobus, the companion, the gouvernante.  While she remained
thunderstruck, I got up and made her a low bow.

The ladies of Jacobus's household evidently spent their days in
light attire.  This stumpy old woman with a face like a large
wrinkled lemon, beady eyes, and a shock of iron-grey hair, was
dressed in a garment of some ash-coloured, silky, light stuff.  It
fell from her thick neck down to her toes with the simplicity of an
unadorned nightgown.  It made her appear truly cylindrical.  She
exclaimed:  "How did you get here?"

Before I could say a word she vanished and presently I heard a
confusion of shrill protestations in a distant part of the house.
Obviously no one could tell her how I got there.  In a moment, with
great outcries from two negro women following her, she waddled back
to the doorway, infuriated.

"What do you want here?"

I turned to the girl.  She was sitting straight up now, her hands
posed on the arms of the chair.  I appealed to her.

"Surely, Miss Alice, you will not let them drive me out into the
street?"

Her magnificent black eyes, narrowed, long in shape, swept over me
with an indefinable expression, then in a harsh, contemptuous voice
she let fall in French a sort of explanation:

"C'est papa."

I made another low bow to the old woman.

She turned her back on me in order to drive away her black
henchwomen, then surveying my person in a peculiar manner with one
small eye nearly closed and her face all drawn up on that side as
if with a twinge of toothache, she stepped out on the verandah, sat
down in a rocking-chair some distance away, and took up her
knitting from a little table.  Before she started at it she plunged
one of the needles into the mop of her grey hair and stirred it
vigorously.

Her elementary nightgown-sort of frock clung to her ancient,
stumpy, and floating form.  She wore white cotton stockings and
flat brown velvet slippers.  Her feet and ankles were obtrusively
visible on the foot-rest.  She began to rock herself slightly,
while she knitted.  I had resumed my seat and kept quiet, for I
mistrusted that old woman.  What if she ordered me to depart?  She
seemed capable of any outrage.  She had snorted once or twice; she
was knitting violently.  Suddenly she piped at the young girl in
French a question which I translate colloquially:

"What's your father up to, now?"

The young creature shrugged her shoulders so comprehensively that
her whole body swayed within the loose wrapper; and in that
unexpectedly harsh voice which yet had a seductive quality to the
senses, like certain kinds of natural rough wines one drinks with
pleasure:

"It's some captain.  Leave me alone--will you!"

The chair rocked quicker, the old, thin voice was like a whistle.

"You and your father make a pair.  He would stick at nothing--
that's well known.  But I didn't expect this."

I thought it high time to air some of my own French.  I remarked
modestly, but firmly, that this was business.  I had some matters
to talk over with Mr. Jacobus.

At once she piped out a derisive "Poor innocent!"  Then, with a
change of tone:  "The shop's for business.  Why don't you go to the
shop to talk with him?"

The furious speed of her fingers and knitting-needles made one
dizzy; and with squeaky indignation:

"Sitting here staring at that girl--is that what you call
business?"

"No," I said suavely.  "I call this pleasure--an unexpected
pleasure.  And unless Miss Alice objects--"

I half turned to her.  She flung at me an angry and contemptuous
"Don't care!" and leaning her elbow on her knees took her chin in
her hand--a Jacobus chin undoubtedly.  And those heavy eyelids,
this black irritated stare reminded me of Jacobus, too--the wealthy
merchant, the respected one.  The design of her eyebrows also was
the same, rigid and ill-omened.  Yes!  I traced in her a
resemblance to both of them.  It came to me as a sort of surprising
remote inference that both these Jacobuses were rather handsome men
after all.  I said:

"Oh!  Then I shall stare at you till you smile."

She favoured me again with an even more viciously scornful "Don't
care!"

The old woman broke in blunt and shrill:

"Hear his impudence!  And you too!  Don't care!  Go at least and
put some more clothes on.  Sitting there like this before this
sailor riff-raff."

The sun was about to leave the Pearl of the Ocean for other seas,
for other lands.  The walled garden full of shadows blazed with
colour as if the flowers were giving up the light absorbed during
the day.  The amazing old woman became very explicit.  She
suggested to the girl a corset and a petticoat with a cynical
unreserve which humiliated me.  Was I of no more account than a
wooden dummy?  The girl snapped out:  "Shan't!"

It was not the naughty retort of a vulgar child; it had a note of
desperation.  Clearly my intrusion had somehow upset the balance of
their established relations.  The old woman knitted with furious
accuracy, her eyes fastened down on her work.

"Oh, you are the true child of your father!  And THAT talks of
entering a convent!  Letting herself be stared at by a fellow."

"Leave off."

"Shameless thing!"

"Old sorceress," the girl uttered distinctly, preserving her
meditative pose, chin in hand, and a far-away stare over the
garden.

It was like the quarrel of the kettle and the pot.  The old woman
flew out of the chair, banged down her work, and with a great play
of thick limb perfectly visible in that weird, clinging garment of
hers, strode at the girl--who never stirred.  I was experiencing a
sort of trepidation when, as if awed by that unconscious attitude,
the aged relative of Jacobus turned short upon me.

She was, I perceived, armed with a knitting-needle; and as she
raised her hand her intention seemed to be to throw it at me like a
dart.  But she only used it to scratch her head with, examining me
the while at close range, one eye nearly shut and her face
distorted by a whimsical, one-sided grimace.

"My dear man," she asked abruptly, "do you expect any good to come
of this?"

 "I do hope so indeed, Miss Jacobus."  I tried to speak in the easy
tone of an afternoon caller.  "You see, I am here after some bags."

"Bags!  Look at that now!  Didn't I hear you holding forth to that
graceless wretch?"

"You would like to see me in my grave," uttered the motionless girl
hoarsely.

"Grave!  What about me?  Buried alive before I am dead for the sake
of a thing blessed with such a pretty father!" she cried; and
turning to me:  "You're one of these men he does business with.
Well--why don't you leave us in peace, my good fellow?"

It was said in a tone--this "leave us in peace!"  There was a sort
of ruffianly familiarity, a superiority, a scorn in it.  I was to
hear it more than once, for you would show an imperfect knowledge
of human nature if you thought that this was my last visit to that
house--where no respectable person had put foot for ever so many
years.  No, you would be very much mistaken if you imagined that
this reception had scared me away.  First of all I was not going to
run before a grotesque and ruffianly old woman.

And then you mustn't forget these necessary bags.  That first
evening Jacobus made me stay to dinner; after, however, telling me
loyally that he didn't know whether he could do anything at all for
me.  He had been thinking it over.  It was too difficult, he
feared. . . . But he did not give it up in so many words.

We were only three at table; the girl by means of repeated "Won't!"
"Shan't!" and "Don't care!" having conveyed and affirmed her
intention not to come to the table, not to have any dinner, not to
move from the verandah.  The old relative hopped about in her flat
slippers and piped indignantly, Jacobus towered over her and
murmured placidly in his throat; I joined jocularly from a
distance, throwing in a few words, for which under the cover of the
night I received secretly a most vicious poke in the ribs from the
old woman's elbow or perhaps her fist.  I restrained a cry.  And
all the time the girl didn't even condescend to raise her head to
look at any of us.  All this may sound childish--and yet that
stony, petulant sullenness had an obscurely tragic flavour.

And so we sat down to the food around the light of a good many
candles while she remained crouching out there, staring in the dark
as if feeding her bad temper on the heavily scented air of the
admirable garden.

Before leaving I said to Jacobus that I would come next day to hear
if the bag affair had made any progress.  He shook his head
slightly at that.

"I'll haunt your house daily till you pull it off.  You'll be
always finding me here."

His faint, melancholy smile did not part his thick lips.

"That will be all right, Captain."

Then seeing me to the door, very tranquil, he murmured earnestly
the recommendation:  "Make yourself at home," and also the
hospitable hint about there being always "a plate of soup."  It was
only on my way to the quay, down the ill-lighted streets, that I
remembered I had been engaged to dine that very evening with the S-
family.  Though vexed with my forgetfulness (it would be rather
awkward to explain) I couldn't help thinking that it had procured
me a more amusing evening.  And besides--business.  The sacred
business--.

In a barefooted negro who overtook me at a run and bolted down the
landing-steps I recognised Jacobus's boatman, who must have been
feeding in the kitchen.  His usual "Good-night, sah!" as I went up
my ship's ladder had a more cordial sound than on previous
occasions.



CHAPTER V



I kept my word to Jacobus.  I haunted his home.  He was perpetually
finding me there of an afternoon when he popped in for a moment
from the "store."  The sound of my voice talking to his Alice
greeted him on his doorstep; and when he returned for good in the
evening, ten to one he would hear it still going on in the
verandah.  I just nodded to him; he would sit down heavily and
gently, and watch with a sort of approving anxiety my efforts to
make his daughter smile.

I called her often "Alice," right before him; sometimes I would
address her as Miss "Don't Care," and I exhausted myself in
nonsensical chatter without succeeding once in taking her out of
her peevish and tragic self.  There were moments when I felt I must
break out and start swearing at her till all was blue.  And I
fancied that had I done so Jacobus would not have moved a muscle.
A sort of shady, intimate understanding seemed to have been
established between us.

I must say the girl treated her father exactly in the same way she
treated me.

And how could it have been otherwise?  She treated me as she
treated her father.  She had never seen a visitor.  She did not
know how men behaved.  I belonged to the low lot with whom her
father did business at the port.  I was of no account.  So was her
father.  The only decent people in the world were the people of the
island, who would have nothing to do with him because of something
wicked he had done.  This was apparently the explanation Miss
Jacobus had given her of the household's isolated position.  For
she had to be told something!  And I feel convinced that this
version had been assented to by Jacobus.  I must say the old woman
was putting it forward with considerable gusto.  It was on her lips
the universal explanation, the universal allusion, the universal
taunt.

One day Jacobus came in early and, beckoning me into the dining-
room, wiped his brow with a weary gesture and told me that he had
managed to unearth a supply of quarter-bags.

"It's fourteen hundred your ship wanted, did you say, Captain?"

"Yes, yes!" I replied eagerly; but he remained calm.  He looked
more tired than I had ever seen him before.

"Well, Captain, you may go and tell your people that they can get
that lot from my brother."

As I remained open-mouthed at this, he added his usual placid
formula of assurance:

"You'll find it correct, Captain."

"You spoke to your brother about it?"  I was distinctly awed.  "And
for me?  Because he must have known that my ship's the only one
hung up for bags.  How on earth--"

He wiped his brow again.  I noticed that he was dressed with
unusual care, in clothes in which I had never seen him before.  He
avoided my eye.

"You've heard people talk, of course. . . . That's true enough.  He
. . . I . . . We certainly. . . for several years . . ."  His voice
declined to a mere sleepy murmur.  "You see I had something to tell
him of, something which--"

His murmur stopped.  He was not going to tell me what this
something was.  And I didn't care.  Anxious to carry the news to my
charterers, I ran back on the verandah to get my hat.

At the bustle I made the girl turned her eyes slowly in my
direction, and even the old woman was checked in her knitting.  I
stopped a moment to exclaim excitedly:

"Your father's a brick, Miss Don't Care.  That's what he is."

She beheld my elation in scornful surprise.  Jacobus with unwonted
familiarity seized my arm as I flew through the dining-room, and
breathed heavily at me a proposal about "A plate of soup" that
evening.  I answered distractedly:  "Eh?  What?  Oh, thanks!
Certainly.  With pleasure," and tore myself away.  Dine with him?
Of course.  The merest gratitude

But some three hours afterwards, in the dusky, silent street, paved
with cobble-stones, I became aware that it was not mere gratitude
which was guiding my steps towards the house with the old garden,
where for years no guest other than myself had ever dined.  Mere
gratitude does not gnaw at one's interior economy in that
particular way.  Hunger might; but I was not feeling particularly
hungry for Jacobus's food.

On that occasion, too, the girl refused to come to the table.

My exasperation grew.  The old woman cast malicious glances at me.
I said suddenly to Jacobus:  "Here!  Put some chicken and salad on
that plate."  He obeyed without raising his eyes.  I carried it
with a knife and fork and a serviette out on the verandah.  The
garden was one mass of gloom, like a cemetery of flowers buried in
the darkness, and she, in the chair, seemed to muse mournfully over
the extinction of light and colour.  Only whiffs of heavy scent
passed like wandering, fragrant souls of that departed multitude of
blossoms.  I talked volubly, jocularly, persuasively, tenderly; I
talked in a subdued tone.  To a listener it would have sounded like
the murmur of a pleading lover.  Whenever I paused expectantly
there was only a deep silence.  It was like offering food to a
seated statue.

"I haven't been able to swallow a single morsel thinking of you out
here starving yourself in the dark.  It's positively cruel to be so
obstinate.  Think of my sufferings."

"Don't care."

I felt as if I could have done her some violence--shaken her,
beaten her maybe.  I said:

"Your absurd behaviour will prevent me coming here any more."

"What's that to me?"

"You like it."

"It's false," she snarled.

My hand fell on her shoulder; and if she had flinched I verily
believe I would have shaken her.  But there was no movement and
this immobility disarmed my anger.

"You do.  Or you wouldn't be found on the verandah every day.  Why
are you here, then?  There are plenty of rooms in the house.  You
have your own room to stay in--if you did not want to see me.  But
you do.  You know you do."

I felt a slight shudder under my hand and released my grip as if
frightened by that sign of animation in her body.  The scented air
of the garden came to us in a warm wave like a voluptuous and
perfumed sigh.

"Go back to them," she whispered, almost pitifully.

As I re-entered the dining-room I saw Jacobus cast down his eyes.
I banged the plate on the table.  At this demonstration of ill-
humour he murmured something in an apologetic tone, and I turned on
him viciously as if he were accountable to me for these "abominable
eccentricities," I believe I called them.

"But I dare say Miss Jacobus here is responsible for most of this
offensive manner," I added loftily.

She piped out at once in her brazen, ruffianly manner:

"Eh?  Why don't you leave us in peace, my good fellow?"

I was astonished that she should dare before Jacobus.  Yet what
could he have done to repress her?  He needed her too much.  He
raised a heavy, drowsy glance for an instant, then looked down
again.  She insisted with shrill finality:

"Haven't you done your business, you two?  Well, then--"

She had the true Jacobus impudence, that old woman.  Her mop of
iron-grey hair was parted, on the side like a man's, raffishly, and
she made as if to plunge her fork into it, as she used to do with
the knitting-needle, but refrained.  Her little black eyes sparkled
venomously.  I turned to my host at the head of the table--
menacingly as it were.

"Well, and what do you say to that, Jacobus?  Am I to take it that
we have done with each other?"

I had to wait a little.  The answer when it came was rather
unexpected, and in quite another spirit than the question.

"I certainly think we might do some business yet with those
potatoes of mine, Captain.  You will find that--"

I cut him short.

"I've told you before that I don't trade."

His broad chest heaved without a sound in a noiseless sigh.

"Think it over, Captain," he murmured, tenacious and tranquil; and
I burst into a jarring laugh, remembering how he had stuck to the
circus-rider woman--the depth of passion under that placid surface,
which even cuts with a riding-whip (so the legend had it) could
never raffle into the semblance of a storm; something like the
passion of a fish would be if one could imagine such a thing as a
passionate fish.

That evening I experienced more distinctly than ever the sense of
moral discomfort which always attended me in that house lying under
the ban of all "decent" people.  I refused to stay on and smoke
after dinner; and when I put my hand into the thickly-cushioned
palm of Jacobus, I said to myself that it would be for the last
time under his roof.  I pressed his bulky paw heartily
nevertheless.  Hadn't he got me out of a serious difficulty?  To
the few words of acknowledgment I was bound, and indeed quite
willing, to utter, he answered by stretching his closed lips in his
melancholy, glued-together smile.

"That will be all right, I hope, Captain," he breathed out
weightily.

"What do you mean?" I asked, alarmed.  "That your brother might
yet--"

"Oh, no," he reassured me.  "He . . . he's a man of his word,
Captain."

My self-communion as I walked away from his door, trying to believe
that this was for the last time, was not satisfactory.  I was aware
myself that I was not sincere in my reflections as to Jacobus's
motives, and, of course, the very next day I went back again.

How weak, irrational, and absurd we are!  How easily carried away
whenever our awakened imagination brings us the irritating hint of
a desire!  I cared for the girl in a particular way, seduced by the
moody expression of her face, by her obstinate silences, her rare,
scornful words; by the perpetual pout of her closed lips, the black
depths of her fixed gaze turned slowly upon me as if in
contemptuous provocation, only to be averted next moment with an
exasperating indifference.

Of course the news of my assiduity had spread all over the little
town.  I noticed a change in the manner of my acquaintances and
even something different in the nods of the other captains, when
meeting them at the landing-steps or in the offices where business
called me.  The old-maidish head clerk treated me with distant
punctiliousness and, as it were, gathered his skirts round him for
fear of contamination.  It seemed to me that the very niggers on
the quays turned to look after me as I passed; and as to Jacobus's
boatman his "Good-night, sah!" when he put me on board was no
longer merely cordial--it had a familiar, confidential sound as
though we had been partners in some villainy.

My friend S- the elder passed me on the other side of the street
with a wave of the hand and an ironic smile.  The younger brother,
the one they had married to an elderly shrew, he, on the strength
of an older friendship and as if paying a debt of gratitude, took
the liberty to utter a word of warning.

"You're doing yourself no good by your choice of friends, my dear
chap," he said with infantile gravity.

As I knew that the meeting of the brothers Jacobus was the subject
of excited comment in the whole of the sugary Pearl of the Ocean I
wanted to know why I was blamed.

"I have been the occasion of a move which may end in a
reconciliation surely desirable from the point of view of the
proprieties--don't you know?"

"Of course, if that girl were disposed of it would certainly
facilitate--" he mused sagely, then, inconsequential creature, gave
me a light tap on the lower part of my waistcoat.  "You old
sinner," he cried jovially, "much you care for proprieties.  But
you had better look out for yourself, you know, with a personage
like Jacobus who has no sort of reputation to lose."

He had recovered his gravity of a respectable citizen by that time
and added regretfully:

"All the women of our family are perfectly scandalised."

But by that time I had given up visiting the S- family and the D-
family.  The elder ladies pulled such faces when I showed myself,
and the multitude of related young ladies received me with such a
variety of looks:  wondering, awed, mocking (except Miss Mary, who
spoke to me and looked at me with hushed, pained compassion as
though I had been ill), that I had no difficulty in giving them all
up.  I would have given up the society of the whole town, for the
sake of sitting near that girl, snarling and superb and barely clad
in that flimsy, dingy, amber wrapper, open low at the throat.  She
looked, with the wild wisps of hair hanging down her tense face, as
though she had just jumped out of bed in the panic of a fire.

She sat leaning on her elbow, looking at nothing.  Why did she stay
listening to my absurd chatter?  And not only that; but why did she
powder her face in preparation for my arrival?  It seemed to be her
idea of making a toilette, and in her untidy negligence a sign of
great effort towards personal adornment.

But I might have been mistaken.  The powdering might have been her
daily practice and her presence in the verandah a sign of an
indifference so complete as to take no account of my existence.
Well, it was all one to me.

I loved to watch her slow changes of pose, to look at her long
immobilities composed in the graceful lines of her body, to observe
the mysterious narrow stare of her splendid black eyes, somewhat
long in shape, half closed, contemplating the void.  She was like a
spellbound creature with the forehead of a goddess crowned by the
dishevelled magnificent hair of a gipsy tramp.  Even her
indifference was seductive.  I felt myself growing attached to her
by the bond of an irrealisable desire, for I kept my head--quite.
And I put up with the moral discomfort of Jacobus's sleepy
watchfulness, tranquil, and yet so expressive; as if there had been
a tacit pact between us two.  I put up with the insolence of the
old woman's:  "Aren't you ever going to leave us in peace, my good
fellow?" with her taunts; with her brazen and sinister scolding.
She was of the true Jacobus stock, and no mistake.

Directly I got away from the girl I called myself many hard names.
What folly was this?  I would ask myself.  It was like being the
slave of some depraved habit.  And I returned to her with my head
clear, my heart certainly free, not even moved by pity for that
castaway (she was as much of a castaway as any one ever wrecked on
a desert island), but as if beguiled by some extraordinary promise.
Nothing more unworthy could be imagined.  The recollection of that
tremulous whisper when I gripped her shoulder with one hand and
held a plate of chicken with the other was enough to make me break
all my good resolutions.

Her insulting taciturnity was enough sometimes to make one gnash
one's teeth with rage.  When she opened her mouth it was only to be
abominably rude in harsh tones to the associate of her reprobate
father; and the full approval of her aged relative was conveyed to
her by offensive chuckles.  If not that, then her remarks, always
uttered in the tone of scathing contempt, were of the most
appalling inanity.

How could it have been otherwise?  That plump, ruffianly Jacobus
old maid in the tight grey frock had never taught her any manners.
Manners I suppose are not necessary for born castaways.  No
educational establishment could ever be induced to accept her as a
pupil--on account of the proprieties, I imagine.  And Jacobus had
not been able to send her away anywhere.  How could he have done
it?  Who with?  Where to?  He himself was not enough of an
adventurer to think of settling down anywhere else.  His passion
had tossed him at the tail of a circus up and down strange coasts,
but, the storm over, he had drifted back shamelessly where, social
outcast as he was, he remained still a Jacobus--one of the oldest
families on the island, older than the French even.  There must
have been a Jacobus in at the death of the last Dodo. . . . The
girl had learned nothing, she had never listened to a general
conversation, she knew nothing, she had heard of nothing.  She
could read certainly; but all the reading matter that ever came in
her way were the newspapers provided for the captains' room of the
"store."  Jacobus had the habit of taking these sheets home now and
then in a very stained and ragged condition.

As her mind could not grasp the meaning of any matters treated
there except police-court reports and accounts of crimes, she had
formed for herself a notion of the civilised world as a scene of
murders, abductions, burglaries, stabbing affrays, and every sort
of desperate violence.  England and France, Paris and London (the
only two towns of which she seemed to have heard), appeared to her
sinks of abomination, reeking with blood, in contrast to her little
island where petty larceny was about the standard of current
misdeeds, with, now and then, some more pronounced crime--and that
only amongst the imported coolie labourers on sugar estates or the
negroes of the town.  But in Europe these things were being done
daily by a wicked population of white men amongst whom, as that
ruffianly, aristocratic old Miss Jacobus pointed out, the wandering
sailors, the associates of her precious papa, were the lowest of
the low.

It was impossible to give her a sense of proportion.  I suppose she
figured England to herself as about the size of the Pearl of the
Ocean; in which case it would certainly have been reeking with gore
and a mere wreck of burgled houses from end to end.  One could not
make her understand that these horrors on which she fed her
imagination were lost in the mass of orderly life like a few drops
of blood in the ocean.  She directed upon me for a moment the
uncomprehending glance of her narrowed eyes and then would turn her
scornful powdered face away without a word.  She would not even
take the trouble to shrug her shoulders.

At that time the batches of papers brought by the last mail
reported a series of crimes in the East End of London, there was a
sensational case of abduction in France and a fine display of armed
robbery in Australia.  One afternoon crossing the dining-room I
heard Miss Jacobus piping in the verandah with venomous animosity:
"I don't know what your precious papa is plotting with that fellow.
But he's just the sort of man who's capable of carrying you off far
away somewhere and then cutting your throat some day for your
money."

There was a good half of the length of the verandah between their
chairs.  I came out and sat down fiercely midway between them.

"Yes, that's what we do with girls in Europe," I began in a grimly
matter-of-fact tone.  I think Miss Jacobus was disconcerted by my
sudden appearance.  I turned upon her with cold ferocity:

"As to objectionable old women, they are first strangled quietly,
then cut up into small pieces and thrown away, a bit here and a bit
there.  They vanish--"

I cannot go so far as to say I had terrified her.  But she was
troubled by my truculence, the more so because I had been always
addressing her with a politeness she did not deserve.  Her plump,
knitting hands fell slowly on her knees.  She said not a word while
I fixed her with severe determination.  Then as I turned away from
her at last, she laid down her work gently and, with noiseless
movements, retreated from the verandah.  In fact, she vanished.

But I was not thinking of her.  I was looking at the girl.  It was
what I was coming for daily; troubled, ashamed, eager; finding in
my nearness to her a unique sensation which I indulged with dread,
self-contempt, and deep pleasure, as if it were a secret vice bound
to end in my undoing, like the habit of some drug or other which
ruins and degrades its slave.

I looked her over, from the top of her dishevelled head, down the
lovely line of the shoulder, following the curve of the hip, the
draped form of the long limb, right down to her fine ankle below a
torn, soiled flounce; and as far as the point of the shabby, high-
heeled, blue slipper, dangling from her well-shaped foot, which she
moved slightly, with quick, nervous jerks, as if impatient of my
presence.  And in the scent of the massed flowers I seemed to
breathe her special and inexplicable charm, the heady perfume of
the everlastingly irritated captive of the garden.

I looked at her rounded chin, the Jacobus chin; at the full, red
lips pouting in the powdered, sallow face; at the firm modelling of
the cheek, the grains of white in the hairs of the straight sombre
eyebrows; at the long eyes, a narrowed gleam of liquid white and
intense motionless black, with their gaze so empty of thought, and
so absorbed in their fixity that she seemed to be staring at her
own lonely image, in some far-off mirror hidden from my sight
amongst the trees.

And suddenly, without looking at me, with the appearance of a
person speaking to herself, she asked, in that voice slightly harsh
yet mellow and always irritated:

"Why do you keep on coming here?"

"Why do I keep on coming here?" I repeated, taken by surprise.  I
could not have told her.  I could not even tell myself with
sincerity why I was coming there.  "What's the good of you asking a
question like that?"

"Nothing is any good," she observed scornfully to the empty air,
her chin propped on her hand, that hand never extended to any man,
that no one had ever grasped--for I had only grasped her shoulder
once--that generous, fine, somewhat masculine hand.  I knew well
the peculiarly efficient shape--broad at the base, tapering at the
fingers--of that hand, for which there was nothing in the world to
lay hold of.  I pretended to be playful.

"No!  But do you really care to know?"

She shrugged indolently her magnificent shoulders, from which the
dingy thin wrapper was slipping a little.

"Oh--never mind--never mind!"

There was something smouldering under those airs of lassitude.  She
exasperated me by the provocation of her nonchalance, by something
elusive and defiant in her very form which I wanted to seize.  I
said roughly:

"Why?  Don't you think I should tell you the truth?"

Her eyes glided my way for a sidelong look, and she murmured,
moving only her full, pouting lips:

"I think you would not dare."

"Do you imagine I am afraid of you?  What on earth. . . . Well,
it's possible, after all, that I don't know exactly why I am coming
here.  Let us say, with Miss Jacobus, that it is for no good.  You
seem to believe the outrageous things she says, if you do have a
row with her now and then."

She snapped out viciously:

"Who else am I to believe?

"I don't know," I had to own, seeing her suddenly very helpless and
condemned to moral solitude by the verdict of a respectable
community.  "You might believe me, if you chose."

She made a slight movement and asked me at once, with an effort as
if making an experiment:

"What is the business between you and papa?"

"Don't you know the nature of your father's business?  Come!  He
sells provisions to ships."

She became rigid again in her crouching pose.

"Not that.  What brings you here--to this house?"

"And suppose it's you?  You would not call that business?  Would
you?  And now let us drop the subject.  It's no use.  My ship will
be ready for sea the day after to-morrow."

She murmured a distinctly scared "So soon," and getting up quickly,
went to the little table and poured herself a glass of water.  She
walked with rapid steps and with an indolent swaying of her whole
young figure above the hips; when she passed near me I felt with
tenfold force the charm of the peculiar, promising sensation I had
formed the habit to seek near her.  I thought with sudden dismay
that this was the end of it; that after one more day I would be no
longer able to come into this verandah, sit on this chair, and
taste perversely the flavour of contempt in her indolent poses,
drink in the provocation of her scornful looks, and listen to the
curt, insolent remarks uttered in that harsh and seductive voice.
As if my innermost nature had been altered by the action of some
moral poison, I felt an abject dread of going to sea.

I had to exercise a sudden self-control, as one puts on a brake, to
prevent myself jumping up to stride about, shout, gesticulate, make
her a scene.  What for?  What about?  I had no idea.  It was just
the relief of violence that I wanted; and I lolled back in my
chair, trying to keep my lips formed in a smile; that half-
indulgent, half-mocking smile which was my shield against the
shafts of her contempt and the insulting sallies flung at me by the
old woman.

She drank the water at a draught, with the avidity of raging
thirst, and let herself fall on the nearest chair, as if utterly
overcome.  Her attitude, like certain tones of her voice, had in it
something masculine:  the knees apart in the ample wrapper, the
clasped hands hanging between them, her body leaning forward, with
drooping head.  I stared at the heavy black coil of twisted hair.
It was enormous, crowning the bowed head with a crushing and
disdained glory.  The escaped wisps hung straight down.  And
suddenly I perceived that the girl was trembling from head to foot,
as though that glass of iced water had chilled her to the bone.

"What's the matter now?" I said, startled, but in no very
sympathetic mood.

She shook her bowed, overweighted head and cried in a stifled voice
but with a rising inflection:

"Go away!  Go away!  Go away!"

I got up then and approached her, with a strange sort of anxiety.
I looked down at her round, strong neck, then stooped low enough to
peep at her face.  And I began to tremble a little myself.

"What on earth are you gone wild about, Miss Don't Care?"

She flung herself backwards violently, her head going over the back
of the chair.  And now it was her smooth, full, palpitating throat
that lay exposed to my bewildered stare.  Her eyes were nearly
closed, with only a horrible white gleam under the lids as if she
were dead.

"What has come to you?" I asked in awe.  "What are you terrifying
yourself with?"

She pulled herself together, her eyes open frightfully wide now.
The tropical afternoon was lengthening the shadows on the hot,
weary earth, the abode of obscure desires, of extravagant hopes, of
unimaginable terrors.

"Never mind!  Don't care!"  Then, after a gasp, she spoke with such
frightful rapidity that I could hardly make out the amazing words:
"For if you were to shut me up in an empty place as smooth all
round as the palm of my hand, I could always strangle myself with
my hair."

For a moment, doubting my ears, I let this inconceivable
declaration sink into me.  It is ever impossible to guess at the
wild thoughts that pass through the heads of our fellow-creatures.
What monstrous imaginings of violence could have dwelt under the
low forehead of that girl who had been taught to regard her father
as "capable of anything" more in the light of a misfortune than
that of a disgrace; as, evidently, something to be resented and
feared rather than to be ashamed of?  She seemed, indeed, as
unaware of shame as of anything else in the world; but in her
ignorance, her resentment and fear took a childish and violent
shape.

Of course she spoke without knowing the value of words.  What could
she know of death--she who knew nothing of life?  It was merely as
the proof of her being beside herself with some odious
apprehension, that this extraordinary speech had moved me, not to
pity, but to a fascinated, horrified wonder.  I had no idea what
notion she had of her danger.  Some sort of abduction.  It was
quite possible with the talk of that atrocious old woman.  Perhaps
she thought she could be carried off, bound hand and foot and even
gagged.  At that surmise I felt as if the door of a furnace had
been opened in front of me.

"Upon my honour!" I cried.  "You shall end by going crazy if you
listen to that abominable old aunt of yours--"

I studied her haggard expression, her trembling lips.  Her cheeks
even seemed sunk a little.  But how I, the associate of her
disreputable father, the "lowest of the low" from the criminal
Europe, could manage to reassure her I had no conception.  She was
exasperating.

"Heavens and earth!  What do you think I can do?"

"I don't know."

Her chin certainly trembled.  And she was looking at me with
extreme attention.  I made a step nearer to her chair.

"I shall do nothing.  I promise you that.  Will that do?  Do you
understand?  I shall do nothing whatever, of any kind; and the day
after to-morrow I shall be gone."

What else could I have said?  She seemed to drink in my words with
the thirsty avidity with which she had emptied the glass of water.
She whispered tremulously, in that touching tone I had heard once
before on her lips, and which thrilled me again with the same
emotion:

"I would believe you.  But what about papa--"

"He be hanged!"  My emotion betrayed itself by the brutality of my
tone.  "I've had enough of your papa.  Are you so stupid as to
imagine that I am frightened of him?  He can't make me do
anything."

All that sounded feeble to me in the face of her ignorance.  But I
must conclude that the "accent of sincerity" has, as some people
say, a really irresistible power.  The effect was far beyond my
hopes,--and even beyond my conception.  To watch the change in the
girl was like watching a miracle--the gradual but swift relaxation
of her tense glance, of her stiffened muscles, of every fibre of
her body.  That black, fixed stare into which I had read a tragic
meaning more than once, in which I had found a sombre seduction,
was perfectly empty now, void of all consciousness whatever, and
not even aware any longer of my presence; it had become a little
sleepy, in the Jacobus fashion.

But, man being a perverse animal, instead of rejoicing at my
complete success, I beheld it with astounded and indignant eyes.
There was something cynical in that unconcealed alteration, the
true Jacobus shamelessness.  I felt as though I had been cheated in
some rather complicated deal into which I had entered against my
better judgment.  Yes, cheated without any regard for, at least,
the forms of decency.

With an easy, indolent, and in its indolence supple, feline
movement, she rose from the chair, so provokingly ignoring me now,
that for very rage I held my ground within less than a foot of her.
Leisurely and tranquil, behaving right before me with the ease of a
person alone in a room, she extended her beautiful arms, with her
hands clenched, her body swaying, her head thrown back a little,
revelling contemptuously in a sense of relief, easing her limbs in
freedom after all these days of crouching, motionless poses when
she had been so furious and so afraid.

All this with supreme indifference, incredible, offensive,
exasperating, like ingratitude doubled with treachery.

I ought to have been flattered, perhaps, but, on the contrary, my
anger grew; her movement to pass by me as if I were a wooden post
or a piece of furniture, that unconcerned movement brought it to a
head.

I won't say I did not know what I was doing, but, certainly, cool
reflection had nothing to do with the circumstance that next moment
both my arms were round her waist.  It was an impulsive action, as
one snatches at something falling or escaping; and it had no
hypocritical gentleness about it either.  She had no time to make a
sound, and the first kiss I planted on her closed lips was vicious
enough to have been a bite.

She did not resist, and of course I did not stop at one.  She let
me go on, not as if she were inanimate--I felt her there, close
against me, young, full of vigour, of life, a strong desirable
creature, but as if she did not care in the least, in the absolute
assurance of her safety, what I did or left undone.  Our faces
brought close together in this storm of haphazard caresses, her
big, black, wide-open eyes looked into mine without the girl
appearing either angry or pleased or moved in any way.  In that
steady gaze which seemed impersonally to watch my madness I could
detect a slight surprise, perhaps--nothing more.  I showered kisses
upon her face and there did not seem to be any reason why this
should not go on for ever.

That thought flashed through my head, and I was on the point of
desisting, when, all at once, she began to struggle with a sudden
violence which all but freed her instantly, which revived my
exasperation with her, indeed a fierce desire never to let her go
any more.  I tightened my embrace in time, gasping out:  "No--you
don't!" as if she were my mortal enemy.  On her part not a word was
said.  Putting her hands against my chest, she pushed with all her
might without succeeding to break the circle of my arms.  Except
that she seemed thoroughly awake now, her eyes gave me no clue
whatever.  To meet her black stare was like looking into a deep
well, and I was totally unprepared for her change of tactics.
Instead of trying to tear my hands apart, she flung herself upon my
breast and with a downward, undulating, serpentine motion, a quick
sliding dive, she got away from me smoothly.  It was all very
swift; I saw her pick up the tail of her wrapper and run for the
door at the end of the verandah not very gracefully.  She appeared
to be limping a little--and then she vanished; the door swung
behind her so noiselessly that I could not believe it was
completely closed.  I had a distinct suspicion of her black eye
being at the crack to watch what I would do.  I could not make up
my mind whether to shake my fist in that direction or blow a kiss.



CHAPTER VI



Either would have been perfectly consistent with my feelings.  I
gazed at the door, hesitating, but in the end I did neither.  The
monition of some sixth sense--the sense of guilt, maybe, that sense
which always acts too late, alas!--warned me to look round; and at
once I became aware that the conclusion of this tumultuous episode
was likely to be a matter of lively anxiety.  Jacobus was standing
in the doorway of the dining-room.  How long he had been there it
was impossible to guess; and remembering my struggle with the girl
I thought he must have been its mute witness from beginning to end.
But this supposition seemed almost incredible.  Perhaps that
impenetrable girl had heard him come in and had got away in time.

He stepped on to the verandah in his usual manner, heavy-eyed, with
glued lips.  I marvelled at the girl's resemblance to this man.
Those long, Egyptian eyes, that low forehead of a stupid goddess,
she had found in the sawdust of the circus; but all the rest of the
face, the design and the modelling, the rounded chin, the very
lips--all that was Jacobus, fined down, more finished, more
expressive.

His thick hand fell on and grasped with force the back of a light
chair (there were several standing about) and I perceived the
chance of a broken head at the end of all this--most likely.  My
mortification was extreme.  The scandal would be horrible; that was
unavoidable.  But how to act so as to satisfy myself I did not
know.  I stood on my guard and at any rate faced him.  There was
nothing else for it.  Of one thing I was certain, that, however
brazen my attitude, it could never equal the characteristic Jacobus
impudence.

He gave me his melancholy, glued smile and sat down.  I own I was
relieved.  The perspective of passing from kisses to blows had
nothing particularly attractive in it.  Perhaps--perhaps he had
seen nothing?  He behaved as usual, but he had never before found
me alone on the verandah.  If he had alluded to it, if he had
asked:  "Where's Alice?" or something of the sort, I would have
been able to judge from the tone.  He would give me no opportunity.
The striking peculiarity was that he had never looked up at me yet.
"He knows," I said to myself confidently.  And my contempt for him
relieved my disgust with myself.

"You are early home," I remarked.

"Things are very quiet; nothing doing at the store to-day," he
explained with a cast-down air.

"Oh, well, you know, I am off," I said, feeling that this, perhaps,
was the best thing to do.

"Yes," he breathed out.  "Day after to-morrow."

This was not what I had meant; but as he gazed persistently on the
floor, I followed the direction of his glance.  In the absolute
stillness of the house we stared at the high-heeled slipper the
girl had lost in her flight.  We stared.  It lay overturned.

After what seemed a very long time to me, Jacobus hitched his chair
forward, stooped with extended arm and picked it up.  It looked a
slender thing in his big, thick hands.  It was not really a
slipper, but a low shoe of blue, glazed kid, rubbed and shabby.  It
had straps to go over the instep, but the girl only thrust her feet
in, after her slovenly manner.  Jacobus raised his eyes from the
shoe to look at me.

"Sit down, Captain," he said at last, in his subdued tone.

As if the sight of that shoe had renewed the spell, I gave up
suddenly the idea of leaving the house there and then.  It had
become impossible.  I sat down, keeping my eyes on the fascinating
object.  Jacobus turned his daughter's shoe over and over in his
cushioned paws as if studying the way the thing was made.  He
contemplated the thin sole for a time; then glancing inside with an
absorbed air:

"I am glad I found you here, Captain."

I answered this by some sort of grunt, watching him covertly.  Then
I added:  "You won't have much more of me now."

He was still deep in the interior of that shoe on which my eyes too
were resting.

"Have you thought any more of this deal in potatoes I spoke to you
about the other day?"

"No, I haven't," I answered curtly.  He checked my movement to rise
by an austere, commanding gesture of the hand holding that fatal
shoe.  I remained seated and glared at him.  "You know I don't
trade."

"You ought to, Captain.  You ought to."

I reflected.  If I left that house now I would never see the girl
again.  And I felt I must see her once more, if only for an
instant.  It was a need, not to be reasoned with, not to be
disregarded.  No, I did not want to go away.  I wanted to stay for
one more experience of that strange provoking sensation and of
indefinite desire, the habit of which had made me--me of all
people!--dread the prospect of going to sea.

"Mr. Jacobus," I pronounced slowly.  "Do you really think that upon
the whole and taking various' matters into consideration--I mean
everything, do you understand?--it would be a good thing for me to
trade, let us say, with you?"

I waited for a while.  He went on looking at the shoe which he held
now crushed in the middle, the worn point of the toe and the high
heel protruding on each side of his heavy fist.

"That will be all right," he said, facing me squarely at last.

"Are you sure?"

"You'll find it quite correct, Captain."  He had uttered his
habitual phrases in his usual placid, breath-saving voice and stood
my hard, inquisitive stare sleepily without as much as a wink.

"Then let us trade," I said, turning my shoulder to him.  "I see
you are bent on it."

I did not want an open scandal, but I thought that outward decency
may be bought too dearly at times.  I included Jacobus, myself, the
whole population of the island, in the same contemptuous disgust as
though we had been partners in an ignoble transaction.  And the
remembered vision at sea, diaphanous and blue, of the Pearl of the
Ocean at sixty miles off; the unsubstantial, clear marvel of it as
if evoked by the art of a beautiful and pure magic, turned into a
thing of horrors too.  Was this the fortune this vaporous and rare
apparition had held for me in its hard heart, hidden within the
shape as of fair dreams and mist?  Was this my luck?

"I think"--Jacobus became suddenly audible after what seemed the
silence of vile meditation--"that you might conveniently take some
thirty tons.  That would be about the lot, Captain."

"Would it?  The lot!  I dare say it would be convenient, but I
haven't got enough money for that."

I had never seen him so animated.

"No!" he exclaimed with what I took for the accent of grim menace.
"That's a pity."  He paused, then, unrelenting:  "How much money
have you got, Captain?" he inquired with awful directness.

It was my turn to face him squarely.  I did so and mentioned the
amount I could dispose of.  And I perceived that he was
disappointed.  He thought it over, his calculating gaze lost in
mine, for quite a long time before he came out in a thoughtful tone
with the rapacious suggestion:

"You could draw some more from your charterers.  That would be
quite easy, Captain."

"No, I couldn't," I retorted brusquely.  "I've drawn my salary up
to date, and besides, the ship's accounts are closed."

I was growing furious.  I pursued:  "And I'll tell you what:  if I
could do it I wouldn't."  Then throwing off all restraint, I added:
"You are a bit too much of a Jacobus, Mr. Jacobus."

The tone alone was insulting enough, but he remained tranquil, only
a little puzzled, till something seemed to dawn upon him; but the
unwonted light in his eyes died out instantly.  As a Jacobus on his
native heath, what a mere skipper chose to say could not touch him,
outcast as he was.  As a ship-chandler he could stand anything.
All I caught of his mumble was a vague--"quite correct," than which
nothing could have been more egregiously false at bottom--to my
view, at least.  But I remembered--I had never forgotten--that I
must see the girl.  I did not mean to go.  I meant to stay in the
house till I had seen her once more.

"Look here!" I said finally.  "I'll tell you what I'll do.  I'll
take as many of your confounded potatoes as my money will buy, on
condition that you go off at once down to the wharf to see them
loaded in the lighter and sent alongside the ship straight away.
Take the invoice and a signed receipt with you.  Here's the key of
my desk.  Give it to Burns.  He will pay you.

He got up from his chair before I had finished speaking, but he
refused to take the key.  Burns would never do it.  He wouldn't
like to ask him even.

"Well, then," I said, eyeing him slightingly, "there's nothing for
it, Mr. Jacobus, but you must wait on board till I come off to
settle with you."

"That will be all right, Captain.  I will go at once."

He seemed at a loss what to do with the girl's shoe he was still
holding in his fist.  Finally, looking dully at me, he put it down
on the chair from which he had risen.

"And you, Captain?  Won't you come along, too, just to see--"

"Don't bother about me.  I'll take care of myself."

He remained perplexed for a moment, as if trying to understand; and
then his weighty:  "Certainly, certainly, Captain," seemed to be
the outcome of some sudden thought.  His big chest heaved.  Was it
a sigh?  As he went out to hurry off those potatoes he never looked
back at me.

I waited till the noise of his footsteps had died out of the
dining-room, and I waited a little longer.  Then turning towards
the distant door I raised my voice along the verandah:

"Alice!"

Nothing answered me, not even a stir behind the door.  Jacobus's
house might have been made empty for me to make myself at home in.
I did not call again.  I had become aware of a great
discouragement.  I was mentally jaded, morally dejected.  I turned
to the garden again, sitting down with my elbows spread on the low
balustrade, and took my head in my hands.

The evening closed upon me.  The shadows lengthened, deepened,
mingled together into a pool of twilight in which the flower-beds
glowed like coloured embers; whiffs of heavy scent came to me as if
the dusk of this hemisphere were but the dimness of a temple and
the garden an enormous censer swinging before the altar of the
stars.  The colours of the blossoms deepened, losing their glow one
by one.

The girl, when I turned my head at a slight noise, appeared to me
very tall and slender, advancing with a swaying limp, a floating
and uneven motion which ended in the sinking of her shadowy form
into the deep low chair.  And I don't know why or whence I received
the impression that she had come too late.  She ought to have
appeared at my call.  She ought to have . . . It was as if a
supreme opportunity had been missed.

I rose and took a seat close to her, nearly opposite her arm-chair.
Her ever discontented voice addressed me at once, contemptuously:

"You are still here."

I pitched mine low.

"You have come out at last."

"I came to look for my shoe--before they bring in the lights."

It was her harsh, enticing whisper, subdued, not very steady, but
its low tremulousness gave me no thrill now.  I could only make out
the oval of her face, her uncovered throat, the long, white gleam
of her eyes.  She was mysterious enough.  Her hands were resting on
the arms of the chair.  But where was the mysterious and provoking
sensation which was like the perfume of her flower-like youth?  I
said quietly:

"I have got your shoe here."  She made no sound and I continued:
"You had better give me your foot and I will put it on for you."

She made no movement.  I bent low down and groped for her foot
under the flounces of the wrapper.  She did not withdraw it and I
put on the shoe, buttoning the instep-strap.  It was an inanimate
foot.  I lowered it gently to the floor.

"If you buttoned the strap you would not be losing your shoe, Miss
Don't Care," I said, trying to be playful without conviction.  I
felt more like wailing over the lost illusion of vague desire, over
the sudden conviction that I would never find again near her the
strange, half-evil, half-tender sensation which had given its acrid
flavour to so many days, which had made her appear tragic and
promising, pitiful and provoking.  That was all over.

"Your father picked it up," I said, thinking she may just as well
be told of the fact.

"I am not afraid of papa--by himself," she declared scornfully.

"Oh!  It's only in conjunction with his disreputable associates,
strangers, the 'riff-raff of Europe' as your charming aunt or
great-aunt says--men like me, for instance--that you--"

"I am not afraid of you," she snapped out.

"That's because you don't know that I am now doing business with
your father.  Yes, I am in fact doing exactly what he wants me to
do.  I've broken my promise to you.  That's the sort of man I am.
And now--aren't you afraid?  If you believe what that dear, kind,
truthful old lady says you ought to be."

It was with unexpected modulated softness that the affirmed:

"No.  I am not afraid."  She hesitated. . . . "Not now."

"Quite right.  You needn't be.  I shall not see you again before I
go to sea."  I rose and stood near her chair.  "But I shall often
think of you in this old garden, passing under the trees over
there, walking between these gorgeous flower-beds.  You must love
this garden--"

"I love nothing."

I heard in her sullen tone the faint echo of that resentfully
tragic note which I had found once so provoking.  But it left me
unmoved except for a sudden and weary conviction of the emptiness
of all things under Heaven.

"Good-bye, Alice," I said.

She did not answer, she did not move.  To merely take her hand,
shake it, and go away seemed impossible, almost improper.  I
stooped without haste and pressed my lips to her smooth forehead.
This was the moment when I realised clearly with a sort of terror
my complete detachment from that unfortunate creature.  And as I
lingered in that cruel self-knowledge I felt the light touch of her
arms falling languidly on my neck and received a hasty, awkward,
haphazard kiss which missed my lips.  No!  She was not afraid; but
I was no longer moved.  Her arms slipped off my neck slowly, she
made no sound, the deep wicker arm-chair creaked slightly; only a
sense of my dignity prevented me fleeing headlong from that
catastrophic revelation.

I traversed the dining-room slowly.  I thought:  She's listening to
my footsteps; she can't help it; she'll hear me open and shut that
door.  And I closed it as gently behind me as if I had been a thief
retreating with his ill-gotten booty.  During that stealthy act I
experienced the last touch of emotion in that house, at the thought
of the girl I had left sitting there in the obscurity, with her
heavy hair and empty eyes as black as the night itself, staring
into the walled garden, silent, warm, odorous with the perfume of
imprisoned flowers, which, like herself, were lost to sight in a
world buried in darkness.

The narrow, ill-lighted, rustic streets I knew so well on my way to
the harbour were extremely quiet.  I felt in my heart that the
further one ventures the better one understands how everything in
our life is common, short, and empty; that it is in seeking the
unknown in our sensations that we discover how mediocre are our
attempts and how soon defeated!  Jacobus's boatman was waiting at
the steps with an unusual air of readiness.  He put me alongside
the ship, but did not give me his confidential "Good-evening, sah,"
and, instead of shoving off at once, remained holding by the
ladder.

I was a thousand miles from commercial affairs, when on the dark
quarter-deck Mr. Burns positively rushed at me, stammering with
excitement.  He had been pacing the deck distractedly for hours
awaiting my arrival.  Just before sunset a lighter loaded with
potatoes had come alongside with that fat ship-chandler himself
sitting on the pile of sacks.  He was now stuck immovable in the
cabin.  What was the meaning of it all?  Surely I did not--

"Yes, Mr. Burns, I did," I cut him short.  He was beginning to make
gestures of despair when I stopped that, too, by giving him the key
of my desk and desiring him, in a tone which admitted of no
argument, to go below at once, pay Mr. Jacobus's bill, and send him
out of the ship.

"I don't want to see him," I confessed frankly, climbing the poop-
ladder.  I felt extremely tired.  Dropping on the seat of the
skylight, I gave myself up to idle gazing at the lights about the
quay and at the black mass of the mountain on the south side of the
harbour.  I never heard Jacobus leave the ship with every single
sovereign of my ready cash in his pocket.  I never heard anything
till, a long time afterwards, Mr. Burns, unable to contain himself
any longer, intruded upon me with his ridiculously angry
lamentations at my weakness and good nature.

"Of course, there's plenty of room in the after-hatch.  But they
are sure to go rotten down there.  Well!  I never heard . . .
seventeen tons!  I suppose I must hoist in that lot first thing to-
morrow morning."

"I suppose you must.  Unless you drop them overboard.  But I'm
afraid you can't do that.  I wouldn't mind myself, but it's
forbidden to throw rubbish into the harbour, you know."

"That is the truest word you have said for many a day, sir--
rubbish.  That's just what I expect they are.  Nearly eighty good
gold sovereigns gone; a perfectly clean sweep of your drawer, sir.
Bless me if I understand!"

As it was impossible to throw the right light on this commercial
transaction I left him to his lamentations and under the impression
that I was a hopeless fool.  Next day I did not go ashore.  For one
thing, I had no money to go ashore with--no, not enough to buy a
cigarette.  Jacobus had made a clean sweep.  But that was not the
only reason.  The Pearl of the Ocean had in a few short hours grown
odious to me.  And I did not want to meet any one.  My reputation
had suffered.  I knew I was the object of unkind and sarcastic
comments.

The following morning at sunrise, just as our stern-fasts had been
let go and the tug plucked us out from between the buoys, I saw
Jacobus standing up in his boat.  The nigger was pulling hard;
several baskets of provisions for ships were stowed between the
thwarts.  The father of Alice was going his morning round.  His
countenance was tranquil and friendly.  He raised his arm and
shouted something with great heartiness.  But his voice was of the
sort that doesn't carry any distance; all I could catch faintly, or
rather guess at, were the words "next time" and "quite correct."
And it was only of these last that I was certain.  Raising my arm
perfunctorily for all response, I turned away.  I rather resented
the familiarity of the thing.  Hadn't I settled accounts finally
with him by means of that potato bargain?

This being a harbour story it is not my purpose to speak of our
passage.  I was glad enough to be at sea, but not with the gladness
of old days.  Formerly I had no memories to take away with me.  I
shared in the blessed forgetfulness of sailors, that forgetfulness
natural and invincible, which resembles innocence in so far that it
prevents self-examination.  Now however I remembered the girl.
During the first few days I was for ever questioning myself as to
the nature of facts and sensations connected with her person and
with my conduct.

And I must say also that Mr. Burns' intolerable fussing with those
potatoes was not calculated to make me forget the part which I had
played.  He looked upon it as a purely commercial transaction of a
particularly foolish kind, and his devotion--if it was devotion and
not mere cussedness as I came to regard it before long--inspired
him with a zeal to minimise my loss as much as possible.  Oh, yes!
He took care of those infamous potatoes with a vengeance, as the
saying goes.

Everlastingly, there was a tackle over the after-hatch and
everlastingly the watch on deck were pulling up, spreading out,
picking over, rebagging, and lowering down again, some part of that
lot of potatoes.  My bargain with all its remotest associations,
mental and visual--the garden of flowers and scents, the girl with
her provoking contempt and her tragic loneliness of a hopeless
castaway--was everlastingly dangled before my eyes, for thousands
of miles along the open sea.  And as if by a satanic refinement of
irony it was accompanied by a most awful smell.  Whiffs from
decaying potatoes pursued me on the poop, they mingled with my
thoughts, with my food, poisoned my very dreams.  They made an
atmosphere of corruption for the ship.

I remonstrated with Mr. Burns about this excessive care.  I would
have been well content to batten the hatch down and let them perish
under the deck.

That perhaps would have been unsafe.  The horrid emanations might
have flavoured the cargo of sugar.  They seemed strong enough to
taint the very ironwork.  In addition Mr. Burns made it a personal
matter.  He assured me he knew how to treat a cargo of potatoes at
sea--had been in the trade as a boy, he said.  He meant to make my
loss as small as possible.  What between his devotion--it must have
been devotion--and his vanity, I positively dared not give him the
order to throw my commercial-venture overboard.  I believe he would
have refused point blank to obey my lawful command.  An
unprecedented and comical situation would have been created with
which I did not feel equal to deal.

I welcomed the coming of bad weather as no sailor had ever done.
When at last I hove the ship to, to pick up the pilot outside Port
Philip Heads, the after-hatch had not been opened for more than a
week and I might have believed that no such thing as a potato had
ever been on board.

It was an abominable day, raw, blustering, with great squalls of
wind and rain; the pilot, a cheery person, looked after the ship
and chatted to me, streaming from head to foot; and the heavier the
lash of the downpour the more pleased with himself and everything
around him he seemed to be.  He rubbed his wet hands with a
satisfaction, which to me, who had stood that kind of thing for
several days and nights, seemed inconceivable in any non-aquatic
creature.

"You seem to enjoy getting wet, Pilot," I remarked.

He had a bit of land round his house in the suburbs and it was of
his garden he was thinking.  At the sound of the word garden,
unheard, unspoken for so many days, I had a vision of gorgeous
colour, of sweet scents, of a girlish figure crouching in a chair.
Yes.  That was a distinct emotion breaking into the peace I had
found in the sleepless anxieties of my responsibility during a week
of dangerous bad weather.  The Colony, the pilot explained, had
suffered from unparalleled drought.  This was the first decent drop
of water they had had for seven months.  The root crops were lost.
And, trying to be casual, but with visible interest, he asked me if
I had perchance any potatoes to spare.

Potatoes!  I had managed to forget them.  In a moment I felt
plunged into corruption up to my neck.  Mr. Burns was making eyes
at me behind the pilot's back.

Finally, he obtained a ton, and paid ten pounds for it.  This was
twice the price of my bargain with Jacobus.  The spirit of
covetousness woke up in me.  That night, in harbour, before I
slept, the Custom House galley came alongside.  While his
underlings were putting seals on the storerooms, the officer in
charge took me aside confidentially.  "I say, Captain, you don't
happen to have any potatoes to sell."

Clearly there was a potato famine in the land.  I let him have a
ton for twelve pounds and he went away joyfully.  That night I
dreamt of a pile of gold in the form of a grave in which a girl was
buried, and woke up callous with greed.  On calling at my ship-
broker's office, that man, after the usual business had been
transacted, pushed his spectacles up on his forehead.

"I was thinking, Captain, that coming from the Pearl of the Ocean
you may have some potatoes to sell."

I said negligently:  "Oh, yes, I could spare you a ton.  Fifteen
pounds."

He exclaimed:  "I say!"  But after studying my face for a while
accepted my terms with a faint grimace.  It seems that these people
could not exist without potatoes.  I could.  I didn't want to see a
potato as long as I lived; but the demon of lucre had taken
possession of me.  How the news got about I don't know, but,
returning on board rather late, I found a small group of men of the
coster type hanging about the waist, while Mr. Burns walked to and
fro the quarterdeck loftily, keeping a triumphant eye on them.
They had come to buy potatoes.

"These chaps have been waiting here in the sun for hours," Burns
whispered to me excitedly.  "They have drank the water-cask dry.
Don't you throw away your chances, sir.  You are too good-natured."

I selected a man with thick legs and a man with a cast in his eye
to negotiate with; simply because they were easily distinguishable
from the rest.  "You have the money on you?" I inquired, before
taking them down into the cabin.

"Yes, sir," they answered in one voice, slapping their pockets.  I
liked their air of quiet determination.  Long before the end of the
day all the potatoes were sold at about three times the price I had
paid for them.  Mr. Burns, feverish and exulting, congratulated
himself on his skilful care of my commercial venture, but hinted
plainly that I ought to have made more of it.

That night I did not sleep very well.  I thought of Jacobus by fits
and starts, between snatches of dreams concerned with castaways
starving on a desert island covered with flowers.  It was extremely
unpleasant.  In the morning, tired and unrefreshed, I sat down and
wrote a long letter to my owners, giving them a carefully-thought-
out scheme for the ship's employment in the East and about the
China Seas for the next two years.  I spent the day at that task
and felt somewhat more at peace when it was done.

Their reply came in due course.  They were greatly struck with my
project; but considering that, notwithstanding the unfortunate
difficulty with the bags (which they trusted I would know how to
guard against in the future), the voyage showed a very fair profit,
they thought it would be better to keep the ship in the sugar
trade--at least for the present.

I turned over the page and read on:

"We have had a letter from our good friend Mr. Jacobus.  We are
pleased to see how well you have hit it off with him; for, not to
speak of his assistance in the unfortunate matter of the bags, he
writes us that should you, by using all possible dispatch, manage
to bring the ship back early in the season he would be able to give
us a good rate of freight.  We have no doubt that your best
endeavours . . . etc. . . etc."

I dropped the letter and sat motionless for a long time.  Then I
wrote my answer (it was a short one) and went ashore myself to post
it.  But I passed one letter-box, then another, and in the end
found myself going up Collins Street with the letter still in my
pocket--against my heart.  Collins Street at four o'clock in the
afternoon is not exactly a desert solitude; but I had never felt
more isolated from the rest of mankind as when I walked that day
its crowded pavement, battling desperately with my thoughts and
feeling already vanquished.

There came a moment when the awful tenacity of Jacobus, the man of
one passion and of one idea, appeared to me almost heroic.  He had
not given me up.  He had gone again to his odious brother.  And
then he appeared to me odious himself.  Was it for his own sake or
for the sake of the poor girl?  And on that last supposition the
memory of the kiss which missed my lips appalled me; for whatever
he had seen, or guessed at, or risked, he knew nothing of that.
Unless the girl had told him.  How could I go back to fan that
fatal spark with my cold breath?  No, no, that unexpected kiss had
to be paid for at its full price.

At the first letter-box I came to I stopped and reaching into my
breast-pocket I took out the letter--it was as if I were plucking
out my very heart--and dropped it through the slit.  Then I went
straight on board.

I wondered what dreams I would have that night; but as it turned
out I did not sleep at all.  At breakfast I informed Mr. Burns that
I had resigned my command.

He dropped his knife and fork and looked at me with indignation.

"You have, sir!  I thought you loved the ship."

"So I do, Burns," I said.  "But the fact is that the Indian Ocean
and everything that is in it has lost its charm for me.  I am going
home as passenger by the Suez Canal."

"Everything that is in it," he repeated angrily.  "I've never heard
anybody talk like this.  And to tell you the truth, sir, all the
time we have been together I've never quite made you out.  What's
one ocean more than another?  Charm, indeed!"

He was really devoted to me, I believe.  But he cheered up when I
told him that I had recommended him for my successor.

"Anyhow," he remarked, "let people say what they like, this Jacobus
has served your turn.  I must admit that this potato business has
paid extremely well.  Of course, if only you had--"

"Yes, Mr. Burns," I interrupted.  "Quite a smile of fortune."

But I could not tell him that it was driving me out of the ship I
had learned to love.  And as I sat heavy-hearted at that parting,
seeing all my plans destroyed, my modest future endangered--for
this command was like a foot in the stirrup for a young man--he
gave up completely for the first time his critical attitude.

"A wonderful piece of luck!" he said.




THE SECRET SHARER--AN EPISODE FROM THE COAST




CHAPTER I



On my right hand there were lines of fishing-stakes resembling a
mysterious system of half-submerged bamboo fences, incomprehensible
in its division of the domain of tropical fishes, and crazy of
aspect as if abandoned forever by some nomad tribe of fishermen now
gone to the other end of the ocean; for there was no sign of human
habitation as far as the eye could reach.  To the left a group of
barren islets, suggesting ruins of stone walls, towers, and
blockhouses, had its foundations set in a blue sea that itself
looked solid, so still and stable did it lie below my feet; even
the track of light from the westering sun shone smoothly, without
that animated glitter which tells of an imperceptible ripple.  And
when I turned my head to take a parting glance at the tug which had
just left us anchored outside the bar, I saw the straight line of
the flat shore joined to the stable sea, edge to edge, with a
perfect and unmarked closeness, in one levelled floor half brown,
half blue under the enormous dome of the sky.  Corresponding in
their insignificance to the islets of the sea, two small clumps of
trees, one on each side of the only fault in the impeccable joint,
marked the mouth of the river Meinam we had just left on the first
preparatory stage of our homeward journey; and, far back on the
inland level, a larger and loftier mass, the grove surrounding the
great Paknam pagoda, was the only thing on which the eye could rest
from the vain task of exploring the monotonous sweep of the
horizon.  Here and there gleams as of a few scattered pieces of
silver marked the windings of the great river; and on the nearest
of them, just within the bar, the tug steaming right into the land
became lost to my sight, hull and funnel and masts, as though the
impassive earth had swallowed her up without an effort, without a
tremor.  My eye followed the light cloud of her smoke, now here,
now there, above the plain, according to the devious curves of the
stream, but always fainter and farther away, till I lost it at last
behind the mitre-shaped hill of the great pagoda.  And then I was
left alone with my ship, anchored at the head of the Gulf of Siam.

She floated at the starting-point of a long journey, very still in
an immense stillness, the shadows of her spars flung far to the
eastward by the setting sun.  At that moment I was alone on her
decks.  There was not a sound in her--and around us nothing moved,
nothing lived, not a canoe on the water, not a bird in the air, not
a cloud in the sky.  In this breathless pause at the threshold of a
long passage we seemed to be measuring our fitness for a long and
arduous enterprise, the appointed task of both our existences to be
carried out, far from all human eyes, with only sky and sea for
spectators and for judges.

There must have been some glare in the air to interfere with one's
sight, because it was only just before the sun left us that my
roaming eyes made out beyond the highest ridge of the principal
islet of the group something which did away with the solemnity of
perfect solitude.  The tide of darkness flowed on swiftly; and with
tropical suddenness a swarm of stars came out above the shadowy
earth, while I lingered yet, my hand resting lightly on my ship's
rail as if on the shoulder of a trusted friend.  But, with all that
multitude of celestial bodies staring down at one, the comfort of
quiet communion with her was gone for good.  And there were also
disturbing sounds by this time--voices, footsteps forward; the
steward flitted along the maindeck, a busily ministering spirit; a
hand-bell tinkled urgently under the poop-deck. . . .

I found my two officers waiting for me near the supper table, in
the lighted cuddy.  We sat down at once, and as I helped the chief
mate, I said:

"Are you aware that there is a ship anchored inside the islands?  I
saw her mastheads above the ridge as the sun went down."

He raised sharply his simple face, overcharged by a terrible growth
of whisker, and emitted his usual ejaculations:  "Bless my soul,
sir!  You don't say so!"

My second mate was a round-cheeked, silent young man, grave beyond
his years, I thought; but as our eyes happened to meet I detected a
slight quiver on his lips.  I looked down at once.  It was not my
part to encourage sneering on board my ship.  It must be said, too,
that I knew very little of my officers.  In consequence of certain
events of no particular significance, except to myself, I had been
appointed to the command only a fortnight before.  Neither did I
know much of the hands forward.  All these people had been together
for eighteen months or so, and my position was that of the only
stranger on board.  I mention this because it has some bearing on
what is to follow.  But what I felt most was my being a stranger to
the ship; and if all the truth must be told, I was somewhat of a
stranger to myself.  The youngest man on board (barring the second
mate), and untried as yet by a position of the fullest
responsibility, I was willing to take the adequacy of the others
for granted.  They had simply to be equal to their tasks; but I
wondered how far I should turn out faithful to that ideal
conception of one's own personality every man sets up for himself
secretly.


Meantime the chief mate, with an almost visible effect of
collaboration on the part of his round eyes and frightful whiskers,
was trying to evolve a theory of the anchored ship.  His dominant
trait was to take all things into earnest consideration.  He was of
a painstaking turn of mind.  As he used to say, he "liked to
account to himself" for practically everything that came in his
way, down to a miserable scorpion he had found in his cabin a week
before.  The why and the wherefore of that scorpion--how it got on
board and came to select his room rather than the pantry (which was
a dark place and more what a scorpion would be partial to), and how
on earth it managed to drown itself in the inkwell of his writing-
desk--had exercised him infinitely.  The ship within the islands
was much more easily accounted for; and just as we were about to
rise from table he made his pronouncement.  She was, he doubted
not, a ship from home lately arrived.  Probably she drew too much
water to cross the bar except at the top of spring tides.
Therefore she went into that natural harbour to wait for a few days
in preference to remaining in an open roadstead.

"That's so," confirmed the second mate, suddenly, in his slightly
hoarse voice.  "She draws over twenty feet.  She's the Liverpool
ship Sephora with a cargo of coal.  Hundred and twenty-three days
from Cardiff."

We looked at him in surprise.

"The tugboat skipper told me when he came on board for your
letters, sir," explained the young man.  "He expects to take her up
the river the day after to-morrow."

After thus overwhelming us with the extent of his information he
slipped out of the cabin.  The mate observed regretfully that he
"could not account for that young fellow's whims."  What prevented
him telling us all about it at once, he wanted to know.

I detained him as he was making a move.  For the last two days the
crew had had plenty of hard work, and the night before they had
very little sleep.  I felt painfully that I--a stranger--was doing
something unusual when I directed him to let all hands turn in
without setting an anchor-watch.  I proposed to keep on deck myself
till one o'clock or thereabouts.  I would get the second mate to
relieve me at that hour.

"He will turn out the cook and the steward at four," I concluded,
"and then give you a call.  Of course at the slightest sign of any
sort of wind we'll have the hands up and make a start at once."

He concealed his astonishment.  "Very well, sir."  Outside the
cuddy he put his head in the second mate's door to inform him of my
unheard-of caprice to take a five hours' anchor-watch on myself.  I
heard the other raise his voice incredulously--"What?  The captain
himself?"  Then a few more murmurs, a door closed, then another.  A
few moments later I went on deck.

My strangeness, which had made me sleepless, had prompted that
unconventional arrangement, as if I had expected in those solitary
hours of the night to get on terms with the ship of which I knew
nothing, manned by men of whom I knew very little more.  Fast
alongside a wharf, littered like any ship in port with a tangle of
unrelated things, invaded by unrelated shore people, I had hardly
seen her yet properly.  Now, as she lay cleared for sea, the
stretch of her maindeck seemed to me very fine under the stars.
Very fine, very roomy for her size, and very inviting.  I descended
the poop and paced the waist, my mind picturing to myself the
coming passage through the Malay Archipelago, down the Indian
Ocean, and up the Atlantic.  All its phases were familiar enough to
me, every characteristic, all the alternatives which were likely to
face me on the high seas--everything! . . . except the novel
responsibility of command.  But I took heart from the reasonable
thought that the ship was like other ships, the men like other men,
and that the sea was not likely to keep any special surprises
expressly for my discomfiture.

Arrived at that comforting conclusion, I bethought myself of a
cigar and went below to get it.  All was still down there.
Everybody at the after end of the ship was sleeping profoundly.  I
came out again on the quarter-deck, agreeably at ease in my
sleeping-suit on that warm breathless night, barefooted, a glowing
cigar in my teeth, and, going forward, I was met by the profound
silence of the fore end of the ship.  Only as I passed the door of
the forecastle I heard a deep, quiet, trustful sigh of some sleeper
inside.  And suddenly I rejoiced in the great security of the sea
as compared with the unrest of the land, in my choice of that
untempted life presenting no disquieting problems, invested with an
elementary moral beauty by the absolute straightforwardness of its
appeal and by the singleness of its purpose.

The riding-light in the fore-rigging burned with a clear,
untroubled, as if symbolic, flame, confident and bright in the
mysterious shades of the night.  Passing on my way aft along the
other side of the ship, I observed that the rope side-ladder, put
over, no doubt, for the master of the tug when he came to fetch
away our letters, had not been hauled in as it should have been.  I
became annoyed at this, for exactitude in small matters is the very
soul of discipline.  Then I reflected that I had myself
peremptorily dismissed my officers from duty, and by my own act had
prevented the anchor-watch being formally set and things properly
attended to.  I asked myself whether it was wise ever to interfere
with the established routine of duties even from the kindest of
motives.  My action might have made me appear eccentric.  Goodness
only knew how that absurdly whiskered mate would "account" for my
conduct, and what the whole ship thought of that informality of
their new captain.  I was vexed with myself.

Not from compunction certainly, but, as it were mechanically, I
proceeded to get the ladder in myself.  Now a side-ladder of that
sort is a light affair and comes in easily, yet my vigorous tug,
which should have brought it flying on board, merely recoiled upon
my body in a totally unexpected jerk.  What the devil! . . . I was
so astounded by the immovableness of that ladder that I remained
stock-still, trying to account for it to myself like that imbecile
mate of mine.  In the end, of course, I put my head over the rail.

The side of the ship made an opaque belt of shadow on the darkling
glassy shimmer of the sea.  But I saw at once something elongated
and pale floating very close to the ladder.  Before I could form a
guess a faint flash of phosphorescent light, which seemed to issue
suddenly from the naked body of a man, flickered in the sleeping
water with the elusive, silent play of summer lightning in a night
sky.  With a gasp I saw revealed to my stare a pair of feet, the
long legs, a broad livid back immersed right up to the neck in a
greenish cadaverous glow.  One hand, awash, clutched the bottom
rung of the ladder.  He was complete but for the head.  A headless
corpse!  The cigar dropped out of my gaping mouth with a tiny plop
and a short hiss quite audible in the absolute stillness of all
things under heaven.  At that I suppose he raised up his face, a
dimly pale oval in the shadow of the ship's side.  But even then I
could only barely make out down there the shape of his black-haired
head.  However, it was enough for the horrid, frost-bound sensation
which had gripped me about the chest to pass off.  The moment of
vain exclamations was past, too.  I only climbed on the spare spar
and leaned over the rail as far as I could, to bring my eyes nearer
to that mystery floating alongside.

As he hung by the ladder, like a resting swimmer, the sea-lightning
played about his limbs at every stir; and he appeared in it
ghastly, silvery, fish-like.  He remained as mute as a fish, too.
He made no motion to get out of the water, either.  It was
inconceivable that he should not attempt to come on board, and
strangely troubling to suspect that perhaps he did not want to.
And my first words were prompted by just that troubled incertitude.

"What's the matter?" I asked in my ordinary tone, speaking down to
the face upturned exactly under mine.

"Cramp," it answered, no louder.  Then slightly anxious, "I say, no
need to call any one."

"I was not going to," I said.

"Are you alone on deck?"

"Yes."

I had somehow the impression that he was on the point of letting go
the ladder to swim away beyond my ken--mysterious as he came.  But,
for the moment, this being appearing as if he had risen from the
bottom of the sea (it was certainly the nearest land to the ship)
wanted only to know the time.  I told him.  And he, down there,
tentatively:

"I suppose your captain's turned in?"

"I am sure he isn't," I said.

He seemed to struggle with himself, for I heard something like the
low, bitter murmur of doubt.  "What's the good?"  His next words
came out with a hesitating effort.

"Look here, my man.  Could you call him out quietly?"

I thought the time had come to declare myself.

"_I_ am the captain."

I heard a "By Jove!" whispered at the level of the water.  The
phosphorescence flashed in the swirl of the water all about his
limbs, his other hand seized the ladder.

"My name's Leggatt."

The voice was calm and resolute.  A good voice.  The self-
possession of that man had somehow induced a corresponding state in
myself.  It was very quietly that I remarked:

"You must be a good swimmer."

"Yes.  I've been in the water practically since nine o'clock.  The
question for me now is whether I am to let go this ladder and go on
swimming till I sink from exhaustion, or--to come on board here."

I felt this was no mere formula of desperate speech, but a real
alternative in the view of a strong soul.  I should have gathered
from this that he was young; indeed, it is only the young who are
ever confronted by such clear issues.  But at the time it was pure
intuition on my part.  A mysterious communication was established
already between us two--in the face of that silent, darkened
tropical sea.  I was young, too; young enough to make no comment.
The man in the water began suddenly to climb up the ladder, and I
hastened away from the rail to fetch some clothes.

Before entering the cabin I stood still, listening in the lobby at
the foot of the stairs.  A faint snore came through the closed door
of the chief mate's room.  The second mate's door was on the hook,
but the darkness in there was absolutely soundless.  He, too, was
young and could sleep like a stone.  Remained the steward, but he
was not likely to wake up before he was called.  I got a sleeping-
suit out of my room and, coming back on deck, saw the naked man
from the sea sitting on the main-hatch, glimmering white in the
darkness, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.  In a
moment he had concealed his damp body in a sleeping-suit of the
same grey-stripe pattern as the one I was wearing and followed me
like my double on the poop.  Together we moved right aft,
barefooted, silent.

"What is it?" I asked in a deadened voice, taking the lighted lamp
out of the binnacle, and raising it to his face.

"An ugly business."

He had rather regular features; a good mouth; light eyes under
somewhat heavy, dark eyebrows; a smooth, square forehead; no growth
on his cheeks; a small, brown moustache, and a well-shaped, round
chin.  His expression was concentrated, meditative, under the
inspecting light of the lamp I held up to his face; such as a man
thinking hard in solitude might wear.  My sleeping-suit was just
right for his size.  A well-knit young fellow of twenty-five at
most.  He caught his lower lip with the edge of white, even teeth.

"Yes," I said, replacing the lamp in the binnacle.  The warm, heavy
tropical night closed upon his head again.

"There's a ship over there," he murmured.

"Yes, I know.  The Sephora.  Did you know of us?"

"Hadn't the slightest idea.  I am the mate of her--"  He paused and
corrected himself.  "I should say I WAS."

"Aha!  Something wrong?"

"Yes.  Very wrong indeed.  I've killed a man."

"What do you mean?  Just now?"

"No, on the passage.  Weeks ago.  Thirty-nine south.  When I say a
man--"

"Fit of temper," I suggested, confidently.

The shadowy, dark head, like mine, seemed to nod imperceptibly
above the ghostly grey of my sleeping-suit.  It was, in the night,
as though I had been faced by my own reflection in the depths of a
sombre and immense mirror.

"A pretty thing to have to own up to for a Conway boy," murmured my
double, distinctly.

"You're a Conway boy?"

"I am," he said, as if startled.  Then, slowly . . . "Perhaps you
too--"

It was so; but being a couple of years older I had left before he
joined.  After a quick interchange of dates a silence fell; and I
thought suddenly of my absurd mate with his terrific whiskers and
the "Bless my soul--you don't say so" type of intellect.  My double
gave me an inkling of his thoughts by saying:

"My father's a parson in Norfolk.  Do you see me before a judge and
jury on that charge?  For myself I can't see the necessity.  There
are fellows that an angel from heaven--And I am not that.  He was
one of those creatures that are just simmering all the time with a
silly sort of wickedness.  Miserable devils that have no business
to live at all.  He wouldn't do his duty and wouldn't let anybody
else do theirs.  But what's the good of talking!  You know well
enough the sort of ill-conditioned snarling cur--"

He appealed to me as if our experiences had been as identical as
our clothes.  And I knew well enough the pestiferous danger of such
a character where there are no means of legal repression.  And I
knew well enough also that my double there was no homicidal
ruffian.  I did not think of asking him for details, and he told me
the story roughly in brusque, disconnected sentences.  I needed no
more.  I saw it all going on as though I were myself inside that
other sleeping-suit.

"It happened while we were setting a reefed foresail, at dusk.
Reefed foresail!  You understand the sort of weather.  The only
sail we had left to keep the ship running; so you may guess what it
had been like for days.  Anxious sort of job, that.  He gave me
some of his cursed insolence at the sheet.  I tell you I was
overdone with this terrific weather that seemed to have no end to
it.  Terrific, I tell you--and a deep ship.  I believe the fellow
himself was half crazed with funk.  It was no time for gentlemanly
reproof, so I turned round and felled him like an ox.  He up and at
me.  We closed just as an awful sea made for the ship.  All hands
saw it coming and took to the rigging, but I had him by the throat,
and went on shaking him like a rat, the men above us yelling, "Look
out! look out!"  Then a crash as if the sky had fallen on my head.
They say that for over ten minutes hardly anything was to be seen
of the ship--just the three masts and a bit of the forecastle head
and of the poop all awash driving along in a smother of foam.  It
was a miracle that they found us, jammed together behind the
forebits.  It's clear that I meant business, because I was holding
him by the throat still when they picked us up.  He was black in
the face.  It was too much for them.  It seems they rushed us aft
together, gripped as we were, screaming "Murder!" like a lot of
lunatics, and broke into the cuddy.  And the ship running for her
life, touch and go all the time, any minute her last in a sea fit
to turn your hair grey only a-looking at it.  I understand that the
skipper, too, started raving like the rest of them.  The man had
been deprived of sleep for more than a week, and to have this
sprung on him at the height of a furious gale nearly drove him out
of his mind.  I wonder they didn't fling me overboard after getting
the carcass of their precious ship-mate out of my fingers.  They
had rather a job to separate us, I've been told.  A sufficiently
fierce story to make an old judge and a respectable jury sit up a
bit.  The first thing I heard when I came to myself was the
maddening howling of that endless gale, and on that the voice of
the old man.  He was hanging on to my bunk, staring into my face
out of his sou'wester.

"'Mr. Leggatt, you have killed a man.  You can act no longer as
chief mate of this ship.'"

His care to subdue his voice made it sound monotonous.  He rested a
hand on the end of the skylight to steady himself with, and all
that time did not stir a limb, so far as I could see.  "Nice little
tale for a quiet tea-party," he concluded in the same tone.

One of my hands, too, rested on the end of the skylight; neither
did I stir a limb, so far as I knew.  We stood less than a foot
from each other.  It occurred to me that if old "Bless my soul--you
don't say so" were to put his head up the companion and catch sight
of us, he would think he was seeing double, or imagine himself come
upon a scene of weird witchcraft; the strange captain having a
quiet confabulation by the wheel with his own grey ghost.  I became
very much concerned to prevent anything of the sort.  I heard the
other's soothing undertone.

"My father's a parson in Norfolk," it said.  Evidently he had
forgotten he had told me this important fact before.  Truly a nice
little tale.

"You had better slip down into my stateroom now," I said, moving
off stealthily.  My double followed my movements; our bare feet
made no sound; I let him in, closed the door with care, and, after
giving a call to the second mate, returned on deck for my relief.

"Not much sign of any wind yet," I remarked when he approached.

"No, sir.  Not much," he assented, sleepily, in his hoarse voice,
with just enough deference, no more, and barely suppressing a yawn.

"Well, that's all you have to look out for.  You have got your
orders."

"Yes, sir."

I paced a turn or two on the poop and saw him take up his position
face forward with his elbow in the ratlines of the mizzen-rigging
before I went below.  The mate's faint snoring was still going on
peacefully.  The cuddy lamp was burning over the table on which
stood a vase with flowers, a polite attention from the ship's
provision merchant--the last flowers we should see for the next
three months at the very least.  Two bunches of bananas hung from
the beam symmetrically, one on each side of the rudder-casing.
Everything was as before in the ship--except that two of her
captain's sleeping-suits were simultaneously in use, one motionless
in the cuddy, the other keeping very still in the captain's
stateroom.

It must be explained here that my cabin had the form of the capital
letter L the door being within the angle and opening into the short
part of the letter.  A couch was to the left, the bed-place to the
right; my writing-desk and the chronometers' table faced the door.
But any one opening it, unless he stepped right inside, had no view
of what I call the long (or vertical) part of the letter.  It
contained some lockers surmounted by a bookcase; and a few clothes,
a thick jacket or two, caps, oilskin coat, and such like, hung on
hooks.  There was at the bottom of that part a door opening into my
bath-room, which could be entered also directly from the saloon.
But that way was never used.

The mysterious arrival had discovered the advantage of this
particular shape.  Entering my room, lighted strongly by a big
bulkhead lamp swung on gimbals above my writing-desk, I did not see
him anywhere till he stepped out quietly from behind the coats hung
in the recessed part.

"I heard somebody moving about, and went in there at once," he
whispered.

I, too, spoke under my breath.

"Nobody is likely to come in here without knocking and getting
permission."

He nodded.  His face was thin and the sunburn faded, as though he
had been ill.  And no wonder.  He had been, I heard presently, kept
under arrest in his cabin for nearly seven weeks.  But there was
nothing sickly in his eyes or in his expression.  He was not a bit
like me, really; yet, as we stood leaning over my bed-place,
whispering side by side, with our dark heads together and our backs
to the door, anybody bold enough to open it stealthily would have
been treated to the uncanny sight of a double captain busy talking
in whispers with his other self.

"But all this doesn't tell me how you came to hang on to our side-
ladder," I inquired, in the hardly audible murmurs we used, after
he had told me something more of the proceedings on board the
Sephora once the bad weather was over.

"When we sighted Java Head I had had time to think all those
matters out several times over.  I had six weeks of doing nothing
else, and with only an hour or so every evening for a tramp on the
quarter-deck."

He whispered, his arms folded on the side of my bed-place, staring
through the open port.  And I could imagine perfectly the manner of
this thinking out--a stubborn if not a steadfast operation;
something of which I should have been perfectly incapable.

"I reckoned it would be dark before we closed with the land," he
continued, so low that I had to strain my hearing, near as we were
to each other, shoulder touching shoulder almost.  "So I asked to
speak to the old man.  He always seemed very sick when he came to
see me--as if he could not look me in the face.  You know, that
foresail saved the ship.  She was too deep to have run long under
bare poles.  And it was I that managed to set it for him.  Anyway,
he came.  When I had him in my cabin--he stood by the door looking
at me as if I had the halter round my neck already--I asked him
right away to leave my cabin door unlocked at night while the ship
was going through Sunda Straits.  There would be the Java coast
within two or three miles, off Angier Point.  I wanted nothing
more.  I've had a prize for swimming my second year in the Conway."

"I can believe it," I breathed out.

"God only knows why they locked me in every night.  To see some of
their faces you'd have thought they were afraid I'd go about at
night strangling people.  Am I a murdering brute?  Do I look it?
By Jove! if I had been he wouldn't have trusted himself like that
into my room.  You'll say I might have chucked him aside and bolted
out, there and then--it was dark already.  Well, no.  And for the
same reason I wouldn't think of trying to smash the door.  There
would have been a rush to stop me at the noise, and I did not mean
to get into a confounded scrimmage.  Somebody else might have got
killed--for I would not have broken out only to get chucked back,
and I did not want any more of that work.  He refused, looking more
sick than ever.  He was afraid of the men, and also of that old
second mate of his who had been sailing with him for years--a grey-
headed old humbug; and his steward, too, had been with him devil
knows how long--seventeen years or more--a dogmatic sort of loafer
who hated me like poison, just because I was the chief mate.  No
chief mate ever made more than one voyage in the Sephora, you know.
Those two old chaps ran the ship.  Devil only knows what the
skipper wasn't afraid of (all his nerve went to pieces altogether
in that hellish spell of bad weather we had)--of what the law would
do to him--of his wife, perhaps.  Oh, yes! she's on board.  Though
I don't think she would have meddled.  She would have been only too
glad to have me out of the ship in any way.  The 'brand of Cain'
business, don't you see.  That's all right.  I was ready enough to
go off wandering on the face of the earth--and that was price
enough to pay for an Abel of that sort.  Anyhow, he wouldn't listen
to me.  'This thing must take its course.  I represent the law
here.'  He was shaking like a leaf.  'So you won't?'  'No!'  'Then
I hope you will be able to sleep on that,' I said, and turned my
back on him.  'I wonder that YOU can,' cries he, and locks the
door.

"Well, after that, I couldn't.  Not very well.  That was three
weeks ago.  We have had a slow passage through the Java Sea;
drifted about Carimata for ten days.  When we anchored here they
thought, I suppose, it was all right.  The nearest land (and that's
five miles) is the ship's destination; the consul would soon set
about catching me; and there would have been no object in bolting
to these islets there.  I don't suppose there's a drop of water on
them.  I don't know how it was, but to-night that steward, after
bringing me my supper, went out to let me eat it, and left the door
unlocked.  And I ate it--all there was, too.  After I had finished
I strolled out on the quarterdeck.  I don't know that I meant to do
anything.  A breath of fresh air was all I wanted, I believe.  Then
a sudden temptation came over me.  I kicked off my slippers and was
in the water before I had made up my mind fairly.  Somebody heard
the splash and they raised an awful hullabaloo.  'He's gone!  Lower
the boats!  He's committed suicide!  No, he's swimming.'  Certainly
I was swimming.  It's not so easy for a swimmer like me to commit
suicide by drowning.  I landed on the nearest islet before the boat
left the ship's side.  I heard them pulling about in the dark,
hailing, and so on, but after a bit they gave up.  Everything
quieted down and the anchorage became as still as death.  I sat
down on a stone and began to think.  I felt certain they would
start searching for me at daylight.  There was no place to hide on
those stony things--and if there had been, what would have been the
good?  But now I was clear of that ship, I was not going back.  So
after a while I took off all my clothes, tied them up in a bundle
with a stone inside, and dropped them in the deep water on the
outer side of that islet.  That was suicide enough for me.  Let
them think what they liked, but I didn't mean to drown myself.  I
meant to swim till I sank--but that's not the same thing.  I struck
out for another of these little islands, and it was from that one
that I first saw your riding-light.  Something to swim for.  I went
on easily, and on the way I came upon a flat rock a foot or two
above water.  In the daytime, I dare say, you might make it out
with a glass from your poop.  I scrambled up on it and rested
myself for a bit.  Then I made another start.  That last spell must
have been over a mile."

His whisper was getting fainter and fainter, and all the time he
stared straight out through the port-hole, in which there was not
even a star to be seen.  I had not interrupted him.  There was
something that made comment impossible in his narrative, or perhaps
in himself; a sort of feeling, a quality, which I can't find a name
for.  And when he ceased, all I found was a futile whisper:  "So
you swam for our light?"

"Yes--straight for it.  It was something to swim for.  I couldn't
see any stars low down because the coast was in the way, and I
couldn't see the land, either.  The water was like glass.  One
might have been swimming in a confounded thousand-feet deep cistern
with no place for scrambling out anywhere; but what I didn't like
was the notion of swimming round and round like a crazed bullock
before I gave out; and as I didn't mean to go back . . . No.  Do
you see me being hauled back, stark naked, off one of these little
islands by the scruff of the neck and fighting like a wild beast?
Somebody would have got killed for certain, and I did not want any
of that.  So I went on.  Then your ladder--"

"Why didn't you hail the ship?" I asked, a little louder.

He touched my shoulder lightly.  Lazy footsteps came right over our
heads and stopped.  The second mate had crossed from the other side
of the poop and might have been hanging over the rail, for all we
knew.

"He couldn't hear us talking--could he?"  My double breathed into
my very ear, anxiously.

His anxiety was an answer, a sufficient answer, to the question I
had put to him.  An answer containing all the difficulty of that
situation.  I closed the port-hole quietly, to make sure.  A louder
word might have been overheard.

"Who's that?" he whispered then.

"My second mate.  But I don't know much more of the fellow than you
do."

And I told him a little about myself.  I had been appointed to take
charge while I least expected anything of the sort, not quite a
fortnight ago.  I didn't know either the ship or the people.
Hadn't had the time in port to look about me or size anybody up.
And as to the crew, all they knew was that I was appointed to take
the ship home.  For the rest, I was almost as much of a stranger on
board as himself, I said.  And at the moment I felt it most
acutely.  I felt that it would take very little to make me a
suspect person in the eyes of the ship's company.

He had turned about meantime; and we, the two strangers in the
ship, faced each other in identical attitudes.

"Your ladder--" he murmured, after a silence.  "Who'd have thought
of finding a ladder hanging over at night in a ship anchored out
here!  I felt just then a very unpleasant faintness.  After the
life I've been leading for nine weeks, anybody would have got out
of condition.  I wasn't capable of swimming round as far as your
rudder-chains.  And, lo and behold! there was a ladder to get hold
of.  After I gripped it I said to myself, 'What's the good?'  When
I saw a man's head looking over I thought I would swim away
presently and leave him shouting--in whatever language it was.  I
didn't mind being looked at.  I--I liked it.  And then you speaking
to me so quietly--as if you had expected me--made me hold on a
little longer.  It had been a confounded lonely time--I don't mean
while swimming.  I was glad to talk a little to somebody that
didn't belong to the Sephora.  As to asking for the captain, that
was a mere impulse.  It could have been no use, with all the ship
knowing about me and the other people pretty certain to be round
here in the morning.  I don't know--I wanted to be seen, to talk
with somebody, before I went on.  I don't know what I would have
said. . . . 'Fine night, isn't it?' or something of the sort."

"Do you think they will be round here presently?" I asked with some
incredulity.

"Quite likely," he said, faintly.

He looked extremely haggard all of a sudden.  His head rolled on
his shoulders.

"H'm.  We shall see then.  Meantime get into that bed," I
whispered.  "Want help?  There."

It was a rather high bed-place with a set of drawers underneath.
This amazing swimmer really needed the lift I gave him by seizing
his leg.  He tumbled in, rolled over on his back, and flung one arm
across his eyes.  And then, with his face nearly hidden, he must
have looked exactly as I used to look in that bed.  I gazed upon my
other self for a while before drawing across carefully the two
green serge curtains which ran on a brass rod.  I thought for a
moment of pinning them together for greater safety, but I sat down
on the couch, and once there I felt unwilling to rise and hunt for
a pin.  I would do it in a moment.  I was extremely tired, in a
peculiarly intimate way, by the strain of stealthiness, by the
effort of whispering and the general secrecy of this excitement.
It was three o'clock by now and I had been on my feet since nine,
but I was not sleepy; I could not have gone to sleep.  I sat there,
fagged out, looking at the curtains, trying to clear my mind of the
confused sensation of being in two places at once, and greatly
bothered by an exasperating knocking in my head.  It was a relief
to discover suddenly that it was not in my head at all, but on the
outside of the door.  Before I could collect myself the words "Come
in" were out of my mouth, and the steward entered with a tray,
bringing in my morning coffee.  I had slept, after all, and I was
so frightened that I shouted, "This way!  I am here, steward," as
though he had been miles away.  He put down the tray on the table
next the couch and only then said, very quietly, "I can see you are
here, sir."  I felt him give me a keen look, but I dared not meet
his eyes just then.  He must have wondered why I had drawn the
curtains of my bed before going to sleep on the couch.  He went
out, hooking the door open as usual.

I heard the crew washing decks above me.  I knew I would have been
told at once if there had been any wind.  Calm, I thought, and I
was doubly vexed.  Indeed, I felt dual more than ever.  The steward
reappeared suddenly in the doorway.  I jumped up from the couch so
quickly that he gave a start.

"What do you want here?"

"Close your port, sir--they are washing decks."

"It is closed," I said, reddening.

"Very well, sir."  But he did not move from the doorway and
returned my stare in an extraordinary, equivocal manner for a time.
Then his eyes wavered, all his expression changed, and in a voice
unusually gentle, almost coaxingly:

"May I come in to take the empty cup away, sir?"

"Of course!"  I turned my back on him while he popped in and out.
Then I unhooked and closed the door and even pushed the bolt.  This
sort of thing could not go on very long.  The cabin was as hot as
an oven, too.  I took a peep at my double, and discovered that he
had not moved, his arm was still over his eyes; but his chest
heaved; his hair was wet; his chin glistened with perspiration.  I
reached over him and opened the port.

"I must show myself on deck," I reflected.

Of course, theoretically, I could do what I liked, with no one to
say nay to me within the whole circle of the horizon; but to lock
my cabin door and take the key away I did not dare.  Directly I put
my head out of the companion I saw the group of my two officers,
the second mate barefooted, the chief mate in long india-rubber
boots, near the break of the poop, and the steward half-way down
the poop-ladder talking to them eagerly.  He happened to catch
sight of me and dived, the second ran down on the main-deck
shouting some order or other, and the chief mate came to meet me,
touching his cap.

There was a sort of curiosity in his eye that I did not like.  I
don't know whether the steward had told them that I was "queer"
only, or downright drunk, but I know the man meant to have a good
look at me.  I watched him coming with a smile which, as he got
into point-blank range, took effect and froze his very whiskers.  I
did not give him time to open his lips.

"Square the yards by lifts and braces before the hands go to
breakfast."

It was the first particular order I had given on board that ship;
and I stayed on deck to see it executed, too.  I had felt the need
of asserting myself without loss of time.  That sneering young cub
got taken down a peg or two on that occasion, and I also seized the
opportunity of having a good look at the face of every foremast man
as they filed past me to go to the after braces.  At breakfast
time, eating nothing myself, I presided with such frigid dignity
that the two mates were only too glad to escape from the cabin as
soon as decency permitted; and all the time the dual working of my
mind distracted me almost to the point of insanity.  I was
constantly watching myself, my secret self, as dependent on my
actions as my own personality, sleeping in that bed, behind that
door which faced me as I sat at the head of the table.  It was very
much like being mad, only it was worse because one was aware of it.

I had to shake him for a solid minute, but when at last he opened
his eyes it was in the full possession of his senses, with an
inquiring look.

"All's well so far," I whispered.  "Now you must vanish into the
bath-room."

He did so, as noiseless as a ghost, and I then rang for the
steward, and facing him boldly, directed him to tidy up my
stateroom while I was having my bath--"and be quick about it."  As
my tone admitted of no excuses, he said, "Yes, sir," and ran off to
fetch his dust-pan and brushes.  I took a bath and did most of my
dressing, splashing, and whistling softly for the steward's
edification, while the secret sharer of my life stood drawn up bolt
upright in that little space, his face looking very sunken in
daylight, his eyelids lowered under the stern, dark line of his
eyebrows drawn together by a slight frown.

When I left him there to go back to my room the steward was
finishing dusting.  I sent for the mate and engaged him in some
insignificant conversation.  It was, as it were, trifling with the
terrific character of his whiskers; but my object was to give him
an opportunity for a good look at my cabin.  And then I could at
last shut, with a clear conscience, the door of my stateroom and
get my double back into the recessed part.  There was nothing else
for it.  He had to sit still on a small folding stool, half
smothered by the heavy coats hanging there.  We listened to the
steward going into the bath-room out of the saloon, filling the
water-bottles there, scrubbing the bath, setting things to rights,
whisk, bang, clatter--out again into the saloon--turn the key--
click.  Such was my scheme for keeping my second self invisible.
Nothing better could be contrived under the circumstances.  And
there we sat; I at my writing-desk ready to appear busy with some
papers, he behind me, out of sight of the door.  It would not have
been prudent to talk in daytime; and I could not have stood the
excitement of that queer sense of whispering to myself.  Now and
then glancing over my shoulder, I saw him far back there, sitting
rigidly on the low stool, his bare feet close together, his arms
folded, his head hanging on his breast--and perfectly still.
Anybody would have taken him for me.

I was fascinated by it myself.  Every moment I had to glance over
my shoulder.  I was looking at him when a voice outside the door
said:

"Beg pardon, sir."

"Well!" . . . I kept my eyes on him, and so, when the voice outside
the door announced, "There's a ship's boat coming our way, sir," I
saw him give a start--the first movement he had made for hours.
But he did not raise his bowed head.

"All right.  Get the ladder over."

I hesitated.  Should I whisper something to him?  But what?  His
immobility seemed to have been never disturbed.  What could I tell
him he did not know already? . . . Finally I went on deck.



CHAPTER II



The skipper of the Sephora had a thin red whisker all round his
face, and the sort of complexion that goes with hair of that
colour; also the particular, rather smeary shade of blue in the
eyes.  He was not exactly a showy figure; his shoulders were high,
his stature but middling--one leg slightly more bandy than the
other.  He shook hands, looking vaguely around.  A spiritless
tenacity was his main characteristic, I judged.  I behaved with a
politeness which seemed to disconcert him.  Perhaps he was shy.  He
mumbled to me as if he were ashamed of what he was saying; gave his
name (it was something like Archbold--but at this distance of years
I hardly am sure), his ship's name, and a few other particulars of
that sort, in the manner of a criminal making a reluctant and
doleful confession.  He had had terrible weather on the passage
out--terrible--terrible--wife aboard, too.

By this time we were seated in the cabin and the steward brought in
a tray with a bottle and glasses.  "Thanks!  No."  Never took
liquor.  Would have some water, though.  He drank two tumblerfuls.
Terrible thirsty work.  Ever since daylight had been exploring the
islands round his ship.

"What was that for--fun?" I asked, with an appearance of polite
interest.

"No!"  He sighed.  "Painful duty."

As he persisted in his mumbling and I wanted my double to hear
every word, I hit upon the notion of informing him that I regretted
to say I was hard of hearing.

"Such a young man, too!" he nodded, keeping his smeary blue,
unintelligent eyes fastened upon me.  What was the cause of it--
some disease? he inquired, without the least sympathy and as if he
thought that, if so, I'd got no more than I deserved.

"Yes; disease," I admitted in a cheerful tone which seemed to shock
him.  But my point was gained, because he had to raise his voice to
give me his tale.  It is not worth while to record that version.
It was just over two months since all this had happened, and he had
thought so much about it that he seemed completely muddled as to
its bearings, but still immensely impressed.

"What would you think of such a thing happening on board your own
ship?  I've had the Sephora for these fifteen years.  I am a well-
known shipmaster."

He was densely distressed--and perhaps I should have sympathised
with him if I had been able to detach my mental vision from the
unsuspected sharer of my cabin as though he were my second self.
There he was on the other side of the bulkhead, four or five feet
from us, no more, as we sat in the saloon.  I looked politely at
Captain Archbold (if that was his name), but it was the other I
saw, in a grey sleeping-suit, seated on a low stool, his bare feet
close together, his arms folded, and every word said between us
falling into the ears of his dark head bowed on his chest.

"I have been at sea now, man and boy, for seven-and-thirty years,
and I've never heard of such a thing happening in an English ship.
And that it should be my ship.  Wife on board, too."

I was hardly listening to him.

"Don't you think," I said, "that the heavy sea which, you told me,
came aboard just then might have killed the man?  I have seen the
sheer weight of a sea kill a man very neatly, by simply breaking
his neck."

"Good God!" he uttered, impressively, fixing his smeary blue eyes
on me.  "The sea!  No man killed by the sea ever looked like that."
He seemed positively scandalised at my suggestion.  And as I gazed
at him, certainly not prepared for anything original on his part,
he advanced his head close to mine and thrust his tongue out at me
so suddenly that I couldn't help starting back.

After scoring over my calmness in this graphic way he nodded
wisely.  If I had seen the sight, he assured me, I would never
forget it as long as I lived.  The weather was too bad to give the
corpse a proper sea burial.  So next day at dawn they took it up on
the poop, covering its face with a bit of bunting; he read a short
prayer, and then, just as it was, in its oilskins and long boots,
they launched it amongst those mountainous seas that seemed ready
every moment to swallow up the ship herself and the terrified lives
on board of her.

"That reefed foresail saved you," I threw in.

"Under God--it did," he exclaimed fervently.  "It was by a special
mercy, I firmly believe, that it stood some of those hurricane
squalls."

"It was the setting of that sail which--" I began.

"God's own hand in it," he interrupted me.  "Nothing less could
have done it.  I don't mind telling you that I hardly dared give
the order.  It seemed impossible that we could touch anything
without losing it, and then our last hope would have been gone."

The terror of that gale was on him yet.  I let him go on for a bit,
then said, casually--as if returning to a minor subject:

"You were very anxious to give up your mate to the shore people, I
believe?"

He was.  To the law.  His obscure tenacity on that point had in it
something incomprehensible and a little awful; something, as it
were, mystical, quite apart from his anxiety that he should not be
suspected of "countenancing any doings of that sort."  Seven-and-
thirty virtuous years at sea, of which over twenty of immaculate
command, and the last fifteen in the Sephora, seemed to have laid
him under some pitiless obligation.

"And you know," he went on, groping shamefacedly amongst his
feelings, "I did not engage that young fellow.  His people had some
interest with my owners.  I was in a way forced to take him on.  He
looked very smart, very gentlemanly, and all that.  But do you
know--I never liked him, somehow.  I am a plain man.  You see, he
wasn't exactly the sort for the chief mate of a ship like the
Sephora."

I had become so connected in thoughts and impressions with the
secret sharer of my cabin that I felt as if I, personally, were
being given to understand that I, too, was not the sort that would
have done for the chief mate of a ship like the Sephora.  I had no
doubt of it in my mind.

"Not at all the style of man.  You understand," he insisted,
superfluously, looking hard at me.

I smiled urbanely.  He seemed at a loss for a while.

"I suppose I must report a suicide."

"Beg pardon?"

"Suicide!  That's what I'll have to write to my owners directly I
get in."

"Unless you manage to recover him before to-morrow," I assented,
dispassionately. . . "I mean, alive."

He mumbled something which I really did not catch, and I turned my
ear to him in a puzzled manner.  He fairly bawled:

"The land--I say, the mainland is at least seven miles off my
anchorage."

"About that."

My lack of excitement, of curiosity, of surprise, of any sort of
pronounced interest, began to arouse his distrust.  But except for
the felicitous pretence of deafness I had not tried to pretend
anything.  I had felt utterly incapable of playing the part of
ignorance properly, and therefore was afraid to try.  It is also
certain that he had brought some ready-made suspicions with him,
and that he viewed my politeness as a strange and unnatural
phenomenon.  And yet how else could I have received him?  Not
heartily!  That was impossible for psychological reasons, which I
need not state here.  My only object was to keep off his inquiries.
Surlily?  Yes, but surliness might have provoked a point-blank
question.  From its novelty to him and from its nature, punctilious
courtesy was the manner best calculated to restrain the man.  But
there was the danger of his breaking through my defence bluntly.  I
could not, I think, have met him by a direct lie, also for
psychological (not moral) reasons.  If he had only known how afraid
I was of his putting my feeling of identity with the other to the
test!  But, strangely enough--(I thought of it only afterward)--I
believe that he was not a little disconcerted by the reverse side
of that weird situation, by something in me that reminded him of
the man he was seeking--suggested a mysterious similitude to the
young fellow he had distrusted and disliked from the first.

However that might have been, the silence was not very prolonged.
He took another oblique step.

"I reckon I had no more than a two-mile pull to your ship.  Not a
bit more."

"And quite enough, too, in this awful heat," I said.

Another pause full of mistrust followed.  Necessity, they say, is
mother of invention, but fear, too, is not barren of ingenious
suggestions.  And I was afraid he would ask me point-blank for news
of my other self.

"Nice little saloon, isn't it?" I remarked, as if noticing for the
first time the way his eyes roamed from one closed door to the
other.  "And very well fitted out too.  Here, for instance," I
continued, reaching over the back of my seat negligently and
flinging the door open, "is my bath-room."

He made an eager movement, but hardly gave it a glance.  I got up,
shut the door of the bath-room, and invited him to have a look
round, as if I were very proud of my accommodation.  He had to rise
and be shown round, but he went through the business without any
raptures whatever.

"And now we'll have a look at my stateroom," I declared, in a voice
as loud as I dared to make it, crossing the cabin to the starboard
side with purposely heavy steps.

He followed me in and gazed around.  My intelligent double had
vanished.  I played my part.

"Very convenient--isn't it?"

"Very nice.  Very comf. . . "  He didn't finish, and went out
brusquely as if to escape from some unrighteous wiles of mine.  But
it was not to be.  I had been too frightened not to feel vengeful;
I felt I had him on the run, and I meant to keep him on the run.
My polite insistence must have had something menacing in it,
because he gave in suddenly.  And I did not let him off a single
item; mate's room, pantry, storerooms, the very sail-locker which
was also under the poop--he had to look into them all.  When at
last I showed him out on the quarter-deck he drew a long,
spiritless sigh, and mumbled dismally that he must really be going
back to his ship now.  I desired my mate, who had joined us, to see
to the captain's boat.

The man of whiskers gave a blast on the whistle which he used to
wear hanging round his neck, and yelled, "Sephoras away!"  My
double down there in my cabin must have heard, and certainly could
not feel more relieved than I.  Four fellows came running out from
somewhere forward and went over the side, while my own men,
appearing on deck too, lined the rail.  I escorted my visitor to
the gangway ceremoniously, and nearly overdid it.  He was a
tenacious beast.  On the very ladder he lingered, and in that
unique, guiltily conscientious manner of sticking to the point:

"I say . . . you . . . you don't think that--"

I covered his voice loudly:

"Certainly not. . . . I am delighted.  Good-bye."

I had an idea of what he meant to say, and just saved myself by the
privilege of defective hearing.  He was too shaken generally to
insist, but my mate, close witness of that parting, looked
mystified and his face took on a thoughtful cast.  As I did not
want to appear as if I wished to avoid all communication with my
officers, he had the opportunity to address me.

"Seems a very nice man.  His boat's crew told our chaps a very
extraordinary story, if what I am told by the steward is true.  I
suppose you had it from the captain, sir?"

"Yes.  I had a story from the captain."

"A very horrible affair--isn't it, sir?"

"It is."

"Beats all these tales we hear about murders in Yankee ships."

"I don't think it beats them.  I don't think it resembles them in
the least."

"Bless my soul--you don't say so!  But of course I've no
acquaintance whatever with American ships, not I, so I couldn't go
against your knowledge.  It's horrible enough for me. . . . But the
queerest part is that those fellows seemed to have some idea the
man was hidden aboard here.  They had really.  Did you ever hear of
such a thing?"

"Preposterous--isn't it?"

We were walking to and fro athwart the quarterdeck.  No one of the
crew forward could be seen (the day was Sunday), and the mate
pursued:

"There was some little dispute about it.  Our chaps took offence.
'As if we would harbour a thing like that,' they said.  'Wouldn't
you like to look for him in our coal-hole?'  Quite a tiff.  But
they made it up in the end.  I suppose he did drown himself.  Don't
you, sir?"

"I don't suppose anything."

"You have no doubt in the matter, sir?"

"None whatever."

I left him suddenly.  I felt I was producing a bad impression, but
with my double down there it was most trying to be on deck.  And it
was almost as trying to be below.  Altogether a nerve-trying
situation.  But on the whole I felt less torn in two when I was
with him.  There was no one in the whole ship whom I dared take
into my confidence.  Since the hands had got to know his story, it
would have been impossible to pass him off for any one else, and an
accidental discovery was to be dreaded now more than ever. . . .

The steward being engaged in laying the table for dinner, we could
talk only with our eyes when I first went down.  Later in the
afternoon we had a cautious try at whispering.  The Sunday
quietness of the ship was against us; the stillness of air and
water around her was against us; the elements, the men were against
us--everything was against us in our secret partnership; time
itself--for this could not go on forever.  The very trust in
Providence was, I suppose, denied to his guilt.  Shall I confess
that this thought cast me down very much?  And as to the chapter of
accidents which counts for so much in the book of success, I could
only hope that it was closed.  For what favourable accident could
be expected?

"Did you hear everything?" were my first words as soon as we took
up our position side by side, leaning over my bed-place.

He had.  And the proof of it was his earnest whisper, "The man told
you he hardly dared to give the order."

I understood the reference to be to that saving foresail.

"Yes.  He was afraid of it being lost in the setting."

"I assure you he never gave the order.  He may think he did, but he
never gave it.  He stood there with me on the break of the poop
after the maintopsail blew away, and whimpered about our last hope-
-positively whimpered about it and nothing else--and the night
coming on!  To hear one's skipper go on like that in such weather
was enough to drive any fellow out of his mind.  It worked me up
into a sort of desperation.  I just took it into my own hands and
went away from him, boiling, and-- But what's the use telling you?
YOU know! . . . Do you think that if I had not been pretty fierce
with them I should have got the men to do anything?  Not it!  The
bo's'n perhaps?  Perhaps!  It wasn't a heavy sea--it was a sea gone
mad!  I suppose the end of the world will be something like that;
and a man may have the heart to see it coming once and be done with
it--but to have to face it day after day--I don't blame anybody.  I
was precious little better than the rest.  Only--I was an officer
of that old coal-waggon, anyhow--"

"I quite understand," I conveyed that sincere assurance into his
ear.  He was out of breath with whispering; I could hear him pant
slightly.  It was all very simple.  The same strung-up force which
had given twenty-four men a chance, at least, for their lives, had,
in a sort of recoil, crushed an unworthy mutinous existence.

But I had no leisure to weigh the merits of the matter--footsteps
in the saloon, a heavy knock.  "There's enough wind to get under
way with, sir."  Here was the call of a new claim upon my thoughts
and even upon my feelings.

"Turn the hands up," I cried through the door.  "I'll be on deck
directly."

I was going out to make the acquaintance of my ship.  Before I left
the cabin our eyes met--the eyes of the only two strangers on
board.  I pointed to the recessed part where the little camp-stool
awaited him and laid my finger on my lips.  He made a gesture--
somewhat vague--a little mysterious, accompanied by a faint smile,
as if of regret.

This is not the place to enlarge upon the sensations of a man who
feels for the first time a ship move under his feet to his own
independent word.  In my case they were not unalloyed.  I was not
wholly alone with my command; for there was that stranger in my
cabin.  Or rather, I was not completely and wholly with her.  Part
of me was absent.  That mental feeling of being in two places at
once affected me physically as if the mood of secrecy had
penetrated my very soul.  Before an hour had elapsed since the ship
had begun to move, having occasion to ask the mate (he stood by my
side) to take a compass bearing of the Pagoda, I caught myself
reaching up to his ear in whispers.  I say I caught myself, but
enough had escaped to startle the man.  I can't describe it
otherwise than by saying that he shied.  A grave, preoccupied
manner, as though he were in possession of some perplexing
intelligence, did not leave him henceforth.  A little later I moved
away from the rail to look at the compass with such a stealthy gait
that the helmsman noticed it--and I could not help noticing the
unusual roundness of his eyes.  These are trifling instances,
though it's to no commander's advantage to be suspected of
ludicrous eccentricities.  But I was also more seriously affected.
There are to a seaman certain words, gestures, that should in given
conditions come as naturally, as instinctively as the winking of a
menaced eye.  A certain order should spring on to his lips without
thinking; a certain sign should get itself made, so to speak,
without reflection.  But all unconscious alertness had abandoned
me.  I had to make an effort of will to recall myself back (from
the cabin) to the conditions of the moment.  I felt that I was
appearing an irresolute commander to those people who were watching
me more or less critically.

And, besides, there were the scares.  On the second day out, for
instance, coming off the deck in the afternoon (I had straw
slippers on my bare feet) I stopped at the open pantry door and
spoke to the steward.  He was doing something there with his back
to me.  At the sound of my voice he nearly jumped out of his skin,
as the saying is, and incidentally broke a cup.

"What on earth's the matter with you?" I asked, astonished.

He was extremely confused.  "Beg your pardon, sir.  I made sure you
were in your cabin."

"You see I wasn't."

"No, sir.  I could have sworn I had heard you moving in there not a
moment ago.  It's most extraordinary . . . very sorry, sir."

I passed on with an inward shudder.  I was so identified with my
secret double that I did not even mention the fact in those scanty,
fearful whispers we exchanged.  I suppose he had made some slight
noise of some kind or other.  It would have been miraculous if he
hadn't at one time or another.  And yet, haggard as he appeared, he
looked always perfectly self-controlled, more than calm--almost
invulnerable.  On my suggestion he remained almost entirely in the
bathroom, which, upon the whole, was the safest place.  There could
be really no shadow of an excuse for any one ever wanting to go in
there, once the steward had done with it.  It was a very tiny
place.  Sometimes he reclined on the floor, his legs bent, his head
sustained on one elbow.  At others I would find him on the camp-
stool, sitting in his grey sleeping-suit and with his cropped dark
hair like a patient, unmoved convict.  At night I would smuggle him
into my bed-place, and we would whisper together, with the regular
footfalls of the officer of the watch passing and repassing over
our heads.  It was an infinitely miserable time.  It was lucky that
some tins of fine preserves were stowed in a locker in my
stateroom; hard bread I could always get hold of; and so he lived
on stewed chicken, pate de foie gras, asparagus, cooked oysters,
sardines--on all sorts of abominable sham delicacies out of tins.
My early morning coffee he always drank; and it was all I dared do
for him in that respect.

Every day there was the horrible manoeuvring to go through so that
my room and then the bath-room should be done in the usual way.  I
came to hate the sight of the steward, to abhor the voice of that
harmless man.  I felt that it was he who would bring on the
disaster of discovery.  It hung like a sword over our heads.

The fourth day out, I think (we were then working down the east
side of the Gulf of Siam, tack for tack, in light winds and smooth
water)--the fourth day, I say, of this miserable juggling with the
unavoidable, as we sat at our evening meal, that man, whose
slightest movement I dreaded, after putting down the dishes ran up
on deck busily.  This could not be dangerous.  Presently he came
down again; and then it appeared that he had remembered a coat of
mine which I had thrown over a rail to dry after having been wetted
in a shower which had passed over the ship in the afternoon.
Sitting stolidly at the head of the table I became terrified at the
sight of the garment on his arm.  Of course he made for my door.
There was no time to lose.

"Steward," I thundered.  My nerves were so shaken that I could not
govern my voice and conceal my agitation.  This was the sort of
thing that made my terrifically whiskered mate tap his forehead
with his forefinger.  I had detected him using that gesture while
talking on deck with a confidential air to the carpenter.  It was
too far to hear a word, but I had no doubt that this pantomime
could only refer to the strange new captain.

"Yes, sir," the pale-faced steward turned resignedly to me.  It was
this maddening course of being shouted at, checked without rhyme or
reason, arbitrarily chased out of my cabin, suddenly called into
it, sent flying out of his pantry on incomprehensible errands, that
accounted for the growing wretchedness of his expression.

"Where are you going with that coat?"

"To your room, sir."

"Is there another shower coming?"

"I'm sure I don't know, sir.  Shall I go up again and see, sir?"

"No! never mind."

My object was attained, as of course my other self in there would
have heard everything that passed.  During this interlude my two
officers never raised their eyes off their respective plates; but
the lip of that confounded cub, the second mate, quivered visibly.

I expected the steward to hook my coat on and come out at once.  He
was very slow about it; but I dominated my nervousness sufficiently
not to shout after him.  Suddenly I became aware (it could be heard
plainly enough) that the fellow for some reason or other was
opening the door of the bath-room.  It was the end.  The place was
literally not big enough to swing a cat in.  My voice died in my
throat and I went stony all over.  I expected to hear a yell of
surprise and terror, and made a movement, but had not the strength
to get on my legs.  Everything remained still.  Had my second self
taken the poor wretch by the throat?  I don't know what I would
have done next moment if I had not seen the steward come out of my
room, close the door, and then stand quietly by the sideboard.

"Saved," I thought.  "But, no!  Lost!  Gone!  He was gone!"

I laid my knife and fork down and leaned back in my chair.  My head
swam.  After a while, when sufficiently recovered to speak in a
steady voice, I instructed my mate to put the ship round at eight
o'clock himself.

"I won't come on deck," I went on.  "I think I'll turn in, and
unless the wind shifts I don't want to be disturbed before
midnight.  I feel a bit seedy."

"You did look middling bad a little while ago," the chief mate
remarked without showing any great concern.

They both went out, and I stared at the steward clearing the table.
There was nothing to be read on that wretched man's face.  But why
did he avoid my eyes I asked myself.  Then I thought I should like
to hear the sound of his voice.

"Steward!"

"Sir!"  Startled as usual.

"Where did you hang up that coat?"

"In the bath-room, sir."  The usual anxious tone.  "It's not quite
dry yet, sir."

For some time longer I sat in the cuddy.  Had my double vanished as
he had come?  But of his coming there was an explanation, whereas
his disappearance would be inexplicable. . . . I went slowly into
my dark room, shut the door, lighted the lamp, and for a time dared
not turn round.  When at last I did I saw him standing bolt-upright
in the narrow recessed part.  It would not be true to say I had a
shock, but an irresistible doubt of his bodily existence flitted
through my mind.  Can it be, I asked myself, that he is not visible
to other eyes than mine?  It was like being haunted.  Motionless,
with a grave face, he raised his hands slightly at me in a gesture
which meant clearly, "Heavens! what a narrow escape!"  Narrow
indeed.  I think I had come creeping quietly as near insanity as
any man who has not actually gone over the border.  That gesture
restrained me, so to speak.

The mate with the terrific whiskers was now putting the ship on the
other tack.  In the moment of profound silence which follows upon
the hands going to their stations I heard on the poop his raised
voice:  "Hard alee!" and the distant shout of the order repeated on
the maindeck.  The sails, in that light breeze, made but a faint
fluttering noise.  It ceased.  The ship was coming round slowly; I
held my breath in the renewed stillness of expectation; one
wouldn't have thought that there was a single living soul on her
decks.  A sudden brisk shout, "Mainsail haul!" broke the spell, and
in the noisy cries and rush overhead of the men running away with
the main-brace we two, down in my cabin, came together in our usual
position by the bed-place.

He did not wait for my question.  "I heard him fumbling here and
just managed to squat myself down in the bath," he whispered to me.
"The fellow only opened the door and put his arm in to hang the
coat up.  All the same--"

"I never thought of that," I whispered back, even more appalled
than before at the closeness of the shave, and marvelling at that
something unyielding in his character which was carrying him
through so finely.  There was no agitation in his whisper.  Whoever
was being driven distracted, it was not he.  He was sane.  And the
proof of his sanity was continued when he took up the whispering
again.

"It would never do for me to come to life again."

It was something that a ghost might have said.  But what he was
alluding to was his old captain's reluctant admission of the theory
of suicide.  It would obviously serve his turn--if I had understood
at all the view which seemed to govern the unalterable purpose of
his action.

"You must maroon me as soon as ever you can get amongst these
islands off the Cambodje shore," he went on.

"Maroon you!  We are not living in a boy's adventure tale," I
protested.  His scornful whispering took me up.

"We aren't indeed!  There's nothing of a boy's tale in this.  But
there's nothing else for it.  I want no more.  You don't suppose I
am afraid of what can be done to me?  Prison or gallows or whatever
they may please.  But you don't see me coming back to explain such
things to an old fellow in a wig and twelve respectable tradesmen,
do you?  What can they know whether I am guilty or not--or of WHAT
I am guilty, either?  That's my affair.  What does the Bible say?
'Driven off the face of the earth.'  Very well.  I am off the face
of the earth now.  As I came at night so I shall go."

"Impossible!" I murmured.  "You can't."

"Can't? . . . Not naked like a soul on the Day of Judgment.  I
shall freeze on to this sleeping-suit.  The Last Day is not yet--
and you have understood thoroughly.  Didn't you?"

I felt suddenly ashamed of myself.  I may say truly that I
understood--and my hesitation in letting that man swim away from my
ship's side had been a mere sham sentiment, a sort of cowardice.

"It can't be done now till next night," I breathed out.  "The ship
is on the off-shore tack and the wind may fail us."

"As long as I know that you understand," he whispered.  "But of
course you do.  It's a great satisfaction to have got somebody to
understand.  You seem to have been there on purpose."  And in the
same whisper, as if we two whenever we talked had to say things to
each other which were not fit for the world to hear, he added,
"It's very wonderful."  We remained side by side talking in our
secret way--but sometimes silent or just exchanging a whispered
word or two at long intervals.  And as usual he stared through the
port.  A breath of wind came now and again into our faces.  The
ship might have been moored in dock, so gently and on an even keel
she slipped through the water, that did not murmur even at our
passage, shadowy and silent like a phantom sea.

At midnight I went on deck, and to my mate's great surprise put the
ship round on the other tack.  His terrible whiskers flitted round
me in silent criticism.  I certainly should not have done it if it
had been only a question of getting out of that sleepy gulf as
quickly as possible.  I believe he told the second mate, who
relieved him, that it was a great want of judgment.  The other only
yawned.  That intolerable cub shuffled about so sleepily and lolled
against the rails in such a slack, improper fashion that I came
down on him sharply.

"Aren't you properly awake yet?"

"Yes, sir!  I am awake."

"Well, then, be good enough to hold yourself as if you were.  And
keep a look-out.  If there's any current we'll be closing with some
islands before daylight."

The east side of the gulf is fringed with islands, some solitary,
others in groups.  On the blue background of the high coast they
seem to float on silvery patches of calm water, arid and grey, or
dark green and rounded like clumps of evergreen bushes, with the
larger ones, a mile or two long, showing the outlines of ridges,
ribs of grey rock under the dank mantle of matted leafage.  Unknown
to trade, to travel, almost to geography, the manner of life they
harbour is an unsolved secret.  There must be villages--settlements
of fishermen at least--on the largest of them, and some
communication with the world is probably kept up by native craft.
But all that forenoon, as we headed for them, fanned along by the
faintest of breezes, I saw no sign of man or canoe in the field of
the telescope I kept on pointing at the scattered group.

At noon I gave no orders for a change of course, and the mate's
whiskers became much concerned and seemed to be offering themselves
unduly to my notice.  At last I said:

"I am going to stand right in.  Quite in--as far as I can take
her."

The stare of extreme surprise imparted an air of ferocity also to
his eyes, and he looked truly terrific for a moment.

"We're not doing well in the middle of the gulf," I continued,
casually.  "I am going to look for the land breezes to-night."

"Bless my soul!  Do you mean, sir, in the dark amongst the lot of
all them islands and reefs and shoals?"

"Well--if there are any regular land breezes at all on this coast
one must get close inshore to find them, mustn't one?"

"Bless my soul!" he exclaimed again under his breath.  All that
afternoon he wore a dreamy, contemplative appearance which in him
was a mark of perplexity.  After dinner I went into my stateroom as
if I meant to take some rest.  There we two bent our dark heads
over a half-unrolled chart lying on my bed.

"There," I said.  "It's got to be Koh-ring.  I've been looking at
it ever since sunrise.  It has got two hills and a low point.  It
must be inhabited.  And on the coast opposite there is what looks
like the mouth of a biggish river--with some town, no doubt, not
far up.  It's the best chance for you that I can see."

"Anything.  Koh-ring let it be."

He looked thoughtfully at the chart as if surveying chances and
distances from a lofty height--and following with his eyes his own
figure wandering on the blank land of Cochin-China, and then
passing off that piece of paper clean out of sight into uncharted
regions.  And it was as if the ship had two captains to plan her
course for her.  I had been so worried and restless running up and
down that I had not had the patience to dress that day.  I had
remained in my sleeping-suit, with straw slippers and a soft floppy
hat.  The closeness of the heat in the gulf had been most
oppressive, and the crew were used to see me wandering in that airy
attire.

"She will clear the south point as she heads now," I whispered into
his ear.  "Goodness only knows when, though, but certainly after
dark.  I'll edge her in to half a mile, as far as I may be able to
judge in the dark--"

"Be careful," he murmured, warningly--and I realised suddenly that
all my future, the only future for which I was fit, would perhaps
go irretrievably to pieces in any mishap to my first command.

I could not stop a moment longer in the room.  I motioned him to
get out of sight and made my way on the poop.  That unplayful cub
had the watch.  I walked up and down for a while thinking things
out, then beckoned him over.

"Send a couple of hands to open the two quarterdeck ports," I said,
mildly.

He actually had the impudence, or else so forgot himself in his
wonder at such an incomprehensible order, as to repeat:

"Open the quarter-deck ports!  What for, sir?"

"The only reason you need concern yourself about is because I tell
you to do so.  Have them open wide and fastened properly."

He reddened and went off, but I believe made some jeering remark to
the carpenter as to the sensible practice of ventilating a ship's
quarter-deck.  I know he popped into the mate's cabin to impart the
fact to him because the whiskers came on deck, as it were by
chance, and stole glances at me from below--for signs of lunacy or
drunkenness, I suppose.

A little before supper, feeling more restless than ever, I
rejoined, for a moment, my second self.  And to find him sitting so
quietly was surprising, like something against nature, inhuman.

I developed my plan in a hurried whisper.

"I shall stand in as close as I dare and then put her round.  I
shall presently find means to smuggle you out of here into the
sail-locker, which communicates with the lobby.  But there is an
opening, a sort of square for hauling the sails out, which gives
straight on the quarter-deck and which is never closed in fine
weather, so as to give air to the sails.  ' When the ship's way is
deadened in stays and all the hands are aft at the main-braces you
shall have a clear road to slip out and get overboard through the
open quarter-deck port.  I've had them both fastened up.  Use a
rope's end to lower yourself into the water so as to avoid a
splash--you know.  It could be heard and cause some beastly
complication."

He kept silent for a while, then whispered, "I understand."

"I won't be there to see you go," I began with an effort.  "The
rest . . . I only hope I have understood, too."

"You have.  From first to last"--and for the first time there
seemed to be a faltering, something strained in his whisper.  He
caught hold of my arm, but the ringing of the supper bell made me
start.  He didn't, though; he only released his grip.

After supper I didn't come below again till well past eight
o'clock.  The faint, steady breeze was loaded with dew; and the
wet, darkened sails held all there was of propelling power in it.
The night, clear and starry, sparkled darkly, and the opaque,
lightless patches shifting slowly against the low stars were the
drifting islets.  On the port bow there was a big one more distant
and shadowily imposing by the great space of sky it eclipsed.

On opening the door I had a back view of my very own self looking
at a chart.  He had come out of the recess and was standing near
the table.

"Quite dark enough," I whispered.

He stepped back and leaned against my bed with a level, quiet
glance.  I sat on the couch.  We had nothing to say to each other.
Over our heads the officer of the watch moved here and there.  Then
I heard him move quickly.  I knew what that meant.  He was making
for the companion; and presently his voice was outside my door.

"We are drawing in pretty fast, sir.  Land looks rather close."

"Very well," I answered.  "I am coming on deck directly."

I waited till he was gone out of the cuddy, then rose.  My double
moved too.  The time had come to exchange our last whispers, for
neither of us was ever to hear each other's natural voice.

"Look here!" I opened a drawer and took out three sovereigns.
"Take this, anyhow.  I've got six and I'd give you the lot, only I
must keep a little money to buy some fruit and vegetables for the
crew from native boats as we go through Sunda Straits."

He shook his head.

"Take it," I urged him, whispering desperately.  "No one can tell
what--"

He smiled and slapped meaningly the only pocket of the sleeping-
jacket.  It was not safe, certainly.  But I produced a large old
silk handkerchief of mine, and tying the three pieces of gold in a
corner, pressed it on him.  He was touched, I suppose, because he
took it at last and tied it quickly round his waist under the
jacket, on his bare skin.

Our eyes met; several seconds elapsed, till, our glances still
mingled, I extended my hand and turned the lamp out.  Then I passed
through the cuddy, leaving the door of my room wide open. . . . .
"Steward!"

He was still lingering in the pantry in the greatness of his zeal,
giving a rub-up to a plated cruet stand the last thing before going
to bed.  Being careful not to wake up the mate, whose room was
opposite, I spoke in an undertone.

He looked round anxiously.  "Sir!"

"Can you get me a little hot water from the galley?"

"I am afraid, sir, the galley fire's been out for some time now."

"Go and see."

He fled up the stairs.

"Now," I whispered, loudly, into the saloon--too loudly, perhaps,
but I was afraid I couldn't make a sound.  He was by my side in an
instant--the double captain slipped past the stairs--through a tiny
dark passage . . . a sliding door.  We were in the sail-locker,
scrambling on our knees over the sails.  A sudden thought struck
me.  I saw myself wandering barefooted, bareheaded, the sun beating
on my dark poll.  I snatched off my floppy hat and tried hurriedly
in the dark to ram it on my other self.  He dodged and fended off
silently.  I wonder what he thought had come to me before he
understood and suddenly desisted.  Our hands met gropingly,
lingered united in a steady, motionless clasp for a second. . . .
No word was breathed by either of us when they separated.

I was standing quietly by the pantry door when the steward
returned.

"Sorry, sir.  Kettle barely warm.  Shall I light the spirit-lamp?"

"Never mind."

I came out on deck slowly.  It was now a matter of conscience to
shave the land as close as possible--for now he must go overboard
whenever the ship was put in stays.  Must!  There could be no going
back for him.  After a moment I walked over to leeward and my heart
flew into my mouth at the nearness of the land on the bow.  Under
any other circumstances I would not have held on a minute longer.
The second mate had followed me anxiously.

I looked on till I felt I could command my voice.  "She will
weather," I said then in a quiet tone.  "Are you going to try that,
sir?" he stammered out incredulously.

I took no notice of him and raised my tone just enough to be heard
by the helmsman.

"Keep her good full."

"Good full, sir."

The wind fanned my cheek, the sails slept, the world was silent.
The strain of watching the dark loom of the land grow bigger and
denser was too much for me.  I had shut my eyes--because the ship
must go closer.  She must!  The stillness was intolerable.  Were we
standing still?

When I opened my eyes the second view started my heart with a
thump.  The black southern hill of Koh-ring seemed to hang right
over the ship like a towering fragment of the everlasting night.
On that enormous mass of blackness there was not a gleam to be
seen, not a sound to be heard.  It was gliding irresistibly toward
us and yet seemed already within reach of the hand.  I saw the
vague figures of the watch grouped in the waist, gazing in awed
silence.

"Are you going on, sir," inquired an unsteady voice at my elbow.

I ignored it.  I had to go on.

"Keep her full.  Don't check her way.  That won't do now," I said,
warningly.

"I can't see the sails very well," the helmsman answered me, in
strange, quavering tones.

Was she close enough?  Already she was, I won't say in the shadow
of the land, but in the very blackness of it, already swallowed up
as it were, gone too close to be recalled, gone from me altogether.

"Give the mate a call," I said to the young man who stood at my
elbow as still as death.  "And turn all hands up."

My tone had a borrowed loudness reverberated from the height of the
land.  Several voices cried out together:  "We are all on deck,
sir."

Then stillness again, with the great shadow gliding closer,
towering higher, without a light, without a sound.  Such a hush had
fallen on the ship that she might have been a bark of the dead
floating in slowly under the very gate of Erebus.

"My God!  Where are we?"

It was the mate moaning at my elbow.  He was thunderstruck, and as
it were deprived of the moral support of his whiskers.  He clapped
his hands and absolutely cried out, "Lost!"

"Be quiet," I said, sternly.

He lowered his tone, but I saw the shadowy gesture of his despair.
"What are we doing here?"

"Looking for the land wind."

He made as if to tear his hair, and addressed me recklessly.

"She will never get out.  You have done it, sir.  I knew it'd end
in something like this.  She will never weather, and you are too
close now to stay.  She'll drift ashore before she's round.  O my
God!"

I caught his arm as he was raising it to batter his poor devoted
head, and shook it violently.

"She's ashore already," he wailed, trying to tear himself away.

"Is she? . . . Keep good full there!"

"Good full, sir," cried the helmsman in a frightened, thin, child-
like voice.

I hadn't let go the mate's arm and went on shaking it.  "Ready
about, do you hear?  You go forward"--shake--"and stop there"--
shake--"and hold your noise"--shake--"and see these head-sheets
properly overhauled"--shake, shake--shake.

And all the time I dared not look toward the land lest my heart
should fail me.  I released my grip at last and he ran forward as
if fleeing for dear life.

I wondered what my double there in the sail-locker thought of this
commotion.  He was able to hear everything--and perhaps he was able
to understand why, on my conscience, it had to be thus close--no
less.  My first order "Hard alee!" re-echoed ominously under the
towering shadow of Koh-ring as if I had shouted in a mountain
gorge.  And then I watched the land intently.  In that smooth water
and light wind it was impossible to feel the ship coming-to.  No!
I could not feel her.  And my second self was making now ready to
slip out and lower himself overboard.  Perhaps he was gone already
. . .?

The great black mass brooding over our very mastheads began to
pivot away from the ship's side silently.  And now I forgot the
secret stranger ready to depart, and remembered only that I was a
total stranger to the ship.  I did not know her.  Would she do it?
How was she to be handled?

I swung the mainyard and waited helplessly.  She was perhaps
stopped, and her very fate hung in the balance, with the black mass
of Koh-ring like the gate of the everlasting night towering over
her taffrail.  What would she do now?  Had she way on her yet?  I
stepped to the side swiftly, and on the shadowy water I could see
nothing except a faint phosphorescent flash revealing the glassy
smoothness of the sleeping surface.  It was impossible to tell--and
I had not learned yet the feel of my ship.  Was she moving?  What I
needed was something easily seen, a piece of paper, which I could
throw overboard and watch.  I had nothing on me.  To run down for
it I didn't dare.  There was no time.  All at once my strained,
yearning stare distinguished a white object floating within a yard
of the ship's side.  White on the black water.  A phosphorescent
flash passed under it.  What was that thing? . . . I recognised my
own floppy hat.  It must have fallen off his head . . . and he
didn't bother.

Now I had what I wanted--the saving mark for my eyes.  But I hardly
thought of my other self, now gone from the ship, to be hidden
forever from all friendly faces, to be a fugitive and a vagabond on
the earth, with no brand of the curse on his sane forehead to stay
a slaying hand . . . too proud to explain.

And I watched the hat--the expression of my sudden pity for his
mere flesh.  It had been meant to save his homeless head from the
dangers of the sun.  And now--behold--it was saving the ship, by
serving me for a mark to help out the ignorance of my strangeness.
Ha!  It was drifting forward, warning me just in time that the ship
had gathered sternway.

"Shift the helm," I said in a low voice to the seaman standing
still like a statue.

The man's eyes glistened wildly in the binnacle light as he jumped
round to the other side and spun round the wheel.

I walked to the break of the poop.  On the overshadowed deck all
hands stood by the forebraces waiting for my order.  The stars
ahead seemed to be gliding from right to left.  And all was so
still in the world that I heard the quiet remark "She's round,"
passed in a tone of intense relief between two seamen.

"Let go and haul."

The foreyards ran round with a great noise, amidst cheery cries.
And now the frightful whisker's made themselves heard giving
various orders.  Already the ship was drawing ahead.  And I was
alone with her.  Nothing! no one in the world should stand now
between us, throwing a shadow on the way of silent knowledge and
mute affection, the perfect communion of a seaman with his first
command.

Walking to the taffrail, I was in time to make out, on the very
edge of a darkness thrown by a towering black mass like the very
gateway of Erebus--yes, I was in time to catch an evanescent
glimpse of my white hat left behind to mark the spot where the
secret sharer of my cabin and of my thoughts, as though he were my
second self, had lowered himself into the water to take his
punishment:  a free man, a proud swimmer striking out for a new
destiny.




FREYA OF THE SEVEN ISLES




CHAPTER I



One day--and that day was many years ago now--I received a long,
chatty letter from one of my old chums and fellow-wanderers in
Eastern waters.  He was still out there, but settled down, and
middle-aged; I imagined him--grown portly in figure and domestic in
his habits; in short, overtaken by the fate common to all except to
those who, being specially beloved by the gods, get knocked on the
head early.  The letter was of the reminiscent "do you remember"
kind--a wistful letter of backward glances.  And, amongst other
things, "surely you remember old Nelson," he wrote.

Remember old Nelson!  Certainly.  And to begin with, his name was
not Nelson.  The Englishmen in the Archipelago called him Nelson
because it was more convenient, I suppose, and he never protested.
It would have been mere pedantry.  The true form of his name was
Nielsen.  He had come out East long before the advent of telegraph
cables, had served English firms, had married an English girl, had
been one of us for years, trading and sailing in all directions
through the Eastern Archipelago, across and around, transversely,
diagonally, perpendicularly, in semi-circles, and zigzags, and
figures of eights, for years and years.

There was no nook or cranny of these tropical waters that the
enterprise of old Nelson (or Nielsen) had not penetrated in an
eminently pacific way.  His tracks, if plotted out, would have
covered the map of the Archipelago like a cobweb--all of it, with
the sole exception of the Philippines.  He would never approach
that part, from a strange dread of Spaniards, or, to be exact, of
the Spanish authorities.  What he imagined they could do to him it
is impossible to say.  Perhaps at some time in his life he had read
some stories of the Inquisition.

But he was in general afraid of what he called "authorities"; not
the English authorities, which he trusted and respected, but the
other two of that part of the world.  He was not so horrified at
the Dutch as he was at the Spaniards, but he was even more
mistrustful of them.  Very mistrustful indeed.  The Dutch, in his
view, were capable of "playing any ugly trick on a man" who had the
misfortune to displease them.  There were their laws and
regulations, but they had no notion of fair play in applying them.
It was really pitiable to see the anxious circumspection of his
dealings with some official or other, and remember that this man
had been known to stroll up to a village of cannibals in New Guinea
in a quiet, fearless manner (and note that he was always fleshy all
his life, and, if I may say so, an appetising morsel) on some
matter of barter that did not amount perhaps to fifty pounds in the
end.

Remember old Nelson!  Rather!  Truly, none of us in my generation
had known him in his active days.  He was "retired" in our time.
He had bought, or else leased, part of a small island from the
Sultan of a little group called the Seven Isles, not far north from
Banka.  It was, I suppose, a legitimate transaction, but I have no
doubt that had he been an Englishman the Dutch would have
discovered a reason to fire him out without ceremony.  In this
connection the real form of his name stood him in good stead.  In
the character of an unassuming Dane whose conduct was most correct,
they let him be.  With all his money engaged in cultivation he was
naturally careful not to give even the shadow of offence, and it
was mostly for prudential reasons of that sort that he did not look
with a favourable eye on Jasper Allen.  But of that later.  Yes!
One remembered well enough old Nelson's big, hospitable bungalow
erected on a shelving point of land, his portly form, costumed
generally in a white shirt and trousers (he had a confirmed habit
of taking off his alpaca jacket on the slightest provocation), his
round blue eyes, his straggly, sandy-white moustache sticking out
all ways like the quills of the fretful porcupine, his propensity
to sit down suddenly and fan himself with his hat.  But there's no
use concealing the fact that what one remembered really was his
daughter, who at that time came out to live with him--and be a sort
of Lady of the Isles.

Freya Nelson (or Nielsen) was the kind of girl one remembers.  The
oval of her face was perfect; and within that fascinating frame the
most happy disposition of line and feature, with an admirable
complexion, gave an impression of health, strength, and what I
might call unconscious self-confidence--a most pleasant and, as it
were, whimsical determination.  I will not compare her eyes to
violets, because the real shade of their colour was peculiar, not
so dark and more lustrous.  They were of the wide-open kind, and
looked at one frankly in every mood.  I never did see the long,
dark eyelashes lowered--I dare say Jasper Allen did, being a
privileged person--but I have no doubt that the expression must
have been charming in a complex way.  She could--Jasper told me
once with a touchingly imbecile exultation--sit on her hair.  I
dare say, I dare say.  It was not for me to behold these wonders; I
was content to admire the neat and becoming way she used to do it
up so as not to conceal the good shape of her head.  And this
wealth of hair was so glossy that when the screens of the west
verandah were down, making a pleasant twilight there, or in the
shade of the grove of fruit-trees near the house, it seemed to give
out a golden light of its own.

She dressed generally in a white frock, with a skirt of walking
length, showing her neat, laced, brown boots.  If there was any
colour about her costume it was just a bit of blue perhaps.  No
exertion seemed to distress her.  I have seen her land from the
dinghy after a long pull in the sun (she rowed herself about a good
deal) with no quickened breath and not a single hair out of its
place.  In the morning when she came out on the verandah for the
first look westward, Sumatra way, over the sea, she seemed as fresh
and sparkling as a dewdrop.  But a dewdrop is evanescent, and there
was nothing evanescent about Freya.  I remember her round, solid
arms with the fine wrists, and her broad, capable hands with
tapering fingers.

I don't know whether she was actually born at sea, but I do know
that up to twelve years of age she sailed about with her parents in
various ships.  After old Nelson lost his wife it became a matter
of serious concern for him what to do with the girl.  A kind lady
in Singapore, touched by his dumb grief and deplorable perplexity,
offered to take charge of Freya.  This arrangement lasted some six
years, during which old Nelson (or Nielsen) "retired" and
established, himself on his island, and then it was settled (the
kind lady going away to Europe) that his daughter should join him.

As the first and most important preparation for that event the old
fellow ordered from his Singapore agent a Steyn and Ebhart's
"upright grand."  I was then commanding a little steamer in the
island trade, and it fell to my lot to take it out to him, so I
know something of Freya's "upright grand."  We landed the enormous
packing-case with difficulty on a flat piece of rock amongst some
bushes, nearly knocking the bottom out of one of my boats in the
course of that nautical operation.  Then, all my crew assisting,
engineers and firemen included, by the exercise of much anxious
ingenuity, and by means of rollers, levers, tackles, and inclined
planes of soaped planks, toiling in the sun like ancient Egyptians
at the building of a pyramid, we got it as far as the house and up
on to the edge of the west verandah--which was the actual drawing-
room of the bungalow.  There, the case being ripped off cautiously,
the beautiful rosewood monster stood revealed at last.  In reverent
excitement we coaxed it against the wall and drew the first free
breath of the day.  It was certainly the heaviest movable object on
that islet since the creation of the world.  The volume of sound it
gave out in that bungalow (which acted as a sounding-board) was
really astonishing.  It thundered sweetly right over the sea.
Jasper Allen told me that early of a morning on the deck of the
Bonito (his wonderfully fast and pretty brig) he could hear Freya
playing her scales quite distinctly.  But the fellow always
anchored foolishly close to the point, as I told him more than
once.  Of course, these seas are almost uniformly serene, and the
Seven Isles is a particularly calm and cloudless spot as a rule.
But still, now and again, an afternoon thunderstorm over Banka, or
even one of these vicious thick squalls, from the distant Sumatra
coast, would make a sudden sally upon the group, enveloping it for
a couple of hours in whirlwinds and bluish-black murk of a
particularly sinister aspect.  Then, with the lowered rattan-
screens rattling desperately in the wind and the bungalow shaking
all over, Freya would sit down to the piano and play fierce Wagner
music in the flicker of blinding flashes, with thunderbolts falling
all round, enough to make your hair stand on end; and Jasper would
remain stock still on the verandah, adoring the back view of her
supple, swaying figure, the miraculous sheen of her fair head, the
rapid hands on the keys, the white nape of her neck--while the
brig, down at the point there, surged at her cables within a
hundred yards of nasty, shiny, black rock-heads.  Ugh!

And this, if you please, for no reason but that, when he went on
board at night and laid his head on the pillow, he should feel that
he was as near as he could conveniently get to his Freya slumbering
in the bungalow.  Did you ever!  And, mind, this brig was the home
to be--their home--the floating paradise which he was gradually
fitting out like a yacht to sail his life blissfully away in with
Freya.  Imbecile!  But the fellow was always taking chances.

One day, I remember I watched with Freya on the verandah the brig
approaching the point from the northward.  I suppose Jasper made
the girl out with his long glass.  What does he do?  Instead of
standing on for another mile and a half along the shoals and then
tacking for the anchorage in a proper and seamanlike manner, he
spies a gap between two disgusting old jagged reefs, puts the helm
down suddenly, and shoots the brig through, with all her sails
shaking and rattling, so that we could hear the racket on the
verandah.  I drew my breath through my teeth, I can tell you, and
Freya swore.  Yes!  She clenched her capable fists and stamped with
her pretty brown boot and said "Damn!"  Then, looking at me with a
little heightened colour--not much--she remarked, "I forgot you
were there," and laughed.  To be sure, to be sure.  When Jasper was
in sight she was not likely to remember that anybody else in the
world was there.  In my concern at this mad trick I couldn't help
appealing to her sympathetic common sense.

"Isn't he a fool?" I said with feeling.

"Perfect idiot," she agreed warmly, looking at me straight with her
wide-open, earnest eyes and the dimple of a smile on her cheek.

"And that," I pointed out to her, "just to save twenty minutes or
so in meeting you."

We heard the anchor go down, and then she became very resolute and
threatening.

"Wait a bit.  I'll teach him."

She went into her own room and shut the door, leaving me alone on
the verandah with my instructions.  Long before the brig's sails
were furled, Jasper came up three steps at a time, forgetting to
say how d'ye do, and looking right and left eagerly.

"Where's Freya?  Wasn't she here just now?"

When I explained to him that he was to be deprived of Miss Freya's
presence for a whole hour, "just to teach him," he said I had put
her up to it, no doubt, and that he feared he would have yet to
shoot me some day.  She and I were getting too thick together.
Then he flung himself into a chair, and tried to talk to me about
his trip.  But the funny thing was that the fellow actually
suffered.  I could see it.  His voice failed him, and he sat there
dumb, looking at the door with the face of a man in pain.  Fact. .
. . And the next still funnier thing was that the girl calmly
walked out of her room in less than ten minutes.  And then I left.
I mean to say that I went away to seek old Nelson (or Nielsen) on
the back verandah, which was his own special nook in the
distribution of that house, with the kind purpose of engaging him
in conversation lest he should start roaming about and intrude
unwittingly where he was not wanted just then.

He knew that the brig had arrived, though he did not know that
Jasper was already with his daughter.  I suppose he didn't think it
was possible in the time.  A father naturally wouldn't.  He
suspected that Allen was sweet on his girl; the fowls of the air
and the fishes of the sea, most of the traders in the Archipelago,
and all sorts and conditions of men in the town of Singapore were
aware of it.  But he was not capable of appreciating how far the
girl was gone on the fellow.  He had an idea that Freya was too
sensible to ever be gone on anybody--I mean to an unmanageable
extent.  No; it was not that which made him sit on the back
verandah and worry himself in his unassuming manner during Jasper's
visits.  What he worried about were the Dutch "authorities."  For
it is a fact that the Dutch looked askance at the doings of Jasper
Allen, owner and master of the brig Bonito.  They considered him
much too enterprising in his trading.  I don't know that he ever
did anything illegal; but it seems to me that his immense activity
was repulsive to their stolid character and slow-going methods.
Anyway, in old Nelson's opinion, the captain of the Bonito was a
smart sailor, and a nice young man, but not a desirable
acquaintance upon the whole.  Somewhat compromising, you
understand.  On the other hand, he did not like to tell Jasper in
so many words to keep away.  Poor old Nelson himself was a nice
fellow.  I believe he would have shrunk from hurting the feelings
even of a mop-headed cannibal, unless, perhaps, under very strong
provocation.  I mean the feelings, not the bodies.  As against
spears, knives, hatchets, clubs, or arrows, old Nelson had proved
himself capable of taking his own part.  In every other respect he
had a timorous soul.  So he sat on the back verandah with a
concerned expression, and whenever the voices of his daughter and
Jasper Allen reached him, he would blow out his cheeks and let the
air escape with a dismal sound, like a much tried man.

Naturally I derided his fears which he, more or less, confided to
me.  He had a certain regard for my judgment, and a certain
respect, not for my moral qualities, however, but for the good
terms I was supposed to be on with the Dutch "authorities."  I knew
for a fact that his greatest bugbear, the Governor of Banka--a
charming, peppery, hearty, retired rear-admiral--had a distinct
liking for him.  This consoling assurance which I used always to
put forward, made old Nelson (or Nielsen) brighten up for a moment;
but in the end he would shake his head doubtfully, as much as to
say that this was all very well, but that there were depths in the
Dutch official nature which no one but himself had ever fathomed.
Perfectly ridiculous.

On this occasion I am speaking of, old Nelson was even fretty; for
while I was trying to entertain him with a very funny and somewhat
scandalous adventure which happened to a certain acquaintance of
ours in Saigon, he exclaimed suddenly:

"What the devil he wants to turn up here for!"

Clearly he had not heard a word of the anecdote.  And this annoyed
me, because the anecdote was really good.  I stared at him.

"Come, come!" I cried.  "Don't you know what Jasper Allen is
turning up here for?"

This was the first open allusion I had ever made to the true state
of affairs between Jasper and his daughter.  He took it very
calmly.

"Oh, Freya is a sensible girl!" he murmured absently, his mind's
eye obviously fixed on the "authorities."  No; Freya was no fool.
He was not concerned about that.  He didn't mind it in the least.
The fellow was just company for her; he amused the girl; nothing
more.

When the perspicacious old chap left off mumbling, all was still in
the house.  The other two were amusing themselves very quietly, and
no doubt very heartily.  What more absorbing and less noisy
amusement could they have found than to plan their future?  Side by
side on the verandah they must have been looking at the brig, the
third party in that fascinating game.  Without her there would have
been no future.  She was the fortune and the home, and the great
free world for them.  Who was it that likened a ship to a prison?
May I be ignominiously hanged at a yardarm if that's true.  The
white sails of that craft were the white wings--pinions, I believe,
would be the more poetical style--well, the white pinions, of their
soaring love.  Soaring as regards Jasper.  Freya, being a woman,
kept a better hold of the mundane connections of this affair.

But Jasper was elevated in the true sense of the word ever since
the day when, after they had been gazing at the brig in one of
those decisive silences that alone establish a perfect communion
between creatures gifted with speech, he proposed that she should
share the ownership of that treasure with him.  Indeed, he
presented the brig to her altogether.  But then his heart was in
the brig since the day he bought her in Manilla from a certain
middle-aged Peruvian, in a sober suit of black broadcloth,
enigmatic and sententious, who, for all I know, might have stolen
her on the South American coast, whence he said he had come over to
the Philippines "for family reasons."  This "for family reasons"
was distinctly good.  No true caballero would care to push on
inquiries after such a statement.

Indeed, Jasper was quite the caballero.  The brig herself was then
all black and enigmatical, and very dirty; a tarnished gem of the
sea, or, rather, a neglected work of art.  For he must have been an
artist, the obscure builder who had put her body together on lovely
lines out of the hardest tropical timber fastened with the purest
copper.  Goodness only knows in what part of the world she was
built.  Jasper himself had not been able to ascertain much of her
history from his sententious, saturnine Peruvian--if the fellow was
a Peruvian, and not the devil himself in disguise, as Jasper
jocularly pretended to believe.  My opinion is that she was old
enough to have been one of the last pirates, a slaver perhaps, or
else an opium clipper of the early days, if not an opium smuggler.

However that may be, she was as sound as on the day she first took
the water, sailed like a witch, steered like a little boat, and,
like some fair women of adventurous life famous in history, seemed
to have the secret of perpetual youth; so that there was nothing
unnatural in Jasper Allen treating her like a lover.  And that
treatment restored the lustre of her beauty.  He clothed her in
many coats of the very best white paint so skilfully, carefully,
artistically put on and kept clean by his badgered crew of picked
Malays, that no costly enamel such as jewellers use for their work
could have looked better and felt smoother to the touch.  A narrow
gilt moulding defined her elegant sheer as she sat on the water,
eclipsing easily the professional good looks of any pleasure yacht
that ever came to the East in those days.  For myself, I must say I
prefer a moulding of deep crimson colour on a white hull.  It gives
a stronger relief besides being less expensive; and I told Jasper
so.  But no, nothing less than the best gold-leaf would do, because
no decoration could be gorgeous enough for the future abode of his
Freya.

His feelings for the brig and for the girl were as indissolubly
united in his heart as you may fuse two precious metals together in
one crucible.  And the flame was pretty hot, I can assure you.  It
induced in him a fierce inward restlessness both of activity and
desire.  Too fine in face, with a lateral wave in his chestnut
hair, spare, long-limbed, with an eager glint in his steely eyes
and quick, brusque movements, he made me think sometimes of a
flashing sword-blade perpetually leaping out of the scabbard.  It
was only when he was near the girl, when he had her there to look
at, that this peculiarly tense attitude was replaced by a grave
devout watchfulness of her slightest movements and utterances.  Her
cool, resolute, capable, good-humoured self-possession seemed to
steady his heart.  Was it the magic of her face, of her voice, of
her glances which calmed him so?  Yet these were the very things
one must believe which had set his imagination ablaze--if love
begins in imagination.  But I am no man to discuss such mysteries,
and it strikes me that we have neglected poor old Nelson inflating
his cheeks in a state of worry on the back verandah.

I pointed out to him that, after all, Jasper was not a very
frequent visitor.  He and his brig worked hard all over the
Archipelago.  But all old Nelson said, and he said it uneasily,
was:

"I hope Heemskirk won't turn up here while the brig's about."

Getting up a scare about Heemskirk now!  Heemskirk! . . . Really,
one hadn't the patience--



CHAPTER II



For, pray, who was Heemskirk?  You shall see at once how
unreasonable this dread of Heemskirk. . . . Certainly, his nature
was malevolent enough.  That was obvious, directly you heard him
laugh.  Nothing gives away more a man's secret disposition than the
unguarded ring of his laugh.  But, bless my soul! if we were to
start at every evil guffaw like a hare at every sound, we shouldn't
be fit for anything but the solitude of a desert, or the seclusion
of a hermitage.  And even there we should have to put up with the
unavoidable company of the devil.

However, the devil is a considerable personage, who has known
better days and has moved high up in the hierarchy of Celestial
Host; but in the hierarchy of mere earthly Dutchmen, Heemskirk,
whose early days could not have been very splendid, was merely a
naval officer forty years of age, of no particular connections or
ability to boast of.  He was commanding the Neptun, a little
gunboat employed on dreary patrol duty up and down the Archipelago,
to look after the traders.  Not a very exalted position truly.  I
tell you, just a common middle-aged lieutenant of some twenty-five
years' service and sure to be retired before long--that's all.

He never bothered his head very much as to what was going on in the
Seven Isles group till he learned from some talk in Mintok or
Palembang, I suppose, that there was a pretty girl living there.
Curiosity, I presume, caused him to go poking around that way, and
then, after he had once seen Freya, he made a practice of calling
at the group whenever he found himself within half a day's steaming
from it.

I don't mean to say that Heemskirk was a typical Dutch naval
officer.  I have seen enough of them not to fall into that absurd
mistake.  He had a big, clean-shaven face; great flat, brown
cheeks, with a thin, hooked nose and a small, pursy mouth squeezed
in between.  There were a few silver threads in his black hair, and
his unpleasant eyes were nearly black, too.  He had a surly way of
casting side glances without moving his head, which was set low on
a short, round neck.  A thick, round trunk in a dark undress jacket
with gold shoulder-straps, was sustained by a straddly pair of
thick, round legs, in white drill trousers.  His round skull under
a white cap looked as if it were immensely thick too, but there
were brains enough in it to discover and take advantage maliciously
of poor old Nelson's nervousness before everything that was
invested with the merest shred of authority.

Heemskirk would land on the point and perambulate silently every
part of the plantation as if the whole place belonged to him,
before her went to the house.  On the verandah he would take the
best chair, and would stay for tiffin or dinner, just simply stay
on, without taking the trouble to invite himself by so much as a
word.

He ought to have been kicked, if only for his manner to Miss Freya.
Had he been a naked savage, armed with spears and poisoned arrows,
old Nelson (or Nielsen) would have gone for him with his bare
fists.  But these gold shoulder-straps--Dutch shoulder-straps at
that--were enough to terrify the old fellow; so he let the beggar
treat him with heavy contempt, devour his daughter with his eyes,
and drink the best part of his little stock of wine.

I saw something of this, and on one occasion I tried to pass a
remark on the subject.  It was pitiable to see the trouble in old
Nelson's round eyes.  At first he cried out that the lieutenant was
a good friend of his; a very good fellow.  I went on staring at him
pretty hard, so that at last he faltered, and had to own that, of
course, Heemskirk was not a very genial person outwardly, but all
the same at bottom. . . .

"I haven't yet met a genial Dutchman out here," I interrupted.
"Geniality, after all, is not of much consequence, but don't you
see--"

Nelson looked suddenly so frightened at what I was going to say
that I hadn't the heart to go on.  Of course, I was going to tell
him that the fellow was after his girl.  That just describes it
exactly.  What Heemskirk might have expected or what he thought he
could do, I don't know.  For all I can tell, he might have imagined
himself irresistible, or have taken Freya for what she was not, on
account of her lively, assured, unconstrained manner.  But there it
is.  He was after that girl.  Nelson could see it well enough.
Only he preferred to ignore it.  He did not want to be told of it.

"All I want is to live in peace and quietness with the Dutch
authorities," he mumbled shamefacedly.

He was incurable.  I was sorry for him, and I really think Miss
Freya was sorry for her father, too.  She restrained herself for
his sake, and as everything she did she did it simply,
unaffectedly, and even good humouredly.  No small effort that,
because in Heemskirk's attentions there was an insolent touch of
scorn, hard to put up with.  Dutchmen of that sort are over-bearing
to their inferiors, and that officer of the king looked upon old
Nelson and Freya as quite beneath him in every way.

I can't say I felt sorry for Freya.  She was not the sort of girl
to take anything tragically.  One could feel for her and sympathise
with her difficulty, but she seemed equal to any situation.  It was
rather admiration she extorted by her competent serenity.  It was
only when Jasper and Heemskirk were together at the bungalow, as it
happened now and then, that she felt the strain, and even then it
was not for everybody to see.  My eyes alone could detect a faint
shadow on the radiance of her personality.  Once I could not help
saying to her appreciatively:

"Upon my word you are wonderful."

She let it pass with a faint smile.

"The great thing is to prevent Jasper becoming unreasonable," she
said; and I could see real concern lurking in the quiet depths of
her frank eyes gazing straight at me.  "You will help to keep him
quiet, won't you?"

"Of course, we must keep him quiet," I declared, understanding very
well the nature of her anxiety.  "He's such a lunatic, too, when
he's roused."

"He is!" she assented, in a soft tone; for it was our joke to speak
of Jasper abusively.  "But I have tamed him a bit.  He's quite a
good boy now."

"He would squash Heemskirk like a blackbeetle all the same," I
remarked.

"Rather!" she murmured.  "And that wouldn't do," she added quickly.
"Imagine the state poor papa would get into.  Besides, I mean to be
mistress of the dear brig and sail about these seas, not go off
wandering ten thousand miles away from here."

"The sooner you are on board to look after the man and the brig the
better," I said seriously.  "They need you to steady them both a
bit.  I don't think Jasper will ever get sobered down till he has
carried you off from this island.  You don't see him when he is
away from you, as I do.  He's in a state of perpetual elation which
almost frightens me."

At this she smiled again, and then looked serious.  For it could
not be unpleasant to her to be told of her power, and she had some
sense of her responsibility.  She slipped away from me suddenly,
because Heemskirk, with old Nelson in attendance at his elbow, was
coming up the steps of the verandah.  Directly his head came above
the level of the floor his ill-natured black eyes shot glances here
and there.

"Where's your girl, Nelson?" he asked, in a tone as if every soul
in the world belonged to him.  And then to me:  "The goddess has
flown, eh?"

Nelson's Cove--as we used to call it--was crowded with shipping
that day.  There was first my steamer, then the Neptun gunboat
further out, and the Bonito, brig, anchored as usual so close
inshore that it looked as if, with a little skill and judgment, one
could shy a hat from the verandah on to her scrupulously holystoned
quarter-deck.  Her brasses flashed like gold, her white body-paint
had a sheen like a satin robe.  The rake of her varnished spars and
the big yards, squared to a hair, gave her a sort of martial
elegance.  She was a beauty.  No wonder that in possession of a
craft like that and the promise of a girl like Freya, Jasper lived
in a state of perpetual elation fit, perhaps, for the seventh
heaven, but not exactly safe in a world like ours.

I remarked politely to Heemskirk that, with three guests in the
house, Miss Freya had no doubt domestic matters to attend to.  I
knew, of course, that she had gone to meet Jasper at a certain
cleared spot on the banks of the only stream on Nelson's little
island.  The commander of the Neptun gave me a dubious black look,
and began to make himself at home, flinging his thick, cylindrical
carcass into a rocking-chair, and unbuttoning his coat.  Old Nelson
sat down opposite him in a most unassuming manner, staring
anxiously with his round eyes and fanning himself with his hat.  I
tried to make conversation to while the time away; not an easy task
with a morose, enamoured Dutchman constantly looking from one door
to another and answering one's advances either with a jeer or a
grunt.

However, the evening passed off all right.  Luckily, there is a
degree of bliss too intense for elation.  Jasper was quiet and
concentrated silently in watching Freya.  As we went on board our
respective ships I offered to give his brig a tow out next morning.
I did it on purpose to get him away at the earliest possible
moment.  So in the first cold light of the dawn we passed by the
gunboat lying black and still without a sound in her at the mouth
of the glassy cove.  But with tropical swiftness the sun had
climbed twice its diameter above the horizon before we had rounded
the reef and got abreast of the point.  On the biggest boulder
there stood Freya, all in white and, in her helmet, like a feminine
and martial statue with a rosy face, as I could see very well with
my glasses.  She fluttered an expressive handkerchief, and Jasper,
running up the main rigging of the white and warlike brig, waved
his hat in response.  Shortly afterwards we parted, I to the
northward and Jasper heading east with a light wind on the quarter,
for Banjermassin and two other ports, I believe it was, that trip.

This peaceful occasion was the last on which I saw all these people
assembled together; the charmingly fresh and resolute Freya, the
innocently round-eyed old Nelson, Jasper, keen, long limbed, lean
faced, admirably self-contained, in his manner, because
inconceivably happy under the eyes of his Freya; all three tall,
fair, and blue-eyed in varied shades, and amongst them the swarthy,
arrogant, black-haired Dutchman, shorter nearly by a head, and so
much thicker than any of them that he seemed to be a creature
capable of inflating itself, a grotesque specimen of mankind from
some other planet.

The contrast struck me all at once as we stood in the lighted
verandah, after rising from the dinner-table.  I was fascinated by
it for the rest of the evening, and I remember the impression of
something funny and ill-omened at the same time in it to this day.



CHAPTER III



A few weeks later, coming early one morning into Singapore, from a
journey to the southward, I saw the brig lying at anchor in all her
usual symmetry and splendour of aspect as though she had been taken
out of a glass case and put delicately into the water that very
moment.

She was well out in the roadstead, but I steamed in and took up my
habitual berth close in front of the town.  Before we had finished
breakfast a quarter-master came to tell me that Captain Allen's
boat was coming our way.

His smart gig dashed alongside, and in two bounds he was up our
accommodation-ladder and shaking me by the hand with his nervous
grip, his eyes snapping inquisitively, for he supposed I had called
at the Seven Isles group on my way.  I reached into my pocket for a
nicely folded little note, which he grabbed out of my hand without
ceremony and carried off on the bridge to read by himself.  After a
decent interval I followed him up there, and found him pacing to
and fro; for the nature of his emotions made him restless even in
his most thoughtful moments.

He shook his head at me triumphantly.

"Well, my dear boy," he said, "I shall be counting the days now."

I understood what he meant.  I knew that those young people had
settled already on a runaway match without official preliminaries.
This was really a logical decision.  Old Nelson (or Nielsen) would
never have agreed to give up Freya peaceably to this compromising
Jasper.  Heavens!  What would the Dutch authorities say to such a
match!  It sounds too ridiculous for words.  But there's nothing in
the world more selfishly hard than a timorous man in a fright about
his "little estate," as old Nelson used to call it in apologetic
accents.  A heart permeated by a particular sort of funk is proof
against sense, feeling, and ridicule.  It's a flint.

Jasper would have made his request all the same and then taken his
own way; but it was Freya who decided that nothing should be said,
on the ground that, "Papa would only worry himself to distraction."
He was capable of making himself ill, and then she wouldn't have
the heart to leave him.  Here you have the sanity of feminine
outlook and the frankness of feminine reasoning.  And for the rest,
Miss Freya could read "poor dear papa" in the way a woman reads a
man--like an open book.  His daughter once gone, old Nelson would
not worry himself.  He would raise a great outcry, and make no end
of lamentable fuss, but that's not the same thing.  The real
agonies of indecision, the anguish of conflicting feelings would be
spared to him.  And as he was too unassuming to rage, he would,
after a period of lamentation, devote himself to his "little
estate," and to keeping on good terms with the authorities.

Time would do the rest.  And Freya thought she could afford to
wait, while ruling over her own home in the beautiful brig and over
the man who loved her.  This was the life for her who had learned
to walk on a ship's deck.  She was a ship-child, a sea-girl if ever
there was one.  And of course she loved Jasper and trusted him; but
there was a shade of anxiety in her pride.  It is very fine and
romantic to possess for your very own a finely tempered and trusty
sword-blade, but whether it is the best weapon to counter with the
common cudgel-play of Fate--that's another question.

She knew that she had the more substance of the two--you needn't
try any cheap jokes, I am not talking of their weights.  She was
just a little anxious while he was away, and she had me who, being
a tried confidant, took the liberty to whisper frequently "The
sooner the better."  But there was a peculiar vein of obstinacy in
Miss Freya, and her reason for delay was characteristic.  "Not
before my twenty-first birthday; so that there shall be no mistake
in people's minds as to me being old enough to know what I am
doing."

Jasper's feelings were in such subjection that he had never even
remonstrated against the decree.  She was just splendid, whatever
she did or said, and there was an end of it for him.  I believe
that he was subtle enough to be even flattered at bottom--at times.
And then to console him he had the brig which seemed pervaded by
the spirit of Freya, since whatever he did on board was always done
under the supreme sanction of his love.

"Yes.  I'll soon begin to count the days," he repeated.  "Eleven
months more.  I'll have to crowd three trips into that."

"Mind you don't come to grief trying to do too much," I admonished
him.  But he dismissed my caution with a laugh and an elated
gesture.  Pooh!  Nothing, nothing could happen to the brig, he
cried, as if the flame of his heart could light up the dark nights
of uncharted seas, and the image of Freya serve for an unerring
beacon amongst hidden shoals; as if the winds had to wait on his
future, the stars fight for it in their courses; as if the magic of
his passion had the power to float a ship on a drop of dew or sail
her through the eye of a needle--simply because it was her
magnificent lot to be the servant of a love so full of grace as to
make all the ways of the earth safe, resplendent, and easy.

"I suppose," I said, after he had finished laughing at my innocent
enough remark, "I suppose you will be off to-day."

That was what he meant to do.  He had not gone at daylight only
because he expected me to come in.

"And only fancy what has happened yesterday," he went on.  "My mate
left me suddenly.  Had to.  And as there's nobody to be found at a
short notice I am going to take Schultz with me.  The notorious
Schultz!  Why don't you jump out of your skin?  I tell you I went
and unearthed Schultz late last evening, after no end of trouble.
'I am your man, captain,' he says, in that wonderful voice of his,
'but I am sorry to confess I have practically no clothes to my
back.  I have had to sell all my wardrobe to get a little food from
day to day.'  What a voice that man has got.  Talk about moving
stones!  But people seem to get used to it.  I had never seen him
before, and, upon my word, I felt suddenly tears rising to my eyes.
Luckily it was dusk.  He was sitting very quiet under a tree in a
native compound as thin as a lath, and when I peered down at him
all he had on was an old cotton singlet and a pair of ragged
pyjamas.  I bought him six white suits and two pairs of canvas
shoes.  Can't clear the ship without a mate.  Must have somebody.
I am going on shore presently to sign him on, and I shall take him
with me as I go back on board to get under way.  Now, I am a
lunatic--am I not?  Mad, of course.  Come on!  Lay it on thick.
Let yourself go.  I like to see you get excited."

He so evidently expected me to scold that I took especial pleasure
in exaggerating the calmness of my attitude.

"The worst that can be brought up against Schultz," I began,
folding my arms and speaking dispassionately, "is an awkward habit
of stealing the stores of every ship he has ever been in.  He will
do it.  That's really all that's wrong.  I don't credit absolutely
that story Captain Robinson tells of Schultz conspiring in
Chantabun with some ruffians in a Chinese junk to steal the anchor
off the starboard bow of the Bohemian Girl schooner.  Robinson's
story is too ingenious altogether.  That other tale of the
engineers of the Nan-Shan finding Schultz at midnight in the
engine-room busy hammering at the brass bearings to carry them off
for sale on shore seems to me more authentic.  Apart from this
little weakness, let me tell you that Schultz is a smarter sailor
than many who never took a drop of drink in their lives, and
perhaps no worse morally than some men you and I know who have
never stolen the value of a penny.  He may not be a desirable
person to have on board one's ship, but since you have no choice he
may be made to do, I believe.  The important thing is to understand
his psychology.  Don't give him any money till you have done with
him.  Not a cent, if he begs ever so.  For as sure as Fate the
moment you give him any money he will begin to steal.  Just
remember that."

I enjoyed Jasper's incredulous surprise.

"The devil he will!" he cried.  "What on earth for?  Aren't you
trying to pull my leg, old boy?"

"No.  I'm not.  You must understand Schultz's psychology.  He's
neither a loafer nor a cadger.  He's not likely to wander about
looking for somebody to stand him drinks.  But suppose he goes on
shore with five dollars, or fifty for that matter, in his pocket?
After the third or fourth glass he becomes fuddled and charitable.
He either drops his money all over the place, or else distributes
the lot around; gives it to any one who will take it.  Then it
occurs to him that the night is young yet, and that he may require
a good many more drinks for himself and his friends before morning.
So he starts off cheerfully for his ship.  His legs never get
affected nor his head either in the usual way.  He gets aboard and
simply grabs the first thing that seems to him suitable--the cabin
lamp, a coil of rope, a bag of biscuits, a drum of oil--and
converts it into money without thinking twice about it.  This is
the process and no other.  You have only to look out that he
doesn't get a start.  That's all."

"Confound his psychology," muttered Jasper.  "But a man with a
voice like his is fit to talk to the angels.  Is he incurable do
you think?"

I said that I thought so.  Nobody had prosecuted him yet, but no
one would employ him any longer.  His end would be, I feared, to
starve in some hole or other.

"Ah, well," reflected Jasper.  "The Bonito isn't trading to any
ports of civilisation.  That'll make it easier for him to keep
straight."

That was true.  The brig's business was on uncivilised coasts, with
obscure rajahs dwelling in nearly unknown bays; with native
settlements up mysterious rivers opening their sombre, forest-lined
estuaries among a welter of pale green reefs and dazzling sand-
banks, in lonely straits of calm blue water all aglitter with
sunshine.  Alone, far from the beaten tracks, she glided, all
white, round dark, frowning headlands, stole out, silent like a
ghost, from behind points of land stretching out all black in the
moonlight; or lay hove-to, like a sleeping sea-bird, under the
shadow of some nameless mountain waiting for a signal.  She would
be glimpsed suddenly on misty, squally days dashing disdainfully
aside the short aggressive waves of the Java Sea; or be seen far,
far away, a tiny dazzling white speck flying across the brooding
purple masses of thunderclouds piled up on the horizon.  Sometimes,
on the rare mail tracks, where civilisation brushes against wild
mystery, when the naive passengers crowding along the rail
exclaimed, pointing at her with interest:  "Oh, here's a yacht!"
the Dutch captain, with a hostile glance, would grunt
contemptuously:  "Yacht!  No!  That's only English Jasper.  A
pedlar--"

"A good seaman you say," ejaculated Jasper, still in the matter of
the hopeless Schultz with the wonderfully touching voice.

"First rate.  Ask any one.  Quite worth having--only impossible," I
declared.

"He shall have his chance to reform in the brig," said Jasper, with
a laugh.  "There will be no temptations either to drink or steal
where I am going to this time."

I didn't press him for anything more definite on that point.  In
fact, intimate as we were, I had a pretty clear notion of the
general run of his business.

But as we are going ashore in his gig he asked suddenly:  "By the
way, do you know where Heemskirk is?"

I eyed him covertly, and was reassured.  He had asked the question,
not as a lover, but as a trader.  I told him that I had heard in
Palembang that the Neptun was on duty down about Flores and
Sumbawa.  Quite out of his way.  He expressed his satisfaction.

"You know," he went on, "that fellow, when he gets on the Borneo
coast, amuses himself by knocking down my beacons.  I have had to
put up a few to help me in and out of the rivers.  Early this year
a Celebes trader becalmed in a prau was watching him at it.  He
steamed the gunboat full tilt at two of them, one after another,
smashing them to pieces, and then lowered a boat on purpose to pull
out a third, which I had a lot of trouble six months ago to stick
up in the middle of a mudflat for a tide mark.  Did you ever hear
of anything more provoking--eh?"

"I wouldn't quarrel with the beggar," I observed casually, yet
disliking that piece of news strongly.  "It isn't worth while."

"I quarrel?" cried Jasper.  "I don't want to quarrel.  I don't want
to hurt a single hair of his ugly head.  My dear fellow, when I
think of Freya's twenty-first birthday, all the world's my friend,
Heemskirk included.  It's a nasty, spiteful amusement, all the
same."

We parted rather hurriedly on the quay, each of us having his own
pressing business to attend to.  I would have been very much cut up
had I known that this hurried grasp of the hand with "So long, old
boy.  Good luck to you!" was the last of our partings.

On his return to the Straits I was away, and he was gone again
before I got back.  He was trying to achieve three trips before
Freya's twenty-first birthday.  At Nelson's Cove I missed him again
by only a couple of days.  Freya and I talked of "that lunatic" and
"perfect idiot" with great delight and infinite appreciation.  She
was very radiant, with a more pronounced gaiety, notwithstanding
that she had just parted from Jasper.  But this was to be their
last separation.

"Do get aboard as soon as you can, Miss Freya," I entreated.

She looked me straight in the face, her colour a little heightened
and with a sort of solemn ardour--if there was a little catch in
her voice.

"The very next day."

Ah, yes!  The very next day after her twenty-first birthday.  I was
pleased at this hint of deep feeling.  It was as if she had grown
impatient at last of the self-imposed delay.  I supposed that
Jasper's recent visit had told heavily.

"That's right," I said approvingly.  "I shall be much easier in my
mind when I know you have taken charge of that lunatic.  Don't you
lose a minute.  He, of course, will be on time--unless heavens
fall."

"Yes.  Unless--" she repeated in a thoughtful whisper, raising her
eyes to the evening sky without a speck of cloud anywhere.  Silent
for a time, we let our eyes wander over the waters below, looking
mysteriously still in the twilight, as if trustfully composed for a
long, long dream in the warm, tropical night.  And the peace all
round us seemed without limits and without end.

And then we began again to talk Jasper over in our usual strain.
We agreed that he was too reckless in many ways.  Luckily, the brig
was equal to the situation.  Nothing apparently was too much for
her.  A perfect darling of a ship, said Miss Freya.  She and her
father had spent an afternoon on board.  Jasper had given them some
tea.  Papa was grumpy. . . . I had a vision of old Nelson under the
brig's snowy awnings, nursing his unassuming vexation, and fanning
himself with his hat.  A comedy father. . . . As a new instance of
Jasper's lunacy, I was told that he was distressed at his inability
to have solid silver handles fitted to all the cabin doors.  "As if
I would have let him!" commented Miss Freya, with amused
indignation.  Incidentally, I learned also that Schultz, the
nautical kleptomaniac with the pathetic voice, was still hanging on
to his job, with Miss Freya's approval.  Jasper had confided to the
lady of his heart his purpose of straightening out the fellow's
psychology.  Yes, indeed.  All the world was his friend because it
breathed the same air with Freya.

Somehow or other, I brought Heemskirk's name into conversation,
and, to my great surprise, startled Miss Freya.  Her eyes expressed
something like distress, while she bit her lip as if to contain an
explosion of laughter.  Oh!  Yes.  Heemskirk was at the bungalow at
the same time with Jasper, but he arrived the day after.  He left
the same day as the brig, but a few hours later.

"What a nuisance he must have been to you two," I said feelingly.

Her eyes flashed at me a sort of frightened merriment, and suddenly
she exploded into a clear burst of laughter.  "Ha, ha, ha!"

I echoed it heartily, but not with the game charming tone:  "Ha,
ha, ha! . . . Isn't he grotesque?  Ha, ha, ha!"  And the
ludicrousness of old Nelson's inanely fierce round eyes in
association with his conciliatory manner to the lieutenant
presenting itself to my mind brought on another fit.

"He looks," I spluttered, "he looks--Ha, ha, ha!--amongst you three
. . . like an unhappy black-beetle.  Ha, ha, ha!"

She gave out another ringing peal, ran off into her own room, and
slammed the door behind her, leaving me profoundly astounded.  I
stopped laughing at once.

"What's the joke?" asked old Nelson's voice, half way down the
steps.

He came up, sat down, and blew out his cheeks, looking
inexpressibly fatuous.  But I didn't want to laugh any more.  And
what on earth, I asked myself, have we been laughing at in this
uncontrollable fashion.  I felt suddenly depressed.

Oh, yes.  Freya had started it.  The girl's overwrought, I thought.
And really one couldn't wonder at it.

I had no answer to old Nelson's question, but he was too aggrieved
at Jasper's visit to think of anything else.  He as good as asked
me whether I wouldn't undertake to hint to Jasper that he was not
wanted at the Seven Isles group.  I declared that it was not
necessary.  From certain circumstances which had come to my
knowledge lately, I had reason to think that he would not be much
troubled by Jasper Allen in the future.

He emitted an earnest "Thank God!" which nearly set me laughing
again, but he did not brighten up proportionately.  It seemed
Heemskirk had taken special pains to make himself disagreeable.
The lieutenant had frightened old Nelson very much by expressing a
sinister wonder at the Government permitting a white man to settle
down in that part at all.  "It is against our declared policy," he
had remarked.  He had also charged him with being in reality no
better than an Englishman.  He had even tried to pick a quarrel
with him for not learning to speak Dutch.

"I told him I was too old to learn now," sighed out old Nelson (or
Nielsen) dismally.  "He said I ought to have learned Dutch long
before.  I had been making my living in Dutch dependencies.  It was
disgraceful of me not to speak Dutch, he said.  He was as savage
with me as if I had been a Chinaman."

It was plain he had been viciously badgered.  He did not mention
how many bottles of his best claret he had offered up on the altar
of conciliation.  It must have been a generous libation.  But old
Nelson (or Nielsen) was really hospitable.  He didn't mind that;
and I only regretted that this virtue should be lavished on the
lieutenant-commander of the Neptun.  I longed to tell him that in
all probability he would be relieved from Heemskirk's visitations
also.  I did not do so only from the fear (absurd, I admit) of
arousing some sort of suspicion in his mind.  As if with this
guileless comedy father such a thing were possible!

Strangely enough, the last words on the subject of Heemskirk were
spoken by Freya, and in that very sense.  The lieutenant was
turning up persistently in old Nelson's conversation at dinner.  At
last I muttered a half audible "Damn the lieutenant."  I could see
that the girl was getting exasperated, too.

"And he wasn't well at all--was he, Freya?" old Nelson went on
moaning.  "Perhaps it was that which made him so snappish, hey,
Freya?  He looked very bad when he left us so suddenly.  His liver
must be in a bad state, too."

"Oh, he will end by getting over it," said Freya impatiently.  "And
do leave off worrying about him, papa.  Very likely you won't see
much of him for a long time to come."

The look she gave me in exchange for my discreet smile had no
hidden mirth in it.  Her eyes seemed hollowed, her face gone wan in
a couple of hours.  We had been laughing too much.  Overwrought!
Overwrought by the approach of the decisive moment.  After all,
sincere, courageous, and self-reliant as she was, she must have
felt both the passion and the compunction of her resolve.  The very
strength of love which had carried her up to that point must have
put her under a great moral strain, in which there might have been
a little simple remorse, too.  For she was honest--and there,
across the table, sat poor old Nelson (or Nielsen) staring at her,
round-eyed and so pathetically comic in his fierce aspect as to
touch the most lightsome heart.

He retired early to his room to soothe himself for a night's rest
by perusing his account-books.  We two remained on the verandah for
another hour or so, but we exchanged only languid phrases on things
without importance, as though we had been emotionally jaded by our
long day's talk on the only momentous subject.  And yet there was
something she might have told a friend.  But she didn't.  We parted
silently.  She distrusted my masculine lack of common sense,
perhaps. . . . O!  Freya!

Going down the precipitous path to the landing-stage, I was
confronted in the shadows of boulders and bushes by a draped
feminine figure whose appearance startled me at first.  It glided
into my way suddenly from behind a piece of rock.  But in a moment
it occurred to me that it could be no one else but Freya's maid, a
half-caste Malacca Portuguese.  One caught fleeting glimpses of her
olive face and dazzling white teeth about the house.  I had
observed her at times from a distance, as she sat within call under
the shade of some fruit trees, brushing and plaiting her long raven
locks.  It seemed to be the principal occupation of her leisure
hours.  We had often exchanged nods and smiles--and a few words,
too.  She was a pretty creature.  And once I had watched her
approvingly make funny and expressive grimaces behind Heemskirk's
back.  I understood (from Jasper) that she was in the secret, like
a comedy camerista.  She was to accompany Freya on her irregular
way to matrimony and "ever after" happiness.  Why should she be
roaming by night near the cove--unless on some love affair of her
own--I asked myself.  But there was nobody suitable within the
Seven Isles group, as far as I knew.  It flashed upon me that it
was myself she had been lying in wait for.

She hesitated, muffled from head to foot, shadowy and bashful.  I
advanced another pace, and how I felt is nobody's business.

"What is it?" I asked, very low.

"Nobody knows I am here," she whispered.

"And nobody can see us," I whispered back.

The murmur of words "I've been so frightened" reached me.  Just
then forty feet above our head, from the yet lighted verandah,
unexpected and startling, Freya's voice rang out in a clear,
imperious call:

"Antonia!"

With a stifled exclamation, the hesitating girl vanished out of the
path.  A bush near by rustled; then silence.  I waited wondering.
The lights on the verandah went out.  I waited a while longer then
continued down the path to my boat, wondering more than ever.

I remember the occurrences of that visit especially, because this
was the last time I saw the Nelson bungalow.  On arriving at the
Straits I found cable messages which made it necessary for me to
throw up my employment at a moment's notice and go home at once.  I
had a desperate scramble to catch the mailboat which was due to
leave next day, but I found time to write two short notes, one to
Freya, the other to Jasper.  Later on I wrote at length, this time
to Allen alone.  I got no answer.  I hunted up then his brother,
or, rather, half-brother, a solicitor in the city, a sallow, calm,
little man who looked at me over his spectacles thoughtfully.

Jasper was the only child of his father's second marriage, a
transaction which had failed to commend itself to the first, grown-
up family.

"You haven't heard for ages," I repeated, with secret annoyance.
"May I ask what 'for ages' means in this connection?"

"It means that I don't care whether I ever hear from him or not,"
retorted the little man of law, turning nasty suddenly.

I could not blame Jasper for not wasting his time in correspondence
with such an outrageous relative.  But why didn't he write to me--a
decent sort of friend, after all; enough of a friend to find for
his silence the excuse of forgetfulness natural to a state of
transcendental bliss?  I waited indulgently, but nothing ever came.
And the East seemed to drop out of my life without an echo, like a
stone falling into a well of prodigious depth.



CHAPTER IV



I suppose praiseworthy motives are a sufficient justification
almost for anything.  What could be more commendable in the
abstract than a girl's determination that "poor papa" should not be
worried, and her anxiety that the man of her choice should be kept
by any means from every occasion of doing something rash, something
which might endanger the whole scheme of their happiness?

Nothing could be more tender and more prudent.  We must also
remember the girl's self-reliant temperament, and the general
unwillingness of women--I mean women of sense--to make a fuss over
matters of that sort.

As has been said already, Heemskirk turned up some time after
Jasper's arrival at Nelson's Cove.  The sight of the brig lying
right under the bungalow was very offensive to him.  He did not fly
ashore before his anchor touched the ground as Jasper used to do.
On the contrary, he hung about his quarter-deck mumbling to
himself; and when he ordered his boat to be manned it was in an
angry voice.  Freya's existence, which lifted Jasper out of himself
into a blissful elation, was for Heemskirk a cause of secret
torment, of hours of exasperated brooding.

While passing the brig he hailed her harshly and asked if the
master was on board.  Schultz, smart and neat in a spotless white
suit, leaned over the taffrail, finding the question somewhat
amusing.  He looked humorously down into Heemskirk's boat, and
answered, in the most amiable modulations of his beautiful voice:
"Captain Allen is up at the house, sir."  But his expression
changed suddenly at the savage growl:  "What the devil are you
grinning at?" which acknowledged that information.

He watched Heemskirk land and, instead of going to the house,
stride away by another path into the grounds.

The desire-tormented Dutchman found old Nelson (or Nielsen) at his
drying-sheds, very busy superintending the manipulation of his
tobacco crop, which, though small, was of excellent quality, and
enjoying himself thoroughly.  But Heemskirk soon put a stop to this
simple happiness.  He sat down by the old chap, and by the sort of
talk which he knew was best calculated for the purpose, reduced him
before long to a state of concealed and perspiring nervousness.  It
was a horrid talk of "authorities," and old Nelson tried to defend
himself.  If he dealt with English traders it was because he had to
dispose of his produce somehow.  He was as conciliatory as he knew
how to be, and this very thing seemed to excite Heemskirk, who had
worked himself up into a heavily breathing state of passion.

"And the worst of them all is that Allen," he growled.  "Your
particular friend--eh?  You have let in a lot of these Englishmen
into this part.  You ought never to have been allowed to settle
here.  Never.  What's he doing here now?"

Old Nelson (or Nielsen), becoming very agitated, declared that
Jasper Allen was no particular friend of his.  No friend at all--at
all.  He had bought three tons of rice from him to feed his
workpeople on.  What sort of evidence of friendship was that?
Heemskirk burst out at last with the thought that had been gnawing
at his vitals:

"Yes.  Sell three tons of rice and flirt three days with that girl
of yours.  I am speaking to you as a friend, Nielsen.  This won't
do.  You are only on sufferance here."

Old Nelson was taken aback at first, but recovered pretty quickly.
Won't do!  Certainly!  Of course, it wouldn't do!  The last man in
the world.  But his girl didn't care for the fellow, and was too
sensible to fall in love with any one.  He was very earnest in
impressing on Heemskirk his own feeling of absolute security.  And
the lieutenant, casting doubting glances sideways, was yet willing
to believe him.

"Much you know about it," he grunted nevertheless.

"But I do know," insisted old Nelson, with the greater desperation
because he wanted to resist the doubts arising in his own mind.
"My own daughter!  In my own house, and I not to know!  Come!  It
would be a good joke, lieutenant."

"They seem to be carrying on considerably," remarked Heemskirk
moodily.  "I suppose they are together now," he added, feeling a
pang which changed what he meant for a mocking smile into a strange
grimace.

The harassed Nelson shook his hand at him.  He was at bottom
shocked at this insistence, and was even beginning to feel annoyed
at the absurdity of it.

"Pooh!  Pooh!  I'll tell you what, lieutenant:  you go to the house
and have a drop of gin-and-bitters before dinner.  Ask for Freya.
I must see the last of this tobacco put away for the night, but
I'll be along presently."

Heemskirk was not insensible to this suggestion.  It answered to
his secret longing, which was not a longing for drink, however.
Old Nelson shouted solicitously after his broad back a
recommendation to make himself comfortable, and that there was a
box of cheroots on the verandah.

It was the west verandah that old Nelson meant, the one which was
the living-room of the house, and had split-rattan screens of the
very finest quality.  The east verandah, sacred to his own privacy,
puffing out of cheeks, and other signs of perplexed thinking, was
fitted with stout blinds of sailcloth.  The north verandah was not
a verandah at all, really.  It was more like a long balcony.  It
did not communicate with the other two, and could only be
approached by a passage inside the house.  Thus it had a privacy
which made it a convenient place for a maiden's meditations without
words, and also for the discourses, apparently without sense,
which, passing between a young man and a maid, become pregnant with
a diversity of transcendental meanings.

This north verandah was embowered with climbing plants.  Freya,
whose room opened out on it, had furnished it as a sort of boudoir
for herself, with a few cane chairs and a sofa of the same kind.
On this sofa she and Jasper sat as close together as is possible in
this imperfect world where neither can a body be in two places at
once nor yet two bodies can be in one place at the same time.  They
had been sitting together all the afternoon, and I won't say that
their talk had been without sense.  Loving him with a little
judicious anxiety lest in his elation he should break his heart
over some mishap, Freya naturally would talk to him soberly.  He,
nervous and brusque when away from her, appeared always as if
overcome by her visibility, by the great wonder of being palpably
loved.  An old man's child, having lost his mother early, thrown
out to sea out of the way while very young, he had not much
experience of tenderness of any kind.

In this private, foliage-embowered verandah, and at this late hour
of the afternoon, he bent down a little, and, possessing himself of
Freya's hands, was kissing them one after another, while she smiled
and looked down at his head with the eyes of approving compassion.
At that same moment Heemskirk was approaching the house from the
north.

Antonia was on the watch on that side.  But she did not keep a very
good watch.  The sun was setting; she knew that her young mistress
and the captain of the Bonito were about to separate.  She was
walking to and fro in the dusky grove with a flower in her hair,
and singing softly to herself, when suddenly, within a foot of her,
the lieutenant appeared from behind a tree.  She bounded aside like
a startled fawn, but Heemskirk, with a lucid comprehension of what
she was there for, pounced upon her, and, catching her arm, clapped
his other thick hand over her mouth.

"If you try to make a noise I'll twist your neck!"

This ferocious figure of speech terrified the girl sufficiently.
Heemskirk had seen plainly enough on the verandah Freya's golden
head with another head very close to it.  He dragged the
unresisting maid with him by a circuitous way into the compound,
where he dismissed her with a vicious push in the direction of the
cluster of bamboo huts for the servants.

She was very much like the faithful camerista of Italian comedy,
but in her terror she bolted away without a sound from that thick,
short, black-eyed man with a cruel grip of fingers like a vice.
Quaking all over at a distance, extremely scared and half inclined
to laugh, she saw him enter the house at the back.

The interior of the bungalow was divided by two passages crossing
each other in the middle.  At that point Heemskirk, by turning his
head slightly to the left as he passed, secured the evidence of
"carrying on" so irreconcilable with old Nelson's assurances that
it made him stagger, with a rush of blood to his head.  Two white
figures, distinct against the light, stood in an unmistakable
attitude.  Freya's arms were round Jasper's neck.  Their faces were
characteristically superimposed on each other, and Heemskirk went
on, his throat choked with a sudden rising of curses, till on the
west verandah he stumbled blindly against a chair and then dropped
into another as though his legs had been swept from under him.  He
had indulged too long in the habit of appropriating Freya to
himself in his thoughts.  "Is that how you entertain your visitors-
-you . . " he thought, so outraged that he could not find a
sufficiently degrading epithet.

Freya struggled a little and threw her head back.

"Somebody has come in," she whispered.  Jasper, holding her clasped
closely to his breast, and looking down into her face, suggested
casually:

"Your father."

Freya tried to disengage herself, but she had not the heart
absolutely to push him away with her hands.

"I believe it's Heemskirk," she breathed out at him.

He, plunging into her eyes in a quiet rapture, was provoked to a
vague smile by the sound of the name.

"The ass is always knocking down my beacons outside the river," he
murmured.  He attached no other meaning to Heemskirk's existence;
but Freya was asking herself whether the lieutenant had seen them.

"Let me go, kid," she ordered in a peremptory whisper.  Jasper
obeyed, and, stepping back at once, continued his contemplation of
her face under another angle.  "I must go and see," she said to
herself anxiously.

She instructed him hurriedly to wait a moment after she was gone
and then to slip on to the back verandah and get a quiet smoke
before he showed himself.

"Don't stay late this evening," was her last recommendation before
she left him.

Then Freya came out on the west verandah with her light, rapid
step.  While going through the doorway she managed to shake down
the folds of the looped-up curtains at the end of the passage so as
to cover Jasper's retreat from the bower.  Directly she appeared
Heemskirk jumped up as if to fly at her.  She paused and he made
her an exaggerated low bow.

It irritated Freya.

"Oh!  It's you, Mr. Heemskirk.  How do you do?"  She spoke in her
usual tone.  Her face was not plainly visible to him in the dusk of
the deep verandah.  He dared not trust himself to speak, his rage
at what he had seen was so great.  And when she added with
serenity:  "Papa will be coming in before long," he called her
horrid names silently, to himself, before he spoke with contorted
lips.

"I have seen your father already.  We had a talk in the sheds.  He
told me some very interesting things.  Oh, very--"

Freya sat down.  She thought:  "He has seen us, for certain."  She
was not ashamed.  What she was afraid of was some foolish or
awkward complication.  But she could not conceive how much her
person had been appropriated by Heemskirk (in his thoughts).  She
tried to be conversational.

"You are coming now from Palembang, I suppose?"

"Eh?  What?  Oh, yes!  I come from Palembang.  Ha, ha, ha!  You
know what your father said?  He said he was afraid you were having
a very dull time of it here."

"And I suppose you are going to cruise in the Moluccas," continued
Freya, who wanted to impart some useful information to Jasper if
possible.  At the same time she was always glad to know that those
two men were a few hundred miles apart when not under her eye.

Heemskirk growled angrily.

"Yes.  Moluccas," glaring in the direction of her shadowy figure.
"Your father thinks it's very quiet for you here.  I tell you what,
Miss Freya.  There isn't such a quiet spot on earth that a woman
can't find an opportunity of making a fool of somebody."

Freya thought:  "I mustn't let him provoke me."  Presently the
Tamil boy, who was Nelson's head servant, came in with the lights.
She addressed him at once with voluble directions where to put the
lamps, told him to bring the tray with the gin and bitters, and to
send Antonia into the house.

"I will have to leave you to yourself, Mr. Heemskirk, for a while,"
she said.

And she went to her room to put on another frock.  She made a quick
change of it because she wished to be on the verandah before her
father and the lieutenant met again.  She relied on herself to
regulate that evening's intercourse between these two.  But
Antonia, still scared and hysterical, exhibited a bruise on her arm
which roused Freya's indignation.

"He jumped on me out of the bush like a tiger," said the girl,
laughing nervously with frightened eyes.

"The brute!" thought Freya.  "He meant to spy on us, then."  She
was enraged, but the recollection of the thick Dutchman in white
trousers wide at the hips and narrow at the ankles, with his
shoulder-straps and black bullet head, glaring at her in the light
of the lamps, was so repulsively comical that she could not help a
smiling grimace.  Then she became anxious.  The absurdities of
three men were forcing this anxiety upon her:  Jasper's
impetuosity, her father's fears, Heemskirk's infatuation.  She was
very tender to the first two, and she made up her mind to display
all her feminine diplomacy.  All this, she said to herself, will be
over and done with before very long now.

Heemskirk on the verandah, lolling in a chair, his legs extended
and his white cap reposing on his stomach, was lashing himself into
a fury of an atrocious character altogether incomprehensible to a
girl like Freya.  His chin was resting on his chest, his eyes gazed
stonily at his shoes.  Freya examined him from behind the curtain.
He didn't stir.  He was ridiculous.  But this absolute stillness
was impressive.  She stole back along the passage to the east
verandah, where Jasper was sitting quietly in the dark, doing what
he was told, like a good boy.

"Psst," she hissed.  He was by her side in a moment.

"Yes.  What is it?" he murmured.

"It's that beetle," she whispered uneasily.  Under the impression
of Heemskirk's sinister immobility she had half a mind to let
Jasper know that they had been seen.  But she was by no means
certain that Heemskirk would tell her father--and at any rate not
that evening.  She concluded rapidly that the safest thing would be
to get Jasper out of the way as soon as possible.

"What has he been doing?" asked Jasper in a calm undertone.

"Oh, nothing!  Nothing.  He sits there looking cross.  But you know
how he's always worrying papa."

"Your father's quite unreasonable," pronounced Jasper judicially.

"I don't know," she said in a doubtful tone.  Something of old
Nelson's dread of the authorities had rubbed off on the girl since
she had to live with it day after day.  "I don't know.  Papa's
afraid of being reduced to beggary, as he says, in his old days.
Look here, kid, you had better clear out to-morrow, first thing."

Jasper had hoped for another afternoon with Freya, an afternoon of
quiet felicity with the girl by his side and his eyes on his brig,
anticipating a blissful future.  His silence was eloquent with
disappointment, and Freya understood it very well.  She, too, was
disappointed.  But it was her business to be sensible.

"We shan't have a moment to ourselves with that beetle creeping
round the house," she argued in a low, hurried voice.  "So what's
the good of your staying?  And he won't go while the brig's here.
You know he won't."

"He ought to be reported for loitering," murmured Jasper with a
vexed little laugh.

"Mind you get under way at daylight," recommended Freya under her
breath.

He detained her after the manner of lovers.  She expostulated
without struggling because it was hard for her to repulse him.  He
whispered into her ear while he put his arms round her.

"Next time we two meet, next time I hold you like this, it shall be
on board.  You and I, in the brig--all the world, all the life--"
And then he flashed out:  "I wonder I can wait!  I feel as if I
must carry you off now, at once.  I could run with you in my hands-
-down the path--without stumbling--without touching the earth--"

She was still.  She listened to the passion in his voice.  She was
saying to herself that if she were to whisper the faintest yes, if
she were but to sigh lightly her consent, he would do it.  He was
capable of doing it--without touching the earth.  She closed her
eyes and smiled in the dark, abandoning herself in a delightful
giddiness, for an instant, to his encircling arm.  But before he
could be tempted to tighten his grasp she was out of it, a foot
away from him and in full possession of herself.

That was the steady Freya.  She was touched by the deep sigh which
floated up to her from the white figure of Jasper, who did not
stir.

"You are a mad kid," she said tremulously.  Then with a change of
tone:  "No one could carry me off.  Not even you.  I am not the
sort of girl that gets carried off."  His white form seemed to
shrink a little before the force of that assertion and she
relented.  "Isn't it enough for you to know that you have--that you
have carried me away?" she added in a tender tone.

He murmured an endearing word, and she continued:

"I've promised you--I've said I would come--and I shall come of my
own free will.  You shall wait for me on board.  I shall get up the
side--by myself, and walk up to you on the deck and say:  'Here I
am, kid.'  And then--and then I shall be carried off.  But it will
be no man who will carry me off--it will be the brig, your brig--
our brig. . . . I love the beauty!"

She heard an inarticulate sound, something like a moan wrung out by
pain or delight, and glided away.  There was that other man on the
other verandah, that dark, surly Dutchman who could make trouble
between Jasper and her father, bring about a quarrel, ugly words,
and perhaps a physical collision.  What a horrible situation!  But,
even putting aside that awful extremity, she shrank from having to
live for some three months with a wretched, tormented, angry,
distracted, absurd man.  And when the day came, the day and the
hour, what should she do if her father tried to detain her by main
force--as was, after all, possible?  Could she actually struggle
with him hand to hand?  But it was of lamentations and entreaties
that she was really afraid.  Could she withstand them?  What an
odious, cruel, ridiculous position would that be!

"But it won't be.  He'll say nothing," she thought as she came out
quickly on the west verandah, and, seeing that Heemskirk did not
move, sat down on a chair near the doorway and kept her eyes on
him.  The outraged lieutenant had not changed his attitude; only
his cap had fallen off his stomach and was lying on the floor.  His
thick black eyebrows were knitted by a frown, while he looked at
her out of the corners of his eyes.  And their sideways glance in
conjunction with the hooked nose, the whole bulky, ungainly,
sprawling person, struck Freya as so comically moody that, inwardly
discomposed as she was, she could not help smiling.  She did her
best to give that smile a conciliatory character.  She did not want
to provoke Heemskirk needlessly.

And the lieutenant, perceiving that smile, was mollified.  It never
entered his head that his outward appearance, a naval officer, in
uniform, could appear ridiculous to that girl of no position--the
daughter of old Nielsen.  The recollection of her arms round
Jasper's neck still irritated and excited him.  "The hussy!" he
thought.  "Smiling--eh?  That's how you are amusing yourself.
Fooling your father finely, aren't you?  You have a taste for that
sort of fun--have you?  Well, we shall see--"  He did not alter his
position, but on his pursed-up lips there also appeared a smile of
surly and ill-omened amusement, while his eyes returned to the
contemplation of his boots.

Freya felt hot with indignation.  She sat radiantly fair in the
lamplight, her strong, well-shaped hands lying one on top of the
other in her lap. . . "Odious creature," she thought.  Her face
coloured with sudden anger.  "You have scared my maid out of her
senses," she said aloud.  "What possessed you?"

He was thinking so deeply of her that the sound of her voice,
pronouncing these unexpected words, startled him extremely.  He
jerked up his head and looked so bewildered that Freya insisted
impatiently:

"I mean Antonia.  You have bruised her arm.  What did you do it
for?"

"Do you want to quarrel with me?" he asked thickly, with a sort of
amazement.  He blinked like an owl.  He was funny.  Freya, like all
women, had a keen sense of the ridiculous in outward appearance.

"Well, no; I don't think I do."  She could not help herself.  She
laughed outright, a clear, nervous laugh in which Heemskirk joined
suddenly with a harsh "Ha, ha, ha!"

Voices and footsteps were heard in the passage, and Jasper, with
old Nelson, came out.  Old Nelson looked at his daughter
approvingly, for he liked the lieutenant to be kept in good humour.
And he also joined sympathetically in the laugh.  "Now, lieutenant,
we shall have some dinner," he said, rubbing his hands cheerily.
Jasper had gone straight to the balustrade.  The sky was full of
stars, and in the blue velvety night the cove below had a denser
blackness, in which the riding-lights of the brig and of the
gunboat glimmered redly, like suspended sparks.  "Next time this
riding-light glimmers down there, I'll be waiting for her on the
quarter-deck to come and say 'Here I am,'" Jasper thought; and his
heart seemed to grow bigger in his chest, dilated by an oppressive
happiness that nearly wrung out a cry from him.  There was no wind.
Not a leaf below him stirred, and even the sea was but a still
uncomplaining shadow.  Far away on the unclouded sky the pale
lightning, the heat-lightning of the tropics, played tremulously
amongst the low stars in short, faint, mysteriously consecutive
flashes, like incomprehensible signals from some distant planet.

The dinner passed off quietly.  Freya sat facing her father, calm
but pale.  Heemskirk affected to talk only to old Nelson.  Jasper's
behaviour was exemplary.  He kept his eyes under control, basking
in the sense of Freya's nearness, as people bask in the sun without
looking up to heaven.  And very soon after dinner was over, mindful
of his instructions, he declared that it was time for him to go on
board his ship.

Heemskirk did not look up.  Ensconced in the rocking-chair, and
puffing at a cheroot, he had the air of meditating surlily over
some odious outbreak.  So at least it seemed to Freya.  Old Nelson
said at once:  "I'll stroll down with you."  He had begun a
professional conversation about the dangers of the New Guinea
coast, and wanted to relate to Jasper some experience of his own
"over there."  Jasper was such a good listener!  Freya made as if
to accompany them, but her father frowned, shook his head, and
nodded significantly towards the immovable Heemskirk blotting out
smoke with half-closed eyes and protruded lips.  The lieutenant
must not be left alone.  Take offence, perhaps.

Freya obeyed these signs.  "Perhaps it is better for me to stay,"
she thought.  Women are not generally prone to review their own
conduct, still less to condemn it.  The embarrassing masculine
absurdities are in the main responsible for its ethics.  But,
looking at Heemskirk, Freya felt regret and even remorse.  His
thick bulk in repose suggested the idea of repletion, but as a
matter of fact he had eaten very little.  He had drunk a great
deal, however.  The fleshy lobes of his unpleasant big ears with
deeply folded rims were crimson.  They quite flamed in the
neighbourhood of the flat, sallow cheeks.  For a considerable time
he did not raise his heavy brown eyelids.  To be at the mercy of
such a creature was humiliating; and Freya, who always ended by
being frank with herself, thought regretfully:  "If only I had been
open with papa from the first!  But then what an impossible life he
would have led me!"  Yes.  Men were absurd in many ways; lovably
like Jasper, impracticably like her father, odiously like that
grotesquely supine creature in the chair.  Was it possible to talk
him over?  Perhaps it was not necessary?  "Oh!  I can't talk to
him," she thought.  And when Heemskirk, still without looking at
her, began resolutely to crush his half-smoked cheroot on the
coffee-tray, she took alarm, glided towards the piano, opened it in
tremendous haste, and struck the keys before she sat down.

In an instant the verandah, the whole carpetless wooden bungalow
raised on piles, became filled with an uproarious, confused
resonance.  But through it all she heard, she felt on the floor the
heavy, prowling footsteps of the lieutenant moving to and fro at
her back.  He was not exactly drunk, but he was sufficiently primed
to make the suggestions of his excited imagination seem perfectly
feasible and even clever; beautifully, unscrupulously clever.
Freya, aware that he had stopped just behind her, went on playing
without turning her head.  She played with spirit, brilliantly, a
fierce piece of music, but when his voice reached her she went cold
all over.  It was the voice, not the words.  The insolent
familiarity of tone dismayed her to such an extent that she could
not understand at first what he was saying.  His utterance was
thick, too.

"I suspected. . . . Of course I suspected something of your little
goings on.  I am not a child.  But from suspecting to seeing--
seeing, you understand--there's an enormous difference.  That sort
of thing. . . . Come!  One isn't made of stone.  And when a man has
been worried by a girl as I have been worried by you, Miss Freya--
sleeping and waking, then, of course. . . . But I am a man of the
world.  It must be dull for you here . . . I say, won't you leave
off this confounded playing . . .?"

This last was the only sentence really which she made out.  She
shook her head negatively, and in desperation put on the loud
pedal, but she could not make the sound of the piano cover his
raised voice.

"Only, I am surprised that you should. . . . An English trading
skipper, a common fellow.  Low, cheeky lot, infesting these
islands.  I would make short work of such trash!  While you have
here a good friend, a gentleman ready to worship at your feet--your
pretty feet--an officer, a man of family.  Strange, isn't it?  But
what of that!  You are fit for a prince."

Freya did not turn her head.  Her face went stiff with horror and
indignation.  This adventure was altogether beyond her conception
of what was possible.  It was not in her character to jump up and
run away.  It seemed to her, too, that if she did move there was no
saying what might happen.  Presently her father would be back, and
then the other would have to leave off.  It was best to ignore--to
ignore.  She went on playing loudly and correctly, as though she
were alone, as if Heemskirk did not exist.  That proceeding
irritated him.

"Come!  You may deceive your father," he bawled angrily, "but I am
not to be made a fool of!  Stop this infernal noise . . . Freya . .
. Hey!  You Scandinavian Goddess of Love!  Stop!  Do you hear?
That's what you are--of love.  But the heathen gods are only devils
in disguise, and that's what you are, too--a deep little devil.
Stop it, I say, or I will lift you off that stool!"

Standing behind her, he devoured her with his eyes, from the golden
crown of her rigidly motionless head to the heels of her shoes, the
line of her shapely shoulders, the curves of her fine figure
swaying a little before the keyboard.  She had on a light dress;
the sleeves stopped short at the elbows in an edging of lace.  A
satin ribbon encircled her waist.  In an access of irresistible,
reckless hopefulness he clapped both his hands on that waist--and
then the irritating music stopped at last.  But, quick as she was
in springing away from the contact (the round music-stool going
over with a crash), Heemskirk's lips, aiming at her neck, landed a
hungry, smacking kiss just under her ear.  A deep silence reigned
for a time.  And then he laughed rather feebly.

He was disconcerted somewhat by her white, still face, the big
light violet eyes resting on him stonily.  She had not uttered a
sound.  She faced him, steadying herself on the corner of the piano
with one extended hand.  The other went on rubbing with mechanical
persistency the place his lips had touched.

"What's the trouble?" he said, offended.  "Startled you?  Look
here:  don't let us have any of that nonsense.  You don't mean to
say a kiss frightens you so much as all that. . . . I know better.
. . . I don't mean to be left out in the cold."

He had been gazing into her face with such strained intentness that
he could no longer see it distinctly.  Everything round him was
rather misty.  He forgot the overturned stool, caught his foot
against it, and lurched forward slightly, saying in an ingratiating
tone:

"I'm not bad fun, really.  You try a few kisses to begin with--"

He said no more, because his head received a terrific concussion,
accompanied by an explosive sound.  Freya had swung her round,
strong arm with such force that the impact of her open palm on his
flat cheek turned him half round.  Uttering a faint, hoarse yell,
the lieutenant clapped both his hands to the left side of his face,
which had taken on suddenly a dusky brick-red tinge.  Freya, very
erect, her violet eyes darkened, her palm still tingling from the
blow, a sort of restrained determined smile showing a tiny gleam of
her white teeth, heard her father's rapid, heavy tread on the path
below the verandah.  Her expression lost its pugnacity and became
sincerely concerned.  She was sorry for her father.  She stooped
quickly to pick up the music-stool, as if anxious to obliterate the
traces. . . . But that was no good.  She had resumed her attitude,
one hand resting lightly on the piano, before old Nelson got up to
the top of the stairs.

Poor father!  How furious he will be--how upset!  And afterwards,
what tremors, what unhappiness!  Why had she not been open with him
from the first?  His round, innocent stare of amazement cut her to
the quick.  But he was not looking at her.  His stare was directed
to Heemskirk, who, with his back to him and with his hands still up
to his face, was hissing curses through his teeth, and (she saw him
in profile) glaring at her balefully with one black, evil eye.

"What's the matter?" asked old Nelson, very much bewildered.

She did not answer him.  She thought of Jasper on the deck of the
brig, gazing up at the lighted bungalow, and she felt frightened.
It was a mercy that one of them at least was on board out of the
way.  She only wished he were a hundred miles off.  And yet she was
not certain that she did.  Had Jasper been mysteriously moved that
moment to reappear on the verandah she would have thrown her
consistency, her firmness, her self-possession, to the winds, and
flown into his arms.

"What is it?  What is it?" insisted the unsuspecting Nelson,
getting quite excited.  "Only this minute you were playing a tune,
and--"

Freya, unable to speak in her apprehension of what was coming (she
was also fascinated by that black, evil, glaring eye), only nodded
slightly at the lieutenant, as much as to say:  "Just look at him!"

"Why, yes!" exclaimed old Nelson.  "I see.  What on earth--"

Meantime he had cautiously approached Heemskirk, who, bursting into
incoherent imprecations, was stamping with both feet where he
stood.  The indignity of the blow, the rage of baffled purpose, the
ridicule of the exposure, and the impossibility of revenge maddened
him to a point when he simply felt he must howl with fury.

"Oh, oh, oh!" he howled, stamping across the verandah as though he
meant to drive his foot through the floor at every step.

"Why, is his face hurt?" asked the astounded old Nelson.  The truth
dawned suddenly upon his innocent mind.  "Dear me!" he cried,
enlightened.  "Get some brandy, quick, Freya. . . . You are subject
to it, lieutenant?  Fiendish, eh?  I know, I know!  Used to go
crazy all of a sudden myself in the time. . . . And the little
bottle of laudanum from the medicine-chest, too, Freya.  Look
sharp. . . . Don't you see he's got a toothache?"

And, indeed, what other explanation could have presented itself to
the guileless old Nelson, beholding this cheek nursed with both
hands, these wild glances, these stampings, this distracted swaying
of the body?  It would have demanded a preternatural acuteness to
hit upon the true cause.  Freya had not moved.  She watched
Heemskirk's savagely inquiring, black stare directed stealthily
upon herself.  "Aha, you would like to be let off!" she said to
herself.  She looked at him unflinchingly, thinking it out.  The
temptation of making an end of it all without further trouble was
irresistible.  She gave an almost imperceptible nod of assent, and
glided away.

"Hurry up that brandy!" old Nelson shouted, as she disappeared in
the passage.

Heemskirk relieved his deeper feelings by a sudden string of curses
in Dutch and English which he sent after her.  He raved to his
heart's content, flinging to and fro the verandah and kicking
chairs out of his way; while Nelson (or Nielsen), whose sympathy
was profoundly stirred by these evidences of agonising pain,
hovered round his dear (and dreaded) lieutenant, fussing like an
old hen.

"Dear me, dear me!  Is it so bad?  I know well what it is.  I used
to frighten my poor wife sometimes.  Do you get it often like this,
lieutenant?"

Heemskirk shouldered him viciously out of his way, with a short,
insane laugh.  But his staggering host took it in good part; a man
beside himself with excruciating toothache is not responsible.

"Go into my room, lieutenant," he suggested urgently.  "Throw
yourself on my bed.  We will get something to ease you in a
minute."

He seized the poor sufferer by the arm and forced him gently
onwards to the very bed, on which Heemskirk, in a renewed access of
rage, flung himself down with such force that he rebounded from the
mattress to the height of quite a foot.

"Dear me!" exclaimed the scared Nelson, and incontinently ran off
to hurry up the brandy and the laudanum, very angry that so little
alacrity was shown in relieving the tortures of his precious guest.
In the end he got these things himself.

Half an hour later he stood in the inner passage of the house,
surprised by faint, spasmodic sounds of a mysterious nature,
between laughter and sobs.  He frowned; then went straight towards
his daughter's room and knocked at the door.

Freya, her glorious fair hair framing her white face and rippling
down a dark-blue dressing-gown, opened it partly.

The light in the room was dim.  Antonia, crouching in a corner,
rocked herself backwards and forwards, uttering feeble moans.  Old
Nelson had not much experience in various kinds of feminine
laughter, but he was certain there had been laughter there.

"Very unfeeling, very unfeeling!" he said, with weighty
displeasure.  "What is there so amusing in a man being in pain?  I
should have thought a woman--a young girl--"

"He was so funny," murmured Freya, whose eyes glistened strangely
in the semi-obscurity of the passage.  "And then, you know, I don't
like him," she added, in an unsteady voice.

"Funny!" repeated old Nelson, amazed at this evidence of
callousness in one so young.  "You don't like him!  Do you mean to
say that, because you don't like him, you--Why, it's simply cruel!
Don't you know it's about the worst sort of pain there is?  Dogs
have been known to go mad with it."

"He certainly seemed to have gone mad," Freya said with an effort,
as if she were struggling with some hidden feeling.

But her father was launched.

"And you know how he is.  He notices everything.  He is a fellow to
take offence for the least little thing--regular Dutchman--and I
want to keep friendly with him.  It's like this, my girl:  if that
rajah of ours were to do something silly--and you know he is a
sulky, rebellious beggar--and the authorities took into their heads
that my influence over him wasn't good, you would find yourself
without a roof over your head--"

She cried:  "What nonsense, father!" in a not very assured tone,
and discovered that he was angry, angry enough to achieve irony;
yes, old Nelson (or Nielsen), irony!  Just a gleam of it.

"Oh, of course, if you have means of your own--a mansion, a
plantation that I know nothing of--"  But he was not capable of
sustained irony.  "I tell you they would bundle me out of here," he
whispered forcibly; "without compensation, of course.  I know these
Dutch.  And the lieutenant's just the fellow to start the trouble
going.  He has the ear of influential officials.  I wouldn't offend
him for anything--for anything--on no consideration whatever. . . .
What did you say?"

It was only an inarticulate exclamation.  If she ever had a half-
formed intention of telling him everything she had given it up now.
It was impossible, both out of regard for his dignity and for the
peace of his poor mind.

"I don't care for him myself very much," old Nelson's subdued
undertone confessed in a sigh.  "He's easier now," he went on,
after a silence.  "I've given him up my bed for the night.  I shall
sleep on my verandah, in the hammock.  No; I can't say I like him
either, but from that to laugh at a man because he's driven crazy
with pain is a long way.  You've surprised me, Freya.  That side of
his face is quite flushed."

Her shoulders shook convulsively under his hands, which he laid on
her paternally.  His straggly, wiry moustache brushed her forehead
in a good-night kiss.  She closed the door, and went away from it
to the middle of the room before she allowed herself a tired-out
sort of laugh, without buoyancy.

"Flushed!  A little flushed!" she repeated to herself.  "I hope so,
indeed!  A little--"

Her eyelashes were wet.  Antonia, in her corner, moaned and
giggled, and it was impossible to tell where the moans ended and
the giggles began.

The mistress and the maid had been somewhat hysterical, for Freya,
on fleeing into her room, had found Antonia there, and had told her
everything.

"I have avenged you, my girl," she exclaimed.

And then they had laughingly cried and cryingly laughed with
admonitions--"Ssh, not so loud!  Be quiet!" on one part, and
interludes of "I am so frightened. . . . He's an evil man," on the
other.

Antonia was very much afraid of Heemskirk.  She was afraid of him
because of his personal appearance:  because of his eyes and his
eyebrows, and his mouth and his nose and his limbs.  Nothing could
be more rational.  And she thought him an evil man, because, to her
eyes, he looked evil.  No ground for an opinion could be sounder.
In the dimness of the room, with only a nightlight burning at the
head of Freya's bed, the camerista crept out of her corner to
crouch at the feet of her mistress, supplicating in whispers:

"There's the brig.  Captain Allen.  Let us run away at once--oh,
let us run away!  I am so frightened.  Let us!  Let us!"

"I!  Run away!" thought Freya to herself, without looking down at
the scared girl.  "Never."

Both the resolute mistress under the mosquito-net and the
frightened maid lying curled up on a mat at the foot of the bed did
not sleep very well that night.  The person that did not sleep at
all was Lieutenant Heemskirk.  He lay on his back staring
vindictively in the darkness.  Inflaming images and humiliating
reflections succeeded each other in his mind, keeping up,
augmenting his anger.  A pretty tale this to get about!  But it
must not be allowed to get about.  The outrage had to be swallowed
in silence.  A pretty affair!  Fooled, led on, and struck by the
girl--and probably fooled by the father, too.  But no.  Nielsen was
but another victim of that shameless hussy, that brazen minx, that
sly, laughing, kissing, lying . . .

"No; he did not deceive me on purpose," thought the tormented
lieutenant.  "But I should like to pay him off, all the same, for
being such an imbecile--"

Well, some day, perhaps.  One thing he was firmly resolved on:  he
had made up his mind to steal early out of the house.  He did not
think he could face the girl without going out of his mind with
fury.

"Fire and perdition!  Ten thousand devils!  I shall choke here
before the morning!" he muttered to himself, lying rigid on his
back on old Nelson's bed, his breast heaving for air.

He arose at daylight and started cautiously to open the door.
Faint sounds in the passage alarmed him, and remaining concealed he
saw Freya coming out.  This unexpected sight deprived him of all
power to move away from the crack of the door.  It was the
narrowest crack possible, but commanding the view of the end of the
verandah.  Freya made for that end hastily to watch the brig
passing the point.  She wore her dark dressing-gown; her feet were
bare, because, having fallen asleep towards the morning, she ran
out headlong in her fear of being too late.  Heemskirk had never
seen her looking like this, with her hair drawn back smoothly to
the shape of her head, and hanging in one heavy, fair tress down
her back, and with that air of extreme youth, intensity, and
eagerness.  And at first he was amazed, and then he gnashed his
teeth.  He could not face her at all.  He muttered a curse, and
kept still behind the door.

With a low, deep-breathed "Ah!" when she first saw the brig already
under way, she reached for Nelson's long glass reposing on brackets
high up the wall.  The wide sleeve of the dressing-gown slipped
back, uncovering her white arm as far as the shoulder.  Heemskirk
gripping the door-handle, as if to crush it, felt like a man just
risen to his feet from a drinking bout.

And Freya knew that he was watching her.  She knew.  She had seen
the door move as she came out of the passage.  She was aware of his
eyes being on her, with scornful bitterness, with triumphant
contempt.

"You are there," she thought, levelling the long glass.  "Oh, well,
look on, then!"

The green islets appeared like black shadows, the ashen sea was
smooth as glass, the clear robe of the colourless dawn, in which
even the brig appeared shadowy, had a hem of light in the east.
Directly Freya had made out Jasper on deck, with his own long glass
directed to the bungalow, she laid hers down and raised both her
beautiful white arms above her head.  In that attitude of supreme
cry she stood still, glowing with the consciousness of Jasper's
adoration going out to her figure held in the field of his glass
away there, and warmed, too, by the feeling of evil passion, the
burning, covetous eyes of the other, fastened on her back.  In the
fervour of her love, in the caprice of her mind, and with that
mysterious knowledge of masculine nature women seem to be born to,
she thought:

"You are looking on--you will--you must!  Then you shall see
something."

She brought both her hands to her lips, then flung them out,
sending a kiss over the sea, as if she wanted to throw her heart
along with it on the deck of the brig.  Her face was rosy, her eyes
shone.  Her repeated, passionate gesture seemed to fling kisses by
the hundred again and again and again, while the slowly ascending
sun brought the glory of colour to the world, turning the islets
green, the sea blue, the brig below her white--dazzlingly white in
the spread of her wings--with the red ensign streaming like a tiny
flame from the peak.

And each time she murmured with a rising inflexion:

"Take this--and this--and this--" till suddenly her arms fell.  She
had seen the ensign dipped in response, and next moment the point
below hid the hull of the brig from her view.  Then she turned away
from the balustrade, and, passing slowly before the door of her
father's room with her eyelids lowered, and an enigmatic expression
on her face, she disappeared behind the curtain.

But instead of going along the passage, she remained concealed and
very still on the other side to watch what would happen.  For some
time the broad, furnished verandah remained empty.  Then the door
of old Nelson's room came open suddenly, and Heemskirk staggered
out.  His hair was rumpled, his eyes bloodshot, his unshaven face
looked very dark.  He gazed wildly about, saw his cap on a table,
snatched it up, and made for the stairs quietly, but with a
strange, tottering gait, like the last effort of waning strength.

Shortly after his head had sunk below the level of the floor, Freya
came out from behind the curtain, with compressed, scheming lips,
and no softness at all in her luminous eyes.  He could not be
allowed to sneak off scot free.  Never--never!  She was excited,
she tingled all over, she had tasted blood!  He must be made to
understand that she had been aware of having been watched; he must
know that he had been seen slinking off shamefully.  But to run to
the front rail and shout after him would have been childish, crude-
-undignified.  And to shout--what?  What word?  What phrase?  No;
it was impossible.  Then how? . . . She frowned, discovered it,
dashed at the piano, which had stood open all night, and made the
rosewood monster growl savagery in an irritated bass.  She struck
chords as if firing shots after that straddling, broad figure in
ample white trousers and a dark uniform jacket with gold shoulder-
straps, and then she pursued him with the same thing she had played
the evening before--a modern, fierce piece of love music which had
been tried more than once against the thunderstorms of the group.
She accentuated its rhythm with triumphant malice, so absorbed in
her purpose that she did not notice the presence of her father,
who, wearing an old threadbare ulster of a check pattern over his
sleeping suit, had run out from the back verandah to inquire the
reason of this untimely performance.  He stared at her.

"What on earth? . . . Freya!"  His voice was nearly drowned by the
piano.  "What's become of the lieutenant?" he shouted.

She looked up at him as if her soul were lost in her music, with
unseeing eyes.

"Gone."

"Wha-a-t? . . . Where?"

She shook her head slightly, and went on playing louder than
before.  Old Nelson's innocently anxious gaze starting from the
open door of his room, explored the whole place high and low, as if
the lieutenant were something small which might have been crawling
on the floor or clinging to a wall.  But a shrill whistle coming
somewhere from below pierced the ample volume of sound rolling out
of the piano in great, vibrating waves.  The lieutenant was down at
the cove, whistling for the boat to come and take him off to his
ship.  And he seemed to be in a terrific hurry, too, for he
whistled again almost directly, waited for a moment, and then sent
out a long, interminable, shrill call as distressful to hear as
though he had shrieked without drawing breath.  Freya ceased
playing suddenly.

"Going on board," said old Nelson, perturbed by the event.  "What
could have made him clear out so early?  Queer chap.  Devilishly
touchy, too!  I shouldn't wonder if it was your conduct last night
that hurt his feelings?  I noticed you, Freya.  You as well as
laughed in his face, while he was suffering agonies from neuralgia.
It isn't the way to get yourself liked.  He's offended with you."

Freya's hands now reposed passive on the keys; she bowed her fair
head, feeling a sudden discontent, a nervous lassitude, as though
she had passed through some exhausting crisis.  Old Nelson (or
Nielsen), looking aggrieved, was revolving matters of policy in his
bald head.

"I think it would be right for me to go on board just to inquire,
some time this morning," he declared fussily.  "Why don't they
bring me my morning tea?  Do you hear, Freya?  You have astonished
me, I must say.  I didn't think a young girl could be so unfeeling.
And the lieutenant thinks himself a friend of ours, too!  What?
No?  Well, he calls himself a friend, and that's something to a
person in my position.  Certainly!  Oh, yes, I must go on board."

"Must you?" murmured Freya listlessly; then added, in her thought:
"Poor man!"



CHAPTER V



In respect of the next seven weeks, all that is necessary to say
is, first, that old Nelson (or Nielsen) failed in paying his
politic call.  The Neptun gunboat of H.M. the King of the
Netherlands, commanded by an outraged and infuriated lieutenant,
left the cove at an unexpectedly early hour.  When Freya's father
came down to the shore, after seeing his precious crop of tobacco
spread out properly in the sun, she was already steaming round the
point.  Old Nelson regretted the circumstance for many days.

"Now, I don't know in what disposition the man went away," he
lamented to his hard daughter.  He was amazed at her hardness.  He
was almost frightened by her indifference.

Next, it must be recorded that the same day the gunboat Neptun,
steering east, passed the brig Bonito becalmed in sight of
Carimata, with her head to the eastward, too.  Her captain, Jasper
Allen, giving himself up consciously to a tender, possessive
reverie of his Freya, did not get out of his long chair on the poop
to look at the Neptun which passed so close that the smoke belching
out suddenly from her short black funnel rolled between the masts
of the Bonito, obscuring for a moment the sunlit whiteness of her
sails, consecrated to the service of love.  Jasper did not even
turn his head for a glance.  But Heemskirk, on the bridge, had
gazed long and earnestly at the brig from the distance, gripping
hard the brass rail in front of him, till, the two ships closing,
he lost all confidence in himself, and retreating to the chartroom,
pulled the door to with a crash.  There, his brows knitted, his
mouth drawn on one side in sardonic meditation, he sat through many
still hours--a sort of Prometheus in the bonds of unholy desire,
having his very vitals torn by the beak and claws of humiliated
passion.

That species of fowl is not to be shooed off as easily as a
chicken.  Fooled, cheated, deceived, led on, outraged, mocked at--
beak and claws!  A sinister bird!  The lieutenant had no mind to
become the talk of the Archipelago, as the naval officer who had
had his face slapped by a girl.  Was it possible that she really
loved that rascally trader?  He tried not to think, but, worse than
thoughts, definite impressions beset him in his retreat.  He saw
her--a vision plain, close to, detailed, plastic, coloured, lighted
up--he saw her hanging round the neck of that fellow.  And he shut
his eyes, only to discover that this was no remedy.  Then a piano
began to play near by, very plainly; and he put his fingers to his
ears with no better effect.  It was not to be borne--not in
solitude.  He bolted out of the chartroom, and talked of
indifferent things somewhat wildly with the officer of the watch on
the bridge, to the mocking accompaniment of a ghostly piano.

The last thing to be recorded is that Lieutenant Heemskirk instead
of pursuing his course towards Ternate, where he was expected, went
out of his way to call at Makassar, where no one was looking for
his arrival.  Once there, he gave certain explanations and laid a
certain proposal before the governor, or some other authority, and
obtained permission to do what he thought fit in these matters.
Thereupon the Neptun, giving up Ternate altogether, steamed north
in view of the mountainous coast of Celebes, and then crossing the
broad straits took up her station on the low coast of virgin
forests, inviolate and mute, in waters phosphorescent at night;
deep blue in daytime with gleaming green patches over the submerged
reefs.  For days the Neptun could be seen moving smoothly up and
down the sombre face of the shore, or hanging about with a watchful
air near the silvery breaks of broad estuaries, under the great
luminous sky never softened, never veiled, and flooding the earth
with the everlasting sunshine of the tropics--that sunshine which,
in its unbroken splendour, oppresses the soul with an inexpressible
melancholy more intimate, more penetrating, more profound than the
grey sadness of the northern mists.


The trading brig Bonito appeared gliding round a sombre forest-clad
point of land on the silvery estuary of a great river.  The breath
of air that gave her motion would not have fluttered the flame of a
torch.  She stole out into the open from behind a veil of
unstirring leaves, mysteriously silent, ghostly white, and solemnly
stealthy in her imperceptible progress; and Jasper, his elbow in
the main rigging, and his head leaning against his hand, thought of
Freya.  Everything in the world reminded him of her.  The beauty of
the loved woman exists in the beauties of Nature.  The swelling
outlines of the hills, the curves of a coast, the free sinuosities
of a river are less suave than the harmonious lines of her body,
and when she moves, gliding lightly, the grace of her progress
suggests the power of occult forces which rule the fascinating
aspects of the visible world.

Dependent on things as all men are, Jasper loved his vessel--the
house of his dreams.  He lent to her something of Freya's soul.
Her deck was the foothold of their love.  The possession of his
brig appeased his passion in a soothing certitude of happiness
already conquered.

The full moon was some way up, perfect and serene, floating in air
as calm and limpid as the glance of Freya's eyes.  There was not a
sound in the brig.

"Here she shall stand, by my side, on evenings like this," he
thought, with rapture.

And it was at that moment, in this peace, in this serenity, under
the full, benign gaze of the moon propitious to lovers, on a sea
without a wrinkle, under a sky without a cloud, as if all Nature
had assumed its most clement mood in a spirit of mockery, that the
gunboat Neptun, detaching herself from the dark coast under which
she had been lying invisible, steamed out to intercept the trading
brig Bonito standing out to sea.

Directly the gunboat had been made out emerging from her ambush,
Schultz, of the fascinating voice, had given signs of strange
agitation.  All that day, ever since leaving the Malay town up the
river, he had shown a haggard face, going about his duties like a
man with something weighing on his mind.  Jasper had noticed it,
but the mate, turning away, as though he had not liked being looked
at, had muttered shamefacedly of a headache and a touch of fever.
He must have had it very badly when, dodging behind his captain he
wondered aloud:  "What can that fellow want with us?" . . . A naked
man standing in a freezing blast and trying not to shiver could not
have spoken with a more harshly uncertain intonation.  But it might
have been fever--a cold fit.

"He wants to make himself disagreeable, simply," said Jasper, with
perfect good humour.  "He has tried it on me before.  However, we
shall soon see."

And, indeed, before long the two vessels lay abreast within easy
hail.  The brig, with her fine lines and her white sails, looked
vaporous and sylph-like in the moonlight.  The gunboat, short,
squat, with her stumpy dark spars naked like dead trees, raised
against the luminous sky of that resplendent night, threw a heavy
shadow on the lane of water between the two ships.

Freya haunted them both like an ubiquitous spirit, and as if she
were the only woman in the world.  Jasper remembered her earnest
recommendation to be guarded and cautious in all his acts and words
while he was away from her.  In this quite unforeseen encounter he
felt on his ear the very breath of these hurried admonitions
customary to the last moment of their partings, heard the half-
jesting final whisper of the "Mind, kid, I'd never forgive you!"
with a quick pressure on his arm, which he answered by a quiet,
confident smile.  Heemskirk was haunted in another fashion.  There
were no whispers in it; it was more like visions.  He saw that girl
hanging round the neck of a low vagabond--that vagabond, the
vagabond who had just answered his hail.  He saw her stealing bare-
footed across a verandah with great, clear, wide-open, eager eyes
to look at a brig--that brig.  If she had shrieked, scolded, called
names! . . . But she had simply triumphed over him.  That was all.
Led on (he firmly believed it), fooled, deceived, outraged, struck,
mocked at. . . . Beak and claws!  The two men, so differently
haunted by Freya of the Seven Isles, were not equally matched.

In the intense stillness, as of sleep, which had fallen upon the
two vessels, in a world that itself seemed but a delicate dream, a
boat pulled by Javanese sailors crossing the dark lane of water
came alongside the brig.  The white warrant officer in her, perhaps
the gunner, climbed aboard.  He was a short man, with a rotund
stomach and a wheezy voice.  His immovable fat face looked lifeless
in the moonlight, and he walked with his thick arms hanging away
from his body as though he had been stuffed.  His cunning little
eyes glittered like bits of mica.  He conveyed to Jasper, in broken
English, a request to come on board the Neptun.

Jasper had not expected anything so unusual.  But after a short
reflection he decided to show neither annoyance, nor even surprise.
The river from which he had come had been politically disturbed for
a couple of years, and he was aware that his visits there were
looked upon with some suspicion.  But he did not mind much the
displeasure of the authorities, so terrifying to old Nelson.  He
prepared to leave the brig, and Schultz followed him to the rail as
if to say something, but in the end stood by in silence.  Jasper
getting over the side, noticed his ghastly face.  The eyes of the
man who had found salvation in the brig from the effects of his
peculiar psychology looked at him with a dumb, beseeching
expression.

"What's the matter?" Jasper asked.

"I wonder how this will end?" said he of the beautiful voice, which
had even fascinated the steady Freya herself.  But where was its
charming timbre now?  These words had sounded like a raven's croak.

"You are ill," said Jasper positively.

"I wish I were dead!" was the startling statement uttered by
Schultz talking to himself in the extremity of some mysterious
trouble.  Jasper gave him a keen glance, but this was not the time
to investigate the morbid outbreak of a feverish man.  He did not
look as though he were actually delirious, and that for the moment
must suffice.  Schultz made a dart forward.

"That fellow means harm!" he said desperately.  "He means harm to
you, Captain Allen.  I feel it, and I--"

He choked with inexplicable emotion.

"All right, Schultz.  I won't give him an opening."  Jasper cut him
short and swung himself into the boat.

On board the Neptun Heemskirk, standing straddle-legs in the flood
of moonlight, his inky shadow falling right across the quarter-
deck, made no sign at his approach, but secretly he felt something
like the heave of the sea in his chest at the sight of that man.
Jasper waited before him in silence.

Brought face to face in direct personal contact, they fell at once
into the manner of their casual meetings in old Nelson's bungalow.
They ignored each other's existence--Heemskirk moodily; Jasper,
with a perfectly colourless quietness.

"What's going on in that river you've just come out of?" asked the
lieutenant straight away.

"I know nothing of the troubles, if you mean that," Jasper
answered.  "I've landed there half a cargo of rice, for which I got
nothing in exchange, and went away.  There's no trade there now,
but they would have been starving in another week--if I hadn't
turned up."

"Meddling!  English meddling!  And suppose the rascals don't
deserve anything better than to starve, eh?"

"There are women and children there, you know," observed Jasper, in
his even tone.

"Oh, yes!  When an Englishman talks of women and children, you may
be sure there's something fishy about the business.  Your doings
will have to be investigated."

They spoke in turn, as though they had been disembodied spirits--
mere voices in empty air; for they looked at each other as if there
had been nothing there, or, at most, with as much recognition as
one gives to an inanimate object, and no more.  But now a silence
fell.  Heemskirk had thought, all at once:  "She will tell him all
about it.  She will tell him while she hangs round his neck
laughing."  And the sudden desire to annihilate Jasper on the spot
almost deprived him of his senses by its vehemence.  He lost the
power of speech, of vision.  For a moment he absolutely couldn't
see Jasper.  But he heard him inquiring, as of the world at large:

"Am I, then, to conclude that the brig is detained?"

Heemskirk made a recovery in a flush of malignant satisfaction.

"She is.  I am going to take her to Makassar in tow."

"The courts will have to decide on the legality of this," said
Jasper, aware that the matter was becoming serious, but with
assumed indifference.

"Oh, yes, the courts!  Certainly.  And as to you, I shall keep you
on board here."

Jasper's dismay at being parted from his ship was betrayed by a
stony immobility.  It lasted but an instant.  Then he turned away
and hailed the brig.  Mr. Schultz answered:

"Yes, sir."

"Get ready to receive a tow-rope from the gunboat!  We are going to
be taken to Makassar."

"Good God!  What's that for, sir?" came an anxious cry faintly.

"Kindness, I suppose," Jasper, ironical, shouted with great
deliberation.  "We might have been--becalmed in here--for days.
And hospitality.  I am invited to stay--on board here."

The answer to this information was a loud ejaculation of distress.
Jasper thought anxiously:  "Why, the fellow's nerve's gone to
pieces;" and with an awkward uneasiness of a new sort, looked
intently at the brig.  The thought that he was parted from her--for
the first time since they came together--shook the apparently
careless fortitude of his character to its very foundations, which
were deep.  All that time neither Heemskirk nor even his inky
shadow had stirred in the least.

"I am going to send a boat's crew and an officer on board your
vessel," he announced to no one in particular.  Jasper, tearing
himself away from the absorbed contemplation of the brig, turned
round, and, without passion, almost without expression in his
voice, entered his protest against the whole of the proceedings.
What he was thinking of was the delay.  He counted the days.
Makassar was actually on his way; and to be towed there really
saved time.  On the other hand, there would be some vexing
formalities to go through.  But the thing was too absurd.  "The
beetle's gone mad," he thought.  "I'll be released at once.  And if
not, Mesman must enter into a bond for me."  Mesman was a Dutch
merchant with whom Jasper had had many dealings, a considerable
person in Makassar.

"You protest?  H'm!" Heemskirk muttered, and for a little longer
remained motionless, his legs planted well apart, and his head
lowered as though he were studying his own comical, deeply-split
shadow.  Then he made a sign to the rotund gunner, who had kept at
hand, motionless, like a vilely-stuffed specimen of a fat man, with
a lifeless face and glittering little eyes.  The fellow approached,
and stood at attention.

"You will board the brig with a boat's crew!"

"Ya, mynherr!"

"You will have one of your men to steer her all the time," went on
Heemskirk, giving his orders in English, apparently for Jasper's
edification.  "You hear?"

"Ya, mynherr."

"You will remain on deck and in charge all the time."

"Ya, mynherr."

Jasper felt as if, together with the command of the brig, his very
heart were being taken out of his breast.  Heemskirk asked, with a
change of tone:

"What weapons have you on board?"

At one time all the ships trading in the China Seas had a licence
to carry a certain quantity of firearms for purposes of defence.
Jasper answered:

"Eighteen rifles with their bayonets, which were on board when I
bought her, four years ago.  They have been declared."

"Where are they kept?"

"Fore-cabin.  Mate has the key."

"You will take possession of them," said Heemskirk to the gunner.

"Ya, mynherr."

"What is this for?  What do you mean to imply?" cried out Jasper;
then bit his lip.  "It's monstrous!" he muttered.

Heemskirk raised for a moment a heavy, as if suffering, glance.

"You may go," he said to his gunner.  The fat man saluted, and
departed.

During the next thirty hours the steady towing was interrupted
once.  At a signal from the brig, made by waving a flag on the
forecastle, the gunboat was stopped.  The badly-stuffed specimen of
a warrant-officer, getting into his boat, arrived on board the
Neptun and hurried straight into his commander's cabin, his
excitement at something he had to communicate being betrayed by the
blinking of his small eyes.  These two were closeted together for
some time, while Jasper at the taffrail tried to make out if
anything out of the common had occurred on board the brig.

But nothing seemed to be amiss on board.  However, he kept a look-
out for the gunner; and, though he had avoided speaking to anybody
since he had finished with Heemskirk, he stopped that man when he
came out on deck again to ask how his mate was.

"He was feeling not very well when I left," he explained.

The fat warrant-officer, holding himself as though the effort of
carrying his big stomach in front of him demanded a rigid carriage,
understood with difficulty.  Not a single one of his features
showed the slightest animation, but his little eyes blinked rapidly
at last.

"Oh, ya!  The mate.  Ya, ya!  He is very well.  But, mein Gott, he
is one very funny man!"

Jasper could get no explanation of that remark, because the
Dutchman got into the boat hurriedly, and went back on board the
brig.  But he consoled himself with the thought that very soon all
this unpleasant and rather absurd experience would be over.  The
roadstead of Makassar was in sight already.  Heemskirk passed by
him going on the bridge.  For the first time the lieutenant looked
at Jasper with marked intention; and the strange roll of his eyes
was so funny--it had been long agreed by Jasper and Freya that the
lieutenant was funny--so ecstatically gratified, as though he were
rolling a tasty morsel on his tongue, that Jasper could not help a
broad smile.  And then he turned to his brig again.

To see her, his cherished possession, animated by something of his
Freya's soul, the only foothold of two lives on the wide earth, the
security of his passion, the companion of adventure, the power to
snatch the calm, adorable Freya to his breast, and carry her off to
the end of the world; to see this beautiful thing embodying
worthily his pride and his love, to see her captive at the end of a
tow-rope was not indeed a pleasant experience.  It had something
nightmarish in it, as, for instance, the dream of a wild sea-bird
loaded with chains.

Yet what else could he want to look at?  Her beauty would sometimes
come to his heart with the force of a spell, so that he would
forget where he was.  And, besides, that sense of superiority which
the certitude of being loved gives to a young man, that illusion of
being set above the Fates by a tender look in a woman's eyes,
helped him, the first shock over, to go through these experiences
with an amused self-confidence.  For what evil could touch the
elect of Freya?

It was now afternoon, the sun being behind the two vessels as they
headed for the harbour.  "The beetle's little joke shall soon be
over," thought Jasper, without any great animosity.  As a seaman
well acquainted with that part of the world, a casual glance was
enough to tell him what was being done.  "Hallo," he thought, "he
is going through Spermonde Passage.  We shall be rounding Tamissa
reef presently."  And again he returned to the contemplation of his
brig, that main-stay of his material and emotional existence which
would be soon in his hands again.  On a sea, calm like a millpond,
a heavy smooth ripple undulated and streamed away from her bows,
for the powerful Neptun was towing at great speed, as if for a
wager.  The Dutch gunner appeared on the forecastle of the Bonito,
and with him a couple of men.  They stood looking at the coast, and
Jasper lost himself in a loverlike trance.

The deep-toned blast of the gunboat's steam-whistle made him
shudder by its unexpectedness.  Slowly he looked about.  Swift as
lightning he leaped from where he stood, bounding forward along the
deck.

"You will be on Tamissa reef!" he yelled.

High up on the bridge Heemskirk looked back over his shoulder
heavily; two seamen were spinning the wheel round, and the Neptun
was already swinging rapidly away from the edge of the pale water
over the danger.  Ha! just in time.  Jasper turned about instantly
to watch his brig; and, even before he realised that--in obedience,
it appears, to Heemskirk's orders given beforehand to the gunner--
the tow-rope had been let go at the blast of the whistle, before he
had time to cry out or to move a limb, he saw her cast adrift and
shooting across the gunboat's stern with the impetus of her speed.
He followed her fine, gliding form with eyes growing big with
incredulity, wild with horror.  The cries on board of her came to
him only as a dreadful and confused murmur through the loud
thumping of blood in his ears, while she held on.  She ran upright
in a terrible display of her gift of speed, with an incomparable
air of life and grace.  She ran on till the smooth level of water
in front of her bows seemed to sink down suddenly as if sucked
away; and, with a strange, violent tremor of her mast-heads she
stopped, inclined her lofty spars a little, and lay still.  She lay
still on the reef, while the Neptun, fetching a wide circle,
continued at full speed up Spermonde Passage, heading for the town.
She lay still, perfectly still, with something ill-omened and
unnatural in her attitude.  In an instant the subtle melancholy of
things touched by decay had fallen on her in the sunshine; she was
but a speck in the brilliant emptiness of space, already lonely,
already desolate.

"Hold him!" yelled a voice from the bridge.

Jasper had started to run to his brig with a headlong impulse, as a
man dashes forward to pull away with his hands a living, breathing,
loved creature from the brink of destruction.  "Hold him!  Stick to
him!" vociferated the lieutenant at the top of the bridge-ladder,
while Jasper struggled madly without a word, only his head emerging
from the heaving crowd of the Neptun's seamen, who had flung
themselves upon him obediently.  "Hold--I would not have that
fellow drown himself for anything now!"

Jasper ceased struggling.

One by one they let go of him; they fell back gradually farther and
farther, in attentive silence, leaving him standing unsupported in
a widened, clear space, as if to give him plenty of room to fall
after the struggle.  He did not even sway perceptibly.  Half an
hour later, when the Neptun anchored in front of the town, he had
not stirred yet, had moved neither head nor limb as much as a
hair's breadth.  Directly the rumble of the gunboat's cable had
ceased, Heemskirk came down heavily from the bridge.

"Call a sampan" he said, in a gloomy tone, as he passed the sentry
at the gangway, and then moved on slowly towards the spot where
Jasper, the object of many awed glances, stood looking at the deck,
as if lost in a brown study.  Heemskirk came up close, and stared
at him thoughtfully, with his fingers over his lips.  Here he was,
the favoured vagabond, the only man to whom that infernal girl was
likely to tell the story.  But he would not find it funny.  The
story how Lieutenant Heemskirk--No, he would not laugh at it.  He
looked as though he would never laugh at anything in his life.

Suddenly Jasper looked up.  His eyes, without any other expression
but bewilderment, met those of Heemskirk, observant and sombre.

"Gone on the reef!" he said, in a low, astounded tone.  "On-the-
reef!" he repeated still lower, and as if attending inwardly to the
birth of some awful and amazing sensation.

"On the very top of high-water, spring tides," Heemskirk struck in,
with a vindictive, exulting violence which flashed and expired.  He
paused, as if weary, fixing upon Jasper his arrogant eyes, over
which secret disenchantment, the unavoidable shadow of all passion,
seemed to pass like a saddening cloud.  "On the very top," he
repeated, rousing himself in fierce reaction to snatch his laced
cap off his head with a horizontal, derisive flourish towards the
gangway.  "And now you may go ashore to the courts, you damned
Englishman!" he said.



CHAPTER VI



The affair of the brig Bonito was bound to cause a sensation in
Makassar, the prettiest, and perhaps the cleanest-looking of all
the towns in the Islands; which however knows few occasions for
excitement.  The "front," with its special population, was soon
aware that something had happened.  A steamer towing a sailing
vessel had been observed far out to sea for some time, and when the
steamer came in alone, leaving the other outside, attention was
aroused.  Why was that?  Her masts only could be seen--with furled
sails--remaining in the same place to the southward.  And soon the
rumour ran all along the crowded seashore street that there was a
ship on Tamissa reef.  That crowd interpreted the appearance
correctly.  Its cause was beyond their penetration, for who could
associate a girl nine hundred miles away with the stranding of a
ship on Tamissa reef, or look for the remote filiation of that
event in the psychology of at least three people, even if one of
them, Lieutenant Heemskirk, was at that very moment passing amongst
them on his way to make his verbal report?

No; the minds on the "front" were not competent for that sort of
investigation, but many hands there--brown hands, yellow hands,
white hands--were raised to shade the eyes gazing out to sea.  The
rumour spread quickly.  Chinese shopkeepers came to their doors,
more than one white merchant, even, rose from his desk to go to the
window.  After all, a ship on Tamissa was not an everyday
occurrence.  And presently the rumour took a more definite shape.
An English trader--detained on suspicion at sea by the Neptun--
Heemskirk was towing him in to test a case, and by some strange
accident--

Later on the name came out.  "The Bonito--what!  Impossible!  Yes--
yes, the Bonito.  Look!  You can see from here; only two masts.
It's a brig.  Didn't think that man would ever let himself be
caught.  Heemskirk's pretty smart, too.  They say she's fitted out
in her cabin like a gentleman's yacht.  That Allen is a sort of
gentleman too.  An extravagant beggar."

A young man entered smartly Messrs. Mesman Brothers' office on the
"front," bubbling with some further information.

"Oh, yes; that's the Bonito for certain!  But you don't know the
story I've heard just now.  The fellow must have been feeding that
river with firearms for the last year or two.  Well, it seems he
has grown so reckless from long impunity that he has actually dared
to sell the very ship's rifles this time.  It's a fact.  The rifles
are not on board.  What impudence!  Only, he didn't know that there
was one of our warships on the coast.  But those Englishmen are so
impudent that perhaps he thought that nothing would be done to him
for it.  Our courts do let off these fellows too often, on some
miserable excuse or other.  But, at any rate, there's an end of the
famous Bonito.  I have just heard in the harbour-office that she
must have gone on at the very top of high-water; and she is in
ballast, too.  No human power, they think, can move her from where
she is.  I only hope it is so.  It would be fine to have the
notorious Bonito stuck up there as a warning to others."

Mr. J. Mesman, a colonial-born Dutchman, a kind, paternal old
fellow, with a clean-shaven, quiet, handsome fade, and a head of
fine iron-grey hair curling a little on his collar, did not say a
word in defence of Jasper and the Bonito.  He rose from his arm-
chair suddenly.  His face was visibly troubled.  It had so happened
that once, from a business talk of ways and means, island trade,
money matters, and so on, Jasper had been led to open himself to
him on the subject of Freya; and the excellent man, who had known
old Nelson years before and even remembered something of Freya, was
much astonished and amused by the unfolding of the tale.

"Well, well, well!  Nelson!  Yes; of course.  A very honest sort of
man.  And a little child with very fair hair.  Oh, yes!  I have a
distinct recollection.  And so she has grown into such a fine girl,
so very determined, so very--"  And he laughed almost boisterously.
"Mind, when you have happily eloped with your future wife, Captain
Allen, you must come along this way, and we shall welcome her here.
A little fair-headed child!  I remember.  I remember."

It was that knowledge which had brought trouble to his face at the
first news of the wreck.  He took up his hat.

"Where are you going, Mr. Mesman?"

"I am going to look for Allen.  I think he must be ashore.  Does
anybody know?"

No one of those present knew.  And Mr. Mesman went out on the
"front" to make inquiries.

The other part of the town, the part near the church and the fort,
got its information in another way.  The first thing disclosed to
it was Jasper himself, walking rapidly, as though he were pursued.
And, as a matter of fact, a Chinaman, obviously a sampan man, was
following him at the same headlong pace.  Suddenly, while passing
Orange House, Jasper swerved and went in, or, rather, rushed in,
startling Gomez, the hotel clerk, very much.  But a Chinaman
beginning to make an unseemly noise at the door claimed the
immediate attention of Gomez.  His grievance was that the white man
whom he had brought on shore from the gunboat had not paid him his
boat-fare.  He had pursued him so far, asking for it all the way.
But the white man had taken no notice whatever of his just claim.
Gomez satisfied the coolie with a few coppers, and then went to
look for Jasper, whom he knew very well.  He found him standing
stiffly by a little round table.  At the other end of the verandah
a few men sitting there had stopped talking, and were looking at
him in silence.  Two billiard-players, with cues in their hands,
had come to the door of the billiard-room and stared, too.

On Gomez coming up to him, Jasper raised one hand to point at his
own throat.  Gomez noted the somewhat soiled state of his white
clothes, then took one look at his face, and fled away to order the
drink for which Jasper seemed to be asking.

Where he wanted to go--or what purpose--where he, perhaps, only
imagined himself to be going, when a sudden impulse or the sight of
a familiar place had made him turn into Orange House--it is
impossible to say.  He was steadying himself lightly with the tips
of his fingers on the little table.  There were on that verandah
two men whom he knew well personally, but his gaze roaming
incessantly as though he were looking for a way of escape, passed
and repassed over them without a sign of recognition.  They, on
their side, looking at him, doubted the evidence of their own eyes.
It was not that his face was distorted.  On the contrary, it was
still, it was set.  But its expression, somehow, was
unrecognisable.  Can that be him? they wondered with awe.

In his head there was a wild chaos of clear thoughts.  Perfectly
clear.  It was this clearness which was so terrible in conjunction
with the utter inability to lay hold of any single one of them all.
He was saying to himself, or to them:  "Steady, steady."  A China
boy appeared before him with a glass on a tray.  He poured the
drink down his throat, and rushed out.  His disappearance removed
the spell of wonder from the beholders.  One of the men jumped up
and moved quickly to that side of the verandah from which almost
the whole of the roadstead could be seen.  At the very moment when
Jasper, issuing from the door of the Orange House, was passing
under him in the street below, he cried to the others excitedly:

"That was Allen right enough!  But where is his brig?"

Jasper heard these words with extraordinary loudness.  The heavens
rang with them, as if calling him to account; for those were the
very words Freya would have to use.  It was an annihilating
question; it struck his consciousness like a thunderbolt and
brought a sudden night upon the chaos of his thoughts even as he
walked.  He did not check his pace.  He went on in the darkness for
another three strides, and then fell.

The good Mesman had to push on as far as the hospital before he
found him.  The doctor there talked of a slight heatstroke.
Nothing very much.  Out in three days. . . . It must be admitted
that the doctor was right.  In three days, Jasper Allen came out of
the hospital and became visible to the town--very visible indeed--
and remained so for quite a long time; long enough to become almost
one of the sights of the place; long enough to become disregarded
at last; long enough for the tale of his haunting visibility to be
remembered in the islands to this day.

The talk on the "front" and Jasper's appearance in the Orange House
stand at the beginning of the famous Bonito case, and give a view
of its two aspects--the practical and the psychological.  The case
for the courts and the case for compassion; that last terribly
evident and yet obscure.

It has, you must understand, remained obscure even for that friend
of mine who wrote me the letter mentioned in the very first lines
of this narrative.  He was one of those in Mr. Mesman's office, and
accompanied that gentleman in his search for Jasper.  His letter
described to me the two aspects and some of the episodes of the
case.  Heemskirk's attitude was that of deep thankfulness for not
having lost his own ship, and that was all.  Haze over the land was
his explanation of having got so close to Tamissa reef.  He saved
his ship, and for the rest he did not care.  As to the fat gunner,
he deposed simply that he thought at the time that he was acting
for the best by letting go the tow-rope, but admitted that he was
greatly confused by the suddenness of the emergency.

As a matter of fact, he had acted on very precise instructions from
Heemskirk, to whom through several years' service together in the
East he had become a sort of devoted henchman.  What was most
amazing in the detention of the Bonito was his story how,
proceeding to take possession of the firearms as ordered, he
discovered that there were no firearms on board.  All he found in
the fore-cabin was an empty rack for the proper number of eighteen
rifles, but of the rifles themselves never a single one anywhere in
the ship.  The mate of the brig, who looked rather ill and behaved
excitedly, as though he were perhaps a lunatic, wanted him to
believe that Captain Allen knew nothing of this; that it was he,
the mate, who had recently sold these rifles in the dead of night
to a certain person up the river.  In proof of this story he
produced a bag of silver dollars and pressed it on his, the
gunner's, acceptance.  Then, suddenly flinging it down on the deck,
he beat his own head with both his fists and started heaping
shocking curses upon his own soul for an ungrateful wretch not fit
to live.

All this the gunner reported at once to his commanding officer.

What Heemskirk intended by taking upon himself to detain the Bonito
it is difficult to say, except that he meant to bring some trouble
into the life of the man favoured by Freya.  He had been looking at
Jasper with a desire to strike that man of kisses and embraces to
the earth.  The question was:  How could he do it without giving
himself away?  But the report of the gunner created a serious case
enough.  Yet Allen had friends--and who could tell whether he
wouldn't somehow succeed in wriggling out of it?  The idea of
simply towing the brig so much compromised on to the reef came to
him while he was listening to the fat gunner in his cabin.  There
was but little risk of being disapproved now.  And it should be
made to appear an accident.

Going out on deck he had gloated upon his unconscious victim with
such a sinister roll of his eyes, such a queerly pursed mouth, that
Jasper could not help smiling.  And the lieutenant had gone on the
bridge, saying to himself:

"You wait!  I shall spoil the taste of those sweet kisses for you.
When you hear of Lieutenant Heemskirk in the future that name won't
bring a smile on your lips, I swear.  You are delivered into my
hands."

And this possibility had come about without any planning, one could
almost say naturally, as if events had mysteriously shaped
themselves to fit the purposes of a dark passion.  The most astute
scheming could not have served Heemskirk better.  It was given to
him to taste a transcendental, an incredible perfection of
vengeance; to strike a deadly blow into that hated person's heart,
and to watch him afterwards walking about with the dagger in his
breast.

For that is what the state of Jasper amounted to.  He moved, acted,
weary-eyed, keen-faced, lank and restless, with brusque movements
and fierce gestures; he talked incessantly in a frenzied and
fatigued voice, but within himself he knew that nothing would ever
give him back the brig, just as nothing can heal a pierced heart.
His soul, kept quiet in the stress of love by the unflinching
Freya's influence, was like a still but overwound string.  The
shock had started it vibrating, and the string had snapped.  He had
waited for two years in a perfectly intoxicated confidence for a
day that now would never come to a man disarmed for life by the
loss of the brig, and, it seemed to him, made unfit for love to
which he had no foothold to offer.

Day after day he would traverse the length of the town, follow the
coast, and, reaching the point of land opposite that part of the
reef on which his brig lay stranded, look steadily across the water
at her beloved form, once the home of an exulting hope, and now, in
her inclined, desolated immobility, towering above the lonely sea-
horizon, a symbol of despair.

The crew had left her in due course in her own boats which directly
they reached the town were sequestrated by the harbour authorities.
The vessel, too, was sequestrated pending proceedings; but these
same authorities did not take the trouble to set a guard on board.
For, indeed, what could move her from there?  Nothing, unless a
miracle; nothing, unless Jasper's eyes, fastened on her tensely for
hours together, as though he hoped by the mere power of vision to
draw her to his breast.

All this story, read in my friend's very chatty letter, dismayed me
not a little.  But it was really appalling to read his relation of
how Schultz, the mate, went about everywhere affirming with
desperate pertinacity that it was he alone who had sold the rifles.
"I stole them," he protested.  Of course, no one would believe him.
My friend himself did not believe him, though he, of course,
admired this self-sacrifice.  But a good many people thought it was
going too far to make oneself out a thief for the sake of a friend.
Only, it was such an obvious lie, too, that it did not matter,
perhaps.

I, who, in view of Schultz's psychology, knew how true that must
be, admit that I was appalled.  So this was how a perfidious
destiny took advantage of a generous impulse!  And I felt as though
I were an accomplice in this perfidy, since I did to a certain
extent encourage Jasper.  Yet I had warned him as well.

"The man seemed to have gone crazy on this point," wrote my friend.
"He went to Mesman with his story.  He says that some rascally
white man living amongst the natives up that river made him drunk
with some gin one evening, and then jeered at him for never having
any money.  Then he, protesting to us that he was an honest man and
must be believed, described himself as being a thief whenever he
took a drop too much, and told us that he went on board and passed
the rifles one by one without the slightest compunction to a canoe
which came alongside that night, receiving ten dollars apiece for
them.

"Next day he was ill with shame and grief, but had not the courage
to confess his lapse to his benefactor.  When the gunboat stopped
the brig he felt ready to die with the apprehension of the
consequences, and would have died happily, if he could have been
able to bring the rifles back by the sacrifice of his life.  He
said nothing to Jasper, hoping that the brig would be released
presently.  When it turned out otherwise and his captain was
detained on board the gunboat, he was ready to commit suicide from
despair; only he thought it his duty to live in order to let the
truth be known.  'I am an honest man!  I am an honest man!' he
repeated, in a voice that brought tears to our eyes.  'You must
believe me when I tell you that I am a thief--a vile, low, cunning,
sneaking thief as soon as I've had a glass or two.  Take me
somewhere where I may tell the truth on oath.'

"When we had at last convinced him that his story could be of no
use to Jasper--for what Dutch court, having once got hold of an
English trader, would accept such an explanation; and, indeed, how,
when, where could one hope to find proofs of such a tale?--he made
as if to tear his hair in handfuls, but, calming down, said:
'Good-bye, then, gentlemen,' and went out of the room so crushed
that he seemed hardly able to put one foot before the other.  That
very night he committed suicide by cutting his throat in the house
of a half-caste with whom he had been lodging since he came ashore
from the wreck."

That throat, I thought with a shudder, which could produce the
tender, persuasive, manly, but fascinating voice which had aroused
Jasper's ready compassion and had secured Freya's sympathy!  Who
could ever have supposed such an end in store for the impossible,
gentle Schultz, with his idiosyncrasy of naive pilfering, so
absurdly straightforward that, even in the people who had suffered
from it, it aroused nothing more than a sort of amused
exasperation?  He was really impossible.  His lot evidently should
have been a half-starved, mysterious, but by no means tragic
existence as a mild-eyed, inoffensive beachcomber on the fringe of
native life.  There are occasions when the irony of fate, which
some people profess to discover in the working out of our lives,
wears the aspect of crude and savage jesting.

I shook my head over the manes of Schultz, and went on with my
friend's letter.  It told me how the brig on the reef, looted by
the natives from the coast villages, acquired gradually the
lamentable aspect, the grey ghastliness of a wreck; while Jasper,
fading daily into a mere shadow of a man, strode brusquely all
along the "front" with horribly lively eyes and a faint, fixed
smile on his lips, to spend the day on a lonely spit of sand
looking eagerly at her, as though he had expected some shape on
board to rise up and make some sort of sign to him over the
decaying bulwarks.  The Mesmans were taking care of him as far as
it was possible.  The Bonito case had been referred to Batavia,
where no doubt it would fade away in a fog of official papers. . .
. It was heartrending to read all this.  That active and zealous
officer, Lieutenant Heemskirk, his air of sullen, darkly-pained
self-importance not lightened by the approval of his action
conveyed to him unofficially, had gone on to take up his station in
the Moluccas. . . .

Then, at the end of the bulky, kindly-meant epistle, dealing with
the island news of half a year at least, my friend wrote:  "A
couple of months ago old Nelson turned up here, arriving by the
mail-boat from Java.  Came to see Mesman, it seems.  A rather
mysterious visit, and extraordinarily short, after coming all that
way.  He stayed just four days at the Orange House, with apparently
nothing in particular to do, and then caught the south-going
steamer for the Straits.  I remember people saying at one time that
Allen was rather sweet on old Nelson's daughter, the girl that was
brought up by Mrs. Harley and then went to live with him at the
Seven Isles group.  Surely you remember old Nelson--"

Remember old Nelson!  Rather!

The letter went on to inform me further that old Nelson, at least,
remembered me, since some time after his flying visit to Makassar
he had written to the Mesmans asking for my address in London.

That old Nelson (or Nielsen), the note of whose personality was a
profound, echoless irresponsiveness to everything around him,
should wish to write, or find anything to write about to anybody,
was in itself a cause for no small wonder.  And to me, of all
people!  I waited with uneasy impatience for whatever disclosure
could come from that naturally benighted intelligence, but my
impatience had time to wear out before my eyes beheld old Nelson's
trembling, painfully-formed handwriting, senile and childish at the
same time, on an envelope bearing a penny stamp and the postal mark
of the Notting Hill office.  I delayed opening it in order to pay
the tribute of astonishment due to the event by flinging my hands
above my head.  So he had come home to England, to be definitely
Nelson; or else was on his way home to Denmark, where he would
revert for ever to his original Nielsen!  But old Nelson (or
Nielsen) out of the tropics seemed unthinkable.  And yet he was
there, asking me to call.

His address was at a boarding-house in one of those Bayswater
squares, once of leisure, which nowadays are reduced to earning
their living.  Somebody had recommended him there.  I started to
call on him on one of those January days in London, one of those
wintry days composed of the four devilish elements, cold, wet, mud,
and grime, combined with a particular stickiness of atmosphere that
clings like an unclean garment to one's very soul.  Yet on
approaching his abode I saw, like a flicker far behind the soiled
veil of the four elements, the wearisome and splendid glitter of a
blue sea with the Seven Islets like minute specks swimming in my
eye, the high red roof of the bungalow crowning the very smallest
of them all.  This visual reminiscence was profoundly disturbing.
I knocked at the door with a faltering hand.

Old Nelson (or Nielsen) got up from the table at which he was
sitting with a shabby pocket-book full of papers before him.  He
took off his spectacles before shaking hands.  For a moment neither
of us said a word; then, noticing me looking round somewhat
expectantly, he murmured some words, of which I caught only
"daughter" and "Hong Kong," cast his eyes down, and sighed.

His moustache, sticking all ways out, as of yore, was quite white
now.  His old cheeks were softly rounded, with some colour in them;
strangely enough, that something childlike always noticeable in the
general contour of his physiognomy had become much more marked.
Like his handwriting, he looked childish and senile.  He showed his
age most in his unintelligently furrowed, anxious forehead and in
his round, innocent eyes, which appeared to me weak and blinking
and watery; or was it that they were full of tears? . . .

To discover old Nelson fully informed upon any matter whatever was
a new experience.  And after the first awkwardness had worn off he
talked freely, with, now and then, a question to start him going
whenever he lapsed into silence, which he would do suddenly,
clasping his hands on his waistcoat in an attitude which would
recall to me the east verandah, where he used to sit talking
quietly and puffing out his cheeks in what seemed now old, very old
days.  He talked in a reasonable somewhat anxious tone.

"No, no.  We did not know anything for weeks.  Out of the way like
that, we couldn't, of course.  No mail service to the Seven Isles.
But one day I ran over to Banka in my big sailing-boat to see
whether there were any letters, and saw a Dutch paper.  But it
looked only like a bit of marine news:  English brig Bonito gone
ashore outside Makassar roads.  That was all.  I took the paper
home with me and showed it to her.  'I will never forgive him!' she
cries with her old spirit.  'My dear,' I said, 'you are a sensible
girl.  The best man may lose a ship.  But what about your health?'
I was beginning to be frightened at her looks.  She would not let
me talk even of going to Singapore before.  But, really, such a
sensible girl couldn't keep on objecting for ever.  'Do what you
like, papa,' she says.  Rather a job, that.  Had to catch a steamer
at sea, but I got her over all right.  There, doctors, of course.
Fever.  Anaemia.  Put her to bed.  Two or three women very kind to
her.  Naturally in our papers the whole story came out before long.
She reads it to the end, lying on the couch; then hands the
newspaper back to me, whispers 'Heemskirk,' and goes off into a
faint."

He blinked at me for quite a long time, his eyes running full of
tears again.

"Next day," he began, without any emotion in his voice, "she felt
stronger, and we had a long talk.  She told me everything."

Here old Nelson, with his eyes cast down, gave me the whole story
of the Heemskirk episode in Freya's words; then went on in his
rather jerky utterance, and looking up innocently:

"'My dear,' I said, 'you have behaved in the main like a sensible
girl.'  'I have been horrid,' she cries, 'and he is breaking his
heart over there.'  Well, she was too sensible not to see she
wasn't in a state to travel.  But I went.  She told me to go.  She
was being looked after very well.  Anaemia.  Getting better, they
said."

He paused.

"You did see him?" I murmured.

"Oh, yes; I did see him," he started again, talking in that
reasonable voice as though he were arguing a point.  "I did see
him.  I came upon him.  Eyes sunk an inch into his head; nothing
but skin on the bones of his face, a skeleton in dirty white
clothes.  That's what he looked like.  How Freya . . . But she
never did--not really.  He was sitting there, the only live thing
for miles along that coast, on a drift-log washed up on the shore.
They had clipped his hair in the hospital, and it had not grown
again.  He stared, holding his chin in his hand, and with nothing
on the sea between him and the sky but that wreck.  When I came up
to him he just moved his head a bit.  'Is that you, old man?' says
he--like that.

"If you had seen him you would have understood at once how
impossible it was for Freya to have ever loved that man.  Well,
well.  I don't say.  She might have--something.  She was lonely,
you know.  But really to go away with him!  Never!  Madness.  She
was too sensible . . . I began to reproach him gently.  And by and
by he turns on me.  'Write to you!  What about?  Come to her!  What
with?  If I had been a man I would have carried her off, but she
made a child, a happy child, of me.  Tell her that the day the only
thing I had belonging to me in the world perished on this reef I
discovered that I had no power over her. . . Has she come here with
you?' he shouts, blazing at me suddenly with his hollow eyes.  I
shook my head.  Come with me, indeed!  Anaemia!  'Aha!  You see?
Go away, then, old man, and leave me alone here with that ghost,'
he says, jerking his head at the wreck of his brig.

"Mad!  It was getting dusk.  I did not care to stop any longer all
by myself with that man in that lonely place.  I was not going to
tell him of Freya's illness.  Anaemia!  What was the good?  Mad!
And what sort of husband would he have made, anyhow, for a sensible
girl like Freya?  Why, even my little property I could not have
left them.  The Dutch authorities would never have allowed an
Englishman to settle there.  It was not sold then.  My man Mahmat,
you know, was looking after it for me.  Later on I let it go for a
tenth of its value to a Dutch half-caste.  But never mind.  It was
nothing to me then.  Yes; I went away from him.  I caught the
return mail-boat.  I told everything to Freya.  'He's mad,' I said;
'and, my dear, the only thing he loved was his brig.'

"'Perhaps,' she says to herself, looking straight away--her eyes
were nearly as hollow as his--'perhaps it is true.  Yes!  I would
never allow him any power over me.'"

Old Nelson paused.  I sat fascinated, and feeling a little cold in
that room with a blazing fire.

"So you see," he continued, "she never really cared for him.  Much
too sensible.  I took her away to Hong Kong.  Change of climate,
they said.  Oh, these doctors!  My God!  Winter time!  There came
ten days of cold mists and wind and rain.  Pneumonia.  But look
here!  We talked a lot together.  Days and evenings.  Who else had
she? . . . She talked a lot to me, my own girl.  Sometimes she
would laugh a little.  Look at me and laugh a little--"

I shuddered.  He looked up vaguely, with a childish, puzzled
moodiness.

"She would say:  'I did not really mean to be a bad daughter to
you, papa.'  And I would say:  'Of course, my dear.  You could not
have meant it.'  She would lie quiet and then say:  'I wonder?'
And sometimes, 'I've been really a coward,' she would tell me.  You
know, sick people they say things.  And so she would say too:
'I've been conceited, headstrong, capricious.  I sought my own
gratification.  I was selfish or afraid.' . . . But sick people,
you know, they say anything.  And once, after lying silent almost
all day, she said:  'Yes; perhaps, when the day came I would not
have gone.  Perhaps!  I don't know,' she cried.  'Draw the curtain,
papa.  Shut the sea out.  It reproaches me with my folly.'"  He
gasped and paused.

"So you see," he went on in a murmur.  "Very ill, very ill indeed.
Pneumonia.  Very sudden."  He pointed his finger at the carpet,
while the thought of the poor girl, vanquished in her struggle with
three men's absurdities, and coming at last to doubt her own self,
held me in a very anguish of pity.

"You see yourself," he began again in a downcast manner.  "She
could not have really . . . She mentioned you several times.  Good
friend.  Sensible man.  So I wanted to tell you myself--let you
know the truth.  A fellow like that!  How could it be?  She was
lonely.  And perhaps for a while . . . Mere nothing.  There could
never have been a question of love for my Freya--such a sensible
girl--"

"Man!" I cried, rising upon him wrathfully, "don't you see that she
died of it?"

He got up too.  "No! no!" he stammered, as if angry.  "The doctors!
Pneumonia.  Low state.  The inflammation of the . . . They told me.
Pneu--"

He did not finish the word.  It ended in a sob.  He flung his arms
out in a gesture of despair, giving up his ghastly pretence with a
low, heartrending cry:

"And I thought that she was so sensible!"




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