Читать книгу Seibert of the Island - Gordon Ray Young - Страница 11

One hot, sultry afternoon two strange men appeared at Seibert's house, which sat well back in a large tropical park, where a gravelled driveway wound up from the road through trees and along terraces until, half circling a spread of lawn, it passed the wide veranda.

A native boy tried warningly to tell them that the big master was taking his after-dinner sleep; but the lean, taller man took the servant by the ear and said, "Lead on"; and they were led.

Seibert in a darkened room lay on his back, breathing heavily and perspiring. His big, round, darkly-red face was moist; his undershirt was wet.

The tall, lean man, with a sort of authoritative roughness, prodded him in the side, saying, "Wake up, wake up, Seibert. We're here on business with you."

Seibert grunted in a kind of confused anger and sat up, staring blankly, with a sort of slow-witted daze, and apparently with wrath gathering at the back of his head. He often had dealings with hard-faced strangers; that was the way he got many of his black labourers; but nobody had ever taken insulting liberties with him. These fellows had the aspect of ruffians; there was a quiet but unmistakable air of menace about them.

The tall, lean man, with the shaven and more sinister face, introduced himself abruptly as Brundage, Tom Combe's new manager; adding: "We've come for a settlement!"

"You are scoundrels!" Seibert shouted, standing up in dazed wrathfulness. "I know you, you Brundage fellow!"

"And we know you," Brundage replied coldly.

"You are a scoundrel, too, like that Waller was!"

"Quiet!" the other man said, with a sharpness as startling as the unexpected discharge of a gun.

Seibert for the first time gave him a careful look, and recognised him, partly from descriptions, and perhaps partly because inter-island rumour frequently connected Brundage's name with Captain Williams, who was a sort of pirate, greatly disliked by planters owing to his practice of taking what he needed in the way of stores and equipment from "blackbirders"—recruiters that furnished labour for plantations. Nearly all the plantations winked encouragement to rascals that sailed under the American, or German, or French flag, so they would not have to obey British labour recruiting laws. Williams was said to have caught recruiters and made them even put their black cargoes back on the beach; it was also said that he was mad; that he hated white men; that he had been more or less casually hunted and chased so many years without success because cannibals everywhere regarded him as a friend, and he could safely stop in remote bays and be supplied with food, water, and wood where only a heavily armed vessel would have dared to drop anchor.

"You have been a thief," said Williams, his eyes like the polished muzzles of two rifles.

Seibert's big body appeared actually to swell, to enlarge, as if anger had a distending force; his round, darkly-red face grew purplish; and his hands, crumpling into huge fists, came half-way up. He shouted: "That is a lie! A lie, you pirate Williams!"

At that, Brundage, who had a lean, cold, sinister face, cast an apprehensive glance at his captain; but Williams remained motionless as, with almost the rapidity of repeating the multiplication table, he began to check off, from memory, the amount of copra Seibert had sold from the Combe plantation, when and to whom, and the inadequate sum he had returned to Combe. It showed that he had, in some way, checked up on Seibert with amazing precision.

Several times Seibert appeared trying to interrupt. His big mouth, with its coarse, stiff lips, would open, gape, close, re-open, as Williams went from fact to fact, speaking without gestures and in a low, hard, cold voice.

Brundage had turned to a pigeon-holed desk that was in the room, and with the careless swiftness of a thief, indifferent as to the state in which he leaves things, began to go through the papers.

"Here! Here, you keep from that!" Seibert shouted, taking a step toward the desk; but Williams placed himself before Seibert, who then glared blankly, as if he had suddenly lost what he had in mind and must search through all of his thoughts to find it again.

With almost a roar, as if the idea had come propulsively back into mind: "Waller he owed me more than what I took. For years I must wait to get my money. I made money for old Combe, who is a fool, to pay myself back too. Look how I cleaned his groves and spread manure!"

"Why not?" said Brundage grimly across his shoulder. "At the rate you were going you would have owned it all in a year or two!"

"Waller owed you?" Williams demanded. It was evident that he did not believe such a thing.

"Ach! It was a Yankee trick."

"Waller was a friend to me. Prove his debt and I'll pay it."

"Bah! You think in a swindle he would give me proofs, that fellow? No, not that fellow. That money he owed me twelve years, then he died!"

"Tell your story."

"You I will tell, though I have told nobody. He come to me and he said, 'Seibert, you have been looking for a schooner.' 'Yes, that is everybody's business. They all know it.' 'Seibert, there is one young trader over in town, and this fellow needs money bad. His schooner—she is over a hundred tons and five years old—is in the bay. I have here the option on her. You need a schooner to carry all your copra to Apia.'

"So I do need a schooner."

"Waller he says, 'I paid him one thousand dollars for the option. The price is fixed at four, and that is cheap. He is a fine young fellow, and needs the money quick. I don't need a boat, so you I will let have the option for just what I have paid.'

"Waller he showed me that option, and I know that four is cheap for a schooner like that. I need that schooner, so I pay him one thousand dollars. With the option made over to my name I go to the bay to find my schooner. In the bay it is all right—in the bottom of the bay. That trader fellow is gone to Apia. She had bumped herself on the reef. To that rascal Waller I take myself.

"'Waller, that was a fine joke. Here is that option thing, and I want my thousand dollars.' He says, 'Oh, is that so?' and he takes the option. Then he says, 'I am glad you think it was a good joke. So do I, for I have made another damn Dutchman squeal. Besides, that young fellow needed the money, and I couldn't afford to lose the thousand I give him.'"

Brundage, with his hands full of papers, turned and chuckled grimly: "Clever, clever, Seibert. You lost a thousand, and you have taken four from Combe in six months. You grow rich by such losses."

"To good interest I have the right. I lose that money for twelve years when I need money. I told Combe, too, I must have something too for my making him some more money. I put my labourers over there. I took ten per cent., and in two years I would have made his yield bigger than twenty more. In a few years by himself he will have no things left but beetles and weeds."

"Strange, Seibert"—Williams was speaking with slow intensity—"that you never told anyone of that until now."

"Think I want to be laughed at for a damn fool? I keep my mouth shut when I have troubles."

Seibert appeared to have lost his anger, and he seemed almost good-natured, agreeable; there was even a trace of awkward heartiness in his slightly rueful manner of relating the trick that he said Waller had played him, as if he wanted to smooth matters over; and his attitude was not convincing. He was a big, powerful man, round-faced, coarsely featured, with front teeth as large as an average man's thumbnail, with no ease of manner or smoothness of gesture; and his effort to be pleasant at this time appeared almost grossly affected.

"Why didn't you make him pay? Why steal it from poor old Tom Combe over a man's grave?" Brundage sneered coldly. Brundage's face was lined and lean and hard.

"Bah! That would have been a fight, and I am no pirate, to kill somebody for some money!"

"No," Brundage answered contemptuously, "but you steal it from a poor, broken-down old devil."

"Nothings I steal, you Brundage! I take what is mine and make no troubles."

Williams answered with finality, "You have lied."

Seibert made a hoarse, deep-throated noise—something of a grunt and growl—and half lifted one of his thick arms. His face now became, not purplish as before, but vividly red, as if shame mingled with anger; and for a moment it appeared that he was about to strike at Williams, who remained perfectly motionless, his hands at his sides, and he met Seibert with a challenging glare that had in it the strange look of madness.

Presently Seibert lowered his arm, and, turning away, dropped bulkily into a chair, where he sat with downcast sullenness, seemingly a little dazed, his face otherwise heavy and mask-like.

He said nothing more, and it was only at parting that either of them spoke to him again; then Brundage said: "Seibert, hear this and remember it. Keep clear of old Tom Combe, whether I stay on the place or not. And if you try to make trouble over this, every white man from Apia to Sydney will learn just what kind of a low thief you have been!"

Seibert sprang from his chair, rising with remarkable quickness for one of his great size; his arms flew out, and the muscles of his thick, heavy face worked as if he was being strangled; but a moment or two later his manner changed abruptly; discretion, self-control, fear, whatever it was, influenced him, so that almost in an instant his arms fell, and his face again became dully expressionless, his eyes a little dazed.