Читать книгу The Plunderer - Henry Oyen - Страница 5

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A flaring ray of purple sun came flashing over the sea to Gumbo Key, a warning of the brazen subtropical dawn that was to come. It pierced a vista in the jungle of coco palms on the narrow key, colored purple the white side of the Paradise Gardens Colony excursion boat Swastika, which lay at the tiny wharf on the key's western shore, and splashed without warning into an open porthole well aft.

Roger Payne awoke with a start. It was his first experience with the shock of a Southern Florida dawn. Dawns of many sorts he had seen—the ghastly ashy, clanging dawns of cities, the gray, creeping dawns of Northern winter, the bluish dawns of the Western mountains—but a dawn which came flaring up from the sea like a clap of thunder was a novelty.

He lay for a moment, stretching his buoyant body on the shelflike berth, his soles firmly against one wall, his head touching another, and wondered how a man could sleep in that bunk who was over six feet one. The Swastika had come from the railroad terminus at Flora City during the night, laden with small land buyers bound up the Chokohatchee River for the Paradise Gardens Colony, and had laid up at Gumbo Key at the mouth of the river to wait for daylight. Payne had secured passage upon it, bound for his prairie land beyond the head waters of the Chokohatchee. As he realized that dawn was coming and that soon he would see his land, he tumbled from his berth with something of the eagerness of a boy on the first day of the long vacation.

"Come on, Hig; daylight's coming."

Higgins, the other man in the room, stirred grudgingly. He was young in years but old in the ways of men, hardened by many hard jobs in rough corners of the world, and broad of body and round and red of head.

"Like the sunrise, do you?" grumbled Higgins. "Go ahead; soak your soul in it. My soul don't need soaking, so lemme sleep. Or, here; mebbe you're out early for a glimpse at the young lady who kept to her room all last evening?"

"I scarcely noticed her."

"You're right; you didn't. That's why I been wondering if there ain't something wrong with you. Tall, slim, carried herself like a princess, and dressed——"

"Go back to sleep, Hig, you're still dreaming."

"A dream is right—but in the flesh—and you never noticed her!"

"I'm down here on business; haven't time for anything else. I'm going out and see what the country is like."

"Go ahead. By the purple shadows I can tell you that in a few minutes 'twill be sunrise, and all gaudier than a campmeeter's picture of heaven. So I'll just roll over and tear off ten winks more."

Out on the narrow wharf Payne caught his foot on the painter of a rowboat moored near the Swastika's stern, and found the soft blue haze of the subtropical night still undisturbed save for the first ray of dawn.

The tree growth on the key was jungle-like in density. A path had been cut through to the eastern shore. It was almost a tunnel, for the fronds of the coco palms and the branches of the red-trunked gumbo limbo, and of live oak formed an arch overhead, from which hung long, listless streamers of Spanish moss. The red rays touched the hanging tips of the moss, as if the streamers had been dipped in vermilion, and it tinted softly the palm fronds, wet with the night's dew.

Payne walked down the path to the east shore of the key, and suddenly he seemed to behold a world being born anew. Dawn was coming with a rush. The soft velvety blackness of night in the heavens was giving way to a faint purple. Up from the mystic spaces of the east rays of deep purple, of burnt umber, vermilion, scarlet and flame were leaping into the sky. Black dots began to appear on the horizon, keys and trees silhouetted against the rising light. A huge heron flapped grotesquely up from the top of a mangrove bush as the sun struck it; a flamingo flapped by, matching its dainty pink with the sun's best tints; a dolphin's fin broke the dark purple water near shore.

Then the eastern horizon became a flare of flame and fire, and the sea grew rosy. Beyond its brim a great conflagration seemed to be raging, throwing its flames of gold, of red and of uncountable tints high into the sky. Higher it rose, its rays more insistent; and then, as with a clashing of brazen cymbals, the full-blown dawn was upon the world.

Payne now saw that the light had revealed two yachts moored to a short pier which ran out from the eastern shore. One, a splendid sixty-foot cruiser of the luxurious type seen in Florida waters during the tourist season, lay at the end of the pier ready to sail. From bow to stern she was immaculate white with shiny brown trimmings, and on her bow the sun revealed in small gilt letters the name Egret.

The second boat was a low, dirty forty-footer—the Cormorant—the boat to which the Swastika's passengers were to transfer for the trip up the river.

A Japanese steward, in spick and span whites, came down the Egret's shiny gangway, entered the path leading to the Swastika's dock, and in a few minutes came hurrying back to his boat carrying a handbag.

The sun now had splashed boldly upon the languid wet fronds of the palms, upon the trunks of trees and the hanging moss. It lighted up the tunnellike vista, painting rosy the shell path underfoot and revealing the Swastika beyond. In the morning stillness Payne heard light, swift steps creaking crisply upon the crushed shells of the path. Then, from his place in the shadows beneath a palm, he saw the girl. She came to the open space before the sea, whistling softly to herself an irrepressible, tuneless matin song of youth, and thus she walked unexpectingly into the full power of the relentless dawn. For a moment she halted, blinking, astounded.

"Ah!"

Her exclamation was a cry of the joy of youth. She stood facing the coming day, and the sea and sun; and a puff of morning breeze flung behind her a vagrant strand of golden hair.

She was quite tall, and upon her young figure, long of waist and lithe, yet well-rounded, the thin white dress of the subtropics was but a filament, a feminine accessory to the virgin beauty and the message of her budding womanhood.

Payne heard a soft, heavy step at his back and saw that Higgins, too, had answered the call of dawn.

The girl stood entranced by the spectacle before her. She placed her hands upon her bosom and stood with uplifted visage, like a young goddess of the dawn. She stretched her arms passionately out over the sea and said quite loudly and fervently:

"I love you, I love you!"

In the shadow of the palm Payne and Higgins began to retreat guiltily.

"No use your sticking round, Payne," whispered the engineer. "You're too late; she's took. You heard what she said."

"Sh-h!"

"I love you," repeated the girl with the same ecstatic tone and pose.

"Ah! How I love you!"

From the arch over the path there dropped with a swish and crash the ten-foot branch of a coco palm, falling without warning or apparent reason, as the overripe branches of coco palms do fall. The girl whirled round; and Payne was shocked and chilled to the marrow by the sight of her as she faced toward them.

Beautiful she was, her face as beautiful as her vibrant young body, but for the moment she was like a thing at bay. Fear shown in her eyes, not the passing fear of a sudden alarm, but a deep-seated, wearing fear suddenly awakened. Her face was a deadly white. For an instant it seemed to Roger that the depths of her soul were revealed, and at the mystery and dread in her eyes he took a step forward. He did not speak. Her expression baffled him. He stood irresolute for the moment, and in that moment she recovered her poise. She drew herself upright slowly, the red came flowing back into the cream of her cheeks, and she relaxed, leaning her weight upon one foot. As she looked at Roger, and from him to the weather-beaten Higgins and back to Roger, her eyes grew easy with assurance.

She began to smile.

"Didn't know there were tigers or other dangerous beasts on this island, miss," chuckled Higgins. "Say the word and we'll clean 'em out for you."

Neither the girl nor Payne appeared to hear. Payne looked at her without attempting to speak; he had tried to smile and carry the thing off easily, but as their eyes met his lips remained half parted without uttering a word. He looked at her in utter helplessness, caught for the moment, at least, in the grip of a force greater than himself. The girl shot Higgins a smile of understanding and friendliness, but as her eyes came back to Roger's the smile vanished by degrees; and upon her visage for the while was the same look of awesome seriousness as was upon the young man's.

"Mebbe they're gorillas, miss," chuckled Higgins.

She turned, reluctant yet relieved at the release from the tension, and looked at him speculatively.

"Why did you say that?" she asked.

"Gorillas, miss? Pshaw! Don't be afraid; I juggle them for morning exercise. Eh? What?" he continued, as he realized that her expression was not one of jesting. "By the great smoked fish—excuse me for cussin', miss—if it wasn't ridiculous I'd say I'd hit it!"

"Do you know anything about this place?" she asked quietly.

"Not a thing, miss."

"Or about the people round here?"

"No."

"It was strange," she said, "your saying 'tiger' and 'gorilla' just then. It was what I would have said—if I could have spoken."

"I am sorry, very sorry we alarmed you," said Roger. "We didn't want to intrude."

"Oh, I am glad you were here," she cried. "You don't know how glad I was to turn round and see you two instead of——"

"Instead of tigers and gorillas?" laughed Roger. "Oh! I beg your pardon!" he cried in swift contrition at the look which the words brought back to her eyes. "I wouldn't for the world—but, surely—it's impossible; there are no dangerous wild animals on this pretty little key."

"No," she said slowly, looking away from him. "No, there are not any dangerous—wild beasts on this key. It—it was just a morning nightmare." She laughed, looking up. "Perhaps I wasn't thoroughly awake yet." But she shuddered, and swiftly made pretense she was shaking herself. "There; I'm awake now. There are no dangerous wild animals here. There are only—people. It—it was just—just moonshine."

"Do they make a little of it round here, miss?" Higgins winked eagerly and with such energy that his ears and hat moved.

"Oh, Higgins!" groaned Roger; but the girl threw back her head and laughed with relief and gratitude for the chance of merriment until the virgin morning seemed filled with song. Higgins' hair-trigger laughter rumbled deep accompaniment; and, as always, the engineer's merriment forced itself upon Roger, and he joined in, while the silver of the girl's tones pealed above both, tinkling in the sun-kissed palms above, rolling out over the purple water, out to the mooring of the immaculate Egret.

"We were on the Swastika, and rose early," explained Roger.

"You're land buyers?"

"Yes, I've invested in a big tract way up the river."

"You're going up to-day?"

"Yes."

"Then—are you going right back after seeing your land—like the others?"

"I plan to develop that land—if it is anything like what it was represented."

Her manner changed. She grew thoughtful.

"Whom did you buy your land from—if it isn't too impertinent?"

"From Senator Fairclothe's company."

"From Senator——! Why, that's——" she stopped.

"Tell me, please; how was that land represented?"

"Prairie land. Soil reports and surveys were furnished. I discounted them fifty per cent, and still thought it a good investment."

"Did the fact that—Senator Fairclothe recommended the land influence you?"

"Why, certainly. He's a United States Senator."

She turned swiftly toward the Egret, but not swiftly enough to hide the flush that rushed to her cheeks.

"I hope—I do hope you are not disappointed," she said.

Her laughter of a moment before, penetrating to the cabin of the Egret, had brought a tall, thin woman, the sun glinting on the diamond pendants in her ears, out from a stateroom forward.

"Ah, my dear Annette!"

"Aunty! You awake so early?"

"The climate has made me young. Come aboard, dear. We sail at once."

The girl hesitated. Her tone was indefinable as she asked: "Is—Mr.

Garman——?"

"He's up at his place, and his boat is at our disposal. Come, dear; come inside. The mornings are damp in spite of their gorgeous beauty."

The girl looked back at Payne from the door of the stateroom. One glance. He tried in vain to fathom it. Then she disappeared.

A few minutes later the Egret's softly purring engines were edging her away from the pier, when:

"Cormorant, ahoy!" called a man from her engine room.

"Hey?" responded a gruff voice from a shack on shore.

"Got that extra drum of gasoline there?"

"Yep."

"Bring it up on the Cormorant when you come."

"Aw-right."

The Egret was well away from shore now. Her sharp white bow cleaved the blue water of the way with slow, irresistible power. Her speed increased. In a few minutes twin waves of blue were curling away from her cutwater as, smoothly and swiftly, she raced across the bay and out of sight round the first bend of the wide mouthed Chokohatchee River.

Roger Payne stood looking up the river long after the boat was out of sight. He was in a daze; but he was very glad that he, too, was going up the river.