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A CERTAIN DR THORNDYKE (1927) [Part 1]

BOOK 1

The Ishmaelite

CHAPTER I

The Fugitive

The tropic moon shone brightly on the village of Adaffia in the Bight of Benin as a fishing-canoe steered warily through the relatively quiet surf of the dry season towards the steep beach. Out in the roadstead an anchored barque stood up sharply against the moonlit sky, the yellow spark of her riding light glimmering warmly, and a white shape dimly discernible in the approaching canoe hinted of a visitor from the sea. Soon the little craft, hidden for a while in the white smother of a breaking wave, emerged triumphant and pushed her pointed nose up the beach; the occupants leaped out and, seizing her by her inturned gunwales, hauled her forthwith out of reach of the following wave.

“You know where to go?” the Englishman demanded, turning a grim, hatchet face towards the ‘headman.’ “Don’t take me to the wrong house.”

The headman grinned. “Only one white man live for Adaffia. Me sabby him proper.” He twisted a rag of cotton cloth into a kind of turban, clapped it on his woolly pate and, poising on top a battered cabin-trunk, strode off easily across the waste of blown sand that separated the beach from a forest of coconut palms that hid the village. The Englishman followed less easily, his shod feet sinking into the loose sand; and as he went, he peered with a stranger’s curiosity along the deserted beach and into the solemn gloom beneath the palms, whence came the rhythmical clamour of drums and the sound of many voices joining in a strange, monotonous chant.

Through the ghostly colonnade of palm trunks, out into the narrow, tortuous alleys that served for streets, between rows of mud-built hovels roofed with unkempt grass thatch, where all was inky blackness in the shadow and silvery grey in the light, the stranger followed his guide; and ever the noise of the drums and the melancholy chant drew nearer. Suddenly the two men emerged from an alley into a large open space and in an instant passed from the stillness of the empty streets into a scene of the strangest bustle and uproar. In the middle of the space was a group of men, seated on low stools, who held between their knees drums of various sizes, which they were beating noisily, though by no means unskillfully, some with crooked sticks, others with the flat of the hand. Around the musicians a circle of dancers moved in an endless procession, the men and the women forming separate groups; and while the former danced furiously, writhing with starting muscles and streaming skins, in gestures grotesque and obscene, the latter undulated languorously with half-closed eyes and rhythmically moving arms.

The Englishman had halted in the black shadow to look on at this singular scene and to listen to the strange chant that rang out at intervals from dancers and spectators alike, when his guide touched him on the arm and pointed.

“Look, Mastah!” said he; “dem white man live. You look um?”

The stranger looked over the heads of the dancers, and, sure enough, in the very midst of the revellers, he espied a fellow-countryman seated on a green-painted gin-case, the sides of which he was pounding with his fists in unsuccessful emulation of the drummers. He was not a spectacle to engender undue pride of race. To begin with, he was obviously drunk, and as he drummed on the case and bellowed discordantly at intervals, he was not dignified. Perhaps to be drunk and dignified at one and the same time is not easy, and assuredly the task is made no easier by a costume consisting of a suit of ragged pyjamas, the legs tucked into scarlet socks, gaudy carpet slippers, and a skullcap of plaited grass. But such was the garb of this representative of a superior race, and the final touch was given to a raffish ensemble by an unlit cigar that waggled from the corner of his mouth.

The stranger stood for a minute or more watching, in silence and with grim disapproval, this unedifying spectacle, when a sudden interruption occurred. One of the dancers, a big, powerful ruffian, in giving an extra flourish to his performance, struck his foot against the gin-case and staggered on to the seated white man, who, with a loud, foolish laugh, caught him playfully by the ankle. As a result, the big negro toppled over and fell sprawling amongst the drummers. In an instant all was confusion and uproar. The drummers pummelled the fallen man, the women howled, the men shouted, and the drunken white man yelled with idiotic laughter. Then the big negro leaped to his feet with a roar of fury, and rushing at the white man, closed with him. The gin-case turned turtle at the first onset, the two combatants flew off gyrating amongst the legs of the crowd, mowing down a little lane as they went; and for some moments nothing could be distinguished save a miscellaneous heap of black bodies and limbs with a pair of carpet slippers kicking wildly in the air. But the white man, if lacking in dignity and discretion, was not deficient in valour. He was soon on his feet and hitting out right and left with uncommon liveliness and spirit. This, however, could not, and did not, last long; a simultaneous rush of angry negroes soon bore him to the ground and there seemed every prospect of his being very severely mauled.

It was at this moment that the stranger abandoned his role of a neutral spectator. Taking off his helmet and depositing it carefully in the angle of a mud wall, he lowered his head, thrust forward his shoulder, and charged heavily into the midst of the shouting mob. Now, the Slave Coast native is a sturdy, courageous fellow and truculent withal; but he does not play the Rugby game and he is a stranger alike to the subtler aspects of pugilism and the gentle art of ju-jitsu. Consequently the tactics of the new assailant created quite a sensation among the Adaffia men. Their heels flew up unaccountably, their heads banged together from unknown causes, mysterious thumps, proceeding from nowhere in particular with the weight of a pile-monkey, stretched them gasping on the earth; and when they would have replied in kind, behold! the enemy was not there! They rushed at him with outstretched hands and straightway fell upon their stomachs; they grabbed at his head and caught nothing but a pain in the shoulder or a tap under the chin; and the sledge hammer blow that was to have annihilated him either spent itself on empty air or, impinging upon the countenance of an ally, led to misunderstanding and confusion. Hampered by their own numbers and baffled by the incredible quickness of their elusive adversary, they began to view his strange manoeuvres as feats of magic. The fire of battle died down, giving place to doubt, bewilderment, and superstitious fear. The space widened round the white, silent, swiftly-moving figure; the more faint-hearted made off with their hands clapped to their mouths, screeching forth the hideous Efé alarm cry; the panic spread, and the remainder first backed away and then fairly broke into a run. A minute later the place was deserted save or the two Europeans and the headman.

The stranger had pursued the retreating mob for some distance, tripping up the stragglers or accelerating their movements by vigorous hammerings from behind, and he now returned, straightening out his drill jacket and dusting the grimy sand from his pipe-clayed shoes with a silk handkerchief. The other white man had by this time returned to the gin-case, on which he was once more enthroned with one of the abandoned drums between his knees, and, as his compatriot approached, he executed a martial roll and would have burst into song but that the cigar, which had been driven into his mouth during the conflict, now dropped into his throat and reduced him temporarily to the verge of suffocation.

“Many thanks, dear chappie,” said he, when he had removed the obstruction; “moral s’pport most valuable; uphold dignity of white man; congratulate you on your style; do credit to Richardsons. Excuse my not rising; reasons excellent; will appear when I do.” In fact his clothing had suffered severely in the combat.

The stranger looked down at the seated figure silently and with tolerant contempt. A stern-faced, grim-looking man was this newcomer, heavy-browed, square-jawed, and hatchet-faced, and his high-shouldered, powerful figure set itself in a characteristic pose, with the feet wide apart and the hands clasped behind the back as he stood looking down on his new acquaintance.

“I suppose,” he said, at length, “you realize that you’re as drunk as an owl?”

“I s’spected it,” returned the other gravely. “Not’s an owl, though; owls very temp’rate in these parts.”

At this moment the headman rose from the cabin-trunk, on which he had seated himself to view the conflict, and, picking up the stranger’s helmet, brought it to him.

“Mastah,” said he, earnestly, “you go for house one time. Dis place no good. Dem people be angry too much; he go fetch gun.”

“You hear that?” said the stranger. “You’d better clear off home.”

“Ver’ well, dear boy,” replied the other, suavely. “Call hansom; we’ll both go.”

“Whereabouts do you live?” demanded the stranger.

The other man looked up with a bland smile. “Grosvenor Square, ol’ fellow, A1; brass knocker ’stinguishers on doorstep. Tell cabby knock three times and ring bottom bell.” He picked up the cigar and began carefully to wipe the sand from it.

“Do you know where he lives?” asked the stranger, turning to the headman.

“Yass; me sabby. He live for factory. You make him come one time, Mastah. You hear dat?”

The sound of the strange and dismal Efé alarm cry (produced by shouting or screaming continuously and patting the mouth quickly with the flat of the hand) was borne down from the farther end of the village. The headman caught up the trunk and started off up the street, while the stranger, having hoisted the seated man off the gin-case with such energy that he staggered round in a half-circle, grasped him from behind by both arms and urged him forward at a brisk trot.

“Here, I say!” protested the latter, “nosso fast, d’ye hear? I’ve dropped my slipper. Lemme pick up my slipper.”

To these protests the stranger paid no attention, but continued to hustle his captive forward with undiminished energy.

“Lemme go, confound you! You’re shaking me all to bits!” exclaimed the captive; and, as the other continued to shove silently, he continued: “Now I un’stand why you boosted those niggers so neatly. You’re a bobby, that’s what you are. I know the professional touch. A blooming escaped bobby. Well, I’m jiggered!” He lapsed, after this, into gloomy silence, and a few minutes’ more rapid travelling brought the party to a high palm-leaf fence. A primitive gate was unfastened, by the simple process of withdrawing a skewer from a loop of cord, and they entered a compound in the middle of which stood a long, low house. The latter was mud-built and thatched with grass like the houses in the village, from which, indeed, it differed only in that its mud walls were whitewashed and pierced for several windows.

“Lemme welcome you to my humble cot,” said the proprietor, following the headman, who had unceremoniously walked into the house and dumped down the cabin-trunk. The stranger entered a small, untidy room lighted by a hurricane-lamp, and, having dismissed the headman with a substantial ‘dash,’ or present, turned to face his host.

“Siddown,” said the latter, dropping into a dilapidated Madeira chair and waving his hand towards another. “Less’ have a talk. Don’t know your name, but you seem to be a decent feller—for a bobby. My name’s Larkom, John Larkom, agent for Foster Brothers. This is Fosters’ factory.”

The stranger looked curiously round the room—so little suggestive of a factory in the European sense—and then, as he seated himself, said: “You probably know me by name: I am John Walker, of whom you have—”

He was interrupted by a screech of laughter from Larkom, who flung himself back in his chair with such violence as to bring that piece of furniture to the verge of dissolution.

“Johnny Walker!” he howled. “My immortal scissors! Sh’ld think I do know you; more senses than one. I’ve got a letter about you—I’ll show it to you. Where is that blamed letter?” He dragged out a table-drawer and rooted among a litter of papers, from which he at length extracted a crumpled sheet of paper. “Here we are. Letter from Hepburn. You ’member Hepburn? He and I at Oxford together. Merton, y’know. Less see what he says. Ah! here you are; I’ll read it: ‘And now I want you to do me a little favour. You will receive a visit from a pal of mine who, in consequence of certain little indiscretions, is for the moment under a cloud, and I want you, if you can, to put him up and keep him out of sight. His fame I am not permitted to disclose, since being, as I have said, ‘sub nube,’ just at present, and consequently not in search of fame or notoriety he elects to travel under the modest and appropriate name of Walker.’” At this point Larkom once more burst into a screech of laughter. “Funny devil, Hepburn! awful rum devil,” he mumbled, leering idiotically at the letter that shook in his hand; then, wiping his eyes on the gaudy ‘trade’ tablecloth, he resumed his reading. “‘He need not cause you any inconvenience, and you won’t mind his company as he is quite a decent fellow—he entered at Merton just after you went down—and he won’t be any expense to you; in fact, with judicious management, he may be made to yield a profit, since he will have some money with him and is, between ourselves, somewhat of a mug.’ Rum devil, awful rum devil,” sniggered Larkom. “Doncher think so?” he added, grinning foolishly in the other man’s face.

“Very,” replied the stranger, stolidly. But he did not look particularly amused.

“‘I think that is all I have to tell you,’” Larkom continued, reading from the letter. “‘I hope you will be able to put the poor devil up, and, by the way, you need not let on that I have told you about his little misfortunes.’” Larkom looked up with a ridiculous air of vexation. “There now,” he exclaimed, “I’ve given old Hepburn away like a silly fool. But no, it was he that was a silly fool. He shouldn’t have told me.”

“No, he should not,” agreed Walker.

“’Course not,” said Larkom with drunken gravity. “Breach o’ confidence. However, ’s all right. ’Pend on me. Close as a lock-jawed oyster. What’ll you drink?”

He waved his hand towards the table, on which a plate of limes, a stone gin jar, a bottle of bitters with a quill stuck through the cork, and a swizzle-stick, stained purple by long service, invited to conviviality.

“Have a cocktail,” said Larkom. “Wine of the country. Good old swizzle-stick. I’ll mix it. Or p’rhaps,” he sniggered, slyly, “p’raps you’d rather have a drop of Johnny Walker—ha! ha! Hallo! Here they are. D’ye hear ’em?” A confused noise of angry voices was audible outside the compound and isolated shouts separated themselves now and again from the general hubbub.

“They’re callin’ us names,” chuckled Larkom. “Good thing you don’t un’stand the language. The nigger can be rude. Personal abuse as a fine art. Have a cocktail.”

“Hadn’t I better go out and send them about their business?” asked Walker.

“Lor’ bless you, they haven’t got any business,” was the reply. “No, siddown. Lerrum alone and they’ll go home. Have a cocktail.” He compounded one for himself, swizzling up the pink mixture with deliberate care and pouring it down his throat with the skill of a juggler; and when Walker had declined the refreshment and lit his pipe, the pair sat and listened to the threats and challenges from the outer darkness. The attitude of masterly inactivity was justified by its results, for the noise subsided by degrees, and presently the rumble of drums and the sound of chanting voices told them that the interrupted revels had been resumed.

After the third application to the stone bottle Larkom began to grow sleepy and subsided into silence, broken at intervals by an abortive snore. Walker meanwhile smoked his pipe and regarded his host with an air of gloomy meditation. At length, as the latter became more and more somnolent, he ventured to rouse him up.

“You haven’t said what you are going to do, Larkom,” said he. “Are you going to put me up for a time?”

Larkom sat up in the squeaking chair and stared at him owlishly. “Put you up, ol’ f’ler?” said he. “Lor bless you, yes. Wodjer think? Bed been ready for you for mor’n a week. Come’n look at it. Gettin’ dam late. Less’ turn in.” He took up the lamp and walked with unsteady steps through a doorway into a small, bare room, the whitewashed walls of which were tastefully decorated with the mud-built nests of solitary wasps. It contained two bedsteads, each fitted with a mosquito net and furnished with a mattress, composed of bundles of rushes lashed together, and covered with a grass mat.

“Thash your doss, ol’ f’ler,” said Larkom, placing the lamp on the packing-case that served for a table, “this is mine. Goo’ night!” He lifted the mosquito-curtain, crept inside, tucked the curtain under the mattress, and forthwith began to snore softly.

Walker fetched in his trunk from the outer room, and, as he exchanged his drill clothes (which he folded carefully as he removed them) for a suit of pyjamas, he looked curiously round the room. A huge, hairy spider was spread out on the wall as if displayed in a collector’s cabinet, and above him a brown cockroach of colossal proportions twirled his long antennae thoughtfully. The low, bumpy ceiling formed a promenade for two pallid, goggle-eyed lizards, who strolled about, defiant of the laws of gravity, picking up an occasional moth or soft-shelled beetle as they went. When he was half undressed an enormous fruit-bat, with a head like that of a fox-terrier, blundered in through the open window and flopped about the room in noisy panic for several minutes before it could find its way out again.

At length he put out the lamp, and creeping inside his curtain, tucked it in securely; and soon, despite the hollow boom of the surf, the whistle of multitudinous bats, the piping of the mosquitoes, and the sounds of revelry from the village, he fell asleep and slept until the sun streamed in on to the whitewashed wall.

CHAPTER II

The Legatee

Larkom appeared to have that tolerance of alcohol that is often to be observed in the confirmed soaker. As he sat with his guest in the living-room, taking his early tea, although he looked frail and broken in health, there was nothing in his appearance to suggest that he had quite recently been very drunk. Nor, on the other hand, was his manner very different from that of the previous night, save that his articulation and his wits were both clearer.

“What made you pick out this particular health-resort for your little holiday?” he asked. “It isn’t what you would call a fashionable watering-place.”

“No,” replied Walker. “That was the attraction. I had heard about you from Hepburn—he is my brother-in-law, you know—and as it seemed, from what he said, that your abode was on the very outside edge of the world, I marked it down as a good place to disappear in.”

Larkom grinned. “You are not a bad judge, old chappie. Disappearing is our speciality. We are famous for it. Always have been. How does the old mariners’ ditty run? You remember it? ‘Oh, the Bight of Benin, the Bight of Benin, One comes out where three go in.’ But perhaps that wasn’t exactly what was in your mind?”

“It wasn’t. I could have managed that sort of disappearance without coming so far. But look here, Larkom, let us have a clear understanding. I came here on spec, not having much time to make arrangements, on the chance that you might be willing to put me up and give me a job. But I haven’t come to fasten on to you. If my presence here will be in any way a hindrance to you, you’ve only got to say so and I will move on. And I shan’t take it as unfriendly. I quite understand that you have your principals to consider.”

“Principals be blowed!” said Larkom. “They don’t come into it; and as to me, I can assure you, J. W., that this is the first stroke of luck I’ve had for years. After vegetating in this God-forgotten hole with nobody but buck-niggers to speak to, you can imagine what it is to me to have a pukka white man—and a gentleman at that—under my roof. I feel like chanting ‘Domine, non sum dignus’; but if you can put up with me, stay as long as you care to, and understand that you are doing me a favour by staying.”

“It is very handsome of you, Larkom, to put it in that way,” said Walker, a little huskily. “Of course, I understand the position and I accept your offer gratefully. But we must put the arrangement on a business footing. I’m not going to sponge on you. I must pay my share of the expenses, and if I can give you any help in working the factory—”

“Don’t you be afraid, old chappie,” interrupted Larkom. “I’ll keep your nose on the grindstone; and as to sharing up, we can see to that later when we cast up the accounts. As soon as we have lapped up our tea, we will go out to the store and I will show you the ropes. They aren’t very complicated, though they are in a bit of a tangle just now. But that is where you will come in, dear boy.”

Larkom’s statement as to the ‘tangle’ was certainly no exaggeration. The spectacle of muddle and disorder that the store presented filled Walker at once with joy and exasperation. After a brief tour of the premises, during which he listened in grim silence to Larkom’s explanations, he deliberately peeled off his jacket—which he folded up neatly and put in a place of safety—and fell to work on the shelves and lockers with a concentrated energy that reduced the native helper to gibbering astonishment and Larkom to indulgent sniggers.

“Don’t overdo it, old chap,” the latter admonished. “Remember the climate. And there’s no hurry. Plenty of spare time in these parts. Leave yourself a bit for tomorrow.” To all of which advice Walker paid no attention whatever, but slogged away at the confused raffle of stock-in-trade without a pause until close upon noon, when the cook came out to announce that “chop live for table.” And even this was but a temporary pause; for soon after breakfast—or tiffin, as the Anglo-Indian calls it—when Larkom showed a tendency to doze in his chair with a tumbler of gin toddy, he stole away to renew his onslaught while the native assistant attended to the ‘trade.’

During the next few days he was kept pretty fully occupied. Not that there was much business doing at the factory, but Larkom’s hand having become of late so tremulous that writing was impossible, the posting of books and answering of letters had automatically ceased.

“You’re a perfect godsend to me, old chappie,” said Larkom, when, by dint of two days’ continuous labour, the books had been brought up to date, and Walker attacked the arrears of correspondence. “The firm wouldn’t have stood it much longer. They’ve complained of my handwriting already. If you hadn’t come I should have got the order of the boot to a certainty. Now they’ll think I’ve got a native clerk from somewhere at my own expense.”

“How about the signature?” Walker asked. “Can you manage that?”

“That’s all right, dear boy,” said Larkom cheerfully. “You sign slowly while I kick the table. They’ll never twig the difference.”

By means of this novel aid to calligraphy the letter was completed and duly dispatched by a messenger to catch the land post at Quittah. Then Walker had leisure to look about him and study the methods of West Coast trade and the manners and customs of his host. Larkom sober was not very different from Larkom drunk—amiable, easy-going, irresponsible, and only a little less cheerful. Perhaps he was better drunk. At any rate, that was his own opinion, and he acted up to it consistently. What would have happened had there had been any appreciable trade at Adaffia it is impossible to guess. As it was, the traffic was never beyond the capacity of Larkom even at his drunkest. Once or twice during the day a party of bush natives would stroll into the compound with a demijohn of palm oil or a calabash full of kernels, or a man from a neighbouring village would bring in a bushel or so of copra, and then the premises would hum with business. The demijohn would be emptied into a puncheon or the kernels stowed in bags ready for shipment, and the vendors would receive their little dole of threepenny pieces—the ordinary currency of the coast. Then the vendors would change into purchasers. A length of baft or calico, a long flint-lock gun with red-painted stock, a keg of powder, or a case of gin would replace the produce they had brought; the threepenny pieces would drift back into the chest whence they had come, and the deal would be completed.

At these functions Walker, owing to his ignorance of the language, appeared chiefly in the role of onlooker, though he took a hand at the scales, when he was about, and helped to fill the canvas bags with kernels. But he found plenty of time to wander about the village and acknowledge the appreciative grins of the men whom he had hammered on the night of his arrival or the courteous salutations of the women. Frequently in the afternoons he would stroll out to sit on the dry sand at high-water mark and, as the feathery leaves of the sea-washed palms pattered above him in the breeze, would gaze wistfully across the blue and empty ocean. One day a homeward-bound steamer came into the bay to anchor in Quittah roads; and then his gaze grew more wistful and the stern face softened into sadness.

Presently Larkom hove in sight under the palms, carolling huskily and filling a gaudy trade pipe. He came and sat down by Walker, and having struck some two dozen Swedish matches without producing a single spark, gazed solemnly at the steamer.

“Yellow funnel boat,” he observed; “that’ll be the Niger, old Rattray’s boat. She’s going home, dear boy, home to England, where hansom cabs and green peas and fair ladies and lamb chops—.”

“Oh, shut up, Larkom!” exclaimed the other, gruffly.

“Right, dear boy. Mum’s the word,” was the bland reply, as Larkom resumed his fruitless attack on the matches. “But there’s one thing I’ve been going to say to you,” he continued after a pause, “and it’s this—confound these damstinkers; I’ve used up a whole box for nothing—I was going to say that you’d better not show yourself out on the beach unnecessarily. I don’t know what your little affair amounts to, but I should say that, if it was worth your while to cut away from home, it’s worth your while to stop away.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you are still within the jurisdiction of the English courts; and if you should have been traced to the ship and you let yourself be seen, say, by any of the Germans who pass up and down from Quittah to Lomé or Bagidá, why, some fine day you may see an officer of the Gold Coast bearing down on you with a file of Hausas, and then it would be ho! for England, home, and beauty. You sabby?”

“I must take that risk,” growled Walker. “I can’t stay skulking in the house, and I’m not going to.”

“As you please, dear boy,” said Larkom. “I only mentioned the matter. Verbum sap. No offence, I hope.”

“Of course not,” replied Walker.

“I don’t think you are in any immediate danger,” pursued Larkom. “Old chief Akolatchi looked in on me just now and he tells me that there are no white officers at Quittah. The doctor died of blackwater fever two days ago, and the commissioner is sick and is off to Madeira by this steamer. Still, you had better keep your weather eyelid lifting.”

“I mean to,” said Walker; and knocking out his pipe on the heel of his shoe, he rose and shook the sand from his clothes.

“If you’ll excuse my harping on a disagreeable topic, old chappie,” said Larkom, as they strolled homewards along the beach, “I think you would be wise to take some elementary precautions.”

“What sort?” asked Walker.

“Well, supposing you were traced to that barque, the Sappho, it would be easy to communicate with her skipper when she comes to her station at Half-Jack. Then they might ascertain that a gent named Johnny Walker with a golden beard and a Wellington nose had been put ashore at Adaffia. You’re a fairly easy chappie to describe, with that Romanesque boko, and fairly easy to recognize from a description.”

“But, damn it, Larkom! You’re not suggesting that I should cut off my nose, are you?”

“God forbid, dear boy! But you might cut off your beard and drop Johnny Walker. A clean shave and a new name would make a world of difference. No native would recognize you without your beard.”

“Perhaps not. But a white police officer would spot me all right. A clean shave and a different name wouldn’t deceive him.”

“Not if he really meant business. But the local officials here will be pretty willing to turn a blind eye. They are not keen on arresting a white man with a parcel of niggers looking on. Lowers the prestige of the race. If a constabulary officer came down here to arrest a bearded man named Walker and found only a clean-shaved covey of the name of Cook, he’d probably say that there was no one here answering the description and go back perfectly satisfied with his tongue in his cheek.”

“Do you think he really would?”

“I do. At any rate, you may as well give the authorities a chance; meet ’em half-way. Don’t you think so?”

“I suppose it is the reasonable thing to do. Very well, Larkom, I will take your advice and turn myself into a bald-faced stag—I noticed that you have some razors in the store. And as to the name, well, I will adopt your suggestion in that, too. ‘Cook’ will do as well as any other.”

“Better, old chap. Distinguished name. Great man, James Cook. Circumnavigator; all round my hat.”

“All the same,” said Walker, alias Cook, “I fancy you are a trifle over-optimistic. If an officer were sent down here with a warrant, I think he would have to execute it if he could. He would be running a biggish risk if he let himself be bamboozled.”

“Well, dear boy,” replied Larkom, “you do the transformation trick and trust in Providence. It’s quite likely that the local authorities will make no move; and if a G.C.C. officer should turn up and insist on mistaking James Cook for Johnny Walker, I daresay we could find some way of dealing with him.”

The other man smiled grimly. “Yes,” he agreed. “I don’t think he’d mistake James Cook for Mary’s little lamb.”

As they entered the compound a quarter of an hour later, a native rose from the kernel bag on which he had been seated, and disengaging from the folds of his cloth a soiled and crumpled letter, held it out to Larkom. The latter opened it with tremulous haste and, having glanced through it quickly, emitted a long, low whistle.

“Sacked, by jiggers!” he exclaimed, and handed the letter to his guest. It was a brief document and came to the point without circumlocution. The Adaffia factory was a financial failure, “whatever it might have been under other management,” and the firm hereby dispensed with Mr. Larkom’s services. “But,” the letter concluded, “as we are unwilling to leave a white man stranded on the Coast, we hereby make over to you, in lieu of notice, the factory and such stock as remains in it, the same to be your own property; and we hope that you will be able to carry on the trade to more advantage for yourself than you have for us.”

“Devilish liberal of them,” groaned Larkom, “for I’ve been a rotten bad servant to the firm. But I shall never make anything of it. I’m a regular waster, old chappie, and the sooner the land-crabs have me, the better it will be for everyone.” He lifted the lid of a gin-case and dejectedly hoisted out a high-shouldered, square-faced Dutch bottle.

“Stop this boozing, Larkom,” said Cook, late Walker. “Pull yourself together, man, and let us see if we can’t make a do of it.” He spoke gently enough, with his hand on the other man’s shoulder, for the thought of his own wrecked life had helped him to understand. It was not the mere loss of employment that had hit Larkom so hard. It was the realization, sudden and complete, of his utter futility; of his final irrevocable failure in the battle of life.

“It’s awfully good of you, old chap,” he said dismally; “but I tell you, I’m beyond redemption.” He paused irresolutely and then added: “However, we’ll stow the lush for the present and talk things over,” and he let the bottle slip back into its compartment and, shut down the lid.

But he was in no mood for talking things over, at present. The sense of utter failure appeared to have overwhelmed him completely, and, though he made no further attempt upon the gin-case that evening, his spirits seemed to sink lower and lower until, about ten o’clock, he rose from his chair and silently tottered off to bed, looking pitiably frail and broken.

It was about two o’clock in the morning when Cook awoke to the consciousness of a very singular noise. He sat up in bed to listen. A strange, quick rattle, like the chatter of a jigsaw, came from the rickety bed on which Larkom slept, and with it was mingled a confused puffing that came and went in quick gusts.

“Anything the matter, Larkom?” he asked anxiously; and then, as a broken mumble and a loud chattering of teeth came in reply, he sprang from the bed and struck a match. A single glance made everything clear. The huddled body, shaking from head to foot, the white, pinched face, the bloodless hands with blue fingernails, clutching the scanty bed-coverings to the trembling chin, presented a picture of African fever that even a newcomer could recognize. Hastily he lit a candle, and, gathering up every rag that he could lay hands on, from his own travelling-rug to the sitting-room tablecloth, piled them on to his shivering comrade until the sick man looked like a gigantic caddis worm.

After an hour or so the violence of the shivering fit abated; gradually the colour returned to the white face until its late pallor gave place to a deep flush. The heaped coverings were thrown on the floor, the sufferer fidgeted restlessly about the bed, his breathing became hurried, and presently he began to babble at intervals, This state of affairs lasted for upwards of an hour. Then a few beads of perspiration appeared on the sick man’s forehead; the chatterings and mumblings and broken snatches of song died away, and, as the parched skin broke out into dewy moisture, a look of intelligence came back to the vacant face.

“Cover me up, old chappie,” said Larkom, turning over with a deep sigh. “Air strikes chilly. Thanks, old fellow; let’s have the tablecloth, too. That’s ripping. Now you turn in and get a bit of sleep. Sorry to have routed you up like this.” He closed his eyes and at once began to doze, and Cook, creeping back to bed, lay and watched him by the light of the flickering candle. Then he, too, fell asleep.

When he awoke it was broad daylight, and through the open door he could see Larkom standing by the table in the sitting-room, wrapped in the rug. The Fanti cook was seated at the table and the solitary Kroo boy, who formed the staff of the factory, stood by his supplementary chair, his eyes a-goggle with curiosity.

“Now, Kwaku,” Larkom was saying, “you see that pencil mark. Well, you take this pen and make a mark on top of it—so.” He handed the pen to the cook, who evidently followed the instructions, for his tongue protruded several inches, and he presently rose, wiping his brow. The Kroo boy took his place and the ceremony was repeated, after which the two natives retired grinning with pride.

“Gad, Larkom,” exclaimed Cook, when he came out and joined his host; “that dose of fever has taken the starch out of you. You oughtn’t to be up, surely?” He looked earnestly at his comrade, shocked at the aspect of the pitiful wreck before him and a little alarmed at the strange, greenish-yellow tint that showed through the waxen pallor of the face.

“Shan’t be up long, dear boy,” said Larkom. “Just setting things straight before I turn in for good. Now, just cast your eye over this document—devil of a scrawl, but I expect you can make it out.” He took up a sheet of paper and handed it to Cook. The writing was so tremulous as to be almost illegible, but with difficulty Cook deciphered it; and its purport filled him with astonishment. It read thus:

“This is the last will and testament of me John Larkom of Adaffia in the Gold Coast Colony, West Africa. I give and devise all my estate and effects, real and personal, which I may die possessed of or be entitled to, unto James Cook absolutely, and I appoint him the executor of this my will.

“Dated this thirteenth day of November one thousand eight hundred and ninety-seven.

“Signed by the testator in the presence of us, who thereupon made our marks in his and each other’s presence.

“JOHN LARKOM.

“Kwaku Mensah of Cape Coast. His + mark

“Pea Soup of Half-Jack. His X mark.”

“I’ve given you your new name, you see,” Larkom explained. “Take charge of this precious document and keep that letter from the firm. Burn all other papers.”

“But,” exclaimed Cook, “why are you talking as if you expected to snuff out? You’ve had fever before, I suppose?”

“Rather,” said Larkom. “But you’re a newcomer; you don’t sabby. I’m an old coaster, and I sabby proper. Look at that, dear boy. Do you know what that means?” He held out a shaking, lemon-coloured hand, and as his companion regarded it silently, he continued:

“That means blackwater fever; and when a Johnny like me goes in for that luxury, it’s a job for the gardener. And talking of that, you’d better plant me in the far corner of the compound where the empty casks are kept, by the prickly-pear hedge; I shall be out of the way of traffic there, though graves are a damned nuisance in business premises, anyhow.”

“Oh, dry up, Larkom, and get to bed,” growled Cook; “and, I say, aren’t there any doctors in this accursed place?”

Larkom grinned. “In the fossil state, dear boy, they are quite numerous. Otherwise scarce. The medico up at Quittah died three days ago, as I told you, and there are no others on tap just now. No good to me if they were. Remember what I’ve told you. Burn all papers and, when you’ve planted me, take over the factory and make things hum. There’s a living to be made here and you’ll make it. Leave the swizzle-stick alone, old chappie, and if ever you should chance to meet Hepburn again, give him my love and kick him—kick him hard. Now I’m going to turn in.”

Larkom’s forecast of the probable course of his illness bid fair to turn out correct. In the intervals of business—which, perversely enough, was unusually brisk on this day—Cook looked in on the invalid and at each visit found him visibly changed for the worse. The pale-lemon tint of his skin gave place to a horrible dusky yellow; his voice grew weaker and his mind more clouded, until at last he sank into a partial stupor from which it was almost impossible to rouse him. He wanted nothing, save an occasional sip of water, and nothing could be done to stay the march of the fell disease.

So the day passed on, a day of miserable suspense for Cook; the little caravans filed into the compound, the kernels and copra and knobs of rubber rolled out of the calabashes on to the ground, the oil gurgled softly into the puncheon, the bush people chattered vivaciously in the store and presently departed gleefully with their purchases; and still Larkom lay silent and apathetic and ever drawing nearer to the frontier between the known and the unknown. The evening fell, the store was locked up, the compound gate was shut, and Cook betook himself with a shaded lamp to sit by the sick man’s bed.

But presently the sight of that yellow face, grown suddenly so strangely small and pinched, the sharpened nose, and the sunken eyes with the yellow gleam of the half-seen eyeballs between the lids, was more than he could bear, and he stole softly through into the sitting-room, there to continue his vigil. So hour after weary hour passed. The village sank to rest (for it was a moonless night) and the sounds that came in through the open window were those of beast and bird and insect. Bats whistled out in the darkness, cicadas and crickets chirred and chirruped, the bark of the genet and the snuffling mutter of prowling civets came from without the compound, while far away the long-drawn, melancholy cry of a hyena could be heard in the intervals of the booming surf.

And all the while the sick man slowly drew nearer to the dread frontier.

It wanted but an hour to dawn when a change came. The feeble babblings and mumblings, the little snatches of forgotten songs chanted in a weak, quavering treble, had ceased for some time, and now through the open door came a new sound—the sound of slow breathing mingled with a soft, moist rattling. The watcher rose from his chair and once again crept, lamp in hand, into the dimly-lighted room, there to stand looking down gloomily at the one friend that Fate had left him. Larkom was now unconscious and lay quite still, save the heaving chest and the rise and fall of the chin with each breath.

Cook took put down the lamp, and, sitting down, gently took the damp and chilly hand in his, while he listened, in agony at his own helplessness, to the monotonous, rattling murmur that went on and on, to and fro, like the escapement of some horrible clock.

By and by it stopped, and Cook fumbled at the tepid wrist; then, after a pause, it began again with an altered rhythm and presently paused again, and again went on; and so the weary, harrowing minutes passed, the pauses growing ever longer and the rattling murmur more and more shallow. At last there came a pause so long that Cook leaned over the bed to listen. A little whispering sigh was borne to his ear, then all was still; and when, after waiting yet several minutes more, he had reverently drawn the gaudy tablecloth over the silent figure, he went back to his chair in the sitting room, there to wait, with grim face and lonely heart, for the coming of the day.

The late afternoon sun was slanting eagerly over the palm-tops as he took his way to the far corner of the compound that faced towards the western beach. The empty barrels had been rolled away and, in the clear space, close to the low prickly-pear hedge, a smooth mound of yellow sand and a rough wooden cross marked the spot where Larkom, stitched up in sacking in lieu of a coffin, had been laid to rest. The cross had occupied most of Cook’s scanty leisure since the hurried burial in the morning (for trade was still perversely brisk, despite the ragged house-flag half-mast on the little flag-pole), and he was now going to put the finishing touches to it.

It was a rude enough memorial, the upright from a board from one of the long gun-crates, and the cross-piece formed by a new barrel stave cut to the requisite length; and the lack of paint left it naked and staring.

Cook laid down on the sand a box containing his materials—a set of zinc stencil plates, used for marking barrels and cases, a stencil brush, and a pot of thin black paint—and sketched out lightly in pencil the words of the inscription:

JOHN LARKOM 14th November 1897

Then he picked out a J from the set of stencil plates, dipped the brush in the pot, and made the first letter, following it in order with O, H, and N. Something in the look of the familiar name—his own name as well as Larkom’s—made him pause and gaze at it thoughtfully, and his air was still meditative and abstracted as he stooped and picked up the L to commence the following word. Rising with the fresh plate in his hand, he happened to glance over the low hedge along the stretch of beach that meandered away to a distant, palm-clad headland; and then he noticed for the first time a little group of figures that stood out sharply against the yellow background. They were about half a mile distant and were evidently coming towards the village; and there was something in their appearance that caused him to examine them narrowly. Four of the figures walked together and carried some large object that he guessed to be a travelling hammock; four others straggled some little distance behind; and yet three more, who walked ahead of the hammock, seemed to carry guns or rifles on their shoulders.

Still holding the plate and brush, Cook stood motionless, watching with grim attention the approach of the little procession. On it came, at a rapid pace, each step bringing it more clearly into view. The hammock was now quite distinct and the passenger could be seen lying in the sagging cloth; eight of the figures were evidently ordinary natives while the other three were plainly black men dressed in a blue uniform, wearing red caps and carrying rifles and bayonets.

Cook stooped and dropped the plate back into the box, picking out, in place of it, a plate pierced with the letter O. Dipping his brush into the paint, he laid the plate over the pencilled L on the cross and brushed in the letter. Quietly and without hurry, he followed the O with an S, M, O, N, and D; and he had just finished the last letter when an English voice hailed him from over the hedge.

He turned and saw, a little distance away, a fresh-laced Englishman in a quiet undress uniform and a cheese-cutter cap, peering at him curiously from the top a sand-hill, at the base of which stood the group of hammockmen and the three Hausas.

“There’s a gate farther down,” said Cook; and, as the officer turned away, he dropped the plate that he was holding back into the box, laid down the brush, and took up a camel’s-hair pencil. Dipping this into the paint-pot, he proceeded deliberately and with no little skill to write the date in small letters under the name. Presently the sound of footsteps was audible from behind. Cook continued his writing with deliberate care and the footsteps drew nearer, slowing as they approached. Close behind him they halted, and a cheery voice exclaimed: “Good Lord! What a let-off!” and then added,

“Poor beggar! When did he die?”

“This morning, just before dawn,” replied Cook.

“Phew!” whistled the officer. “He wasn’t long getting his ticket. But, I say, how did you know his name? I thought he called himself Walker.”

“So he did. But he wished his name to be put on his grave.”

“Naturally,” said the officer. “It’s no use giving an alias at the last muster. Well, poor devil! He’s had rough luck, but perhaps it’s best, after all. It’s certainly best for me.”

“Why for you?” asked Cook.

“Because I’ve got a warrant in my pocket to arrest him for some trouble at home—signed the wrong cheque or something of that kind—and I wasn’t very sweet on the job, as you may guess. Blood’s thicker than water, you know, and the poor chap was an English gentleman after all. However, those black devils of mine don’t know what I have come for, so now nothing need be said.”

“No.” He looked round into the bluff, rosy face and clear blue eyes of the officer and asked: “How did you manage to run him to earth?”

“He was traced to Bristol and to the barque Sappho after she had sailed. Then the Sappho was seen from Quittah to bring up here, right off her station—she trades to Half-Jack—and, as we were on the lookout, we made inquiries and found that a white man had come ashore here. Good thing we didn’t find out sooner. Well, I’ll be getting back to Quittah. I’ve just come down with a new doctor to take over there. My name’s Cockeram, assistant inspector G.C.C. You’re Mr. Larkom, I suppose?”

“Won’t you stop and have a cocktail?” asked Cook, ignoring the question.

“No, thanks. Don’t take ’em. H2O is the drink for this country.”

He touched his cap and sauntered to the gate, and Cook saw him walk slowly up and down behind the hedge, apparently gathering something. Presently he sauntered back into the compound looking a little sheepish, and, as he came, twisting some blossoming twigs of wild cotton into a kind of grommet and shelling the little ‘prayer-beads’ out of some Jequirity pods that he had gathered. He walked up the sandy mound and, sprinkling the scarlet seeds in the form of a cross, laid the loop of cotton-blossoms above it.

“It’s a scurvy wreath,” he said, gruffly, without looking at Cook, “but it’s a scurvy country. So long.” He walked briskly out of the compound and, flinging himself into the hammock, gave the word to march.

The other looked after him with an unwonted softening of the grim face—yet grimmer and more lean now that the beard was gone—only resuming his writing when the little procession was growing small in the distance. The date was completed now, but, dipping his brush afresh, he wrote below in still smaller letters: ‘Now shall I sleep in the dust; and thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I shall not be.’

Then he picked up the box and went back into the house.

CHAPTER III

The Mutiny on the ‘Speedwell’

For a man in search of quiet and retirement, the village of Adaffia would seem to be an ideally eligible spot; especially if the man in question should happen be under a rather heavy cloud. Situated in a little known part of the Slave Coast, many miles distant from any town or settlement where white men had their abodes, it offered a haven of security to the Ishmaelite if it offered little else.

Thus reflected John Osmond, late John Walker, and now ‘Mr. James Cook,’ if the need for a surname should arise. But hitherto it had not arisen; for, to the natives, he was simply ‘the white man’ or ‘mastah,’ and no other European had passed along the coast since the day on which he had buried Larkom—and his own identity—and entered into his inheritance.

He reviewed the short interval with its tale of eventless and monotonous days as he sat smoking a thoughtful pipe in the shady coconut grove that encompassed the hamlet, letting his thoughts travel back anon to a more distant and eventful past, and all the while keeping an attentive eye on a shabby-looking brigantine that was creeping up from the south. It was not, perhaps, a very thrilling spectacle, but yet Osmond watched the approaching vessel with lively interest. For though, on that deserted coast, ships may be seen to pass up and down on the rim of the horizon, two or three, perhaps, in a month, this was the first vessel that had headed for the land since the day on which he had become the owner of the factory and the sole representative of European civilization in Adaffia. It was natural, then, that he should watch her with interest and curiosity, not only as a visitor from the world which he had left, but as one with which he was personally concerned; for if her people had business ashore, that business was pretty certainly with him.

At a distance of about a mile and a half from the shore the brigantine luffed up, fired a gun, hoisted a dirty red ensign, let go her anchor, scandalized her mainsail, lowered her head-sails, and roughly dewed up the square-sails. A fishing canoe, which had paddled out to meet her, ran alongside and presently returned shoreward with a couple of white men on board. And still Osmond made no move. Business considerations should have led him to go down to the beach and meet the white men, since they were almost certainly bound for his factory; but other considerations restrained him. The fewer white men that he met, the safer he would be: for, to the Ishmaelite, every stranger is a possible enemy or, worse still, a possible acquaintance. And then, although he felt no distaste for the ordinary trade with the natives, he did not much fancy himself standing behind a counter selling gin and tobacco to a party of British shell-backs. So he loitered under the coconuts and determined to leave the business transactions to his native assistant, Kwaku Mensah.

The canoe landed safely through the surf; the two white men stepped ashore and disappeared towards the village. Osmond refilled his pipe and walked a little farther away. Presently a file of natives appeared moving towards the shore, each carrying on his head a green-painted gin-case. Osmond counted them—there were six in all—and watched them stow the cases in the canoe. Then, suddenly, the two white men appeared, running furiously. They made straight for the canoe and jumped in; the canoe men pushed off and the little craft began to wriggle its way cautiously through the surf. And at this moment another figure made its appearance on the beach and began to make unmistakable demonstrations of hostility to the receding canoe.

Now, a man who wears a scarlet flannelette coat, green cotton trousers, yellow carpet slippers, and a gold-laced smoking-cap is not difficult to identify even at some little distance. Osmond instantly recognized his assistant and strode away to make inquiries.

There was no need to ask what was the matter. As Osmond crossed the stretch of blown sand that lay between the palm-grove and the beach, his retainer came running towards him, flourishing his arms wildly and fairly gibbering with excitement.

“Dem sailor man, sah!” he gasped, when he had come within earshot, “he dam tief, sah! He tief six case gin!”

“Do you mean that those fellows didn’t pay for that gin?” Osmond demanded.

“No, sah. No pay nutting. Dey send de case down for beach and dey tell me find some country cloth. I go into store to look dem cloth, den dey run away for deir canoe. Dey no pay nutting.”

“Very well, Mensah. We’ll go on board and collect the money or bring back the gin. Can you get a canoe?”

“All canoe go out fishing excepting dat one,” said Mensah.

“Then we must wait for that one to come back,” was the reply; and Osmond seated himself on the edge of dry sand that overhung the beach and fixed a steady gaze on the dwindling canoe. Mensah sat down likewise and glanced dubiously at his grim-faced employer; but whatever doubts he had as to the wisdom of the proposed expedition, he kept them to himself. For John Osmond—like Father O’Flynn—had a ‘wonderful way with him’; a way that induced unruly intruders to leave the compound hurriedly and rub themselves a good deal when they got outside. So Mensah kept his own counsel.

The canoe ran alongside the brigantine, and, having discharged its passengers and freight, put off for its return shorewards. Then a new phase in the proceedings began. The brigantine’s head-sails, which lay loose on the jib-boom, began to slide up the stays; the untidy bunches of canvas aloft began to flatten out to the pull of the sheets. The brigantine, in fact, was preparing to get under way. But it was all done in a very leisurely fashion; so deliberately that the last of the square-sails was barely sheeted home when the canoe grounded on the beach.

Osmond wasted no time. While Mensah was giving the necessary explanations, he set his shoulder to the peak of the canoe and shoved her round head to sea, regardless of the cloud of spray that burst over him.

The canoe-men were nothing loath, for the African is keenly appreciative of a humorous situation. Moreover, they had some experience of the white man’s peculiar methods of persuasion and felt a natural desire to see them exercised on persons of his own colour—especially as those persons had been none too civil. Accordingly they pushed off gleefully and plunged once more into the breakers, digging their massive, trident-shaped paddles into the water to the accompaniment of those uncanny hisses, groans, and snatches of song with which the African canoe-man sweetens his labour.

Meanwhile their passenger sat in the bow of the canoe, wiping the sea water from his face and fixing a baleful glance on the brigantine, as she wallowed drunkenly on the heavy swell. Slowly the tack of the mainsail descended, and then, to a series of squeaks from the halyard-blocks, the peak of the sail rose by stow jerks. The canoe bounded forward over the great rollers, the hull of the vessel rose and began to loom large above the waters, and Osmond had just read the name ‘Speedwell, Bristol’ on her broad counter, when his ear caught a new sound—the ‘clink, clink’ of the windlass-pawl. The anchor was being hove up.

But the canoe-men had heard the sound, too, and, with a loud groan, dug their paddles into the water with furious energy. The canoe shot forward under the swaying counter and swept alongside, the brigantine rolled over as if she would annihilate the little craft, and Osmond, grasping a chain-plate, swung himself up into the channel, whence he climbed to the bulwark rail and dropped down on the deck.

The windlass was manned by six of the crew, who bobbed up and down slowly at the ends of the long levers; a seventh man was seated on the deck, with one of the gin cases open before him, in the act of uncorking a bottle. The other five cases were ranged along by the bulwark.

“Good afternoon,” said Osmond, whose arrival had been unnoticed by the preoccupied crew; “you forgot to pay for that gin.”

The seated man looked up with a start, first at Osmond and then at Mensah, who now sat astride the rail in a strategic position that admitted of advance or retreat as circumstances might suggest. The clink of the windlass ceased, and the six men came sauntering aft with expectant grins.

“What are you doin’ aboard this ship?” demanded the first man.

“I’ve come to collect my dues,” replied Osmond.

“Have yer?” said the sailor. “You’ll be the factory bug, I reckon?”

“I’m the owner of that gin.”

“Now that’s where you make a mistake, young feller. I’m the owner of this here gin.”

“Then you’ve got to pay me one pound four.”

The sailor set the bottle down on the deck and rose to his feet.

“Look here, young feller,” said he, “I’m goin’ to give you a valuable tip—gratis. You git overboard. Sharp. D’ye hear?”

“I want one pound four,” said Osmond, in a misleadingly quiet tone.

“Pitch ’im overboard, Dhoody,” one of the other sailors counselled. “Send ’im for a swim, mate.”

“I’m a-goin’ to,” said Dhoody, “if he don’t clear out,” and he began to advance, crabwise, across the deck in the manner of a wrestler attacking.

Osmond stood motionless in a characteristic attitude, with his long legs wide apart, his hands clasped behind him, his gaunt shoulders hunched up, and his chin thrust forward, swaying regularly to the heave of the deck, and with his grim, hatchet face turned impassively towards his adversary, presented a decidedly uninviting aspect. Perhaps Dhoody appreciated this fact; at any rate, he advanced with an ostentatious show of strategy and much intimidating air-clawing. But he made a bad choice of the moment for the actual attack, for he elected to rush in just as the farther side of the deck was rising. In an instant Osmond’s statuesque immobility changed to bewilderingly rapid movement. There was a resounding “Smack, smack,” Dhoody flew backwards, capsizing two men behind him, staggered down the sloping deck, closely followed by Osmond (executing a continuous series of ‘postman’s knocks’ on the Dhoodian countenance), and finally fell sprawling in the scuppers, with his head jammed against a stanchion. The two capsized men scrambled to their feet, and, with their four comrades, closed in on Osmond with evidently hostile intentions. But the latter did not wait to be attacked. Acting on the advice of the Duke of Wellington—whom, by the way, he somewhat resembled in appearance—to ‘hit first and keep on hitting,’ he charged the group of seamen like an extremely self-possessed bull, hammering right and left, regardless of the unskilful thumps that he got in return, and gradually drove them, bewildered by his extraordinary quickness and the weight of his well-directed blows, through the space between the fore mast and the bulwark. Slowly they backed away before his continuous battering, hitting out at him ineffectively, hampered by their numbers and the confined space, until one man, who had had the bad luck to catch two upper cuts in succession, uttered a howl of rage and whipped out his sheath-knife. Osmond’s quick eye caught the dull glint of the steel just as he was passing the fife-rail. Instantly he whisked out an unoccupied iron belaying-pin, whirled it over and brought it down on the man’s head. The fellow dropped like a pole-axed ox, and as the belaying-pin rose aloft once more, the other five men sprang back out of range.

How the combat might have ended under other circumstances it is impossible to say. Dhoody had disappeared—with a bloody scalp and an obliterated eye; the man with the knife lay unconscious on the deck with a little red pool collecting by his head; the other five men had scattered and were hastily searching for weapons and missiles, so far as was possible with this bloodthirsty Bedlamite of a ‘factory bug’ flying up and down the deck flourishing a belaying-pin. Their principal occupation, in fact, was in keeping out of reach; and they did not always succeed.

Suddenly a shot rang out. A little cloud of splinters flew from the side of the mainmast, and the five seamen ducked simultaneously. Glancing quickly forward, Osmond beheld his late antagonist, Dhoody, emerging from the forecastle hatch and taking aim at him with a still smoking revolver. Now, the ‘factory bug’ was a pugnacious man and perhaps over-confident, too. But he had some idea of his limitations. You can’t walk up twenty yards of deck to punch the head of a man who is covering you with a revolver. At the moment, Osmond was abreast of the uncovered main hatch. A passing glance had shown him a tier of kernel bags covering the floor of the hold. Without a moment’s hesitation he stooped with his hands on the coaming, and, vaulting over, dropped plump on the bags, and then, picking himself up, scrambled forward under the shelter of the deck.

The hold of the Speedwell, like that of most vessels of her class, was a simple cavity, extending from the forecastle bulkhead to that of the after-cabin. Of this the forward part still contained a portion of the out ward cargo, while the homeward lading was stowed abaft the main hatch. But the hold was two-thirds empty and afforded plenty of room to move about.

Osmond took up a position behind some bales of Manchester goods and waited for the next move on the part of the enemy. He had not long to wait. Voices from above told him that the crew had gathered round the hatch; indeed, from his retreat, he could see some of them craning over the coamings, peering into the dark recesses of the hold.

“What are yer goin’ to do, Dhoody?” one of the men asked.

“I’m goin’ below to finish the beggar off,” was the reply in a tone of savage determination.

The place of a ladder was supplied by wooden footholds nailed to the massive stanchion that supported the deck and rested on the kelson. Osmond kept a sharp eye on the top foothold, clambering quickly on the closely packed bales to get within reach; and as a booted foot appeared below the beam and settled on the projection, he brought down his belaying-pin on the toe with a rap that elicited a yell of agony and caused the hasty withdrawal of the foot. For a minute or more the air was thick with execrations, and, as Osmond crept back into shelter, an irregular stamping on the deck above suggested some person hopping actively on one leg.

But the retreat was not premature. Hardly had Osmond squeezed himself behind the stack of bales when a succession of shots rang out from above, and bullet after bullet embedded itself in the rolls of cotton cloth. Osmond counted five shots and when there came an interval—presumably to reload—he ventured to peer between the bales, and was able to see Dhoody frantically emptying the discharged chambers of the revolver and ramming in fresh cartridges, while the five sailors stared curiously into the hold.

“Now then,” said Dhoody, when he had re-loaded, “you just nip down, Sam Winter, and see if I’ve hit him, and I’ll stand by here to shoot if he goes for yer.”

“Not me,” replied Sam. “You ’and me the gun and just pop down yerself. I’ll see as he don’t hurt yer.”

“How can I?” roared Dhoody, “with me fut hammered into a jelly?”

“Well,” retorted Sam, “what about my feet? D’ye think I can fly?”

“Oh,” said Dhoody, contemptuously, “if you funk the job, I won’t press yer. Bob Simmons ain’t afraid, I know. He’ll go.”

“Will he?” said Simmons. “I’m jiggered if he will! That bloke’s too handy with that pin for my taste. But I’ll hold the gun while you go, Dhoody.”

Dhoody cursed the whole ship’s company collectively and individually for a pack of chicken-livered curs. But not one of them would budge. Each was quite willing, and even eager, to do the shooting from above; but no one was disposed to go below and ‘draw the badger.’ The proceedings seemed to have come to a deadlock when one of the sailors was inspired with a new idea.

“Look ’ere, mates,” he said, oracularly; “’Tis like this ’ere: ’ere’s this ’ere bloomin’ ship with a nomicidal maniac in ’er ’old. Now, none of us ain’t a-goin’ down there for to fetch ’im out. We don’t want our ’eds broke same as what ’e’s broke Jim Darker’s ’ed. Contrarywise, so long as ’e’s loose on this ship, no man’s life ain’t worth a brass farden. Wherefore I says, bottle ’im up, I says; clap on the hatch-covers and batten down. Then we’ve got ’im, and then we can sleep in our bunks in peace.”

“That’s right enough, Bill,” another voice broke in, “but you’re forgettin’ that we’ve got a little job to do down below there.”

“Not yet, we ain’t,” the other rejoined; “not afore we gets down Ambriz way, and he’ll be quiet enough by then.”

This seemed to satisfy all parties, including even the ferocious Dhoody, and a general movement warned Osmond that his incarceration was imminent, For one moment he was disposed to make a last, desperate sortie, but the certainty that he would be a dead man before he reached the deck decided him to lie low. Many things might happen before the brigantine reached Ambriz.

As the hatchcovers grated over the coaming and dropped into their beds, the prisoner took a rapid survey of his surroundings before the last glimmer of daylight should be shut out. But he had scarcely time to memorize the geographical features of the hold before the last of the hatch-covers was dropped into its place. Then he heard the tarpaulin drag over the hatch, shutting out the last gleams of light that had filtered through the joints of the covers; the battens were dropped into their catches, the wedges driven home, and he sat, in a darkness like that of the tomb.

The hold was intolerably hot and close. The roasting deck above was like the roof of an oven. A greasy reek arose from the bags of kernels, a strange, mixed effluvium from the bales of cotton cloth. And the place was full of strange noises. At every roll of the ship, as the strain of the rigging changed sides, a universal groan arose; bulkheads squeaked, timbers grated, the masts creaked noisily in their housings, and unctuous gurgles issued from the tier of oil puncheons. It was clear to Osmond that this was no place for a prolonged residence. The sweat that already trickled down his face meant thirst in the near future, and death if he failed to discover the tank or water-casks. A diet of palm kernels did not commend itself; and, now that the hatch was covered, the water in the bilge made its peculiar properties manifest. The obvious necessity was to get out; but the method of escape was not obvious at all.

From his own position Osmond’s thoughts turned to the state of the vessel. From the first, it had been evident to him that there was something very abnormal about this ship. Apart from the lawless behaviour of the crew, there was the fact that since he had come on board he had seen no vestige of an officer. Dhoody had seemed to have some sort of authority, but the manner in which the men addressed him showed that he had no superior status. Then, where was the ‘afterguard’? They had not gone ashore. And there had been enough uproar to bring them on deck if they had been on board. There was only one reasonable conclusion from these facts, and it was confirmed by Dhoody’s proprietary air and by a certain brown stain that Osmond had noticed on the deck. There had been a mutiny on the Speedwell.

The inveterate smoker invokes the aid of tobacco in all cases where concentrated thought is required. Osmond made shift to fill his pipe in the dark, and, noting that his tobacco was low, struck a match. The flame lighted up the corner into which he had crept and rendered visible some objects that he had not noticed before; and, at the first glance, any lingering uncertainty as to the state of affairs on the Speedwell vanished in an instant. For the objects that he had seen comprised a shipwright’s auger, a caulking mallet, and a dozen or more large wooden pegs cut to a taper at one end.

The purpose of these appliances was unmistakable, and very clearly explained the nature of the ‘little job’ that the sailors had to do down below. Those rascals intended to scuttle the ship. Holes were to be bored in the bottom with the auger and the plugs driven into them. Then, when the mutineers were ready to leave, the plugs would be pulled out, and the ship abandoned with the water pouring into her hold. It was a pretty scheme, if not a novel one, and it again suggested the question: Where were the officers?

Turning over this question, Osmond remembered that Dhoody had gone to the forecastle to fetch his revolver. Then the crew would appear to be still occupying their own quarters; whence it followed that, if the officers were on board, they were probably secured in their berths aft.

This consideration suggested a new idea. Osmond lit another match and explored the immediate neighbourhood in the hope of finding more tools; but there were only the auger and the mallet, the pegs having probably been tapered with a sheath-knife. As the match went out, Osmond quenched the glowing tip, and, picking up the auger and mallet, though for the latter he had no present use, began to grope his way aft. The part of the hold abaft the main hatch had a ground tier of oil-puncheons, above which was stowed a quantity of produce, principally copra and kernels in bags. Climbing on top of this, Osmond crawled aft until he brought up against the bulkhead that separated the cabin from the hold. Here he commenced operations without delay. Rapping with his knuckles to make sure of the absence of obstructing stanchions, he set the point of the auger against the bulkhead, and, grasping the cross lever, fell to work vigorously. It was a big tool, boring an inch and a half hole, and correspondingly heavy to turn; but Osmond drove it with a will, and was soon rewarded by feeling it give with a jerk, and when he withdrew it, there was a circular hole through which streamed the welcome daylight.

He applied his eye to the hole (which, in spite of the thickness of the planking, afforded a fairly wide view) and looked into what was evidently the cuddy or cabin. He could see a small, nearly triangular table fitted with ‘fiddles,’ or safety rims, between which a big water-bottle slid backwards and forwards as the ship rolled, pursued by a dozen or more green limes and an empty tumbler—a sight which made his mouth water. Opposite was the companion-ladder and at each side of it a door—probably those of the captain’s and mate’s cabins. Above the table would be the sky light, though he could not see it; but he could make out some pieces of broken glass on the floor and one or two on the table; and he now recalled that he had noticed, when on deck, that the skylight glass was smashed.

Having made this survey, he returned to his task. Above the hole that he had bored, he proceeded to bore another, slightly intersecting it, and above this another, and so on; tracing a continuous curved row of holes, each hole encroaching a little on the next, and the entire series looking, from the dark hold, like a luminous silhouette of a string of beads. It was arduous work, and monotonous, but Osmond kept at it with only an occasional pause to wipe his streaming face and steal a wistful look at the water-bottle on the cabin table. No sign did he perceive there of either officers or crew; indeed the latter were busy on deck, for he had heard the clink of the windlass, and when that had ceased, the rattle of running gear as the sails were trimmed. And meanwhile the curved line of holes extended along the bulkhead and began to define an ellipse some eighteen inches by twelve.

By the time he had made the twenty-fourth hole, a sudden weakening of the light that came through informed him that the sun was setting. He took a last peep into the cabin before the brief tropic twilight should have faded, and was surprised to note that the tumbler seemed to have vanished and that there appeared to be less water in the bottle. Speculating vaguely on the possible explanation of this, he fell to work again, adding hole after hole to the series, guiding himself by the sense of touch when the light failed completely.

The thirty-eighth hole nearly completed the ellipse, and was within an inch of the first one bored. Standing back from the bulkhead, Osmond gave a vigorous kick on the space enclosed by the line of holes, and sent the oval piece of planking flying through into the cabin. Passing his head through the opening, he listened awhile. Sounds of revelry from the deck, now plainly audible, told him that the gin was doing its work and that the crew were fully occupied. He slipped easily through the opening, and, groping his way to the table, found the water-bottle and refreshed himself with a long and delicious draught. Then, feeling his way to the companion-ladders he knocked with his knuckles on the door at its port side.

No one answered; and yet he had a feeling of some soft and stealthy movement within. Accordingly he knocked again, a little more sharply, and as there was still no answer, he turned the handle and pushed gently at the door, which was, however, bolted or locked. But the effort was not in vain, for as he gave a second, harder push, a woman’s voice—which sounded quite near, as if the speaker were close to the door—demanded “Who is there?”

Considerably taken aback by the discovery of this unexpected denizen of the mutiny-ridden ship, Osmond was for a few moments at a loss for a reply. At length, putting his mouth near to the keyhole (for the skylight was open and the steersman, at least, not far away), he answered softly: “A friend.”

The reply did not appear to have the desired effect, for the woman—also speaking into the keyhole—demanded sharply:

“But who are you? And what do you want?”

These were difficult questions. Addressing himself to the first, and boggling awkwardly at the unaccustomed lie, Osmond stammered:

“My name is—er—is Cook, but you don’t know me. I am not one of the crew. If you wouldn’t mind opening the door, I could explain matters.”

“I shall do nothing of the kind,” was the reply.

“There’s really no occasion for you to be afraid,” Osmond urged.

“Isn’t there?” she retorted. “And who said I was afraid? Let me tell you that I’ve got a pistol, and I shall shoot if I have any of your nonsense. So you’d better be off.”

Osmond grinned appreciatively but decided to abandon the parley.

“Is there anyone aft here besides you?” he asked.

“Never you mind,” was the tart reply. “You had better go back where you came from.”

Osmond rose with a grim smile and began cautiously to feel his way towards the companion-steps and past them to the other door that he had seen. Having found it and located the handle, he rapped sharply but not too loudly.

“Well?” demanded a gruff voice from within.

Osmond turned the handle, and, as a stream of light issued from the opening door, he entered hastily and closed it behind him. He found himself in a small cabin lighted by a candle-lamp that swung in gimballs from the bulkhead. One side was occupied by a bunk in which reclined a small, elderly man, who appeared to have been reading, for he held an open volume, which Osmond observed with some surprise to be Applin’s Commentary On the Book of Job. His head was roughly bandaged and he wore his left arm in a primitive sling.

“Well,” he repeated, taking off his spectacles to look at Osmond.

“You are the captain, I presume?” said Osmond.

“Yes. Name of Hartup. Who are you?”

Osmond briefly explained the circumstances of his arrival on board.

“Ah!” said the captain. “I wondered who was boring those holes when I went into the cabin just now. Well, you’ve put your head into a hornet’s nest, young man.”

“Yes,” said Osmond “and I’m going to keep it there until I’m paid to take it out.”

The captain smiled sourly. “You are like my mate, Will Redford; very like him you are to look at, and the same quarrelsome disposition, apparently.”

“Where is the mate now?”

“Overboard,” replied the captain. “He got flourishing a revolver and the second mate stabbed him.”

“Is the second mate’s name Dhoody?”

“Yes. But he’s only a substitute. The proper second mate died up at Sherbro, so I promoted Dhoody from before the mast.”

“I take it that your crew have mutinied?”

“Yes,” said the captain, placidly. “There is over a ton of ivory on board and two hundred ounces of gold dust in that chest that you are sitting on. It was a great temptation. Dhoody began it and Redford made it worse by bullying.”

“Dhoody seems to be a tough customer.”

“Very,” said the captain. “A violent man. A man of wrath. I am surprised that he didn’t make an end of you.”

“So is he, I expect,” Osmond replied with a grin; “and I hope to give him one or two more surprises before we part. What are you going to do?”

The captain sighed. “We are in the hands of Providence,” said he.

“You’ll be in the hands of Davy Jones if you don’t look out,” said Osmond. “They are going to scuttle the ship when they get to Ambriz. Can I get anything to eat?”

“There is corned pork and biscuit in that locker,” said the captain “and water and limes on the cabin table. No intoxicants. This is a temperance ship.”

Osmond smiled grimly as a wild chorus from above burst out as if in commentary on the captain’s statement. But he made no remark. Corned pork was better than discussion just now.

“You seem to have been in the wars,” he remarked, glancing at the skipper’s bandaged head and arm.

“Yes. Fell down the companion; at least, Dhoody shoved me down. I’ll get you to fix a new dressing on my arm when you’ve finished eating. You’ll find some lint and rubber plaster in the medicine chest there.”

“By the way,” said Osmond, as he cracked a biscuit on his knee, “there’s a woman in the next berth. Sounded like quite a ladylike person, too. Who is she?”

The captain shook his head. “Yes,” he groaned, “there’s another complication. She is a Miss Burleigh; daughter of Sir Hector Burleigh, the Administrator or Acting Governor, or something of the sort, of the Gold Coast.”

“But what the deuce is she doing on an old rattle trap of a windjammer like this?”

The captain sat up with a jerk. “I’ll trouble you, young man,” he said, severely, “to express yourself with more decorum. I am the owner of this vessel, and if she is good enough for me she will have to be good enough for you. Nobody asked you to come aboard, you know.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Osmond. “Didn’t mean to give offence. But you’ll admit that she isn’t cut out for the high-class passenger trade.”

“She is not,” Captain Hartup agreed, “and that is what I pointed out to the young woman when she asked for a passage from Axim to Accra. I told her we had no accommodation for females, but she just giggled and said that didn’t matter. She is a very self-willed young woman.”

“But why didn’t she take a passage on a steamer?”

“There was no steamer due for the Leeward Coast. Her father, Sir Hector, tried to put her off; but she would have her own way. Said it would be a bit of an adventure; travelling on a sailing ship.”

“Gad! She was right there,” remarked Osmond.

“She was, indeed. Well, she came aboard and Redford gave her his berth, he moving into the second mate’s berth, as Dhoody remained in the forecastle. And there she is; and I wish she was at Jericho.”

“I expect she does, too. What happened to her when the mutiny broke out?”

“I told her to go to her berth and lock herself in. But no one attempted to molest her.”

“I am glad to hear that,” said Osmond, and as he broke another biscuit, he asked: “Did you secure the companion-hatch?”

“Miss Burleigh did. She fixed the bar across the inside of the doors. But it wasn’t necessary, for they had barricaded the doors outside. They didn’t want to come down to us, they only wanted to prevent us from going up on deck.”

“She was wise to bolt the doors, all the same,” said Osmond; and for a time there was silence in the cabin, broken only by the vigorous mastication of stony biscuit.

CHAPTER IV

The Phantom Mate

When he had finished his rough and hasty meal, Osmond attended to his host’s injuries, securing a pad of lint on the lacerated arm with strips cut from a broad roll of the sticky rubber plaster. Then he went out into the cabin to reconnoitre and take a drink of water, closing the door of the captain’s berth so that the light should not be seen from above.

The hubbub on deck had now subsided into occasional snatches of indistinct melody. The men had had a pretty long bout and were—to judge by the tone of the songs—getting drowsy. Osmond climbed on to the table and began carefully to pick the remainder of the glass out of the skylight frame. The skylight had a fixed top—there being a separate ventilator for the cabin—and, instead of the usual guard-bars, had loose wood shutters for use in bad weather. Hence the present catastrophe; and hence, when Osmond had picked away the remains of the glass, there was a clear opening through which he could, by hoisting himself up, thrust out his head and shoulders. To avoid this fatiguing position, however, he descended and placed on the table a case that he had noticed by daylight on a side-locker; then, mounting, he was able, by standing on this, to look out at his ease, and yet pop down out of sight if necessary.

When he cautiously thrust out his head to look up and down the deck, he was able at first to see very little, though there was now a moderate starlight. Forward, whence drowsy mumblings mingled with snores came from the neighbourhood of the caboose, he could see only a projecting pair of feet; and aft, where a single voice carolled huskily intervals, his view was cut off by the boat—which lay at the side of the deck—and by the hood of the companion-hatch. He craned out farther; and now he could catch a glimpse of the man at the wheel. The fellow was not taking his duties very seriously, for he was seated on the grating unhandily filling his pipe and letting the ship steer herself; which she did well enough, if direction was of no consequence, the light breeze being a couple of points free and the main-sheet well slacked out. Osmond watched the man light his pipe, recognizing then the flat, shaven face—which he had punched earlier in the day—and as he watched he rapidly reviewed the strategic position and considered its possibilities. The flat, shaven face, with its wide mouth, offered a vague suggestion. He considered; looked out again; listened awhile; and then descended with a distinctly purposeful air. First he crept silently up the steps of the companion and softly removed the bar from the inside of the doors. Then he made his way to the skipper’s cabin.

As he entered, the “old man” looked up from his book inquiringly.

“I’ve come down for a bit of rubber plaster,” said Osmond.

The skipper nodded towards the medicine-chest and resumed his studies, while Osmond cut off a strip of plaster some seven inches by four.

“You haven’t got any thin rope or small-stuff in here, I suppose?” said Osmond.

“There’s a coil of rope-yarn on the peg under those oilskins—those smart yellow ones; those were poor Redford’s. He was too much of a dandy to wear common black oilies like the rest of us. What do you want the stuff for?”

“I want to try a little experiment,” replied Osmond. “But I’ll tell you about it afterwards.,” and he took down the oilskins and the coil of line, the latter of which he carried away with him to the main cabin together with the roll of plaster and the scissors. Here, by the faint starlight that now mitigated the darkness, he cut off a couple of lengths of the line and, having pocketed one and made a bowline-knot or fixed loop in the end of the other, ascended the table and once more looked out on deck. Save for some resonant snoring from forward, all was quiet and the ship seemed to have settled down for the night. The helmsman, however, was still awake, for Osmond heard him yawn wearily; but he had left the wheel with a rope hitched round one of the spokes, and was now leaning over the quarter-rail, apparently contemplating the passing water.

It was an ideal opportunity. Grasping the frame of the skylight, Osmond gave a light spring and came through the opening like a very stealthy harlequin. Then, creeping along the deck in the shelter of the boat and that of the companion-hood, he rose and stole noiselessly on the toes of his rubber-soled shoes towards the preoccupied seaman. Nearer and nearer he crept, grasping an end of the line between the fingers of either hand, and holding the strip of plaster spread out on the palm of the left, until he stood close behind his quarry. Then, as the sailor removed his pipe to emit another enormous yawn, he slipped his left hand round, clapped the plaster over the open mouth, and instantly pinioned the man’s arms by clasping him tightly round the chest. The fellow struggled furiously and would have shouted, but was only able to utter muffled grunts and snorts through his nose. His arms were gripped to his sides as if in a vice and his efforts to kick were all foreseen and adroitly frustrated. He had been taken by surprise by a man who was his superior in mere strength and who was an expert wrestler into the bargain; and he was further handicapped by superstitious terror and lack of breath.

The struggle went on with surprisingly little noise—since the sailor could not cry out—and meanwhile Osmond contrived to pass the end of the line through the loop of the bowline and draw it inch by inch until it was ready for the final pull. Then, with a skilful throw, he let the man down softly, face downwards, on the deck; jerked the line tight and sat on his prisoner’s legs. He was now master of the situation. Taking another turn with the line round the man’s body, he secured it with a knot in the middle of the back, and with the other length of line, which he had in his pocket, he lashed his captive’s ankles together.

The almost noiseless struggle had passed unnoticed by the sleepers forward. No watch or lookout had been set and it had apparently been left to the helmsman to rouse up his relief when he guessed his “trick” at the wheel to have expired. Osmond listened for a few moments, and then, removing the batten with which the doors of the companion had been secured on the outside, opened the hatch, slid his helpless prisoner down the ladder; closed the doors again, replaced the batten, and, creeping through the opening of the sky light, let himself down into the cabin. Here he seized his writhing captive, and, dragging him across the cabin, thrust him head-first through the hole in the bulkhead and followed him into the hold, where he finally deposited him as comfortably as possible on the kernel bags under the main hatch.

“Now, listen,” he said, sternly. “I’m going to take that plaster off your mouth; but if you utter a sound, I shall stick it on again and fix it with a lashing.” He peeled the plaster off, and, as the man drew a long breath, he demanded: “Do you hear what I say?

“Yes,” was the reply; “I hear. You’ve got me, governor, fair on the hop, you have. You won’t hear no more of me. And if you can cop that there Dhoody the same way, there won’t be no more trouble on this ship.”

“I’ll see what can be done,” said Osmond; and with this he returned into the cabin, and, cutting off two fresh lengths of rope-yarn and another piece of plaster, prepared for a fresh capture.

But, at present, there was no one to capture. The wheel jerked to and fro in its lashing, the brigantine walloped along quietly before the soft breeze, the crew slumbered peacefully forward, and Osmond looked out of the skylight on an empty deck, listening impatiently to the chorus of snores and wondering if he would get another chance.

It is impossible to say how long this state of affairs would have lasted if nothing had happened to disturb it. As it was, a sudden accident dispelled the universal repose. The unsteered vessel, yawing from side to side, lifted her stern to a following sea and yawed so far that her mainsail got by the lee. The long boom swung inboard and the big sail jibed over with a slam that shook the entire fabric. The vessel immediately broached to with all her square-sails aback, and heeled over until the water bubbled up through her scupper holes.

The noise and the jar roused some of the sleepers forward and a hoarse voice bawled out angrily: “Now you, Sam! What the devil are you up to? You’ll have the masts overboard if you don’t look out.”

Immediately after, Dhoody came staggering aft along the sloping deck, followed by one or two bewildered sailors. The group stood gazing in muddled surprise at the untended wheel, and Dhoody exclaimed:

“Where’s the beggar gone to? Here, you Sam! Where are you?”

“P’raps he’s gone down to the cabin,” one of the men suggested.

“No, he ain’t,” said Dhoody. “The companion’s fastened up.”

“So it is, mate,” agreed the other with a glance at the battened doors; and the party rambled slowly round the poop, peering out into the darkness astern and speculating vaguely on the strange disappearance.

“He’s gone overboard,” said Dhoody; “that’s what he’s done. So you’d better take the wheel now, Bob Simmons; and you just mind yer helm, or you’ll be goin’ overboard, too, with all that lush in yer ’ed.”

Accordingly Simmons, protesting sleepily that it “wasn’t his trick yet,” took his place at the wheel. The vessel was put once more on her course, and the men, with the exception of Dhoody, crawled forward to the shelter of the caboose. The second mate remained awhile, yawning drearily and impressing on the somnolent Simmons the responsibilities of his position. Then, at last, he too went forward, and the ship settled down to its former quiet.

Osmond waited for some time in case Dhoody should return to see that the new helmsman was attending to his instructions; but as he made no reappearance and was now probably asleep, it seemed safe to resume operations. Osmond thrust his head and shoulders out through the opening, but, though he could see that the wheel was already deserted, the unfaithful Simmons was invisible. Presently, however, a soft snore from somewhere close by invited him to further investigation, and as he crept out on deck, the enormity of Simmons’s conduct was revealed. He had not sunk overpowered at his post, but had deliberately seated himself on the deck in a comfortable position with his back against the doors of the companion, where he now reclined at his ease, wrapped in alcoholic slumber. If only Dhoody would keep out of the way, the capture was as good as made.

Osmond stole up to the sleeping seaman and softly encircled his arms with the noose, leaving it slack with the end handy for the final pull. Then he put the man’s feet together, and passing the lashing round the ankles, secured it firmly. This aroused the sleeper, who began to mumble protests. Instantly, Osmond slapped the plaster on his mouth, jerked the arm-lashing tight and secured it with a knot; unbattened the doors, and, opening them, slid the wriggling captive down the ladder on to the cabin floor. Then he came up, closed and re-battened the doors, slipped down through the skylight, and, dragging his prisoner to the bulkhead, bundled him neck and crop through the opening and finally deposited him on the kernel-bags beside the other man, who was now slumbering peacefully. Having removed the plaster, he remained awhile, for Simmons was in no condition to give promises of good behaviour; but in a few minutes he gave what was more reassuring, a good healthy snore; on which Osmond departed, leaving him to sleep the sleep of the drunk.

The capture had been made none too soon. As Osmond came through into the cabin, he was aware of voices on deck, and, climbing on to the table, put his head up to listen, but keeping carefully out of sight.

“It’s a dam rum go,” a hoarse voice exclaimed. “Seems as if there was somethink queer about this bloomin’ ship. First of all this factory devil comes aboard like a roarin’ lion seekin’ who he can bash on the ’ed; then Sam goes overboard; then Bob Simmons goes overboard. ’Tain’t nateral, I tell yer. There’s somethink queer, and it’s my belief as it’s all along o’ this mutiny.”

“Oh, shut up, Bill,” growled Dhoody.

“Bill’s right, though,” said another voice. “We ain’t ’ad no luck since we broke out. I’m for chuckin’ this Ambriz job and lettin’ the old man out.”

“And what about Redford?” demanded Dhoody.

“Redford ain’t no affair of mine,” was the sulky reply; to which Dhoody rejoined in terms that cannot, in the interests of public morality, be literally recorded; concluding with the remark that ‘if he’d got to swing, it wouldn’t be for Redford only.’

“Then,” said the first speaker, “you’d better take the wheel yerself. I ain’t goin’ to.”

“More ain’t I,” said another. “I don’t want to go overboard.”

A prolonged wrangle ensued, the upshot of which was that the men drifted away forward, leaving Dhoody to steer the ship.

Osmond quietly renewed his preparations, though he realized that a considerably tougher encounter loomed ahead. Dhoody was not only less drunk than the others; he was a good deal more alert and intelligent and he probably had a revolver in his pocket. And the other men would now be more easily roused after this second catastrophe. He peeped out from time to time, always finding Dhoody wide awake at his post, and sensible of drowsy conversation from the sailors forward.

It was fully an hour before a chance seemed to present itself; and Osmond was too wary to attack blindly without a chance. By that time the mumblings from forward had subsided into snores and the ship was once more wrapped in repose. Looking out at that moment, he saw Dhoody staring critically aloft, as if dissatisfied with the trim of the sails. Presently the second mate stepped away from the wheel, and, casting off one of the lee braces, took a long pull at the rope. Now was the time for action. Slipping out through the skylight, Osmond stole quickly along in the shelter of the boat, and, emerging behind Dhoody, stood up just as the latter stooped to belay the rope. He waited until his quarry had set a half-hitch on the last turn and rose to go back to the wheel; then he sprang at him, clapped the plaster on his mouth, and encircled him with his arms.

But Dhoody was a tough adversary. He was stronger, more sober, and less nervous than the others. And he had a moustache, which interfered with the set of the plaster, so that his breathing was less hampered. In fact, Osmond had to clap his hand on it to prevent the man from calling out; and thus it was that the catastrophe befell. For as Osmond relaxed his bear-hug with one arm, Dhoody wriggled himself partly free. In a moment his hand flew to his pocket, and Osmond grabbed his wrist only just in time to prevent him from pointing the revolver. Then followed a struggle at the utmost tension of two strong men; a struggle, on Osmond’s side, at least, for dear life. Gripping the other man’s wrists, he watched the revolver, all his strength concentrated on the effort to prevent its muzzle from being turned on him. And so the two men stood for a space, nearly motionless, quite silent, trembling with the intensity of muscular strain.

Suddenly Dhoody took a quick step backwards. A fatal step; for the manoeuvre failed, and Osmond followed him up, pressing him farther backward. The bulwark on the poop was comparatively low. As Dhoody staggered against it with accumulated momentum, his body swung outboard and his feet rose from the deck. It was impossible to save him without releasing the pistol hand. He remained poised for an instant on the rail and then toppled over; and as he slithered down the side and his wrist slipped from Osmond’s grasp, the revolver discharged, blowing a ragged hole in the bulwark and waking the echoes in the sails with the din of the explosion.

Osmond sprang back to the companion-hatch and crouched behind the hood. There was no time for him to get back to the skylight; indeed he hardly had time to unfasten the doors and drop on to the ladder before the men came shambling aft, muttering and rubbing their eyes. Quietly closing the doors, he descended to the cabin and took up his old post of observation on the table.

“He’s gone, right enough,” said an awe-stricken voice, “and I reckon it’ll be our turn next. This is a bad lookout, mates.”

There was a brief and dismal silence; then a distant report was heard, followed quickly by two more.

“That’s Dhoody,” exclaimed another voice. “He’s a-swimmin’ and makin’ signals. What’s to be done? We can’t let ’im drownd without doin’ nothin’.”

“No,” agreed the first man, “we must have a try at pickin’ ’im up. You and me, Tom, will put off in the dinghy, while Joe keeps the ship hove-to.”

“What!” protested Joe. “Am I to be left alone on the ship with no one but Jim Darker, and him below in his bunk?”

“Well, yer can’t let a shipmate drownd, can yer?” demanded the other. “And look here, Joe Bradley, as soon as you’ve got the ship hove-to, you just fetch up the fo’c’sle lamp and show us a glim, or we shall be goners, too. Now hard down with the helm, mate!”

Very soon the loud flapping of canvas announced that the ship had come up into the wind, and immediately after the squeal of tackle-blocks was heard. The Speedwell carried a dinghy, slung from davits at the taffrail, in addition to the larger boat on deck, and it was in this that the two men were putting out on their rather hopeless quest.

Osmond rapidly reviewed the situation. Of the original seven men one was overboard, two were in the hold, one was below in his bunk, and two were away in the boat. There remained only Joe Bradley. It would be pretty easy to overpower him and stow him in the hold; but a yet easier plan suggested itself. Joe was evidently in a state of extreme superstitious funk and the other two were in little better case. He recalled the captain’s remark as to his resemblance to the dead mate and also the fact that Redford’s oilskins were different from any others on board. These circumstances seemed to group themselves naturally and indicate a course of action.

He made his way to the captain’s berth and, knocking softly and receiving no answer, entered. The skipper had fallen asleep over his book and lay in his bunk, a living commentary on the Book of Job. Osmond took the oilskins from the peg, and, stealing back silently to the cabin, invested himself in the borrowed raiment. Presently a passing gleam of light from above told him that Joe was carrying the fore castle lamp aft to ‘show a glim’ from the taffrail. Remembering that he had left the companion hatch unfastened, he ascended the ladder, and, softly opening one door, looked out. At the moment, Joe was engaged in hanging the lamp from a fair-lead over the stern, and, as his back was towards the deck, Osmond stepped out of the hatch and silently approached him.

Having secured the lamp, Joe took a long look over the dark sea and then turned towards the deck; and as his eyes fell on the tall, oilskinned figure, obscurely visible in the gloom—for the lamp was below the bulwark—he uttered a gasp of horror and began rapidly to shuffle away backwards. Osmond stood motionless, watching him from under the deep shade of his sou’-wester as he continued to edge away backwards. Suddenly his heel caught on a ring-bolt and he staggered and fell on the deck with a howl of terror; but in another instant he had scrambled to his feet and raced away forward, whence the slam of the forecastle scuttle announced his retirement to the sanctuary of his berth.

More than a quarter of an hour elapsed before a hoarse hail from the sea heralded the return of the boat.

“Joe ahoy! It’s no go, mate. He’s gone.” There was a pause. Then came the splash of oars, a bump under the counter, the sound of the hooking on of tackles, and another hail.

“Joe ahoy! Is all well aboard?”

Osmond stepped away into the shadow of the main sail, whence he watched the taffrail. Soon the two men came actively up the tackle-ropes, their heads appeared above the rail, and they swung themselves on board simultaneously.

“Joe ahoy!” one of them sang out huskily, as he looked blankly round the deck. “Where are yer, Joe?” There was a brief silence; then, in an awe-stricken voice, he exclaimed: “Gawd-amighty, Tom! If he ain’t gone overboard, too!”

At this moment the other man caught sight of Osmond, and, silently touching his companion on the shoulder, pointed to the motionless figure. Osmond moved a little out of the shadow and began to pace aft, treading without a sound. For one instant the two men watched as if petrified; then, with one accord, they stampeded forward, and once more the forecastle scuttle slammed. Osmond followed, and quietly thrusting a belaying-pin through the staple of the scuttle, secured them in their retreat.

CHAPTER V

The New Afterguard

When Captain Hartup, brusquely aroused from his slumbers, opened his eyes and beheld a tall, yellow oilskinned figure in his berth, the Book of Job faded instantly from his memory and he scrambled from his bunk with a yell of terror. Then, when Osmond took off his sou’-wester, he recognized his visitor and became distinctly uncivil.

“What the devil do you mean by masquerading in this idiotic fashion?” he demanded angrily. “I don’t want any of your silly schoolboy jokes on this ship, so you please understand that.”

“I came down,” said Osmond, smothering a grin and ignoring the reproaches, “to report progress. I have hove the ship to, but there is no one at the wheel and no lookout.”

The skipper stared at him in bewilderment as he crawled back into his bunk. “What do you mean?” he asked. “You’ve hove the ship to? Isn’t there anybody on deck?”

“No. The ship is taking care of herself at the moment.”

“Queer,” said the skipper. “I wonder what Dhoody’s up to.”

“Dhoody is overboard,” said Osmond.

“Overboard!” exclaimed the skipper, staring harder than ever at Osmond. Then, after an interval of silent astonishment, he said severely:

“You are talking in riddles, young man. Just try to explain yourself a little more clearly. Do I understand that you have hove my second mate overboard?”

“No,” replied Osmond. “He went overboard by accident. But it was all for the best;” and hereupon he proceeded to give the skipper a somewhat sketchy account of the stirring events of the last few hours, to which the latter listened with sour disapproval.

“I don’t hold with deeds of violence,” he said when the story was finished, “but what you have done is on your own head. Where do you say the crew are?”

“Two are in the hold and the other four in the fo’c’sle, bolted in. They are all pretty drunk, but you’ll find them as quiet as lambs when they’ve slept off their tipple. But the question is, what is to be done now. The men won’t be any good for an hour or two, but there ought to be someone at the wheel and some sort of watch on deck. And I can’t take it on until I have had a sleep. I’ve been hard at it ever since I came on board yesterday.”

“Yes,” Captain Hartup agreed, sarcastically, “I daresay you found it fatiguing, chucking your fellow-creatures overboard and breaking their heads. Well, you had better take the second mate’s berth—the one Redford had—and I will go on deck and keep a look out. But I can’t do much with my arm in a sling.”

“What about the lady?” asked Osmond. “Couldn’t she hold on to the wheel if you stood by and told her what to do?”

“Ha!” exclaimed the skipper. “I had forgotten her. Yes, she knows how to steer—in a fashion. She used to wheedle Redford into letting her take a trick in his watch while he stood by and instructed her; a parcel of silly philandering, really, but it wasn’t any affair of mine. I’d better go and rouse her up.”

“Wait till I’ve turned in,” said Osmond. “I am not fit to meet a lady until I have had a sleep and a wash. If you will show me my berth, I will go and cast the lashings off those two beggars in the hold and then turn in for an hour or two.”

The captain smiled sardonically but made no comment; and when Osmond, furnished with a lantern, had visited the hold and removed the lashings from the still slumbering seamen, he entered the tiny berth that the skipper pointed out to him, closed the door, and, having taken off his jacket and folded it carefully, and wound his watch, blew out the candle in the lantern, stretched himself in the bunk and instantly fell asleep.

When he awoke, the gleam from the deck-light over his head—the berth had no port-hole—informed him that it was day. Reference to his watch showed the hour to be about half-past eight; and the clink of crockery and a murmur of voices—one very distinctly feminine—suggested that breakfast was in progress.

Which, again, suggested that the conditions of life on board had returned to the more or less normal.

Osmond sprang out of the bunk, and, impelled by hunger and curiosity, made a lightning toilet with the aid of Redford’s razor, sponge, and brushes. There was, of course, no bath; but a ‘dry’ rub-down in the oven-like cabin was a fair substitute. In a surprisingly short time, with the imperfect means at hand, he had made himself almost incredibly presentable and after a final ‘look over’ in Redford’s minute shaving-glass, he opened the door and entered the cuddy.

The little table, roughly laid for breakfast, was occupied by Captain Hartup and a lady, and a flat-faced seaman with a black eye officiated as cabin steward. They all looked up as Osmond emerged from his door and the sailor grinned a little sheepishly.

“Had a short night, haven’t you?” said the captain. “Didn’t expect you to turn out yet. Let me present you to our passenger. Miss Burleigh, this is Mr.—Mr.—”

“Cook,” said Osmond, ready for the question this time.

“Mr. Cook, the young man I was telling you about.”

Miss Burleigh acknowledged Osmond’s bow, gazing at him with devouring curiosity and marvelling at his cool, trim, well appearance.

“I think,” she said, “we had a brief interview last night, if you can call it an interview when there was a locked door between us. I am afraid I wasn’t very civil. But you must try to forgive me. I’ve been sorry since.”

“There is no need to be,” replied Osmond. “It was perfectly natural.”

“Oh, but it isn’t mere remorse. I am so mad with myself for having missed all the excitements. If I had only known! But, you see, I had happened to look out of my door in the evening, hearing a peculiar sort of noise, and then I saw somebody boring holes in the partition, and of course I thought it was those wretches trying to get into the cabin. Then, when I heard your voice, I made sure it was Dhoody or one of those other ruffians, trying to entice me out. And so I missed all the fun.”

“Just as well that you did,” said the captain. “Females are out of place in scenes of violence and disorder. What are you going to have, Mr. Cook? There’s corned pork and biscuit and I think there’s some lobscouse or sea-pie in the galley, if the men haven’t eaten it all.”

Osmond turned suddenly to the sailor, who instantly came to ‘attention.’

“You’re Sam Winter, aren’t you?”

“Aye, sir,” the man replied, considerably taken aback by the ‘factory bug’s’ uncanny omniscience. “Sam Winter it is, sir.”

“How is Jim Darker?”

“He’s a-doin’ nicely, sir,” replied Sam, regarding Osmond with secret awe. “Eat a rare breakfast of lobscouse, he did.”

“Is there any left?”

“I think there is, sir.”

“Then I’ll have some;” and, as the man saluted and bustled away up the companion-steps, he seated himself on the fixed bench by the table.

Captain Hartup smiled sourly, while Miss Burleigh regarded Osmond with delighted amusement.

“Seem quite intimate with ’em all,” the former remarked. “Regular friend of the family. I suppose it was you who gave Winter that black eye?”

“I expect so,” replied Osmond. “He probably caught it in the scrum when I first came on board. Did you have any trouble in getting the men to go back to duty?”

“The men in the fo’c’sle wouldn’t come out till daylight, and the two men in the hold took a lot of rousing from their drunken sleep. Of course, I couldn’t get through that hole with my arm in this sling, so I had to prod them with a boat-hook. It’s a pity you made that hole. Lets the smell of the cargo and the bilge through into the cabin.”

He looked distastefully at the dark aperture in the bulkhead and sniffed—quite unnecessarily, for the air of the cuddy was charged with the mingled aroma of bilge and kernels.

“Well, it had to be,” said Osmond; “and it will be easy to cover it up. After all, a smell in the cuddy is better than sea-water.”

Here Sam Winter was seen unsteadily descending the companion-steps with a large enamelled-iron plate in his hands; which plate, being deferentially placed on the table before Osmond, was seen to be loaded with a repulsive-looking mixture of ‘salt horse,’ shreds of fat pork and soaked biscuit floating in a greasy brown liquid.

“That’s all there was left, sir,” said he, transferring a small surplus from his hands to the dorsal aspect of his trousers.

Osmond made no comment on this statement but fell-to on the unsavoury mess with wolfish voracity, while the captain filled a mug with alleged coffee and passed it to him.

“Who is at the wheel, Winter?” the captain asked.

“Simmons, sir,” was the reply. “I woke him up again as I come aft.”

“Well, you’d better go up and take it from him. Carry on till I come up.”

As Winter disappeared up the companionway Miss Burleigh uttered a little gurgle of enjoyment. “Aren’t they funny?” she exclaimed. “Fancy waking up the man at the wheel! It’s like a comic opera.”

The captain looked at her sourly as he tapped the table with a piece of biscuit for the purpose of evicting a couple of fat weevils; but he made no comment, and for a time the meal proceeded in silence. The skipper was fully occupied with cutting up his corned pork with one hand and in breaking the hard biscuit and knocking out the weevils, while Osmond doggedly worked his way through the lobscouse with the silent concentration of a famished man, all unconscious of the interest and curiosity with which he was being observed by the girl opposite him.

However, the lobscouse came to an end—all too soon—and as he reached out to the bread-barge for a handful of biscuit he met her eyes; and fine, clear, bright blue eyes they were, sparkling with vivacity and humour. She greeted his glance with an affable smile and hoped that he was feeling revived.

“That looked rather awful stuff,” she added.

“It was all right,” said he, “only there wasn’t enough of it. But I hope you had something more suitable.”

“She has had what the ship’s stores provide, like the rest of us,” snapped the captain. “This is not a floating hotel.”

“No, it isn’t,” Osmond agreed, “and that’s a fact. But it is something that she still floats; and it would be just as well to keep her floating.”

“What do you mean?” demanded the skipper.

Osmond thoughtfully extracted a weevil with the prong of his fork as he replied: “You’ve got a crew of six, three to a watch, and one of them has got to do the cooking. But you have got no officers.”

“Well, I know that,” said the captain. “What about it?”

“You can’t carry on without officers.”

“I can and I shall. I shall appoint one of the men to be mate and take the other watch myself.”

“That won’t answer,” said Osmond. “There isn’t a man among them who could be trusted or who is up to the job; and you are not in a fit state to stand regular watches.”

Captain Hartup snorted. “Don’t you lay down the law to me, young man. I am the master of this ship.” And then he added, a little inconsistently “Perhaps you can tell me how I am to get a couple of officers.”

“I can,” replied Osmond. “There will have to be some responsible person on deck with each watch.”

“Well?

“Well, there are two responsible persons sitting at this table with you.”

For a few moments the captain stared at Osmond in speechless astonishment (while Miss Burleigh murmured “Hear, hear!” and rapped the table with the handle of her knife). At length he burst out: “What! Do I understand you to suggest that I should navigate this vessel with a landsman and a female as my mates?”

“I am not exactly a landsman,” Osmond replied. “I am an experienced yachtsman and I have made a voyage in a sailing ship.”

“Pah!” exclaimed the skipper. “Fresh-water sailor and a passenger! Don’t talk nonsense. And a female, too!”

“What I am suggesting,” Osmond persisted calmly, “is that you should be about as much as is possible in your condition and that Miss Burleigh and I should keep an eye on the men when you are below. I could take all the night watches and Miss Burleigh could be on deck during the day.”

“That’s just rank foolishness,” said the skipper. “Talk of a comic opera! Why, you are wanting to turn the ship into a Punch and Judy show! I’ve no patience to listen to you,” and the captain rose in dudgeon and crawled—not without difficulty—up the companion-steps. Miss Burleigh watched him with a mischievous smile, and as his stumbling feet disappeared she turned to Osmond.

“What a lark it would be!” she exclaimed, gleefully. “Do you think you will be able to persuade him? He is rather an obstinate little man.”

“The best way with obstinate people,” replied Osmond, “is to assume that they have agreed, and carry on. Can you steer—not that you need, being an officer. But you ought to know how to.”

“I can steer by the compass. But I don’t know much about the sails excepting that you have to keep the wind on the right side of them.”

“Yes, that is important with a square vessel. But you will soon learn the essentials—enough to enable you to keep the crew out of mischief. We will go on deck presently and then I will show you the ropes and explain how the gear works.”

“That will be jolly,” said she. “But there’s another thing that I want you to explain: about this mutiny, you know. Captain Hartup was awfully muddled about it. I want to know all that happened while I was locked in my berth.”

“I expect you know all about it now,” Osmond replied evasively. “There was a bit of a rumpus, of course, but as soon as Dhoody was overboard it was all plain sailing.”

“Now, you are not going to put me off like that,” she said, in a resolute tone. “I want the whole story in detail, if you please, sir. Does a second mate say ‘sir’ when he, or she, addresses the first mate?”

“Not as a rule,” Osmond replied, with a grin.

“Then I won’t. But I want the story. Now.” Osmond looked uneasily into the delicately fair, slightly freckled face and thought it, with its crown of red-gold hair, the prettiest face that he had ever seen. But it was an uncommonly determined little face, all the same.

“There really isn’t any story,” he began. But she interrupted sharply:

“Now listen to me. Yesterday there were seven ferocious men going about this ship like roaring and swearing lions. Today there are six meek and rather sleepy lambs—I saw them just before breakfast. It is you who have produced this miraculous change, and I want to know how you did it. No sketchy evasions, you know. I want a clear, intelligible narrative.”

“It isn’t a very suitable occasion for a long yarn,” he objected. “Don’t you think we ought to go on deck and keep an eye on the old man?”

“Perhaps we ought,” she agreed. “But I’m not going to let you off the story, you know. That is understood, isn’t it?”

He gave a reluctant assent, and when she had fetched her pith helmet from her cabin and he had borrowed a Panama hat of Redford’s, they ascended together to the deck.

The scene was reminiscent of ‘The Ancient Mariner.’ The blazing sun shone down on a sea that seemed to be composed of oil, so smooth and unruffled was its surface. The air was absolutely still, and the old brigantine wallowed foolishly as the great, glassy rollers swept under her, her sails alternately filling and backing with loud, explosive flaps as the masts swung from side to side, and her long main-boom banging across with a heavy jar at each roll. Sam Winter stood at the wheel in a posture of easy negligence (but he straightened up with a jerk as Osmond’s head rose out of the companion-hood); the rest of the crew, excepting Jim Darker, lounged about drowsily forward; and the skipper appeared to be doing sentry-go before a row of green gin-cases that were ranged along the side of the caboose. He looked round as the newcomers arrived on deck, and pointing to the cases, addressed Osmond.

“These boxes of poison belong to you, I understand. I can’t have them lying about here.”

“Better stow them in the lazarette when I’ve checked the contents,” replied Osmond.

“I can’t have intoxicating liquors in my lazarette. This is a temperance ship. I’ve a good mind to chuck ’em overboard.”

“All right,” said Osmond. “You pay me one pound four, and then you can do what you like with them.”

“Pay!” shrieked the captain. “I pay for this devil’s elixir! I traffic in strong drink that steals away men’s reason and turns them into fiends! Never! Not a farthing!”

“Very well,” said Osmond, “then they had better go below. Here, you, Simmons and Bradley, bear a hand with those cases. Will you see them stowed away in the lazarette, Miss Burleigh?”

“Aye, aye, sir,” the latter replied, touching her helmet smartly; whereupon the two men, with delighted grins, pounced upon two of the cases, while Miss Burleigh edged up close to Osmond.

“What on earth is the lazarette?” she whispered, “and where shall I find it?”

“Under the cuddy floor,” he whispered in reply. “The trap is under the table.”

As the two seamen picked up their respective loads and went off beaming, followed by Miss Burleigh, the captain stood gazing open-mouthed. “Well, I’m—I’m—sure!” he exclaimed, at length. “What do you mean by giving orders to my crew? And I said I wouldn’t have that gin in my lazarette.”

“Can’t leave it about for the men to pinch. You’ll have them all drunk again. And what about the watches? We can’t have the regular port and starboard watches until you are fit again. Better do as I suggested. Let me keep on deck during the night, and you take charge during the day. Miss Burleigh can relieve you if you want to go below.”

“I’ll have no women playing the fool on my ship,” snapped the skipper; “but as to you, I don’t mind your staying on deck at night if you undertake to call me up when you get into a mess—as you certainly will.”

“Very well,” said Osmond, “we’ll leave it at that. And now you’d better come below and let me attend to your bandages. There’s nothing to do on deck while this calm lasts.”

The skipper complied, not unwillingly; and when Osmond had very gently and skilfully renewed the dressings and rebandaged the injured arm and head—the captain reclining in his bunk for the purpose—he retired, leaving his patient to rest awhile with the aid of the Commentary On the Book of Job.

As soon as he arrived on deck, he proceeded definitely to take charge. The stowage of the gin was now completed and the crew were once more collected forward, gossiping idly but evidently watchful and expectant of further developments from the ‘after-guard.’ Osmond hailed them in a masterful tone. “Here, you men, get a pull on the main-sheet and stop the boom from slamming. Haul her in as taut as she’ll go.”

The men came aft with ready cheerfulness, and as Osmond cast off the fall of the rope and gave them a lead, they tailed on and hauled with a will until the sheet-blocks were as close as they could be brought. Then, when the rope had been belayed, Osmond turned to the crew and briefly explained the arrangements for working the ship in her present, short-handed state.

“So you understand,” he concluded, “I am the mate for the time being, and Miss Burleigh is taking the duties of the second mate. Is that clear?”

“Aye, aye, sir,” was the reply, accompanied by the broadest of grins, “we understands, sir.”

“Who is the cook?” inquired Osmond.

“Bill Foat ’as been a-doin’ the cookin’, sir,” Simmons explained.

“Then he’d better get on with it. Whose watch on deck is it?”

“Starboard watch, sir,” replied Simmons; “that’s me and Winter and Darker.”

“I must have a look at Darker,” said Osmond. “Meanwhile you take the wheel, and you, Winter, keep a lookout forward. I haven’t heard the ship’s bell sounded this morning.”

“No, sir,” Winter explained. “The clock in the companion has stopped and none of us haven’t got the time.”

“Very well,” said Osmond. “I’ll wind it up and start it when I make eight bells.”

The routine of the duties being thus set going, Osmond went forward and paid a visit to the invalid in the forecastle, with the result that Jim Darker presently appeared on deck with a clean bandage and a somewhat sheepish grin. Then the chief officer turned his attention to the education of his subordinate, observed intently by six pairs of inquisitive eyes.

“I think, Miss Burleigh,” he said, “you had better begin by learning how to take an observation. Then you will be able to do something that the men can’t, as an officer should. Do you know anything about mathematics?”

“As much as is necessary, I expect. I took second class honours in maths. Will that do?”

“Of course it will. By the way, where did you take your degree?”

Oxford—Somerville, you know.”

“Oh,” said Osmond, rather taken aback. “When were you up at Oxford?”

She regarded him with a mischievous smile as she replied: “After your time, I should say. I only came down a year ago.”

It was, of course, but a chance shot. Nevertheless, Osmond hastily reverted to the subject of observations. “It is quite a simple matter to take the altitude of the sun, and you work out your results almost entirely from tables. You will do it easily the first time. I’ll go and get Redford’s sextant, or better still, we might go below and I can show you how to use a sextant and how to work out your latitude.”

“Yes,” she agreed eagerly, “I would sooner have my first lesson below. Our friends here are so very interested in us.”

She bustled away down to the cabin, and Osmond, following, went into his berth, whence he presently emerged with two mahogany cases and a portly volume, inscribed ‘Norie’s Navigation.’

“I’ve found the second mate’s sextant as well as Redford’s, so we can have one each,” he said, laying them on the table with the volume. “And now let us get to work. We mustn’t stay here too long or we shall miss the transit.”

The two mates seated themselves side by side at the table, and Osmond, taking one of the sextants out of its case, explained its construction and demonstrated its use. Then the volume was opened, the tables explained, the mysteries of ‘dip’ refraction and ‘parallax’ expounded, and finally an imaginary observation was worked out on the back of an envelope.

“I had no idea,” said Miss Burleigh, as she triumphantly finished the calculation, “that the science of navigation was so simple.”

“It isn’t,” replied Osmond. “Latitude by the meridian altitude of the sun is the A B C of navigation. Some of it, such as longitude by lunar distance, is fairly tough. But it is time we got on deck. It is past eleven by my watch and the Lord knows what the time actually is. The chronometer has stopped. The skipper bumped against it when he staggered into his berth on the day when the mutiny broke out.”

“Then how shall we get the longitude?” Miss Burleigh asked.

“We shan’t. But it doesn’t matter much. We must keep on a westerly course. There is nothing, in that direction, between us and America.”

The appearance on deck of the two officers, each armed with a sextant, created a profound impression. It is true that, so far as the ‘second mate’ was concerned, the attitude of the crew was merely that of respectful amusement. But the effect, in the case of Osmond, was very different. The evidence that he was able to ‘shoot the sun’ established him in their eyes as a pukka navigator, and added to the awe with which they regarded this uncannily capable ‘factory bug.’ And there was plenty of time for the impression to soak in; for the first glance through the sextant showed that the sun was still rising fairly fast; that there was yet some considerable time to run before noon. In fact, more than half an hour passed before the retardation of the sun’s motion heralded the critical phase. And at this moment the skipper’s head rose slowly above the hood of the companion-hatch.

At first his back was towards the observers, but when he emerged and, turning forward, became aware of them, he stopped short as if petrified. The men ceased their gossip to watch him with ecstatic grins, and Sam Winter edged stealthily towards the ship’s bell.

“What is the meaning of this play-acting and tom foolery?” the skipper demanded, sourly. “Women and landsmen monkeying about with nautical instruments.”

Osmond held up an admonitory hand, keeping his eye glued to the eyepiece of the sextant.

“I’m asking you a question,” the captain persisted. There was another brief silence. Then, suddenly, Osmond sang out “Eight bells!” and looked at his watch. Winter, seizing the lanyard that hung from the clapper of the bell, struck the eight strokes, and the second mate—prompted in a hoarse whisper—called out: “Port watch, there! Bradley will take the first trick at the wheel.”

“Aye, aye, sir—Miss, I means,” responded Bradley, and proceeded purple-faced and chuckling aloud, to relieve the gratified Simmons.

At these proceedings the captain looked on in helpless bewilderment. He watched Osmond wind and set the clock in the companion and saw him disappear below, followed by his accomplice, to work out the reckoning, and shook his head with mute disapproval. But yet to him, as to the rest of the ship’s company, there came a certain sense of relief. Osmond’s brisk, confident voice, the cheerful sound of the ship’s bell, and the orderly setting of the watch, seemed definitely to mark the end of the mutiny and the return to a reign of law and order.

CHAPTER VI

BETTY MAKES A DISCOVERY

For reasons best known to herself, Miss Burleigh made no further attempt that day to satisfy her curiosity as to the quelling of the mutiny. There was, in fact, little opportunity. For shortly after the mid-day meal—sea-pie and corned pork with biscuit—Osmond turned in regardless of the heat, to get a few hours’ sleep before beginning his long night vigil. But on the following day the captain was so far recovered as to be able to take the alternate watches—relieved to some extent in the daytime by the second mate—and this left ample time for Osmond to continue the education of his junior, which now extended from theoretical navigation to practical seamanship.

It was during the afternoon watch, when the two mates were seated on a couple of spare cases in the shadow of the main-sail, practising the working of splices on some oddments of rope, that the ‘examination-in-chief’ began; and Osmond, recognizing the hopelessness of further evasion, was fain to tell the story of his adventure, dryly enough, indeed, but in fairly satisfying detail. And as he narrated, in jerky, colourless sentences, with his eyes riveted on the splice that he was working, his spellbound listener let her rope’s-end and marlinspike lie idle on her lap while she watched his impassive face with something more than mere attention.

“I wonder,” she said when the tale was told, “whether the men realize who the spectre mate really was.”

“I don’t think they can quite make out what happened. But I fancy they look upon me as something rather uncanny; which is all for the best, seeing how short we are and what a helpless worm the skipper is.”

“Yes, they certainly have a holy fear of you,” she agreed, smiling at the grim, preoccupied face. She reflected awhile and then continued: “But I don’t quite understand what brought you on board. You say that Dhoody had stolen those cases of gin. But what business was that of yours?”

“It was my gin.”

“Your gin? But you don’t drink gin.”

“No, I sell it. I am a trader. I run a store, or factory, as they call it out here.”

As Osmond made this statement, her look of undisguised admiration changed to one of amazement. She smothered an exclamation and managed to convert it at short notice into an unconcerned “I see,” but her astonishment extinguished her powers of conversation for the time being. She could only gaze at him and marvel at the incongruity of his personality with his vocation. She had encountered a good many traders, and though she had realized that the ‘palm-oil ruffian’ was largely the invention of the missionary and the official snob and that West African traders are a singularly heterogeneous body, still that body did not ordinarily include men of Osmond’s class. And her sly suggestion of his connection with Oxford had been something more than a mere random shot. There are certain little tricks of speech and manner by which members of the ancient universities can usually be recognized, especially by their contemporaries and though Osmond was entirely free from the deliberate affectations of a certain type of ‘’varsity’ man, her quick ear had detected one or two turns of phrase that seemed familiar. And he had not repudiated the suggestion.

“I wonder,” she said, after an interval of some what uncomfortable silence, “what made you take to trading. The métier doesn’t seem to fit you very well.”

“No,” he admitted with a grim smile; “I am a bit of a mug at a business deal.”

“I didn’t mean that,” she rejoined hastily. “But there are such a lot of things that would suit you better. It is a sin for a man of your class and attainments to be keeping a shop—for that is what it amounts to.”

“That is what it actually is,” said he.

“Yes. But why on earth do you do it?”

“Must do something, you know,” he replied, lamely.

“Of course you must, but it should be something suitable, and selling gin is not a suitable occupation for a gentleman. And it isn’t as if you were a ‘lost dog.’ You are really extremely capable.”

“Yes,” he admitted with a grin, “I’m pretty handy in a scrum.”

“Don’t be silly,” she admonished, severely. “I don’t undervalue your courage and strength—I shouldn’t be a natural woman if I did—but I am thinking of your resourcefulness and ingenuity. It wasn’t by mere thumping that you got your ascendancy over the men. You beat them by sheer brains.”

“Jim Darker thinks it was an iron belaying-pin.”

“Now don’t quibble and prevaricate. You know as well as I do that, if it had been a matter of mere strength and courage, you would never have got out of the hold, and we should have been at the bottom of the sea by now. It was your mental alertness that saved us all.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Osmond. “But you aren’t getting on very fast with that splice. Have you been watching me?”

“Oh! bother the splices!” she exclaimed, impatiently. “I want you to tell me why you are throwing yourself away on this ridiculous factory.”

“It isn’t a bad sort of life,” he protested. “I don’t think I mind it.”

“Then you ought to,” she retorted. “You ought to have some ambition. Think of all the things that you might have done—that you still might do with, your abilities and initiative.”

She looked at him earnestly as she spoke; and some thing that she saw in his face as she uttered those last words gave her pause. Suddenly it was borne in on her that she had met other men who seemed to be out of their element; men who, report whispered, had been driven by social misadventure—by debt, entanglements, or drink—to seek sanctuary on the remote West Coast. Was it possible that he might be one of these refugees? He was obviously not a drinker and he did not look like a wastrel of any kind. Still, there might be a skeleton in his cupboard. At any rate, he was extraordinarily reticent about himself.

She changed the subject rather abruptly. “Is your factory in the British Protectorate?”

“Yes. At Adaffia, a little, out-of-the-way place about a dozen miles east of Quittah.”

“I know it—at least I have heard of it. Isn’t it the place where that poor fellow Osmond died?”

“Yes,” he replied, a little startled by the question.

“What was he like? I suppose you saw him?”

“Yes. A biggish man. Short moustache and Vandyke beard.”

“Quite a gentlemanly man, wasn’t he?”

“He seemed to be. But he didn’t have a great deal to say to anybody.”

“It was rather pathetic, his dying in that way, like a hunted ox that has run into a trap.”

“Well,” said Osmond, “there wasn’t much to choose. If the climate hadn’t had him, the police would.”

“I am not so sure,” she replied. “We all hoped he would get away, especially the officer who was detailed to arrest him. I think he meant to make a fussy search of all the wrong houses in the village by way of giving notice that he was there and scaring the fugitive away. Still, I think he was rather relieved when he found that trader man—what was his name?—Larkin or Larkom?—painting the poor fellow’s name on the cross above his grave. You heard about that, I suppose?”

“Yes. Queer coincidence, wasn’t it?”

“Don’t be so callous. I think it was a most pathetic incident.”

“I suppose it was,” Osmond agreed. “And now, don’t you think you had better have another try at that splice?”

With a little grimace she took up the piece of rope and began obediently to unlay its ends and the interrupted course of practical seamanship was resumed, with intervals of desultory conversation, until eight bells, when the teapot was brought forth from the galley and conveyed below to the cabin. After tea, through what was left of the first dog-watch, there was another spell of knots and splices; and then, when the sun set and darkness fell on the sea, more desultory talk, in which Osmond mostly played the role of listener, which—with an interval for dinner—lasted until it was time for the second mate to turn in.

So life went on aboard the Speedwell day after day.

The calm persisted as calms are apt to do in the Doldrums, with nothing to suggest any promise of a change. Now and again, at long intervals, the oily surface of the sea would be dimmed by a little draught of air—just enough to ‘put the sails asleep’ and give momentary life to the steering-wheel. But in a few minutes it would die away, leaving the sails to back and fill as the vessel rolled inertly on the glassy swell. The first observation had shown the ship’s position to be about four degrees north of the equator, with the coast of the Bight of Benin some eighty miles away to the north; and subsequent observations revealed a slow southerly drift. It was pretty certain that she had a more rapid easterly drift on the Guinea current, but as the chronometer was out of action, there was no means of ascertaining this or of determining her longitude. Sooner or later, if the calm continued, she would drift into the Bight of Biafra, where she might pick up the land and sea breezes or find an anchorage where she could bring up and get the chronometer rated.

To a seaman there is nothing more exasperating than a prolonged calm. The crew of the Speedwell were not sailors of a strenuous type, but the inaction and monotony that prevailed on the idly ship bored them—if not to tears, at least to bad language and chronic grumbling. They lounged about with sulky looks and yawned over the odd jobs that Osmond found for them, whistling vainly for a breeze and crawling up the rigging from time to time to see if anything—land or another ship—was in sight. As to the captain, he grew daily more sour and taciturn as he saw his stores of provisions dwindling with nothing to show for the expenditure.

But by two of the ship company the calm was accepted with something more than resignation. The two mates had no complaint whatever to make. They were, indeed, cut off from all the world; marooned on a stationary ship in an unfrequented sea. But they had one another and asked for nothing better; and the longer the calm lasted the more secure were they of the continuance of this happy condition. For the inevitable thing had happened. They had fallen in love.

It was very natural. Both were more than commonly attractive, and circumstances had thrown them together in the closest and most intimate companionship through every hour of the long days. They had worked together, though the work was more than half play; they had a common interest which kept them apart from the others. Together they had sat, talking endlessly, in little patches of shadow when the sun was high in the heavens, or leaned upon the bulwark rail and watched the porpoises playing round the idle ship or the Portuguese men-of-war gliding imperceptibly past on their rainbow-tinted floats. They had paced the heaving deck together when the daylight was gone and earnestly studied the constellations ‘that blazed in the velvet blue,’ or peered down into the dark water alongside where the Nautilus shone like submarine stars and shoals of fish darted away before the pursuing dolphin lurid flashes of phosphorescent light. No more perfect setting for a romance could be imagined.

And then the personality of each was such as to make a special appeal to the other. In the eyes of the girl, Osmond was a hero, a paladin. His commanding stature, his strength, his mastery of other men, and above all his indomitable courage, had captured her imagination from the first. And in his rugged way he was a handsome man; and if he could be a little brutal on occasion, he had always been, to her, the soul of courtesy and chivalry. As to the ‘past’ of which she had a strong suspicion, that was no concern of hers; perhaps it even invested him with an added interest.

As to Osmond, he had been captivated at once, and, to do him justice he had instantly perceived the danger that loomed ahead. But he could do nothing to avoid it. Flight was impossible from this little self-contained world, so pleasantly cut off from the unfriendly world without; nor could he, even if he had tried, help being thrown constantly into the society of this fascinating little lady. And if, during the long, solitary night-watches, or in his stifling berth, he gnashed his teeth over the perverseness of Fate and thought bitterly of what might have been, that did not prevent him from succumbing during the day to the charm of her frank, unconcealed friendliness.

It was in the forenoon of the eighth day of the calm that the two cronies were leaning on the rail, each holding a stout line. The previous day Osmond had discovered a quantity of fishing tackle among Redford’s effects, and a trial cast had provided not only excellent sport, but a very welcome addition to the ship’s meagre diet. Thereupon an epidemic of sea-angling had broken out on board, and Bill Foat, the cook, had been kept busy with the preparation of snappers, horse and other deep-sea fish.

“I wonder,” the girl mused as she peered over the side, “how much longer this calm is going to last.”

“It may last for weeks,” Osmond replied. “I hope it won’t for your sake. You must be getting frightfully bored.”

“Indeed, I’m not,” she rejoined. “It is the jolliest holiday I have ever had. The only fly in the ointment is the fear that my father may be a little anxious about me. But I don’t suppose he is really worrying. He is like me—not much given to fussing and he knows that I am fairly well able to take care of myself, though he doesn’t know that I have got a Captain James Cook to stand by me. But I expect you are getting pretty sick of this monotonous life, aren’t you, Captain J.?”

Osmond shook his head. “Not a bit,” he replied. “It has been a delightful interlude for me. I should be perfectly satisfied for it to go on for the rest of my life.”

She looked at him thoughtfully, speculating on the inward meaning of this statement and noting a certain grave wistfulness that softened the grim face.

“That sounds rather as if Adaffia were not a perfect Paradise, for it has been a dull life for you since the mutiny collapsed and the calm set in, with no one to talk to but me.”

“Adaffia would be all right under the same conditions,” said he.

“What do you mean by the same conditions?” she asked, flushing slightly; and as he did not immediately answer, she continued: “Do you mean that life would be more pleasant there if you had your second mate to gossip with?”

“Yes,” he answered, reluctantly, almost gruffly. “Of course that is what I mean.”

“It is very nice of you, Jim, to say that, but you needn’t have spoiled it by speaking in that crabby tone. It is nothing to be ashamed of. I don’t mind admitting that I shall miss you most awfully if we have to separate when this voyage is over. You have been the best of chums to me.”

She flushed again as she said this and then looked at him a little shyly. For nearly a minute he made no response, but continued to gaze intently and rather gloomily at the water below. At length he said, gravely, still looking steadily at the water:

“There is something, Miss Burleigh, that I feel I ought to tell you; that I wouldn’t tell any one else in the world.”

“Thank you, Jim,” she said. “But please don’t call me Miss Burleigh. It is so ridiculously stiff between old chums like us. And, Jim, you are not to tell me anything that it might be better for you that I should not know. I am not in the least inquisitive about your affairs.”

“I know that,” he replied. “But this is a thing that I feel you ought to know. It has been on my mind to tell you for some days past.” He paused for a few seconds and then continued: “You remember, Betty, that man Osmond that you spoke about?”

“Yes; but don’t call him ‘that man Osmond.’ Poor fellow! I don’t suppose he had done anything very dreadful, and at any rate we can afford to speak kindly of him now that he is dead.”

“Yes, but that is just the point. He isn’t dead.”

“Isn’t dead?” she repeated. “But Captain Cockcram saw that other man, Larkom, painting the name on his grave. Was it a dummy grave?”

“No. But it was Larkom who died. The man Cockeram saw was Osmond.”

“Are you sure? But of course you would be. Oh, Jim! You won’t tell anybody else, will you?”

“I am not very likely to,” he replied with a grim smile, “as I happen to be the said John Osmond.”

“Jim!” she gasped, gazing at him with wide eyes and parted lips. “I am astounded! I can’t believe it.”

“I expect it is a bit of a shock,” he said bitterly, “to find that you have been socialising for more than a week with a man who is wanted by the police.”

“I didn’t mean that,” she exclaimed, turning scarlet. “You know I didn’t. But it is so astonishing. I can’t understand how it happened. It seems so extraordinary, and so—so opportune.”

Osmond chuckled grimly. “It does,” he agreed. “Remarkably opportune. Almost as if I had polished Larkom off ad hoc. Well, I didn’t.”

“Of course you didn’t. Who supposed for a moment that you did? But do tell me exactly how it happened.”

“Well, it was quite simple. Poor old Larkom died of blackwater fever. He was a good fellow. One of the very best, and the only friend I had. He knew all about me—or nearly all—and he did everything he could to help me. It was an awful blow to me when he died. But he never had a chance when once the fever took hold of him. He was an absolute wreck and he went out like the snuff of a candle, though he managed to make a will before he died, leaving the factory and all his effects to his friend James Cook. It was he who invented that name for me.

“Well, of course, when he was dead, I had to bury him and stick up a cross over his grave. And—then I just painted the wrong name on it. That’s all.”

She nodded without looking at him and a shadow seemed to fall on her face. “I see,” she said, a little coldly. “It was a tempting opportunity; and events have justified you in taking it.”

Something in her tone arrested his attention. He looked at her sharply and with a somewhat puzzled expression. Suddenly he burst out: “Good Lord, Betty! You don’t think I did this thing in cold blood, do you?”

“Didn’t you?” she asked. “Then how did you come to do it?”

“I’ll tell you. Poor old Larkom’s name was John, like mine. I had painted in the ‘John’ and was just going to begin the ‘Larkom’ when I happened to look along the beach. And there I saw Cockeram with his armed party bearing down on Adaffia. Of course, I guessed instantly what his business was, and I saw that there was only one thing to be done. There was the blank space on the cross. I had only to fill it in with my own name and the situation would be saved. So I did.”

Her face cleared at this explanation. “I am glad,” she said, “that it was only done on the spur of the moment. It did seem a little callous.”

“I should think so,” he agreed, “if you thought of me sitting by the poor old fellow’s bedside and calmly planning to use his corpse to cover my retreat. As it was, I hated doing it; but necessity knows no law. I have thought more than once of making a dummy grave for myself and shifting the cross to it and of setting up a proper memorial to Larkom. And I will do it when I get back.”

She made no comment on this; and as, at the moment her line tightened, she hauled it in, and impassively detaching a big red snapper from the hook, re-baited and cast the line overboard with a curiously detached, preoccupied air. Apparently, she was reflecting profoundly on what she had just learned, and Osmond, glancing at her furtively from time to time, abstained from interrupting her meditations. After a considerable interval she turned towards him and said in a low, earnest tone: “There is one thing that I want to ask you. Just now you said that you felt you ought to tell me this; that I ought to know. I don’t quite see why.”

“There was a very good reason,” he replied, “and I may as well make a clean breast of it. To put it bluntly, I fell in love with you almost as soon as I saw you, and naturally, I have grown to love you more with every day that has passed.”

She flushed deeply, and glancing at him for an instant, turned her eyes once more on her line.

“Still,” she said in a low voice, “I don’t see why you thought I ought to know.”

“Don’t you?” he rejoined. “But surely it is obvious. You accepted me as your chum and you seemed to like me well enough. But you had no inkling as to who or what I was. It was my clear duty to tell you.”

“You mean that there was the possibility that I might come to care for you and that you felt it your duty to warn me off?”

“Yes. It wasn’t very likely that there would be anything more than friendship on your side; but still it was not impossible. Women fall in love with the most unlikely men.”

At this she smiled and looked him squarely in the face, “I thought you meant that,” she said, softly, “and, of course, you were quite right. But if your intention was to put me on my guard and prevent me from caring for you, your warning has come too late. You would have had to tell me before I had seen you—and I don’t believe it would have made a scrap of difference even then. At any rate, I don’t care a fig what you have done—I know it was nothing mean. But all the same, I am glad you told me. I should have hated to find it out afterwards by myself.”

He gazed at her in dismay. “But, Betty,” he protested, “you don’t seem to grasp the position. There is a warrant out for my arrest.”

“Who cares?” she responded. “Besides, there isn’t. John Osmond is dead and there is no warrant out for Captain James Cook. It is you who don’t grasp the position.”

“But,” he expostulated, “don’t you realize that I can never go home? That I can’t even show my face in Europe?”

“Very well,” said she. “So much the worse for Europe. But there are plenty of other places; and what is good enough for you is good enough for me. Now, Jim, dear,” she added, coaxingly, “don’t create difficulties. You have said that you love me—I think I knew it before you told me—and that is all that matters to me. Everything else is trivial. You are the man to whom I have given my heart, and I am not going to have you crying off.”

“Good God, Betty!” he groaned, “don’t talk about ‘crying off.’ If you only know what it means to me to look into Paradise and be forced to turn away! But, my dearest love, it has to be. I would give my life for you gladly, joyfully. I am giving more than my life in refusing the sacrifice that you, in the nobleness of your heart, are willing to make. But I could never accept it. I could never stoop to the mean selfishness of spoiling the life of the woman who is more to me than all the world.”

“I am offering no sacrifice,” she said. “I am only asking to share the life of the man I love. What more does a woman want?”

“Not to share such a life as mine,” he replied, bitterly. “Think of it, Betty, darling! For the rest of my days I must sneak about the world under a false name, hiding in obscure places, scanning the face of every stranger with fear and suspicion lest he should discover my secret and drag me from my sham grave. I am an outcast, an Ishmaelite. Every man’s hand is against me. Could I allow a woman—a beautiful girl, a lady of position—to share such a sordid existence as mine? I should be a poor lover if I could think of such contemptible selfishness.”

“It isn’t so bad as that, Jim, dear,” she pleaded. “We could go abroad—to America—and make a fresh start. You would be sure to do well there with your abilities, and we could just shake off the old world and forget it.”

He shook his head, sadly. “It is no use, darling, to delude ourselves. We must face realities. Mine is a wrecked life. It would be a crime, even if it were possible, for me to take you from the surroundings of an English lady and involve you in the wreckage. It was a misfortune, at least for you, that we ever met, and there is only one remedy. When we separate, we must try to forget one another.”

“We shan’t, Jim,” she exclaimed, passionately. “You know we shan’t. We aren’t, either of us, of the kind that forgets. And we could be so happy together! Don’t let us lose everything for a mere scruple.”

At this moment all on deck were startled by a loud hail from aloft. One of the men had climbed up into the swaying foretop and stood there holding on to the topmast shrouds and with his free hand pointing to the north. Osmond stepped forward and hailed him.

“Foretop there! What is it?”

“A steamer, sir. Seems to be headin’ straight on to us.”

Osmond ran below, and having fetched Redford’s binocular from the berth, climbed the main rigging to just below the cross-tree. There, securing himself with one arm passed round a shroud, he scanned the northern horizon intently for a minute or two and then descended slowly with a grave, set face. From his loftier station he had been able to make out the vessel’s hull; and the character of the approaching ship had left him in little doubt as to her mission. His comrade met him with an anxious, inquiring face as he jumped down from the rail.

“Small man-o’-war,” he reported in response to the unspoken question; “barquentine-rigged, buff funnel, white hull. Looks like a gun-boat.”

“Ha!” she exclaimed. “That will be the Widgeon. She was lying off Accra.”

The two looked at one another in silence for a while as they look who have heard bad tidings. At length Osmond said, grimly: “Well, this is the end of it, Betty. She has been sent out to search for you. It will be ‘good-bye’ in less than an hour.”

“Not ‘good-bye,’ Jim,” she urged. “You will come, too, won’t you?”

“No,” he replied; “I can’t leave the old man in this muddle.”

“But you’ll have to leave him sooner or later.”

“Yes; but I must give him the chance to get another mate, or at least to ship one or two native hands.”

“Oh, let him muddle on as he did before. My father will be wild to see you when he hears of all that has happened. Don’t forget, Jim, that you saved my life.”

“I saved my own,” said he, “and you chanced to benefit. But I couldn’t come with you in any case, Betty. You are forgetting that I have to keep out of sight. There may be men up at head-quarters who know me. There may be even on this gun-boat.”

She gazed at him despairingly and her eyes filled. “Oh, Jim,” she moaned, “how dreadful it is. Of course I must go. But I feel that we shall never see one another again.”

“It will be better if we don’t,” said he.

“Oh, don’t say that!” she pleaded. “Think of what we have been to one another and what we could still be for ever and ever if only you could forget what is past and done with. Think of what perfect chums we have been and how fond we are of one another. For we are, Jim. I love you with my whole heart and I know that you are just as devoted to me. It is a tragedy that we should have to part.”

“It is,” he agreed, gloomily, “and the tragedy is of my making.”

“It isn’t,” she dissented, indignantly; and then, softly and coaxingly, she continued: “But we won’t lose sight of each other altogether, Jim, will we? You will write to me as soon as you get ashore. Promise me that you will.”

“Much better not,” he replied; but with so little decision that she persisted until, in the end, and much against his judgment, he yielded and gave the required promise.

“That makes it a little easier,” she said, with a sigh. “It leaves me something to look forward to.”

She took the glasses from him and searched the rim of the horizon, over which the masts of the approaching ship had begun to appear.

“I suppose I ought to report to the old man,” said Osmond, and he was just turning towards the companion when Captain Hartup’s head emerged slowly and was in due course followed by the remainder of his person. His left arm was now emancipated from the sling and in his right hand he carried a sextant.

“Gun-boat in sight, sir,” said Osmond. “Seems to be coming our way.”

The captain nodded, and stepping to the taffrail, applied his eye to the eyepiece of the sextant.

“It has gone seven bells,” said he. “Isn’t it about time you got ready to take the latitude—you and the other officer?” he added, with a sour grin.

In the agitating circumstances, Osmond had nearly forgotten the daily ceremony—a source of perennial joy to the crew. He now ran below and presently returned with the two sextants, one of which he handed to ‘the other officer.’

“For the last time, little comrade,” he whispered.

“And we’ll work the reckoning together. Norie’s Navigation will be a sacred book to me after this.”

She took the instrument from him and advanced with him to the bulwark. But if the truth must be told, her observation was a mere matter of form, and twice before the skipper called “eight bells” she had furtively to wipe a tear from the eyepiece. But she went below to the cuddy and resolutely worked out the latitude (from the reading on Osmond’s sextant), and when the brief calculation was finished, she silently picked up the scrap of paper on which Osmond had worked out the reckoning and laid hers in its place. He took it up without a word and slipped it into his pocket.

“They are queer keepsakes,” she said in a half-whisper as the door of the captain’s cabin opened, “but they will tell us exactly when and where we parted. Who knows when and where we shall meet again—if we ever do?”

“If we ever do,” he repeated in the same tone; and then, as the captain came out and looked at them inquiringly, he reported the latitude that they had found, and followed him up the companion-steps.

When they arrived on deck they found the crew ranged along the bulwark watching the gun-boat, which was now fully in view, end-on to the brigantine, and approaching rapidly, her bare masts swinging like pendulums as she rolled along over the big swell.

“I suppose we shall make our number, sir,” said Osmond; and as the skipper vouchsafed no reply beyond an unintelligible grunt, he added: “The flag locker is in your cabin, isn’t it?

“Never you mind about the flag locker,” was the sour reply. “Our name is painted legibly on the bows and the counter, and I suppose they’ve got glasses if they want to know who we are.” He took the binocular from Osmond, and after a leisurely inspection of the gun-boat, continued: “Looks like the Widgeon. Coming to pick up a passenger, I reckon. About time, too. I suppose you are both going—if they’ll take you?”

“I am not,” said Osmond. “I am going to stay and see you into port.”

The skipper nodded and emitted an ambiguous grunt, which he amplified with the addition: “Well, you can please yourself,” and resumed his inspection of the approaching stranger.

His forecast turned out to be correct, for the gunboat made no signal, but, sweeping past the Speedwell’s stern at a distance of less than a quarter of a mile, slowed down and brought-to on the port side, when she proceeded to lower a boat; whereupon Captain Hartup ordered a rope ladder to be dropped over the port quarter. These preparations Miss Burleigh watched anxiously and with an assumption of cheerful interest, and when the boat ran alongside, she joined the skipper at the head of the ladder, while Osmond, lurking discreetly in the background, kept a watchful eye on the officer who sat in the stern-sheets until the lessening distance rendered him distinguishable as an undoubted stranger, when he also joined the skipper.

As the newcomer—a pleasant-faced, clean-shaved man in a lieutenant’s uniform—reached the top of the ladder, he exchanged salutes with the skipper and the lady, who advanced and held out her hand.

“Well, Miss Burleigh,” said the lieutenant as he shook her hand, heartily, “this is a relief to find you safe and sound and looking in the very pink of health. But you have given us all a rare fright. We were afraid the ship had been lost.”

“So she was,” replied Betty. “Lost and found. I think I have earned a fatted calf, don’t you, Captain Darley?”

“I don’t know,” rejoined the lieutenant (the honorary rank was in acknowledgment of his position as commander of the gun-boat); “we must leave that to His Excellency. But it doesn’t sound very complimentary to your shipmates or to your recent diet. I needn’t ask if you are coming back with us. My cabin has been made ready for you.”

“But how kind of you, Captain Darley. Yes, I suppose I must come with you, though I have been having quite a good time here; mutinies, fishing, and all sorts of entertainments.”

“Mutinies, hey!” exclaimed Darley, with a quick glance at the captain. “Well, I am sorry to tear you away from these entertainments, but orders are orders. Perhaps you will get your traps packed up while I have a few words with the captain. I shall have to make a report of what has happened.”

On this there was a general move towards the companion. Betty retired—somewhat precipitately—to her berth and the lieutenant followed Captain Hartup to his cabin.

Both parties were absent for some time. The first to reappear was Betty, slightly red about the eyes and carrying a small handbag. Having dispatched Sam Winter below to fetch up her portmanteau, she drew Osmond away to the starboard side.

“Jack,” she said, in a low, earnest tone—“I may call you by your own name just for once, mayn’t I?—you have made me a promise. You won’t go back on it, will you, Jack?”

“Of course I shan’t, Betty,” he replied.

“I want you to have my cabin when I’ve gone,” she continued. “It is a better one than yours and it has a tiny port-hole. And if you open the locker, you will find a little note for you. That is all. Here they come. Good-bye, Jack, darling!”

She turned away abruptly as he murmured a husky farewell, and having shaken hands with Captain Hartup and thanked him for his hospitality, was stepping on to the ladder when she paused suddenly and turned back.

“I had nearly forgotten,” said she. “I haven’t paid my passage.”

“There is no passage-money to pay,” the skipper said, gruffly. “My contract was to deliver you at Accra, and I haven’t done it. Besides,” he added, with a sour grin, “you’ve worked your passage.”

“Worked her passage!” exclaimed the lieutenant. What do you mean?”

“She has been taking the second mate’s duties,” the skipper explained.

Darley stared open-mouthed from the skipper to the lady. Then, with a fine, hearty British guffaw, he assisted the latter down to the boat.

CHAPTER VII

The Mate Takes His Discharge

As an instance of the malicious perversity which the forces of nature often appear to display, the calm which had for so many days cut off Miss Betty from any communication with the world at large seemed unable to survive her departure. Before the gun-boat was fairly hull down on the horizon, a dark line on the glassy sea announced the approach of a breeze, and a few minutes later the brigantine’s sails filled, her wallowings subsided, and a visible wake began to stream out astern.

The change in the vessel’s motion brought the captain promptly on deck, and Osmond listened somewhat anxiously for the orders as to the course which was to be set. But he knew his commander too well to make any suggestions.

“Breeze seems to be about sou’-sou’-west,” the skipper remarked with one eye on the compass-dial and the other on the upper sails. “Looks as if it was going to hold, too. Put her head west-nor’-west.”

“Did the lieutenant give you our position?” Osmond inquired.

“No, he didn’t,” the skipper snapped. “He wasn’t asked. I don’t want any of your brass-bound dandies teaching me my business. The continent of Africa is big enough for me to find without their help.”

Osmond smothered a grin as he thought of the chronometer, re-started and ticking away aimlessly in the captain’s cabin, its error and rate alike unknown. But again he made no comment, and presently the skipper resumed: “I suppose you will be wanting to get back to Adaffia?”

“I’m not going to leave you in the lurch.”

“Well, you can’t stay with me for good excepting as a seaman, as you haven’t got a ticket—at least, I suppose you haven’t.”

“No. I hold a master’s certificate entitling me to navigate my own yacht, but, of course, that is no use on a merchant vessel, excepting in an emergency. But I don’t quite see what you are going to do.”

“It is a bit of a problem,” the skipper admitted. “I shall take on one or two native hands to help while we are on the Coast, and appoint Winter and Simmons to act as mates. Then perhaps I shall he able to pick up an officer from one of the steamers for the homeward trip.”

“I will stay with you until you are fixed up, if you like,” said Osmond; but the captain shook his head.

“No,” he replied. “I shall put you ashore at Adaffia. I can manage all right on the Coast, and I must have a regular mate for the homeward voyage.”

Thus the programme was settled, and, on the whole, satisfactorily to Osmond. It is true that, if there had been no such person as Elizabeth Burleigh, he would have held on to his position, even with the rating of ordinary seaman, for the homeward voyage, on the chance of transferring later to some ship bound for South America or the Pacific Islands. But although he had renounced all claim to her and all hope of any future connected with her, he still clung to the ill omened land that was made glorious to him by her beloved presence.

The captain’s forecast was justified by the event. The breeze held steadily and seemed inclined to freshen rather than to fail. The old brigantine heeled over gently and forged ahead with a pleasant murmur in her sails and quite a fine wake trailing astern. It was a great relief to everybody after the long calm, with its monotony and inaction and the incessant rolling of the ship and flapping of the sails. The captain was almost pleasant and the crew were cheerful and contented, though they had little to do, for when once the course was set there was no need to touch sheet or brace, and the trick at the wheel was the only active duty apart from the cook’s activities.

To Osmond alone the change brought no obvious satisfaction. All that had recently happened had been, as he could not but recognize, for the best. The parting had to come, and every day that it was delayed forged his fetters only the more firmly. But this reflection offered little consolation. He loved this sweet, frank, open-hearted girl with an intensity possible only to a man of his strength of will and constancy of purpose. And now she was gone; gone out of his life for ever. It was a final parting. There was no future to look forward to; not even the most distant and shadowy. The vision of a great happiness had floated before him and had passed, leaving him to take up again the burden of his joyless life, haunted for ever by the ghost of the might-have-been.

Nevertheless, he went about his duties briskly enough, finding jobs for the men and for himself, overhauling the cordage, doing small repairs on the rigging, and even, with his own hands, putting a patch on a weak spot on the bottom of the long-boat and lining it inside and out with scraps of sheet copper. And if he was a little grimmer and more silent than before, the men understood and in their rough way sympathized, merely remarking that “Pore old Cook do seem cut up along o’ losin’ his Judy.”

At dawn on the third day the land was in sight; that is to say to the north there was an appearance as if a number of small entomological pins had been stuck into the sea-horizon in irregular groups. Viewed from the fore-top, however, through Redford’s glasses, this phenomenon resolved itself into a narrow band of low-lying shore, dotted with coconut palms, the characteristic aspect of the Bight of Benin.

As the day wore on, the brigantine gradually closed in with the land. Before noon, the captain was able, through his telescope, to identify a group of white buildings as the German factories at the village of Bagidá. Then the neighbouring village of Lomé came in sight and slowly crept past; and as the Speedwell drew yet nearer to the land, Osmond was able to recognize, among a large grove of coconuts, the white-washed bungalow at Denu, and, a few miles ahead, the dark mass of palms that he knew to be Adaffia.

“Well, Mr. Cook,” said the captain, “you’ll soon be back by your own fireside. If the breeze holds, we ought to be in Adaffia roads by four at the latest. I suppose you have got all your portmanteaux packed?”

“I’m all ready to go ashore, if you are still of the same mind.”

“I never change my mind,” replied the skipper; and Osmond believed him.

“Are you making any stay at Adaffia?” he asked.

“I am going to put you ashore,” the captain answered. “What I shall do after that is my business.”

“I asked,” said Osmond, “because I thought I might be able to get you one or two native hands. However, you can let me know about that later. Now, as it is your watch on deck, I will go below and take a bit of a rest.”

He went down to the berth, into which he had moved when Betty departed, and, shutting the door, looked thoughtfully round the little apartment. Nothing had been altered since she left. All the little feminine tidinesses had been piously preserved. It was still, to the eye, a woman’s cabin, and everything in its aspect spoke to him of the late tenant. Presently he lay down on the bunk—the bunk in which she had slept—and for the hundredth time drew from his pocket the letter which she had left in the locker. It was quite short—just a little note hastily written at the last moment when the boat was waiting. But to him it was inexhaustible; and though by now he knew it by heart, he read it again as eagerly as when he had first opened it.

“MY DEAREST JIM,” it ran. “I am writing you a few words of farewell (since we must say ‘good-bye’ in public) to tell you that when you read them I shall be thinking of you. I shall think of you, best and dearest comrade, every day of my life, and I shall go on hoping that somehow we shall meet again and be as we have been on this dear old ship. And Jim, dearest, I want you to understand that I am always yours. Whenever you want me—no, I don’t mean that; I know you want me now—but whenever you can cast away things that ought to be forgotten, remember that I am waiting for you. Try, dear, to forget every thing but your love and mine.

“Au revoir!

“Your faithful and loving

“BETTY.”

It was a sweet letter, written in all sincerity; and even though Osmond never wavered in the renunciation that honour demanded, still it told him in convincing terms that the door was not shut. The gate of Paradise was still ajar. If he could forget all justice and generosity; if he, who had nothing to give, could bring himself to accept the gift so generously held out to him, he still had the option to enter. He realized that—and never, for an instant, entertained the thought. Perhaps there were other ways out. But if there were, he dismissed them, too. Like Captain Hartup, he was not given to altering his mind. Free as he was from the captain’s petty obstinacy, he was a man of inflexible purpose, even though the purpose might have been ill-considered.

His long reverie was at length interrupted by a voice which came in through the little port-hole. “No soundings!”

He glanced up at the tell-tale compass which formed a rather unusual fitting to the mate’s bunk and noted that the ship’s course had been altered three points to the north. She was now heading almost directly for the land and was presumably nearly opposite Adaffia. He re-folded the letter and put it away, but his thoughts went back to its message and to the beloved writer. Presently the voice of the man in the channel who was heaving the lead was heard again; and this time it told of a nearer approach to that dreary shore.

“By the deep, eighteen!”

He noted the depth with faint interest and began to think of the immediate future. As soon as he got ashore he must write to her. It was quite wrong, but he had promised, and he could not but be glad that she had exacted the promise. It would be a joy to write to her, and yet he could feel that he was doing it under compulsion. But it must be a careful letter. There must be in it no sign of weakening or wavering that might mislead her. She must be free and she must fully realize it; must realize that he belonged to her past and had no part in her future. It would be a difficult letter to write; and here he set himself to consider what he should say. And meanwhile the leads-man’s voice came in from time to time, recording the gradual approach to the land.

“By the deep, ele-vern!” “By the mark, ten!” “By the deep, eight!”

At this point he was aware of sounds in the cuddy as if some heavy objects were being moved, and he surmised that the gin-cases were being disinterred from the lazarette. Then he heard the trap fall and heavy footsteps stumbled up the companion-stairs. A moment later the leadsman sang out: “By the mark, sev-ern!” and as Osmond rose from the bunk there came a thumping at his door and a voice sang out:

“The captain wants you on deck, sir, and there’s a canoe a-comin’ alongside.”

Osmond cast a farewell glance round the little cabin and followed the man up on deck, where he found the captain waiting on the poop, standing guard, apparently, over two leathern bags and one of canvas. Looking forward, he saw the crew gathered at the open gangway, regarding with sheepish grins four unopened gin-cases, while a canoe, bearing a scarlet-coated grandee, was just running alongside. As he stepped out of the companion, the captain picked up the three bags, and walking with him slowly towards the gangway, addressed him in a gruff tone and a somewhat aggressive manner.

“According to law,” said he, “I believe you are entitled to a third of the ship’s value for salvage services. There are nearly two hundred ounces of gold-dust in these two leather bags—that is, roughly, eight hundred pounds—and there is forty-eight pounds ten in sovereigns and half-sovereigns, in the canvas bag. Will that satisfy you?

“Rubbish,” said Osmond. “I want eight shillings for two cases of gin broached by your men.”

“You won’t get it from me,” snapped the skipper. “I’ll have nothing to do with intoxicating liquor.”

“If you don’t pay, I’ll sue you,” said Osmond.

“I haven’t had the gin,” retorted the skipper. “It was brought on board without my authority. You must recover from the men who had it. But what do you say about the question of salvage?”

“Hang the salvage!” replied Osmond. “I want to be paid for my gin.”

“You won’t get a ha’penny from me for your confounded poison,” exclaimed the skipper, hotly. “I hold very strict views on the liquor traffic. There are the men who drank the stuff. Make them pay. It’s no concern of mine. But about this salvage question: are you satisfied with what I offer?”

Osmond glanced through the gangway. The gin-cases were all stowed in the canoe; Mensah was beaming up at him with an expectant grin and the canoe-men grasped their paddles. He felt in his pocket, and then, taking the canvas bag from the skipper, thrust his hand in and brought out a handful of coins. From these he selected a half-sovereign, and returning the others, dropped in a couple of shillings from his pocket.

“Two shillings change,” he remarked. He threw the bag down on the deck, and pocketing the half sovereign, dropped down into the canoe. But he had hardly taken his seat on the tie-tie thwart when two heavy thumps on the floor of the canoe, followed by a jingling impact, announced the arrival of the two bags of gold-dust and the bag of specie.

Osmond stood up in the dancing canoe with a leather bag in each hand.

“Now, Mensah,” he sang out, “tell the boys to get away one time.”

The paddles dug into the blue water; the canoe bounded forward. Aiming skilfully at the open gang way, Osmond sent the heavy leathern bags, one after the other, skimming along the deck, and the little bag of specie after them. The skipper grabbed them up and rushed to the gangway. But he was too late. The canoe was twenty yards away and leaping forward to the thud of the paddles. Looking back at the brigantine with a satisfied smile, Osmond saw a row of six grinning faces at the rail, and at the gangway a small figure that shook its fist at the receding canoe with valedictory fury.

His homecoming was the occasion of a pleasant surprise. At intervals during his absence he had given a passing thought to his factory and the little solitary house by the beach and had wondered how they would fare while their master was away. Now he found that in Kwaku Mensah he had a really faithful steward, and not only faithful but strangely competent in his simple way. The house was in apple-pie order and the store was neatly kept and evidently a going concern, for when he arrived, Mensah’s pretty Fanti wife was behind the counter, chaffering persuasively with a party of ‘bush’ people from Agotimé, and a glance into the compound showed a good pile of produce, awaiting removal to the produce store. Accounts, of course, there were none, since Mensah ‘no sabby book,’ but nevertheless that artless merchantman had kept an exact record of all the transactions with that uncanny precision of memory that one often observes in the intelligent illiterate.

So Osmond settled down at once, with a satisfaction that rather surprised him, into the old surroundings; and as he sat that evening at the table, consuming with uncommon relish a dinner of okro soup, ‘chickum cotrecks,’ and ‘banana flitters,’ the product of Mrs. Mensah’s skill (her name was Ekua Bochwi, from which one learned that she had been born on Wednesday and was the eighth child of her parents), he was inclined to congratulate himself on Captain Hartup’s refusal to retain him as the provisional mate of the Speedwell.

But in spite of the triumphant way in which he had out-manoeuvred the skipper, Osmond had a suspicion that he had not seen the last of his late commander. For the brigantine, which he had left hove-to and apparently ready to proceed on her voyage, had presently let go her anchor and stowed her sails as if the captain contemplated a stay at Adaffia. And the event justified his suspicions. On the following morning, while he was seated at the breakfast-table, with a fair copy of his letter to Betty before him, he became aware of shod feet on the gravelled compound, and a few moments later the doorway framed the figure of Captain Hartup, while in the background lurked Sam Winter, grinning joy and carrying two leathern bags.

The captain entered, and regarding his quondam mate with an expression that almost approached geniality, wished him “good morning” and even held out his hand. Osmond grasped it cordially, and drawing up a second chair, pressed his visitor to join him.

“A little fresh food,” he remarked, untactfully, with his eye on the leathern bags, “and a cup of real coffee will do you good.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that,” snorted the skipper. “I’m not starving, and neither are you. The ship’s grub hasn’t killed you. Still,” he added, “as I see you are breakfasting like a Christian and not in the beastly Coast fashion, I don’t mind if I do try a bit of shore tack with you. And you needn’t look at those bags like that. I am not going to force anything on you. I am not an obstinate man” (which was a most outrageous untruth).

“What have you brought them here for?” Osmond demanded stolidly.

“I’ll tell you presently,” replied the skipper. “Bring ’em in, Winter, and dump ’em on that sideboard.”

Winter deposited the two bags on the stack of empty cases thus politely designated and then backed to the doorway, where he was encountered by Kwaku, who was directed to take him to the store and feed him.

“I’ve come ashore,” the captain explained when they were alone, “to see if I can make one or two little arrangements with you.”

Osmond nodded as he helped his guest to stuffed okros and fried eggs (eggs are usually served, on the Coast, fried or poached or in some other overt form, as a precaution against embryological surprises).

“To begin with,” continued the skipper, “I want about half a dozen niggers—a cook, a cabin-boy, and a few hands to do the rough work. Do you think you can manage that for me?”

“I’ve no doubt I can,” was the reply.

“Good. Well, then, there is this gold-dust. If you care to change your mind, say so, and the stuff is yours.”

Osmond shook his head. “I came on board for my own purposes,” said he, “and I am not going to take any payment for looking after my own business.”

“Very well,” the skipper rejoined: “then if you won’t have it, I may as well keep it; and I shan’t if it remains on board. It was that gold-dust that tempted Dhoody and the others. Now I understood from you that you have got a safe. Is it a pretty strong one?”

“It’s strong enough. There are no skilled burglars out here.”

“Then I’m going to ask you to take charge of this stuff for me. You see that both bags are sealed up, and there is a paper inside each giving particulars of the contents and full directions as to how they are to be disposed of if anything should happen to me. Will you do this for me—as a matter of business, of course?”

“Not as a matter of business,” replied Osmond. “That would make me responsible for the safe custody of the bags, which I can’t be, as I may have to be absent from Adaffia and leave my man, Mensah, in charge of the factory. I will put the stuff in my safe with pleasure, and I think it will be perfectly secure there; but I won’t take any payment or accept any responsibility beyond exercising reasonable care. Will that do?”

“Yes,” replied the captain, “that will do. What is good enough for your own property is good enough for mine. So I will ask you to lock the stuff up for me and keep it till I ask for it; but if you should hear that anything has happened to me—that I am dead, in fact—then you will open the bags and read the papers inside and dispose of the property according to the directions written in those papers. Will you do that? It will be a weight off my mind if you will.”

“Certainly I will,” said Osmond. “But have you any reason to expect that anything will happen to you?”

“Nothing immediate,” the captain replied. “But, you see, I am not as young as I was, and I am not what you would call a very sound man. I am subject to occasional attacks of giddiness and faintness. I don’t know how much they mean, but my doctor at Bristol warned me not to treat them too lightly. He gave me a supply of medicine, which I keep in the chest, and when I feel an attack coming on, I turn in and take some. But still, ‘in the midst of life we are in death,’ you know; and I’m ready to answer to my name when the call comes.”

“Well,” said Osmond, “let us hope it won’t come until you have got your goods safely home to Bristol. But in any case, you can depend on me to carry out your instructions.”

“Thank you, Mr. Cook,” said the captain. “I am glad to get that little matter settled. The only anxiety that is left now is the ivory. I had thought of asking you to take charge of that, too, but it would be awkward for you to store. And, after all, it’s fairly safe in the hold. A man can’t nip off with a dozen eighty-pound tusks in his pocket. So I think we will leave that where it is, ready stowed for the homeward voyage. By the way, have you got any produce that you want to dispose of?”

“Yes, I have a ton or two of copra and a couple of puncheons of oil; and I can let you have some kernels and rubber. Perhaps you would like to take some of the produce in exchange for trade goods.”

The arrangement suited Captain Hartup exactly, and accordingly, when they had finished breakfast and stowed the gold-dust in the safe, they adjourned to the produce store to settle the details of the exchange. Then half a dozen canoes were chartered, the new hands mustered by Kwaku, and for the rest of the day the little factory compound and the usually quiet beach were scenes of unwonted bustle and activity. Sam Winter (secretly fortified with a substantial ‘tot’ of gin) was sent on board to superintend the stowage and breaking-out of cargo, while the skipper remained ashore to check off the goods landed and embarked.

The sun was getting low when the two white men set forth to follow the last consignment down to the beach. When they had seen it loaded into the canoes and watched its passage through the surf, Captain Hartup turned to Osmond, and having shaken his hand with almost unnatural cordiality, said, gruffly but not without emotion:

“Well, good-bye, Mr. Cook. I’ve a good deal to thank you for, and I don’t forget it. Providence brought us together when I badly needed a friend, and He will bring us together again, no doubt, in His own good time. But how or when, no one can foresee.”

He shook Osmond’s hand again and, stepping into the waiting canoe, took his seat on a parcel of rubber. The incoming breaker surged up and spent its last energy in a burst of spray on the canoe’s beak. The little craft lifted and, impelled by a hearty shove from the canoe-men, slid down the beach on the backwash and charged into the surf. For a few minutes Osmond stood at the brink of the sea watching the canoe as it hovered amidst clouds of spray, dodging the great combers and waiting for its chance to slip through the ‘shouting seas’ to the quiet rollers outside. At length the periodical ‘lull’ came; the paddles drummed furiously on the green-blue water; the canoe leaped at the following wave, disappeared in a burst of snowy froth, and reappeared prancing wildly but safely outside the line of surf. A little figure in the canoe turned and waved its hand; and Osmond, after a responsive flourish of his hat and a glance at the anchored brigantine, turned away from the beach with an odd feeling of regret and walked slowly back to the factory, pondering on the captain’s curious and rather cryptic farewell.

CHAPTER VIII

The Last of the ‘Speedwell’

For a couple of months Osmond’s life at Adaffia drifted on monotonously enough, yet not at all drearily to a man of his somewhat solitary habits and self-contained nature. The factory prospered in a modest way with very little attention on his part, causing him often to reflect regretfully on poor Larkom’s melancholy and unnecessary failure. That kindly wastrel was now secured—for a time—from oblivion by a neatly-made wooden cross, painted white and inscribed with his name, a date, and a few appreciative words, which had been set above his grave when the other cross had been removed to grace an elongated heap of sand which represented the resting-place of the late John Osmond.

Moreover, there were breaks in the monotony which had not existed before the adventure of the Speedwell. His letter to Betty (in which, among other matters, he had related with naive satisfaction the incident of the leathern bags and the defeat of Captain Hartup) had evoked a lengthy reply with a demand for a further letter; and so, much against his judgment, he had been drawn into a regular correspondence which was the occasion of alternate and conflicting emotions. Every letter that he wrote racked his conscience and filled him with self-contempt. But the arrival of the inevitable and always prompt reply was a delight which he accepted and enjoyed without a qualm. It was very inconsistent. To the half-naked native who acted as the semi-official postman, he would hand his letter shamefacedly, with a growl of disapproval, admonishing himself that “this sort of thing has got to stop.” And then, on the day when the reply was expected, he would take a telescope out on the sand-hills and remain for hours watching the beach for the appearance in the remote distance of that same native postman.

These letters, mostly written from head-quarters, kept him informed respecting events of local interest, and, what was much more to the point, of Betty’s own doings and movements. He learned, for instance, that there were rumours of a native rising in Anglóh (officially spelt Awuna), the region at the back of Adaffia; and that—regardless of this fact—Betty was trying to get her father’s permission for a little journey of exploration into this very district.

This latter item of news set his emotional see-saw going at double speed. His judgment denounced the project violently. First, there was the danger—obvious, though not so very great; for the African is essentially a gentlemanly fighter, if rather heavy-handed, and would avoid injuring a white woman. But he is a shockingly bad marksman and uses slugs and gravel for ammunition, so that accidents are very liable to happen. But apart from the danger, this expedition was highly undesirable, for it would bring Betty into his neighbourhood, and of course they would meet—she would see to that. And that meeting ought not to take place. It would only prolong a state of affairs that was disturbing to him and ruinous to her future prospects. He felt this very sincerely, and was foolish enough to say so in his reply to her letter.

From time to time his thoughts wandered to Captain Hartup, and always with a tendency to speculate on the meaning—if there were any—of the note of foreboding which he thought he had detected in the captain’s last words as they said “good-bye” on the beach. Those words—together with something final and testamentary in his manner when he had deposited the bags of gold-dust in the safe—seemed to hint at an uncertainty of life and distrust of the future on the captain’s part, on which Osmond reflected uneasily. And at last, there came a day on which the skipper’s meaning was made clear.

One morning, in the short interval between the night and the dawn, he awoke suddenly and became aware of a dusky figure between his bed and the window.

“Mastah!” the voice of Mensah exclaimed, excitedly, “dat ship, Speedwell! I look um. He fit for come on de beach.”

Osmond lifted the mosquito-curtain and, springing out of bed, dropped into his slippers, snatched up the telescope, and followed Mensah out to the end of the compound whence there was a clear view of the sea. And there she was looming up sharp and clear against the grey dawn; and the first glance of a nautical eye read tragedy and disaster in every detail of her aspect. No telescope was needed. She was close in shore, within a couple of cable-lengths of the surf, with her square-sails aback and head-sails shivering, drifting slowly but surely to the destruction that roared under her lee. Obviously, there was no one at the wheel, nor was there any sign of life on board. She was a perfect picture of a derelict.

For a few moments Osmond stared at her in horrified amazement. Then, with a sharp command to Mensah to “get canoe one time,” he ran out of the compound and made his way to the beach.

But his order had been anticipated. As he and Mensah came out on the shore, they found a group of excited fishermen dragging a canoe down to the water’s edge, while another party were already afloat and paddling out through the surf towards the derelict brigantine. Osmond and his henchman at once joined the fishermen, and though the latter looked askance at the white man—for the accommodation of the little craft was rather limited—they made no demur, experience having taught them that he would have his own way—and pay for it. Accordingly they hauled and shoved with a will, and in a very few moments got the canoe down to the water’s edge. Osmond and Mensah stepped in and took their seats, the fishermen grasped the gunwales, and when a big wave swept in and lifted the canoe, they shoved off and went sliding down on the backwash and charged into the surf.

Meanwhile the brigantine continued to drift by the wind and current nearly parallel to the shore, but slowly approached the latter. At the moment she was turning sluggishly and beginning to ‘pay off’ on the star board tack. Her sails filled and she began to move ahead. If anyone had been on board she might even now have been saved, for there was still room for her to ‘claw off’ the lee shore. Osmond gazed at her with his heart in his mouth and urged the canoe-men to greater efforts; though they wanted little urging, seeing that their friends in the other canoe were now quite near to the receding ship. Moment by moment his hopes rose as the brigantine gathered way, though she was now less easy to overtake. Breathlessly he watched the leading canoe approach her nearer and nearer until at last the fishermen were able to lay hold of the vacant tackles that hung down from the stern davits and swarm up them to the poop. And even as they disappeared over the taffrail, the flicker of life that the old brigantine had displayed faded out. Under the pressure of the mainsail she began slowly to turn to windward. The head-sails shivered, the square-sails blew back against the mast; she ceased to move ahead, and then began once more to drift stern-foremost towards the white line of surf.

As Osmond’s canoe ran alongside, where the other canoe was now towing, the first arrivals came tumbling over the side in a state of wild excitement, jabbering as only an excited African can jabber. Mensah proceeded hastily to interpret.

“Dose fishermen say dis ship no good. Dead man live inside him.”

Osmond acknowledged the information with an in articulate growl, and grasping a chain-plate, hauled himself up into the channel, whence he climbed over the rail and dropped on deck.

His first act was to run to the wheel, jam it hard over to port and fix it with a lashing. Then he ran forward to look at the anchors; but both of them were stowed securely and—for the present purposes—useless. He looked up despairingly at the sails, and for a moment thought of trying to swing the yards; but a glance over the stern at the snowy line of surf showed him that the time for manoeuvring was past. For an instant he stood scanning the deck; noting the absence of both boats and the yawning main hatch. Then he ran aft and scrambled down the companion-steps.

The door of the captain’s cabin was open—had been left open by the fishermen—and was swinging idly as the ship rolled. But though the whereabouts of the dead man was evident enough before he reached it, he entered without hesitation, intent only on learning exactly what had happened on that ill-omened ship.

The little cabin was just as he had last seen it—with certain differences. And in the bunk lay something that had once been Captain Hartup. It was a dreadful thing to look upon, for the Tropics deal not kindly with the unsepulchred dead. But as Osmond stood looking down on the bunk, mere physical repulsion was swallowed up in a profound feeling of pity for the poor, cross-grained, honest-hearted little shipmaster. There he lay—all that was left of him. There, in the bunk, still lightly held by the blackened, puffy hand, was the inexhaustible Commentary, and on the deck, by the bunk-side, an open box containing a tumbler and a large medicine-bottle the label of which bore written directions and a Bristol address.

Osmond picked up the bottle and read the minute directions with a sense of profound relief. Its presence suggested what his inspection of the dead man confirmed; that at least death had come to Captain Hartup peaceably and decently. The traces of a murderous attack which he had feared to find were not there. Everything tended to show that the captain had died, as he had seemed to expect, from the effects of some long-standing malady.

From the dead man Osmond turned a swift attention to the cabin. He had noticed, when he entered, that the chronometer was not in its place on the little chart-table. He now observed that other things had disappeared—the telescope, the marine glasses, the sextant, and the mathematical instrument case In short, as he looked round, he perceived that the little cabin had been gutted. Every portable thing of value had been taken away.

His observations were interrupted by the voice of Mensah calling to him urgently to come away “one time,” and at the same moment he felt the ship give a heavy lurch followed by a quick recovery. He backed out of the cabin and was about to run up the companion-steps when his glance fell on the door of the adjoining berth, which had been his own and Betty’s, and he was moved irresistibly to take a last, farewell look at the little hutch which held so many and so dearly prized memories. He thrust the door open and looked in; and even as he looked, a flash of dazzling white came through the tiny porthole, and a moment later a thunderous crash resounded and the ship trembled as if struck by a thousand monstrous hammers.

He waited no more, but, springing up the steps, thrust his head cautiously out of the companion-hatch. Glancing seaward, he saw a great, sparkling green mass sweeping down on the ship. In another instant, its sharp, tremulous crest whitened; a hissing sound was borne to his ears and quickly rose to a hoarse roar which ended in a crash that nearly shook him off his feet. Then sea and sky, masts and deck, were swallowed up in a cloud of blinding white; there was another roar, and the snowy cataract descended, filling the deck with a seething torrent of foaming water.

Osmond sprang out of the hatch and took a quick glance round. The two canoes were hovering on the outside edge of the surf and obviously unable to approach the ship. Towards the land, the sea was an unbroken expanse of white, while to seaward the long ranks of sharp-crested waves were turning over and breaking as they approached. Warned by a hissing roar from the nearest wave, he stepped back into the shelter of the companion. Again the ship staggered to the crashing impact. Again the visible world was blotted out by the white cloud of spray and foam; and then, as the deluge fell, came a sickening jar with loud cracking noises as the ship struck heavily on the ground. Twice she lifted and struck again, but the third time, rending sounds from below told that her timbers had given way and she lifted no more. Then, under the hammering of the surf, which filled her lower sails with green water, she heeled over towards the shore until the deck was at an angle of nearly forty-five.

Osmond looked out from his shelter and rapidly considered what he should do. There was not much time to consider, for the ship would soon begin to break up. He thought of dropping overboard on the land side and swimming ashore; but it was not a very safe plan, for at any moment the masts might go over the side, and it would not do for him to be underneath when they fell.

Still, he had to act quickly if he were to escape from the impending collapse of the whole fabric, and he looked about eagerly to find the least perilous method. Suddenly his glance fell upon a large cork fender which was washing about in the lee scuppers. The way in which it floated showed that it was dry and buoyant, and it appeared to him that with its aid he might venture into the surf beyond the shelter of the ship and wash safely ashore.

He watched for an opportunity to secure it. Waiting for the brief interval between the descent of the deluge and the bursting of the next wave, he slipped out, and grasping the end of the main sheet, which had washed partly loose from the cleat, ran down to the scupper, seized the fender, and hauling himself up again, crept into his shelter just in time to escape the next wave. When this had burst on the ship and the cataract had fallen, he kicked off his slippers, darted out, and clawing his way past the wheel, reached the taffrail. Holding on firmly to the fender with one hand, with the other he grasped the lee davit-tackle, and springing out, let the tackle slip through his hand.

Just as he reached the water, the next wave burst on the ship; and for the next few moments he was conscious of nothing but a roaring in his ears, a sudden plunge into darkness, and a sense of violent movement. But he still clung tenaciously to the fender, and presently his head rose above the seething water. He took a deep breath, shook the water from his eyes, and began to strike out with his feet, waiting anxiously for the next wave and wondering how much submersion he could stand without drowning. But when the next wave came, its behaviour rather surprised him. The advancing wall of hissing foam seemed simply to take hold of the fender and bear it away swiftly shoreward, leaving him to hold on and follow with his head comfortably above the surface.

In this way, amidst a roar like that of steam from an engine’s escape-valve, he was borne steadily and swiftly for about a quarter of a mile. Then the spent wave left him and he could see it travelling away towards the shore. But the following wave overtook him after a very short interval and carried him forward another stage. And so he was borne along with surprising ease and speed until he was at last flung roughly on the beach and forthwith smothered in foaming water. He clawed frantically at the wet sand and strove to rise. But the beach was steep and the undertow would have dragged him back but for the help of a couple of fishermen, who, holding on to a grass rope that was held by their companions, waded into the surf, and grabbing him by the arms, dragged him up on to the dry sand beyond the reach of the waves.

As he rose to his feet, he turned to look at the ship. But she was a ship no longer. The short time occupied by his passage ashore had turned her into a mere wreck. Her masts lay flat on the water and her deck had been burst through from below; and through the yawning spaces where the planks had been driven out, daylight could be seen in several places where her side was stove in. The two canoes had already come ashore, and their crews stood at the water’s edge, watching the flotsam that was even now beginning to drift shoreward on the surf. Osmond, too, watched it with interest, for he now recalled that the instantaneous glance that he had cast through the open main hatch had shown an unexpectedly empty condition of the hold. And this impression was confirmed when Mensah joined him (apparently quite unmoved by the proceedings of his eccentric employer) and remarked:

“Dose fishermen say only small-small cargo live in side dat ship. Dey say de sailor-man tief de cargo and go away in de boats.”

Osmond made no comment on this. Obviously the cargo could not have been taken away in two small boats. But equally obviously it was not there, nor were the boats. It was clear that the ship had been abandoned—probably after the skipper’s death—and she had been abandoned at sea. The suggestion was that the crew had transhipped on to some passing vessel and that the cargo had been transferred with them. It might be a perfectly legitimate transaction. But the presence in the cabin of the unburied body of the captain, and the open main hatch, hinted at hurried proceedings of not very scrupulous agents. A responsible shipmaster would certainly have buried the dead captain. Altogether it was a mysterious affair, on which it was possible only to speculate.

The spot where the brigantine had come ashore was about halfway between Adaffia and the adjoining village of Denu. Osmond decided to walk the three or four miles into Adaffia, and when he had washed, dressed, and breakfasted, to return and examine the wreckage. Meanwhile, he left Mensah on guard to see that nothing was taken away—or at any rate, to keep account of anything that was removed by the natives, who were now beginning to flock in from the two villages. Accordingly, having borrowed from the fishermen a large, shallow calabash to put over his head—for the sun was now well up and making itself felt—he strode away westward along the beach, walking as far as was possible on the wet sand to avoid delivering his bare feet to the attacks of the chiggers—sand-fleas—which infested the ‘Aeolian sands’ above the tide-marks.

When he returned some three hours later all that was left of the Speedwell was a litter of wreckage and flotsam strewn along the margin of the sea or on the blown sand, to which some of the more valuable portions had been carried. The vessel’s keel, with the stem and stern-posts and a few of the main timbers still attached, lay some distance out, but even this melancholy skeleton was gradually creeping shoreward under the incessant pounding of the surf. The masts, spars, and sails were still in the water, but they, too, were slowly creeping up the beach as the spent waves struck them every few seconds. As to the rest, the ship seemed almost to have decomposed into her constituent planks and beams. There is no ship-breaker like an Atlantic surf.

Osmond cast a pensive glance over the disorderly frame that had once been a stout little ship, and as Mensah observed him and approached, he asked:

“How much cargo has come ashore, Kwaku?”

Mensah flung out his hands and pointed to the litter on the shore. “Small, small cargo come,” said he. “One, two puncheons of oil, two or tree dozen bags kernels, some bags copra, two, tree bales Manchester goods—finish.”

“I don’t see any Manchester goods,” said Osmond.

“No, sah. Dem country people. Dey darn tief. Dey take eberyting. Dey no leave nutting,” and in confirmation he pointed to sundry little caravans of men, women, and children, all heavily laden and all hurrying homeward, which were visible, mostly in the distance. Indeed, Osmond had met several of them on his way.

“You have not seen any ivory?”

“No, sah. I look for um proper but I no see um.”

“Nor any big crates or cases?”

“No, sah. Only de bales and crates of Manchester goods, and de country people break dem up.”

“Has the captain—the dead man—come ashore?”

“Yas, sah. He live for dat place,” and Mensah pointed to a spot at the eastern end of the beach where a clump of coconut palms grew almost at high-water mark. Thither Osmond proceeded with Mensah, and there, at the spot indicated, he found the uncomely corpse of the little skipper lying amidst a litter of loose planks and small flotsam, on the wet sand in the wash of the sea, and seeming to wince as the spent waves alternately pushed it forward and drew it back.

“Mensah,” said Osmond, looking down gravely at the body, “this man my countryman, my friend. You sabby?”

“Yas, sah. I sabby he be your brudder.”

“Well, I am going to bury him in the compound with Mr. Larkom and Mr. Osmond.”

“Yas, sah,” said Mensah, with a somewhat puzzled expression. That second grave was a mystery that had caused him much secret cogitation. But discretion had restrained him from asking questions.

“You think,” pursued Osmond, “these people fit for bring the dead man to Adaffia?”

“Dey fit,” replied Mensah, “s’pose you dash um plenty money.”

“Very well,” said Osmond, with characteristic incaution, “see that he is brought in and I will pay them what they ask.”

“I go look dem people one time,” said Mensah, who had instantly decided that, on these advantageous terms, he would undertake the contract himself.

Before starting to walk back, Osmond took another glance at the wreckage and at the crowd of natives who were, even now, carrying it away piecemeal. For a moment he had a thought of constituting himself Lloyd’s agent and taking possession of what was left. But he had no authority, and as the mere wreckage was of no realizable value, and as the little cargo there had been was already carried away, he dismissed the idea and set out homeward, leaving the delighted natives in undisputed possession.

His first proceeding on arriving home was to unlock the safe and break open the leathern bags to see what directions Captain Hartup had given as to the disposal of his property. He was not entirely unprepared to find that the captain had formally transferred the gold-dust to him. But he was totally unprepared for the contents of the bulky paper which he drew out of the second bag, and as he opened and read it he could hardly believe the evidence of his eyesight. The paper was a regularly-drawn will, witnessed by Winter and Simmons, which made ‘my friend and temporary mate, Mr. James Cook,’ sole executor and legatee.

It began with a preamble, setting forth that ‘I, Nicholas Hartup, being a widower without offspring, dependants, or near relations, give and bequeath my worldly possessions to the man who has dealt with me honestly, faithfully, and without thought of material profit or reward’ and then went on to make the specific bequests, describing each of the items clearly and in detail. These included the gold-dust, giving the exact weight, a consignment of ivory consisting of ‘thirty-nine large tusks in three large crates, at present in the hold of the brigantine Speedwell, and fifty-one scribellos in a large canvas bag wired up and sealed, also in the hold’ also the vessel herself, and, most astonishing of all, ‘my freehold house in Bristol, known as number sixty-five Garlic Street’ and a sum of about three thousand pounds, a part invested in certain named securities and the remainder lying on deposit at a specified bank in Bristol. It was an amazing document. As Osmond read and re-read it he found himself wondering at the perverseness of the little shipmaster in hiding his kindly, appreciative feelings under so forbidding an exterior; but, to judge by the wording of the preamble, his experience of men would seem not to have been happy. Osmond, having put back the will in the bag, tied up that and the other and replaced them in the safe. As he locked the door and pocketed the key, he reflected on the irony of his present position. In all the years during which he had lived amidst his friends and relatives, no one had ever bequeathed to him a single penny. Yet in the course of a few months, in this unfrequented and forgotten corner of the world, he had twice been made the sole legatee of almost complete strangers. And now he had be come a man of modest substance, an owner of landed property; and that in a country which prudence insisted that he must never revisit.

CHAPTER IX

Arms and the Man

Speaking in general terms, Welshmen cannot be fairly described as excessively rare creatures; in fact, there are some parts of the world—Wales, for instance—in which they are quite common. But circumstances alter cases. When Jack Osmond, busily engaged in posting up his account-books, lifted his eyes and beheld a specimen of this well-known type of mammal, he was quite startled; not merely because he had never before heard anyone say “Good morning” with an accent on the “ning”—which the present example did, although it was actually three in the afternoon—but because no ship had called in the neighbourhood quite lately and he had not known of the presence of any European in the village.

The stranger introduced himself by the name of Jones, which being not entirely without precedent was accepted without difficulty. He had an additional name, but as Osmond failed to assimilate it, and it could be expressed in writing only by an extravagant expenditure of l’s and double d’s, it is omitted from this merely Saxon chronicle. He shook Osmond’s hand exuberantly and smiled until his face—particularly the left side—was as full of lines as a ground-plan of Willesden Junction.

“I come to you, Mr. Larkom,” said the visitor, retaining Osmond’s unwilling hand and apparently adopting the name that remained unaltered over the door of the factory, “as a fellow-countryman in distress, craving a charitable judgment and a helping hand.”

He would have been well advised to leave it at that; for Osmond’s natural generosity needed no spur, and the memory of his own misfortunes was enough to ensure his charity to others. But Mr. Jones continued, smiling harder than ever: “I come to you confidently for this help because of the many instances of your kindness and generosity and good-fellowship that I have heard—”

“From whom?” interrupted Osmond.

“From—er—from—well, I may say, from every one on the Coast who knows you.”

“Oh,” said Osmond; and his face relaxed into a grim smile. Jones saw that he had made a mistake and wondered what the deuce it was.

“Come into my room,” said Osmond, “and tell me what you want me to do. Have a cocktail?”

Mr. Jones would have a cocktail, thank you; and while Osmond twirled the swizzle-stick and raised a pink froth in the tumbler, he cautiously opened his business.

“I am taking some risk in telling you of my little affair, but I am sure I can trust you not to give me away.”

“Certainly you can,” Osmond replied, incautiously.

“You promise on your honour as a gentleman not to give me away?”

“I have,” said Osmond, handing him the cocktail.

Jones still hesitated somewhat, as if desirous of further formalities, but at length plunged into the matter in a persuasive whisper, with much gesticulation and a craftily watchful eye on Osmond’s face.

It was not an encouraging face. A portrait of the ‘Iron Duke’ at the age of thirty, executed in very hard wood by a heavy-handed artist with a large chisel and mallet, would give you the kind of face that Mr. Jones looked upon; and as the ‘little affair’ unfolded itself, that face grew more and more wooden. For Osmond’s charity in respect of errors of conduct did not extend to those that were merely in contemplation.

It transpired gradually that Mr. Jones’s sufferings and distress were occasioned by a little cargo that he had been unable to land; which cargo happened to include—er—in fact, to be quite candid, consisted largely of Mauser rifles, together with some miscellaneous knick-knacks—such as Mauser cartridges, for instance—all of which were at present rolling in the hold of a privately-chartered vessel (name not mentioned). It also appeared that the Colonial Government had most unreasonably prohibited the importation of arms and ammunition on account of the silly little insurrection that had broken out inland; which very circumstance created an exceptional opportunity—don’t you understand?—for disposing of munitions of war on profitable terms. It appeared, finally, that Mr. Larkom’s factory was an ideal place in which to conceal the goods and from which to distribute them among local sportsmen interested in target-practice or partridge-shooting.

“To put it in a nutshell,” said Osmond, “you’re doing a bit of gun-running and you want to use me as a cat’s paw; and to put it in another nutshell, I’ll see you damned first.”

“But,” protested Jones, “you sell arms yourself, don’t you?”

“Not while this row is on. Besides, the niggers don’t buy my gas-pipes for war-palaver. My customers are mostly hunters from the bush.”

Mr. Jones lingered a while to ply the arts of persuasion and consume two more cocktails; and when at last he departed, more in sorrow than in anger, he paused on the threshold to remark:

“You have promised, on your honour, not to give me away.”

“I know I have, like a fool,” replied Osmond “Wish I hadn’t. Know better next time. Good day.” And he followed his departing guest to the compound gate and shut it after him.

From that moment Mr. Jones seemed to vanish into thin air. He was seen no more in the village, and no whispers as to his movements came from outside. But a few nights later Osmond had a rather curious experience that somehow recalled his absent acquaintance. He had gone out, according to his common custom, to take a quiet stroll on the beach before turning in, and think of his future movements and of the everlasting might-have-been. Half a mile west of the village he came on a fishing canoe, drawn up above tide-marks, and as he had just filled his pipe he crept under the lee of the canoe to light it—for one learns to husband one’s matches in West Africa. Having lighted his pipe, he sat down to think over a trading expedition that he had projected, but, finding himself annoyed by the crabs, which at nightfall pour out of their burrows in myriads, he shifted to the interior of the canoe. Here he sat, looking over the spectral breakers out into the dark void which was the sea, and immersed in his thoughts until he was startled by the sudden appearance of a light. He watched it curiously and not without suspicion. It was not a ship’s anchor-light, nor was it a flare-lamp in a fishing-canoe. By the constant variation in its brightness Osmond judged it to be a bull’s-eye lantern which was being flashed to and fro along the coast from some vessel in the offing to signal to someone ashore.

He looked up and down the dark beach for the answering signal, and presently caught a dull glimmer, as of a bull’s-eye lantern seen from one side, proceeding from the beach a short distance farther west. Watching this spot, he soon made out a patch of deeper darkness which grew in extent, indicating that a crowd of natives had gathered at the water’s edge; and, after a considerable interval a momentary flash of the lantern fell on a boat dashing towards the beach in a smother of spray.

Soon after this a number of dark shapes began to separate themselves from the mass and move in single file across the low sand-dunes, passing within a few dozen yards of the canoe. Osmond could see them distinctly, though himself unseen; a long procession of carriers, each bearing a load on his head; and whereas some of these loads were of an oblong shape, like small gun-crates—about the length of a Mauser rifle—the others were more nearly cubical and quite small, though obviously heavy. Osmond watched the file of carriers and counted upwards of forty loads. Perhaps it was none of his business. But as those parcels of death and destruction were borne silently away into the darkness to swell the tale of slaughter in the inland villages, he cursed Mr. Jones and his own folly in giving that unconsidered promise.

The last of the carriers had vanished and he had just risen from the canoe to return up the now deserted beach when a new phenomenon presented itself. The clouds which had hidden the rising moon, thinned for a few moments, leaving a patch of coppery light in the eastern sky; and against this, sharp and distinct as if cut out of black paper, stood the shape of a schooner. But not an ordinary trading schooner. Brief as was the gleam that rendered her visible, her character was perfectly obvious to a yachtsman’s eye. She was a large yacht of the type that was fashionable when the America Cup was new; when spoon bows and bulb keels were things as yet undreamed of. Osmond stared at her in astonishment; and even as he looked, the clouds closed up, the sky drew dark, and she was lost in the blackness of the night.

He was up betimes on the following morning and out on the beach in the grey dawn to see if any confirmatory traces of these mysterious proceedings were visible. But his questioning eye ranged over the grey sea in vain. The schooner had vanished as if she had never been. There were, however, multitudinous tracks of bare feet leading up from the shore to the sand-hills, where they were lost; deep footprints such as would be made by heavily-laden men. And there was something else, even more significant. Just at high-water mark, hardly clear of the wash of the sea, was a ship’s boat, badly battered, broken-backed, and with one bilge stove in. Some fool, who knew not the West Coast surf, had evidently landed a heavy lading in her with this inevitable result.

But it was not her condition alone that caused Osmond to stride so eagerly towards her. There was something in her size and build that he seemed to recognize. As he reached her, he walked round to examine her stern. There had, of course, been a name painted on her transom, but it had been scraped out and the stern re-painted. Then Osmond stepped in and lifted one of the bottom-boards; and there, on the starboard side close to the keel, was a patch covered with sheet-copper, while inspection from without showed an external covering of copper. There was no mistaking that patch. It was his own handiwork. This poor battered wreck was the Speedwell’s long-boat; and as he realized this, he realized, too, what had become of the Speedwell’s cargo.

The discovery gave Osmond considerable food for thought for the remainder of the morning. But about mid-day an unlooked-for letter from Betty arrived and for the time being occupied his attention to the exclusion of all other matters. And not entirely without reason. For it conveyed tidings of a somewhat disturbing kind. The message was, indeed, smuggled in inconsequently, as important messages often are in ladies’ letters, at he end. But there it was; and Osmond read it with deep disapproval and no small uneasiness.

“You will probably not hear from me again for a week or two as I am going for a little trip inland and may not have a chance to send a letter. I shall let you know directly I get back, and until you hear from me you had better not write—or, at least, you can write, and make it a nice long letter, but don’t send it until you get mine.”

That was the message. She did not give a hint as to the region into which the ‘little trip’ would take her. But Osmond had a strong and uncomfortable suspicion that her route would take her into the country at the back of the great lagoon and would bring her finally to Adaffia.

He pondered the situation at length. As to the danger of such a journey, it was probably negligible—if the reports were correct. The disturbed area was far away to the north, on the borders of Krepi. The country at the back of the lagoon was believed to be quite peaceful and safe. But one never knew. These Efé peoples were naturally warlike and turbulent. At any moment they might break out in support of their inland relatives. Even now they might have provided themselves with some of Mr. Jones’s knick-knacks and be preparing for “war-palaver.”

The result of his cogitations was somewhat curious and not very easy to understand. For some time past he had been turning over in his mind a project which had really been held up by the regular arrival of Betty’s letters. That project was concerned with a trading expedition to the interior—to the country at the back of the lagoon. But that ‘little trip’ would have taken him out of the region in which the receipt of letters was possible, and he had accordingly put it off to some more opportune time. Now that more opportune time seemed to have arrived. There would be no more letters for a week or two, so there was nothing to prevent him from starting. That was how he put it to himself. What was actually in his mind it is impossible to guess. Whether his purpose was to be absent from Adaffia when Betty should make her inevitable visit, to avoid the meeting for which he had yearned but which he felt to be so undesirable; or whether he had some vague hopes of a possible encounter on the road: who can say? Certainly not the present chronicler, and probably not Osmond himself. At any rate, the upshot of it was that he decided on the journey, and with characteristic promptitude set about his preparations forthwith; and as they were far from elaborate and had been well considered before hand, a single day’s work saw everything ready for the start.

On the following morning he set forth, leaving the faithful Mensah in charge of the factory. A dozen carriers bore the loads of goods for the trading venture, and his recently engaged servant, Koffi Kuma, carried his simple necessaries in a light box. In spite of his anxieties and haunting regrets, he was in high spirits at the promised change from the monotony of Adaffia, which, but for the infinitely precious letters, would have been intolerably wearisome. The universal sand, varied only by the black lagoon mud, the everlasting coconut palms chattering incessantly in the breeze, and the bald horizon of the unpeopled sea, had begotten in him an intense yearning for a change of scene; for the sight of veritable trees with leaves, growing in actual earth, and of living things other than the sea-birds and the amphibious denizens of the beach.

A couple of hours’ steady marching carried him and his little party across the bare plain of dry mud that had once been part of the great lagoon and brought him to the mainland and the little nine-inch trail that did duty as a road. Gleefully he strode along in the rear of his little caravan, refreshing his eyes and ears with the novel sights and sounds. The tiresome boom of the surf had faded into a distant murmur that mingled with the stirring of leaves; strange birds, unseen in the bush, piped queer little Gregorian chants, while others, silent, but gorgeous of plumage—scarlet cardinals and rainbow-hued sun-birds—disported themselves visibly among the foliage. Little striped Barbary mice gambolled beside the track, and great, blue-bodied lizards with scarlet heads and tails perched on the tall ant-hills that rose on all sides like pink monuments, and nodded their heads defiantly at the passing strangers. It was a new world to Osmond. The bright pink soil, the crowded bush, the buttressed forest trees, the uncouth baobabs, with their colossal trunks and absurdly dwarfed branches—all were new and delightful after the monotony of the beach village, and so fully occupied his attention that when they entered a hamlet of pink-walled houses, he was content to leave the trading to Koffi, while he watched a troop of dog-faced monkeys who seemed to have established a sort of modus vivendi with the villagers.

Thus, with occasional halts for rest or barter, the caravan worked its way through the bush until about four o’clock in the afternoon; when Osmond, who had lagged behind to avoid the chatter of his carriers, rounded a sharp turn in the road and found himself entering the main street of a village. But he was not the only visitor. An instantaneous glance showed him a couple of stands of piled arms, by the side of which some half-dozen bare-footed native soldiers were seated on the ground eating from a large calabash; a fierce and sullen looking native, secured with manacles and a leading-rope and guarded by two more of the Hausa soldiers as he was fed by some of the villagers; and two white officers, seated under the village shade tree and engaged at the moment in conversation with Koffi, who seemed to have been captured by a Hausa sergeant.

As Osmond came in sight the two officers looked at one another and rose with a rather stiff salutation.

“You are Mr. Cook of Adaffia, I understand?” one of them said.

“Yes,” Osmond replied; and as the two officers again looked at one another with an air of some embarrassment, he continued, bluntly: “I suppose you want to know if I have got any contraband of war?”

“Well, you know,” was the half-apologetic reply, “someone has been selling rifles and ammunition to the natives, so we have to make inquiries.”

“Of course you do,” said Osmond; “and you’d better have a look at my goods. Koffi, tell the carriers to bring their loads here and open them.”

A very perfunctory inspection was enough to satisfy the constabulary officers of the harmless character of the trade goods, and having made it, they introduced themselves by the respective names of Stockbridge and Westall and invited Osmond to join them in their interrupted tea under the shade tree.

“Troublesome affair this rising,” said Westall, as he handed Osmond a mug of tea; “there’ll be wigs on the green before it’s over. Now that the beggars have got rifles, they are ready to stand up to the constabulary. Think they’re as good as we are; and they’re not so far wrong, either.”

“Where are you bound for now?” Osmond asked.

“We are going back to Quittah with some prisoners from Agotimé.” Westall nodded at the manacled native and added: “That’s one of the ring-leaders—a rascal named Zippah; a devil of a fellow, vicious as a bush-cat and plucky, too. Stockbridge and I are keeping him with us, in case of a rescue, but there are over a dozen other prisoners with the main body of Hausas. They marched out of the village just before you turned up.”

“And we’d better be marching out, too,” said Stockbridge, “or we shan’t catch them up. Will you have any more tea, Cook? If not, we’d better get on the road. There’s only a native sergeant-major with those men ahead. Are you coming our way?”

“Yes,” replied Osmond, “I’ll come with you as far as Affieringba, and then work my way home along the north shore of the lagoon.”

The three Englishman rose, and, as Westall’s servant repacked the tea apparatus, the little procession formed up. The six Hausas led with fixed bayonets; then came Westall followed by the prisoner, Zippah, and his guard; next came half a dozen carriers loaded with bundles of confiscated muskets and powder then Osmond and Stockbridge; and the rear was brought up by Osmond’s carriers and the three servants.

The road, or path, after leaving the village, passed through a number of yam and cassava plantations and then entered a forest of fan-palms; a dim and ghostly place now that the sun was getting low, pervaded by a universal rustling from the broad, ragged leaves above and a noisy crackling from the dry branches underfoot. For nearly an hour the party threaded its way through the gloomy aisles, then the palms gradually thinned out, giving place to ordinary forest trees and bush.

“Quite pleasant to get a look at the sky again,” Osmond remarked as they came out into the thin forest.

“Yes,” said Stockbridge; “but you won’t see it for long. There’s a bamboo thicket just ahead.”

Even as he spoke there loomed up before them an immense, cloudy mass of soft, blue-green foliage; then appeared a triangular black hole like the entrance to a tunnel, into which the Hausas, the prisoners, and the carriers successively vanished. A moment later and Osmond himself had entered through that strange portal and was groping his way in almost total darkness through a narrow passage, enclosed and roofed in by solid masses of bamboo stalks. Ahead, he could dimly make out the vague shapes of the carriers, while all around the huge clusters of bamboos rose like enormous piers, widening out until they met overhead to form a kind of groined roof. It was an uncanny place; a place in which voices echoed weirdly, mingling with strange, unexplained noises and with the unceasing, distant murmur of the soft foliage far away over head.

Osmond stumbled on over the crackling canes that formed the floor, gradually growing accustomed to the darkness until there appeared ahead a triangular spot of light that grew slowly larger, framing the figures of the Hausas and carriers; and then, quite suddenly, he emerged, blinking, into broad daylight on the margin of a smallish but deep and rapid river, which at this spot was spanned by a primitive bridge.

Now a native bridge is an excellent contrivance—for natives; for the booted European it is much less suitable. The present one was formed of the slender trunk of a young silk-cotton tree, barkless and polished by years of wear, and Osmond watched enviously as the Hausas strolled across, grasping the cylindrical surface handily with their bare feet, and wondered if he had not better take off his boots. However, Westall had no false pride. Recognizing the disabilities involved by boots, he stooped, and, getting astride the slender log, crossed the river with ease and safety, if without much dignity; and the other two white men were not too proud to follow his example.

Beyond the river the path, after crossing a narrow belt of forest, entered a valley bordered by hills covered with dense bush, which rose steeply on either side. Osmond looked at the little party ahead, straggling in single file along the bottom of the valley, and inwardly wondered where Westall had picked up his strategy.

“It’s to be hoped, Stockbridge,” he remarked, “that there are none of Mr. Zippah’s friends hanging about here. You couldn’t want a prettier spot for an ambush.”

He had hardly spoken when a tall man, wearing a hunter’s lionskin cap and carrying a musket, stepped quietly out of the bush on to the track just in front of Westall. The prisoner, Zippah, uttered a yell of recognition and held up his manacled hands. The deep, cannon-like report of the musket rang out and the narrow gorge was filled with a dense cloud of smoke.

There was an instant’s silence. Then a scattering volley was heard from the Hausas ahead, the panic-stricken carriers came flying back along the trail, shouting with terror, and the two white men plunged forward into the stinking smoke. Leaping over the prostrate Zippah, who was being held down by two Hausas, they came upon Westall, lying across the path, limp and motionless. A great ragged patch on his breast, all scorched and bloody, told the tale that his pinched, grey face and glazing eyes confirmed. Indeed, even as they stooped over him, heedless of the bellowing muskets and the slugs that shrieked past, he drew one shallow breath and was gone.

There was no time for sentiment. With set faces the two men turned from the dead officer and ran forward to where the shadowy forms of the Hausas appeared through the smoke, holding their ground doggedly and firing right and left into the bush. But a single glance showed the hopelessness of the position. Two of the Hausas were down, and of the remaining four, three, including the sergeant, were more or less wounded. Not a man of the enemy was to be seen, but from the wooded slope on either hand came jets of flame and smoke, accompanied by the thunderous reports of the muskets and the whistle of flying slugs, while a thick cloud of smoke rolled down the hillsides and filled the bottom of the valley as with a dense fog.

Osmond snatched up the rifle of one of the fallen Hausas and, clearing out the man’s cartridge-pouch, began firing into likely spots in the bush when Stockbridge interposed. “It’s no go, Cook. We must fall back across the bridge. You clear out while you’ve got a whole skin. Hallo! did you hear that? Those weren’t trade guns.”

As he spoke there were heard, mingling with the noisy explosions of the muskets, a succession of sharp, woody reports, each followed by the musical hum of a high-speed bullet.

“Back you go, Cook,” he urged. “This is no place for—”

He stopped short, staggered back a few paces, and fell, cursing volubly, with a bloody hand clasped on his leg just below the knee.

Osmond stooped over him, and, finding that the bone was not broken, quickly tied his handkerchief over the wound to restrain the bleeding. “That will do for the present,” said he. “Now you tell the men to fall back, and I’ll bring the prisoner.”

“Never mind the prisoner,” said Stockbridge. “Get the wounded back and get back yourself.”

“Not at all,” said Osmond. “The prisoner is going to cover our retreat. Put your arm round the sergeant’s neck and hop along on your sound leg.”

In spite of the galling fire, the retreat was carried out quickly and in good order. Stockbridge was hustled away by the sergeant—who was only disabled in one arm—and the two helpless men and the dead officer were borne off by the three native servants. Meanwhile Osmond took possession of the prisoner—just as one of his guards was preparing to cut his throat with a large and very unofficial-looking knife—and, rapidly pinioning his arms with the leading-rope, held him up with his face towards the enemy; in which position he served as excellent cover, not only for Osmond but also for the two Hausas, who were able to keep up a brisk fire over his shoulders.

In this fashion Osmond and his two supporters slowly backed after the retreating party. The firing from the bush practically ceased, since the enemy had now no mark to fire at but their own chief; and though they continued to follow up, as the moving bushes showed, their wholesome respect for the Snider rifle—with which the Hausas were armed—prevented them from coming out of cover or approaching dangerously near.

In less than a quarter of an hour the open space by the river was reached; and here Osmond’s retreat was covered by the rest of the party, who had crossed the river and had taken up a safe position in the bamboo thicket, whence they could, without exposing themselves, command the approaches to the bridge. The two Hausas were turning to run across the log when Osmond noticed a large basket of produce—containing among other things, a number of balls of shea butter—which one of his carriers had dropped in retreat.

“Hi!” he sang out, “pick up that basket and take him across,” and then, as a new idea suggested itself: “Put those balls of shea tulu in my pocket.”

The astonished Hausa hesitated, especially as a Mauser bullet had just hummed past his head, but when Osmond repeated the order impatiently he hurriedly grabbed up the unsavoury-looking balls of grease and emptied them into Osmond’s pocket. Then he turned and ran across the bridge.

Osmond continued to back towards the river, still holding the struggling Zippah close before him as a shield. Arriving at the end of the bridge, he cautiously sat down and got astride the log, pulling his captive, with some difficulty, into the same position, and began to wriggle across. Once started, Zippah was docile enough; for, with his pinioned arms, he could not afford to fall into the swirling water. He even assisted his captor so far as he was able, being evidently anxious to get the perilous passage over as quickly as possible. When they had crept about a third of the way across, Osmond took one of the balls of shea butter from his pocket and, reaching past his prisoner, smeared the mass thickly on the smooth surface of the log; and this proceeding he repeated at intervals as he retired, leaving a thick trail of the solid grease behind him. Zippah was at first profoundly mystified by the white man’s manoeuvres, which he probably regarded as some kind of fetish ceremonial or magic; but when its purpose suddenly dawned on him, his sullen face relaxed into a broad and appreciative grin, and as he was at length dragged backwards from the head of the bridge, through the opening into the dark bamboo thicket, he astonished the besieged party (and no doubt the besiegers also) by letting off a peal of honest African guffaws.