Book 3 — THE RETRIEVE.

NIGHT THE FOURTEENTH.

SAN RAMON.

I have never set eyes on the village of San Ramon, but I have heard it described by two men—by one of them in great detail—and their descriptions tally.

It is a village or townlet of two hundred houses or so. It lies about a third of the way down the coast of Peru, close over the sea. It has no harbour: a population of half-breeds—mestizos? Is that the word?—sprinkled with whitish cosmopolitans, and here and there a real white man. But these last, though they wear shoes and keep up among themselves a pretence to be the aristocracy of the place, have really resigned life for this anticipatory Paradise where they grow grey on remittance money, eating the lotus, drinking smoked Scotch in the hotel veranda, swapping stories, and—since they know one another all too well in this drowsy decline of their day—feebly and falsely pretending to one another what gallant knowing fellows they had been in its morning. As for their shoes, token of their caste, they usually wear them unlaced by day and not infrequently sleep in them at night. With the exception of Engelbaum, who keeps the hotel, the white citizens are unmarried. With the exception of Frau Engelbaum— aged sixty and stout at that—there are no white ladies in San Ramon.

And yet San Ramon is a Paradise. A tall mountain backs it. The Pacific kisses its feet. A spring bursting from the mountain, about four thousand feet up, has cut a gorge down which it tumbles in cascades to the beach and the salt water. Where the source leaps from the rock the vegetation begins, as you would expect. It widens and grows more luxuriant all the way down. The stream comes to a forty-foot waterfall between sheer rock curtained with creepers; whence it hurries down through plantations of banana, past San Ramon, which perches where it can, house by house, on shelves hidden in greenery. There it takes another great leap into a basin it has hollowed for itself in the steep-to beach.

We have come down by nature's route. Now we'll climb back by man's. A sort of stairway, broad-stepped, made of pebbles and pounded earth, mounts in fairly well engineered zigzags to the plateau above the lower fall, and in a straighter flight beside the gorge to the hotel which is the topmost building of San Ramon. Above that it becomes a gully curved by torrential rains; above that, zigzags again as a mule-track up to a pass in the mountains—and thereafter God knows whither. Connecting the lower zigzags (I need scarcely say) are short-cuts or slides made by the brown-footed children, who plunge down almost as steeply and quickly as the stream itself when the fortnightly fruit-steamer blows her siren beyond the point.

There is no harbour, you understand. The small steamer—by name the P.M. Diaz—drops anchor a short mile out in a half-protected roadstead, and discharges what she has to discharge, or lades what she has to lade, by boats. Her ladings during the banana-harvest are feverish, tumultuous, vociferous. Her ladings during the sleepy remainder of the year comprise canned meats, Scotch whisky, illustrated magazines, and plantation inspectors.

It was almost twelve months to a day—I am trying to tell the story to-night as a novelist would tell it, but without going beyond the material supplied to me—It was almost twelve months from the day Foe left the portico of the Flaxman Building Hotel, New York, that he stepped ashore on the beach below San Ramon and resigned his light suitcase to a herd of bare-legged boys who offered to carry it up to the hotel, but seemed likelier to dismember it on the way and share up the shreds. They took him, as a matter of course, for a plantation inspector, arrived in the off-season. He was the only passenger landed from the P.M. Diaz, which had dropped anchor comfortably, in perfect weather, but would sail in the morning. A light land-breeze blew off the mountains: but it passed over a mile of water before rippling the sea, which, inshore, lay as glass. The sunset from the Pacific lit up San Ramon above him, all terraced and embowered.

Halted there, gazing up and taking stock of this Paradise before scaling it, Foe could not be aware, though he might have guessed, that half a hundred embrasures in the climbing foliage hid field-glasses and telescopes of which he was the one and common focus. Up at the hotel, one idler said to another, "Will it be Morgansen this time, d'you think?" The other passed on the question to Engelbaum, who was so far the master of his guests that he had lazily commandeered the large telescope on the galeria, and without gainsay. "If it's old Morgansen," the second man added, "we might trot some way down the hill to wish him well. The day's cooling in."

"It's not Morgansen," announced Engelbaum. "A new man—thinnish—Oh, yes, but an inspector. You can tell these scientific men by their cut."

"Hope they haven't sacked old Morgansen," said the first idler. "He's been a bit of a scandal, these three years. But he knows about bananas more'n a banana would own to, even with a blush."

Half-way over the hill, on a packing-case in a bare veranda, sat a man who for three months had avoided the hotel and these loungers, and been given up by all of them (by some enviously) as a lost friend. A woman reclined—good old novelists' word—in a sort of deck-chair three paces away. The windows of the house stood wide, and showed rooms within carpetless, matless, swept if not garnished, with other packing-cases stacked about and labelled. There was even a label on the chair in which the woman reclined: but her skirt hid it.

When the whistle of the fruit-steamer had first sounded, out beyond the Point, and almost before the alert young population of San Ramon could tear down the pathway beside the bungalow's discreet garden, she had risen with a catch of the breath, taken up a pair of field-glasses and scanned the offing.

"It is she beyond a doubt," she had announced.

"What other could it be?" the man had answered, pretty lazily. "And that being so—"

Said the woman—I am trying to tell this in correct fashion—"Why are you so dull?—who, when the boat used to call, would snatch up the glasses and be no company for anyone until you had counted everything she discharged."

Farrell—oh! by the way it's about time I told you that the man was Farrell—Farrell looked at the woman. Farrell said:

No, the devil! I can't tell it the professional way, after all. There's the woman. Well, the woman was young, and fair to see, dark, well-bred, with a tinge of lemon, and descended pretty straight from the Incas—"instead of which" she preferred to call herself Mrs. M'Kay or M'Kie, having been caught and married in an unguarded moment by someone who had arrived in San Ramon to push a new brand of whisky and stayed to push it the wrong way. Since M'Kie's death—or M'Kay's—whichever it was—new-comers had to choose between Engelbaum's, on the summit, and the lady, an heiress in a small way, who played the guitar, half-way down the hill, but frowned on the drinking-habit.

Farrell, you will perceive, had chosen the better way, and had become a voluntary exile from Engelbaum's in consequence. That, or the exercise of running, had done him a power of good. Just now he was bronzed, spare, even inclining to gauntness. Twelve months before, he had shortened his whiskers, as a first step to disguise. Since then, and to please this woman, he had grown a beard which he kept short and trimmed to a point, naval fashion. It was straw-coloured, went well with his bronzed complexion and improved his appearance very considerably. It may be that this growth had encouraged the hair on his scalp or stimulated it by rivalry to renewed effort: more likely the play of sunshine and sea-breeze had done the trick between them; but anyhow Farrell now possessed a light mat of silky yellowish hair on the top of his head—as the nigger song has it, in the place where the wool ought to grow. Shoes, blue dungaree trousers and a striped shirt were his clothing—the shirt opened at the throat and to the second button, disclosing a V of naked chest as healthily tanned as his face. His face had thinned too. His eyes no longer bulged. They had receded well under the pent of his brow and, in receding, taken colour from its shadow.

"I am not dull, Santa," said Farrell. "I am only content and—well, a little bit regretful, and—well yes, again, the least bit lazy. But what does it matter? Ylario has gone down to the beach. He will send off word to the skipper that all this truck will be ready on the foreshore by five-thirty to-morrow. In good weather he never weighs before seven, and the weather is settled."

The woman, at one word of his, had turned and set down her glasses.

"Regretful?" She echoed it as a question, and followed it up with a question. "At what are you staring so hard?"

He lifted his eyes and met hers very steadily, earnestly. "At your shape, Santa," was his answer. "When your back is turned, I am always looking at you so."

"Regretfully?" she asked, mocking.

"As for the regret, you know what it is and must be. How can a man feel it different, when we leave this place to-morrow? Don't women feel that way towards places where they have been happy?"

She picked up the glasses again and set them with her gaze seaward before answering. Thus the shadow of her hands screened any emotion—if emotion there were—on her face.

"I have not been happy here, all the time," she answered softly, readjusting the glass, or pretending to. "Not by any means. San Ramon to me is a hole.… Yes," she went on deliberately, "I know well what you are going to say. I have you: but I want something more—something I have always wanted and, it seems to me, every woman always wants—something beyond the sky-line. In Sydney, now—"

"You'll find there's a sky-line waiting for you at Sydney," said Farrell; "as like to this one as two peas—and just as impossible to get beyond"—which mayn't seem very good grammar, but is how he said it. "Now to me a sky-line's a sky-line—just something to have you standing against."

"You shall have a kiss for that, caballero—in a moment," she purred, and slanted the binoculars down to bear on the beach. "Only one passenger," she announced.

"Usual inspector, no doubt," said Farrell, rolling a cigarette.

"Ye-es—by the look of him.… Oh, there's Ylario, all right, talking to the boatman!… He must be a stranger, I think—by the way he's staring up at the town."

"Ylario was bred and born here; of uncertain parents, to be sure—"

She laughed. "Foolish!… I meant the inspector, of course."

"What's he like?" asked Farrell. "Report."

She lowered the glass, twisted the screw of it idly, and returned to her hammock-chair, beside which she set it down on the veranda floor.

"Now I'll make a confession to you," she said, picking up her guitar and throwing her body back in the chair. "I love you," she said. "When you are close, and alone with me, my heart feels as if it could melt into yours.… No, don't get up: you shall have your kiss, in good time. But when you—what shall I say?—when you all-white men are at all far off, or when many of you are together, I cannot well distinguish.… Ah, pardon me, beloved! Haven't you had that trouble with people of other races than your own—among a crowd of Japanese, say? And the shepherds on the mountains behind here—have you not wondered how they can know every sheep in a flock of many hundred?"

Farrell was on his feet by this time, and in something of a passion. "Am I, then," he stammered out; "—am I, then, so like any of the others, up at Engelbaum's?"

"Calm yourself, O beloved," said Santa, brushing her finger-nails, gipsy-wise and soft as butterflies, over, the strings of her guitar. "Calm yourself, and hearken. You are all the world to me, and you know it. Yet there is something—something I could explain to you better, maybe, if I knew English better… and yet I am not sure. … Let me try, however.… It always seems to me with you English, you Americans, you white-skinned men—with all the ones I have known—that the fault is not all mine when I find you alike just at first; that every one of you ought to be a man quite different from all other men; that you, of your race—yes, every one—were meant for something you have missed—were meant to be—Oh, what is the word?"

"'Distinguished?'" suggested Farrell, standing up. "I never was that, Santa—though, back in England, at one time, I had a notion to make some sort of a mark."

Santa let the neck of the guitar fall back against her breast and clasped her hands suddenly. "Yes, that is it;—to make your mark! Every woman who loves a man wants him to make his mark somehow, somewhere.… I cannot tell you why: but it is so."

Farrell took a turn on the veranda. "My dear," he said tenderly, coming back and halting before her, "do you realise that I am fifty years old?" She pressed her palms over her eyes. "You keep telling me that, and it hurts! Besides, you grow younger every day… and—and I cannot bear to hear you say it!" She lowered her hands and smiled up, but through tears.

"The men who find their way to San Ramon from my country or from the States," he went on, picking up the binoculars absently while his eyes sought the sky-line, "do not come in any hope of making their mark—not even plantation-inspectors." Farrell fumbled with the screw, adjusting the focus. "If that is why we are going to Sydney—"

"Whatever happens," declared Santa, "I will love you better anywhere than in San Ramon: and I have loved you well enough here! The men who come to San Ramon—pah! this for them!" She thrummed an air— La Camisa de la Lola—on the guitar and broke off with another small sound of scorn from her throat. "That's what suits them, and what all of them are worth!"

She brushed the strings again: and if Farrell made any sound at all, the buzz of them covered it. He had brought the glasses to bear on the beach.

Santa started to thrum on the lower strings. Farrell swung about suddenly, set the glasses down, and walked back into the dismantled house.

Now so far I have evidence for all I'm telling you. From this point for thirty seconds or so, I am going to guess what happened. Santa went on thrumming. She heard his footsteps on the bare floor as he went through the echoing, dismantled room behind her. She heard them on the brick of the broad passage which separated the living-rooms of the bungalow from its bed-chambers. She heard him lift the latch of the outer door. She heard the outer door shut behind him. Then she waited for his footsteps to sound again on the sunken pathway which ran downhill beside her patch of garden, hidden by the cactus fence—or rather, deep below it. "He is standing on the doorstep," she said to herself, "lighting a cigarette"; and then, "but he is a long while about it. This is strange." Still as her ear caught no sound of him, Santa sprang up and slipped, guitar in hand, to the outer door—the fence being too tall for her to over-pry, and moreover prickly. She opened the door and peeped out. There was no one down the pathway. There was no one up the pathway, which here, for some fifty or sixty yards, climbed straight, full in view. "And what on earth has become of him?" wondered Santa. "He did not go down—I should have heard him. But why should he go up? He has broken with those drinkers at Engelbaum's.… Besides, it is unbelievable that, in this short time, he should have vanished. …"

So much for guesswork. Now I come back to the story as it was afterwards related to me.

Santa, standing there in the porch, guitar in hand and leaning forward over the rail which guarded a long flight of stone steps, heard a footfall on the road below—an ascending footfall. For a moment she mistook it for Farrell's: she believed she could distinguish Farrell's from any other man's: and so for a moment she stood mystified.

Then a man hove in view around the corner… not Farrell, but the newly-landed stranger she had spied through her binoculars—the presumed Inspector. His eyes were lifted as he calculated the new gradient ahead of him, and thus on the instant he caught sight of Santa aloft in the porch-way. Something held Santa's feet.

"Many pardons, senora," said the Stranger, halting a little before he came abreast of the stairway and lifting his hat. "But can you tell me if this path leads to the Hotel?"

Now Santa was confused and a little abashed—it may have been because in her haste she had forgotten to drape her head in her mantilla—a rite proper to be observed by Peruvian ladies before showing themselves out-of-doors. But she could not help smiling: the question being so absurd.

"Seeing, sentor, that there can be no other," she answered, with a small wave of the hand out and towards the gorge down which the river cascaded always so loudly that they both had unconsciously raised the pitch of their voices.

From the pathway above came the sound of stray stones dislodged under a heavy plunging tread; and there was Farrell striding down, with his hands in his trousers' pockets.

In the right pocket he carried a revolver, which he had picked up on his way through the house. His forefinger felt about its trigger.

He had recognised Foe through the glass. He had pelted up the path in the old sweating terror, making for the mountain as if driven, to call on it to cover him.

Close by Engelbaum's gate he overtook three small boys contending around a suit-case: the point being that all three could not demand reward for carrying so light a burden. If the owner were a fool, or generously inclined (which amounted to the same thing), two of the three might put in a colourable claim for services rendered.

In white countries one boy fights with another. In San Ramon as many as fifteen can fight indiscriminately, and the vanquished are weeded out by gradual process. Farrell shook the urchins apart, driving them for a moment from the suit-case as one would drive three wasps off a honey-pot.… It lay at his feet. Yes, he'd have recognised it anywhere, even without help of the half-effaced "J. F." painted on its canvas cover. It was a far-travelled piece of luggage, and much-enduring—What are those adjectives by which Homer is always calling Ulysses?… It bore many labels. One, with "Southampton" upon it, was apparently pretty recent… and another with "Waterloo."

He turned the case over while the boys eyed him, keeping their distance. His brain worked more and more clearly. . . Foe had returned to England, then, to pick up the trail. But how had he struck it?… There was only one way.… He had, of course, been obliged to send letters home from time to time—letters to his firm, to his bankers for money—instructions to pay his housekeeper— possibly a score of letters in all. Foe must have obtained possession of one and spotted the postmark on the Peruvian stamp. …

Of a sudden he realised his cowardice; and flushed, with shame and manhood together, there in the pathway.… This thing was no longer a duel. Three were in it now, and the third was Santa.… The old scare had caught him, surprised him, and he had run from recollected habit.… It had been base.… Why, of course, Santa made all the difference! He must go back to protect Santa.

At the thought of her he felt a second flush of shame sweep up in him, quite different from the first and quite horrible. The tide of it scorched his face as if flaying it. And so—if you'll understand—in the very moment of knowing himself twice vulnerable— no, ten times as vulnerable—this Farrell, loving this woman, became a man: and three small ragamuffins stood about him and witnessed the outward process.

The outward process ended in his fishing out three dineros from his trouser pocket and bestowing one on each of them—twopence-halfpenny or thereabouts is a godsend to a juvenile in San Ramon. "There, little fools!" he said. "Take the stranger's bag along and don't quarrel any more. There is nothing in this world so silly as quarrelling."

With that he went back down the hill, and so came on Foe and on Santa, talking down to Foe from the balcony porch.

"Hallo, old man!" said Farrell, looking Foe straight in the eyes: and "Hallo!" answered Foe, looking Farrell straight in the eyes. Santa, gazing down from the rail, thought it strange that they did not shake hands, as Britons and Americans do when they met.

"I found three rascals," said Farrell easily, "scrapping for the honour of delivering a suit-case at Engelbaum's hotel—a suit-case that I recognised. I rescued it, and it is now safe in the porch. … Oh, by the way, though you seem to have made acquaintance, let me do the formal and introduce you to my wife. Santa, this is Doctor Foe, an old fellow-traveller."

Foe gave him one glance, shrewd and steady, before looking aloft and again raising his hat. The thrust did not penetrate Farrell's defence.

"It's awkward," said Farrell, "that we can't even offer you a bed. We're all packed up, ready to sail by the steamer to-morrow. Mrs. Farrell and I in fact are shifting quarters.… Staying?"

"No," said Foe imperturbably. "I shall be sailing to-morrow, too. … I just heard of this place, and thought I'd like to have a look at it before going on.… Shouldn't think of troubling you."

"Curious, how small the world is," went on Farrell in a level voice. "You won't mind my talking a bit in the old manner?… It sort of puts us back at the old ease, eh?… Well then, we can't offer to put you up. But if you don't mind a packing-case for a chair and another for a table—eh, Santa?"

"We shall be charmed," said Santa.

"You understand that it will be a picnic," added Farrell.

"My good sir!" protested Foe.

"Yes?… It will be better than Engelbaum's, any way. I don't mind promising," said Farrell. "We will talk over old times, and Santa shall play her guitar to us."

That is how the two men met.

The P.M. Diaz plied no farther than Callao. From Callao the Farrells, with their furniture, and Foe in company, worked down by coasters to Valparaiso.

Does any one of you remember the mystery of the Eurotas? which regularly for about four months occupied from an inch-and-a-half to four inches space in the newspapers. In 1909… pretty late in the year. She happened to be the first ship of a new line started between Valparaiso and Sydney, and her owners had so well boomed the adventure in the Press that, when she began to be reported as overdue, the public woke up and she became as interesting as a lost dog. She was of 12,000 tons, new, Clyde-built, well-found, and carried a mixed cargo, with about twenty passengers. Two vessels reported having passed her, about three hundred miles out. After that she had become as a ship that had never been.

In his casual way—for I must remind you that he and I had lost all trace of Foe and Farrell in New York—Jimmy lit on the next item of news.

Long before the Eurotas was posted as "missing," the newspapers published a list of her passengers. Jimmy, seizing on this, ran his eye down it, and let out the sort of cry with which he greets all news, good, bad, or indifferent.

"I say, Otty!—here it is, and what do you make of it?

—'The s.s. Eurotas.… List of Passengers. "Mr. and Mrs. P. Farrell, San Ramon, Peru. Professor J. Foe, of London.…'"

And after that there was silence for four years. The bell at Lloyd's never rang to announce the arrival of the Eurotas. By Christmas her underwriters were paying up, and the newspapers had lost interest in her fate.

NIGHT THE FIFTEENTH.

REDIVIVUS.

About seven weeks later Norgate called on me with evidence that settled the last doubt: a letter from Foe, written from Valparaiso. It was brief enough. It merely announced that he was on the eve of sailing for Sydney and wished to have credit for £600 opened with the Bank of New South Wales. "I have booked a berth on the Eurotas," it concluded, "and go aboard to-night. She's a new ship, owned by a new line, of which you may or may not have heard—the 'Southern Cross Line.' We hear enough about it in this town, the Company having contrived to fall foul of the dock labour here. I don't know the rights or wrongs of it, but some sort of boycott is threatened. However, this sort of dispute usually gets itself settled at the last moment; and anyhow I shall get to Sydney by some means or other. So you may safely mail there. No need to cable. I have plenty of money for immediate purposes."

"What had I best do?" asked Norgate. "Lloyd's are about giving the Eurotas up."

"Cable out and make sure," said I. "If he calls at the Bank, he calls; and if he doesn't, there are no bones broken. Something has gone wrong with the ship; and in the mix-up he may easily have lost his ready cash and be landed at Sydney without a cent."

I should have told you that, about a fortnight before this, Jimmy had solved, or partially solved, the puzzle of that entry "Mr. and Mrs. P. Farrell" on the passenger-list. Jimmy had found a good girl, and as pretty almost as she was good, and yet imprudent enough to consent to marry him. This had the effect of rendering him at once and surprisingly prudent. As the poet puts it, "he had found out a flat for his fair," and as he himself put it, "We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow: but be-shrew me, we never thought of making my bank-manager one of the party, to break him in to our ways; the consequence being that Elinor's maid will have to stick a bedroom-suite priced five-pounds-ten, while the other domestics, unless dividends improve, sleep (poor souls, insecurely) upon bedsteads liable to be spirited from under them at any moment by a Hire System that knows no bowels.… By George!" sighed Jimmy. "If we hadn't let Farrell slip through our fingers! Do you know, Otty, I've an idea," he announced. "Why shouldn't I take the Tottenham Court Road to-morrow, visit Farrell's old place of business, and kill two birds with one stone?"

"It sounds a sporting proposition," I agreed, "though sketchily presented."

"Adumbrated," suggested Jimmy. "That's a good word. I found it in yesterday's Observer."

"Adumbrated, then," said I. "The Tottenham Court Road—"

"—And two birds with one stone. No moors for me this year: I'm back on the simple life and the catapult.… You just wait."

There really is no resisting Jimmy, nor ever will be. He went up the Tottenham Court Road next day, walked into Farrell's late place of business and demanded to see the General Manager; and—if you'll believe it—that dignitary was fetched amid a hush of awe. "I dropped in," explained Jimmy, "to see one of those cheap bedroom suites you advertise, in pickled walnut—or is it marron glace?— suitable for a house-parlourmaid. The fact is, I'm going to get married—well, you've guessed that—otherwise, of course, I shouldn't be here.… My intended wife—she's a Devonshire lady, by the way—from near Honiton. Anything wrong about Honiton?… No? I beg your pardon—I thought you smiled.… Well, as I was about to explain, my intended wife, coming as she does from near Honiton— that's where they make the lace—likes her servants to be comfortable: at least, so she says. Your late Managing Director, had he lived—" Here Jimmy made a pause.

"You knew our Mr. Farrell, sir?" asked the present Managing Director, sympathetically.

"He honoured me with his acquaintance. If he had lived," said Jimmy … "But there!… By the way… that second marriage of his—wasn't it rather sudden? I understood him to be a confirmed widower."

"We know nothing about it, sir: nothing beyond what he conveyed in a letter to our Vice-Chairman. In fact, sir, during the last year or so of his life, when Mr. Farrell took his strange fancy for foreign parts, it seemed to us—well, it seemed to us that, in his strange condition of mind, anything might happen. To this day, sir, we haven't what you might call any certitude of his demise. It is not, up to this moment, legally proven—as they say. Our last letter from him was dated from far up the coast—from a place called San Ramon, which I understand to be in Peru. In it he announced that he was married again, and to a lady (as we gathered) of Peruvian descent. He added that he had never, previously to the time of writing or thereabouts, known complete happiness."

Jimmy brought back this information, having, on top of it, acquired a bedroom suite of painted deal. "And there," said he, "the matter must rest. Foe's gone, and Farrell's gone. Both decent, in their way; and both, but for foolish temper, alive now and hearty."

So it seemed to be, and the book to be closed. I mourned for Jack, yet not as I should have mourned for him a year or two before. Jimmy married and left me, and soon after I moved from our old quarters in the Temple to my present rooms in Jermyn Street.

Four years passed: and then, one fine morning, my door opened, and John Foe called me by name.

"Hallo, Roddy! How goes it?"

I jumped up, in a pretty bad scare. It was the voice that did it: for, my door making an angle with the window, and the day being sunny, he stood there against a strong light—sort of silhouette effect, as you might put it. And there was a something about him, thus gloomed—but we'll talk of that by and by. The voice was Jack Foe's, and none other.

"It's all right," he went on easily. "Pull yourself together. … It is the Ancient Mariner come home, but you needn't imitate the Pilot and fall down in a fit.… Where's the Pilot's Boy, by the way—young Jimmy Collingwood? You still keep Jephson, I see. … I happened on Jephson at your street-door, just returned from posting a letter. Jephson performed the holy Hermit very creditably: he raised his eyes and almost sat down on the doorstep and prayed where he did sit. 'Doctor Foe!' said Jephson. 'Good Lord, send may I never—!'—which amounts to a prayer, eh?… He let me in with his latchkey, and I told him I'd run up unannounced.… Well?"

He came forward. In the old days Jack and I never shook hands; nor did we now. He set down hat, gloves, and umbrella carelessly on my knee-hole table and dropped into a chair with a long-drawn sigh. "Reminds one—eh?—of the famous stage-direction in The Rovers— Several soldiers cross the stage wearily, as if returning from the Thirty Years' War.… Well? What are you still staring at? … Oh, I perceive! It's my clothes.… Yes; I should inform you that they are expensive, and the nearest compromise a Valparaiso tailor and I could reach in realising our several ideas of a Harley Street doctor. I am going to open a practice in that neighbourhood, and thought I would lose no time. The hat and umbrella over there are all right, if you'll give yourself the trouble to examine them. I bought them on the way along."

He was right, in a way, about his clothes. (I believe I have already mentioned that Jack had always dressed himself carefully and in good form.) His frock-coat had a fullness of skirt, and his trousers a bluish aggressive tint, that I couldn't pass for metropolitan. His boots were worse—of some wrong sort of patent leather. But they ought not to have altered the man as I felt that he was altered. … Yes, cheapened and coarsened, in some indefinable way. His hair had thinned and showed a bald patch: not a large patch: still, there it was. His shape had been rather noticeably slim. I won't say that it had grown pursy, but it had run to seed somehow. Least of all I liked the change in his eyes, which bulged somewhat, showing an unhealthy white glitter. I set down this glitter as due to long weeks at sea: but the explanation couldn't quite satisfy me. When a lost friend returns as it were from the grave—from shipwreck, at any rate, and uncharted travel—you look to find him gaunt, brown, leathery, hollow of cheek and eye, eh? Foe's appearance didn't answer to this conception… not one little bit.

"Then you didn't sail in the Eurotas, after all?" said I, finding speech. "We saw your name on the list."

"Oh, yes, I did," he interrupted. "And, by the way, we shall have to talk about her—or, rather, about what I ought to do.… Yes, I know what you'll be advising. 'Go straight to Lloyd's,' no doubt."

"Man alive," said I, "why not? If you were aboard of her—and if, as you tell me, you fetched somehow to Sydney—why in God's name hasn't Lloyd's heard of it months ago? There are such things as cables. … Unless, to be sure, you have a reason?"

"I have and I haven't," said Jack. "My turning-up doesn't hurt anyone, does it? The Eurotas went down, sure enough: and I didn't scuttle her, if that's what you suspect."

"Please don't be an ass, Jack," I pleaded.

"Well, I don't see," he continued, ruminating, "—I don't see any way but to go to Lloyd's and tell them about it. Yet equally I don't see what good it can do. The underwriters have paid up, eh?"

"More than three years ago," I told him.

"Well, then… I was perfectly well prepared to answer any questions at Valparaiso. I landed in my own name. I went back to the same hotel. And 'Foe' is not the most common of names, especially when you write 'Doctor' before it.… No, I'm wrong. Farrell had entered our names on the register, and had entered mine as 'Professor.' On my return I wrote it 'John Foe, M.D.' But anyway, not a soul in the hotel recognised me.… I think my looks must have altered, somehow.… So I let it go. I dare say you won't understand, not knowing the kind of experiences I've been through, nor the number of 'em. But you may understand that after a goodish while as a castaway I was tired beyond the point of answering more questions than I should happen to be asked.… So I gave Valparaiso a silent blessing, and came home by the first ship, to consult you and Collingwood. What—let me repeat—have you done with Collingwood?"

"Jimmy?" said I. "He's married, a year since, and is already the father of a bouncing boy. I acted as his best man, by request. He has a delightful and tiny wife who keeps him in order, which he passes on to the County of Warwickshire as Justice of the Peace and Coram.… But about the Eurotas?" I persisted. "I don't think you quite realise. There were passengers on board: and for months—"

"Of course there were passengers," Foe agreed. "It won't help their relatives (will it?) to know for certain what they pretty well know already. As I hinted to Norgate in my last letter, there was a labour crisis on when we sailed. Some aggrieved blackguard on the dock, acting on his own or under command of his 'Union,' shovelled half a dozen bombs in with the coal. Simple process. Between seven hundred and a thousand miles out, this particular batch of coal was reached and shovelled into the forward furnaces. I counted four explosions. Two of them blew her bows to pieces, and she sank by the head and was gone in twenty minutes.

"Must I tell it, when I am home and dying to ask questions?—Oh, very well, then.… I shall be perfectly truthful so far as the history goes; but I warn you that at a certain point you won't like it, and you'll go on to like it less. You and I have been friends, Roddy, and you naturally suppose that I've come straight to you, as my first friend, to be welcomed and to ask for counsel. But you suppose wrong. I am come asking neither for advice, nor for a sympathy— which I know I shan't get."

"My dear Jack—" I began to protest.

"Oh, be quiet," said he, "and let me do the talking! I've had no one to talk to, these five months around the Horn, but a Norwegian skipper, a first mate of the same country, a fellow-passenger shipped off as a dipsomaniac for a cure (we lost him somewhere in the worst of it—I've an idea he let himself be swept overboard), and a mixed crew that I helped to cure of beri-beri at St. Helena. So I want to do the talking, with your leave.

"—And I want to say this first, foremost, once and for all. I am come simply to tell you. I understand the devil of a lot about hatred by this time—more than you will ever begin to guess. But you taught me, anyhow, this much about friendship, that I couldn't bear to go along with you without your knowing every atom of the truth. That means, we're going to be clean cuts, when I've done.… You'll loathe the tale. But, damn it, you shall respect me for this, that I cut clean, for old sake's sake, and wiped up the account, before we parted as strangers and I started life afresh."

"All this is pretty mysterious, Jack," said I. "You know that, for all the hurt he'd done you, I shied out of helping your pursuit of Farrell.… Tell me, what happened to Farrell? Went down in the Eurotas, I guess, and so squared accounts. That's what you mean— eh?—by your clean cut and starting life afresh?… If so, for your sake I'm glad of it."

"He didn't go down in the Eurotas," Foe answered gravely: "As a matter of fact I dragged him on board one of the boats with my own hands."

"What?" said I. "Farrell another survivor?"

"Upon my word," he answered, lighting a cigarette, "I can't swear to Farrell's being alive or dead. Probably he's dead; but anyway I've no further use for him, and that's where the clean cut comes in. I had to quit hold of him because a woman beat me.… Now sit quiet and listen."

FOE'S NARRATIVE.

"Did you know that Farrell had married?… Yes, at San Ramon, a little portless place some way down the coast of Peru. The woman was a Peruvian and owned a banana-strip there, left to her by her first husband, a drunkard, in part-compensation for having ill-used and beaten her.

"When I ran Farrell to earth there, after he'd given me the slip for twelve months and more, this woman had married him and almost made a new man of him. In another month or so I don't doubt she'd have converted him into man enough to tell her all the truth, and let her deliver him.

"As it was, he passed me off for his friend—the ass!… I shipped with them, and we worked down the coast, by fruit-ship and sloop, to Valparaiso, intending for Sydney.… Now at this point I might easily make myself out a calculating villain. Farrell was enamoured to feebleness, and to make love to his Santa was an opportunity cast into my lap by the gods.… But actually, before I could even meditate this simple villainy, I had fallen in love with her because I couldn't help it.

"Now I had never been in love before, and I took the disease pretty severely. And I should say that I took it rather curiously: but you shall judge, for I'll set out the credit side of the account just as plainly as the other.

"I hated the man, as you know: I loved the woman, as I've told you. But—here's the puzzle—strange to say, at that time, and for a long while, these two passions did not conflict or even contend at all, as neither did they help. I couldn't hate Farrell any worse than I did already. If I'd hated him just a little less, I might have killed him, to get him out of the way. But I give you my word, I never thought of shortening the chase in that way. Farrell, you may say, had become necessary to me: by this time I couldn't think of living without him.… Now I know what's crossing your mind. I might have piled up the torture on Farrell, and at the same time have played on that other passion, by setting myself to debauch Santa. No, I'm not complaining. You shall have as bad to condemn before I've done, so you needn't apologise. But, as it happens, I wasn't that sort of blackguard. Moreover, it wouldn't have worked, anyhow. Santa was as good as her name—

"No, damn it! I will clear myself of that!… You'll understand that I loved the woman, and—well, in the old days, as you'll do me the justice to remember, I hated men who played loose among women. As for 'making love' to Santa—oh, I can't explain to you, who never saw her, how utterly that was beyond question on either side.… Almost white she was, with the blood of the Incas in her—blood of Castile, too, belike—and yet all of a woman, with funny rustic ways that turned at any moment to royal.… And she loved Farrell—my God!

"I wonder now if she guessed—guessed at the time, I mean. They say that women always guess; which in these matters is as good as knowing.… But I'm holding up my story."

"The Eurotas went down in something like 36, south latitude, longitude 105 and a half west. That's as near as I make it: that is to say, some three or four hundred miles from any known land save Easter Island, which lay well away north and to windward, for we were down where the main winds set between W. and N. That's as close as I can give it to you. In seafaring matters I leave seamen to their own job, and don't worry about reckonings and day's runs. It's their business to take me, mine to trust their skill. You will own, Roddy, that if fools had only kept their noses out of my job in life, I shouldn't be having to tell you this story.

"Anyhow, Macnaughten—that was the skipper's name—took all the ship's instruments with him on board his own boat, which was the last to quit.

"He was a good man, and I couldn't but admire his behaviour, first and last. The Eurotas went down within half an hour of the first explosion; which had surprised us passengers on deck as we were chatting and watching the sunset. The sea was calm as a pond, with a bank of cloud to northward, all edged with gold on its western fringes.

"I think this calm, resting over sea and sky, may have helped us through the catastrophe. The only irritation I felt was at the slowness of it all, between the moment we knew we were lost and the moment when the vessel went down. Yet every moment between was used to a nicety, almost as if Captain Macnaughten had been preparing for the test. He commanded us, crew and passengers alike. Four stokers had been killed below: another and the engineer officer badly hurt. These two were fetched up while some of us lowered the accommodation-ladder and others swung out the boats on the davits. These two sick men were carried down to the first of the three boats launched. Four women passengers followed; three married, one a spinster. The three husbands were ordered down after them.

"The Eurotas, as I've told you, was a new ship, well found to the last life-buoy. The directors of the Company had lunched on board before she sailed and drunk to her health, having seen that everything answered to advertisement. The boats were staunch, newly painted and smart: the crew as well-picked a lot as the Board could find. So far as I can recall those hurrying minutes, I remember them as being almost intolerably slow. I cannot say how many of them it took before we realised for a certainty that the ship was going down. But I know that as, by order, I went down the ladder to the second boat, I had a sense of irritation at the long time it was taking and the methodical way the skipper was getting out stores and water-breakers and having them hefted down.

"Another thing I must tell you. As I went down the ladder—the ship's bows already beginning to dip steeply—I had a sense of being in no time at all, but in eternity. There around us, spread and placid, stretched the emptiest waste of the Pacific, with God's sun deserting the sky above it, sinking almost as fast as the ship was sinking.

"Santa had wrapped her mantilla over her head. She went down the ladder before me, following Farrell. Our boat was white-painted on thwarts and stern-sheets.… I was keeping my foothold with difficulty, loaded with a water-breaker.… A man took it from me, all in silence. I gripped Farrell's hand and hoiked him on board. There was a great silence hanging, as it seemed, about those last moments.

"We pushed off a little way. The third and last boat was lowered down, and we saw the last half-dozen, with the captain at their heels, tumbling down in a stampede.

"The Eurotas took her plunge just as we heard them unhook from the davit-blocks."

NIGHT THE SIXTEENTH.

CAPTAIN MACNAUGHTEN.

(Foe's Narrative Continued.)

"I once read a novel called One Traveller Returns. That's all I remember of it—the title.

"Well, I am that traveller: and if ever I write down the story of the Eurotas, and in particular of what was suffered on board her boat No. 2, I have no doubt that nine readers out of ten will forget the details just as soon and just as completely. There is a horrible sameness about these narratives, Roddy; and the truer they are (as I've proved) the nearer they resemble one another. Monotonous they are—these drawn-out agonies—as the sea itself upon which they are enacted. From time to time you sit up half-awake out of your stupor, and then you know that something is going to happen, and also that it is something you've read about somewhere, something that you've lived through (or so it seems) in dreams, or in a previous existence. You hardly know which; and you don't care, much. It's going to be horrible, you know: it's going to be all the more horrible, in its way, for being conventional. You want to get it over and pass on to the next stereotyped nightmare. That's the feeling.

"So I'm going to confine my tale pretty closely to myself and what pulled me through.… But before I get to this I must tell you of two shocks that fell on me before I came to it, and seemed to promise that the books were all wrong and not half vivid enough. I dare say that quite a number of survivors have tried to paint the sense of loneliness that swooped on them in the first few seconds after their ship had slid down. But I'll swear I had read nothing to prepare me for it.… It's not a ship—it's a continent—that vanishes. The little hole it has made in the water calls to the whole ocean to cover it, and the ocean widens out its horizon by ten times all around, at once pouring in and spreading itself to isolate you ten times farther from help.… Nobody who hasn't been through this and felt it for himself can understand how promptly and easily— without help of quenching their thirst in salt water—men go mad, in open boats, at sea.

"But I believe the shock of loneliness at sunrise was even more hideous. One is prepared for it, in a way; otherwise it would, I am sure, be far more hideous. Santa confessed to me, on the second day, that she had felt—and, she believed, could feel—nothing more dreadful. As she put it, 'You see, my friend, when the sky lightens at length, you have assurance of God, and that God is help. Then, when He sends up no help, but a great staring sun to watch your misery, hour by hour, God turns to devil and you only long for night—when, at least, the dew falls.'

"Between sunset and sunrise, however, I was kept fairly busy. For the Eurotas had scarcely been twenty minutes under water, and night had barely fallen, before the captain's boat ranged up to us. She carried a lantern in her bows, and I had found one and was lighting it after his example.

"'Names on board!' he demanded. We gave them through Grimalson, the second mate, who was in charge. He said no more for about half a minute, during which time no doubt he was running through the list in his head. Then, 'That's all right,' he announced cheerily. 'You'll set watches, Mr. Grimalson, and keep her in easy hail. The weather will certainly hold fine for a bit, and early to-morrow I'll be alongside again with instructions. Plumb south our course lies, for the present. I'll tell you why, later. You have a sail?"

"'Ay, sir,' answered Grimalson.

"'Right. But don't hoist it unless I signal.… Yes, yes, not a draught at present. But if a breeze should get up, don't hoist sail without instructions. We keep together—that's the main point. Just pull along easy—I'll set the pace—and keep in my wake, course due south. Those that aren't pulling will act wise to trust in God and get some sleep.… Is that Doctor Foe there forra'd, with the lantern?'

"'Ay, sir,' I answered up.

"'Then as soon as you've fixed it, sir, I'll ask you to jump aboard and along with us for to-night. I've poor Jock Abercrombie here— fetched him and Swainson out of No. 1 boat'—These were the two injured men: Abercrombie, our Chief Engineer, by far the worst burnt—'I doubt if he'll last till morning: but we've been friends from boys, Jock and me, and if you can do aught, sir, to make his passing easier—'

"I asked him to wait while I fetched my medicine-chest, and was transhipped with it into the captain's boat. They had laid Abercrombie in the stern-sheets, with the stoker Swainson beside him. Abercrombie's plight was hopeless; flesh of chest and arms all red-raw from the scorching, and the man palpably dying from shock.

"'I had him into my boat, sir,' Macnaughten explained gravely, 'because we'd shipped the ladies—all but Mrs. Farrell—in No. 1, and I don't want 'em to be distressed more than necessary.… A man can't think of everything all in five minutes, but I got him out of it, soon as I could. There's no hope, think you?'

"'Between you and me, none,' said I, sinking my voice.

"'That's what I reckoned,' said the skipper, with just a nod of his head. He had taken the tiller and sent all the crew, saving four men rowing, forward whilst I examined the patients. 'Jock wouldn't be one to let out a groan if he knew there were women by to be scared by it.… Also, Doctor, if he's dying, I'd like to be handy by, if you understand. I got him this berth. We were friends, always.'

"I found some cotton-wool and a tin of vaseline, and coated the poor man's hurts as well as I could. Then, as he still groaned, though more feebly, I got out my phial of morphia and a needle. As I held the bottle against a sort of binnacle-light by which Macnaughten sat steering, I caught his eyes staring down on me, quiet and solemn. I tell you, that man was a man, Roddy.

"'Yes, I know, Doctor,' he said quietly. 'You're calculating how much there is of it, and how you may have to use it before we're through.… What about Swainson?'

"'He'll pull around,' said I. 'The vaseline will ease three-fourths of his trouble within ten minutes.'

"'Keep your voice low,' said the skipper, 'as I'm keeping mine.' He bent forward, pretending to consult the compass. 'I've sent all these fellows forward, though they put her down by the head so that it's like steering a monkey by the tail.… Now I reckon that you'll be wishful to go back to-morrow, or as soon as may be, and join your party. That's so?'

"'That's so,' said I, as I finished the injection and turned to deal with the stoker.

"'Well, I'd like to have you here aboard,' said the skipper. 'But so's best. We want some brains in No. 2 boat; and, between ourselves, Grimalson hasn't the brains of a hare. He's a second-cousin-twice-removed of one of our directors. He's no seaman at all; and his navigation's all a pretence.… I suppose, now, you can't navigate?'

"'Good Lord, no, sir!' said I. 'I just understand the principles of it—that's all.'

"'It's a damned sight more than Grimalson understands, I'll bet,' responded Captain Macnaughten, studying the binnacle and speaking as though we were discussing the weather and the crops. 'You may push your finger into that man anywhere, he's that soft and boggy—no better'n slush—and pink.… Don't you despise a pink-coloured man? Still, I want you to understand, Doctor, that he's the superior officer on No. 2, for the time being.'

"'I understand,' said I, looking up from my business of unguenting the stoker, who was not badly burnt.

"'But if Grimalson should turn rotten.… Well, now, I've had an eye on you, sir, and I judge I can share off on you a bit of trouble I wouldn't share off on most.… You must know as well as I do that the chance is pretty thin for us all, even if this weather holds. I reckon there's no nearer land than Easter Island, four hundred good miles norr'ard, and a beat in light winds.… I've heard too much about long beats in open boats—heard enough to make the flesh creep. Anyways, I'm responsible. I've turned it over in my head: and I'm giving orders—you take me? We're not steering for any land at all. We're steering the shortest way, due south—what wind there is drawing behind us—on the chance to hit in with the way of traffic—Sydney ships making round the Horn.… You'll not argue that, I hope?" he demanded.

"'On the contrary, sir,' I agreed, 'I just know enough to be sure that you are doing the wisest thing.'

"'Nobody but God can be sure,' said he, and sat musing. 'Well, I take the responsibility God has seen fit to lay on me of a sudden. You won't hear me speak of this again: but you're an educated man, and you've nerve as well as brains—I marked ye by the head of the ladder, when the first boat was getting out. I reckoned you for one that doesn't speak out of his turn; and it came over me, just now, that I'd like one such man, and him a gentleman, to bear in mind that if I set my face pretty hard in the time that's ahead of us, it won't mean that I ain't feeling things at the back of it.'

"'Thank you, Captain Macnaughten,' said I, pretty earnestly. 'The best I can answer is the simplest—that you're doing me much honour.'

"'That's all right,' he said lightly: 'all right and understood. One man often helps another in funny little ways in this funny old world.' After a pause he went on yet more lightly and cheerfully, 'Well—and I've noticed you've a trick of beginning your sentences on that word 'well': it's a habit of mine too, they tell me—as the ladies say ashore, we're going to be worse before we are better, so we'll call those fellows aft a bit and ease the steering.… Stay a minute, though, before I call to them.… A clever man like you ought to be able to pick up a bit of navigation in a few lessons. While our boats keep together (as, please God, they will to the end) it wouldn't be a bad notion if you dropped alongside just before midday for a morning call, and I'll learn you how to handle a sextant and prick down a reckoning.… It'll be sociable, too.… Yes, I'll signal the time to you: but, to be ready for it, you might set your watch by my chronometer here.… I wonder, now,' he inquired oddly, 'if you've forgot to wind yours up to-night?'

"Well, Roddy, it's the truth that I had forgotten. I looked at him, pretty foolish, and with that we both laughed—yes, there and then, a sort of laugh, low and quiet, like well-water bubbling.

"'Now I'll tell you,' said the skipper, 'I caught myself winding up mine the moment after the ship went down… that's funny, eh? Five minutes to nine was the hour.… I'd hooked the old timepiece out of my fob, and there I was, winding, for all the world as if ashore and going to bed.… See here—three turns of the winch and she's chock-a-block again, if you ever!… And, come to think, I may as well correct her by the chronometer, too.'

"So we solemnly set our watches together, there by the binnacle light. A queer fancy took me that the act was a sort of ritual, not devised by either of us—a setting and sealing of friendship.… Ought a fellow, Roddy, shipwrecked in the South Pacific, to complain while he has these three stand-by's—a woman to love, a man to admire, and a man to hate?"

"The engineer died just before dawn. Indeed, the day broke of a sudden as I finished straightening his body and wrapping it for burial; and I looked up in the new light, and around me, to take in that second gush of loneliness of which I told you.… It was appalling. It swept in on me from the whole enormous circumference of empty waters, and I fairly cowered from it over the corpse I had been tending.

"I never had that sensation again, or in anything like that degree, during the whole voyage; and I shall presently tell you why. But it was Macnaughten who taught me my first deliverance.… I knelt there, huddled, not daring to turn my face up for a second look and expose my cowardice. I seemed to be drowning in the deep of deeps, and fragments of the first chapter of Genesis swirled past me like straws—And the earth was without form and void.… And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God saw the light, that it was good—but here it was, and it was not good. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters— but there was no firmament. And God divided the waters… and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good—oh, my God! And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let dry land appear: and it was so—But it wasn't!

"Captain Macnaughten's voice spoke through this misery of mine quite matter-of-factly and simply, dispersing it like so much morning mist.

"'Signal the other boats to pull close,' he commanded. 'Someone tell me where the Bible and Prayer-Book were stowed. I saw them handed down, with my own eyes.' Then to me: 'These things—packed as we are… the sooner over, the better, and the less they'll prey on anyone's mind.' He looked down. 'Jock would have liked it so, I reckon.'

"The other two boats were called close. The summons was explained, and the burial service decently read. 'It don't seem altogether a lively beginning,' said he to me at the close—and the water was scarce dry on his cheek that had run down suddenly as he read out I heard a voice from heaven, saying—'But,' he added, 'it'll sober 'em down to what they'll have to face.… And now we'll sober 'em up with some cheerfuller business no less practical.'

"The boats having gathered close for this ceremony, he commanded them to stay so while the crews cooked breakfast. 'I saw the coffee handed down into No. 1,' he announced. 'Fetch it out, you!… And, after breakfast, I'll overhaul all three boats and see that each has her share fairly apportioned.'

"I tell you, Roddy, that this Macnaughten, who aboard the Eurotas had been an ordinary skipper conning his ship, and nowise hearty or communicative, of a sudden proved himself as great as any man I've read of in history.… You may smile if you will. But here was a man abandoned by Heaven in the waste of the South Pacific, with all his prospects blasted and all the hopes built on the Eurotas line (in which, I learned, he had piled his money); with a wife at home, moreover, and a daughter. Yet for the seven days we kept company he stood up to duty, fathered us all, never showed sick or sorry. He had a fairish baritone voice, and it was he that started us singing to fill up the endless time. How does it go?—"

Thus sang they in an English boat, A holy and a cheerful note—

God! I can hear his voice now, trolling Nancy Lee back across the waters, defying them, until the night quenched it.

"Through these seven days, regularly and towards noon, he signalled and I went aboard No. 3 for a lesson in navigation. It was the third day that, returning, I found Grimalson didn't stomach these visits. Grimalson was a mean man, and incompetent; the sort that knows he's not trusted, knows there's good reason for it, and resents it all the time. I thought him just a sulky brute, and noted that on some excuse or other it was always inconvenient to be close up with No. 3 boat as it drew towards midday and my time (as he put it, growling) for 'taking the Old Man's temperature.' He was misguided enough, on the fourth day, to let off a part of this rather feeble joke upon the captain himself, and found his bearings pretty smartly. He had so managed things that at ten minutes to noon it became pretty clear I must miss my appointment. All three boats carried sail now: the weather being perfect, with a nor'-westerly breeze, light but steady: and the three were running before it pretty well abreast like three tiny butterflies on the waste of water—for I should tell you that all three were twenty-four footers, built to one whale-boat model on the same moulds, and carried small Bermuda, or leg-of-mutton sails, cut to one pattern—when Grimalson took it into his head that our down-haul should be tautened in, cursed the man who was doing his best to execute a silly order, ran forward, and so messed matters that the sail had to be three-parts lowered and re-set. It was quite deliberately done, as even a landsman could see; and it lost us a couple of hundred yards off the captain's boat, sailing to starboard of us.

"Things were scarcely right with us before Macnaughten had brought his boat about close to wind and came ranging alongside. He had his watch in his hand.

"'Mr. Grimalson,' he demanded, 'why were you fooling with that sail, just now?'

"'She wasn't setting proper,' explained Grimalson; 'and I told Jarvis to take a swig on the downhaul. He got messed up in the slack somehow, and—'

"'Before you go any further,'—the captain cut him short—' I may just tell you that your sail was setting perfectly, and that I saw the whole business through my glass.… Hasn't Doctor Foe told you that I require him, while this weather holds, to be on board this boat regularly at ten minutes to noon, to take observations?'

"'Observations?' grumbled the second mate. 'I thought observations to be a seaman's job. I reckoned that what doctors and suchlike took was temperatures, and five minutes up or down wouldn't put anyone out.'

"'I'm sorry,' answered Macnaughten, very quiet, after a moment's thought,—'I am very sorry to tell you before your crew and passengers what, with a ship under me, I should have called you aft and below to hear in private. But if you ever use that tone with me again, Mr. Grimalson, I shall take your temperature with my revolver. And if you dare to disobey my smallest order, as you deliberately did just now, I shall transfer you to this boat and clap you in irons. For it seems to me I have to explain to you what the others,—crew and passengers alike—know by the light of common sense: that until God's mercy delivers us my least word is the Ten Commandments rolled into one, we being where a hand's turn is either a hair's-breadth or broad as the Pacific.… Now cast off, and set your behaviour by No. 1 boat, where Mr. Ingpen has come up to wind and is waiting for us.… A cable's length on the port, and level with us—that's the order, and you'll watch it until I give the next. You have lost us twenty minutes. Happen that might turn out the hair's breadth I was speaking of—the difference between life and death—and the whole Pacific ain't wider.'

"We were down in latitudes where the current sets southeasterly, and this was helping us all the time. But on the sixth and seventh days, although the wind held fair and light and steady, a considerable swell had been following us, warning of trouble somewhere to northward; and on the eighth night it overtook us.

"It was—not to speak irreverently—in itself ten times more trouble than ten thousand Grimalsons could have raised; a tearing gale of wind which, all of a sudden, converted the oily summits of the swell into bursting white waves. I don't suppose the height from trough to summit actually increased as it did to view, but in twenty minutes, and with night shutting down the lid on us, each successive wave astern seemed to grow taller by feet. The rain appeared to have no effect in flattening their caps, though it came down with a weight that knocked half the breath out of our bodies, and with a roar above which it was hard to hear an order shouted. We could spy the other boats' lanterns but at long intervals, partly because of this down-pouring curtain and partly, I suppose, because when we topped up over a crest they would nine times out of ten be hidden in a trough, dipping or rising.

"We carried, by Captain Macnaughten's orders, a hurricane lamp on our fore-stay. Someone had lit a second amidships, where we huddled in oilskins and under tarpaulins like a congregation of eels.… Jarvis, our best seaman, had the tiller. He sat, all hunched, crouching forward over a third small lamp—the binnacle lamp with which our boat, like the others, was providentially fitted. The rain, however, beat on its glass in such sheets that he could not possibly have read the compass card floating by the wick. Nor—I am sure—was he trying to read it. He just sat and steered by the feel of the seas as they lurched ahead and sank abaft. The lamplight glowed up on his cheek-bones, but was lost under the pent of his sou'wester, which had a sort of crease or channel in its fore-flap, that shed down the rain in a flood. Though we lay, we passengers, on the bottom boards we could see nothing of his face, so far forward he bent.

"Then Grimalson lost his head. He was seated at Jarvis's shoulder in the stern-sheets, with a hefty seaman (Prout by name) on his other hand tending the sheet—the both of 'em starboard of Jarvis. Of a sudden he started up, reached forward, snatched the midships light, and held it aloft against the wall of a tremendous sea arching astern. At sight of it the fool lost all his remaining nerve, and yelled to the two seamen forward to lash a couple of oars to the painter and cast overboard. 'If we ran another hundred yards, we were lost: there was no hope but to fetch around head-to-sea and ride to it.'

"—Which, after some seven or eight sickening minutes, we did. He was master, and Jarvis put down the helm and obeyed. Twice we were heaved, tilted and slid sideways down, like folks perched on the window-sills of a falling house. Then she came fair about and rode to it, every crest flinging more or less of spray over us, hour after hour.…

"But I must tell you one thing. From time to time we were roused up in the darkness, to bale. Our work performed, we three passengers— Santa and Farrell and I—would creep under the tarpauling anew, out of the drumming rain, and coil there to sleep.… Ay, and once in the pitch blackness under, she, mistaking, reached two arms around my neck and with a long sigh, dead-beat, sank asleep. That was all. … Farrell lay as he had tumbled, like a log across my ankles. … I held her, crooked by my elbow against my side, her head drowsed on my shoulder, her body pulsing against mine. I am telling you all, and I tell you that I did not dare to kiss her. Lying awake, with Farrell across my feet, I held her to me, feeling her breathe.

"At hint of dawn Jarvis, who had been watching the seas the night through, barked us out of cover. The rain had ceased, the gale had swept southward as fast as it had come. The sea heaved almost as steeply as ever, but the toppling waves no longer flung any spray over us, or any to mention."

"Day broke, and the after-swell still tumbled us heavily: but nowhere within the great ring of horizon did it heave one of the other boats into sight. The sea smoothed itself down with a quite wonderful rapidity, and still its great surface was a blank."

"I cannot somehow believe that so able a handler of his boat as I knew Captain Macnaughten to be allowed himself to be swamped in that gale. His orders had been to carry on and only heave-to upon signal. Jarvis—who (as I have said) could sail our boat running by the feel of her, maintained that we had never been in the worst of danger, that the skipper could sail a boat for ten to his own one, that he had just held on, in his straight way, upon the orders he had given, and left us at the back of the horizon while we fenced seas under Grimalson's orders.

"Since nothing apparently has been heard since of those other boats, I shall go on hoping that Jarvis was wrong, and that Captain Macnaughten's boat and Mr. Ingpen's, in one way or another, met with a short sharp end in that gale.

"But if they did last it out and over the horizon to drag it out and die and never be reported to Lloyd's, then I, who know the sort of things they must have suffered, assure you, who have read them accurately reported in books, that whenever or wherever Captain James Macnaughten perished, the Recording Angel has him entered up for a seaman and a gentleman."

NIGHT THE SEVENTEENTH.

NO. 2 BOAT.

(Foe's Narrative Continued.)

"One must use ugly words for ugly things.

"Grimalson, staring—as we all stared—over the blank sea, vomited the natural man within him in some fourteen or fifteen words for which he was never forgiven by any of us.

"'Gone, by Gosh! And that bloody old fool was teaching me to handle a boat!'

"All heard it. Not a soul spoke. I glanced at Jarvis in time to catch the twitch of his mouth—one of those twitches I used to study in angry dogs, and snapshot and measure: but he continued to gaze across the waters. After half a minute or so he glanced at me, looked seaward again, and observed quietly, 'It don't seem probable they would run mast-down in the time. And yet I don't know: 'twas blowing powerful fresh just after midnight. Hull-down, a boat might easily be; and supposing sail lowered, what's a boat's mast better to pick up than a needle in a bottle o' hay?—let be they might be dismasted. There was weather enough. And No. 1 carried a bamboo— which is never to be trusted, if you ask me.'

"'Who the devil's asking you?' demanded Grimalson.

"'Nobody, sir,' the seaman answered, respectfully, but without turning his head. 'Words spoken in a l'il boat like this be for anybody's hearin'; and anybody's heard or no, accordin' as they choose.'

"'Well then,' Grimalson retorted, 'I happen to be boss here aboard, and I don't choose. So drop you that, prompt, and start baling her.'

"'One moment, Mr. Grimalson—' I began. But he took me up quicker than he had taken Jarvis.

"'Dear me, now!' he snarled in a foolish sarcastic way. 'And who may this be that I have the honour of addressing?—Captain Macnaughten's ghost? or his next-of-kin, belike? Or may be his deputy understudy?—with your One moment, please?… You sit down on that thwart there, and don't you dare open your face again until I give you leave.… That was the old fool's way with me—hey? And now you recognise it.'

"'I do,' said I, pulling out my revolver. 'You may quit fumbling in your pocket, for it's wringing wet and these cartridges are dry, as I have assured myself.… You sit down on that thwart, and don't you dare open your face until I give you leave to get up and wash it. That's your trick of speech, and maybe you recognise it."

"As I covered him, Jarvis touched my elbow. 'I beg your pardon, sir, but you're a gentleman and a passenger, and Mr. Grimalson's our senior officer, when all's said, and in command.… I'm not talkin' about the rights of it nor the wrongs of it,' Jarvis went on, as I still held the revolver levelled:' but 'tis flat mutiny you're committing; and me and my mates'll have to range up on the side of order. Whereby you'll be no match for us.… Oh, sir,' he pleaded, 'let up with quarrelling, and let's all die decent, if we must, when the time comes—and with a lady in the boat!'

"'Thank you, Jarvis,' said I; and lowering my revolver drew out the cartridges pretty deliberately. 'I beg your pardon, Mr. Grimalson. I shall not, on any provocation, interfere with you again. But before you start baling the boat, I'll ask you to note that the third water-breaker is stove, and it was the only full one. Saltish this water may be, but nine-tenths of it is honest rain from heaven.'

"'My God, sir, and it's truth!' verified one of the seamen who had scrambled forward. The full breaker had jerked loose from its lashings and lay awash under the bowman's thwart: worse—it had loosed the other two, and these, floating light, had washed away overboard and gone out of ken.

"Grimalson stood up, slightly dazed. In the rock of the boat he seemed to be shifting his weight deliberately from foot to foot.

"'Why didn't one of you report?' he shouted, in a fury at which I smiled; it being so senseless and at the same time so cunning, as a ruse to let him arise with dignity from the thwart. 'Why didn't somebody report?' he repeated in an absurd official manner, quite as though he had been a station-master interrogating a group of porters on the whereabouts of a missing parcel.

"'Well, sir,' I answered as politely as possible; 'it was I that first found the casks were loose, and by the accident that the rim of the full one struck me pretty sharply, in the night, between the shoulder-blades. I got it trigged up, as you see, before it ran amuck to do further damage. In securing it I found that it had lost its bung and was almost empty: but that hardly seemed worth mentioning, with such a flood of rainwater washing around. There was nothing to be done at the moment; the breaker in a way was refilling itself, as soon as I had it jammed, by the water washing over it; and, after a bit, judging it full or nearly full, I ripped off a corner of my oily and made a sort of bung, as you see."

"All this had, in fact, cost me some labour, and I related it, no doubt, a bit too complacently. Worse, I rounded it up by saying, 'The captain, sir, was more anxious about the water than anything, as he told me yesterday.'

"At this his temper boiled over—yet not (as I could see) until he had flung a glance at Jarvis and the crew, to make sure they were submissive still to the old habit of discipline. 'Macnaughten was always full of wisdom,' he sneered; '—so full that he's dead of it! … And so you didn't think it worth mentioning?'

"Do you know, Roddy, I didn't think the fool worth any further attention.… One can't really hate two men at one time… at any rate, I can't. It's too fatiguing. There sat Farrell, three feet away, looking dazed, as he'd looked ever since the Eurotas went under. As for this Grimalson, I didn't reckon him worth powder and shot. I knew that he would bluster before the men, to save his face, and then climb down. To secure the water on board was such an obvious measure that, bluster as he might, he couldn't miss coming to it finally.… I heard Jarvis explaining that an empty pork-tub, with a tarpauling inside of it, would hold quite a deal of the rainwater washing above the bottom-boards. I took no more trouble than to turn my back on Grimalson, who was arguing that all this water was mucking the dry provisions.

"'They're pretty well mucked already, sir, by the looks of 'em,' answered Jarvis: 'all but the canned meats, and few enough they are. Five cans, as I counted the last stowage.'

"'Oh, very well, then,' came the order which I had known to be inevitable. 'Run a tarpauling inside of that cask—and bale, you, Prout and Martinez!'

"And so, behind my back and almost as I shrugged my shoulders—so, within twenty minutes of the sunrise that told us we were eight human beings isolated from all help but that which we could afford to one another—in a casual, unpremeditated stroke the curse fell on us.

"The seaman Martinez, kneeling in water, was asking, rather helplessly, for someone to pass him a baler or invent one—our regulation dipper having gone overboard in the gale. It was a silly, useless question: but Grimalson, already rattled, swung round upon a man he knew to be weak. 'Damn me!' cried he in a gust of rage, 'if I can't teach it to doctors, I'll teach seamen who gives orders here!' and snatching out a marling-spike from a sheath in his belt, hurled it full at the seaman's head.

"The act was brutal enough in itself; for the iron, though a light one, was full heavy enough, flung with that force, to lay a man out. It did worse: for Martinez, instead of ducking his head, made a spring to his feet, putting out his hands much as if fielding a cricket-ball. The marling-spike, miss-aimed, struck the thwart in front of him, turned point up with the ricochet, and plunged into his thigh. As I splashed forward to his help, blood came creeping, staining the water around my ankles. The steel point had pierced slantwise through his femoral artery.

"Well, I was quick: and Santa was quick, too—tearing in strips the damp pillow-case on which her head rested of nights when it wasn't resting against Farrell's shoulder. (But not this night, I thought as I worked—not this blessed night just passed!) With the pillow-case and the very spike that had done the mischief I made a good firm tourniquet and saved Martinez's life for the time.

"But he had lost a lot of blood. All the drinking water awash in the boat was foul with it, and this bloodied flood was running, as the boat rocked, in and out among our small bags of pork and ship-bread. My job ended, I looked aft. Farrell was leaning over the gunwale in uncontrollable nausea. The face of Prout at the tiller, was dogged but inexpressive. Grimalson stood like a man dazed.

"'Will he live?' he asked, his eyes meeting mine. 'Of course I never intended—'

"'It wasn't a very pretty thing to do, was it?' I answered quietly.

"'Well, this settles it,' said he, staring down at the water. 'We must clean out this filthy mess and overhaul the stores.'

"'And then?' I asked.

"'Oh, it'll rain,' said he, affecting confidence. 'It rained for a hundred last night, didn't it? We've run south of the dry latitudes and soon we'll be getting more rain than we've any use for. There's the small keg of rum, too.… Great thing as we're situated,' the fool continued, 'is to keep everyone in heart. And anyway I don't stomach water with blood in it—specially Dago blood.… Jarvis and Webster, fall to baling: and you, Prout, hand us over the tiller and dig out something for breakfast.'

"I had found a plug of tobacco in my pocket and seated myself to slice it: and as I cut it upon my palm, my eyes fell on Farrell's yet-heaving shoulders.… Of a sudden then it came upon me that, even with the luck we'd carried, men can't go through seven days and eight nights in an open boat and emerge quite sane. Macnaughten had put up a gallant, a magnificent pretence. 'The Old Man's Penny Readings,' as Grimalson had dubbed those evenings when the boats had closed up and the crews sang Moody and Sankey or My Mary—'The Old Man's Penny Readings, or Pea-nuts on the Pacific'—had been just as grandly simple as anything in the Gospel. No: that's wrong—they had come straight out of the Gospel, a last chapter of it the skipper had found floating and recovered, and would carry up, a proud passport to his God.

"But Macnaughten was gone, and with him the whole lovely illusion. He had kept us in a nursery, separated from hell by a half-inch plank; and here we were all beasts, consigned to ravening and to die of unsatisfied bestial wants—yes, and commanded by a monkey-man who chattered of keeping everyone in heart! He!"

"So there it was. I told you, Roddy, that it all happened like a nightmare—or, if you prefer it, a composite photograph—of any dozen stories you can recall. Here are the facts; and I will try to give them succinctly, as in a police-report.

"We were eight in the boat:"

Grimalson.In command.

Davis.A.B. Seaman.

Prout.A.B. Seaman.

Webster.Ordinary Seaman.

Martinez.Ordinary Seaman.

Farrell.Passenger.

Santa.Passenger.

and I.Passenger.

"Our victuals were:—4 lb. of pork (about) and 7 lb. of ship-bread, all messed with blood: 3 cans of potted meat, 2 of preserved fruit, one tin of sardines: for liquid, half a gallon of rum and, in the breaker, about 3 pints of water.

"We were, as we calculated, four hundred miles at least from any known land, and we had no chart on board: we might be within a hundred miles of the fringe of traffic.

"The sea was calm: the wind came in intermittent light draughts from the north. The sky was a great burning-glass, holding no hint of rain."

"Now from the very beginning—from the moment we left the ship—I knew that, if we were to perish of hunger or thirst before sighting help, I should be the last survivor. No; you needn't stare: it's perfectly simple.… I doubt if I ever told you that in the old days, when experimenting with the animals, I found that my will—or brain-power, if you prefer the term—worked torpidly for a while after meals, although, as you know, I was never what they call a hearty feeder. So I took to cutting down my rations. Then of course I discovered that this was all right enough up to a point, beyond which the stomach's craving made the brain irritable and impatient. So for a long time I let it go at that, and ate pretty frugally at fairly long stretches… until one day, in some book about Indian fakirs, I picked up a hint that if this interval of exhaustion were passed—if I stuck it out—my will might pick up its second wind, so to speak, and work more strongly than ever. I was curious enough, anyway, to give it a trial or two. The results didn't amount to much: but I did discover that I had a rather exceptional capacity for fasting, and promised myself to practise it further, from time to time, as an experiment on my own vile body.

"But now we'll come to something more important. In the matter of thirst I had persevered: being, as you may remember, hot-foot upon rabies just then and the salivary glands.… Well, in the matter of thirst, I trained myself to do my three days easy without swallowing a drop. That last night you invited yourself to dinner— the night I first met Farrell, by the way—you unknowingly ended a four days' experiment. I told Jimmy Collingwood about it, the morning he breakfasted with me.…"

["I remember Jimmy's telling me something about it, in the taxi," I put in. "He said you were either the saviour or the curse of society—he wasn't clear which: wouldn't commit himself until he'd read your forthcoming treatise on Thirst, Its Cause and Cure. He added that you were mistaken if you thought the topic non-controversial."]

"He needn't be afraid. . . Farrell smashed me up for good as a benefactor of my species.… I shall put up a brass plate in Harley Street and end my days as a pottering empiricist—Remember Jimmy's trouble with that word?—alleviating particular complaints for cash. If it hadn't been for Farrell—well, just you remember that when I stand up for judgment!…

"Anyhow, that infernal boat gave me all the personal experiment I wanted.… I promised not to tell you all about it.… Martinez went first, of course, being weak as water. He died muttering for water. Grimalson came next… two days later.

"But I shall go on telling you about myself. Physically I suffered very little, mentally a good deal at sight of the others' torments— but only from time to time. By the fourth day (the eleventh after the Eurotas went down) we were all more or less mad, I reckon. But my lunacy took the form of light-headedness with a strange, almost persistent, sense of exaltation. I kept my strength so much better than they that almost unconsciously they left most of the trimming and steering in my hands. And I sat and steered as a god, in a world blank of all but miserable happenings. I looked on Santa, and she was the woman I loved but should never enjoy. I looked on Farrell: and he was here, brought here by me. What worse woe could possibly lie in store for him than this agony over which I presided it was impossible to tell and hard indeed to imagine. But I did not want him to die. On the contrary, it was for him that I searched the horizon, that a ship might rescue us and he might live. I would see to the rest!

"They say that living with an enemy in a confinement such as ours, makes you hate him worse and worse.… It wasn't so with me. My hate, by this time, was set and annealed, so to speak; quite cold, and almost judicial. I had no more jealousy than Jove. The air that, to the others, quivered so damnably, so insufferably around the boat under a sky without shade, swam around me like incense.… As for Farrell, his eyes watched mine like a dog's.

"Oh, yes, we went through it all! I'll have to tell you about Grimalson (as shortly as possible, though), because Farrell gets mixed up in it, hereabouts. Even in their suffering, the three seamen—Jarvis, Prout, and Webster—had nursed poor Martinez almost tenderly; and I suppose, amid their mutterings forward, they had hatched out their form of protest. And it was fit for comic opera— ghastly comic opera—if you can imagine Lucifer sitting in the stalls.

"Noon of the third day it was—I count from the time of our losing the other two boats. We had lowered Martinez overboard about an hour before, and the seamen should have been preparing our diminutive ration. (Salt pork boiled in sea-water, if you can imagine it, Roddy!) I was steering: Santa sat a foot away, staring over the waters, sometimes bringing her attention back to a line which Grimalson had cast overboard, trying for a fish. Grimalson lounged on the after-thwart—facing me, as you might say, and with his back to the men, but lolling sideways over the gunwale. He felt the line with his left hand. Close by his right lay a useless gaff. He had exhausted our third and last tin of sardines for bait, without effect, and—what was worse—had drained the oil down his throat impudently, without an offer to share it. Also he had been drinking salt water—and I had not troubled to restrain him. Farrell I could hate, but this man was naught. Farrell lay on the bottom-boards at my feet, breathing stertorously, with his head in what shade Santa's gown and the side-sheets together afforded. But this fool seemed intent on baiting the Pacific with a plummet, a hook, and a lump of salt pork.

"As if this wasn't enough of grisly opera, of a sudden, in my light-headedness I saw the three men stand up, join hands solemnly in a sort of cat's cradle fashion, and advance aft, for all the world like a comic trio, with the after thwart for footlights. They came to a halt, close behind Grimalson, and—even as though I had ordered a burlesque—Jarvis cleared his parched throat painfully, very formally, and spoke across to me. You must picture the three, if you will, still holding hands while he spoke.

"'Doctor Foe, sir,' said Jarvis oratorically, 'me and my mates, not knowing the law, but being wishful to behave conformable as British seamen, have cast it up together. And we allow 'tis no mutiny, being situated as we are, to say as this Martinez was a shipmate, when all's said and done, though a Dago, and Mr. Grimalson, meaning no disrespect, done him to death by bloody murder. Which, consequently, attaching no blame, we three, as loyal British seamen, two A.B. and one ordinary, and giving our opinion for what it is worth, hold that Mr. Grimalson was probably off his chump when he done it, and hasn't behaved subsequently in a way to inspire confidence in a crew left as we are. Whereby, Doctor Foe, not having pen and ink handy to make a round robin of it, we hereby respectfully depose Mr. Grimalson, and request of you to take over command of this craft, trusting you to be a gentleman and being well aware of the consequences and ready to face 'em. The others having said Amen, we'll consider the matter finished.'

"There's farce somewhere in every tragedy, Roddy. Here, against the glare on the Pacific, it challenged all doom, broad and unashamed. I need hardly tell you that Grimalson, at the opening of this harangue, had dropped his fishing-line, clutched his gaff, and whirled about furiously. But he faced three determined men, and Webster's loose hand played with a revolver. Twice or thrice Grimalson essayed to interrupt; but Jarvis was a man with a prepared speech: and, backed by Webster's free hand, he delivered it straight out at me to the last word over Grimalson's shoulder.

"Then, as he concluded, there ensued the beastliest scene of all. Grimalson, from facing these three slow, determined men, took a swift turn right about and struck at me with the gaff. They clutched at him and he faced about again, dropping the gaff, springing to the thwart and hitting right and left. Webster sprang also to the thwart and landed him a stunner on the point of the jaw which sent him overboard from the rocking boat.

"Now Webster was, in ordinary life, a religious man, and a Methodist. At sight of what he had done he ran to the boat's side, making ineffectual grabs to recover the body, which floated for a moment or two, with the senseless hands afloat or spread on the waters, as if in ghastly benediction. And then, as I put up helm, as if hauled down on a line, the trunk and head disappeared from view and a bloody smear came up, oozing and spreading. Jarvis called out that he had seen a shark's fin.

"I did not see it, being occupied in rounding up the boat to recover the body: doing this, too, with my left hand, in no small pain. For Grimalson's stroke with the gaff had lacerated my right fore-arm, tearing away a strip of my rolled-up shirt-sleeve.

"And then.… My God, Roddy!—Farrell, who had roused himself up at the scrimmage, had his mouth fastened on my arm, mad with thirst, sucking the blood! Oh, you have to go through these things to understand!… And I said I wouldn't tell.… I beat at him; but it was Santa who pushed him off.

"Webster had sunk, sobbing, with his face on his hands that gripped the gunwale. We were all mad. I held out my bleeding fore-arm to Santa, who was tearing a bandage for it.