For Jacinta

"What's her head to the westwards for?" he said. "Port, hard over! Can't you hear inside there?"

The steering engine rattled, and it was evident that the helmsman was badly afraid, but in another moment Jefferson had swung away from the wheel-house, and was wrenching at the telegraph again.

"What's the matter with these engines?" he said. "I want her backed while I swing her under a ported helm. I'll plug somebody certain if this is a mutiny."

He opened the big revolver, and closed it with a suggestive click, while it cost Austin an effort to walk quietly along the bridge. Jefferson's eyes were glittering, his hair hung down on his face, which was grey and drawn, dark with perspiration, and his hands and limbs were quivering. His voice, however, although a trifle hoarser, was very like his usual one, so much so, in fact, that Austin found it difficult to believe the man's mind was unhinged by fever. He whirled round when he heard Austin, without a trace of recognition in his eyes.

"Now," he said, "why can't I get what I want done?"

"You're very sick," said Austin quietly. "Hadn't you better go back to bed?"

Jefferson laughed. "Yes," he said, "I guess I am, or these brutes wouldn't try to take advantage of me. Still, in another minute you're going to see me make a hole in somebody!"

He leaned heavily on the bridge rails, with the pistol glinting in his hand, and Austin endeavoured to answer him soothingly.

"What do you want to go back to Africa for?" he said. "There wouldn't be any difficulty about it if it was necessary."

"Funnel-paint's there. They brought me away when I was sick, or I'd have killed him." He made a little gesture, and dropped his hoarse voice. "You see, I had a partner who stood by me through everything, and Funnel-paint sent down a – rotting nigger!"

"Your partner's all right," said Austin, who saw that Jefferson was as far from recognising him as ever. "I've excellent reasons for being sure of it."

Jefferson leaned towards him confidentially, with one hand on the rails.

"It hasn't come out, but it's bound to get him. The nigger had his arms round him. Then he'll have to hide in a dark hole where nobody can see him, while the flesh rots off him, until he dies."

Austin could not help a shiver. He knew the thing might happen, and he realised now that it had also been in Jefferson's mind. Still, it was, in the meanwhile, his business to get the pistol from the latter, and then put him in his berth, by force, if necessary.

"The difficulty is that you can't kill a man twice," he said. "I seem to have a notion that you hove a stick of dynamite into Funnel-paint's canoe."

"I could have done, and I meant to, but my partner was with me. I had to humour him. That man stood by me."

Austin stood still, looking at him, a little bewildered by it all. The mailboat doctors and some of the traders he had met at Las Palmas had more than once related curious examples of the mental aberration which now and then results from malarial fever. Still, Jefferson, whom he had left scarcely fit to raise his head in his bunk, was now apparently almost sensible; and, what was more astonishing, able, at least, to walk about. Then, when he wondered how he was to get his comrade down from the bridge, the latter turned to him with a sudden change of mood.

"You're keeping me talking while they play some trick on me," he said. "All right! In another moment you'll be sorry."

The pistol went up, and Austin set his lips while a little shiver of dismay ran through him. The ladder he had come up by was some distance away, the wheel-house, at least, as far, and he stood clear in the moonlight, realising that the first move he made would probably lead to Jefferson squeezing the trigger. Then, with sudden bitterness, he remembered what, it seemed, was in his blood, and felt astonished that he should be troubled by physical fear. It would be a swifter and cleaner end if his comrade killed him there. That consideration, however, only appealed to his reason, and the reflection came that Jefferson would probably never shake off the recollection of what he had done; and, knowing it was safest, he braced himself to stand motionless, while the perspiration dripped from him, steadily eyeing the fever-crazed man.

"If you will let me tell you why we are steaming west it would save a good deal of trouble," he said, as soothingly as he could, though his voice shook. "You see, you were too sick to understand, and you're not very well yet."

Jefferson, somewhat to his astonishment, seemed willing to listen, but he was, unfortunately, far from the side of the bridge below which Austin surmised that Tom was crouching. He risked a glance round, but the helmsman evidently dare not leave the wheel-house, for which Austin could not blame him, and the Spaniards stood clustered together gazing up at them from below. Austin decided that if he signed or called to them Jefferson would use the pistol, though he fancied that one of them was trying to make him understand something.

Then suddenly a shadowy form glided out from behind the wheel-house, where Jefferson could not see it. There was a rush of feet, and a spring, and Jefferson went down heavily with another man, who wound his arms round him. They rolled against the bridge rails, and a breathless voice called to Austin.

"Get hold of the pistol!" it said.

Austin wrenched it from his comrade; men came scrambling up the ladder, and in another moment or two they had Jefferson helpless, and set about carrying him to his room. When they laid him in his berth his strength seemed to suddenly melt away, and he lay limp and still, only babbling incoherently. Austin ventured to give him a sedative, and then, leaving Wall-eye to watch him, went out on deck. Tom, who was waiting for him, made a little deprecatory gesture.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Austin, but he never came near my side of the bridge," he said. "If I had got up he'd have dropped me with the pistol, and that wouldn't have done much good to anybody."

"Of course not," said Austin. "I was uncommonly thankful when Bill got hold of him. Send him along to my room, and then start your engines."

In another two or three minutes the Cumbria was steaming west again, and Bill, the fireman, stood, somewhat sheepishly, in the doorway of Austin's room.

"I owe you a good deal, and when the time comes I'll endeavour to remember it," said the latter. "Still, I don't want Mr. Jefferson ever to know anything about the thing. You did it cleverly."

Bill grinned. "Well," he said, "I'm quite glad I did. I felt I had to do something for my five pounds, any way."

It dawned upon Austin that once or twice, when he had somewhat risky work to do, Bill had been near him.

"What five pounds?" he asked.

"The five pounds she shoved into my hand one night on board the Estremedura– no – the fact is, I'm feeling a little shaky, and I don't quite know what I'm saying. The getting hold of Mr. Jefferson has upset me. When you think of it, it's only natural."

"Then it has come on very suddenly," said Austin. "You seemed all right a moment or two ago. Am I to understand that somebody gave you five pounds to look after me?"

It was evident to Bill that there was nothing to be gained by further reticence, and he edged out of the doorway, grinning more broadly than ever.

"Well," he said, "I guess she meant you, though she said it was both of you. Still, you won't tell her, or I sha'n't get any more."

He had vanished before Austin could ask another question, but the matter was quite clear to the latter, and his face grew hot while a little thrill of satisfaction ran through him as he recognised that Jacinta had felt it worth while to do what she could to ensure his safety. Then he remembered something else, and his face grew hard as he pulled off his jacket and glanced at his bare arm.

He had torn and abraded it heaving in oil and coal, and the gunboat's surgeon had warned him that it was advisable to keep his skin unbroken. There were several half-hardened scars upon it now, and another had been torn away when he fell against the rail in a heavy lurch a day or two earlier. He had worn no jacket at the time. He had since noticed a curious tingling sensation in that part of his arm, and, holding it nearer the lamp, he saw that the flesh was inflamed about the wound. There was no doubt about the fact. When he pressed it with his thumb all the lower arm was sore, and he let it fall limply to his side, and sat down with a little groan. The horrible thing he shrank from had, it seemed, come upon him. He sat very still for half an hour, grappling with a numbing sense of dismay, and then, with a little shake of his shoulders, went back to the bridge, for he had still a duty to his comrades.

CHAPTER XXIX

AUSTIN IS MISSING

It was a fine morning, and the signal, "Steamer approaching from the South," was flying from the staff high up on the Isleta hill, when Pancho Brown's boat lay heaving on the smooth swell at the entrance to Las Palmas harbour. Mrs. Hatherly, Jacinta, and Muriel sat in the stern-sheets, and beyond them two barefooted Canarios were resting on their oars, while two or three miles away a smear of smoke that half hid a streak of dusky hull moved towards them across the shining sea. Brown was watching it attentively with a pair of marine glasses in his hand.

"You have brought me off several times for nothing, but I almost think our friends have turned up at last," he said. "Of course, from Lieutenant Onslow's cable she should have been here several days ago, but it's very likely the engines would give them trouble. Any way, we'll know in ten minutes or so. There's the Sanidad going off."

A launch crept out from the mole, and behind her in the harbour boats were being got afloat. Coaling clerks, tobacco and wine merchants, and a miscellaneous crowd of petty dealers, were waiting to step on board, but two, at least, of Pancho Brown's party had no eyes for them. They were watching the incoming steamer rise higher out of the shining sea, and wondering if she was the one they had for the last few days looked for with tense anxiety. They had Onslow's cable from Sierra Leone, and the skipper of a big tramp which had come in for coals reported that a small British steamer had asked him for the latitude and longitude a week before. Nothing, however, had since been heard of her, and Jacinta had found the last three or four days as trying as Muriel did. The latter had, however, borne the suspense bravely, and displayed a sublime confidence in her lover which Jacinta, for no very obvious reason, found almost exasperating at times.

"Can't we go out a little?" she said at last.

Brown made a sign to the Canarios, who dipped the oars, and as they slid past the Carsegarry, which lay with steam blowing off, and a water barge alongside, Captain Farquhar leaned over her rails. He had come in for coal on his way to Liverpool the previous day, and had spent part of the night with Brown.

"I really think that is the Cumbria," he said. "Any way, she's much the kind of boat Jefferson described to me, and so far as I can make out they have a big boiler on deck. I suppose you are going off to her?"

Brown said they were, and Farquhar glanced at the boat hesitatingly. "I'd very much like to come with you, but I can't leave just now," he said. "Still, we won't have filled our tanks up for an hour or two, and you might tell Mr. Austin that I certainly expect him to pull across and see me. In fact, although we have steam up, I'll wait until he does."

Brown made a sign of comprehension, and the boat slid away, while when she stopped again outside the harbour the eyes of all on board her were fixed upon the steamer. She had also stopped, and lay rolling wildly, with the yellow flag at her foremast-head and the Sanidad launch alongside her; but in another minute or two the flag came fluttering down, and she moved on again towards the harbour. Brown signed to the oarsmen to turn the boat's head.

"There's no doubt that she's the Cumbria, and they can't have had anything very bad on board," he said.

In another five minutes the Cumbria crept up with them, rolling wickedly, with the big pump thudding on her deck, and a stream of water spouting from her side. Rags of awnings fluttered about her, her funnel was white with salt crust, for the trade-wind blows strong at that season, and the blistered paint had peeled from her corroded sides. Her story was written upon her so that even the girls could read, and both felt that no plainer testimony was needed to the courage of the men who had brought her home. Then they saw them, Jefferson leaning out, gaunt and blanched in face, from the bridge rails, and Austin standing amidst a group of haggard men on the forecastle. Jacinta's heart was beating a good deal faster than usual, and she saw the sudden tears rise to her companion's eyes; but as the long, rusty hull forged past them Austin made no sign. He stood looking straight in front of him, until he turned to the men about him who were busy with the anchor.

"He can't have seen us," said Muriel, with astonishment in her tone, and then touched Brown's arm. "Tell them to row their hardest, please."