CHAPTER VWHAT THE LITTLE STEAMER BROUGHT
IT was clearly impossible for me to make the real acquaintance of theAstartethat night and, as it was certainly raw and cold on deck in the dark, I gladly followed Captain Welfare down the companion to the saloon.
Here I found a most unexpected scene of comfort and civilisation. Most of my limited experience of yachting had been gained in small boats, and I had foolishly modelled my anticipation of theAstarteon my recollections of these. So I was surprised at the width and spaciousness I found.
A powerful lamp deeply shaded in red and suspended from the skylight lit up the table, which was laid for some sort of late evening meal. There were deep-red tulips in vases, and a pleasant gleam of silver and cut glass on the white cloth. The chairs, of course, were of the marine type, fixed in the floor with revolving seats.
Over the lockers along each side were deep luxurious seats, upholstered in dull red morocco, and over these, between the wide port-holes, each panel was filled with a pictorial tile of Delft ware, with a singularly clean and restful decorative effect of blues and browns. The further bulkhead on either side of the narrow door leading for’ard was filled with book-cases. A soft Persian carpetand the curving sides of the ship, the cunning shelves and cupboards that occupied odd corners, all combined to produce that air of cosiness that can be found nowhere in such perfection as in a ship’s cabin.
Captain Welfare was openly delighted by my praises of all these arrangements. There was something comical though pathetic in his anxiety for my approval. In fact I began to fear that his apologetic attitude would become a little wearisome if he persisted in it.
Thus he apologised for the leather upholstering and entered into a long explanation of the reasons for the absence of velvet. It was in vain that I assured him with the utmost sincerity that I greatly preferred leather. He simply did not listen. It was evident that he himself considered that red velvet cushions would have done me more honour, and really deplored their absence. My protestations he regarded as mere politeness, and he was concerned only in his own explanations. In the same spirit he kept apologising for the absence of many things which I should have loathed had they been there.
My cabin had been newly furnished throughout, and I found something very touching in the almost ladylike care which had been spent upon it.
I had for some time realised that, as Edmund had said he would, Captain Welfare regarded me as a “swell”; and simply because I was quite unconscious of being anything of the sort, he had conceived a queer kind of devotion to me.
Like the great majority of mankind, both Welfare and Edmund were pleasantest when acting as host. Especially Edmund, because his pride in the ship was gratified by my real pleasure in it, and he wasof course free from that well-meant but fussy solicitude that is so common in hosts and so very wearing for the guest.
After our early and hurried meal the supper on board was most acceptable.
TheAstartewas footing pleasantly before the fair wind with very little motion, and as we chatted in the warm light of the saloon I felt that my holiday was going to be a great success.
“When do you expect to reach Guernsey?” I asked.
“If this breeze holds we shall be there the morning after to-morrow at latest,” said Captain Welfare. “But we can’t count on it this time of year. It may fall calm any minute. Then it will be a matter of luck with the tides and what bits of wind we can catch.”
“I’m in no hurry,” I said with a sense of luxurious freedom, “I rather hope we shall be delayed.”
“Well, we’ll be a few days in Guernsey anyhow, and then I want to go on to Jersey. I hope that will be quite convenient to you, Mr. Davoren?”
“I shall be delighted. If you call at Alderney and Sark and all the rest of them, it will be all right to me!”
“I’ve heard from my correspondent in Jersey,” said Captain Welfare with a little grandiloquence, “of a bit of cargo there we might as well bring back. It will help to pay our expenses.”
“That’s delightful. The touch of business takes away all the sense of futility one usually has on a yacht.”
“Yes,” said Edmund, “going to look at places and photograph them simply because everyone else has labelled them pretty, or picturesque, or interesting or something. That kind of yachtsmanis only an expensive kind of tripper after all.”
“I’ve had good times on a yacht too, I must admit,” I said with a retrospective sigh.
“And I never have,” said Edmund with sudden bitterness. “I’ve had to watch other people, ladies and asses in white flannels, floating into a harbour on some millionaire cheesemonger’s 1000-tonner, while I’ve stood, black to the eyes, watching the dagoes coal ship, or punching niggers on some bit of a trading scow. It’s simply a case of ‘sour grapes’ with me, old man!”
He ended with a laugh that grated on me. It was a cynical laugh, very unlike the Edmund of old, and yet, I felt, typical of much that I had noticed in his bearing since he had been home this time. I did not like to think of him having been driven to envy mere prosperous, idle people; and I was sure there was something deeper in his resentment than common jealousy of idleness and wealth. The bishop’s words came back to me with painful force—“There is nothing worse for a gentleman than to bedéclassé.” And with this there recurred my old wonder, what it was that Edmund had “surrendered”?
“I don’t think you need envy anybody while you’re on theAstarte,” I said quietly.
“Oh! I haven’t a word to say against theAstarte,” Edmund admitted.
Captain Welfare leaned back with a sigh of relief. He had watched Edmund anxiously during his momentary discontent. Indeed I had noticed that he often seemed uneasy when Edmund expressed any dissatisfaction, as though some restraint were needed to keep him in the partnership. I attributed this merely to the want of steadfastness I knew so well in Edmund.
“Of course,” he said, as if in explanation, “we’ve not always been on theAstarte. We had some rough times before we got her, as you know, sir. But if things go as well as they’re doing for another three years, you’ll be able to have your own yacht, Mr. Edmund, and bother no more about cargoes.”
“I shan’t want it then. Once I’m independent of trade, I shall want to stick to it.”
This was of course unintelligible to Captain Welfare, with his ideal of “retiring”; but I understood perfectly. I said to myself, “The bishop was right. Edmund must have some service to perform as soon as possible.”
A tremendous sleepiness came upon me, and early as it was I said good-night and turned in.
I was on deck betimes next morning and found the sun well up in a clear blue April morning sky. TheAstartewas foaming along very gaily with free sheets, two big square sails set on her foremast and all her head-sails drawing. There was a fair amount of following sea from which she lifted her short counter with exhilarating buoyancy.
She struck me as bigger and more of a ship than I had expected. The bulwarks round the afterdeck were nearly breast high, as she had a great deal of free-board for her size. There was a kind of short waist amidships, covering the hold, and a small deck over the fo’c’sle. Her slightly raking masts and leg-o’-mutton sails looked a tremendous height from the deck, and the whole boat seemed to taper away to the great sloping bowsprit with its flight of jibs. I thought what a weird-looking craft she must be from outside. But I realised that her lines, though strange, must be beautiful.
Her decks were holystoned and scrubbed to the whiteness of paper, and the thin lines of caulkingbetween the planks had the polish of jet. The inside of the bulwarks and other parts were newly painted in green and white, and the mahogany and brass of the sky-lights, the wheel and binnacle, all shone with the lustre of well-tended furniture.
Two or three of the crew were busy about the deck.
Their bare legs, shining like brown silk stockings, their bright, exotic costumes, and dark faces with teeth flashing as they grinned and chattered at their work, gave me a queer feeling of having been transported in my sleep to the unknown East.
One of them was a thin, delicate creature with a skin of the colour and polish of black-lead—a Soudanese as I afterwards learned.
The wheel was a little abaft of the saloon companion. It was in charge of a tall, gracefully built Arab in a handsome blue linen galabieh. As we were practically before the wind there was little strain on the wheel, which he handled delicately and instinctively with one hand. The soft fez at the back of his head was bound with the green of a descendant of the Prophet. His lean brown face had an essential air of aristocracy and command in its repose. Only his accipitrine eyes seemed alert, intent on everything from the horizon to the details of the work of the man nearest to him. He reminded me irresistibly of a half-tamed falcon on a perch.
I guessed this must be Jakoub, who had sat next us in the boat, but whom I could not be said to have seen, and to whom I had not yet spoken.
“Sa’ida Effendi,” he said gravely as I approached him. He made his dignified salaam, touching his forehead, lips and breast with a gesture that surprised me, for it was so like the Christian ceremony of crossing one’s self.
“Good morning,” I said; “do you speak English?”
“I speak all the languages. They are alike to me.”
“You are—er—Jakoub?”
I knew no other name for him, but I was honestly afraid of being unduly familiar in addressing him by his—whatever the Mohammedan equivalent of a Christian name may be.
“I am your Excellency’s servant—Jakoub,” he replied.
He seemed to wait for me to continue the conversation if I wanted to; but would evidently be quite unembarrassed if no more were said. I uttered the usual futility about the morning.
“It is, sir, ver’ beautiful,” he replied. “Your English sea can be sometimes beautiful, but it is not so often.”
He politely offered me the wheel, asking if I would like to steer. I took it from him. Being better used to a tiller, I did not at first find my touch, and allowed a following sea to break square on our counter. A heavy dash of spray wetted us both, but Jakoub only smiled politely at my vexation.
It was then that I began to hate him. His manner was polite, in fact obsequious, but from the beginning of our acquaintance I felt that he regarded me as a sort of joke, as something utterly negligible. In the covert insolence of his handsome face I thought I read too that were I ever in his way he would see me thrown overboard as if I were a rat.
I wondered at Edmund’s easy-going toleration of such a man.
This was, however, my only disagreeable impression on board theAstarteand, as I had no occasionto see the man, it soon passed from my mind as I fell into the mood of the cheerfully passing hours aboard ship.
The weather kept fine, and the breeze held throughout the day and the night.
Intent on picking up a little colloquial Arabic, I spent a good deal of time talking to the Arab who acted as waiter and servant in the saloon. Although I had never before heard the language spoken, I had in the course of my researches gained some little acquaintance with the terrors of Arabic grammar, and even some vocabulary, which I now found I pronounced all wrong.
It was a relief to find that the extraordinary complexities of the language, as written by scholars, disappeared from the tongue as spoken, and I hoped it would not be impossible to compass a passable imitation of their weird gutturals and deep chest tones.
Hassan, as our servant was called, professed to be astonished at my proficiency, and I was encouraged by finding that I could soon pick out some words and phrases in listening to the jabber of the Arab crew.
Edmund was often able to help me in points I could not well explain to Hassan, although he averred he only knew enough of the language “to curse the niggers in.”
To Captain Welfare my progress was miraculous. He said that to have been able to speak and understand the language would once have been worth a thousand pounds to him, but he had been told it was derived from camel-talk, and had not believed it was possible for a Christian to learn it.
He had all the ignorant Englishman’s feeling that there is something undignified in using anylanguage spoken by what he calls generically “natives,” which is curiously mingled with profound respect for anyone else who can do it.
It was on our second morning out that I found Captain Welfare on deck before me.
“That’s Alderney,” he said, pointing to a long low coast-line just visible on our port bow.
“Already?” I asked. “We seem hardly to have started.”
“I’m glad it’s not been tedious, sir. But we’re a good way from Guernsey yet. The wind’s inclined to south a bit though, and if it goes a few more points we’ll get our square sails set again. Then if it holds we’ll be there or thereabouts to-night or to-morrow morning.”
“Well, I’m in no hurry to get there, as I said.”
“That’s maybe just as well. You never know your luck at sea in a sailing boat.”
By midday I was watching the sea break over the famous Casquets, which looked like the jaw of a dog in the water. We went down to luncheon, and were just having our coffee after the meal when the saloon door opened and Jakoub came in.
This was an unwarranted intrusion, for Jakoub had neither the status of a guest nor a servant, and etiquette is necessarily rigid at sea. I saw Welfare flush angrily and look at him with astonishment in his round bright eyes.
“What the devil——?” began Edmund.
Jakoub looked at him quite impassively and said a few words in Arabic which I did not understand.
I saw Edmund look startled.
“Get away on deck and I’ll follow you in a minute,” he said.
Jakoub gravely salaamed and left, carefully closing the door.
“What’s the matter?” asked Welfare.
“I’m just going to see. Nothing much, I expect,” Edmund replied, but I thought there was a note of anxiety in his voice.
“Infernal cheek of him walking in here, whatever it is,” grumbled Welfare.
“Yes, of course,” Edmund agreed. “He should have given his message to Hassan.”
I was enjoying the situation, taking the cowardly pleasure that one does when a man one dislikes incurs the blame of people one suspects of supporting him. I had felt I was in a minority in my resentment of Jakoub, and now I tasted the craven joy of having others on my side.
“Excuse me,” said Edmund as he finished his coffee, and he went on deck.
“I hope there’s nothing wrong?” I said to Welfare.
“Oh, there can’t be anythingwrongexactly. A bit of a scrap among some of the crew, I daresay.”
In spite of his words he looked uneasy as he lit a cigarette.
“Don’t let me keep you if you want to go up,” I said.
“Perhaps I might as well have a look.” He followed Edmund and I was left alone.
There were no unusual sounds, nor any sign of alteration in the weather. I felt that if it was only some matter of the ship’s discipline they would prefer me to remain below.
I drank another cup of coffee, but then curiosity overcame my scruples and I went on deck.
A little dirty steamer had come up to within a quarter of a mile of us, one of those tiny nondescript things that knock about near harbours with a bit of deck for’ard and a funnel right in the sternmaking a vast amount of black smoke. Someone on her deck was handing down a string of signal-flags as I came up, and I noticed that our course was altered so as to bring us right down to her. There was nothing else to be seen save the spouts of foam over the Casquets, now far astern.
Captain Welfare, Edmund and Jakoub were leaning on the port bulwarks, watching the little vessel and then Edmund came past me to take the wheel from one of the Arabs.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“It’s a letter from the people in Guernsey—I don’t know what they want.”
The wheel was put over a few spokes, the crew paid out some of the main and fore-sheets, and theAstartewent foaming down widely to leeward of the steamer.
I heard the “cling-cling” of the steamer’s engine signal, and her noisy propeller stopped.
Then our wheel was put hard over, the big booms came aboard with a swing, and theAstartecame into the wind with a tremendous flapping of her head-sails. Her way took her within a few yards of the steamer, and as the helm was put over again she slid slowly along her lee.
A man on the dirty little bridge gave us a hail and swung out a small packet attached to a light line which was neatly caught by Jakoub.
“All right?” he hailed in English.
“All right.”
The steamer’s skipper rang his engines on again, theAstartegathered her way, and the two boats parted with a wave of the hand from the man on the bridge.
I saw Captain Welfare cut the canvas wrappings from the packet that had been thrown aboard.He took a letter out, opened it, and glanced at it swiftly.
Then it seemed to me that he looked across the deck at myself with an expression of regretful perplexity on his great heavy face.
It occurred to me that this was how he would look if he had to announce to me that someone very dear to me were dead.
But at the same time I knew I was the one member of the party who could not be affected by the news, whatever it might be.
Still holding his letter in both hands and glancing at it, Captain Welfare walked across to Edmund and spoke to him.
Edmund nodded, called Jakoub, and handed over the wheel to him. Then they both disappeared down the companion.
I set down all these details as minutely as I can remember them, because it is from them that I have since had to piece together in my mind all that was happening during this time when I had no clue to their meaning.
I had no mind to speak to Jakoub, and stood leaning over the bulwark watching the lessening smudge of black smoke that represented the little steamer.
Edmund had left us sailing with free sheets on our course to Guernsey, so I was surprised on looking up to see the crew getting in sheets, while Jakoub put us on a course close-hauled to windward.
I surprised a look in Jakoub’s face as though he were waiting for some sign of uneasiness on my part. His face was more than usually insolent, I thought, so I merely looked up along the leech of the sail till the tremor died from it as theAstartesettled to her new work. Then I returned to my former posture and waited ten minutes by my watch before I went below.
The saloon was empty, but I heard voices from Welfare’s cabin, which had room for a good-sized table in it, and served as a kind of office and chart-room.
I lay down on one of our delightfully comfortable locker couches with a novel I had been trying to get interested in. The steady motion of the boat and the soft diffused light that came down from the skylight were very soothing.
The book was one that Captain Welfare regarded as a masterpiece of literature. He would not be satisfied until I had read and praised it. I was conscientiously trying to do the former, and intended afterwards to praise it without consulting my conscience. It was one of those novels that people write again and again, like the pictures that turn up season after season at the Academy—“Nymphs Bathing,” “Autumn’s Fiery Finger,” and the like. I forget whether this book was about Cavaliers and Roundheads, or the French Revolution. But very soon I began to be interested in the patterns made by the spaces between the printed words; they seemed to run in wavy lines down the page, and soon the book had lost all power to bore me. Presently I heard the cabin-door open, and Edmund and Welfare came out, speaking in low tones.
“You’ll have to tell him,” Edmund was saying.
“But what am I to say?”
“Stick to what we arranged. You must chalk it all down to Jakoub.”
I perceived from their voices that they thought I was asleep, and though their conversation hadconveyed no meaning to me, I did not want to overhear more. I coughed and sat up.
“I hope we have not disturbed you?” Welfare asked, looking, I thought, a little guilty.
“Not at all. But I’m afraid I have dozed a little over this most interesting book. It’s the sea air, and the motion.”
“Quite so, quite so,” said Captain Welfare solemnly.
Edmund said nothing and went on deck.
Captain Welfare sat down facing me in one of the revolving chairs on the opposite side of the table.
His eyes looked distressful in the midst of his great cicatrix of a face, and I noticed perspiration on his forehead and upper lip.
“I hope there’s nothing wrong?” I said.
“Well, we’ve had some rather upsetting news. Nothing wrong exactly, but upsetting. It alters our plans a bit. I was just going to tell you. Me and Mr. Edmund have been talking things over a bit.”
His big right hand was pinching up creases in the table-cloth and setting it all crooked in a maddening way.
“Well?” I said interrogatively.
“I don’t often drink between meals, Mr. Davoren, but I think I’ll have a brandy and soda if you don’t mind.”
“Of course,” I said, as he touched the gong on the table and gave his instructions to Hassan.
“Perhaps you’ll join me?” he asked hopefully.
I elected to have some whisky, so as to put him a little more at his ease, for he was perturbed to an extent that was quite distressing.
I anticipated nothing but some trouble, possiblysome loss, in connection with the business, and was chiefly anxious to know whether Jakoub had been authorised to alter our course.
Captain Welfare swallowed about half of his brandy and soda and mopped his forehead, still regarding me with a look of perplexity and distress.
“Yes,” he said, as though continuing a conversation. “Yes. We’ll have to give Guernsey a miss.”
“Oh! Are you going straight to Jersey, then?”
In the back of my mind I knew that the course we were on was taking us away from the one island as fast as from the other; but I had not thought it out, and felt there must be some way of accounting for the manœuvre.
“No. I’m afraid we’ll have to give Jersey a miss too. In fact, we’ll have to cut out the islands altogether this trip.”
“Really? That’s very disappointing. Are we going straight back?”
“Oh no. No, we’ll not go back for a bit.”
“Well, where on eartharewe going, Captain Welfare?”
Captain Welfare slowly finished his drink and looked as if he were pondering the advisability of taking another. He finally put his glass down a little tremulously.
“The fact is—you saw this message come aboard?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it seems we’re wanted out East at once, very urgent. There’s nothing for it but to make all sail and get there.”
“Out East?”
“The Mediterranean, you know—the old beat.”
“But that will take weeks!”
“We should do it in a month with luck, if the weather holds.”
“And where are you going to put me off?”
“We were just talking about that, me and Mr. Edmund. You wouldn’t think well of making the trip with us, I suppose?”
“That’s quite out of the question. I only arranged to be away for two or three weeks.”
“It will be a bit warm out there, of course, but not bad really, especially at sea, and the worst of the Khamsins—that’s the hot winds, you know—will be over.”
“But, Captain Welfare, I don’t care about the climate there, for I’m not going. It’s impossible. I must ask you to call at Guernsey or somewhere and put me off. Then I could get back to Southampton. I shall be very sorry to leave the boat, but there’s nothing else for it.”
“It’s the time, Mr. Davoren. It might mean missing our markets. We can’t afford to take any chances.”
“I don’t profess to know much about trade——”
“You don’t, sir. You don’t know anything about it. That’s what makes it so hard to explain.”
“All the same, I don’t see how a delay of twenty-four hours or less in a month’s voyage is going to make such a vital difference as all that.”
“That’s just it, Mr. Davoren. You don’t see it. You can’t.”
“No, and therefore I demand to be landed at Guernsey. After all, I’m a partner.”
“To be sure, sir. Nobody questions your right. But we—well, the fact is we can’t call at Guernsey. It’s not only missing our market—but we should lose Jakoub.”
“Jakoub? That would be no great loss, in myopinion. But what has he got to do with it?”
“I’m afraid Jakoub hasn’t a very good record. We knew that, of course, when we took him on. I think Mr. Edmund told you?”
“He did. And my own impression is that he’s the biggest scoundrel unhung.”
“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. But he’s extraordinarily useful to us just at present. I don’t know what we should do without him. Then they would want us to give evidence, and you don’t know what the Egyptian courts are for delay—and worse things.”
“But what is it all about? For the Lord’s sake, man, tell me straight what’s happened.”
“I was just going to. It seems he’s wanted by the Egyptian police, and they have traced him on to theAstarte, and have warrants out for him all over the place. They might put the ship under arrest, and that would simply ruin us. We’ve got to get him back to Egypt, sir. We can get rid of him there, and we cannot get rid of him any nearer home.”
There was an air of finality in his tone which warned me I must try to preserve my dignity, even if bereft of my liberty.
“I think this is a matter that ought to be discussed between all three of us,” I said. “Do you mind if I send Hassan to ask my brother to join us?”
“Not at all. I’ll go myself,” said Welfare with an air of intense relief.
For the time being the thought uppermost in my mind was the anxiety of Bates and Mrs. Rattray at my absence. I had not been long enough away, nor far enough, for the home foreground to recede.
Edmund came in, looking, to my surprise, morecheerful and jollier than he had done for a long time.
“Well,” he said, “I suppose Welfare’s broken it to you? Ah! I see you’ve been drinking to the cruise! I’ll join you. Hassan, get another glass. I’m really jolly glad, old man, you’re coming. You will simply love the Mediterranean.”
“It seems to me,” I said, with a sincere attempt at austerity, “that I am being taken to the Mediterranean against my will, in order to help a criminal to elude justice.”
“Only temporarily,” said Edmund; “nothing could keep Jakoub from the gallows in the long run.”
“This kind of thing may be all very well for you. But in my position——”
“I know. It wouldn’t be considered good form in a clergyman. But I assure you nothing will ever come of it—at home. We’re not going ‘East of Suez, where there ain’t no ten commandments,’ but to Egypt and the Levant, where there are so many commandments that nobody can remember them all, or bother very much. Besides, you’ve no responsibility in the matter, anyhow.”
“You forget I’m part owner of this boat.”
“We’ll make that all right. We’ll sign a declaration that you have been shanghaied and brought along under protest. You’ll sign, Welfare?”
“Certainly, if Mr. Davoren thinks it necessary.”
“I don’t want anything of the sort. But you must see it is impossible for me to be so long away from the parish.”
“Why, we heard the bishop telling you to stop away as long as you liked; and it will be a godsend for that poor fellow Snape.”
“Oh! he won’t object, I know. But Bates andMrs. Rattray will be frantic with anxiety—and all my letters unanswered!”
“We don’t suppose it’s convenient; but on the other hand there’s the chance of making a clear two thousand. Welfare and I can’t afford to risk losing that.”
“Two thousand pounds? I wish you had let me go back to Guernsey in the boat that brought the message.”
“I never thought of that,” said Captain Welfare.
“Naturally. We didn’t know what the message was. It wouldn’t have done, anyhow. No, it’s far better as it is. The only thing now is to have as good a time as we can. So here’s luck!”
“And I hope you won’t feel as if any constraint was put on you, sir,” said Captain Welfare with profound solemnity.
Edmund and I both laughed, and in the laugh was my capitulation.
“I can’t feel that, Captain Welfare, as long as you do nothing to prevent me swimming home!”
Captain Welfare held out his hand, and took mine gravely.
“Mr. Davoren,” he said, “I wouldn’t have had this happen for a great deal. I don’t know how to thank you for taking it as you do, sir; it’s a great relief.”
“That’s all right,” said Edmund; “and now we’ll drink prosperity to the trip, and may nothing cheat the gallows of Jakoub.”