Toppys had chosen his officers with judgment. The skipper, R.N.R., a man of Devon, sprang from the salt stock which had roamed uncharted seas with Drake and Cook. The Chief Engineer, a man of Glasgow, was of that hybrid race of deep water mechanicians which had come into existence withBell and Wood'sComet, and for a hundred years had bent the powers of the land to the service of the sea. In the ancestry of sea craft engineers are of mushroom stock, and in comparison with the unbroken line of Plymouth Chings the Glasgow Ewing was little better than an upstart, an expert in tin-pot mysteries. Nevertheless the sailor Ching respected the engine-room accomplishments of Ewing, and Ewing, who could not have safely navigated a railway steamer from Portsmouth Harbour to Ryde Pier, freely acknowledged that in the above deck business Ching was his master. Each expert was supreme in his own department, and where in the world can one find better navigators than in Plymouth, or better marine engineers than in Glasgow City?
They cast off in the late afternoon of March 15th, and in the evening were running out towards the Needles, the rapid whirr of the geared turbines scarcely conveying a flicker of vibration to the long slender hull. The yacht, on bridge and down in the engine-room, was in charge of the junior ranks, and both Ching and Ewing sat at dinner with Madame in the bright saloon.
"Hark to yon turbines," said Ewing. "Did ye ever hear the like? Just a wee whisper down below and a bit quiver along the decks. Yet they are pushing the boat along at eleven good knots."
"Eleven point four," corrected Ching. "What could you hammer out, Ewing, in case of necessity?"
"We never hammer," replied the Chief with dignity. "We just spin a wee bit faster when more boilers are fired and the steam pressure is raised.I could push her up to seventeen without a weep from the joints of the Babcock boilers. But it would be wicked war-r-k with fuel oil at 150 shillings the ton. At an easy eleven knots we are just burning money; at a forced seventeen it would be a ghastly conflagration."
"I don't understand machinery," said Madame, "though I can run a five-ton motor lorry with any man born. What is all this talk of oil? I thought that steam yachts burned coal and yet I haven't seen a sign of coal dust in the vessel. My sitting-room and my cabin, like this saloon here, are warmed by electric radiators, and when I was down below, one might have eaten off the spickspan decks. Are we a motor yacht and no steamer at all?"
"Coal," said Ewing, "belongs to the carboniferous epoch. This is the Twentieth Century and the Age of Oil. TheHumming Topis an oil-fired steamship and years before her time. Didn't you know that she was built by Denny's of Dumbarr-r-ton regarr-r-dless of expense? Her original triple-expansion reciprocating engines, driving twin screws, were put on the scrap heap in 1913, the year before the war, and high-speed turbines put in. Their incredible speed of revolution is reduced down to the propeller shafts by helical spur gearing. There were vairy few destroyers in the King's service in 1913 which wouldn't have squirmed with jealousy at the sight of our engine-room. At the same time, Madame, our ancient Scotch boilers with their coal fire-boxes were ripped out, and water-tube boilers, oil fired, installed in place of them. We don't shovel heavy dirty coal, Madame; we simply squirt atomised oil upon the glowing fires. And whenwe want to replenish our bunkers we don't run under the coal tips and smother our clean decks with filthy black dust; we just connect up with the tanks ashore, and press the switch of an electric pump. You could refill our bunkers yourself, Madame, without soiling your dainty fingers. And with our geared turbines and our oil fuel we have a radius of action which is scarce believable."
"This is most interesting," said Madame. "Though I don't understand machinery, I love it tremendously. And I am nothing if not up-to-date."
"You are up-to-date in theHumming Top; you couldn't be up-to-dater in theHood. We are a small craft, only a thousand tons yacht measurement, but at this moment we have 155 tons of oil in our side bunkers, and a resairve of 75 tons more in our double bottom in case of emairgency. At this easy toddle of eleven knots we can run seven thousand miles, more than half-way over the big bulge of the world, without replenishment. Which is an advantage, Madame, that later on you will greatly appreciate. If we were coal fired we should need to go under those dirty wagon tips every two thousand miles or thereby. We can steam from here to Panama, or from Panama to Auckland without anxiety about our bunkers—always provided that Captain Ching doesn't get impatient and doesn't try to shove us along at more than eleven knots. If we steam fast there will be a terrible waste, and a great reduction in our radius."
"I shan't hurry," said the Skipper, "though Sir John told me to obey Madame's orders about speed. If he don't mind paying for forced draught, it is no business of mine to spare his pocket."
"Sir John may be rich as Pierpont Morgan," declared the Scot. "But I don't waste good Asiatic oil for anybody's wealth—not at 150 shillings the ton. Oil once burnt doesn't grow again, and posterity will starve for our lustful rapeedity. The cost of this trip is just awful. And for pleasure, too. I am a judeecious, reflective man. Here we are in an empty ship idling across the world when we could have stuffed the yacht full of high-priced cargo at any damn freights we chose to extort. Ching, my commercial conscience racks me like a raging blister. A cabin load each of drugs or dyestuffs would have made our fortunes in South America, yet here we are with half a dozen cabins empty. The wickedness of it scares me. TheHumming Topwill come to no good when owners fly like yon in the face of the bountiful freights of a kindly Providence. If I may say so without irreverence, we are sacrileegiously biffing the Providential eye."
Captain Ching laughed. He was willing to venture freight on private account when granted an opportunity. But this was a private yachting cruise and orders were orders. If Sir John chose to burn money to please Madame Gilbert—for that is how the long sea trip presented itself to his mind—well, he had plenty to burn, and Madame was well worth pleasing. He, as skipper, was handsomely paid for his job, and that was enough for him. So was Ewing very well paid. But the lost opportunities of plundering South American Dagoes which slid unregarded past the easy-going Devonian just exasperated the Scot from Glasgow.
"Please explain," put in Madame. "How canwe gratify the bountiful Providence who is displeased with theHumming Top? I am always careful, when I can, to range Providence on my side."
The Engineer explained. He pointed out that here was a yacht with half her cabins empty and stowage spaces unoccupied beneath their very feet. Here also was a world bereft of shipping and every scrap of space afloat worth almost as much as habitable houses ashore. It would do no one any harm, least of all Sir John Toppys, the Owner, if by judicious private trading Ching and Ewing could accumulate a pile of wealth. "Of course Sir John would get his share—and you too, Madame," explained Ewing, anxiously.
"Please leave me out," cried Madame, greatly to the relief of Ewing, to whom an Owner's idle share gave pain sufficient, "I stand in with Sir John. Is there any real reason, Captain Ching, why Mr. Ewing should not do what he proposes? Would Sir John object?" It had occurred to Madame that theHumming Topas a trader would be accepted in the South Seas without comment, whereas a private yacht, cruising at large upon an unexplained purpose, might excite curiosity the most unwelcome.
"Not at all, I think," said Ching. "My orders are to take you to the Torres Straits and to place myself and the yacht unreservedly at your disposal. Sir John was most positive. I have among the ship's papers written instructions directing me to obey any orders from you which are consistent with the laws of British shipping. Sir John has very complete confidence in your judgment, Madame."
"The more reason why I should not strain my temporary authority," said Madame. "Still in thismatter of private trading I do not hold that Sir John could reasonably take objection. We do no injury to him nor to the yacht, and you, his officers, will perhaps benefit. You have my permission to go ahead."
"Madame Gilbert," said Ewing solemnly, "you are the maist sensible wumman it has ever been my fortune to encounter. Not excepting Mrs. Ewing. I may add," he went on with enthusiasm, "that if I were not a man happily married to a gude Scots leddy I would throw my hairt into your bonnie lap."
"This is very sudden," said Madame. "For all you know I may be married myself."
"No matter," cried the Engineer. "If you, a foreign leddy, are so ripe with sense now what would you become with a gude Scotsman beside ye? You and I together would scrape the jewels off the airth. Meantime, with your permission, we will get busy. I take it that the yacht will call at Plymouth and maybe stay two three days whiles I communicate with my friends in Glasgow."
"If you are going to load theHumming Topwith valuable stores, Mr. Ewing, you will need a lot of ready money."
Ewing grinned. "We Scots folk are cautious, vairy cautious. Especially when we deal with one another."
"Perhaps you need the more caution then," suggested Madame, smiling.
"Maybe aye, maybe no. We don't push in our fingers farther than we can draw the hand back. But in these days it is scarcely possible to make a mistake. If we load up with opium, cocaine, andother immoral dopes for the Dagoes we can't go wrong. They will pay any money, and my friends in Glasgow will do the needful on credit. They will ask a percentage, I don't deny that, but there will be a margin. Ching, my son, are you game for dope smuggling round Valparaiso and Lima way?"
"We must have creditable stores for the manifest," said Ching, "but I don't suppose the Dago Customs will peer closely at a private yacht. And a few honest dollars will blind their eyes I reckon. The Law is not obtrusive on the West Coast, Ewing. But go easy with contraband. We mustn't get Madame here into trouble."
"Don't worry about me," said Madame cheerfully. "I already feel like a buccaneer. A bit of smuggling will give zest to a voyage which threatens to be tedious. So let us stop in Plymouth for so long as Mr. Ewing requires for his nefarious operations."
"I never thought to see the day," declared Ewing, beaming upon her, "when my gude wife in Paisley would seem to be a sore encumbrance. And after Plymouth could we not touch at Bordeaux? French wines are always good mairchandise on the West Coast, and the profits thereof would seduce old Pussyfoot himself."
"I clearly see," said Madame, smiling, "that when theHumming Topleaves Europe for her long trail to the Panama Canal she will be laden to her utmost capacity. We shall burn a power of oil to knock out even eleven knots then."
"It will be worth it," cried Ewing, smacking his lips. "Even with fuel oil at one hundred and fifty shillings the ton, there will still be a margin. If weare loaded rail under with profitable stores I won't grudge a cask or two of Sir John Toppys' oil. We play fair, Madame. The Owner gets his share, a full honest share."
"For rank buccaneers and smugglers," observed Madame contemplatively, "we seem to be indifferently honest. Go ahead, my good but disreputable friends. And if you should require any cash I am in this thing with you up to my fair neck."
"Madame," declared Ewing gloomily, "you make the recollection of my gude wife fair burdensome to me, fair burdensome. We should ha' made a bonny pair of pirates, you and I."
If I had not set myself down to write the story of Madame Gilbert in relation to His Lordship the Cannibal I should entertain my readers with full details of theHumming Top'sillicit enterprises. Abetted by Captain Ching and Madame Gilbert, the capable Scot, Ewing, let himself go. "It should never be said of me," he remarked, "that I encouraged the vices of the Dagoes by making them inexpensive. They shall find their sins a most costly luxury. In the eyes of the judeecious my operations convey a strictly moral lesson." To dopes and drinks he added chemicals and dyes of high commercial importance. "In brand they are Swiss, but in parentage suspiciously German; the Dagoes will pay the more for them on that account."
The stowage capacity of theHumming Topfilled him with admiration.
"The design of this boat," pronounced Ewing, "is vairy creditable to my friend Ar-r-chie Denny of Dumbarton. He was not at the time she was constructed the Baronet that he grew into; just plain Ar-r-chie. He is a vairy far-sighted man, is Ar-r-chie Denny. When he designed that snug wee hold below the main deck, so modest, so unobtrusive, so shrinking from observation, yet so bountiful in capacity, he must have foreseen that his yachtwould find its way into gude judeecious Scots hands. He is a vairy releegious man, is Ar-r-chie Denny. I shall chairge the idolatrous Papists a price for the dopes and dyes which will gratify his Presbyterian conscience. The Scots, you will observe, Madame, are a grand God-fearing people."
"I am a Papist," whispered Madame. "It was not my fault, and I am not a very good one."
"The better for that; the better for that," said Ewing, encouragingly. "You need only a gude Scots Presbyterian husband and you would become a pairfect wumman."
Ching entered with zeal into the lawless projects of the Scots Engineer. His ancestors—and mine—had played the merry three-legged game a few hundred years earlier, and, like all of true Devon stock, he was unchangeable in temper. He was a smuggler by inheritance. Out of Plymouth to the Slave Coast with beads and trumpery—the first leg. From the Coast to the West Indies with a cargo of blackbirds—the second leg. From the West Indies to Plymouth with rum and molasses—the third leg. That was the merry three-legged game with hundreds per cent. profit at the end of each leg. And in those righteous days no excess profits duty. We of Devon played it, and the Pilgrim Fathers of Rhode Island played it—with geographical modifications—and we remained citizens of the highest repute. John Hawkins, who began it, became a Knight by the hand of Queen Elizabeth, and Treasurer of the Royal Navy of England. We have fallen upon soft times, but even now the Devon folk—and Scots like friend Ewing—revert to ancestral types and practices. "A far-sighted manis Ar-r-chie Denny," murmured Ewing again, as he stuffed packages into the snug wee hold between the main deck and the ballast tanks. "He would just love to be here to see how we appreciate his cunning war-r-k."
Ewing speedily found that Plymouth was an unsympathetic base for his illicit operations. In the old days Cawsand at the western entrance of the Sound had been a famous smuggling centre, but its glory had departed. Plymouth itself was hedged about with unromantic restrictions. Ewing's Glasgow accomplices could pass down dyestuffs and chemicals in gratifying quantity, but dopes, the glowing fount of profits, declined to flow.
"The English," wailed Ewing, "give no encouragement to honest Scottish enterprises. Their jealousy is just parochial. There was a time when one could ship any damn thing out of Glasgow, but there is too much of the Royal British fossilised old Navy about Plymouth. Those Keyham blacksmiths did their wor-r-st to strip my turbines with their monkey tricks when theHumming Topwas requisitioned, and the port authorities are every bit as feckless as the Navy, all forms and Customs regulations. Give me immoral belle France and worthy dishonest Spain."
He did better at Bordeaux, and best of all at Lisbon, to which easy-going jumping-off place his Glasgow friends ordered Switzerland to consign the soul-raising dopes which England had barred as immoral. There are few scruples about Switzerland and fewer still about Portugal.
"We Scots are proud of our national institutions," remarked Ewing, when Lisbon unfolded tohim its charms as an abetter of crime, "until we come to experience their rotten foolishness. We are too intolerant and logical; give me the broadminded and wholly unscrupulous Dagoes for business partners. We lack sympathy with human weakness, but the Dagoes coin dollars out of it all the time. If I were a wee bit younger I would turn Dago myself."
When at last theHumming Topcast off at Lisbon and stretched away at her leisurely eleven knots for Colon and the South Seas she was stuffed with stores of "prodeegious richness," all insured.
"But go careful, Ching, if you love me," implored Ewing. "I have covered the lot on board of us at Lloyd's, but a claim won't bear looking into. If we do get wrecked this side of Valparaiso, it has got to be a thorough casualty. A total loss. A sunk ship tells no tales."
"We are not going to be lost," promised the Skipper.
"Speak softly, man," whispered Ewing. "Speak soft. Rub wood. Ye carry Cæsar and his fortunes. There is sair peril in boastfulness at sea."
To Madame the flagrant abuse of Sir John Toppys' marine hospitality was a rich jest, packed with many a subtle stimulus to laughter. One remorseless Fate—in the person of the late Hon. William Toppys—had given a coloured Head to an ultra-respectable and unimaginative English Family. A second Fate—in the person of naughty Madame Gilbert—had corrupted the virtue of the Family Yacht, and set her rollicking across the seas as a flagrantly unchaste smuggler. The private list of her "soul-raising" stores, designed topander to the degenerate tastes of South American Dagoes, almost staggered Madame herself, and she turned for the solace of her seasoned conscience to the blameless manifest craftily prepared by Captain Ching for the edification of the Panama Canal Board.
"You are sure there will be no examination?" she asked the Skipper.
"Sure," he said confidently. "We are landing nothing in the Canal Zone, and the Board doesn't care two pins what we carry through."
"If that is so," murmured Madame; "if we get through without scandal, I will tell Sir John Toppys all about it. He is a white man, Captain Ching, who trusted me. One owes something," added Madame virtuously, "to a white man who really trusts one."
Confession after crime was to Madame—and I am afraid also to the "grandly releegious" Ewing—greatly to be preferred to weak repentance before hand.
"It is the golden rule of life," said Ewing, "not to repent too soon. There is a time and season for all things."
That very up-to-date yacht theHumming Topcarried a wireless plant and a Marconi operator. Aerials hung between the slim masts, and their range of contact with the outside world extended for five hundred miles—by day. By night it was much wider. The operator, as they hummed along, picked up the news of the day for Madame's edification; it cannot be said that he was overworked.
I think Madame's state room—it really was worthy of that abused epithet—must have beendesigned for the use of Sir John Toppys and his departed lady, in the days when space at sea was a new luxury. With its appurtenances—a dressing-room at one end and a bathroom at the other—it was thirty feet long, and it contained, as has been said, a spring bedstead hung hammock-wise. The bed gave discreetly to the roll of the ship. In the dressing-room which had a door of direct communication, was installed Madame's maid, a French girl who detested the sea and did not conceal her hatred. She became reconciled to the months of sea travel by the gratifying circumstance that she and Madame were two lone women in a man-infested ship. Marie could do with a large surplusage of Man.
The saloon on the upper deck was the Mess of Madame and the chief officers; to the two junior deck officers and the two assistant Engineers was assigned the Mess Room aft on the main deck out of which their cabins opened, and to them, at their own request, was added the society at meals of Marie.
"How many?" enquired Madame, when Ching diffidently communicated the invitation. "Four of them? Marie could keep a dozen busy. She will make four hop pretty briskly." In spite of bouts of sea-sickness I fancy that Marie enjoyed her voyage.
Between Madame Gilbert and her companions grew up a close friendship. She talked freely with them except upon the purpose of her travels. That was maintained for the present as a Family Secret. They, simple creatures, sometimes wondered why Sir John Toppys should spend so much money upon Madame's pleasures and refrain from sharing them with her. His absence was grateful in their sight—for did they not between them monopolise a most gracious and entertaining lady?—but they often wondered at his lack of enterprise.
"Ching," said Ewing confidentially, "you are married as tightly as I am, and both of us are faithful—in reason—to our wedded wives. But if you had the chance of an unlawful holiday cruise with our beautiful Madame Gilbert, would you not jump at it?"
"Ewing," said Ching, as confidentially, "I am a sinful man. I should."
"Sir John Toppys must be a meeracle," declared Ewing, after a long pause.
"Perhaps it is Madame who is the miracle," observed the Skipper shrewdly.
The ripe flavour of Ewing's Scottish character was not appreciated by Madame Gilbert until a conversation took place off Valparaiso, for the contraband cargo had all been disposed of—at cash prices—and Ching and Ewing were counting up their gains in Madame's presence. Half the profits were set aside for the Owner of theHumming Top, and were safely locked up with the ship's gold in the Captain's safe.
"It's an awful sum of money to pay over to the idle rich," wailed Ewing.
The "Idle Rich," as Madame and Ching pointed out, had not only provided the vessel for their illicit trading operations, but had also paid handsome wages to the crew—including their noble selves. Incidentally his idle wealth purchased the tons of oil fuel—at steadily advancing prices—which they drew aboard at Colon and purposed to take in at Auckland. The "Idle Rich" supplied the Capitaland working expenses; Ching, Madame, and Ewing the unscrupulous Labour. Madame, it may be observed, received nothing: Ewing and Ching drew fifty per cent. between them.
"Was not that fair?" enquired Madame.
"As a matter of metapheesical exactitude," replied Ewing cautiously, "I would not deny that the Owner's half-profit is defensible. From the point of view, mar-r-k my wor-r-ds, of the Idle Capeetalist. But the Spirit of the Age, Madame, is not concairned solely with—with the boodle. The news which flickers in over our most efficient wireless apparatus indicates that the Wor-r-kers of the Wor-r-ld are all on the Grab. I am a wor-r-ker, Ching is a wor-r-ker, you, Madame, are a wor-r-ker. Sir John Toppys is not a wor-r-ker. I don't suppose that the little man has ever sweated in his life-except maybe at the gowf. To the wor-r-kers belong the profits. That means Ching and me."
"But I am also a wor-r-ker," put in Madame slyly.
Ewing shuffled uneasily. "I have said so, and I bide by what I have said. But you have waived your rights, Madame. Ching will bear witness."
Madame laughed. Then an idea struck her, and she gleefully cast it in Ewing's voracious teeth.
"I have waived my rights. But your officers and men have not waived theirs. They are wor-r-kers. They have navigated the ship which has sailed the seas and carried the goods which Ewing and Ching and Madame—and those friends of yours in Glasgow—have bought and sold. By comparison with the junior officers and the humble men, you and I are little better than idle rich ourselves. We justgive the orders; they do the hard uninteresting wor-r-k. We loll smoking here while they sweat. Surely they should have their share of the boodle."
Horror competed with exasperation on the harsh red face of the Chief Engineer. With difficulty he awaited the end of her speech and then burst out:
"Is it possible, Madame Gilbert, that you are a Socialist? I could not have believed it of you if I had not hair-r-d your terrible wur-r-ds with my own ears."
"I am more than a Socialist," said Madame proudly. "I am a Bolshevist where the humble poor are concerned."
Ewing shuddered. "I could not have believed it. It is just peetiful trash that you speak. And you in other respects a maist sensible wumman. What is ceevilisation?" Ewing flung out this large inquiry, and an answer not being offered, proceeded to supply one himself. "Ceevilisation is brains, Madame. Capital is not brains; it is gilded idleness levying toll on the honest wor-r-ker. Toilsome sweat is not brains; it just stupidly does what it is told by superior intelligences. Sir John Toppys is not ceevilisation. The men who obey our or-r-ders above deck and in the engine-room are not ceevilisation. WE are ceevilisation. Ching and I—and you, Madame, who have waived your claim to a share. And quite right, too. In strict economic justice, I, Alexander Ewing, should draw a lairger dividend from the boodle than Rober-r-t Ching. And for why? Because I have the mair brains. The oreeginal idea of this smuggling plant was mine. But I say nothing about that," he added generously. "Share and share alike. But if," he went on withvicious emphasis, "any of my engine-room hands, or my Engineers, peer their noses into my private enterprises I will sor-r-t their fat car-r-cases with a coal shovel. Ceevilisation is brains, Madame. Don't for peety's sake tell you fearsome Socialism to me any more. I just canna bear it."
The plunder was all in fat United States dollars, a noble currency which towers like a mountain peak amidst the wreckage of European depreciated paper. Ewing saw to that. He dribbled out his highly demanded stores in quantities that rather added to than diminished the exuberant buoyancy of the market. He was a Scotsman who had made a Corner, next perhaps to a Scotsman on the Make the most noble Wor-r-k of God. Dagoes of varied hues, and of more than doubtful parentage, came and went; they were closeted with Ewing in the saloon, and departed stripped. They got their dyes and their chemicals and their naughty dopes, but what a hair-raising price they were compelled to pay!
"I am no profiteer," declared Ewing. "Just a plain, honest Scottish mairchant. I chairge no mair than the mar-r-ket will bear. And I have a suspeecion that there will be no excess profits duty paid on this deal. We are private persons engaged in honourable professions, not traders or registered partners. Besides we are out of the jurisdiction of the wucked English income tax. We are patriots, too, employed upon the noble wor-r-k of reconstructing the trade of the British Empire."
When one combines lofty patriotism with some five hundred per cent. profit, the result cannot fail to be profoundly gratifying.
They drew away from the South American Coast and headed for New Zealand and the Coral Sea beyond. And as Robert Ching pored over the chart of the Coral Sea it was borne in upon him that the navigation of those many spiked waters would, in the absence of a pilot, be as big a job as he wanted. TheHumming Topdrew no more than ten and a half feet of water, and was specially guarded under her keel by six inches of solid teak—Ching had demanded the false, protective keel before he would consent to take the yacht to the Torres Straits—but she was big enough to tear herself to pieces on those frightful coral teeth if permitted to swerve only by a little from the tortuous channels.
"I shall have to do without a pilot most of the time," said he. "There is a large regular trade and not enough pilots to supply wandering yachts. We must go back to the methods of Drake and Cook—keep the lead going by day and lie up at night. A sailor can smell his way along anywhere if he is not pressed for time."
Madame promised him all the time that there was—she was enjoying herself and in no hurry to get at grips with the problem of the Twenty-Eighth Baron of Topsham. Every week which passed atsea made the purpose of her voyage seem more bizarre and incredible. Yet she was constantly reminded of its reality. Though they knew it not, here were Ching and Ewing, together with some two dozen officers and men, at a cost which ran into hundreds of pounds a week, steaming to the ends of the earth solely for that bizarre and incredible purpose. Madame had made her own position luminously clear. She was going with no plan and under no promise. She was not going to smother Willatopy or tip him into the sea—which would have been of little use since he swam like a dolphin. She was not going to poison his food or even to kidnap him. She was simply going to see what this half-caste Baron looked like and to order her movements in accordance with her impressions. She talked with Ching and Ewing upon every subject in earth or heaven except this one. The Family Secret must remain secret until the day arrived when secrecy should avail nothing. When that day would dawn Madame had no idea. To anyone except Sir John Toppys—and curiously enough Roger Gatepath—the whole expedition would have seemed a ridiculous waste of money. But both of them were at their wits' end, and both of them had a childlike faith in Madame Gilbert's lively intelligence and resource. Something striking would result from the voyage, of that they felt convinced; though what it would be they had no conception. Neither had Madame. Yet she went. The Family Misfortune intrigued her, and she wanted to see it at close quarters, and to make it crawl to her feet and eat out of her hand.
When at last they warped up at Auckland Ewinghimself sounded the fuel tanks in theHumming Top'sdouble bottom. He had sworn by his holy gods—the twin high-speed Parson-cum-Denny geared turbines—that the yacht would run from Panama to Auckland, via Lima and Valparaiso, on the 230 tons of fuel oil which she bore away from the Canal Zone. She had done it, and the Chief was curious to see by what small margin his judgment as Engineer had been saved from derision. The margin was just nine tons, say 270 miles of steaming at eleven knots.
"Thirty miles to the ton or thereby," murmured he, "and very good wor-r-k too. Yon's a useful figure to bear in one's heid."
At Auckland he filled up chock a block, side bunkers and ballast tanks, and felt confident that he could go up to Thursday Island, toddle about at low speed in the Straits so long as it pleased Madame to toddle, and then make his way back to the Auckland tanks while, so to speak, some shots remained unburnt in his locker. But the price of oil at the Antipodes struck horror to his thrifty heart. Suppose—it was an awful suppose—Sir John Toppys, obdurate to the wheedlings of Madame, who had promised to do her utmost to make the owner waive his share, should insist on debiting the cost of the voyage to that "owner's share" of the illicit profits. It was a dreadful supposition. Ewing thrust it from his consciousness; even the Idle Rich could not be so utterly soulless.
At Auckland in addition to the stores of oil fuel they shipped trading goods for the Islands, and stowed them carefully away in the empty cabins and in the snug wee hold which had already servedthe adventurers so well. These saleable commodities were designed to give to the wandering yacht a commercial status, and might possibly, almost certainly, add some few dollars of profit to their bursting treasury.
"One can never make too much profit," explained Ewing, "especially when one doesn't pay any excess taxes to an extortionate English Government. Cash, in American dollars, tells no tales."
Ewing had already decided that theHumming Topshould look in at an American port on the way home, and that the boodle should be deposited out of harm's way under the protection of the Stars and Stripes. A dread lest the tax gatherers of England might yet grab some of it possessed him. In his management of the Auckland stores his genius for finance rose to lofty heights.
"We will invest the alleged share of Sir John Toppys in this Island trade," declared he. "If we make a loss—and it is not a business which I vairy clearly comprehend—then the loss will fall upon the Owner of the yacht. Which is just. Idle and rich owners must take some risk; that is what they are for. If we realise a profit—and my friends here say that the Islands are stripped and will buy anything ravenously—if we realise a profit, of course it belongs to us who have airned it. To me and Ching," he added hastily, lest Madame should intrude with a claim. "Sir John's share will be put back, untouched; we are honest men."
When Madame hinted that righteous dealing had not quite been given a full rein, Ewing protested sorrowfully that as an operation of business whathe proposed was spotless, white as driven snow on the bonny hills of Scotland.
"Sir John is a capeetalist," said he. "He would not wish his funds to lie idle in yon safe. He would wish that they should be employed in the reconstruction of the British Empire. That's what we are going to do with them. Would you leave his money fruitless just because we are twelve thousand miles away and cannot ask his permission to employ it? Would you be baffled by a formality like yon? Capeetalists always love to tur-r-n their money over. We will tur-r-n Sir John's over for him. We will make it skip. It's going to belong to us anyway—you have promised to see to that, Madame—although for the moment we are holding it for him. Do you not reflect also, Madame, that a whole five per cent. of Sir John's share is going to the officers and crew and I have got to make good the grievous loss which your Socialism has brought upon me. I have to carry that feckless Ching on my back too. He would give the lot away like a pound of mouldy tea if I were not at his elbow to keep him heedful of the future. I am not what you could exactly call a man of business, but I have grasped the inherent principles of the job."
"You grasp the principles—and most other things," said Madame, smiling. Her joy in Ewing never failed, and between the pair had grown up a very close affection. She liked the simple, kindly, unselfish Ching, but as a study in humanity he could not compete in interest with the great Alexander.
Ching made no mystery of the sea craft in which he was a master. He took Madame and Ewingwholly into his confidence, and earned their full confidence in return. The yacht was about to sail in waters where destruction awaited eagerly any slip by a careless navigator, and Ching was not taking any risks which could be avoided.
"I am not going to see more of the coral reefs than I'm obliged," said he, during the first dinner out of Auckland. "We shall get our bellyful of them in the Straits, especially if Madame here has a fancy for uncharted channels. I am taking theHumming Topby the outer passage, as far east of the Great Barrier as I can get, and then come down to Thursday Island by the Bligh Entrance. You've heard ofBountyBligh, Madame; he was a masterful man, and always stirred up a mutiny wherever he commanded. There is a well-known inner passage between the Barrier and the Queensland Coast; it is sheltered and lighted like the Strand, but as it isn't much wider I'm not taking any of it. I couldn't look at the passage without a pilot, and there might not be one to theHumming Top. She's a vagrant yacht, not a real ship."
"She is an Island trader," corrected Ewing with dignity.
"Humph," replied Ching. "A ton or two of frippery doesn't turn a yacht into a ship. We are a rich man's toy, and don't count for much on the high seas. Our burgee and Blue Ensign look consequential at Auckland, but an ancient Island schooner would make more stir in the Straits."
"Wait till they see our engine-room," cried Ewing. "There's nothing like it outside the King's Navy."
"Humph," replied Ching again. "They wouldn'tlook at our engine-room if there was a dirty craft alongside which would load up their copra andbeche de mer. Trade must run both ways to be taken seriously. I take it that we are not going to carry copra to the English soap boilers or smoked sea slugs for the Chinese soup market. And if we don't do both the Island trade has no use for us and no interest in us."
"You make us feel humble," said Madame, smiling. "I had become proud of theHumming Top."
"She's a fine craft, but a yacht isn't a real ship, Madame."
"She was a real enough ship when you and I ran her in at seventeen knots under the guns at Zeebrugge to pick up the Navy boys in the watter," shouted Ewing.
"That was another Service," returned Ching stolidly. "She was a ship then. Now she's a yacht. I'm proud to command her now, as I was then; but I want to make you see that as a yacht she has no status on the seas. If pilots are scarce we shall have no call on one. We've got to run our own risks by ourselves and to make them as small as we know how. Is that clear?"
"As crystal," said Madame. "Also humiliating. And I thought I was rather a swell cruising about the world in a yacht which was practically my own."
"You always would be a swell anywhere," said Ching politely. "But on the high seas the mistress of a yacht doesn't count for a row of beans."
"Don't heed him, Madame," cried Ewing. "He's only a demobbed Commander R.N.R. Your friend Alexander Ewing will stick up for you. I was anEngineer Lieutenant, and the engine-room ranks much higher than the bridge nowadays, though it may not sport so many rows of gold lace. It is my deliberate opeenion, arrived at by careful consideration of all the circumstances, and after giving full weight to the observations of my commanding officer, that we shall get on quite nicely without a pilot, thank you. I am not exactly what you could call an experienced navigator, but give me a well-found vessel of light draught, with six inches of teak fender to her hinder end, a diligent crew heaving the lead at discreet intervals, all the eyes on the bridge looking sprightly for promiscuous breakers, and I would con theHumming Topmyself. The mair especially if I could be in two places at once and be in chairge of my bonny engines at the same time as I strolled majestically about the bridge. There is no real deeficulty about navigation, Madame. Yon's not like to the management of high-speed geared turbines. Yon's child's wor-r-k with Admiralty charts spread about ye. But since I cannot be, like the fabulous bir-r-d, in the two places at once, I will leave the bridge to our deefident friend Ching. Go ahead, dead slow, among the prickly reefs, and if you should just butt on the ground give the wor-r-d to me by the engine-room telegraph and I will whip her off on the revairse. That is the grand advantage of geared turbines, Madame. One has the full power on the revairse. What did you go for to put teak to the bottom of us, Ching, if you didna expect to find a use for it?"
"It was a precaution," said the Skipper, "like a fender. One doesn't bang the sides of a ship against a stone wharf because one has fenders. Ihave seen a fender break through the plates before now when used without judgment."
"You are a careful man, and we trust you, Ching," said Ewing encouragingly. "Go ahead, pilot or no pilot. And if you should get into trouble deeper than your brains can penetrate, there is always the voice pipe handy. Take counsel of Alexander Ewing. He will stand by ye."
"I will," returned the Skipper, "I will ask you how to run my ship when you ask me how to manage your engine-room."
"Alexander," said Madame severely, when the Captain had left the saloon for his own duties, "if Captain Ching were not a sweet-blooded angel he would kick you hard. I should. Don't you see, you thick-headed Scotch mechanic, that the Captain is worried, and when a sailor like that is worried, the danger must be considerable. I am ashamed of you, Alexander."
"It was just pairsiflage, Madame," said Ewing. "A wee bit of vairy humorous pairsiflage. I know my place. Though I have mair gude Scots brains in my finger than all the soft West Country porridge stuff in Ching's head, I would never interfere with the bridge. A Chief Engineer is a man of science, not a rule of thumb navigator."
"You had better not," quoth Madame. "Ching is slow and quiet. He has no small talk, and, it must be confessed, is sometimes a bit heavy on hand. He is not a lively companion like our Alexander. But in a misspent life I have learned something of men, and I bank on Ching. Mar-r-k my wor-r-ds, Sandy. He will bring us through the reefs without scraping our false keel, and if you chaffhim at a moment when he is really anxious he will chuck you into the Ditch. The Scotch are a great people, but they are not conspicuous for tact."
It was well into May when, far up in the Gulf of Papua, Ching swung theHumming Topto the westward, and began the hazardous unaided penetration of the coral barriers which lay between him and Thursday Island. The weather was perfect and could be depended upon. It was the season of the regular south-east trade, the sunny rainless season of the Torres winter. The wind would gather strength every morning to a half gale at noon and then as evenly decline to a calm after sunset. The tides ran very strongly, between three and four knots, and gained in speed as the Straits narrowed, but to judge their tidal drift, and the variable leeway due to the rise and fall of the trade wind, was child's play to a seaman of Ching's quality. Upon his chart were marked all the islands—many of them loftily volcanic, others low coral atolls—and the sandbanks, known locally as cays. He could work by taking bearings of the more conspicuous island features, and by calculating his horizontal danger angles with a generous margin. He assumed that every island had an inner fringing reef and an outer barrier—though many of them had no barrier—and that every turf-swept cay shelved slowly into the depths. Time was not his master, and Ching was a cautious man. When one evening, just after sunset, he raised the beacon on the Bramble Cay, and found the position of the yacht very near to his dead reckoning, he patted himself on the back and went to dinner with a mind temporarily at ease. He dropped his anchor off the Black Rocks at theexact point for which he had aimed—the Bligh Entrance to the North-East Channel.
"Now the fun is about to begin," said he, smiling. Madame plied him with broad flattery, and the Chief did his rather clumsy best to support her. Now that the yacht was actually in the Straits, Ewing had enough of good sense to attend to his own job, and to leave Ching unharried to attend to his. Both Madame and Ewing were well pleased to see the Captain smile.
Navigation on the following day would have been less hair-raising if the chart had been half as wise as it pretended. But since most of its features were based upon surveys of some half a century earlier, and the coral polyp is an industrious creature, there was a wide margin of conjecture left to the hardy sailor. The channels were deep enough—Ching sometimes had fourteen fathoms and usually not less than ten under his forefoot—but there were so many of them, and they were so liberally cut into by what in trench warfare were called traverses, that running a vessel through them was very like threading an imperfectly remembered maze. Still the Skipper's eye for water held true, he could generally tell by the look of the surface if the reefs were closing in upon him, and the lead which was freely kept going warned him off the sandbanks. He ran dead slow all through the day, except when the tide setting against him called for half speed. More than once he was obliged to stop and back out of acul de sac, but, as I have said, there was usually plenty of water under foot, and a timely warning by eye or lead when obstructions were reaching up towards the broken surface. Allthrough the day theHumming Topnever touched once, and Ching began to feel that he needed but a licence to rate himself a pilot of the Straits. But his self-satisfaction was not destined to last very long.
It was about five o'clock, and for an hour past the Skipper had noticed a fully decked yawl, sailed apparently single-handed, following on his own course about a mile to leeward. With the tide under her, and sailing on a beam wind, this thirty-foot yawl was moving rather faster than the big yacht which she was gradually overhauling. The yawl pulled in more and more to the south-west, and passing astern of theHumming Top, reached out towards a group of islands which Ching judged to be away from his own channel. He himself bore off almost due west, and the gap between the steam yacht and the yawl opened out rapidly. That was at about five o'clock. Ching was therefore surprised half an hour later to see the yawl come flying out of space with the wind behind her, and steering direct for his own port bow with apparently a complete disregard for the intricacies of the coral channels. He put up his glass. The yawl was, as he had judged, sailed single-handed. Her skipper, a small white figure with a bare black head, was sitting by the tiller, and, as Ching looked, he seemed to be waving one hand. There could be no doubt that the yawl was making for the yacht, so, with sailor courtesy, Ching ran off his engines and waited for the little craft to arrive.
She came with a rush and swirl which showed at least, high courage in her solitary navigator. She passed the bow of theHumming Topat about ahundred yards distance, swung under the lee of the yacht, and skilfully used the flow of the tide as a brake upon her progress. The white figure sprang up, let the yawl swing with flapping sails into the wind, and then in thirty active seconds had lowered and roughly stowed mainsail, jib and foresail. He left the spanker standing set on the small mizzen aft. The whole manœuvre was so accurately timed that the yacht had lost her way when she arrived close beside theHumming Top'scounter. In a moment more the visitor had caught a line which was deftly thrown to him from the yacht, reeved it through a ringbolt by his bowsprit, hauled his little vessel half round, and sprang, active as a monkey, up the seven feet of freeboard to theHumming Top'srail. His deserted yawl trailed away at the end of the line, and her late skipper and crew, now aboard theHumming Top, strolled forrard grinning capaciously. It could now be seen that though clad in the white Palm Beach trousers, and fine cotton shirt of an Englishman, he was a dark-skinned, frizzy-haired Melanesian. His feet were bare and his head was bare; the shirt and trousers seemed to comprise his entire wardrobe.
He moved forrard looking curiously and eagerly at the yacht's equipment. He mounted the steps of the shade deck on which were stowed four lifeboats, a small dinghy, and a twenty-foot motor launch. His eye ran closely over all of them; the motor boat seemed specially to please him. He passed the yellow funnel, and peered into the smoke-room, a pleasant structure in which Madame Gilbert spent much of her time on deck. She was within at the moment knitting her ninth jumper—she caught a glimpse of a dark grinning face, and started slightly at the contrast between the brown of the face and the bright blue eyes which looked eagerly out of it. It was the face of a boy of some twenty years. Madame saw him for a brief instant, and wondering who he was, and how he had reached the yacht—she had not witnessed his masterly boarding operation—came out on the boat deck to see more. An unexpected incident is very welcome indeed on a long voyage unbroken except by smuggling operations and the knitting of jumpers. The boy reached the chart-room and wheel-house above which was built the bridge, with its engine and steering telegraphs. Ching from the bridge looked down upon the boy, and the boy looked up at Ching. The visitor waved a hand at the Captain.
"Cheerio, Skipper," cried he. "You are a bit off your course, aren't you?" His voice was not unpleasing and his English was surprisingly good for a coffee-coloured native—dark coffee, too.
"That depends on what the course is," replied Ching shortly. He was frowning, and his genial eye had gone cold.
What I have described did not occupy more than a very few minutes, during which time the yacht, with her engines stopped, was idly drifting under the influence of wind and tide.
"At present," said the boy, showing his fine white teeth as he grinned broadly, "you are bound for the Warrior Reefs. That was why I boarded you."
Ching spoke briefly to a sailor who was with him on the bridge, and then dropped down to the chart-room beneath. The boy mounted the bridge ladder, and took a comprehensive look round. What hesaw did not please him. His blue eyes hardened—they were bright steely blue, very unusual eyes even in an English face, and incredible in a native of the Torres Straits—and going straight to one of the engine-room telegraphs pulled the lever over to half speed astern. The bell clanged.
As a wounded tiger bursts open-mouthed and raging from its ravished retreat in the jungle so Ching furiously burst from the chart-room at the sound of that bell. And for my part I would sooner face a wounded tiger in the jungle than a mild-mannered Devonshire ship captain upon whose engine-room telegraph I had set my lawless hand. The Skipper sprang on the bridge pushed the boy away so roughly that he sprawled over the weather cloths, snapped the telegraph back to STOP, and roared:
"Chuck this nig—young feller into his boat and cut him adrift." It says much, very much, for the inherent kindliness of our Robert Ching that even under stress of an unparalleled trespass upon his prerogatives as commander, he bit back the offensive word "nigger."
The sailor sprang at the boy, who evaded the rush with lithe ease. He was quite calm, and still grinned cheerfully.
"Wait," cried he, in a tone so gleefully significant that the sailor stopped, and even Ching looked up curiously. "Wait," cried the boy, holding up his hand. They waited until one might count perhaps ten, and then that for which they waited befell:
G-RRR-H, G-RRR-H, G-RRR-H!
TheHumming Toptook the hidden reef with a slow grinding crash which made her shiver, andunder pressure of wind and tide she bit deeper and deeper into the coral. It was well for her at that moment that between her steel plates and the reef there interposed the faithful baulks of previsionary teak.
The boy, with a heedless courage which to me seems almost sublime—after all a skipper is a skipper and a very great man on his own bridge—the boy pushed past the Captain of the yacht, laid his brown sacrilegious hand once more on the engine-room telegraph, and banged the lever over to FULL SPEED ASTERN.
"Go," he said sharply to the amazed sailorman. "Jump into my yawl, and fend her off as we go astern."
I am afraid that when that crash came the Chief Engineer laughed. He had seen nothing of the incidents on deck, but the sudden grounding of the yacht, after the strange vacillations of the telegraph, suggested that Ching had blundered badly. And Ewing, as a platonic rival with Ching for the favours of Madame Gilbert, was not disposed to cry over the Skipper's troubles. He gave full speed astern with a will and under the hefty pull of the twin screws the yacht was dragged off within a few seconds. The tide happily was flowing.
"Keep herso," ordered the boy, indicating the correct course with his hand, and the Skipper, to his own surprise, kept her so. There was an intimate local knowledge and a masterful confidence about this intrusive Melanesian which made him irresistible.
From that moment, extraordinary as it may seem to the reader, that strange boy took charge. Heset the backward course, and kept theHumming Topat full speed astern for more than three miles. Ching had overshot a hidden turning in the channel; he had run into a narrow byway in which there was no space for so long a vessel to turn round. She was 230 feet over all. The new pilot quite evidently needed no chart, and possibly would not have understood one had it been spread before him. Every reef and bank was as familiar to him from constant sailing by them as are the streets of one's native town. He conned theHumming Topby movements of his hand, for though he understood the uses of an engine-room telegraph, that other telegraph which controlled the wheel below was apparently strange to him. He gave his orders by signs and the rightful skipper humbly obeyed. It was a triumph of intensive local experience over professional training.
When he had backed the yacht a sufficient distance to satisfy his own judgment this boy sent her forward once more—not at poor Ching's cautious dead slow or half speed, but at a ramping eleven knots—following the windings of the deep waterways with consummate assurance. Now and then, when it seemed to the eye of Ching that he was running straight upon surf-broken dangers, a sailor would be ordered forward with the lead, but the result was always the same. The depth was never less than ten fathoms, and the broken water was an innocuous tide rip.
This went on for more than an hour, the evening drew on, and Ching, at last convinced that he was in the hands of a master of the Coral Sea, spoke. Hitherto he had obeyed the signs of the boy, obeyedthough savagely reluctant, yet had said nothing. Now he spoke.
"Are you a pilot, boy?"
"Oh, no. I am no pilot. I am very rich and do not work. I was sailing down to Thursday Island in my yawl—to see my banker and collect my money. I have much money. When I saw you running this nice ship on the Warrior Reefs I sailed across to show you the proper way. No pearl raking pilot can teach me anything. They are no good, no good at all."
"You seem to know the channels," assented Ching.
"All of them," said the boy. "Not these only for a big big ship, but the little ones too. I do not sail in and out as I am taking you now. I cut across wherever I please. There is always water to be found if one knows where to look for it."
"It is getting dark," said Ching, "and there is a short twilight in these latitudes. Can you see or shall we anchor now?"
"I can see. I can steer you all through the night if you please. But if you and the white lady, the beautiful white lady with the hair so red, would wish to anchor, I will take you to a safe place." His hand waved here and there; the growing darkness made no difference to him, and presently theHumming Topwas riding quietly at her anchor in the lagoon of a low coral atoll. The boy had conned her through the barrier reef and laid her up in the smooth water within. Ching gasped as the yacht slipped in through a narrow gap in the reef little wider than her own 30 feet of beam. It was likepushing a Rolls-Royce in between two threatening motor lorries.
"Boy," said Ching slowly, when the anchor had splashed into the warm quiet sea. "I meant to throw you overboard and you jolly well deserved it for monkeying with my telegraph. But I will say that you are a daisy of a pilot."
As they came down from the bridge they met Madame by the smoke-room.
"Who is that?" she enquired. "A native pilot?"
"No," replied the boy, before Ching could speak. "I am no pilot. I am very rich and do no work. I am going to Thursday Island to see my banker and get my money. I am Willatopy."
They were gathered in the smoke-room which was planted upon the boat deck abaft the chart-house. It was the snuggery held in common by Madame and Ching and Ewing; to them was now added another—Willatopy, Pilot. Madame, when she heard his name so unexpectedly had switched up the lights behind her and invited him to enter. She wanted to see him clearly, and to collect her thoughts. All through the long voyage she had pictured her meeting with a naked Cannibal in the appropriate setting of a tropical coral island. Yet here and now had come to her out of the seas a young man, passably English in dress except for his bare feet, passably English in speech, and a good deal superior to the English in his masterly knowledge of the variegated depths of his native seas. The blue eyes of this young man who called himself Willatopy had astonished her when first she came under their quick steely flash; now when they were bent upon her, quite plainly in admiration, she sensibly shrank before their bright intelligence. They were the Toppys eyes; she had admired them when set in Sir John's pale face; out of the dark, almost black countenance of young Willatopy they shone like beacons. They were beacons, the burning evidences of his Toppys blood.
It was their first night in the Straits—what Stevenson, pumped dry of tropical epithets, so often called "a wonderful night of stars." Yet Madame Gilbert had no eyes and no mind for the wonder of it. She could think of nothing but the Cannibal who for months had seemed to be so very remote and who was now so very near. Indeed exactly opposite to her, seated cross-legged like an Englishman upon a sofa bunk. His lips and nostrils were rather thick and broad, and his hair distinctly negroid—one should, I suppose, say Australoid—he was of the colour of strong coffee, yet he was not in the least like a Cannibal.
"Gatepath must be even a bigger fool than I thought," muttered Madame angrily to herself. Which was unjust. She had not, like Gatepath, been chased down to a boat by a naked furious Willatopy urged on to speed by the prod of a fish spear. But at that moment Madame was unwilling to be just, especially to Roger Gatepath.
"What makes your hair so red?" asked Willatopy suddenly.
"It grows that way," murmured Madame feebly.
"I have never seen hair red like that," observed Willatopy. "At Thursday Island the white women's hair is black or muddy. Not nice. Your hair is very nice. It shines like, like red copper. And your skin is whiter than any skin I have seen. Are you white like that all over under your clothes?"
"Young man," said Ewing, who had just entered and caught the last enquiry. "You are vairy indiscreet. Leddies do not possess what they do not please to show us."
"No?" Willatopy lifted his eyebrows. "But Madame"—he had caught the title from Ching—"has such beautiful skin. Her stockings shine, like rich bronze, and are very beautiful, but I think that her legs would be much nicer without all those stockings and petticoats."
Ewing grinned. Ching frowned. Madame for a moment almost blushed and then laughed in her old rippling fashion.
"Willatopy," said she, "if you don't mind we will change the subject. White men don't talk like that about white women, and you must try to behave like a white man. It was all your fault, Alexander," she went on severely. "If you had left the boy alone I would have dealt with him myself. How often must I tell you that Scotsmen have no tact?"
"The Scots are a vairy great people," proclaimed Ewing, unabashed. "We are too great for the snivelling hypocrisy which the English folk call tak. We say just what we think."
"And that is what makes you so exasperating to live with," rasped Madame.
"Scots!" cried Willatopy. "I know the Scots. There was one of them at Thursday Island. He was always drinking whisky and always drunk. He used to chant songs, long, miles long, and used to shout, as he rolled over hugging a bottle, 'From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs.'"
Willatopy's exact imitation of the old drunkard's accent, which was not widely different from Ewing's own accent, sent Madame and Ching into a roar of laughter.
"I will mind yon," growled the Chief.
"No, you won't," commanded Madame. "Youwill treat Willatopy very kindly. He is the pilot, and our lives are in his hands. Yon have brought your troubles on your own silly head, Alexander, and I don't sympathise with you one little bit. Now, Willatopy, tell us about yourself, how you came to be here, where you live, and how it is that you speak English so well."
"I am not English," said Willatopy, rather unnecessarily. "My father was English, a very grand Chief in his own country, but he did not love the English. He always said to me when I was so, so high," he indicated a child of about the height of the bunk on which he was sitting. "He said to me, 'Willie, you belong to your mother's people. You are a Hula, of the tribe of fishers and swimmers and sailors of the sea. It is better to be a Hula than an Englishman.' I remember the words of my father, whose hair was long and yellow, and his eyes blue like mine. The girls say"—he spoke a sentence in native dialect and then translated—"they say that my eyes are blue as the sky before dawn. The brown girls love my eyes. Do you love my eyes, Madame? I love yours; they shine like the English violets which my father planted, like the violets shine before the sun has soaked up the morning dew."
"You should not say things like that, young man," reproved Ewing. "Madame will be very angry."
"Oh, shut up, Alexander," snapped Madame Gilbert. "I want to listen to the boy. He has paid me a pretty compliment. Thank you, Willatopy. I like your bright steely blue eyes. The girls on your island have good taste."
"Have you a husband, Madame?" enquired Willatopy eagerly.
"Yes," replied Madame with hardihood. "I have a fine big husband, and I love him very much."
"I am sorry," said Willatopy, simply. "I think that I should like to marry you myself. I am a grown man and very rich. I would have built a very fine hut for you on my island, and I would have taken one of my girls to be your maiden."
"You are not very old, Willatopy, and it will be better fun for you not to be married just yet. My own fine big husband would not wish me to take another one, not even you."
"No," assented Willatopy, true to the strictly monogamous code of the Straits. "One time, one husband. But it is a great pity. You are very beautiful, and I love you. The Skipper he called me a nigger, Madame, but you do not call me a nigger."
"I didn't," growled Ching, to whom the whole scene was highly offensive. "But if it wasn't for Madame here I would soon show you your proper place."
"Willatopy is half white," explained Madame. "He is not an ordinary native. And you said yourself he was a daisy of a pilot."
"So he is. As a pilot and down with the men in the foc's'le he would be in his proper place. But here, talking like this before you, he makes me sick. If you will excuse me, Madame, I will go to my chart-room." Ching stumped off with a sour face, but the more politic Ewing remained. He did not propose that the novel attractions of Willatopy should have the field entirely to themselves.
Willatopy, though half white in blood and quite passably well taught by his late father and in the mission schools on Murray Island, had all the inconsequence of a native. He would jump about from one subject to another, like a bee among flowers, sipping here and there, and then skipping on forgetful of where he had last been. He continued to stare at Madame in deep admiration—never in his small experience had he seen a woman with hair so richly red, eyes of so dazzling a violet, or a figure so graciously indicated by the clinging folds of a modern dress. His idea of woman had hitherto been of the crudest—black hair and eyes, and brown limbs fully revealed. But though he continued to be absorbed by the feminine mystery of Madame—there is no mystery about nakedness—he forgot all about his recent matrimonial suggestions.
"I sail everywhere in my yawl," said he. "When the tide is high I go straight over the reefs. They are nothing. But when the water falls I keep to the channels. Not the deep channels; the little ones which wander in and out among the islands. It was my father's yawl. He brought her out from England, from his own country. She was built—I forget where; perhaps I shall remember soon. It is no matter. In Baru, where I live with my mother and my sisters, my father bought miles and miles of shore and forest. It is all mine now, though my mother calls it hers. My father said to me, 'It will be all yours, Willie, when I die, though your mother must keep it while she lives.' My father was very rich, and I am now very rich. I do not work. There are fish, plenty fish, in the sea; we catch them with nets and in our hands. We are Hula fishers,and the sea is our home as much as the land. We hunt turtle and dugong. Both are easy. If you will come with me to my island, Madame, I will show you how to fish on the Barrier Reef and how to hunt the dugong with spears, and to catch the silly turtle with suckers. My father said, 'When God plants bananas and papaw and chestnuts in the woods, and fills the sea with fish and dugong, and turtle, there is no need for man to waste his life in work.' My father loved Baru and the Hula more than he loved England and the English. My father was a beachcomber," added Willatopy, proudly.
"I have never sailed the southern part of these Straits," said Ewing. "But I know New Guinea. The Hula tribe belong to New Guinea."
"That is so," assented Willatopy. "My father took my mother from the Hula pile village at Bulaa, and brought her to Baru, which he bought. Not the whole island, but miles and miles of shore and forest. I am half English and half Hula, but I love Hula and hate English. Except you, Madame. When I go to Thursday Island in my yawl to see my banker and to get my money—it comes from England, my money does, in big bags—I see English, and Japanese, plenty Japanese, but I do not love them, not a bit. I shall never go to England. My father said when I was so, so high: 'Always stick to Hula, Willie, never go to England.' And I never will."
Madame reflected. She was called upon to make a decision of some moment. Now that Willatopy, risen from the sea, had taken possession of theHumming Top, it was plain that he must remain onboard until she let go her anchor at his island home. She would never arrive without him. Ching was an excellent deep-sea sailor, but Willatopy was immeasurably his superior as a pilot of the Straits. It was also obvious that the blood connection between Willatopy and the Family of Toppys must soon come out, though it would not necessarily be assumed that he was the legitimate heir of the family title. Half blood is much more common than legitimacy. Madame, of course, did not intend at any time to disclose the fact of her pre-knowledge. The revelation of Willatopy's parentage must be drawn from the artless boy himself. And since it seemed to Madame that a disclosure must come sooner or later, it were on the whole better that it should come sooner. Her task would thereby be made the more easy. So she led the boy gently, imperceptibly, to the point at which his identity would become manifest. From Gossip Ewing the toothsome scandal would spread over the ship as rapidly as if one shouted it from the bridge.
"I am very dark," observed Willatopy, flying off upon quite a new tack, "darker than my mother, who is pure Hula. Though I have the blue eyes of my father, my skin is very dark; it is like my face all over. When I go to Thursday Island I wear these white clothes, but at home in my island I wear nothing—almost nothing. When you come to my island, Madame, you shall dress Hula fashion like my sisters. My sisters are very pale skinned; my father said that they were the colour of fawns in England."
"You remember your father very well," saidMadame, ignoring the suggestion of a future costume for herself. "Has he been dead long?"