Marie raged, but that unlucky language difficulty hampered her freedom of speech.
"Madame Gilbert is not so very great," she got out at length. "She is my mistress, because she is rich, and because she saved me when I was in trouble in France. She is just an ordinary widow, not a real lady like I should be if you married me, Willie."
"What is that?" cried Willatopy, starting up. "Madame Gilbert a widow? She told me she had a big handsome husband who loved her very much. She told me so when I said that I would like to marry her. I was a boy then, and had not become Lord Topsham."
"Madame Gilbert is not truthful—like me. She says any old thing which suits her at the moment. Sometimes she tells men that she has a husband, sometimes that she is a widow. She is really a widow, I swear it to you. Her husband was killed in the war."
"How do you know?" asked Willatopy suspiciously. "I would believe Madame before you. She is a Queen, not a common thing like you. She cannot be a widow."
"She is," stated Marie positively, and left the assertion to sink into Willatopy's mind. She was horribly jealous of the boy's honest devotion to Madame Gilbert, and knew that widows were held in scant respect in the Torres Straits. Willie ranked his mother, once the wife of a white god, as altogether different from the ordinary run of brown widows, but she had been, so far, the one exceptionpermitted by his social code. The simple savage mind does not like exceptions.
"No," said he at last. "I am sure that Madame has a big, handsome husband as she declared to me."
"No," shouted Marie.
"Marie," growled Willatopy, "I don't want to smack you, but if you say anything against Madame, I shall, hard."
"You love Madame better than you do me," grumbled Marie.
Willie had never analysed the various mental and physical emotions which are vaguely called love, and reflected upon this charge.
"I expect that I do," said he, arriving at a judgment.
Marie sprang to her feet.
"Que tu es bête," she roared, "bête comme un sauvage. You are the—the—limit. I go." She dashed away through the woods in a fury. Willatopy grinned as he watched her disappear. His first rapture in the conquest of Marie Lambert was quickly wearing thin, and though he did not wish to part with his white mistress, a little of her society went a long way.
"I wonder," he murmured, "if the she-devil speaks truth, and that Madame is a widow. I will ask her."
* * * * * * *
Madame was lying in a rest chair at the entrance to her tent when Marie arrived. She calmly surveyed the girl who came to a halt before her and awaited orders. She allowed Marie a reasonable amount of time off every afternoon, but on this occasion the maid had outstayed her leave.
"Where have you been?" asked Madame.
"I met the Misses Toppys," explained Marie, "and they detained me. I thought that you would wish me to show the young ladies every respect. I did not like to leave them before they desired to return."
"Quite so," said Madame drily. "I hope that you also show Lord Topsham every—respect."
Marie started; never before had Madame used Willatopy's title when speaking of him to her.
"Certainly, Madame. Whenever I meet his lordship, which is but seldom."
"In the future, it will be even less seldom," serenely observed Madame Gilbert. "The motor boat is waiting for the water to deepen upon the bar. When she leaves for the yacht you will take passage in her. And after that, my dear, it will bela belle France. With what pleasure you will revisit France after so long an exile!"
Marie howled, and grovelled at Madame's feet. "Not France," screamed she. "Any punishment except France."
"Marie," said Madame, unmoved. "You should have learned in these years of our association that I am not wholly a fool. My arm is long, and my eyes can penetrate the thickets—of Tops Island, for example. Yesterday I learned of the clearing in the woods where you have been meeting Lord Topsham. To-day I had you watched—when going and returning. Before, I suspected. Last time in France it was a German officer in hiding. Now it is the brown heir to an English peerage. Your tastes are catholic. They must be restrained, my dear, or they will get you into trouble. When earlyin the war I found you in Amiens with that German officer I had him haled forth and shot, but I concealed the identity of his associate. I believed your tearful story of innocence. You thought him a loyal Alsatian, didn't you? His accent, I remember, called for some little explanation. You have been a useful maid. I have given you every chance. I warned you, when first Lord Topsham—then the boy, Willatopy, our Pilot—came to us, what would happen if you played tricks with him. It is going to happen now. I shall accompany you to France and inform the civil authorities of the circumstances under which you were found by me four years ago at Amiens close to the fighting lines. The French are very hard upon those of their women who give shelter and comfort to enemy officers in hiding. The French are a susceptible race, yet much prettier women than you have been shot or hanged for smaller crimes than you committed. You will not find theHumming Topvery comfortable. She rolls damnably at anchor. After two or three weeks of her you will become quite a hardened sailor. Then you will have leisure to reflect upon your sins and upon their punishment."
Marie sobbed out confessions and appeals at Madame's chair, but the heart of her mistress was harder than its oaken frame. Madame listened politely to the story of Marie's intrigue with Willatopy, and incredulously to her voluble promises of amendment.
"In any case," ended Marie, "I had done with him. He refuses to marry me."
"I thought that was the game," observed Madame. "It is ended, anyhow. And even if I hadnot tumbled to your carryings on, you would have failed. You could not have been legally married here, and Captain Ching has my orders to blockade the bay. The yawl, with the happy bride and bridegroom, would have been stopped on the way to the wedding. I have not come to the ends of the earth to be foiled by a Marie Lambert. And now, if you will put up your things, the boat will convey you to theHumming Top. For the rest of my stay here I shall dispense with the services of my maid."
At the last Marie showed the courage of her race. She rose, packed up her clothes, and went forth in the motor boat without another word. France was a long way off, and much might happen before she was carried thither to her doom. But the yacht was a very present horror, and Marie needed all her courage to face confinement within its heaving frames. Still she went quietly without another word of wasted appeal. At the boat's side she turned and bowed deferentially to her mistress.
"Au revoir, Marie," said Madame.
"Au 'voir, Madame," said the maid.
Madame Gilbert watched the boat buzz away, and nodded approvingly.
"She has pluck," she murmured. "That is much. We will reconsider the second part of the programme. But for the present it shall hang like a sharp sword over Marie's head."
Marie watched Madame standing there on the shore, and smiled grimly.
"At least," thought she, "I have told Willie that his goddess is a widow. That will take a bit of the gilt and wings off her." From which it would appear that Marie, though subdued and humbled, was not in the least repentant.
Willatopy did not immediately discover that Marie had been forcibly embarked and definitely severed from his embraces. He did not attend the place of tryst next day, for he was otherwise engaged. One of his brown boys had caught a "sucker," which he pronounced to be in excellent condition for the chase; a sucker suggested turtle; and the claims, first of sport and secondly of turtle, cooked native fashion in its own juices, banished all thoughts of Marie from his mind. Much more civilised men than the Twenty-Eighth Baron of Topsham have subordinated Love to Sport and the Table.
Madame was an early riser in the Island. At seven o'clock the following morning she was up, and was about to seek refreshment in a swim, when her steward approached.
"Lord Topsham's compliments," said the man, "and could Madame spare his lordship a moment before leaving for her bathe?"
Madame frowned slightly. She naturally expected that Willie had descended in wrath to demand the return of his ravished mistress, and she did not want to face a struggle, and possibly a quarrel, before breakfast.
"His lordship awaits your pleasure," added the steward, "outside the escort tent."
There was nothing to be done except to meet Willatopy at once. He might perhaps restrain his emotional expression in the public arena of the stirring men's camp.
Willatopy hailed Madame joyously. He had gone back at a bound to the gay light-hearted boy who had killed sharks with trench daggers and caught fish on the Barrier in his jaws.
"Are you Willie or Lord Topsham?" asked Madame. "I love Willie, but I don't think that I am going to approve of Lord Topsham."
"With you, dear Madame," cried the boy, "I am always Willie. Let us forget that I am a great English Lord. One of my boys has caught a beautiful sucker. He has tied a string to its tail and tethered it to a stone in the water down yonder. As soon as you have bathed and had breakfast, Madame, let us be off after turtle in the motor boat. If we are quick we can eat turtle in the evening, real turtle." He smacked his lips.
"What, please, is a sucker?" enquired Madame. She had already been out with Willie on a not very successful attempt to spear turtle in the open sea, but had never assisted at a chasea lasucker.
"A sucker," explained Willie, "is just a sucker. It sticks to the turtle."
Madame turned to the group of officers and men who stood at a respectful distance at the opening of their tent.
"Explain please," cried she. "What is a sucker?" Captain Ching detached himself and approached.
"A sucker," he explained lucidly, "is a remora."
"Thank you," said Madame sweetly. "That is excellent as far as it goes. But what, pray, is a remora?"
Ching struggled helplessly against such dense feminine ignorance. If, in the absence of the quadruped, one asked a farmer "What is a cow?" he might become as costive in speech as poor Ching.
The voluble Ewing, who was within earshot, offered his services.
"The remora, Madame, is the fabulous creature which used to cling to the ships of our forbears, and drag them backwards with all sails set. At the high school of Paisley they used to teach me that the remora, fastening its sucker upon the galley of Marcus Antoninus, prevented him from bringing succour to his Queen Cleopatra." The pun when first uttered was accidental, but Ewing, unhappily perceiving that he had achieved a play on words, repeated the offence deliberately, which was beyond pardon.
"Your will obsairve, Madame," remarked he, "that I am a man of wut."
"Alexander," said Madame, "if I have any more of your wut I shall send for my gun. From your description it would appear that the remora is rather a formidable pet."
"That is so. The galley of Marcus Antoninus was pulled by the remora against the efforts of a hundred rowers."
"Whew!" whistled Madame. "One might as well go a-fishing with a Kraken."
"But, Madame," broke in Ching. "A remora isnot often more than two feet long. It is a powerful beast for its size."
"So it would appear. My brain whirls. A fish two feet long which can pull a galley against a hundred rowers must be of considerable horsepower. And yet Willie's boy has tethered it to a stone. It is true that he has not revealed the size of the stone—it must be as big as yonder mountain."
"The beast is fabulous," observed Ewing.
"No," said Ching, "Echeneis Remorais a well-known fish."
"Willie," appealed Madame in despair. "Lead me to your captive. These experts will drive me frantic."
Willatopy led her about a hundred yards, and showed to her a fish, less than two feet long, wriggling about in a shallow pool. A string had been fastened near its forked tail, and the stone, which held it captive, weighed some five pounds. Willie pointed to the curious, palpitating organ, some five inches long, upon the shoulders of the fish by means of which it could adhere by suction to a turtle or to a boat. Hence the name "sucker."
"That is a remora," observed Ching.
"Is it?" said Ewing sourly. "That wee bit thing a remora? Then all I can say is that our ancestors and our historians are damned liars."
"Your criticism is not new, Sandy," observed Madame. "In the unkind light of positive evidence, tradition and history have a way of crumpling up. How do you use the beast, Willie?"
Willatopy explained that the sucker adhered to the plastron of a turtle, which could then be playedby means of a long thin line fastened to the sucker's tail. For greater security a hole was bored through the sucker's back, a bit of string run through, and attached to the main line.
"Hum!" remarked Madame. "Painful for the sucker, isn't it?"
With the customary assurance of the sportsman, Willie claimed that the sucker rather enjoyed than otherwise the use to which its services were put. By a similar contention a worm loves to be impaled upon a hook.
"If we are quick," said Willie, "there will be time to cook a turtle for supper. Have you ever tasted turtle, Madame, real turtle?"
"So I have been assured," replied Madame cautiously.
"I don't expect, Madame," put in Ching, "that you have ever eaten turtle cooked in its own shell, native fashion."
"Never. Is it good?"
"Good! Good!" Ching sighed deeply. "If they eat food in Heaven that is the sort of food that they eat."
"Will you come with us, Captain, and afterwards join me at supper?"
"I will, Madame. I would not be absent for a thousand pounds."
"And why should I be left out?" wailed Ewing. "I cannot offer a thousand pounds for my supper. I am a poor man. But if half-a-croon...."
"You shall come for nothing, Sandy," said Madame graciously.
The motor boat was ready shortly after breakfast. With her eight-cylinder forty-horse-powerengine she could drive through the surf on the bar between half-flood and half-ebb, and the big curved storm curtain in her bows kept her passengers moderately dry, except at the extreme ends of her tidal range. Willie took on board some sixty yards of thin cotton line wound upon a wooden check winch, which, long since, he had purchased in Thursday Island. The wealth of Willatopy enabled him to improve upon native fishing methods. He fitted the winch upon a piece of stick, and lashed this stick to a thwart of the boat. He explained that by keeping the motor boat broadside on to a sucker-attached turtle—a manœuvre which her dominating speed made easy—he could play the beast over the gunwale from his winch. To his hunting equipment he added four spears—similar to those which had become the terror of intrusive lawyers—and to the shafts of these spears were fastened coils of long stout cord. Turtle huntinga lasucker looked a complicated business, though, according to Willie, the principle was easy of comprehension. One despatched the sucker in quest of a turtle, just as our ancestors flew falcons after heron, played the turtle by way of the sucker's tail and soreback for so long as might be necessary to tire the animal, then at favourable opportunities the spears were thrown, and finally the quarry was brought to boat by means of the cords attached to the shafts of the spears. All this took time, for a turtle in these waters ran up to some four feet in length and two hundred and fifty pounds in weight.
"There is a powerful lot of eating in a turtle," remarked Ewing when these statistical details had been made clear.
"Wonderful eating, too," murmured Ching, and fell into deep contemplation of the divinely copious ambrosia which would reward success in their chase.
"Does the sucker get any reward for its services?" enquired Madame.
"If it is not too far gone," explained Willie, "my brown boys eat it."
"The lords of creation are ungrateful pigs," said Madame.
Willatopy took one of his boys to do the spearing part of the programme, a junior engineer relieved Ewing of all care for the engine, Ching steered, Madame sat in the bows under the storm curtain, and the expedition set forth. It was bound for the sheltered coves on the west coast of Tops Island, where turtle were to be found disporting themselves in five or six fathoms of water. The sucker, a most accommodating beast, was put over the side of the boat, and instantly grappled the wooden planking to its adhesive shoulders. It is this passion for free travel which has made the remora the slave of turtle-hunting man. He is a hoe-boe among fish; too lazy to swim, he makes others swim for him. Then man steps in and utilises his laziness.
In the sheltered waters to leeward of the Island turtle could be seen swimming far down; now and then one would rise, take a gulp of air, flop over and descend. They were very shy, and when the shadow of the motor boat fell upon them would flee instantly. Upon Madame's previous visit Willatopy never got within spear throw of the beasts, but now he was better equipped for the discomfiture of turtle. He bade Ching anchor, but haul short onthe cable, so that the launch might get away quickly upon emergency. The motor was declutched and kept running slowly so that power would instantly be at call. Then he watched intently the depths of the clear sea. For some time no turtle approached the hovering boat, but, after about half-an-hour, the great carapace and flappers of a fine specimen could be made out. Willie waited patiently until the turtle began to rise for breath, and then leaning well over he grabbed the remora, and skinned its sucker off the bottom of the launch. The direct retaining power of a sucker is enormous, but one may lever up an edge and peel it off without great difficulty. He rubbed the organ of suction vigorously with his hand—"to wake it up" said he—and then, as the turtle neared the surface some forty yards away, threw the remora far out towards it over the side of the boat. The turtle gulped and sank, and with it, adhering tightly to its plastron, went the remora. Denied free, joyous transport under a motor launch, it would put up with turtle. Its vigorously chafed sucker itched for adherence to something. The check on the winch whirred as the thin line ran out.
The turtle could not feel the suck of the remora which clung tightly to its shell, and, for a while was unconscious of the strain upon Willatopy's line. A pound or so of pull upon a beast weighing two hundred weight is not very noticeable. It wandered to and fro upon its lawful occasions, and all the while Willatopy kept the line tight by winding it in, or letting it run out against the mechanical check. He was subjecting the big turtle to lesspull than one puts upon a twenty-pound salmon, and the situation called for sublime patience.
Time passed, the sun rose higher and higher in the sky, the launch rolled lazily in the back wash of the Pacific swell, but Willatopy went on oblivious playing his turtle. He could not increase the strain lest the line be torn out of the remora's back. I cannot believe, in spite of Willie's assurances to Madame, that the remora itself really enjoyed the sport. A small fish with a string tied round its tail—and also rove through a hole in its back—and perpetually hauled upon by a heavy check winch, could not have been wholly comfortable.
The turtle wandered farther and farther away. Willie ordered the anchor to be hauled up, the propeller moved slowly, and the boat to be steered in a wide circle of which the turtle and the adhering remora formed the centre. For an hour or more this manœuvre was continued, until the turtle revealed plain signs of annoyance. Hitherto it had risen at intervals, showed maybe two inches of snout, while it took a mouthful of air, and then passed to the depths to feed. Now its head would come right out as it shook it savagely, and the upper flappers would beat the water in irritation. Willatopy did not hurry the chase. He wanted the turtle's attention to be so far diverted from the boat and concentrated upon its own troubles that he could approach within a spear's throw. But he steadily shortened his line, and directed Ching to make circles, or rather spirals, of ever-narrowing radius. Upon these sea expeditions Madame did not carry a watch, and was no accurate judge of timewithout one. They had reached the fishing ground at about nine o'clock, and it was about noon when the second stage in the hunt began. Thus Willatopy had played his turtle for some two hours and a half. Once he could begin to get in work with his spears, the business would not take long in completion, though the natives, in their tiny canoes, hauled about by a speared turtle, will occupy some six hours in the killing. A powerful motor boat as a base of operation is very different from a bark canoe two feet wide, and with little more than an inch of free board.
The motor boat, steered by the deeply interested Ching, and guided by an occasional nod and word from Willatopy, closed in upon ever-narrowing spirals. The turtle, a huge beast, would now stay up a few seconds after each rise, shaking its big puzzled head, and churning the water into angry foam with aimless flappers. Willie signalled to his boy, who picked up a spear, and got upon his feet. He was a skilful boy, and it was a pretty bit of javelin work that he put in. The turtle was twenty yards distant at its last rise, yet the boy got it full under the flapper with his first cast.
"Now," roared Willie, as the turtle dashed down and away, leaving a trail of blood on the water, and the line fastened to the spear shaft spun out. Round came the motor boat and followed fast, yet not so fast that the cord was overrun. Willie wanted the turtle to pull against the barb of the spear, as it had pulled against the check of his winch. The end now approached. The brown boy, another spear in his hand, waited for a second chance, and got it. His spear, flung with the mostdazzling force and accuracy, caught the unhappy turtle under a lower flapper as it rolled over to dive, and it was now attached, fore and aft, by two cords to the boat. Still Willatopy did not hurry; a turtle's flesh is soft, and the barbs might be torn out, and the prey lost if haste followed too close upon the heels of desire. He went on playing the beast sideways, hauling in a little upon his cord, as it weakened from its wounds, until finally he could get within spear's thrust and reach a clean finish.
"Now," said he again, as the turtle, pulled in within six feet of the boat, wallowed on the surface, and his boy, leaning down, drove a third and last spear right home between shoulders and carapace. "It is finished," said Willie with satisfaction. "We will now go back at speed and start upon the cookery."
"I am rather sorry for the brave turtle," observed Madame.
"Not me," said Alexander, who throughout had done nothing, and done it with his customary efficiency. "I have yet to taste a supper which Ching values at a thousand pounds of our grievously depreciated currency. It must be a supper worth coming twelve thousand miles to eat."
"It is worth swimming twelve thousand miles to eat, if you couldn't get to it any other way," said Ching, for once really eloquent.
The turtle had been killed and hauled aboard at half-past twelve. Half an hour later the motor boat, driven at twenty knots, butted its humped shoulders through the surf, and sped down the bay to Madame's camping ground. A crowd of Willie's brown boys awaited the arrival of the hunters. How theyknew that a turtle had been caught I cannot explain. They did know, and wading into the water, they dragged it forth with enthusiasm.
Their knowledge, acquired so mysteriously, had already impelled them to light the fires for the cooking, and the stones had been getting hot long before the motor boat had passed the bar on her rush for home.
"Now watch, Madame," said Ching. "I have seen native turtle cooking in Queensland, and it is worth seeing. It may be Stone Age cookery, but we can't beat it with all our modern appliances. If the Lord Mayor knew what turtle really tasted like when properly cooked, he would let the Mansion House for what it would fetch, and live for ever in the South Seas."
"We want eight hours," pronounced Willie. "No more, and not a minute less. So jump lively. Madame by nine o'clock will be hungry, but she will be glad to have waited."
"I have a healthy appetite at all times," quoth Madame, "and am always eager for my meals. But if turtle is like what you suggest, I will wait for it till midnight."
"Eight hours," again said Willie. "No more, but not a minute less."
While they talked, the boys had cut off the head and the fore flappers of the turtle, and grubbed out its inside with knives. They hollowed out the beast as if it had been a pumpkin. Those inward parts which had been taken out were cleaned carefully, and replaced under the stern inspecting eye of Willatopy. His reputation was at stake, and he had determined that Madame should partake of asupper worthy of the goddess that he still reckoned her to be. Then a hole was dug in the sand, and the turtle levered up till the tail and lower flappers had been buried deeply. The headless beast stood up rigidly, and the hole between carapace and plastron, where its neck had been, yawned capaciously. The boys went to the smaller of the two fires, and clearing away the red-hot ashes revealed a dozen flat stones, about the size of small saucers. These stones glowed red as the ashes amid which they had been heated. They were picked one up by one between sticks, and dropped down through the cavity of the neck into the interior of the waiting turtle. As they fell, they hissed savagely, and a thick oily steam poured forth.
"It smells good," murmured Madame.
"Wait," said Willie. He inserted a stout, clean strip of bamboo in the turtle's stomach, and stirred the stones thoroughly, so that they might make burning contact with all the interior juices.
In the meanwhile the brown boys had gone to the second and much larger fire, which was burning furiously. They cast on dry sticks and churned its heart so that the flames roared to Heaven. When its heat had been judged to be sufficient, they raked away the blazing wood from its bed, and Madame saw that the fire had been built upon stones laid together to make an oval saucer of about the same size and shape as the turtle's carapace. These stones under the fire had also become red hot. Under Willatopy's stern exacting eye the sand about the turtle was scraped away, and the beast, with the hot stones in its belly, eased down carefully so that not a drop of the precious juice wasspilled. Then four boys lifted it, carapace downwards, and deposited the body on the hot bed which had been prepared in readiness as its last resting-place. Instantly, so that none of the essential heat might be dissipated, all the boys fell to work piling green leaves upon the turtle, and then sand upon the leaves until a mound, four feet high, rose above the hot stone bed upon which the promised supper lay stewing slowly in its own rich juices. Above and below the carapace glowed the hot stones, and within white flesh and glutin fizzled together in silent preparation. It was, as the Skipper said, Stone Age cookery, yet all the modern appliances of civilisation have not come near to equalling its performances.
"I feel hungry already," wailed Madame, turning sorrowfully away from the sacred mound.
"Eight hours," said Willie sternly. "No more, but not a minute less. The Turtle Will Then Be Cooked."
Madame issued invitations to all the officers and men of her escort, and as night drew on, tripods were put up round the mound, under which the supper was cooking, and ships' lanterns hung upon them. Wood for a fire was also prepared and piled up hard by, for the air, after sunset, rapidly cooled as the heat radiated from the shores of the Island. Mrs. Toppys and her daughters, all of whom loved turtle cooked native fashion, were eager to take part in the feast; and since the turtle was so very large, Madame offered a reversion in the hot corpse to Willie's brown boys who had so cunningly provided the apparatus of cookery.
"They shall eat," said Willie, "but not until wehave finished." Willatopy, Lord of Tops Island, did not pretend to any truck with democracy.
I do not often describe meals in my books. They are usually functions of physical necessity rather than of intellectual interest. But I cannot refrain from indicating that turtle, cooked native fashion with hot stones, is a divine repast. A supper which, merely in anticipation, moved the silent Ching to eloquent enthusiasm, cannot be dismissed in a bald sentence. Yet how can one convey in words the supreme satisfaction with which our friends in Tops Island began and ended that memorable supper? European turtle soup, even that of the Mansion House banquets, is a pale, tasteless potage when placed in comparison alongside a carapace filled to the brim with the concentrated essence of turtle perfectly cooked in its own sacred juices.
At half-past nine that evening Willatopy, in tones of becoming gravity, announced that supper might be served. The company gathered about the mound in silence. The occasion was too solemn a one, and feelings were too deep, for smiles or speech. The ship's lanterns had been lighted, and rugs spread conveniently near to the adjacent fire. Willie raised his hand, and two brown boys stepping forward, cleared the sand and leaves from the turtle's shell. Then, with fingers carefully wrapped in wet leaves, they slowly prised off and lifted the plastron. Upon its stone bed lay the bountiful carapace, and within glowed in the light of lanterns a thick deep brown steaming turtle stew. Gallons of it! It is a poor wretched word, stew, but I am dredged empty of adequate terms in which to describe thatgorgeous compost. The smell of it rose up like a benediction, and smote all present in the most sensitive nerve centres of their beings. They gasped and remained speechless. Madame alone retained something of her self-possession. She beckoned to her steward, and whispered the one word "SPOONS!"
The man handed them round, and, first, Madame, and then the others, prepared to dip.
But Alexander Ewing, towering, forbidding in his pale emotion, raised a warning hand.
"Let us, my friends," said he solemnly, "first ask a blessing."
"Dinna be o'er lang, Sandy man," whispered Madame. She had been in act to dip her spoon, and the scent of concentrated turtle had come near to driving forth from her all the polite restraints of civilised feeding. "Cut the grace short if you love me."
Alexander asked a blessing, fervent in its agitated brevity. He did not keep them waiting long. He was himself too eager to begin.
Then they dipped their spoons, slowly sucked down the quintessence of turtle—and worshipped. Their thanks before meat may have been perfunctory; afterwards it was heartfelt. They all guzzled, every man and woman of them. Willatopy sought not to enquire why his Marie was not present in attendance upon her mistress. He was too busy with his spoon. Mrs. Toppys with Joy and Cry, though turtle was no new experience for them, fell to as eagerly as did the Europeans. In some respects it may be considered by the judicious to have been a horrid spectacle. But give me the most sour-faced and dyspeptic of social critics, let me placehim before a carapace well filled with real turtle, cooked native fashion for eight hours, and his high-browed criticism will go to blazes. He will guzzle with the rest.
They did not stop until exhaustion, following upon repletion, drove them to the rugs about the fire. There they lay and smoked Madame's cigarettes. They did not digest. One does not digest real turtle, cooked native fashion in its own juices. One absorbs it whole.
Then the brown boys came and fell upon the turtle. They lapped it up with balls of dried grass; they ate noisily and disgustingly; but those who had fed before them looked on with approving sympathy. No restraints, no civilised conventions, can be expected of those, white or brown, who sup late and hungry upon real turtle. Especially of those who have cooked it.
When all was finished, Madame suddenly remembered the humble hard-working sucker, to whose exertions they owed the feast which had been spread. She beckoned Willie to her side and whispered:
"What became of the dear sucker?"
"Oh!" replied he indifferently. "It was still attached to the turtle when we drew it in. It died in the boat, so I threw it away. It was no more good."
For a full minute Madame said nothing. Then: "Mankind," observed she sententiously to the stars which twinkled yet heeded not, "Mankind was never grateful to its true benefactors. And mankind never changes. But next time, Willie, please put the sucker back in the water before it is dead. It might come in useful another time."
That was the last of Madame Gilbert's happy days in Tops Island. Before twenty-four hours had gone by, the storm burst which whirled Willatopy as we have known him out of my story. In his place remained Lord Topsham. In the course of the last ten chapters I have tried to realise Willatopy and to paint his portrait for you. It has been a labour of love, for he was a gallant lad. But for the Lord Topsham, into whom by woeful mischance of birth he developed, I have neither respect nor affection. He seems to me to have displayed the worst qualities of the two races whose blood formed an unstable mixture in his veins. It is true that the boy never had a chance. The lawyer, John Clifford, and the girl Marie were the worse conceivable guides for his halting steps on the threshold of a new life. And just when Madame Gilbert's influence was most vitally needed by him it failed. She who had been raised to the throne of a goddess came tumbling down and lay prostrate—a mere human widow. Willatopy spurned both his gods—his dead father the wise madman of Tops Island, and the living Madame. He rejected the precepts of the father, and he bitterly resented the restraints which Madame Gilbert sought to impose upon him. His misguided,masterful spirit then led him with terrible swiftness down the steep slope which ended in irretrievable disaster. I love the boy Willatopy, and I would that it had been my fate to tell this story differently.
When Willie found the place of assignation empty, on the afternoon which followed the turtle feast, he descended in great leaps to Madame's camp, and made enquiries of her escort. From a talkative sailor he learned that Marie had been embarked in the motor boat two days before, and had not returned to the camp. Willie scented a discovery of his amour, and, as a deeply resentful Peer of England, sought an explanation from Madame Gilbert.
"What have you done with Marie, Madame Gilbert?" demanded he.
"What has my maid Marie to do with Lord Topsham?" asked Madame. She saw the fury burning in the bright blue eyes, and faced him with a hauteur as fierce as his own.
"I have made her my white slave," growled he.
"That is very good of you," said Madame blandly. "But Marie Lambert happens to be my maid and otherwise engaged. By my orders she has been returned to the yacht, where she will remain. Please bear in mind, Willie, that your heirship to a Peerage gives you no rights whatever over my servants."
"John says...." began Willie, but Madame waved him into silence with a royal gesture.
"If you paid more attention to your father's memory and to my words, and less to that miserable wretch, John Clifford, you would understand better your position. An English Lord has no rightswhich are not common to every English gentleman. John Clifford is deceiving you for his own ends, that he may take you to England and rob you. You think yourself rich, my poor boy. Wait till Clifford has had his will of you. There will not be a shilling left in your purse, and not an ounce of flesh upon your bones, when Clifford has done with the stripping of you."
"John came all the way from England to tell me that I was the heir of my uncle. You also came all the way from England, but you told me nothing. You must have known, for you came here in a Toppys yacht, the property of my cousin. Yet you told me nothing. John Clifford is a little mean white beast, but he has been more of a friend to me than you, Madame. Although you knew what I had become you told me nothing."
"Yes," said Madame calmly. "I knew. And yet I told you nothing."
"It was you who wished to rob me, you and Sir John Toppys. If John Clifford had not come I should still be Willatopy."
"It is my great regret that you have not remained the Willatopy whom I met and loved in the Torres Straits. You were happy then, you are unhappy now. Nothing except misery for you can come of this most lamentable succession of yours."
"John has often told me that you wished to rob me, you and Sir John Toppys. But I did not believe. I beat John for the words that he spoke against you. But now I begin to believe. You and yourHumming Topwould never have taken me to England if John had not come to search me out."
"You would not have wished to go to England if John Clifford had not come to spoil your life."
"Willatopy would not have gone to England. Why should he? But now that I am the lawful Lord of Topsham I shall certainly go. My father was wrong. I see now that my place is not here. I see it more clearly because you have tried to keep me in ignorance. You who were my friend, my false friend, have now become openly my enemy. You tried to steal my place in England from me, and now you have torn away my white girl, Marie."
"Willie," said Madame gently. "It is not very long since in theHumming TopI offered to raise the anchor and bear you homewards myself. Does this look as if I wished to steal your place from you? I offered to carry you home and protect you. It was you, Willie, who declined to go."
"I would not leave Marie."
"I suspected that Marie was the explanation. The publicity of a yacht does not offer much opportunity for assignations. You have behaved very badly towards me, Willie. You had no right to make appointments with my servant. Still less have you any right to resent my action in sending her back to theHumming Top. I am speaking to you exactly as I should to an English gentleman and a social equal. Lord Topsham has behaved badly, Willie. Lord Topsham, under the malign influence of that Clifford wretch, has got his head swelled. When you go to England you will have many miseries and many disappointments. You will discover that, in these modern days, English Lords count for nothing except for their worth as men. They have no rights and no powers beyondthose of common men. But, Willie, because of their rank and place they are expected to behave always as honourable gentlemen. It is no act of a gentleman to come ranting and raging at me because I stopped your intrigue with my servant Marie. An Englishman, even one without rank or station, would be ashamed to speak to me in reproof upon such a subject. He would have felt too much of shame for his conduct. You played me a low trick, Willie, and I am excessively angry with you."
"Why should I feel shame before you?" asked Willie haughtily. Never before had he used such a tone towards Madame Gilbert, and she looked searchingly at him. She had noticed and lamented the almost daily change observable in him, but though much of his old tender regard for her had been visibly slipping away, he had never yet used words of offence.
"Why should I feel shame before you?" he asked again.
Madame Gilbert shrugged her shoulders. It was a question difficult to answer. After all the boy was a Melanesian who had never been outside his own seas, and one could not expect him to comprehend the standards of social conduct in Europe.
"You were my friend, Willie, my dear friend. And Marie was my maid. Don't you see that your action was not quite worthy of one who calls himself Lord Topsham? You are now the head of a very ancient and honourable family."
"Honourable!" cried Willie scornfully. "You told me that you were the honourable wife of a big and handsome husband. Now I know that you are nothing but a widow."
"Who told you that?" asked Madame quietly.
"Is it true?"
"Yes, it is true. My big and handsome husband is dead. But what difference does that make? I put up my big and handsome husband because at our first meeting in the yacht, which seems now so long ago, your admiration was so very outspoken. You wanted, if I remember rightly, to marry me yourself."
"I did not then know that you were a widow. Men do not marry widows in the Torres Straits."
"So that is the trouble. I am a widow, and therefore disreputable. Willie, dear, when I think how much you have to learn about the ways of white men and women, my heart fails because of you. You will have a very, very, rotten time in England. Clifford is your white slave, and Marie is, or was, your white mistress. You have made a very bad beginning, and a beginning most unfortunate for you. You think, no doubt, that all white men will be your slaves and all white women will be at your pleasure. That is what Clifford tells you. He stuffs you up with this dreadful rubbish and stifles your sense—you have plenty of good sense about things that you understand—he stifles your sense with filthy liquors brought over from Thursday Island. You are a fly in the spider's web, Willie, and I, who have done my best to save you from him, am spurned as a mere widow. If you were a little older, my dear, you would remember that a Widow sat on the throne of England for more years than you or I are likely to live."
"Queens are different. My mother is a widow, but she also is different. Her husband was a whitegod. You, Madame, are not different. You tried to rob me of my rank and place, and you have torn away Marie whom I loved. I will never forgive you, Madame. You thought that I was a helpless brown boy who could be played with and deceived. If you had been a queen with a big handsome king for husband I would have obeyed your wishes. I would have stayed here in Tops Island and forgotten Marie whom I should not love if she were not white. But I am not going to be ruled by a widow, even by one so beautiful as you. I am not Willatopy any more; I am William, Lord Topsham."
"I do not think," responded Madame coldly, "that I am greatly interested in William, Lord Topsham, or that I desire his further acquaintance. You have my permission to depart."
He stared, puzzled by the formula of dismissal. Then when Madame turned her broad back, his skin flushed into deep purple. He a great English Lord had been curtly sent away by a mere widow! Something must be wrong with the world which in ignorant imagination he had constructed. William, Lord Topsham, went to consult John Clifford, who advised that Madame, with her paraphernalia of tents and escort, should be summarily expelled from the Toppys property on the Island. But Willie in becoming an English Lord had not shed his native courtesy. So long as Madame wished to remain on Tops Island, she was free to stay. But for his part he would visit her no more.
Madame Gilbert summoned her friends into council, and described in detail the stormy interview with Willie.
"We were both very angry, very haughty, andvery ridiculous," said Madame. "I think that the late supper upon excessive quantities of rich turtle had something to do with our loss of temper. The high mightinesses of his brown lordship ought to have made me laugh. But there will emerge, I fancy, certain solid advantages. It is clear that Master Willieà la tête montéehas flung away the precepts of his late father, and means to claim his English peerage. He will very soon find that the Madame Gilbert whom he is pleased to scorn holds the key to that project. We will begin at once to make ostentatious preparations for departure. You might, if you will, Captain, hire sundry brown boys to scrape weed off theHumming Top'steak fenders. Our preparations will instantly come to Willie's ears, and he will rapidly pass from curiosity to worry. Prompted by John Clifford it will dawn upon his infant mind that theHumming Topholds not only Marie, but the command of his passage to England."
"The boys will be delighted to scrape off the worst of our weed," said Ching, "and their labours will help us up to Singapore. But I don't quite grasp the rest of your scheme, Madame."
"It is quite simple," said she. "In these days of overcrowded shipping how is Willie to get away beyond Thursday Island unless as our guest in theHumming Top? He might hang about for months waiting for a ship to take him to Singapore, and might spend months more before he could get any farther. Grant, if I mistake not, will not unloose the money bags, and John Clifford, whatever may be his resources, will not spend a penny more than he can help. It will be the interest of both to comehat in hand to me, and make peace. Then I shall command the situation and lay down my own terms."
"Madame is right," cried Ewing. "She always is. It will cost Clifford a small fortune to get Willie home by passenger steamers even if he can secure berths, which is not likely. When he is up against staying here or in Thursday Island at indefinite delay and expense for a passage, he will send his brown master to Madame to eat humble pie. I don't want to let either of them get out of my sight, and it will be a great pull for us if they come of their own accord."
"Besides," went on Madame serenely, "I have the bait of Marie locked up in theHumming Top, and Willie does not know that my hold over her is so terrifying that she will avoid him like the plague when he comes aboard. Let him find that out later for himself." Madame then explained the nature of her influence over Marie Lambert. "If she remains convinced that I shall certainly take her to France she may become reckless, but I shall hint judiciously that a rigid obedience to my orders may bring about a reprieve. I've got her tight, and Master Willie too. They may both be as savage as they please so long as they dance to my strings."
"The weak point of your scheme, Madame, if I may say so," observed Ching, "is the presence of that damned Jonah Clifford in my yacht. He will bring along enough ill luck to sink a battleship. My officers won't have him in their mess, and if I put him in the foc's'le there will be a mutiny among the men. The best of lawyers would make them restive, and this poisonous little blighter would bust up allthe restraints of discipline. Not a man in my ship would eat or drink with him. I would sooner give passage to a plague-stricken Chinky than to that Clifford beast."
"I feel for you," said Madame, smiling. "We will give him a cabin somewhere forrard, and let him take his food there. He shall learn what it feels like to be a pariah. The experience will do him good."
"I expect," observed Alexander thoughtfully, "that he will pick his bit of offal in the shaft tunnel. He won't be safe from man-handling anywhere else. My stokehold staff would love to put him in their fires."
"Still, however rightly unpopular he may be, we can't leave him here," declared Madame. "I cannot have that dear little Mrs. Topy and the jolly girls burdened with the swine hound. But we will dump him over the side at Singapore, and leave him to find his way home from there. We will carry him out of harm's way and then shunt him. I have quite decided to disappoint the poachers of St. Mary Axe. Once Willie, Lord Topsham, comes aboard my yacht, he doesn't leave it till I hand him over to his own Trustees. Sir John Toppys and Gatepath will be furious with me, but there is nothing else to be done. I won't have the boy plundered by those land sharks."
Madame's plans were at once put in train, and it quickly spread through the Island that good pay was to be won by diving down and cutting weed from theHumming Top'sbottom. Willie's black boys deserted his plantation under the magnetic pull of the yacht's treasure chest. Boats full ofdivers clustered about the vessel throughout all the hours of daylight, and every kind of scraper was furbished up and turned to account in the novel labour. It was given about that theHumming Topwould sail as soon as her bottom had been made tolerably clean, and John Clifford, in dread of being marooned for months on Tops Island, was prepared to face even Madame's straight-shooting pistol rather than be left there by himself. He suspected that Willie would be welcome on board, but he cherished no illusions concerning his own popularity. He urged his lordly master to approach Madame with humility, and to seek passage for both. John Clifford, a human "sucker," had all the remora's love for free transport. His voyage out had occupied months and contained exasperations innumerable; whatever might be his sufferings in the detestedHumming Top, they could not compare with the professional disaster of losing his hardly won client—spirited off in the yacht—and being left himself upon the loathed beach. He was insistent upon a free passage for both, the client and the lawyer. It cost him the surviving bottles in his liquor cases to win the assent of Lord Topsham, and he would not have won even with their fiery aid, had not recollections of the ravished Marie been present to Willie's mind. William, Lord Topsham, under the stimulus of hot, bad wine, became convinced that Madame had done him grievous wrong, and was savagely resentful. He had spurned her as a goddess. Now he came near to spurning her as a woman, and to accepting John's theory that Madame had swept Marie off into captivity because the mistress was jealous of hislordship's attentions to the maid. The pair of them argued much as Madame had anticipated. Willie would regain his Marie under Madame's forbidding nose, and both would secure a passage to England in a luxurious private yacht. Neither appreciated the hidden disadvantages. Willie did not realise that Marie, given one last chance of reprieve from a shameful death in France, would flee from the smallest association with himself; and before Clifford's mind arose no picture of an outcast Hedge Lawyer, spurned as vermin by the humblest seaman, driven to pick his bit of offal in the shaft tunnel.
The preparations for departure went on, and for a week Madame Gilbert saw nothing of Willie or John Clifford. The lawyer she had not met since she had thrust him off the yacht's deck into the mangrove swamp. Mrs. Topy and the girls she encountered now and then. They looked at her sorrowfully, but said little. Some hint of Willie's intended abandonment of Tops Island had been conveyed to them, and they grieved. The mother, and perhaps the sisters also, realised that if he went they would never look upon his face again. He was an English Lord; they were Hulas of New Guinea. Lawful inheritance ran in the male line; to the women it brought nothing except loss. From the artless chatter of Joy and Cry, Madame gathered that Willie was working up an appetite for the humble pie. He was furious against her, she learned, and smiled. Madame had been fond of Willatopy, but she felt very little regard for William, Lord Topsham. She did not care how furious he grew so long as he fell in with her plans.
Willie took his meal as soon as the divers had all been paid off, and the work of cleaning completed—in so far as it could be completed out of dock. He approached the camp one evening, observed the ostentatious signs of packing up, and then plunged into a request that Madame would see him. She graciously assented, and he was shown into that tent whither not so long since he had fled, a frightened savage boy, and sobbed out his troubles at her feet. Then he had been Willatopy; now he was William, Lord Topsham. Just as Willie had changed so Madame had changed. She was no longer the half-maternal comforter who had nursed the frizzy head in her lap and playfully suggested that he should really get his hair cut in honour of his peerage. Now she received him with ceremony, bowed him towards a chair, and seated herself opposite. He who had been so gay and outspoken was now tongue-tied, his spirit frozen by the chilly atmosphere in which Madame had enwrapped herself. Even then had Madame relented, stretched out both her hands, and smiled upon him in the old fashion, I believe that the boy would have cast aside his absurd pretensions to dignity, and given back to her his heart. Madame could, I am convinced, have made him kiss the dust off her feet. But she was still sore and angry. A goddess does not take pleasure in being tumbled into ruin by a brown half-caste, and Madame, who had brought so many white men to her feet, scorned to win an easy conquest over Willie. Since he had elected to be William, Lord Topsham, he should be treated as he deserved.
"Well," said Madame, as the boy mumbled andstammered before her. "You wish to speak to me?"
"They say that you are leaving my Island," muttered Willie.
"Yes," replied Madame. "There is nothing to keep me here now. I stayed as your friend. You have spurned me, and I go. My yacht is under orders to sail as soon as the camp gear has been transferred. I am obliged to you for your hospitality, Lord Topsham, and should have called to bid you farewell and thank you. Since you have come I thank you now." She was certainly not making his humble pie very appetising.
"We have been honoured by your presence, Madame," said he. It was quite a good beginning, and gave him courage. "And since I have been so fortunate as to be able to show you hospitality, I feel bold enough to request a return favour from you."
Madame stared. The speech did not sound a bit like the composition of Willie—certainly not of the old Willatopy—and had little flavour of the Hedge Lawyer. There were no books upon the Island from which Willie might have gleaned polite phrases. The change in him from brown to white, which was taking place before her eyes, was almost incredible in its speed. She remembered his faithful recollection of his father's words, and supposed that expressions which the father had used remained embedded in the son's mind.
"It will be a real pleasure, Lord Topsham," said she with gravity, "if I may be permitted to return your kind hospitality."
"You once offered me passage to England in theHumming Top," said Willie. "I refused then but I shall no longer refuse if you repeat the offer."
"Consider it repeated, Lord Topsham," said Madame, and a smile flickered round her lips. "Since you have decided to go to England it is fitting that you should go in a Toppys ship."
"And my lawyer, Mr. John Clifford?" enquired he. A little while since since it had been "My white slave, John." Now it was "My lawyer, Mr. John Clifford."
"I will not pretend that I care for the society of your lawyer. But I will not be so unkind as to separate a client from his legal adviser." This was language above Willie's head, and it was his turn to stare. Madame translated: "John Clifford may come in the yacht, but please don't expect me to entertain him myself. You will be my guest, but Clifford must fend for himself with the men."
"Of course," said Willie, indifferently consigning the Hedge Lawyer to the shaft tunnel. "He is a noxious animal. But he is my lawyer, and I would not leave him here."
Madame smiled again, and thought of how the legal adviser would be shot off into desolate space at Singapore. She was willing that he should travel thus far in the yacht, and hoped, but without confidence, that his voyage would be pleasant.
"Thank you, Madame," said Willie, rising. "We will come aboard when you are ready to receive us. Have I your permission to go?" He was a quick lad, very quick to pick up English phrases.
Madame relaxed at the words, and her old friendly smile shone out. If Willie had then forgotten his ridiculous assumption of dignity and relaxedtoo, the pair of them might have attained to happy reconciliation in one another's arms. But Fate had spoken, and the boy moved towards his destined end. "How could we sail," whispered she, "without our Pilot Willatopy?"
He frowned. "I will sail as your guest, Madame. But Lord Topsham is not, and will not be, your pilot."
"Well, well," muttered Madame as she watched him go, "I could not have believed that my boy Willatopy would so quickly turn into an insufferable fool. So he is too proud now even to pilot theHumming Top. Soon he will be too proud to sail his own yawl. His pride will come down with a pretty hard bump upon the unkindly soil of England. That is some comfort."
She sent for Ching, and told him the latest of Lord Topsham's incarnations. "He is now much too fine a gentleman to navigate a steam yacht. His Highness will presently seek the services of a valet when his wardrobe has had an opportunity of development. He pictures himself surrounded by white slaves among whom you and I have the honour of inclusion. Captain, can you manage to take the blessed yacht back to Thursday Island without butting her aground? That confounded Peer would sneer disgustingly at us if we couldn't get through the channels without his help. He wants to bring us to our knees imploring his assistance. I would sooner that theHumming Topwere wrecked in the Straits and perished with all hands."
"I think that I can do it," said Ching cautiously. "His young lordship brought us up here so fast andfearlessly that I took no soundings, but I have all the channels marked, and the bearings of every headland. It stuck in my mind that we might have to get back without a pilot, so my first officer or myself were on watch all the time in the chart-house following the course, charting the channels, and working out the bearings. We have had a lot of time on our hands here, and have filled some of it by constructing a chart of our own of the Torres Straits. I can't con the yacht with the ease and certainty of his lordship, but I can get through without bumping much on the ground. After we pass Thursday Island, it is just deep-sea work up to Sunda. I can manage, Madame, I think."
This assurance from the careful and competent Ching gave Madame Gilbert the utmost satisfaction. Now that William, Lord Topsham, though anxious to take passage in the yacht, had refused to work for his living, she would have perished rather than seek help from him. He should learn that there were others besides himself capable of navigating his own familiar seas. She blessed the cautious foresight of the complete seaman, Robert Ching, and was prepared to trust him to save the bottom of theHumming Topand the face of her owner. As for William, Lord Topsham, her resentment began to take root and grow with tropical rapidity. The boy Willatopy, whom she had loved, was in danger of being obliterated altogether. And yet until the Hedge Lawyer appeared to bring woe upon the happy Island, he had been a boy eminently lovable.