The courtyard was a large one, penned between a couple of houses, and separated from the street by the wall which the great gate pierced. From it half a dozen doors led into the houses, each a possible road of escape when the hour should come. Truda looked about her calmly.
The people were standing about in large groups—men, women, and children—and they spoke in whispers among themselves. But all of them were listening; each sound from without stiffened them to scared attention. From somewhere distant there traveled a dull noise of shouts and singing, a confused blatancy of far voices; and as it swelled and sank and swelled again, a tremor ran over that silent waiting throng like a wind-ripple on standing crops. Overhead the sky shone with pin-point stars; a breath of air stirred about them faintly; all seemed keyed to that tense furtive quiet of the doomed Jews. Not a child cried, not a woman sobbed; they had learned, direfully enough, the piteous art of the oppressed—the knack of silence and concealment.
It was by slow degrees that the distant shoutings came nearer; the mob had yet to unite in purpose and ferocity. Truda, listening, and marking its approach, could almost tell by the violence of its noise how it wound through the streets, staggering drunkenly, waving bludgeons, working itself to the necessary point of brutal fury. And always it grew nearer. Its note changed and deepened, till it sank to a long snarling drone; she, wise in the moods of men in the mass, a practicer on the minds of multitudes, knew the moment was at hand; this was the voice of human beings with the passions of beasts. The noise dwindled as the mob poured through an alley, and then broke out again, loud and daunting, as it emerged. It was near at hand; now there was added to its voice the drum of its footsteps on cobble- paved streets, and suddenly, brief and agonizing, a wild outcry of shrieks as some wretched creature was found out of hiding and the bludgeons beat it out of human semblance. All round Truda there was a stir among the Jews; a child wrought beyond endurance whimpered and was gagged under an apron; the howl of the mob startled her ears as it poured along the street outside the great gate.
Then came confusion, a chaos of voices, of ringing blows upon the gate, screams and moans, the shrill sound of the glee that goes with open murder, and a sudden light that shot up against the sky from a house on fire. The crowd of Jews in the courtyard thinned as some slipped swiftly into the dark doorways to be ready for flight, startled by a tattoo of blows on the gate that broke out abruptly. Truda stood fast where she was, listening with a kind of detachment. The blows on the gate increased; she could even hear, among the other sounds, the heavy breathing of those who strove to break a way in. Men came running to aid them, and the stout gate bent under their efforts. It was fastened within by an iron bar lying in sockets across it; with an interest that was almost idle she saw how these sockets, one by one, were yielding and let the bar go loose. One broke off with a sharp crack, and sent the rest of the Jews racing to the dark doorways. Truda loosened her cloak and let it fall about her feet, and stood up alone, vivid in the dancing light of the burning house, in saffron and white. She moved deliberate hands over her hair and patted a loose strand into its place. Another rending crash; she set her hand on her hip and stood still. The door yielded and sprang back. There was a raw yell, and the mob was in.
Prince Sarasin was again in his box when Monsieur Vaucher, broken in spirit and looking bleak and old, came before the curtain to announce that owing to circumstances—unforeseen circumstances—of a—a peculiar nature, Madame Schottelius would be unable to appear that night, and her place would be taken, etc. The announcement was not well received, and nobody was less pleased than the Prince. He knit his heavy brows in a scowl as poor Vaucher sidled back to obscurity, and thought rapidly. His thoughts, and what he knew of the night's programme in the Jewish quarter of his city, carried him round to the stage door, with his surprised aide-de-camp at his heels.
Monsieur Vaucher, tearful and impotent, was at his service.
"Never before has she played me such a trick," he lamented. "Ill! Why, I have known her go on and make a success when she was ill enough to keep another woman in bed. It is a trick; she is not even at the hotel. No one knows where she is."
The Governor, his last interview with Truda fresh in his recollection, asked curt questions. He was a man of direct mind. In less time than one might have supposed from the condition of poor Vaucher, he had elicited some outstanding facts—the note which Truda had sent to the Jewish quarter among them. The keeper of the stage- door added the little he knew. Prince Sarasin turned to his aide.
"Dragoons," he ordered. "Half a squadron. I shall be at the barracks in ten minutes, when they must be ready. Go at once."
The aide-de-camp, who knew the Prince, recognized that this was an occasion for speed. When the Prince, mounted, arrived at the barracks, the dragoons were drawn up-awaiting him. He moved them off towards the Jewish quarter at the trot. The streets echoed their hoof-beats, and little time elapsed before they were on the skirts of the mob. The Prince spurred alongside a watching police-officer.
"A lady!" repeated the officer, in amazement. "I have seen no lady, your Excellency. But the principal—er—disorder is in the street behind the church. The Jews are making no resistance at all."
The Prince pushed on, and came with his dragoons at the rear of the mob. With a fine Russian callousness he thrust into it, his horses clearing a way for themselves and bowling men to right and left. The street was in darkness and resounded with violence. Standing in his stirrups and peering ahead, the Prince realized that he might ride Truda down without ever seeing her.
He leaned back and caught his aide-de-camp by the arm.
"We must have light," he shouted. "Dismount a dozen men and fire a house."
At the order, men swung from their saddles, and in a few minutes the house was ablaze; its windows, red with fire, cast a dancing glow on the tumult of the street. They pressed on, the fire sparkling on their accoutrements, and on the housetops cowering Jews broke into tremblings at a wild hope that here was salvation. The Prince peered anxiously about, unconcerned at all the savagery that was unloosened to each side of him. He did not pause to aid a woman dragged shrieking from a doorway by the hair, nor look back at that other scream when a dragoon, unmanned and overwrought, reined from the ranks and cut her assailant down.
At one point the crowd was thick about the gate of a walled courtyard, thundering on it with crowbars and axes; here, again, the Prince paused to look sharply among them, lest somewhere there might be a brown head and a pale clear-cut face that he sought. Even as he tightened his bridle, the gate gave rendingly; he turned his head as the mob, roaring, poured in. For the space of perhaps a second he sat motionless and stricken, but it was long enough to see what he never forgot—a woman, composed, serene, bright against her dark background in the shifting light of the burning house, gay in saffron and white. Then the mob surged before her and hid her, and his voice returned to him.
"Charge!" he roared, and tore his sword out.
The dragoons, eager enough, followed him; the courtyard overflowed with them as their great horses thundered in at the gate, and the long swords got to their work on that packed and cornered throng. There were swift bitter passages as the troopers cleared the place— episodes such as only Jews knew till then, ghastly killings of men who crawled among the horses' feet and were hunted out to be slaughtered. And in the middle of it, the Prince was on his knees, holding up a brown head in the crook of his arm, seeing nothing of the butchery at his elbow.
It was when the killing was done, and the dragoons were clearing the street, that there arrived on tiptoe Monsieur Vaucher, searching through tears for Madame. When he saw her he ceased to weep, but stood looking down, with his hands clasped behind his back.
"Dead?" he asked abruptly.
The Prince glanced up. "Yes," he answered.
"Ah!" Monsieur Vaucher pondered. "Who killed her?" he asked presently.
"Look!" said the Prince, and motioned with one hand to the dragoons' leavings, the very silent citizens who lay about on the flagstones.
"Ah!" said Vaucher again. "And to-morrow the world will ask for an account. It is not wise to destroy a great genius like this, here in a corner of your dirty town. That is what you have to learn."
"Yes," said the Prince. "We shall learn something now. She gave her life to teach it. There will be no more Judenhetze in this city."
"Her life to teach it," repeated Monsieur Vaucher. "She gave her life." His composure failed him suddenly, and he fell on his knees on the other side of what had been Truda Schottelius, weeping openly.
"She never failed," he said. "She never failed. A great artist,Monsieur, the Schottelius! She—she had the sense of climax!"
From the windows of the houses above them, scared curious Jews looked down uncomprehendingly.
In Manicaland, summer wears the livery of the tropics. At the foot of the hills north of Macequece every yard of earth is vocal with life, and the bush is brave with color. Where the earth shows it is red, as though a wound bled. The mimosas have not yet come to flower, but amid their delicate green—the long thorns, straight or curved like claws, gleam with the flash of silver. Palms poise aloft, brilliant and delicate, and under foot, flowers are abroad. The flame-blossom blazes in scarlet. The sangdieu burns in sullen vermilion. Insects fill the world with the noise of their business—spiders, butterflies, and centipedes, ants, beetles, and flies, and mysterious entities that crawl nameless under foot. A pea-hen shrieks in the grass, and a kite whistles aloft. A remote speck in the sky denotes a watchful vulture, alert for any mishap to the citizens of the woods, and a crash of twigs may mean anything from a buck to a rhinoceros. There is a hectic on the face of nature.
The trader of Last Notch went homewards to his store through such a maze of urgent life, and panted in the heat. He had been out to shoot guinea-fowl, had shot none and expended all his cartridges, and his gun, glinting in the strong light as he walked, was heavy to his shoulder and hot to his hand. His mood was one of patient protest, for the sun found him an easy prey and he had yet some miles to go. Where another man would have said: "Damn the heat," and done with it, John Mills, the trader, tasted the word on his lips, forbore to slip it, and counted it to himself for virtue. He set a large value on restraint, which, in view of his strength and resolute daring, was perhaps not wholly false. He was a large man, more noticeable for a sturdy solidness of proportion than for height, and his strong face was won to pleasantness by a brown beard, which he wore "navy fash." His store, five big huts above the kloof known as Last Notch, was at the heart of a large Kafir population; and the natives, agriculturists by convention and warriors between whiles, patronized him very liberally. The Englishmen and Portuguese of the country held him in favor, and he enjoyed that esteem which a strong quiet man, who has proved himself to have reserves of violence, commonly wins from turbulent neighbors.
He was trying for a short cut home, and purposed to wade the Revue river wherever he should strike it. Over the low bush about him he could see his hills yet a couple of hours off, and he sighed for thirst and extreme discomfort. No one, he knew, lived thereabouts—no one, at least, who was likely to have whisky at hand, though, for the matter of that, he would have welcomed a hut and a draught of Kafir itywala. His surprise was the greater, then, when there appeared from the growth beside his path as white a man as himself, a tall, somewhat ragged figure—but rags tell no news at all in Manicaland— who wore a large black moustache and smiled affably on him.
He noted that the stranger was a fine figure of a man, tall and slim, with clear dark eyes and tanned face, and he saw, too, that he wore a heavy Webley on his right hip. The newcomer continued to smile as Mills scanned him over, and waited for the trader to speak first.
"Hullo!" said Mills at length.
"'Ullo!" replied the stranger, smiling still. He had a capital smile, and Mills was captivated into smiling in sympathy.
"Who may you be?" he asked agreeably; "didn't expect to meet no white men about here. Where's your boys?"
The tall man waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the coast, as though to imply that he had carriers somewhere in that part of the world.
"Yais," he said pleasantly. "An' you are Jone Mills, eh?"
"That's me," said Mills promptly, lowering the butt of his gun to the ground and resting both hands on the muzzle. The stranger started slightly, but did not cease to smile.
"I don't seem to know you," pondered Mills. "I can't fix you at all."
"Ah, but you will. Le' me see. Was it Beira, eh?"
Mills shook his head decidedly. "I never was in Beira," he said.
"Not Beira?" queried the stranger. "Oh, but surelee. No? Well,Mandega's, per'aps?"
"Mandega's? Yes, I was there for a bit. I had a block of claims on the ditch, next to old Jimmy Ryan's."
"Ah yais," said the tall man eagerly. "I know 'im. An' there you shoot the Intendente, not? That was ver' fine. I see you coom down all quiet, an' shoot 'im in the 'ead. It was done ver' naice, eh!"
Mills's face darkened. "He was robbin' me, the swine," he answered. "He'd been robbin' me for six months. But that's nobody's business but mine, and anyhow I didn't shoot him in the head. It was in the chest. An' now, who the blazes are you?"
"You do' know me?" smiled the stranger; "but I know you. Oh, ver' well. I see you ver' often. You see. My name is Jacques."
"Jack what?" demanded Mills.
"Not Jack—Jacques. Tha's all. All the people call me Frenchy, eh?You don' remember?"
"No," said Mills thoughtfully; "but then I seen a good many chaps, and I'd be like to forget some o' them. You doin' anything round here?"
The man who called himself Jacques held up a finger. "Ah, you wan' to know, eh? Well, I don' tell you. I fin' anything, I don' tell all the people; I don' blow the gaff. I sit still, eh? I lie low, eh? I keep 'im all for me, eh? You see?"
"Well, of course," agreed Mills; "struck a pocket, I suppose. I shouldn't have thought you'd have found much here. But then, of course, you're not going to give your game away. Where's your camp? I could do with a drink."
"Back there," said the Frenchman, pointing in the direction whence Mills had come. "'Bout five miles. You don' wan' to come, eh? Too far, eh?"
"Yes, I reckon it's too far," replied Mills. "I'm not more than four miles from my own kia now. You goin' on?"
"Yais," agreed the Frenchman. "I go a leetle bit. Not too far, eh!"
They moved on through the bush. Mills shifted his; gun from shoulder to shoulder, and suffered still from heat and sweat. His taller companion went more easily, striding along as Mills thought, glancing at him, "like a fox." The warmth appeared not to distress him in the least.
"By Jove," exclaimed the trader. "You're the build of man for this blooming country. You travel as if you was born to it. Don't the heat trouble you at all?"
"Oh no," answered the Frenchman carelessly. "You see, I come from a 'ot country. In France it is ver' often 'ot. But you don' like it, eh?"
"No," said the trader, with emphasis. "I was after pea-hen, or you wouldn't see me out this time o' the day. English chaps can't stand it."
"Eh?"
"English chaps can't stand it, I said," repeated Mills. "They mos'ly lie up till it's cooler."
"Ah yais."
They were now nearing the river. A steam rose over the bushes and spiraled into the air, and the hum of water going slowly was audible. A few minutes of walking brought them to its banks. The stream flowed greasily and dark, some forty yards wide, but in the middle it forked about a spit of sand not more than ten paces broad. It was a very Lethe of a river, running oilily and with a slumberous sound, and its reputation for crocodiles was vile.
Mills sat down and began to pull off his boots.
"As well here as anywhere," he said. "I'll try it, anyhow."
"I go back now," said the Frenchman. "Some day I come up an' see you, eh? You like that?"
"Come along any time," replied Mills cheerfully as he slung his boots across his shoulders. "You don't think that island's a quicksand, eh?"
The Frenchman turned and stared at it. "I do' know," he answered."Per'aps. You goin' to try, eh?"
"Yes, I'll have a shot at it. You can mos'ly trust yourself on 'em if you walk light an' quick. But we'll see."
The Frenchman watched him as he waded out. The black water reached no higher than his knees, but the ground was soft under foot, and he floundered anxiously.
"It sucks at you," he called. "It's all greasy."
He moved on, and came to the sand island.
"It's better here," he called. "I'll be all right now."
The Frenchman jumped to his feet.
"Look out!" he shouted, gesticulating violently. "You go down; walk off 'im!"
Mills glanced down, and saw that the creeping sand had him knee-deep. He dragged his right foot forth and plunged forward, but with the action his left leg sank to the crutch, and he only kept his balance with a violent effort.
The Frenchman danced on the bank. "Throw you' gun down," he shouted. "Throw you' boots down. You' in to the waist now. Push yo'self back to the water. Push hard."
He wrung his hands together with excitement.
Mills threw down his gun, and the sand swallowed it at once. He turned his head to the man at the bank.
"It's no good, chum," he said quietly. "I reckon you better take a shot at me with that revolver."
The sand was in his armpits. The Frenchman ceased to jump and wring his hands, and smiled at him oddly. Mills, in the midst of his trouble, felt an odd sense of outraged propriety. The smile, he reflected, was ill-timed—and he was sinking deeper.
"What you grinning at?" he gasped. "Shoot, can't you?"
"I coom pull you out," said the Frenchman, fumbling at the buckle of his belt, and he forthwith stepped into the water.
He waded swiftly to within five feet of the sinking man, and flung him the end of the belt. Mills failed to catch it, and the Frenchman shifted his feet cautiously and flung again.
"Now," he shouted as the trader gripped it, "catch 'old tight," and he started to drag him bodily forwards.
"Careful," cried Mills; "you're sinking!"
The Frenchman stepped free hastily, and strained on the belt again.Mills endeavored to kick with his entombed legs, and called a warningas his rescuer sunk in the sands. Thus they wrestled, and at lengthMills found his head in the water and his body free.
He rose, and they waded to the bank.
"Of all the quicksands I ever saw," said the trader slowly, as he sat down and gazed at the place that had so nearly been his grave, "that one's the worst."
"'Orrid," agreed the Frenchman, smiling amicably. "You was ver' near buried, eh?"
"Yes," said the trader thoughtfully. "I suppose anyone 'ud say you saved my life, Frenchy."
"Yea," replied the other.
"Exactly," said Mills. "Well there's my hand for you, Frenchy. You done me a good turn. I'll do as much for you one of these days."
"Eh?" said the Frenchman as he shook hands.
"You've got a nasty habit of saying 'Eh?'" retorted the trader. "I said I'd do as much for you one of these days. Comprenny?"
"Oh yais," smiled the Frenchman. "I think you will. Tha's all right."
"Well," said Mills, "I wish you'd come up and see me at my kia. Sure you can't come now?"
"Yais, I coom now," answered the other.
Mills stared. "'Fraid you can't trust me to go alone, are you?" he queried. "'Cause, if so——"
"Tha's all right," interrupted the Frenchman. "I coom now."
"Right you are," said Mills heartily. "Come along then!"
They strode off in the direction of the drift, Mills going thoughtfully, with an occasional glance at his companion. The Frenchman smiled perpetually, and once he laughed out.
"What's the joke?" demanded the trader.
"I think I do a good piece of business to-day," replied theFrenchman.
"H'm, yes," continued Mills suspiciously.
It was a longish uphill walk to the trader's store, and the night fell while they were yet on the way. With the darkness came a breeze, cool and refreshing; the sky filled with sharp points of light, and the bush woke with a new life. The crackle of their boots on the stiff grass as they walked sent live things scattering to left and right, and once a night-adder hissed malevolently at the Frenchman's heel. They talked little as they went, but Mills noticed that now and again his companion appeared to check a laugh. He experienced a feeling of vague indignation against the man who had saved his life; he was selfish in not sharing his point of view and the thoughts which amused him. At times reserve can be the most selfish thing imaginable, and one might as well be reticent on a desert island as in Manicaland. Moreover, despite the tolerant manners of the country, Mills was conscious of something unexplained in his companion— something which engendered a suspicion on general grounds.
The circle of big dome-shaped huts which constituted the store of Last Notch came into view against a sky of dull velvet as they breasted the last rise. The indescribable homely smell of a wood-fire greeted the nostrils with the force of a spoken welcome. They could hear the gabble of the Kafirs at their supper and the noise of their shrill, empty laughter.
"That's home," said Mills, breaking a long silence.
"Yais," murmured the Frenchman; "'ome, eh? Yais. Ver' naice."
"You may say what you like," continued the trader aggressively. "Home is something. Though never so 'umble, ye know, there's no place like home."
"Tha's all right," assented the other gaily. "I know a man name' Albert Smith, an' 'e sing that in the jail at Beira. Sing all the night till I stop 'im with a broom. Yais."
Mills grunted, and they entered the skoff kia—the largest of the huts, sacred to the uses of a dining-room. It contained two canvas chairs, a camp table, a variety of boxes to sit upon, and some picture-paper illustration on the mud wall. A candle in a bottle illuminated it, and a bird in the thatch overhead twittered volubly at their presence. Some tattered books lay in the corner.
They washed in the open air, sluicing themselves from buckets, and dressed again in clean dungarees in another hut.
"Skoff (food) 'll be ready by now," said Mills; "but I think a gargle's the first thing. You'll have whisky, or gin?"
The Frenchman pronounced for whisky, and took it neat. Mills stared.
"If I took off a dose like that," he observed, "I should be as drunk as an owl. You know how to shift it!"
"Eh?"
"Gimme patience," prayed the trader. "You bleat like a yowe. I said you can take it, the drink. Savvy? Wena poosa meningi sterrik. Have some more?"
"Oh yais," smiled the guest. "Ver' good w'isky, eh?"
He tossed off another four fingers of the liquor, and they sat down to their meal. The food was such as most tables in Manicaland offered. Everything was tinned, and the menu ran the gamut of edibles from roast capon (cold) to pate de foie gras in a pot. When they had finished Mills passed over his tobacco and sat back. He watched the other light up and blow a white cloud, and then spoke.
"Look here, Frenchy," he said, looking at him steadily; "I don't quite cotton to you, and I think it proper you should say a bit more than you have said."
"Eh!" queried the other, smiling.
Mills glowered, but restrained himself. "I want to know who you are, and I guess I mean to know too, so out with it!"
"Ah yais," replied the Frenchman, and removed his pipe from his mouth. He trimmed the bowl fastidiously with his thumb, smiling the while. Of a sudden he looked up, and the smile was gone. He gave Mills back a look as purposeful as his own.
"I'm the man that save' you in the river," he said meaningly.
"Well," began the trader hotly, but stopped.
"That's true," he answered thoughtfully, as though speaking to himself. "Yes, that's true. You've got me, Frenchy."
"Yais," went on the Frenchman, leaning forward across the table, and speaking with an emphasis that was like an insult. "You sink there in the sand. I stop and save you. I stop, you see, although the men from Macequece coom after me and want to kill me."
"But I don' run away; I don' say to you, 'I can' stop. You go down; you die.' I don' say that. I stop. I save you. An' now you say to me, 'Frenchy, 'oo the 'ell are you?' Yais."
Mills shrugged protestingly. The appeal was to the core of his nature; the demand was one he could not dishonor.
"I didn't say just that," he urged. "But what are the chaps fromMacequece after you for?"
"Tha's all right," replied the Frenchman with a wave of his hand."You say, 'Frenchy, I don' like you. Dam' you, Frenchy!' Ver' well.The men coom, you give me to them. They shoot me. Tha's all right;yais!"
He replaced his pipe and commenced again to smoke with an expression of weary indifference.
"I'm not that sort," said Mills. "I'm open to admit I didn't quite take to you—at first. I can't say fairer than that. But tell me what you done to rile the chaps. Did you kill a bloke, or what?"
"Jone Mills," said the Frenchman "Jone Mills shoot the Intendente at Mandega's. Kill 'im dead. Dead as pork. They don' chase Jone Mills. They don' wan' to shoot Jone Mills. No. Frenchy—po' ol' Frenchy—'e shoot a man in Macequece. Shoot 'im dead. Dead as pork. Then they all coom after 'im. Wan' to shoot 'im. An' po' ol' Frenchy, 'e stop to pull Jone Mills out of the river. 'E save Jone Mills. Jone squeak an' say, 'Shoot me quick befo' I choke.' But Frenchy stop an' pull 'im out. Yais. An' then they shoot Frenchy. Yais!" He blew a huge volume of smoke and lay back serenely.
"Look 'ere, Frenchy," cried Mills, stretching his hand across the table, "I'm in this. They won't catch you here, old son. Savvy? There's my hand for you."
"Eh?"
"There's my hand, I'm tellin' you. Shake hands, old son. You may be a hard case, but you did save my life, and it's up to me to see you through. We'll be able to call quits then."
The Frenchman rose with a serious face, and the two shook hands over the candle. The Frenchman held Mills's hand a moment longer.
"I know you," he said. "You do' know me. I trust you, Jone. I know yo' a good man."
He sat back again, and Mills turned matters over. In that rough community no man would own himself devoid of gratitude. "I'll do as much for you" was the common acknowledgment of a favor. It appeared to Mills that his new acquaintance might be a precious scoundrel, but that point was not at present in issue, and there remained a debt to be satisfied before he could raise it. The knowledge that Frenchy had shot a man did not trouble him in the least, so long as the accompanying circumstances and the motive were in accordance with the simple standards of Manicaland. Here came in the doubt, engendered by nothing more concrete or citable than a trifle of mystery in the man's manner, and some undefined quality that disagreed with the trader. He glanced over to him; the Frenchman was blowing rings of smoke and smiling at them. There was nothing in his face but innocent and boyish amusement.
"Gad, you're a cool hand!" exclaimed Mills. "How d'you reckon we better work it?"
"I do' know," replied the other indifferently.
"You don't, eh? Well, d'you think they'll follow you all night?"
"I don' think," said the Frenchman, with confidence and a swelling of his chest—"I don' think they wan' to meet me in the night. Not ver' naice eh? Leetle dangerous."
"H'm. You've got a bit of an opinion of yerself, anyhow. If that's all right, it'll be time enough to clear by daylight. Did you bolt just as you are—no niggers, no skoff, no anything?"
"No time," was the answer. "So I coom out-with-out everything. Just like this."
"I can get you a couple of niggers," mused Mills, "an' you'll want a gun. Then, with skoff for a fortnight, you ought to be up at the Mazoe before they find your spoor. What do you think?"
"I think i's ver' naice," smiled the other.
"Then we'll hamba lala" (go to sleep), said Mills rising. "I don't know how you feel, but I'm just done up."
A bed was soon fixed for the Frenchman, who retired with a light- hearted "goo' night." Mills, keeping full in view his guest's awkward position, and the necessity for packing him off at daylight, determined not to sleep. He went out of the kraal and listened to the night. It spoke with a thousand voices; the great factory of days and nights was in full swing; but he caught no sound of human approach, and returned to the huts to prepare his guest's kit for the departure. He found and partially cleaned an old rifle, and unpacked a generous donation of cartridges. Meal for the carriers, blankets and tinned meats for the Frenchman, were all at hand. Candles, a lantern, matches, gin, a pannikin, a pair of pots, and so on, soon completed the outfit. Packing is generally an interesting operation, and Mills was an expert in it. He forgot most of his perplexity and ill-ease as he adjusted the bundles and measured the commodities. He had the whole of the gear spread out on the floor of the skoff kia when a voice accosted him.
"You needn't bother no more, Jack," it said softly.
A man tiptoed in. He was short and lightly built, and carried a sporting rifle in his hand. His reddish moustache was draggled with dew and his clothes were soaked in it. He looked at Mills with gleeful blue eyes.
"Where's Frenchy?" he asked softly.
Mills labored to express surprise. "What're you talkin' about?" he demanded loudly.
"Don't shout, blast yer!" whispered the other vehemently. "We saw yer go up 'ere together, Jack, and nobody ain't gone away since. There's five of us, Jack, and we want that swine—we want 'im bad."
"What for?" asked Mills desperately, without lowering his voice.
The other made an impatient gesture for silence, but his words were arrested by a clamor in the yard. There were shouts and curses and the sound of blows.
"We've got him, Charley," shouted some one triumphantly.
The smaller man rushed out, and Mills followed swiftly. There was a blackness of moving forms in the open, and some one struck a match. The man called Charley stepped forward. Mills saw the face and hand of a man standing upright, brilliantly illuminated by the flame of the match; and on the ground three men, who knelt on and about a prostrate figure. One was busy with some cord. In the background stood Mills's Kafirs. The match burned down to the holder's fingers, and he dropped it.
"Well, Dave," said Mills, "what's the meanin' o' this game o' yours— comin' to a man's kia in the middle o' the night and ropin' his mate out o' bed?"
The man who had lit the match laughed. "That you, Jack?" he said. "Well, you wouldn't be so ready to call this bloke 'mate' if you knew what he'd been up to."
"The—swine!" commented Charley.
"Get a lantern," commanded Mills to the Kafirs. "What d'you mean?" he asked of the tall man.
"He shot a woman," said Dave. The tone was eloquent of the speaker's rage and disgust.
Mills stared open-mouthed. "A woman!" he gasped.
"A woman," replied Dave. "Shot her, as bold as the devil, on the street, in the daytime, and did a bolt for the bush. Every man that could put foot to the ground is out after him."
A kafir arrived then with the lantern Mills had designed for the Frenchman, and by its light he was able to see the faces of the men. They were all known to him. The man who was cording the prisoner's arms had seen his daring work at Mandega's. He knelt on the prostrate form as he worked, and the Frenchman's face showed like a waxen mask on the ground. Blood was running from a deep cut on his cheek.
"I save yo' life, Jone," he gasped.
"Shut up!" snapped one of the men, and struck him on the mouth.
"Here," protested Mills; "go slow, can't you, There's no call to bang him about."
They stared at him with astonishment. "Why, man," exclaimed Charley, "didn't we tell you he shot a woman?"
"What's that he said about savin' your life?" demanded Dave.
"He did," explained Mills. He told them the story, and they listened without sympathy.
"It was a bloomin' plucky thing to do," concluded the trader. "I'd ha' bin dead by now but for him, and I owe 'im one for it."
"Oh, nobody's sayin' he isn't plucky," said the man who had 'been tying the Frenchman's arms, as he rose to his feet. "He's the dare- devillist swine alive, but he's done with it now."
Dave came round and clapped Mills on the shoulder.
"It's worked you a bit soft, old man," he said. "Why, hang it all, you wouldn't have us let him go after shooting a woman, would you?"
"Oh! stow it," broke in one of the others. "If it wasn't that 'e's got to go back to Macequece to be shot, I'd blow his head off now."
"I'm not asking you to let him go," cried Mills. "But give the bloke a chance, give 'im a run for it. Why, I wouldn't kill a dog so; it's awful—an'—an'—he saved my life, chaps; he saved my life."
"But he shot a woman," said Charley.
That closed the case—the man had committed the ultimate crime.Nothing could avail him now. He had shot a woman—he must suffer.
"Jone," moaned the Frenchman—the cords were eating into his flesh—"Jone, I saved yo' life."
"Why couldn't you tell me?" cried Mills passionately; "why couldn't you trust me? I could ha' got you away."
"That'll do," interrupted Dave, thrusting Mills aside. "We'll trouble you for a drink and a bite, old boy, an' then we'll start back."
Mills led the way to the skoff kia in silence. There was food and drink still on the table, and the men sat down to it at once. The Frenchman lay in the middle of the kraal, bound; his captors' weapons lay at their feet. He was as effectually a prisoner as if their five barrels were covering him. Mills stood moodily watching the men eat, his brain drumming on the anguished problem of the Frenchman's life or death without effort or volition on his part.
"Got any more poosa, old boy?" asked Dave, setting down the whisky- bottle empty.
"Yes," said Mills thoughtfully. "Plenty." He shouted for a boy, and one came running.
"Go to the store-hut," ordered Mills slowly, "and bring a bottle of whisky." He spoke the "kitchen-Kafir" that every one in Manicaland understands.
"Yes, bass," said the native.
"But first," said Mills, still speaking slowly and quietly, "take a knife and cut loose the man on the ground. Quick!" The last word was a shout.
Dave sprang to his feet and stood motionless. The others were arrested in the action of rising or reaching their weapons. From the wall beside him Mills had reached a revolver and held them covered. The barrel moved over them, presenting its black threatful mouth to one after the other. It moved in jerks, but not without purpose. It held them all subject, and the first movement doomed.
"Jack!" cried Dave.
"Shut up!" commanded Mills. "Don't move now. For God's sake don't move. I'll shoot the first one that does."
"He shot a woman," they protested.
"He saved my life," said Mills. "Are you'all right, Frenchy?"
"Yais," came the answer, and with it the ghost of a laugh.
Mills did not look round, and the steady remorseless barrel still sailed to and fro across the faces of the men in the hut.
"Clear out, then," he shouted. "I'll only give you five minutes. You shot a woman. And, Frenchy——"
"Yais, Jone."
"This makes us quits, see?"
"Ver' good, Jone. Good-bye."
"Good-bye, Frenchy."
Dave ripped out a curse and shifted slightly. The barrel sprang round to him, and he froze into stillness.
"Don't do that again, Davy," warned Mills.
"You'll catch it hot for this," snarled one of them.
"Very like," replied the trader.
He counted a liberal five minutes by guess. He dared not look away from his men. At last he spoke.
"It was up to me, boys," he said with a sigh. "I couldn't do no less. If it 'ad been a man 'e shot I'd ha' kept you here all day. But I've done enough, I reckon, seein' it was a woman."
He dropped the revolver to the ground.
"Now!" he said.
They sat round and stared at him. For full a minute no one spoke. Mills gave them back their eyes gloomily, leaning with folded arms against the wall. Then Dave drew a long breath, a very sigh.
"Well, Jack," he said, shaking his head, "I didn't think it of you—I didn't indeed. A skunk like that! a woman-shooter, and a Frenchman! You didn't use to be like this."
"We're quits now, him and me," answered Mills. "He saved my life, and I'm satisfied. So if you've got anything to say—or do—then get it over."
Charley burst out at this in a fuss of anger. "You ought to be shot," he shouted. "That's all you're fit for."
"Charley's right," growled one of the others.
"Oh, cut it off," cried Dave impatiently; "we're not going to shootJack. But I guess we won't say we've lost the Frenchman yet."
He lowered his brows and turned his eyes on Mills.
"You an' him's quits, Jack," he said. "What do you think about it?"
Mills looked up slowly, like a man newly awaked from a dream.
"You might get a shot at him from the path," he answered musingly."That is, if he's keeping north. I'll show you the place."
"You don't think we'd have a chance of catching him?"
"Not a ghost," replied the trader decisively. "Once you get into the kloof, he's lost. All you can do is wait till he breaks cover down below, an' try a long shot. By God!" he cried with sudden energy, "I'll try a lick at him myself. We're quits now, the—the woman- shooter!"
He snatched a rifle and led the way, the others tumbling after him. Some hundred yards beyond the kraal the footpath dipped abruptly towards the valley, and at an angle of it there was to be gained a clear view of the bush beneath, where it surged at the foot of the hill and ran down the kloof; at the lower part of the kloof it ceased, and the ground was bare red earth for a space of some thousand yards. Mills sat down on a stone. Dave squatted beside him, and the others grouped themselves on adjacent boulders.
The sun was well into the sky by now—it was about six o'clock in the morning. The air was of diamond, and the chill of the night had already passed. The men glued their eyes on the bare patch and waited.
"Funny game you played up there," whispered Dave to the trader.
Mills nodded without speaking.
"I'm not blaming you," continued the other. "I reckon I understand, old boy. But are you goin' to shoot at him?"
"I am that," was the reply.
"Well, I hope you get him," said Dave. "The chaps'll forget the other business then. They didn't like it, you know—nobody would."
"It's not because I care for them or what they think——" beganMills.
"I know it's not," interrupted Dave. "You know all the ranges, I suppose?"
"Nine hundred yards to that black spot," said Mills. "The spot's a bit of a hole in the ground. Twelve hundred to the big boulder."
He rose off the stone he was sitting on and lay down on the path, belly under, and ran up the back sight of his rifle with care. Flinging back the bolt, he blew into the chamber and thrust a cartridge in; tested the air with a wet finger, and wriggled the butt home into his shoulder. Dave watched him in silence; Mills was, he knew, a good shot, and he was now preparing, with all the little tricks and graces of the rifle-range, to pull trigger on the man he had risked—nay, almost thrown away—his life to save from the consequences of an unspeakable crime.
"Ah!" breathed Mills, with an artist's luxurious satisfaction.
Down the valley a figure had broken from the bush, and was plainly to be seen against the red ground. The men on the hill flopped down and prepared to shoot.
"Don't fire," Dave warned the others. He was watching Mills. The trader's face bore no signs of his recent mental struggle. It carried no expression whatever, save one of cool interest, just touched with a craftsman's confidence. His barrel was steady as his head. The little figure below was moving over the rough ground towards the black spot. They could see its legs working grotesquely, like a mechanical toy.
"So," murmured Mills. "Now just a little farther. So!"
He fired.
There was no leap into the air, no tragic bound and sprawling tumble.The little figure in the valley fell where it was, and never moved.
Mills jerked open his breech.
"I'll bet that took him in the spine," he said.
From the open door of the galley, where the cross, sleepy cook was coaxing his stove to burn, a path of light lay across the deck, showing a slice of steel bulwark with ropes coiled on the pins, and above it the arched foot of the mainsail. In the darkness forward, where the port watch of the Villingen was beginning the sea day by washing down decks, the brooms swished briskly and the head-pump clacked like a great, clumsy clock.
The men worked in silence, though the mate was aft on the poop, and nothing prevented them from talking as they passed the buckets to and from the tub under the pump and drove their brooms along the planks. They labored with the haste of men accustomed to be driven hard, with the shuffling, involuntary speed that has nothing in it of free strength or good-will. The big German four-master had gathered from the boarding-houses of Philadelphia a crew representing all the nationalities which breed sailors, and carried officers skilled in the crude arts of getting the utmost out of it. And since the lingua franca of the sea, the tongue which has meaning for Swedish carpenters, Finn sail-makers, and Greek fo'c's'le hands alike, is not German, orders aboard the Villingen were given and understood in English.
"A hand com' aft here!"
It was the mate's voice from the poop, robust and peremptory. Conroy, one of the two Englishmen in the port watch, laid down the bucket he was carrying and moved aft in obedience to the summons. As he trod into the slip of light by the galley door he was visible as a fair youth, long-limbed and slender, clad in a serge shirt, with dungaree trousers rolled up to the knees, and girt with a belt which carried the usual sheath-knife. His pleasant face had a hint of uncertainty; it was conciliatory and amiable; he was an able seaman of the kind which is manufactured by a boarding-master short of men out of a runaway apprentice. The others, glancing after him while they continued their work, saw him suddenly clear by the galley door, then dim again as he stepped beyond it. He passed out of sight towards the lee poop ladder.
The silent, hurried sailors pressed on with their work, while the big barque purred through the water to the drone of wind thrusting in the canvas. The brooms were abaft of the galley when the outcry began which caused them to look apprehensively towards the poop without ceasing their business of washing down. First it was an oath in explosive German, the tongue which puts a cutting-edge on profanity; then the mate's roar:
"Is dat vat I tell you, you verfluchter fool? Vat? Vat? You don't understand ven I speak? I show you vat——"
The men who looked up were on the wrong side of the deck to make out what was happening, for the chart-house screened the drama from them. But they knew too well the meaning of that instantaneous silence which cut the words off. It was the mate biting in his breath as he struck. They heard the smack of the fist's impact and Conroy's faint, angry cry as he failed to guard it; then the mate again, bull- mouthed, lustful for cruelty: "Vat—you lift up your arm to me! You dog!" More blows, a rain of them, and then a noise as though Conroy had fallen or been knocked down. And after that a thud and a scream.
The men looked at one another, and nods passed among them. "He kicked him when he was down on the deck," the whisper went. The other Englishman in the watch swore in a low grunt and dropped his broom, meeting the wondering eyes of the "Dutchmen" and "Dagoes" with a scowl. He was white-haired and red-faced, a veteran among the nomads of the sea, the oldest man aboard, and the only one in the port watch who had not felt the weight of the mate's fist. Scowling still, as though in deep thought, he moved towards the ladder. The forlorn hope was going on a desperate enterprise of rescue.
It might have been an ugly business; there was a sense in the minds of his fellows of something sickening about to happen; but the mate had finished with Conroy. The youth came staggering and crying down the ladder, with tears and blood befouling his face, and stumbled as his foot touched the deck. The older man, Slade, saved him from falling, and held him by the upper arm with one gnarled, toil- roughened hand, peering at him through the early morning gloom.
"Kicked you when you was down, didn't he?" he demanded abruptly.
"Yes," blubbered Conroy, shivering and dabbing at his face. "With his sea-boots, too, the—the——"
Slade shook him. "Don't make that noise or he might kick you spine more," he advised grimly. "You better go now an' swab that blood off your face."
"Yes," agreed Conroy tremulously, and Slade let him go.
The elder man watched him move forward on shambling and uncertain feet, with one hand pressed to his flank, where the mate's kick was still an agony. Slade was frowning heavily, with a tincture of thought in his manner, as though he halted on the brink of some purpose.
"Conroy," he breathed, and started after the other.
The younger man turned. Slade again put his hand on Conroy's arm.
"Say," he said, breathing short, "is that a knife in your belt?"
Conroy felt behind him, uncomprehending, for the sheath-knife, which he wore, sailor fashion, in the middle of his back.
"What d'you mean?" he asked vacantly. "Here's my knife."
He drew it and showed it to Slade, the flat blade displayed in his palm.
The white-haired seaman thrust his keen old face toward Conroy's, so that the other could see the flash of the white of his eyes.
"And he kicked you, didn't he?" said Slade tensely. "You fool!"
He struck the knife to the deck, where it rattled and slid toward the scupper.
"Eh?" Conroy gaped, not understanding. "I don't see what——"
"Pick it up!" said Slade, with a gesture toward the knife. He spoke, as though he strangled an impulse to brandish his fists and scream, in a nasal whisper. "It's safe to kick you," he said. "A woman could do it."
"But——" Conroy flustered vaguely.
Slade drove him off with a wave of his arm and turned away with the abruptness of a man disgusted beyond bearing.
Conroy stared after him and saw him pick up his broom where he had dropped it and join the others. His intelligence limped; his thrashing had stunned him, and he could not think—he could only feel, like fire in his mind, the passion of the feeble soul resenting injustice and pain which it cannot resist or avenge. He stooped to pick up his knife and went forward to the tub under the head-pump, to wash his cuts in cold sea-water, the cheap balm for so many wrongs of cheap humanity.
It was an accident such as might serve to dedicate the day to the service of the owners of the Villingen. It was early and sudden; but, save in these respects, it had no character of the unusual. The men who plied the brooms and carried the buckets were not shocked or startled by it so much as stimulated; it thrust under their noses the always imminent danger of failing to satisfy the mate's ideal of seaman-like efficiency. They woke to a fresher energy, a more desperate haste, under its suggestion.
It was after the coffee interval, which mitigates the sourness of the morning watch, when daylight had brought its chill, grey light to the wide, wet decks, that the mate came forward to superintend the "pull all round," which is the ritual sequel to washing down.
"Lee fore-brace, dere!" his flat, voluminous voice ordered, heavy with the man's potent and dreaded personality. They flocked to obey, scurrying like scared rats, glancing at him in timid hate. He came striding along the weather side of the deck from the remote, august poop; he was like a dreadful god making a dreadful visitation upon his faithful. Short-legged, tending to bigness in the belly, bearded, vibrant with animal force and personal power, his mere presence cowed them. His gross face, the happy face of an egoist with a sound digestion, sent its lofty and sure regard over them; it had a kind of unconsciousness of their sense of humility, of their wrong and resentment—the innocence of an aloof and distant tyrant, who has not dreamed how hurt flesh quivers and seared minds rankle. He was bland and terrible; and they hated him after their several manners, some with dull tear, one or two—and Slade among them—with a ferocity that moved them like physical nausea.
He had left his coat on the wheel-box to go to his work, and was manifestly unarmed. The belief which had currency in the forecastle, that he came on watch with a revolver in his coat-pocket, did not apply to him now; they could have seized him, smitten him on his blaspheming mouth, and hove him over the side without peril. It is a thing that has happened to a hated officer more than once or ten times, and a lie, solemnly sworn to by every man of the watch on deck, has been entered in the log, and closed the matter for all hands. He was barer of defense than they, for they had their sheath- knives; and he stood by the weather-braces, arrogant, tyrannical, overbearing, and commanded them. He seemed invulnerable, a thing too great to strike or defy, like the white squalls that swooped from the horizon and made of the vast Villingen a victim and a plaything. His full, boastful eye traveled over them absently, and they cringed like slaves.
"Belay, dere!" came his orders, overloud and galling to men surging with cowardly and insufferable haste. "Lower tobsail—haul! Belay! Ubber tobsail—haul, you sons of dogs! Haul, dere, blast you! You vant me to come over and show you?"
Servilely, desperately, they obeyed him, spending their utmost strength to placate him, while the naked spirit of murder moved in every heart among them. At the tail of the brace, Conroy, with his cuts stanched, pulled with them. His abject eyes, showing the white in sidelong glances, watched the great, squat figure of the mate with a fearful fascination.
Eight bells came at last, signaling the release of the port watch from the deck and the tension of the officer's presence. The forecastle received them, the stronghold of their brief and limited leisure. The unkempt, weather-stained men, to whom the shifting seas were the sole arena of their lives, sat about on chests and on the edges of the lower bunks, at their breakfast, while the pale sunlight traveled to and fro on the deck as the Villingen lurched in her gait. Conroy, haggard and drawn, let the coffee slop over the brim of his hook-pot as he found himself a seat.
"Well, an' what did he punch ye for this time?"
It was old Slade who put the question, seated on a chest with his back against the bulkhead. His pot was balanced on his knee, and his venerable, sardonic face, with the scanty white hair clinging about the temples, addressed Conroy with slow mockery.
Conroy hesitated. "It was over coilin' away some gear," he said. Slade waited, and he had to go on. He had misunderstood the mate's order to coil the ropes on the pins, where they would be out of the way of the deck-washing, and he had flemished them down on the poop instead. It was the mistake of a fool, and he knew it.
Slade nodded. "Ye-es," he drawled. "You earned a punch an' you got it. But he kicked you, too, didn't he?"
"Kicked me!" cried Conroy. "Why, I thought he was goin' to kill me!Look here—look at this, will you?"
With fumbling hands he cast loose his belt and flung it on the floor, and plucked his shirt up so as to leave his side bare. He stood up, with one arm raised above his head, showing his naked flank to the slow eyes of his shipmates. His body had still a boyish delicacy and slenderness; the labor of his trade had not yet built it and thickened it to a full masculinity of proportion. Measured by any of the other men in the watch, it was frail, immature, and tender. The moving sunlight that flowed around the door touched the fair skin and showed the great, puffed bruises that stood on it, swollen and horrid, like some vampire fungus growing on the clean flesh.
A great Greek, all black hair and eyeball, clicked softly between his teeth.
"It looks like—a hell!" he said softly, in his purring voice.
"Dem is kicks, all right—ja!" said some one else, and yet another added the comment of a heavy oath.
Old Slade made no comment, but sat, balancing his hook-pot of coffee and watching the scene under his heavy white brows. Conroy lowered his arm and let the shirt fall to cover the bruises.
"You see?" he said to Slade.
"I see," answered the other, with a bitter twist of his old, malicious lips. Setting down the pot which he held, he stooped and lifted the belt which Conroy had thrown down. It seemed to interest him, for he looked at it for some moments.
"And here's yer knife," he said, reaching it to the youth, still with his manner of mockery. "There's some men it wouldn't be safe to kick, with a knife in their belts."
He and Conroy were the only Englishmen there; the rest were of the races which do not fight bare-handed. The big Greek flashed a smile through the black, shining curls of his beard, and continued to smile without speaking. Through the tangle of incomprehensible conventions, he had arrived at last at a familiar principle.
Conroy flushed hotly, the blood rising hectic on his bruised and broken face.
"If he thinks it's safe with me," he cried, "he'll learn different. I didn't have a chance aft there; he came on me too quick, before I was expecting him, and it was dark, besides. Or else——"
"It'll be dark again," said Slade, with intent, significant eyes fixed on him, "and he needn't be expecting you. But—it don't do to talk too much. Talk's easy—talk is."
"I'll do more than talk," responded Conroy. "You'll see!"
Slade nodded. "Right, then; we'll see," he said, and returned to his breakfast.
His bunk was an upper one, lighted and aired by a brass-framed port- hole. Here, when his meal was at an end, he lay, his pipe in his mouth, his hands behind his head, smoking with slow relish, with his wry old face upturned, and the leathery, muscular forearms showing below the rolled shirt-sleeves. His years had ground him to an edge; he had an effect, as he lay, of fineness, of subtlety, of keen and fastidious temper. Forty years of subjection to arbitrary masters had left him shrewd and secret, a Machiavelli of the forecastle.
Once Conroy, after seeming to sleep for an hour, rose on his elbow and stared across at him, craning his neck from his bunk to see the still mask of his face.
"Slade?" he said uncertainly.
"What?" demanded the other, unmoving.
Conroy hesitated. The forecastle was hushed; the seamen about them slumbered; the only noises were the soothing of the water overside, the stress of the sails and gear, and the irregular tap of a hammer aft. It was safe to speak, but he did not speak.
"Oh, nothing," he said, and lay down again. Slade smiled slowly, almost paternally.
It took less than eight hours for Conroy's rancor to wear dull, and he could easily have forgotten his threat against the mate in twelve, if only he had been allowed to. He was genuinely shocked when he found that his vaporings were taken as the utterance of a serious determination. Just before eight bells in the afternoon watch he went forward beneath the forecastle head in search of some rope-yarns, and was cutting an end off a bit of waste-line when the Greek, he of the curly beard and extravagant eyeballs, rose like a demon of pantomime from the forepeak. Conroy had his knife in his hand to cut the rope, and the Greek's sudden smile seemed to rest on that and nothing else.
"Sharp, eh!" asked the Greek, in a whisper that filled the place with dark drama.
Conroy paused, apprehending his meaning with a start.
"Oh, it's all right," he growled, and began to saw at the rope in his hand, while the Greek watched him with his fixed, bony smile.
"No," said the latter suddenly. "Dat-a not sharp—no! Look-a 'ere; you see dis?"
He drew his own knife, and showed it pointing towards Conroy in a damp, swarthy hand, whose knuckles bulged above the haft. His rough, spatulate thumb rasped along it, drawing from it the crepitation that proves an acute edge.
"Carve him like-a da pork," he said, in his stage-conspirator's whisper. "And da point—now, see!"
He glanced over his shoulder to be sure that none overlooked them; then, with no more than a jerk of his hand beside his hip, threw the keen blade toward the wooden door of the bo'sun's locker. It traveled through the air swiftly and stuck, quivering on its thin point, in the stout teak. The Greek turned his smile again for a moment on Conroy before he strode across and recovered it.
"You take 'im," he whispered. "Better dan your little knife—yais."
By the mere urgency of his proffering it the exchange was made, and Conroy found himself with a knife in his hand that fell through the strands of the manila line as though they had been butter, an instrument made and perfected for a murder.
"Yes, but look here——" he began, in alarm.
The broad, mirthless smile was turned on him.
"Just like-a da pork," purred the Greek, and nodded assuringly before he turned to go aft.
The bull-roar of the mate, who was awaiting his return with the rope- yarns, roused Conroy from a scared reverie over the knife. He started; the mate was bustling furiously forward in search of him, full of uproar and anger.
"Dam' lazy schwein, you goin' to schleep dere? You vant me to come an' fetch you?? You vant anodder schmack on de maul to keep you avake—yes?"
He stamped into view round the forward house, while Conroy stood, convicted of idleness by the rope in his hand only half cut through. At the same moment a population of faces came into being behind him. A man who had been aloft shuffled down to the rail; a couple of others came into view on the deck; on top of the house, old Slade kneeled to see under the break of the forecastle head. It seemed as though a skeptical audience had suddenly been created out of his boast of the morning, every face threatening him with that shame which vanity will die rather than endure. In a panic of his faculties he took one step toward the mate.
"Hey?" The mate halted in his stride, with sheer amazement written on his face. "You vant yer head knocked off—yes?"
"No, I don't," said Conroy, out of a dry mouth.
According to the usage of ships, even that was defiance and a challenge.
He had forgotten the revolver with which the mate was credited; he had forgotten everything but the fact that eyes were on him. Even the knife in his hand passed from his mind; he was a mere tingling pretence at fortitude, expending every force to maintain his pose.
"Put dat knife avay!" ordered the mate suddenly.
He arrested an automatic movement to obey, fighting down a growing fear of his opponent.
"I've not finished with it yet," he answered.
The mate measured him with a practiced eye. Though he had the crazy courage of a bulldog, he was too much an expert in warlike emergencies to overlook the risk of trying to rush a desperate man armed with a knife, the chances of the grapple were too ugly. There was something lunatic and strange in the youth's glare also; and it will sometimes happen that an oppressed and cowed man in his extremity will shrug his meekness from him and become, in a breath, a desperado. This had its place in the mate's considerations.
"Finish, den!" he rasped, with no weakening of his tone or manner. "You don't t'ink I'm goin' to vait all night for dem rope-yarns— hey?"
He turned his back at once lest Conroy should venture another retort, and make an immediate fight unavoidable. Before his eye the silent audience melted as swiftly as it had appeared, and Conroy was alone with his sick sense of having ventured too far, which stood him in place of the thrill of victory.
The thrill came later, in the forecastle, where he swelled to the adulation of his mates. They, at any rate, had been deceived by his attitude; they praised him by word and look; the big Greek infused a certain geniality into his smile. Only Slade said the wrong thing.
"I was ready for him as soon as he moved," Conroy was asserting. "And he knew it. You should ha' seen how he gaped when I wouldn't put the knife away."
The men were listening, crediting him. Old Slade, in the background, took his pipe from his lips.
"An' now I suppose you're satisfied," he inquired harshly.
"How d'you mean, satisfied?" demanded Conroy, coloring. "You saw what happened, didn't you?"
"You made him gape," said Slade. "That was because he made you howl, eh? Well, ain't you calling it quits, then—till the next time he kicks you?"
Some one laughed; Conroy raised his voice.
"He'll never kick me again," he cried. "His kicking days are over.He's kicked me once too often, he has. Quits—I guess not!"
Slade let a mouthful of smoke trickle between his lips; it swam in front of his face in a tenuous film of pale vapor.
"Well, talkin' won't do it, anyhow," he said.
"No," retorted Conroy, and collected all eyes to his gesture. "But this will!"