CHAPTER XXI
The days were getting warmer. Rio stopped by Martin’s house in the early afternoon and together they walked to the Battery where they sat down on a bench out of the sun. People were pouring in and out of the Aquarium. Boats leaving for Bedloe’s Island whistled and grunted against the docks. Liberty herself, as statuesque as ever, shone from her spring cleaning and seemed to hold her torch still higher and more independently.
Turning away from the water, Rio glanced at Martin’s hand, his attention called to it, perhaps, by a ray of sunlight which fell slantingly upon a flat block of black onyx with a point of ruby in one corner which Martin wore upon his middle finger.
“I’ve always wanted to ask you about that funny ring you got there,” said Rio, yawning. “Where’d you find it?”
Martin twisted the ring until it caught the sun more evenly before he spoke.
“In the Red Sea,” he finally replied.
“Sounds like somethin’ back of it,” persisted Rio.
“There is.” Martin locked his hands around one kneeand leaned forward in an attitude of tenseness. “The year before I met you, Rio, I got hurt on the oldSilver Cross. She’s being scrapped now, and this was when she made her last trip to the East. I was pretty bad in the Indian Ocean, and the weather didn’t help any. I was worse at Aden; and they had to take me off at Massaua. When I was getting well I met a fellow named Nahrinja who was agent for a man who owned a pearl-fishing fleet. I wanted to get out on one of the boats to see how the boys went about it. So when I was better he gave me a knock-down to one of the Arab skippers and we set out.
“The Sudanese divers all seemed to like me, for I took to their native lute as though I’d played it all my life. In a few days I could do their ancient chants on the tamboura—somehow, understanding this sad, lost music. One Sudanese in particular, a boy named Sali, used to squat silently on the deck and watch me by the hour.
“We were after the finest pearl—the bilbil. And one morning Sali and I launched his dugout and piled in, the natives laughing a good deal, for I wasn’t used to their tipsy little pirogues. I paddled, while Sali looked through a glass-bottomed box for a good spot. When he found it, he went over the side with a weight to a depth of forty or fifty feet, while I watched through the box to see if he was all right and kept a lookout for shark. I had tried it once, myself, in shallower water and had got nicely stung by a poison fish for my efforts. Sali had many such scars and seemed used to it. But he told me tobe careful of the giant clams, careful of the coral and particularly leery of the whip-tail ray, which can give you a bad cut with their barb.
“Sali worked more than he should; but he brought back good oyster. I was having a hell of a good time in spite of the stinks, and looked like one of the divers with my loincloth and my skin crusted with salt. Then it happened.” Martin looked at his ring again and continued.
“Sali had just left the ocean bed when I saw a black fin circle the bow of the boat. From his back, the shark was a big one. I began smacking the water with an iron pole, trying to frighten him away or attract his attention to the other side of the dugout, and to warn Sali, who was coming up fast.
“But just as the boy hit the surface, the shark struck him and Sali’s head went under. I jumped over the side and got him by the hair. When I brought him above water and could see his face, it looked as though it were frozen. He didn’t say anything or make any effort, and I couldn’t get him in the canoe; but when I clamped his hand on the gunwhale he held to it like a child, and I climbed into the boat by the stern, hoping the beast wouldn’t come back till I’d pulled the lad in. Finally, I got him by the wrist and managed to haul him in without capsizing. He looked down at his body at the place where his leg had been, for it was off high up next the hip. Then he looked at me and smiled, while two bigtears ran down his cheeks.” Martin stopped again and choked. “I hope, Rio, it was because he was shocked out of his wits. I stripped off my loincloth and tried, as only a desperate man can do, to get a tourniquet around a place where I didn’t even have a stub to work on. At last, I started to shove my fist up the hole where the blood was spurting; and then, realizing that I was going mad myself, I grabbed a paddle and headed for the mother-boat like a demon. A pretty picture, eh, Rio?” said Martin bitterly. “A naked white man, as bloody by this time as the Sudanese, racing through the Red Sea with a dying boy who thought I could make him live—for that was what he kept saying all the time.”
“Cut it,” said Rio, his face hard. “Did you get him to the boat alive?”
“Yes,” answered Martin. “The nakhuda and another Arab hoisted him aboard and we laid him on the deck, out of the sun, with his head propped up. There were only minutes left, with nothing to do but magic; so I rubbed his wrists and whispered the Lord’s Prayer to him. It sounded all right on that blistering deck, or must have done so, for Sali kept smiling and repeating the words—the sound of the words after me.... ‘Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.’ ... Then his face changed—I saw it coming. He spoke thinly to the nakhuda, who knelt down and cut the string around the boy’s neck which held this amulet.” Martinpointed to the charm on his finger. “Sali took it, and with that hopeless, sweet trust glazed on his eyes forever, held it out to me that death-like second before death.”
Martin cleared his throat and looked down at the grass.
After watching him for a moment Rio said quietly, “That’s the last time I’ll ever ask about a ring. I done it once before, and I ought to know better.”
“What happened?” asked Martin.
Rio took his time, and scanned the harbor before he spoke.
“I shipped out of Liverpool,” he said at last, “because I had to once, on a vessel bound for the Solomon Islands. My watch partner looked like a Limey, but he was a shanty Irishman from Philadelphia. I never could quite make ’im out. We had two hours in Lisbon on the trip South, and he give a kid two bits American to get off a spittoon in a Portugee gin mill. He told me it made him nervous, seein’ a boy sit like that. Well, we had some sour wine and some biscuits before I seen his ring. It was a wide gold band on his left middle finger, and somehow I asked him about it. He grinned and looked pretty sick; but he said it was for Maud. I took another drink and lit up a cigarette because I couldn’t see no woman withhim. He called himself ‘Philadelphia Dick,’ but the city would’ve killed ’im for it, since he was the ugliest bastard I ever seen, with a skin like tripe and a red eyelid that hung down like a lantern over his left eye. He knowed I didn’t believe that Maud stuff, and thatdamned eyelid dropped down like he was laughin’ at me, while he chewed on a biscuit with the ring wigglin’ all the time under his Harp nose.
“We sailed, soon after, for undetermined cargo on the Solomon’s. Every man of us got fed up after we got there, for it was ‘lay to, and wait for orders.’ We had the ship so clean she ached, and finally we got shore-leave. The second engineer hammered me out a barb and Chips fixed an ironwood shaft for me, so I had a good harpoon to try on the bass and some red trout I seen around there. Philadelphia Dick grinned and looked sick again when he heard I was goin’ fishin’; but he and a couple of other sailors come along.
“It was a small atoll I picked near the mainland; so we rolled up our pants and waded to the belt of coral to have a look at the lagoon. The water was still; but all the fish I could see was small for my spear. One of the boys though, who was standin’ between me and Dick, slapped me on the arm and reached quick for the harpoon; and then I could see the water break a ways out, and a turtle come up from the shallows. It was a big one—about three hundred pounds—and we all got down on our knees and stayed quiet, except Philadelphia Dick. He stood there with his jaw droppin’ and his skin turnin’ so red that his loose eyelid hung down, limp and white, like a blossom.
“The turtle waded up pretty slow, takin’ its own damned way like they always do, till the guy that hadmy spear seen it was time. He jumped up and run toward the creature, raisin’ his arm to let the turtle have it through the eye. But he never made it,” Rio added slowly. “Philadelphia Dick hit him in the cheek and then in the nose, which broke so we could all hear it snap—even the damned turtle, who crawled on up like nothin’ had happened. Well, we stood there like a bunch of god-damned fools, like the guy who’d been clipped, while the turtle come on till she stood right in front of Philadelphia Dick. By God!—they watched each other till it made us feel in the way somehow, and we got the hell out of there. Once, the guy with the bloody face turned round and looked back at Dick and the turtle. ‘She took his eye, Rio,’ he said to me, funny-like. And I said, ‘Yeah—that’s Maud.’ ‘Maud?’ he said, still lookin’ funny, and we went back to the ship.
“Philadelphia Dick didn’t come back that night; but a native brought ’im alongside the next mornin’ and he come up the Jacob’s ladder like a snake. The Chinee cook seen ’im first and turned green. For Dick’s eyelid was down to his cheek like it had been sewed there, and his good eye was too cold for a man. But the worst thing was the look of his Irish nose that had been tilted up for thirty-five years—till then—but that had bent overnight into a hook as sharp as the creature’s we was all thinkin’ of. By the mercy of God, we sailed that evenin’ for Sarawak. Philadelphia Dick was at the steam winch when I seen ’im last; but five minutes later nobody could find’im on the ship. When we got to Borneo the Devil himself must’ve reversed our sailing orders; for we was sent back to the Solomons, though the sailors hadn’t no stomach for it, I can tell you. The galley boy, more scared than silly, said somethin’ about Maud, and got the back of the hand from one of the men. Most of us, though, took this jinx along with the bugs and the sour bread; but we was all steppin’ like the Chief’s cat when we hove to about the place where Philadelphia Dick had jumped ship. We was all by the rail expectin’ somethin’, and we got it. A couple of turtles drifted in about midships and out of the long green we watched two beaks come up. One was Maud, the other a stranger. The god-damned Chinee cook yelled out and pointed. I seen the fella—a wide blue turtle with a heavy, forward shell. He scratched Maud (who looked pretty wise) with his right flipper and lifted the other one at us. The damned Chinee yelled again and we seen why; for there was a gold band like a barrel hoop, high up on that blue turtle’s port leg, where no human hand could’ve put it.” Rio stopped.
“And then?” asked Martin.
“And then a film come over that fella’s left eye and dropped down like our shipmate’s—and sure enough, there was Philadelphia Dick, hatin’ our guts, but tickled; and with all of us lookin’ on and wonderin’, he winked at us again and sounded, with his arm under Maud’s belly.”
Rio cleared his throat and looked out at the water. For a few minutes, the two men remained quiet until Rio, glancing at Martin, saw that his friend was hunched forward, his head down, still staring at the grass, and that his eyes were wet.
“For God’s sake, Martin,” he said.
Martin put his hand under his chin and regarded the other with a look so brief and yet so haunting that Rio held his tongue.
A Green Circle ship was leaving the harbor. The wordNOMADwas painted on her bow.
“I made a trip on her one time,” said Rio, pointing, and changing the subject deliberately. “Old Hungry was the steward. God! What food!”
Martin straightened up and leaned back against the hard, wooden bench.
“I never saw you when you couldn’t eat,” he said, smiling a little.
“This wasn’t no different,” replied Rio, grinning with satisfaction. “I got chummy with the galley boy and lived handsome. I ate the Old Man’s oranges and drank the chief engineer’s ale.”
Martin looked amused.
“Did the kid supply you with romance, too?” he asked.
Rio regarded him strangely.
“No,” he stated, after a moment, “but that brings somethin’ to mind. Maybe you know the answer, my educated friend.”
“Perhaps,” said Martin, in a dry tone.
Rio shifted his position, moving back out of the sun.
“I was in Santa de Marina last trip, as you know,” he said. “There was a girl, and a boy.” He stopped talking abruptly and removed his cap long enough to wipe away the perspiration which had gathered on the band. “By God, I can’t finish it!” he added vehemently.
Martin was silent.
Rio thought for a moment, then sighed and went on.
“Yeah, it’s hard tellin’. There was somethin’ funny about the girl. Funny in a nice way. And she was screwy, too.” He wrinkled up his nose. “She made me dance pretty, but I could see she wasn’t tryin’ to.”
“In the Street of Curtains?” asked Martin.
“Yeah. But she don’t belong there,” said Rio, his voice rising. “I don’t believe I’ll leave her there.”
“That sounds just right,” observed his friend.
“You ain’t heard the story,” said Rio quietly.
“That’s right. The boy?”
Rio shook his head.
“He’s tougher to figure than his sister.”
Martin glanced up, interested for the first time.
“His sister was the girl?”
“His sister was the girl,” repeated Rio. “The boy—well—I never knowed no kid like him—” He stopped and stared at his friend. “Unless——”
“Unless it was myself, Rio?” supplied Martin, a hard smile on his lips.
“Since you’ve said it—yeah.” Rio looked out at the harbor again. “I give the girl all the money I had, and went back to the ship with the boy. On the way, there was a tree in flower—” He turned sharply on Martin and took hold of his shoulder. “Say,” he said in a low, intense voice, “what the hell’s wrong with me, Martin? By God, I want the truth!”
Martin could see astonishment and resentment in Rio’s face; also a desperate sense of fear.
“There isn’t anything wrong with you, Rio,” he said calmly. “I’ve been afraid, too. And I’ve been sick with anger at the extremes. But if God Almighty granted you one precious moment, as I believe He did, and you didn’t spend it, you can get down on your damned knees with the rest of the dilettantes and say your A B C’s to Heaven the rest of your life without getting another.” Martin’s face was now so flushed with an anger he could not understand that it was as dark as Rio’s.
The frown had left Rio’s face. Infinitely puzzled, yet reassured, he stared at his friend.
“You can still talk, can’t you, Martin? You can still make me believe you. Yeah, even when you lie, you make me feel better.”
“Yes,” said Martin, “I can still talk. For I have a problem myself. Perhaps you can help me with it.”
“Shoot,” said Rio, relief in his voice.
“It’s about Carol. I’ll try to make it quick for I know you don’t like him.”
“D’you?”
“Never mind about that. Here’s the point. Things are getting a little mixed up in our fashionable set. Drew kept down the friction, but he went away and I can’t say that I blame him.”
Rio grinned.
“He didn’t cut down the friction on me,” he said, patting his back and grimacing. “But I’m not sore at him.” Rio laughed out loud. “He’s too damned pretty. Anyway, what about Carol?”
Martin leaned over and spoke confidentially.
“I can’t tell you now, but I saw it,” he said, in a low voice. “Carol’s bound for it,” he went on moodily. “What a shame!”
Rio swung around to stare at his friend. His own mouth was open, and his soft brown eyes were as wide, as honest and as startled as those of a besieged mare.
“I’ll be god-damned!” he whispered, and turned away from Martin to stare out to sea. He stuck out his tongue and pulled at his ears. Then, after a moment, he settled back on the bench and regarded Martin with a worried expression. The sun disappeared behind a sailboat and in the bay, Liberty grew darker. A salt wind came up from the harbor and the shadow of the Aquarium now covered all that section of the Battery.