TEN THOUSAND POUNDS REWARD.Runyon Rufe, Banker and Company Promoter, wanted for gigantic frauds in connection with the Invincible Building Society, the Greater London Finance Syndicate, Suburbs Limited, and other undertakings. Fled to the United States, where he had previously put by sums aggregating two hundred thousand pounds; resisted extradition; forfeited his bail; was traced to Portland, Oregon, and thenceto Penrhyn Island, South Pacific, where all clews as to his whereabouts were lost.Aged sixty-three; height, five feet nine inches; imposing appearance; weight, fifteen stone and over; fair complexion; brown eyes, with bushy, gray eyebrows; scanty gray hair; of a plethoric habit, and with a noticeable hesitancy of speech. When last seen was well supplied with money, and was heard declaring his intention of making his way toward the lesser-traveled islands of the Pacific Ocean.The above reward, in whole or in part, will be paid by Houghton & Cust, No. 318 George Street, Sydney, New South Wales, on receiving information that will lead to the arrest of the said Runyon Rufe.Traders and others are cautioned against harboring the fugitive, or aiding and abetting his escape from the officers of justice.
TEN THOUSAND POUNDS REWARD.
Runyon Rufe, Banker and Company Promoter, wanted for gigantic frauds in connection with the Invincible Building Society, the Greater London Finance Syndicate, Suburbs Limited, and other undertakings. Fled to the United States, where he had previously put by sums aggregating two hundred thousand pounds; resisted extradition; forfeited his bail; was traced to Portland, Oregon, and thenceto Penrhyn Island, South Pacific, where all clews as to his whereabouts were lost.
Aged sixty-three; height, five feet nine inches; imposing appearance; weight, fifteen stone and over; fair complexion; brown eyes, with bushy, gray eyebrows; scanty gray hair; of a plethoric habit, and with a noticeable hesitancy of speech. When last seen was well supplied with money, and was heard declaring his intention of making his way toward the lesser-traveled islands of the Pacific Ocean.
The above reward, in whole or in part, will be paid by Houghton & Cust, No. 318 George Street, Sydney, New South Wales, on receiving information that will lead to the arrest of the said Runyon Rufe.
Traders and others are cautioned against harboring the fugitive, or aiding and abetting his escape from the officers of justice.
I read it three times and then handed it back.
"Show me where to sign," says I.
"We have to go through the disagreeable formality of searching these premises," said Mr. Phelps, disregarding my joke, "and if you have no objections we shall begin now!"
"And suppose Ididhave an objection?" I asked.
"We'd search them just the same," said Mr. Phelps, grinning.
I was in two minds what to do; but I noticed the bookkeeper's lip was cut, and there was dried blood on Mr. Nettleship's knuckles, and it didn't seem good enough. I saw they had begun on Tom first, and that decided me to take water with my formality.
"Walk in," says I.
They didn't wait for a second asking, and a minute later were poking and rummaging all through the place. They thought I might have hid him somewheres, and turned over everything to that end, not opening as much as a chest or pulling out a single drawer. It wasn't much pleasure to look on and see them doing it, but I had to take my medicine, and it was common sense to appear cheerful about it. They crawled into all kinds of places, and backed out of all kinds of others, and tapped the walls to see if any was hollow, and turned over sacks of pearl shell and copra, and sneezed and swore and burrowed and choked, till at last Mr. Phelps really found something, and that was a centipede that bit him. This brought them all out on the front veranda again, where I had to pretend I was sorry, which I was—for the centipede.
I asked what they were going to do next, and they said, "Get aboard and bathe it with ammoniar"; and I said, "No, I meant about Runyon Rufe"; and Mr. Phelps he give me a wicked look, and said that they'd lay him by the legs before long, together with a few white trading gentlemen, maybe, to keep him company; and I said, "Oh, dear, I hope that isn't any insinuation against present company!" and he said, "the present company might put the cap on if it fitted them"; and I said "if he couldn't keep a civil tongue in hishead he had better get off my front stoop"; and he said "he wouldn't demean himself by bandying words with a beach-comber," and went off sucking his hand, with the others crowding around him, and asking him how it felt now.
I suspicioned there had been a leak somewheres, and was surer than ever when Tom came around with his eye bunged up where Nettleship had hit him. And it certainly looked black that they made no appearance of moving, raising an awning over the quarter-deck, and bringing up tables and swinging hammocks like it was for a week. The pastor had told Tom that one of the children had reckonized Old Dibs's photograph, and clapped his hands before he could be stopped, crying out, "Ona! Ona!" the name Old Dibs went by among the Kanakas.
We put in a pretty anxious day, for they began a systematic prowl all over the island, obviously dividing out the territory and doing it simultaneous. That night they set a watch on my house and Tom's, the news coming in from Iosefo, who had spies out watching them. It was regular wheels within wheels, and I couldn't but wonder how poor Old Dibs was faring up his tree, waiting and waiting for us to come!
The next day they prowled harder than ever, this time the crew joining in, mate, cook, cabin boy, and four hands. Like was natural, they mademe and Tom's first—the crew, I mean—and we both had the same happy thought, square-face. The mate went off with only three drinks in him, taking the cabin boy with two, but the rest of them sucked it in by the bucket, and the fartherest any of them got away was a hundred yards, and him with a bottle in his hand. They were a pretty ugly crowd by nightfall, refusing to go back to the ship when ordered, and roaring and yelling about the settlement to all hours. The afterguard still kept tab on me and Tom, however, and so yet another night passed without our daring to make our date with Old Dibs. But in the morning they lost all patience, rounding up the crew with handspikes, and all going off to the schooner with half of them in irons. Phelps and Nettleship helped to get up anchor themselves, and toward nine o'clock we had the blessed sight of their heels, beating out of the lagoon against a stiff trade.
It was hard to have to wait the balance of the day doing nothing, for we might need the tree idea again, and it would have been a mug's game to have given away the secret to the Kanakas. Tom and me both felt considerable rocky, besides, from having drunk so much gin with the schooner's people; for though we had held back all we could, and had tipped our glasses on the sly, we couldn't seem too behindhand in whooping it up with them. But we were dead dogs now all right, and the mainpart of breakfast and dinner was the buckets of water we poured over each other's heads. It was what you might call a very long day, and it seemed like the sun would never set, for we were both of us in a sweat about Old Dibs, and more than anxious how he had made out.
Then sundown came, and dusk, and night itself, and still another long spell for the Kanakas to go to sleep, which it seemed as though they never would. Yes, a long day, and a long, long evening, and it was like a whole week had passed before we stood under the tree and owly-owled to Old Dibs.
It was a mighty faint answer he gave back, and when me and Tom had rigged up the chair again we found we had a sick man on our hands. The exposure had nearly done for him; that, and the fear of being caught, and all the water having leaked out of the demijohn, which he had stood on its side the better to hide it. He was that weak he could hardly sit up, and was partly off his nut, besides, wanting to telephone at once to Longhurst, and mixing up Tom with the Public Prosecutor.
He would put his poor old trembling hand across his forehead like he was trying to wipe all this away, saying, "Is that you, Tom Riley?" and, "Bill, Bill," like that. It was no easy matter to get him down, for he almost needed to be lifted into the boatswain's chair, and couldn't as much asraise a little finger to help himself or hold on, and once we nearly spilled him out altogether. Fortunately, my old girl had brought some hot coffee in a beer bottle, and this was just like pouring new life down his throat. Our first business was to get him home and tuck him in, returning and making a second trip of the treasure, and winding up all serene about two in the morning, with Old Dibs sitting up in bed and eating fried eggs.
When Iosefo reported next morning, Old Dibs paid him a hundred dollars and dispensed with his services, saying that though he'd always be glad to see him around as a friend, he had no more call to keep him sitting on the chest. This made Tom and me feel good, for it showed he trusted us now, which he had never quite done before. In a day or two he was almost as lively as ever, out in the graveyard playing on his flute, and attending to church work on committee nights the same as before.
But there was a big change in him for all that, and me and Tom got it into our heads that he wasn't going to live very long, for he had that distressed look on his face that showed something wrong inside. He used to run on talking to himself half the night, and once he burst in to where I was asleep, saying he had seen me at the treasure chest, prizing off the lid, and what did I mean by it? After having lived together so long andcomfortable, it wasn't very pleasant to see him going crazy on us—and going crazy that way—being suspicious we meant to rob and kill him, and all of us being in a conspiracy. He told the pastor he was afraid of his life of Tom and me, and if it wasn't for Iosefo he would be fearful to stay in my house a minute; and he told Tomhewas the only friend he had; and then said the same to me, warning me against Tom and Iosefo, saying they were at the winder every night trying to break in. And all this, maybe, on the very self-same day, the three of us comparing notes and wondering where it was all going to end.
It ended sooner than any of us expected; for one morning, when Sarah went to take him his coffee, his door was locked, and for all our hammering we couldn't raise a sound. I broke it in at last, expecting that he'd rise up and shoot me, and dodging when it went inward with a crash. But there was nobody to shoot, the room being stark empty, and the only thing of Old Dibs his clothes on a chair. We were at a loss what to do, and waited for half an hour, thinking he might turn up. Then, real uneasy in our minds, we went out to look for him. He wasn't anywhere near the house or the beach, and as a last resort we went across the island to the graveyard, thinking perhaps he had taken it into his head to have a before-breakfast tootle on the flute. We found him, sure enough, in themiddle of the graveyard, but laying forward in his old crimson dressing gown, dead.
Yes, sir, cold to the touch like it had been for hours, and holding a blackened lantern in his poor old fist—dead as dead—face down in the coral sand. We rolled him over to do what we could for him, but he had passed to a place beyond help or hurt. I went back for Tom in a protuberation, saying, "My God! Tom, what do you think's happened?—Old Dibs's dead in the graveyard!" I guess the old man had never been so close to Tom as he had been to me, boarding in my house and almost a father to me and the wife, for Tom took it awful cool, and asked almost the first thing about the money.
"You and me will divide on that," he says.
"Sure," I says, "but that can stand over till afterwards, Tom."
"Stand over, nothing!" he says, very sharp; and with that we both set off running for my house.
It was a jumpy thing to enter that darkened room, with the feeling you couldn't shake off that Old Dibs was peering in at us, and that every minute we'd hear his footstep, everything laid out just as he had last touched them, and almost warm, even to his slippers and his collar and the old hat against the wall. But it made no more difference to Tom than if it had been his own hat, and hetramped in like a policeman, saying, "Where is it, Bill?"
"In one of them two camphor-wood chests," says I.
He lifted up one of them by the end and let it fall ker-bang!
"Not here," says he.
"Try the other," says I, with a sudden sinking.
He let that crash, too, and turning around, looked me in the face.
"Good God, Tom!" said I.
"Just what I suspected all along," said Tom, as savage as a tiger. "He's made way with it!"
We didn't stop to speak another word, but rummaged the whole room upside down.
"He's buried it," says Tom, savager than ever, "and what kind of a bastard was you to let him?"
"It was none of my business," says I.
"None of your business!" he repeated, screaming out at me like a woman—"to have a quarter of a million by the tail and let it go? You might have been slack about your own half, but it was a swine's trick not to keep track of mine!"
"He can't have taken it very far," I said.
"Not far!" yelled Tom, making an insult of every word I said. "Why, what was to prevent him lugging away a little this day and that, till the whole caboodle was sunk in a solid block? What do you suppose he was doing with thelantern, you tom-fool? Planting it, of course—planting every dollar of it, night after night, while you were snoozing in your silly bed."
"If it's anywhere it's in the Kanaka graveyard," says I. "I'll go bail it's within ten feet of where we found his dead body."
"Did you stake the place?" says Tom.
I was ashamed to tell him I hadn't even thought of the money, being struck all of a heap, and always powerful fond of Old Dibs.
"It would serve you right if I made you dig up the whole graveyard, single-handed," said Tom; "and if you had a spark of proper feeling, Bill Hargus, you'd fall on your knees and beg my parding for having acted like such a damned ninny!"
I would have answered him back in his own coin if I hadn't felt so bad about it all, and rattled, besides. I had punched Tom's head often and often, and he had punched mine; but I was staggered by the money being missing, and the loss of it just seemed to swallow up everything else. Somehow, it had never seemedmymoney till then, and the more I felt it mine the more galling it was to give it up. Tom relented when he saw how cut up I was, withdrawing all the hard things he had said, and going on the other tack to cheer me up. He said he was just as big an ass as I was, and came out handsome about its being both our fault,and how it didn't matter a hill of beans anyway, for we'd soon get our spades on to it. It stood to reason it couldn't be far away or buried very deep, and a little fossicking with an iron ramrod would feel it out in no time.
Well, we gave Old Dibs a good send off, Tom and me making the coffin, and we buried him in a likely place to windward of the Kanaka graveyard. Tom wouldn't have himinside, for fear the natives might chance on the treasure themselves, and we put a neat fence around the place, with a priming and two coats of white paint, and a natty gate to go in by with brass hinges. The whole settlement turned out, Iosefo outdoing himself, and the king butting in with an address, and everything shipshape and Bristol fashion, as sailors say. We didn't have no flowers, and the whole business was sort of home-made and amateur, but Sarah made up for the lack of them by pegging out the grave with little poles, and streamers which gave quite a gay look to it, and fluttered in the wind, very pretty to see.
Then Tom and me started in our digging operations on a checkerboard plan, very systematic, with stakes where we left off, working by night so as not to rouse the natives' ill will. Or, I ought to have said, two nights, for I guess we didn't cover up our tracks sufficient, and they got on to it. We discovered this in the form of a depitation of chiefsand elders, who give us warning it had to stop ker-plunk! They said they wouldn't allow their graveyard torn up, and altogether acted very ugly and insulting. Tom and I had to sing small and put in a holiday neither of us wanted, for the Kanakas had the whip hand of us, and I never saw them so roused. Tom at first tried to carry it off with a high hand, informing them that he was a British subjeck, by God! and was they meaning to interfere with a British subjeck? But I couldn't see how that gave him any right to dig up Kanaka graveyards for money that didn't belong to him, and so I smoothed them down and out-talked Tom, saying it shouldn't happen again, and I was glad they had mentioned it!
We waited a few weeks for the storm to blow over, and then begun again, this time more cautious than before by a darned sight. We thought we were managing beautifully, till the next day, when we went out fishing in Tom's boat and come back to find both our stations burned to the ground, and all our stuff stacked outside the smoking ruins, higgledy-piggledy!
This was getting it in the neck, and we saw we were beat. We ran up a couple of little shacks and settled down to ordinary trading again, with what good spirits you can imagine. We didn't even dare walk on the weather side of the island, lest they'd carry out their next threat, which was toshoot us; and the only revenge we had was raising prices on them and monkeying with the scales, winning out in both ways. But it was a poor set off to a quarter of a million of cold coin where almost we could lay our hands on it, and if there was in the whole world a human being more blue and miserable than me, it was Tom Riley. Then, to make matters worse, the whole thing was common property now, the Kanakas knowing as much as we did, and more, and the news was passed along to every ship that came—all about Old Dibs and the money in the graveyard. You might be surprised the natives didn't take a leaf out of our book and dig it up for themselves; but you'll never really civilize a Kanaka if you try a thousand years, and they wouldn't have turned up their dead grandmothers and fathers and aunts for all the gold in the Bank of England—being sunk in superstition and slavishly afraid of spirits and the like.
We had to sit with folded hands and pretend to be pleased, while every ship that called had to take its whack at the graveyard. First it was theLorelei, getting off scot-free with only a taboo; then it was theTasmanian, with a bullet through the captain's leg; then the cutterSprite, with concussion of the brain. I never saw the Kanakas drove so wild, till at last, when there was a ship off the settlement, they'd set an anchor watch on the graveyard and do sentry go with loaded guns.
Then one fine day a French schooner from Tahiti ran in, unloaded sixteen men armed with rifles and carrying pickaxes and spades, who marched across the island singing the "Marseillaise," and proceeded to take up the whole place. The natives rallied with everything they could lay their hands on, from Winchesters to fish spears, and my, if they didn't chase out them Frenchmen at the double! They got away, leaving one dead and carrying three, making a bee line for the beach, the schooner covering their retreat with a blazing Nordenfeldt. They were in such a hurry to be gone that they cut away their moorings with an ax, and I had the privilege, later on, of buying their anchor, second hand, for ten dollars in trade.
The natives got wilder than ever after this, and were almost afraid to die, lest they'd be dug up again and their bones cast to the winds. From being the most orderly island in the Pacific, Manihiki slumped to be the worst; and it got such a name that ships were scared of coming near it; and once, when Tom and me went out in a whaleboat toward a becalmed German bark, hoping to raise a newspaper or a sack of potatoes, they opened fire on us and lowered two boats to tow away the ship. Tom and me got mixed up in the general opinion of the place, which was stinking bad and what they called a pirates' nest, and an English man-of-war came down special to deport Tom. Inever was so glad in my life to be an American, for, though the captain gave Tom what he called the benefit of the doubt, they fined him two hundred and fifty dollars and slanged him like a nigger.
The last straw was the visit of a French man-of-war, that opened broadsides on us without warning, and then landed and burned the settlement, including everything me and Tom owned in the world, except the clothes we stood in and the cash we snatched on the run. This was on account of the "outrage" on the Tahiti schooner.
Tom said the island was becoming a regular human pigeon-shoot, and wondered where the lightning would strike next; and we both grew clean sick of it and in a fever to get away. There was not even the temptation of Old Dibs's treasure to keep us now, for the natives all got together and heaped up the graveyard solid with rock to the level of the outside walls, and floored the top with cement six inches deep, putting in a matter of a thousand tons. It was as solid as a fortification, and pounded down, besides, with pounders, like a city street; and if ever there was money in a safe place and likely to stay there undisturbed, I guess it was Old Dibs's.
It was a happy day for Tom and me when theFlinkdropped anchor off the settlement, and we patched it up with the captain to give us a passage to the Kingsmills, to begin the world again. Ithad always lain sort of heavy on my wife that we hadn't put up a name over old Dibs's grave, and now that we were going away with that undone she reproached me awful. You see, I had promised her something nice in the marble line from Sydney, and kept putting her off and off in the hope she'd forget it. She had been remarkably fond of the old fellow, as, indeed, so was I, and she said it was a shame to go away forever with this unattended to. I didn't have no time for anything fancy, nor the ability neither, but as the ship lay over for a couple of days I made shift to please her with a wooden slab. We went over and set it up about an hour before we sailed, and for all I know it may be there yet. Some folks might kick at the inscription, but he had always been mighty good and kind and free-handed to us, and you must take a man as you find him. This was how it run:
SACREDTOTHE MEMORYOFRUNYON RUFEBANKER AND PHILANTHROPISTERECTEDBYHIS SORROWING FRIENDS
SACREDTOTHE MEMORYOFRUNYON RUFEBANKER AND PHILANTHROPISTERECTEDBYHIS SORROWING FRIENDS
It was a wild March day, and the rising wind sang in the rigging of the ships. The weather horizon, dark and brilliant, in ominous alternations showed a sky of piled-up cloud interspersed with inky patches where squalls were bursting. To leeward, the broad lagoon, stretching for a dozen miles to the tree-topped rim of reef, smoked with the haze of an impending gale. Ashore, the palms bent like grass in the succeeding gusts, and the ocean beaches reverberated with a furious surf. The great atoll of Makin, no higher than a man, no wider than a couple of furlongs, but in circumference a sinuous giant of ninety miles or more, lay like a snake on the boisterous waters of the equator and defied the sea and storm.
Within the lagoon, and not far off the settlement, two ships rocked at anchor. One, theNorthern Light, was a powerful topsail schooner of a hundred tons; straight bowed, low in the water, built on fine lines and yet sparred for safety, the sort of vessel that does well under plain sail, and when pressed can fly. The other, theEdelweiss, was a miniature fore and after of about twenty tons, a toy of delicacy and grace, betraying at a glancethat she had been designed a yacht, and, in spite of fallen fortunes, was still sailed as one. The man that laid her lee rail under would get danger as well as speed for his pains, and in time would be likely to satisfy a taste for both by making a swift trip to the bottom.
The deck of theNorthern Lightwas empty save for the single tall figure of Gregory Cole, captain and owner, who was leaning over the rail gazing at theEdelweiss. He was a man of about thirty, his tanned, handsome face overcast and somber, his eyes, with their characteristic hunted look, fixed in an uneasy stare on his smaller neighbor.
He had never known how passionately he had loved Madge Blanchard until he had lost her; until after that wild quarrel on Nonootch, when her father had called him a slaver to his face, and they had parted on either side in anger; until he had beaten up from westward to find her the month-old wife of Joe Horble. Somehow, in the course of those long, miserable months, he had never thought of her marrying; he felt so confident of that fierce love she had so often confessed for him; he had come back repentant, ashamed of the burning offense he had then taken, determined to let bygones be bygones, and to begin, if need be, a new and a more blameless way of life. It was natural for the girl to side with her father; to resent her lover's violence and temper; to show a face as coldas his own when he said he would up anchor and to sea. Fool that he had been to keep his word! fool that he had been to tear his heart to pieces out of pride! fool that he had been to let it stand between him and the woman he loved! His pride! with Madge now in Joe Horble's arms!
He cursed the fate that had brought him into the same lagoon with theEdelweiss; that had laid his ship side by side with Joe's dainty schooner; that shamed and mocked him with the unceasing thought that Madge—his Madge—was aboard of her. He paced up and down the quarter-deck. He had more than a mind to get to sea, but the gloom to windward daunted him, and he ordered out the kedge instead and bade the mate strip the awnings off her. By Jove! if things grew blacker he'd house his topmasts. Then he looked again at the littleEdelweiss, and tried to keep back the thought of Horble sitting there below with Madge.
He had to see her. He was mad to see her. The thought of her tortured and tempted him without end. Suppose she, too, had learned that love is stronger than oneself; that the mouth can say Yes when the heart within is breaking; that she, like himself, had found the time to repent her folly? Was he the man to leave her thus; to acquiesce tamely in a decision that was doubtless already abhorrent to her; to remain with unlifted hand when she might be on fire for the sign tocome to him? No, by God! he'd beg her forgiveness and offer her the choice. Yes or No! It was for her to choose.
He jumped into the dinghy and pulled over to the schooner. Small at a distance, she seemed to shrink as he drew near her, so that when he stood up he was surprised to find his head above the rail. So this was Horble, this coarse, red-faced trader, with the pug nose, the fat hands, the faded blue eyes that met his own so sourly!
"Captain Horble?" said Gregory Cole.
"Glad to see you aboard," said Horble.
They shook hands and sat side by side on the rail.
"Where's Madge?" said Gregory.
"Mrs. Horble's ashore," said the captain.
"I'm afraid I can never call her anything but Madge," said Gregory, detecting the covert reproach in the other's voice.
Horble was plainly ill at ease. His face turned a deeper red. He was on the edge of blurting out a disagreeable remark, and then hesitated, making an inarticulate sound in his throat. Like everybody else, he was afraid of the labor captain.
"Crew's ashore, too," said Gregory, glancing about the empty deck.
"There ain't no crew," muttered Horble.
"Thunder!" cried Gregory. "Do you do it with electricity, or what?"
"Me and Madge runs her," returned Horble.
"Do you mean to say she pully-hauls your damn ropes?" exclaimed Gregory.
"Yes," said Horble. "What's twenty tons between the two of us?"
"And cooks?" said Gregory.
"And cooks," said Horble.
"You don't believe in lapping your wife in luxury!" exclaimed Gregory.
"Madge and I talked it over," said Horble. "I was for trading ashore, but her heart was set on the schooner. I can make twice the money this way and please her in the bargain."
"I know she can sail a boat against anybody," said Gregory, wincing at the remark.
Horble spat in the water and said nothing. His fat, broad back said, plainer than words: "You're an intruder! Get out!"
"I believe she's aboard this very minute," said Gregory with a strange smile.
"She's ashore, I tell you," said Horble sullenly.
"I'll just run below and make sure," said Gregory.
He slipped down the little companion way, looked about the empty cabin and peered into the semi-darkness of the only stateroom.
"Madge!" he cried. "Madge!"
Horble had not lied to him. There was not a soul below. But on the cabin table he saw Madge'ssewing machine and a half-made dress of cotton print. She had always been fond of books, and there, in the corner, was her little bookcase, taken bodily from her old home in Nonootch. Scattered about here and there were other things that brought her memory painfully back to him; that hurt him with their familiarity; that caused him to lift them up and hold them with a sort of despairing wonder: her guitar, her worn, lock-fast desk; the old gilt photograph album he remembered so well. He sat down at the table and buried his face in his hands. What a fool he had been! What a fool he had been!
He was roused by the sound of Horble's footsteps down the ladder. With his head leaning on his hand, he looked at the big naked feet feeling for the steps, then at the uncouth clothes as they gradually appeared, then at the fat, weak, frightened face of the man himself. He grew sick at the sight of him. Would Horble strike him? Would Horble have the grit to order him off the ship? No; the infernal coward was getting out the gin—a bottle of square-face and two glasses.
"Say when," said Horble.
"When," said Gregory.
Horble tipped the bottle into his own glass. A second mate's grog! One could see what the fellow drank.
"Here's luck," said Gregory.
"Drink hearty," said Horble.
"Joe Horble," said Gregory, leaning both elbows on the table, "there's something you ought to know: I love Madge, and Madge loves me!"
Horble gasped.
"She's mine!" said Gregory.
Horble helped himself to some more gin, and then slowly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"You're forgetting she's my wife," he said.
"I'll give you a thousand pounds for her, cash and bills," said Gregory.
"You can't sell white women," said Horble. "She ain't labor."
"A thousand pounds!" repeated Gregory.
"I won't sell my wife to no man," said Horble.
The pair looked at each other. Horble's hand felt for the gin again. His speech had grown a little thick. He was angry and flustered, and a dull resentment was mantling his heavy face.
"I'll go the schooner," cried Gregory. "TheNorthern Lightas she lies there this minute, not a dollar owing on her bottom, with two hundred pounds of specie in her safe. Lock, stock, and barrel, she's yours!"
Horble shook his head.
"Madge ain't for sale," he said.
"Please yourself," said Gregory. "You'll end by losing her for nothing."
"Captain Cole," said Horble, "Madge has told me how near it was a go between you and her, and how, if you hadn't cleared out so sudden the way you did, she would have married you in spite of old Blanchard. But when you went away like that you left the field clear, and you mustn't bear me no malice for having stepped in and taken your leavings. What's done's done, and it's a sorry game to come back too late and insult a man who never did you no harm."
"Oh!" said Gregory.
"If you choose," continued Horble in his tone of wounded reasonableness, "you can make a power of mischief between me and Madge. I don't think it comes very well from you to do it; I don't think anything that calls himself a man would do it; least of all a genelman like yourself, whom we all respeck and look up to. Captain Cole, if you've lost Madge, you know you can only blame yourself."
"I don't call her lost," said Gregory.
"Captain Cole," said Horble, calmly but with a quiver of his lip, "we'll take another drink and then we'll say good-by."
"I'm not going till I see Madge," said Gregory.
Horble began to tremble.
"It's for Madge to decide," added Gregory.
"Decide what?" demanded Horble in a husky stutter.
"Between you and me, old fellow," said Gregory.
"And you've the gall to say that on my ship, at my table, about my wife!" exclaimed Horble, punctuating the sentence with the possessive.
"Yes," said Gregory.
Horble sat awhile silent. He was obviously turning the matter over in his head. He said at last he would go on deck and take another look to windward.
"There's a power of dirt to windward!" he said.
Gregory, left to himself, edged closer against the bulkhead. He felt that something was about to happen, and he was in the sort of humor to never mind what. It did not even worry him to think he was unarmed.
The companion way darkened with Horble's body, and the big naked feet again floundered for the steps. As they deliberately descended, Gregory changed his place, taking the corner by the lazarette door, where, at any rate, he could only be attacked in front. Horble's face plainly showed discomfiture at this move, and his right hand went hurriedly behind his back. Gregory was conscious of a belaying pin being whipped out of sight, and in an instant he was roused and tense, his nostrils vibrating with a sense of danger. The two men stared at each other, and then Horble backed into the stateroom, remarking with furtiveinsincerity, "There's a power of dirt to windward!" This said, the door went shut behind him. Gregory sprang to his feet and burst it open with his powerful shoulders, crushing Horble against the bunk, who, pistol in hand, fired at him point blank. The bullet went wide, and there was a sound of shattering glass. Gregory's hands clenched themselves on Horble's, and the revolver twisted this way and that under the double grasp. Horble was panting like a steam engine; his lower jaw hung open, and he cried as he fought, the tears streaking his red face; there was an agonized light in his eyes, for his forefinger was breaking in the trigger guard. A hair's breadth more and he could have driven a bullet through his opponent's body; a twist the other way—and he moaned and ground his teeth and frenziedly strove to regain what he had lost. Suddenly he let go, snatched his left hand clear, and throttled Gregory against the wall. Gregory, suffocating, his eyes starting from their sockets, his mouth dribbling blood and froth, struggled with supreme desperation for the pistol. Getting it in the very nick of time, and eluding Horble's right hand, he fired twice through the armpit down.
Horble sank at the first shot, and received the second kneeling. Then he toppled backward, and lay in a twitching heap against the drawers below the bunk, groaning and coughing. Gregory, withaverted face, gave him another shot behind the ear, and another through the mouth, and then went out, sick and faint, shutting the stateroom door behind him. He sat for a long time beside the table, absolutely spent, and still holding the revolver in his hand. He was shaking in a chill, though the temperature was over eighty, and the cabin, when he had first entered it, had seemed to him overpoweringly hot and stifling. He warmed himself with a nip of gin. He looked over his clothes for a trace of blood, and was thankful to find none. He took off his coat; he examined the soles of his shoes. No blood! Thank God, no blood!
He went on deck and cast the revolver overboard, standing at the taffrail and watching it sink. Even in the time he had been below the wind had risen; it was blowing great guns to seaward, and the lagoon itself was white and broken as far as the eye could reach. Aboard his own schooner they were busy housing the topmasts, and the yeo-heave-yeo of straining voices warned him that Cracroft was hoisting in the boats and making everything snug.
Gregory leaned against the wheel and tried to think. To throw Horble's body overboard would be to accomplish nothing. The blood, the shot holes, the disordered cabin, would all betray him. To scuttle the schooner with a stick of dynamite was a better plan, but that involved returning totheNorthern Light, with the possibility of Madge coming off in the interval and discovering the murder for herself. No, the risk of that appalled him. Besides, whatever happened, he had another reason for keeping the truth from Madge. The fact of Horble's death, even if she thought it accidental, would shock her to the core. It was inconceivable that she would feel anything but horror stricken, whether she judged her former lover innocent or not. She might even undergo a terrible remorse. At such a moment how little likely she would be to give way to him! Of course she would refuse. Any woman would refuse. Every restraining influence would be massed against him. No, his only hope lay in getting her aboard his schooner and out of the lagoon before the least suspicion could dawn upon her. Once away, and it might be two years before she might even hear of Horble's death. Once away, and the empty seas would keep his secret. Once away——
He studied the weather with a new and consuming anxiety. How could he manage to get out at all, or pick a course through the middle channel! It was thick with coral rocks, and in a day so overcast the keenest eye aloft would be at fault. And outside, what then? By God! it was working up to a hurricane. To run before it would be courting death. Hove to, he would be cramped for room, with three big islands on his lee. In hislawless and desperate past he had taken many a fall with fortune; he was accustomed to weigh the danger of perilous alternatives; he knew what it was to hazard everything on his own vigilance and skill, and to bear with a sailor's fatalism the throw of those dread dice on which his own life had been so often staked. But to stake Madge's life! Madge, whom he loved so dearly! Madge, for whom he would have died! And yet there was something sublime in the thought of taking her in his arms and driving before the gale, the storm sails treble reefed on the bending yards, the decks awash from end to end, Madge beside him, the pitchy night in front, the engulfing seas behind; to swim or sink, to ride or smother, accepting their fate together, and, if need be, drowning at the last in each other's arms.
He looked toward the settlement and saw a crowd of natives pushing a whaleboat into the water; looked again, and saw old Maka taking his place in the stern sheets and assisting a woman in beside him. The woman! It needed no second glance to tell him it was Madge. He had never counted on her coming off in company. Fool that he was, he had taken it for granted that she would be alone. Everything, in fact, turned on her being alone. Then, with a start, he remembered his own dinghy, and how it would betray him. He had made it fast on the schooner's starboard quarter,near the little accommodation ladder. Going on his hands and knees, lest his head should be seen above the shallow rail, he unloosed the painter, worked the boat astern, and drew it in again to port. Then he crouched down in the alleyway and waited.
A few minutes later and the whaler was bumping against the schooner's side. It might have been bumping against Gregory's heart, so agonizing was the suspense as he lay breathless and cramped between the coffinlike width of house and rail.
"It was kind of you to bring me off, Maka," said Madge.
The old Hawaiian laughed musically in denial. "No, no!" he cried.
"You must come below and see the captain," said Madge.
Gregory was in a cold sweat of apprehension.
"Too much storm," said Maka doubtfully. "I go home now, and put rocks on the church roof."
"Five minutes won't matter," said Madge.
Again Gregory trembled.
"More better I go home quick," said Maka. "No rocks, no roof!"
The boat shoved off, the crew striking up a song. Madge seemed to remain standing at the gangway where they had left her. Gregory felt by instinct that she was gazing at theNorthern Light, and that as she gazed she sighed; that she was lost in reverie and was loath to go below.
He rose stiffly from his hiding place. Even as he did so it came over him that he was extraordinarily tired—so tired that he swayed as he stood and looked at her.
"Madge!" he said in almost a whisper. "Madge!"
She turned instantly, paling as she saw who confronted her.
"Greg!" she cried.
For a moment they stared at each other speechless. Then he leaped on the house and ran to her, she shrinking back from him as he tried to take her hands.
"You must not!" she cried, as he would have kissed her. "Greg, you must not! I'm married. It's all different now."
He tried to put his arms around her, but she pushed him fiercely back. Her eyes were flashing, and her bosom rose and fell.
"I'm Joe's wife," she said.
Then, from his face, she seemed to divine something.
"What have you done to Joe?" she cried. She would have passed him, but he stopped her.
"No, no!" he protested.
"Let me go, or I shall call him," she broke out. "You sha'n't insult me! You sha'n't kiss me!"
He was kissing her even as he held her back,even as she fought and struggled with him—on the lips, on the neck, on her black, loosened hair, now tangling and flying in the wind. He was so weak that she soon got the better of him—so weak and dizzy that he did not guard himself as she struck him on the mouth with her little doubled-up fist.
He put his hand to his lip and found it bleeding. He showed her what she had done. She drew back, and regarded him with mingled pity and exultation.
"Now will you let me go?" she cried.
"Madge," he returned, "Joe's drunk in his berth. I made him drunk, Madge. I had to talk to you alone, and there was no other way."
She was stung to the quick. Her husband's shame was hers, and it was somehow plain that Horble had been at fault before. She never thought to doubt Greg's word, though his callousness revolted her.
"What is it you want to say?" she said at last in an altered voice.
"To ask you to forgive me."
"For what? for taking advantage of Joe's one failing?"
"No; for leaving you the way I did."
"I'll never do that, Greg—never, never, never!"
"Your father——"
"Don't try and blame my father, Greg."
"I blame only myself."
"Why have you come back to torture me?" she exclaimed. "You said it was forever. You cast me off, when I cried, and tried to keep you. You said I'd never see you again."
"I was a fool, Madge."
"Then accept the consequences, and leave me alone."
"And if I can't——"
She looked him squarely in the eyes. "I am Joe's wife," she said.
"Madge," he said, "I am not trying to defend myself. I'm throwing myself on your mercy. I'm begging you, on my knees, for what I threw away. I——"
"You've broken my heart," she said; "why should I mind if you break yours?"
"Madge," he cried, "in ten minutes we can be aboard theNorthern Lightand under weigh; in an hour we can be outside the reef; in two, and this cursed island will sink forever behind us, and no one here will ever see us again or know whither we have gone. Let us follow the gale, and push into new seas, among new people—Tahiti, Marquesas, the Pearl Islands—where we shall win back our lost happiness, and find our love only the stronger for what we've suffered."
She pointed to the windward sky. "I think I know the port we'd make," she said.
"Then make it," he cried, "and go down to it in each other's arms."
For a moment she looked at him in a sort of exaltation. She seemed to hesitate no longer. Her hot hands reached for his, and he felt in her quick and tumultuous breath the first token of her surrender. Herself a child of the sea, brought up from infancy among boats and ships, her hand as true on the tiller, her sparkling eyes as keen to watch the luff of a sail as any man's, she knew as well as Gregory the hell that awaited them outside. To accept so terrible an ordeal seemed like a purification of her dishonor. If she died, she would die unstained; if she lived, it would be after such a bridal that would obliterate her tie to the sot below. Then, on the eve of her giving way, as every line in her body showed her longing, as her head drooped as though to find a resting place on the breast of the man she loved, she suddenly called up all her resolution and tore herself free.
"I'm Joe's wife!" she said.
Gregory faltered as he tried again to plead with her; but in his mind's eye he saw that stiffening corpse below, lying stark and bloody on the cabin floor.
"You gave me to him," she burst out. "I'm his, Greg. I will not betray my husband for any man."
Again he besought her to go with him. But the moment of her madness had passed. She listened unmoved, and when at last he stopped in despair, she bade him take his boat and go.
He sat down on the rail instead, his eyes defying her.
She stepped aft, and his heart stood still as she seemed on the point of descending the companion. But she had another purpose in mind. Throwing aside the gaskets, she stripped the sail covers off the mainsail and began, with practiced hands, to reef down to the third reef. Then she went forward and did the same to the forestaysail. A minute later, hardly knowing why or how, except that he was helping Madge, Gregory, like a man in a dream, was pulling with her on the halyards of both sails. The wind thundered in them as they rose; the main boom jerked violently at the sheet and lashed to and fro the width of the deck; the anchor chain fretted and sawed in the hawse hole; the whole schooner strained and creaked and shook to the keelson. Gregory, in amazement, asked Madge what she was doing.
"Going to sea, Greg," she said.
"Alone?" he cried. "Alone?"
"Joe and I," she said.
It was on his tongue to tell her Joe was dead; but, though he tried, he could not do so. It wasn't in flesh and blood to tell her he had killed herhusband. He could only look at her helplessly, and say over and over again, "To sea!"
"Greg," she said, "I mean to leave you while I am brave—while I am yet able to resist—while I can still remember I am Joe's wife!"
"And drown," he said.
"What do I care if I do?" she returned. "What do I care for anything?"
"If it's to be one or the other," he said, "I'll go myself. With my big schooner I'd have twice the chance you'd have."
She put her arms round his neck and kissed him. "You sweet traitor," she said, "you'd play me false!"
He protested vehemently that he would not deceive her.
"Besides," she said, "I could risk myself, but I couldn't bear to risk you, Greg."
He tried a last shot. The words almost strangled in his throat.
"And Joe?" he said. "Have you no thought of Joe?"
"Joe loves me," she said—"loves me a thousand times better than you ever did. Joe's man enough to chance death rather than lose his wife."
"But I won't let you go!" said Gregory.
"You can't stop me," she returned.
He caught her round the body and tried to hold her, but she fought herself free. His strength wasgone; he was as feeble as a child; in the course of those short hours something seemed to have snapped within him. Even Madge was startled at his weakness.
"Greg, you're ill!" she cried, as he staggered, and caught at a backstay to save himself from falling. He sat down on the house and tried to keep back a sob. Madge stooped, and looked anxiously into his face. She had known him for two years as a man of unusual sternness and self-control; obstinate, reserved, willful, and moody, yet one that gave always the impression of unflinching courage and resolution. It was inexplicable now to see him crying like a woman, his square shoulders bent and heaving, his sinewy hands opening and shutting convulsively.
"You're ill," she repeated. "I'll go down and fetch you something."
This pulled him together. "I'm all right, Madge," he said faintly. "I suppose it's just a touch of the old fever. See, it's passing already."
She watched him in silence. Then she stepped forward, dropped down the forecastle hatchway, and reappeared with an ax. While he was wondering what she meant to do, she raised it in the air and crashed it down on the groaning anchor chain. It parted at the first blow, and theEdelweiss, now adrift, blundered broadside on to leeward.
Madge ran aft, brought the schooner up in the wind, and cried out to Gregory to get into his boat.
He said sullenly he wouldn't do anything of the kind.
She lashed the wheel and came up to him.
"I mean it, Greg," she said.
"You are going to your death, Madge," he said.
"Get into your boat!" she repeated.
He rose, and slowly began to obey.
"You may kiss me good-by, Greg," she said.
She put up her face to his; their lips met. Then, with her arm around him, she half forced, half supported him to the port quarter, where his boat was slopping against the side. He wanted to resist; he wanted to cry out and tell her the truth, but a strange, leaden powerlessness benumbed him. He got into the dinghy, drew in the dripping painter she cast after him, and watched her ease the sheet and set the vessel scudding for the passage. With her black hair flying in the wind, her bare arms resting lightly on the wheel, her straight, girlish, supple figure bending with the heel of the deck, she never faltered nor looked back as the water whitened and boiled in the schooner's wake.
Gregory came to himself in his own cabin. Cracroft, the mate, was bending over him with a bottle of whisky. The Malita steward was chafing hisnaked feet. Overhead the rush and roar of the gale broke pitilessly on his ears.
"TheEdelweiss!" he gasped; "theEdelweiss!"
"Went down an hour ago, sir," said Cracroft grimly.