By Reef and Palm
Page 9
ENDERBY'S COURTSHIP
The two ghastly creatures sat facing each other in their wordlessmisery as the wind died away and the tattered remnants of the sail hungmotionless after a last faint flutter. The Thing that sat aft--forsurely so grotesquely horrible a vision could not be a Man--pointedwith hands like the talons of a bird of prey to the purple outline ofthe island in the west, and his black, blood-baked lips moved, opened,and essayed to speak. The other being that, with bare and skinny armsclasped around its bony knees, sat crouched in the bottom of the boat,leaned forward to listen.
"Ducie Island, Enderby," said the first in a hoarse, rattling whisper;"no one on it; but water is there ... and plenty of birds and turtle,and a few coconuts."
At the word "water" the listener gave a curious gibbering chuckle,unclasped his hands from his knees, and crept further towards thespeaker.
"And the current is setting us down to it, wind or no wind. I believewe'll see this pleasure-trip through, after all"--and the black lipsparted in a hideous grimace.
The man whom he called Enderby sank his head again upon his knees, andhis dulled and bloodshot eyes rested on something that lay at thecaptain's feet--the figure of a woman enveloped from her shoulders downin a ragged native mat. For some hours past she had lain thus, with thegrey shadows of coming dissolution hovering about her pallid face, andonly the faintest movement of lips and eyelids to show that she stilllived.
* * * * *
The black-whiskered man who steered looked down for a second upon theface beneath him with the unconcern for others born of the agony ofthirst and despair, and again his gaunt face turned to the land. Yetshe was his wife, and not six weeks back he had experienced a cold sortof satisfaction in the possession of so much beauty.
He remembered that day now. Enderby, the passenger from Sydney, and hewere walking the poop; his wife was asleep in a deck-chair on the otherside. An open book lay in her lap. As the two men passed and re-passedher, the one noted that the other would glance in undisguised andhonest admiration at the figure in the chair. And Enderby, who was asopen as the day, had said to him, Langton, that the sleeping MrsLangton made as beautiful a picture as he had ever seen.
* * * * *
The sail stirred, filled out, and then drooped again, and the twospectres, with the sleeping woman between, still sat with their hungryeyes gazing over toward the land. As the sun sank, the outlines of theverdure-clad summits and beetling cliffs stood forth clearly for ashort minute or two, as if to mock them with hope, and then becameenshrouded in the tenebrous night.
* * * * *
Another hour, and a faint sigh came from the ragged mat. Enderby, forever on the watch, had first seen a white hand silhouetted against theblackness of the covering, and knew that she was still alive. And as hewas about to call Langton, who lay in the stern-sheets muttering inhideous dreams, he heard the woman's voice calling HIM. With pantingbreath and trembling limbs he crawled over beside her and gentlytouched her hand.
"Thank God, you are alive, Mrs Langton. Shall I wake Captain Langton?We must be nearing the land."
"No, don't. Let him sleep. But I called you, Mr Enderby, to lift me up.I want to see where the rain is coming from."
Enderby groaned in anguish of spirit. "Rain? God has forgotten us, I----,"and then he stopped in shame at betraying his weakness before awoman.
The soft, tender tones again--"Ah, do help me up, please, I can FEELthe rain is near." Then the man, with hot tears of mingled weakness andpity coursing down his cheeks, raised her up.
"Why, there it is, Mr Enderby--and the land as well! And it's a heavysquall, too," and she pointed to a moving, inky mass that halfconcealed the black shadow of the island. "Quick, take my mat; one endof it is tight and will hold water."
"Langton, La-a-ngton! Here's a rain squall coming!" and Enderby pressedthe woman's hand to his lips and kissed it again and again. Then witheager hands he took the mat from her, and staggering forward to thebows stretched the sound end across and bellied it down. And then themoving mass that was once black, and was now white, swept down uponthem, and brought them life and joy.
Langton, with an empty beef-tin in his hand, stumbled over his wife'sfigure, plunged the vessel into the water and drank again and again.
"Curse you, you brute!" shouted Enderby through the wild noise of thehissing rain, "where is your wife? Are you going to let her lie therewithout a drink?"
Langton answered not, but drank once more. Then Enderby, with an oath,tore the tin from his hand, filled it and took it to her, holding herup while she drank. And as her eyes looked gratefully into his while heplaced her tenderly back in the stern-sheets, the madness of a momentoverpowered him, and he kissed her on the lips.
Concerned only with the nectar in the mat, Langton took no regard ofEnderby as he opened the little locker, pulled out a coarse dungareejumper, and wrapped it round the thinly-clad and drenched figure of thewoman.
She was weeping now, partly from the joy of knowing that she was not todie of the agonies of thirst in an open boat in mid-Pacific, and partlybecause the water had given her strength to remember that Langton hadcursed her when he had stumbled over her to get at the water in themat.
* * * * *
She had married him because of his handsome face and dashing manner forone reason, and because her pious Scotch father, also a Sydney-Tahitiantrading captain, had pointed out to her that Langton had made and wasstill making money in the island trade. Her ideal of a happy life wasto have her husband leave the sea and buy an estate either in Tahiti orChili. She knew both countries well: the first was her birthplace, andbetween there and Valparaiso and Sydney her money-grubbing old fatherhad traded for years, always carrying with him his one daughter, whosebeauty the old man regarded as a "vara vain thing," but likely toprocure him a "weel-to-do mon" for a son-in-law.
Mrs Langton cared for her husband in a prosaic sort of way, but sheknew no more of his inner nature and latent utter selfishness a yearafter her marriage than she had known a year before. Yet, because ofthe strain of dark blood in her veins--her mother was a Tahitianhalf-caste--she felt the mastery of his savage resolution in the faceof danger in the thirteen days of horror that had elapsed since thebrigantine crashed on an uncharted reef between Pitcairn and DucieIslands, and the other boat had parted company with them, taking mostof the provisions and water. And to hard, callous natures such asLangton's women yield easily and admire--which is better, perhaps, thanloving, for both.
But that savage curse still sounded in her ears, and unconsciously madeher think of Enderby, who had always, ever since the eighth day in theboat, given her half his share of water. Little did she know the agonyit cost him the day before when the water had given out, to bring herthe whole of his allowance. And as she drank, the man's heart hadbeaten with a dull sense of pity, the while his baser nature calledout, "Fool! it is HIS place, not yours, to suffer for her."
* * * * *
At daylight the boat was close in to the land, and Langton, in hiscool, cynical fashion, told his wife and Enderby to finish up the lastof the meat and biscuit--for if they capsized getting through into thelagoon, he said, they would never want any more. He had eaten all hewanted unknown to the others, and looked with an unmoved face atEnderby soaking some biscuit in the tin for his wife. Then, with theragged sail fluttering to the wind, Langton headed the boat through thepassage into the glassy waters of the lagoon, and the two totteringmen, leading the woman between them, sought the shelter of a thicketscrub, impenetrable to the rays of the sun, and slept. And then for aweek Enderby went and scoured the reefs for food for her.
* * * * *
One day at noon Enderby awoke. The woman still slept heavily, the firstsign of returning strength showing as a faint tinge in the pallor ofher cheek. Langton was gone. A sudden chill passed over him--hadLangton taken the boat and left them to die on lonely Ducie? With hastystep Enderby hurried to the beach. The boat was there, safe. And at thefarther end of the beach he saw Langton, sitting on t
he sand, eating.
"Selfish brute!" muttered Enderby. "I wonder what he's got?" just thenhe saw, close overhead, a huge ripe pandanus, and, picking up a heavy,flat piece of coral, he tried to ascend the triplicated bole of thetree and hammer off some of the fruit. Langton looked up at him, andshowed his white teeth in a mocking smile at the futile effort. Enderbywalked over to him, stone in hand. He was not a vindictive man, but hehad grown to hate Langton fiercely during the past week for his selfishneglect of his wife. And here was the fellow, gorging himself onturtle-eggs, and his tender, delicate wife living on shell-fish andpandanus.
* * * * *
"Langton," he said, speaking thickly and pretending not to notice theremainder of the eggs, "the tide is out, and we may get a turtle in oneof the pools if you come with me. Mrs Langton needs something betterthan that infernal pandanus fruit. Her lips are quite sore and bleedingfrom eating it."
The Inner Nature came out. "Are they? My wife's lips seem to give you avery great deal of concern. She has not said anything to me. And I havean idea----" the look in Enderby's face shamed into silence the slanderhe was about to utter. Then he added coolly--"But as for going with youafter a turtle, thanks, I won't. I've found a nest here, and have had agood square feed. If the cursed man-o'-war hawks and boobies hadn'tbeen here before me I'd have got the whole lot." Then he tore the skinoff another egg with his teeth.
With a curious guttural voice Enderby asked--"How many eggs were left?"
"Thirty or so--perhaps forty."
"And you have eaten all but those?"--pointing with savage contempt tofive of the round, white balls; "give me those for your wife."
"My dear man, Louise has too much Island blood in her not to be able todo better than I--or you--in a case like ours. And as you have kindlyconstituted yourself her providore, you had better go and look for anest yourself."
"You dog!"--and the sharp-edged coral stone crashed into his brain.
* * * * *
When Enderby returned, he found Mrs Langton sitting up on thecreeper-covered mound that over-looked the beach where he had leftLangton.
"Come away from here," he said, "into the shade. I have found a fewturtle-eggs."
They walked back a little and sat down. But for the wild riot in hisbrain, Enderby would have noted that every vestige of colour had lefther face.
"You must be hungry," he thought he was saying to her, and he placedthe white objects in her lap.
She turned them slowly over and over in her hands, and then droppedthem with a shudder. Some were flecked with red.
"For God's sake," the man cried, "tell me what you know!"
"I saw it all," she answered.
"I swear to you, Mrs Lan----" (the name stuck in his throat) "I nevermeant it. As God is my witness, I swear it. If we ever escape from hereI will give myself up to justice as a murderer."
The woman, with hands spread over her face, shook her head from side toside and sobbed. Then she spoke. "I thought I loved him, once....Yet it was for me ... and you saved my life over and over again inthe boat. All sinners are forgiven we are told.... Why should notyou be? ... and it was for me you did it. And I won't let you giveyourself up to justice or any one. I'll say he died in the boat." Andthen the laughter of hysterics.
* * * * *
When, some months later, the JOSEPHINE, whaler, of New London, pickedthem up on her way to Japan, VIA the Carolines and Pelews, the captainsatisfactorily answered the query made by Enderby if he could marrythem. He "rayther thought he could. A man who was used ter ketchin' andkillin'whales, the powerfullest creature of Almighty Gawd's creation,was ekal to marryin' a pair of unfortunit human beans in sich apre-carus situation as theirs."
* * * * *
And, by the irony of fate, the Enderbys (that isn't their name) are nowliving in a group of islands where there's quite a trade done inturtle, and whenever a ship's captain comes to dine with them theynever have the local dish--turtle eggs--for dinner. "We see them sooften," Enderby explains, "and my wife is quite tired of them."