The Lost Master - The Collected Works

by Stanley G. Weinbaum

  Higgins joined in with a pleasant enough tenor voice; he hadn't failed once during the evening. The others took up the melody; in self-defense, Mark chimed in himself.

  "Say," he remarked, at the conclusion of the piece, "that must be the national anthem. I seem to remember dimly having heard it before during the course of the evening."

  "Ad nauseam, my lad, ad nauseam!" laughed Higgins. "You'll notice I always put in my bit of harmony; that's because I object less to my own voice than the noise of musicians. When I sing, all I hear is myself!"

  "Plain selfishness!" remarked another of the group—Mark couldn't for the life of him recall his name.—"Plain selfishness! You forget that when you drown out the orchestra, we have to listen to you!"

  A chorus of agreement greeted the sally.

  "Anyway," said Mark, with an air of finality, "I'm sick of this place. Let's move on."

  The suggestion seemed hardly popular.

  "But we just got here!"

  "What is this—some sort of marathon?"

  "This is the coolest spot we've hit so far!"

  "What a chap!" marveled Higgins. "Here we've got just one night, and he's got a month, if he chooses, and he's the one wants to cover the town! One would fancy he's looking for some one!"

  "Don't be ridiculous!" said Mark sharply. He hadn't admitted to himself that his restless peregrinations from place to place were evidence of hopes of seeing Vanya. Higgins' thrust irritated him. "I'm simply sick of this hole with its New York Hawaiians. They sing 'Aloha Oe' with a Broadway accent!"

  "Let's humor him," said Higgins, who was genial with the unaccustomed strength of American Prohibition concoctions.

  At their next stop, three girls in the conventional grass skirts of Hawaiian entertainers were singing —again the song that had pursued them all during the evening. Mark gave them a single glance and lost interest in the place.

  "Nothing novel here," he said. "Let's try another."

  He was promptly overruled.

  "One look at the girls and he's through!" said Higgins. "What's the matter with them?"

  "For one thing," said Mark, "they're some more specimens of Broadway Hulas."

  "Look genuine to me," objected the other.

  "Have one over to the table," said Mark resignedly. "You'll see."

  "Good idea! The plump one at the left."

  Mark was right, but it mattered nothing to the rest of the group; the girl was vivacious, passably good-looking, and friendly. Nor had she any objections to a nominal quantity of liquor, drinking toasts with them to "crime," to "Prohibition," to whatever fanciful suggestions came to their minds. They discovered that her name was "Lilikani"; she spelt it out very carefully with a fork on the table cloth. After the third toast, it developed that her real name was Carrie Chapman, of Elizabeth, New Jersey. Mark felt himself justified by her declaration; he gazed around the group with an "I-told-you-so" smile, but no one, apparently, paid him the slightest attention.

  After a few minutes, Mark had an inspiration.

  "By the way," he said, leaning toward Carrie, "do you know many of the entertainers in town?"

  "Professionals?" she responded. "Sure; I know pretty near all of 'em."

  Mark kept his tone casually conversational.

  "Then do you know—I'm sure she's in the islands—a dancer named Vanya — let's see — Vanya Prokovna?"

  The girl wrinkled her nose in thought.

  "Real name?" she asked.

  Mark nodded. Beyond doubt, Captain Rawlinson had given him, her true name.

  "I don't know her," said Carrie, after a moment's thought. "Russian, isn't she? Or Polish?"

  "Russian, I think," said Mark.

  "Well, I know everybody who's in the profession at the high class places."

  She paused.

  "Of course, there's a bunch of dives down along the waterfront. Some Russian, too. But gentlemen I like you wouldn't know nobody there —would you?"

  Mark shook his head, but he wasn't as positive as he tried to appear. He had distinct doubts as to whether his acquaintances included a waterfront dance-hall girl. He said nothing, however, and the conversation turned to other channels.

  Carrie looked at the wall-clock ticking wearily at the far end of the room.

  "Sorry," she said, "but my next number's on."

  She rose with a smile.

  "Before you go," said Higgins, "tell us why every place we've been in tonight plays 'Aloha' with such an air of originality. Don't you islanders know any other music?"

  "You tourists seem to expect it," grinned Carrie. "Don't blame us! And thanks!"

  She disappeared through a far door.

  CHAPTER VI

  Mark shifted impatiently in his chair; he was by far the soberest individual in the party, and this fact was not entirely due to his abstinence, for he had consumed his share of the liquid supplies of the group. It was partly due to a certain native capacity, and partly, no doubt, to his superior experience with the fiery distillates popular in post-war America.

  "There ought to be some excitement along the waterfront, at that," he said suggestively. "Who's game for a fling at the sailors' hangouts?"

  The phraseology caught Higgins' fancy, which at the moment was none too critical.

  "Sailors' hangouts!" he exclaimed. "That's where we belong! A night in port! Shore leave!"

  There was a chorus of protests. Carrie had taken the fancy of the party; the general opinion favored a renewal of the acquaintanceship after her next song. Ultimately Mark and Higgins, sticking stubbornly to their announced intentions, found themselves alone in a humid night, bound in the direction of the docks.

  Even Mark's conception of the remainder of the night was hazy: he moved in a pleasant misty glow from place to place—Mariner's Rest, Sailor's Haven, Safe Harbor, and a conglomerate list of dives disguised under the name of soft-drink parlors. He watched slim Chinese girls dance, he heard dusky, sloe-eyed Eurasians sing, and brown-skinned Polynesians playing exotic stringed instruments. He drank curious drinks, at bars, at tables, or seated on woven mats. Long afterwards he retained the memory of a fantastic face made of some sort of twisted and dyed grasses, that stared at him from some smoke-darkened wall; he could never recall the particular place in which it hung.

  Finally, however, he found himself with clearer mind, guiding a thoroughly disorganized Higgins along the docks toward the black hulk of the Orient. Dawn was breaking; back over the hills of Oahu, the sun was coming out of far-distant America, three thousand miles beyond the eastern horizon.

  A small schooner, typical pearl or tradeship of the South Seas, was casting off. Mark steadied himself by staring at its top-mast against the now lightening western sky.

  "There's ol’ boat," said Higgins. "All right now."

  "Can you get to your stateroom?” asked Mark, pausing at the gang plank.

  "Sure. All right now," said his companion.

  Mark watched him mount unsteadily to the deck, and waved a friendly farewell. Full daylight seemed suddenly to have flamed out on the harbor.

  He turned; the schooner at the next dock was sliding silently past him, toward the western seas. He felt eyes upon him, and lifted his glance to the rail.

  For a moment, Mark was speechless. He stood gathering his befuddled wits, and staring. For there, leaning on the rail, with her black hair glistening in the sunrise, stood Vanya, gazing coolly at him, and hardly twenty feet away!

  Mark recovered himself enough to wave a hand in greeting, and he thought the faintest trace of a smile softened the sullen set of her mouth, but he wasn't sure. The vessel slid inevitably away. Mark cupped his hands to his mouth.

  "Where bound?" he called. Again he thought, but wasn't sure, that she shook her head faintly; otherwise she gave him no response. The schooner slid out into the harbor while Mark stood disconsolately watching from the dock. He followed it with his eyes until the figure still leaning on the starboard rail had diminished to an indistinguishable point in th
e glow of dawn.

  How long Mark stood in the shadow of the giant Orient, staring out at the schooner receding into the Pacific, he hardly knew. Finally he bestirred himself.

  "What's the difference?" he queried of the Pacific waves. "Suppose she is leaving Honolulu! Probably save me another rebuff at her hands. A few more meetings and my self-esteem would be pretty badly bent."

  He turned his back upon the schooner, already in the middle distance, and walked slowly along the dock toward shore.

  "She must be soured on the whole world," he thought. "My features can't be wicked enough to account for all the aversion she's favored me with."

  He paced slowly on.

  "Wonder why she was deported," he continued. "Shouldn't be surprised if it were some of this moral turpitude business. Dancer from the South Sea islands! Enough to condemn a girl in the eyes of the officials without much additional evidence. And I suppose she's no better than the rest. But so darned pretty!"

  He passed the dock where the schooner had lain. A stevedore— white, by some mischance of the islands—lounged against a stanchion, smoking a pipe and staring out at the gulls soaring over the harbor. Mark approached him, deriding himself for doing it.

  "What's the schooner?" he asked casually.

  The dock-hand gave him a slow glance.

  "Pearly Shene's Porpoise," he responded, and dropped into his former meditative silence.

  Mark waited for further information; after a moment he realized that none was to be volunteered. "Where bound?" he asked.

  The stevedore shrugged. "Pearly didn't say, and if he had said, it wouldn't mean a damn thing. Pearly's not one to talk plain."

  He resumed his contemplation of the gulls.

  "I wonder where the lady's bound," said Mark, driven to a direct hint.

  "Y'interested?"

  "Not especially!" Mark was nettled by the implication of the fellow's tone.

  "Just as well, because I couldn't tell you anyway."

  "He's bearing south," said Mark, squinting at the distant schooner.

  "More 'n likely," rejoined the stevedore. Apparently he relented, for he continued, "Pearly's shakedown is south—a long way south.”

  "Fiji?" hazarded Mark hopefully.

  "Further than that," replied his informant.

  "Samoa?" tried Mark, wondering whether this was to develop into a guessing game.

  "Nope. The Tongas. The Friendly Islands."

  "The Friendly Islands!" ejaculated Mark, adding, half to himself "What a swell place for her!"

  "Eh?" queried the other at his inaudible mutter. "The Friendly Islands ain't as welcoming as their name."

  "That makes it all right, then,” said Mark.

  He nodded to his informant, and departed, leaving that individual shaking his head in doubtful manner. It was not until Mark passed out of sight that he retransferred his attention to the gulls screaming and soaring in great arcs above the harbor.

  Mark was more than a little disgusted with himself for his persistent all-night search for the anything-but-cordial Vanya. The quest's unexpected culmination did not add to his self-respect, and a gradually growing headache as a result of his night's libations merely capped an unpleasant climax. His mood as he returned to his hotel, was emphatically not jovial.

  "A fine fool I am!" he told himself savagely. "After making the supreme effort of finally cutting myself loose, I spend most of my time pursuing a South Sea dancer, who is doubtless everything that South Sea dancers are popularly supposed to be. And why? Merely because she happens to be pretty."

  He shrugged his shoulders impatiently, as if that gesture could shake off the unwelcome memory of Vanya's prettiness.

  "I certainly made a fool of myself," he proceeded mentally. "If I'd flashed a ten dollar bill instead of orange juice and coffee, I'd probably have found a ready welcome, seasickness or no seasickness. Coffee and orange juice! No wonder she snubbed me!"

  He stalked through the lobby of the hotel, nearly deserted at that early hour, and mounted to his room, encountering there a disturbed chambermaid eyeing the unruffled bed. He shooed her impatiently out, and prepared to upset the bed's serene white coolness.

  It was late afternoon when he awoke, somewhat refreshed and in much less turbulent spirits. He attired himself, and descended to consume a meal—breakfast, lunch, or dinner?—he didn't know exactly what to call it.

  The hotel dining room was closed; dinner wasn't to be served for an hour. Mark found an attractive restaurant adjacent to the hotel, and entered.

  Honolulu, he decided, had lost its attractiveness for him; it was high time to set sail for stranger ports, and higher adventures than this island outpost of Uncle Sam could offer. He determined to discover what ships were sailing, and to what regions; the Orient might have served, for Canton had a romantic ring, but that staunch vessel was gone on the mid-morning tide, while he lay sleeping. He proceeded to the docks after his meal. Fully a dozen vessels lay snug against the wharves—both sail and steam; and the smell of tar and oil, mingled with the spicy odors of pineapple, coffee, and sugar cane, sent a thrill of anticipation through him.

  His dock-hand of the morning was still on the job, still puffing his contemplative pipe. Mark put his query to him.

  "Which way you want to go?" asked the stevedore, logically enough.

  "I don't care," said Mark. "Then any of 'em'll do," said the other disinterestedly.

  Mark laughed in his exasperation.

  "Any way except east," he amended, and then, as a thought struck him, he added, "except east and south!"

  The stevedore waved his hand toward a stubby black steamer a hundred yards out in the bay.

  "That tramp's bound for the Marshalls. They're west, if west'll do you."

  "Good as any," said Mark.

  "That's the Colin," continued his , companion. "She'll pick up a cargo of copra and cane."

  "She'll do," said Mark.

  He located the Captain, a short, energetic little man named Korff, "and Yankee in spite of his name. He was more than willing to carry a passenger; Mark gathered from his string of oaths and expletives that the business of freighting was not all that might be hoped.

  CHAPTER VII

  The Colin was weighing anchor with the tide at dawn. Mark decided to sleep on board, and accordingly returned to the hotel for his luggage. He was aboard by nightfall, comfortably installed in a stateroom a bit less elaborate than the one he had recently occupied on the Orient, but considerably more livable than he had expected on a South Sea tramp freighter.

  He spent the evening on deck, leaning over the rail and watching the broken reflection of a full moon in the waves. The gulls were silent; only the muffled sounds of the city and the gentle slap of the harbor waves gave an undertone of sound.

  His thoughts returned to Vanya. He was sailing west at dawn; she was already far to the south. Their paths had crossed, tangled for a short time, and separated; doubtless they had done with each other.

  "And that," reflected Mark, "is probably entirely to her satisfaction. Lord! Of all the cool, unfriendly propositions, she is certainly the coolest and most unfriendly. And just as well for me, too, that I didn't find her last night; I'd have been fool enough to still be hanging around Honolulu."

  He stared down at the black waters.

  "There are a thousand like her in the South Seas," he told himself. "Probably plenty just as pretty, or prettier!—If that's possible," he ended gloomily.

  "Well," he concluded, "I might just as well stop thinking about her. I'm not going to change my plans to go trailing after her."

  He stared at the sparkling waters for a long time. It was when the black sheen of the waves began to remind him of Vanya's ebony hair that he turned disgustedly, and went to bed.

  STRANGE PORTS

  Mark awoke a little disgusted with himself. Of course, he couldn't actually expect to control his dreams, but he really registered a strong objection to dreaming of Vanya. The logical way to prevent t
hat, naturally, was to find himself other interests; here, ready at hand, was the Colin and its crew of world-traveled sailors.

  The ship steamed heavily westward through oily seas; Mark rose and ascended to the deck, determined to find his amusement in talking to Captain Korff or others of the ship's company.

  All of these were hard-bitten seafaring individuals who had sailed most of the seven seas, and had many a story to tell of strange ports and far-off islands. The Solomons, the Society Islands, the Marquesas, were names that rolled easily off their tongues in tales around the officers' mess. Discipline, so far as passengers were concerned, was far less strict on the lumbering freighter than on the giant Orient; Mark found himself welcomed on the bridge, in the wheel-house, everywhere, in fact, from galley to stokehole.

  The Captain and the first mate, O'Keefe, seemed delighted to have a new and interested audience for their yarns, and that Mark certainly was. He found O'Keefe, a mystical Irishman, perhaps the more entertaining of the two, and never tired of listening to his tales during the dog watch. He listened with avid interest to the ruddy mate's tale of the barque Cuchulain, that had sailed to Hy Brasil, and was never seen again, barring once, when it bore past a startled watch on a collier, looming out of the fog and rushing by with all sails set, and not a human soul on deck. Hy Brasil, Mark learned on inquiry, was a phantom island seen at dawn from Galway, west of Ireland; O'Keefe had seen it himself, with its spired port glistening in the sunrise, and, moreover, he had sailed right over the spot by broad daylight, and never a thing but green sea water was there. And this, he concluded, was just as well, for a ship that sails to Hy Brasil never returns; at least it never returns to mortal ports.

  Mark was fascinated and charmed by O'Keefe's legends, but he found a far more practical source of information in little Captain Korff. The man had been literally everywhere. Mark listened with relish to his oath-laden descriptions, and plied him with questions concerning the remote and romantic places he mentioned. And finally he put a query that he had deliberately promised himself not to ask. It slipped out unexpectedly as he idled one evening beside Korff in the wheel-house.