The Lost Master - The Collected Works

by Stanley G. Weinbaum

"For decent men

  Will hardly seek

  The filthy pen

  Where such men reek!

  For Hong is fat

  And Shone is big—

  But Shane's a rat,

  And Hong's a pig!"

  Mark heard Vanya's distracted murmur, still missing the hysteria in her voice.

  "Oh God!" she whispered. "No more of it!"

  The fracas broke into the open; Mark saw from the window the group of sailors, Loring in their midst, stagger toward the beach. And a final fragmentary melody floated back.

  "Let long, cool swells

  Of ocean clean

  Wash out the smells

  Of Hong and Shene."

  The voice faded. Mark turned again to the pale face and haunted eyes of Vanya.

  "I've got to leave," she said, "or go mad!"

  Mark perceived his chance—the opportunity to further his plans.

  'Leave? he said. "Where? Singapore, Canton, Harbin? Or Saigon or Shanghai? I'll give you passage money, if they're better than this.

  "But I have a plan," he continued, noting the girl's shudder. "I'm not proposing marriage, but I can slip you into the United States —as my wife! Get you past the immigration people. You'd like to enter the States, wouldn't you? Clean cities, cultured people, wealth —you know the details!"

  Vanya still looked up at him with that hopeless, silent gaze.

  "I'll be fair," said Mark. "I won't collect until I deliver. The mail packet leaves Taulanga for Honolulu in about three weeks; we'll sail on that as a married couple. Once in the States, you belong to yourself; until we dock at Frisco, you are my wife. There's my offer; yes or no?"

  Mark stared down into the dark eyes.

  "There it is!" he thought. "Trial by Fire—and I hope to Heaven she slaps my face!"

  But she didn't. She just gazed at him with the same dazed, hopeless expression, and then closed her eyes and sobbed quietly.

  * * *

  "Looks like a typhoon passed through the bar!" said Mark to Loring, as the latter sat munching his morning quota of bananas and breadfruit. The beachcomber showed some effects of the evening's fracas; his lower lip bore a ragged cut, and his eyes were more than usually red-rimmed. His unkempt beard concealed any other damages his face might have suffered.

  "Good party!" replied Loring. "Must have been, for I've had the only headache I've acquired for several years. . . . Though that might have been the bottle itself instead of its contents!"

  "Hong looked normal this morning."

  "He should; the pig ducked out when the excitement started."

  "What happened ?"

  "Couldn't say," grinned Loring. "Just began, I suppose. These little affairs have a habit of starting when I get spiffed around Hong or Shone. Just a minor peculiarity of mine!"

  "At that," said Mark, "you and your friends appeared to come off second best, from what little I saw of the affair."

  "That Shene!" said the beachcomber with distaste. "He did in the five of us; took most of it out on me, of course; he was really very gentle with the paying customers."

  Mark stared out to where the Ellice was slowly rounding the last curve of Tongatabu. It sailed jauntily, with full sail spread to the mild Trade Wind, notwithstanding the fact that a good portion of the small crew must have been feeling their two-days' dissipations.

  "There goes Shene's clientele," he observed. No show tonight."

  "Oh, the lady will have a free evening, if that's what you mean," replied Loring. "And by the way, did I win that quart?"

  "You did not!" snapped Mark.

  He strolled away, leaving Loring gazing after him with an expression of mingled amusement and regret.

  He did not heed the beachcomber's sarcastic call. . "There's also a Trial by Combat!" came Loring's irrepressible voice. "I'll wager another quart on that!"

  CHAPTER XXI

  Mark saw Vanya at the red-iron pump beyond the Diver's Helmet, with a little heap of white clothes beside her. Barelegged, her tiny feet in worn slippers, she seemed charming to Mark, yet the memory of her yielding last night displeased him.

  "She's rated herself," he reflected. "The best thing for me is to avoid her until the mail packet sails."

  And he did avoid her—for nearly the entire day. Dusk found him apologizing to his own strict New England code, and nevertheless approaching Vanya where she sat at the extremity of the point.

  Vanya looked up with a wan smile at his approach; she seemed spiritless, forlorn, sitting alone in the darkness. She had changed her dress to her worn white breeches and a sleeveless blouse, and she seemed amazingly slender and tiny. "Boyish" wasn't the word, Mark thought — she looked feminine enough; "trim, neat, tailored," came closer to the point. On an impulse, he leaned over her and kissed her rather lightly on her lips; she made no move to evade him, but likewise made no response.

  He seated himself beside her. "Vanya," he said, "I spent the whole day trying to avoid you." She nodded. "I noticed it."

  "And did you know why?"

  "Of course." She looked at him gravely. "It's because you regretted our—our bargain."

  Mark frowned. Did he regret his offer? He realized that he did not; what bothered him was Vanya's easy surrender, and her unresisting acceptance of the position in which he had placed her.

  "No," he said. "I keep my bargains."

  He looked out at the Porpoise; the ship's harbor lights gleamed in the little cove like errant stars.

  "What does Shene use that schooner for?" he asked.

  "He pearls," said the girl in a dull voice. "The mate, Orris, the one that plays the piano, will take it out again in a day or two, and be gone eight or ten weeks."

  "Who plays when he's gone?" asked Mark idly.

  "Loring," said Vanya. "It's worse then," she added in a low voice. "Why are you interested in the Porpoise?" she asked after a moment's silence.

  "Ways and means!" said Mark. "We must have marriage papers of some sort; I think they may be purchased from Shene. After all, he's a ship's master, with the right to perform marriage ceremonies. But we'll have to arrange the thing before the Porpoise leaves."

  "Why?" asked Vanya. "I haven't had any experience with—with—I don't know the rules."

  "Because a ship's captain only has the authority to conduct these ceremonies on the high seas. The high seas begin three miles from land, and we'll have to sail the Porpoise out, just in case—If the witnesses think it's authentic, so much the better. This fellow Orris can be one, and one of the crew the other—but they're all black, aren't they?"

  "Yes," said the girl.

  "Well, there's bound to be a mission boy among them who can scrawl his name. Or we could take Loring—"

  "Loring!" cried Vanya. "Never! Never in the world! This business is degrading enough without him—" She ended in a choked sob.

  "Degrading?" said Mark cruelly. "Why should that matter? You chose your own way out of this!"

  "I'm sorry," said the girl, relapsing into the lifeless tone of her previous remarks. "I'm sorry, but please—not Loring! I couldn't stand the bitter, shrewd, smirking face he'd put on!"

  "Would you have him wear the regalia of a wedding guest?" sneered Mark. "But all right—not Loring."

  "When can we get the—the thing over with?" the girl asked.

  "Tomorrow — tomorrow!" said Mark. "The sooner the better!" Then out of the night rose Loring's voice, oddly shrill, in a weird sort of chant.

  "England is a woman,

  calling me again

  With a voice inhuman,

  To a world of men!

  England's eyes are like the lights

  Seen on foggy London nights

  With a beckoning that invites—

  England is a woman!"

  Vanya shuddered at Mark's side; she seemed nervous and distraught at the uncanny keening voice.

  "Drunk again!" said Mark. "Where the devil did he get the liquor?"

  "He's not drunk," said the girl. "When he'
s drunk he sings about Hong and Shene. Sometimes he sings sober, like this, and that's the worst of all."

  Again rose the strange song, like the voice of a disembodied spirit drifting out of some invisible bourne.

  "Tonga is a woman

  Lying in a fen,

  With the art to summon

  Evil out of men!

  Tonga's breath is passion-hot,

  Whisp'ring, 'Loring—drunken sot

  Here you stay and here you rot!'

  Tonga is a woman!"

  The voice rose to a shrill, bitter, nerve-wracking climax; and died into silence. Vanya clenched her white little hands into fists, and writhed under the spell of some powerful emotion.

  "I hate him!" she murmured. "I hate him the worst of all at times like this; He won't forget, and he won't let anyone forget!"

  She was almost sobbing. Mark drew her into his arms in an impulse to comfort her. She twisted until her face, with its haunted eyes, looked up into his; she reached her hand up and touched his bronzed cheek.

  "I know now that our bargain was no mistake," she said. "It's worth everything to leave this place—everything! To see clean snow again, and normal people!"

  She paused, staring off into the darkness where Loring was weaving his disturbing thoughts.

  "Don't you realize the curse of this place, Mark?" she continued drearily. It was the first time she had over used his given name; the sound of it on her lips sent a curious thrill through him. "It's this," she continued. "That every person here grows to hate the others. Hong hates Loring and Shene, and Toring hates Shene and Hong, and Shene hates all of us, and I'm no different. Only you, cold and strong, and fresh from a clean Northern land, are not yet one of us, we don't hate you and you don't hate us—yet!"

  She closed her eyes.

  "You're cruel and heartless, Mark; yet you're a better refuge than Tonga offers."

  However, Mark was feeling anything but cruel and heartless. A confused babel of emotions stirred in him that he could not analyze; he knew only that sympathy moved him for the grave girl in his arms. Her lips were very close; he pressed a kiss on them. A mist dropped over him; he realized vaguely that his kisses were growing fierce, bruising, passionate — and a moment later Vanya was twisting, desperately away, beating at his face and shoulders! She thrust herself violently from his arms and ran down the coral spit toward the Cove.

  "Vanya!" he called after her.

  She stopped, looking back at him; he could hear the panting of her breath.

  "The mail packet doesn't sail for three weeks!" she said.

  A HONEYMOON IN ECLIPSE

  "We can manage!" said Pearly Shene. "They won't know nothing.

  They'll sign where I tell 'em!" The Porpoise was slipping easily away from Tongatabu, rounding the reef into the open sea. Vanya, wearing the long black dress she had worn the first time Mark ever laid eyes on her, stood silently beside Shene in the stern. The unfailing tropical sun of the dry season blazed down on them, but a fresh wind countered its heat. Shone spun the wheel; the little schooner heeled over into the wind, and the Cove, deserted except for Loring dozing beneath his tree, slid gradually astern.

  "We can fix it," said Shone with a grin intended to be jovial. "I've got a mission boy aboard who can scribble his name — Paul Tubou. He'll do for the second witness. And neither him nor Orris will know but what it's a genuine splice. So they won't talk, and as for Pearly Shene —he never talks out o' turn!"

  Vanya's nervousness was becoming obvious, she gave an impatient gesture at Shene's remarks, and turned to walk forward along the deck. The breeze whipped her clothes about her; Shene followed her with his eyes.

  "A nice figure!" he commented to Mark. "You're picking well, though for me—I like women more on the plump side. I like a waist with heft to it; your lady's as slim in the middle as a marlin-spike!"

  Mark felt a quiver of indignation run through him at Shene's cool appraisal. The devil with the fellow and his tastes!

  "Aren't we three miles out yet?" he queried morosely.

  "We'll make it a good five and be sure." said Shene. "Wind don't cost nothing."

  CHAPTER XXII

  The ship slid smoothly on, and the green hills of Tongatabu sank into lower relief. Mark tried to pick out the location of the native village where he and Loring bad experienced such trouble; he pictured Vanya as she had appeared in the ruddy light of the tribal fire. Beautiful, he thought, glancing toward her slender figure along the deck. She was beautiful! He ought to be glad of the lucky break he was getting, instead of miserable. After all, she was as much the gainer as he—more, as far as that went. He was spending good money on this fool's business; he probably could have driven a far sharper bargain. "Easy Mark!" Loring had been right! And yet—Well, the bargain was made, and that settled it. Vanya hadn't been forced to agree to his terms.

  "Heave to!" bellowed Shene. There was a scurrying of black figures; Orris was bawling orders at the black boys. The schooner swung gracefully about, her trim nose pointed keen as a setter's into the wind.

  "A couple of minutes till the boys get the lines fast," said Shene to Mark.

  "Trim little craft, ain't she?"

  "Very," said Mark politely.

  "There's money to be made with a ship like this," said Shene. "Anyhow, for those that's willing to put some in."

  "I don't doubt it," said Mark.

  "Now if you, for instance, were looking for a neat profit, I could maybe point the way." Shane's voice dropped to a confidential growl.

  "I’m not in Tonga on business," replied Mark, watching Vanya who had turned and was approaching them.

  "I know — I know!" rumbled Shene. "But a man's a fool not to take a turn when it's offered. And I've a good thing, too—a bed of oyster off an atoll, and every shell a find. I know; I been there. And I'd take a partner in on shares, maybe."

  "What's a share worth?" asked Mark casually. Vanya had looked up, suddenly at his question.

  'Two hundred pound," said Shene, "and you stand to clear it five times!"

  "Almost a thousand dollars," said Mark. "I thought you said wind was free!"

  "Ah, but supplies ain't!" grinned Shene. He glanced over the ship. "Right and tight!" he said. "Into the cabin."

  Mark followed Vanya through the door. Shene was fingering a paper he had spread on the table before him, scrawling something with a hand awkwardly unused to pen.

  "Now," he growled to Mark. "You'll sign here, and you here." They did as he indicated; Mark with a hasty, deliberately careless scribbling, and Vanya with no expression at all.

  "My heartiest to you!" said Shene with a sarcastic leer, as he stepped to the door.

  "Orris!" he bawled. "Tubou!" The sandy-haired little man who had played for the Ellice's entertainment entered, followed by a trouser-clad native. Shene pointed a heavy finger at the paper.

  "Witness, you scum!" he roared. "You've signed papers before! And get out!"

  The witnesses departed, and Shone turned with a smirk to Mark.

  "And now the parson's fee," he chuckled.

  Mark drew a sheaf of traveler's cheques from his pocket.

  "Is this good?" he asked.

  "As gold!" rumbled Shene, watching him countersign one of the slips. "States money goes anywhere in the world."

  Mark motioned Vanya to the door. She was embarrassed, flushed with mortification; the sordid business apparently appealed to her even less than to Mark.

  "Mind that offer I made," said Shone as they departed.

  "I'll think it over," said Mark. The schooner was tacking into the wind as they emerged on deck. The green, low hills of Tongatabu were dead ahead, though the Cove itself was hidden by the jutting coral spit.

  Vanya turned her serious face to Mark.

  "Did he want you to give him some money?" she asked.

  "He did."

  "And will you?"

  "Why do you ask?" queried Mark. "Why are you interested?"

  "I don't know why," said th
e girl. "You can afford to lose, it seems. But I want to warn you—hers trying to swindle you."

  Mark chuckled.

  "Don't you think I suspected it?" he asked amusedly. "I've been around a bit!"

  "No need to suspect it. You can be sure."

  "Even being sure, I might be willing to gamble it," said Mark, "if the deal promised excitement. If, for instance, I might go along."

  "You'd not come back then; not if your disappearance meant any advantage to him!"

  "That makes it interesting," laughed Mark.

  The girl faced him, looking at him with grave eyes.

  "You won't do it!" she said with unexpected vehemence. "Say you won't do it!"

  "Very likely not," agreed Mark. "I'm a simpleton in some ways, but in others I'm eminently practical."

  A sudden gust of wind struck the schooner, sending the little craft yawing widely. Shene burst angrily out of the cabin, rumbling derogatory remarks about the seamanship of his crew. Mark regained his balance; both he and Vanya had been precipitated rather sharply against the starboard rail. The girl was rubbing her side ruefully.

  Suddenly she stooped quickly; a tiny tan bag, chamois or silk, lay at her feet. It might have slipped from about her throat, Mark thought. She seized it, thrust it into a pocket of her dress without comment as Shene approached.

  "How's the honeymooners?" bellowed the giant.

  "Thankful to get ashore!" snapped Mark, irritated once more by the other's manner.

  'And that'll be soon,' grinned Shene, "if this flea-bitten crew of mine don't run us on the reef!"

  He moved ponderously away toward the stern, where Orris held the wheel. The Porpoise veered sharply to round the coral reef that hid the Cove. Mark stared at the spot and the near point where he and Vanya had several times sat at evening, quarreling, or, as last night, swept by other emotions than anger.

  The Cove swept into view, with Loring still dozing peacefully beneath the tree he called home. Mark wondered what possible shelter he found during the rainy season, and resolved to ask him. The two stood silently at the rail as the little ship hove to and dropped anchor; the crew scampered busily about furling sail, and making the canvas fast. Shane's rumbles of dissatisfaction sounded, like a rolling of very muffled thunder.