“Yes. A biggish man. Short moustache and Vandyke beard.”
“Quite a gentlemanly man, wasn’t he?”
“He seemed to be. But he didn’t have a great deal to say to anybody.”
“It was rather pathetic, his dying in that way, like a hunted ox that has run into a trap.”
“Well,” said Osmond, “there wasn’t much to choose. If the climate hadn’t had him, the police would.”
“I am not so sure,” she replied. “We all hoped he would get away, especially the officer who was detailed to arrest him. I think he meant to make a fussy search of all the wrong houses in the village by way of giving notice that he was there and scaring the fugitive away. Still, I think he was rather relieved when he found that trader man—what was his name?—Larkin or Larkom?—painting the poor fellow’s name on the cross above his grave. You heard about that, I suppose?”
“Yes. Queer coincidence, wasn’t it?”
“Don’t be so callous. I think it was a most pathetic incident.”
“I suppose it was,” Osmond agreed. “And now, don’t you think you had better have another try at that splice?”
With a little grimace she took up the piece of rope and began obediently to unlay its ends and the interrupted course of practical seamanship was resumed, with intervals of desultory conversation, until eight bells, when the teapot was brought forth from the galley and conveyed below to the cabin. After tea, through what was left of the first dog-watch, there was another spell of knots and splices; and then, when the sun set and darkness fell on the sea, more desultory talk, in which Osmond mostly played the role of listener, which—with an interval for dinner—lasted until it was time for the second mate to turn in.
So life went on aboard the Speedwell day after day.
The calm persisted as calms are apt to do in the Doldrums, with nothing to suggest any promise of a change. Now and again, at long intervals, the oily surface of the sea would be dimmed by a little draught of air—just enough to ‘put the sails asleep’ and give momentary life to the steering-wheel. But in a few minutes it would die away, leaving the sails to back and fill as the vessel rolled inertly on the glassy swell. The first observation had shown the ship’s position to be about four degrees north of the equator, with the coast of the Bight of Benin some eighty miles away to the north; and subsequent observations revealed a slow southerly drift. It was pretty certain that she had a more rapid easterly drift on the Guinea current, but as the chronometer was out of action, there was no means of ascertaining this or of determining her longitude. Sooner or later, if the calm continued, she would drift into the Bight of Biafra, where she might pick up the land and sea breezes or find an anchorage where she could bring up and get the chronometer rated.
To a seaman there is nothing more exasperating than a prolonged calm. The crew of the Speedwell were not sailors of a strenuous type, but the inaction and monotony that prevailed on the idly ship bored them—if not to tears, at least to bad language and chronic grumbling. They lounged about with sulky looks and yawned over the odd jobs that Osmond found for them, whistling vainly for a breeze and crawling up the rigging from time to time to see if anything—land or another ship—was in sight. As to the captain, he grew daily more sour and taciturn as he saw his stores of provisions dwindling with nothing to show for the expenditure.
But by two of the ship company the calm was accepted with something more than resignation. The two mates had no complaint whatever to make. They were, indeed, cut off from all the world; marooned on a stationary ship in an unfrequented sea. But they had one another and asked for nothing better; and the longer the calm lasted the more secure were they of the continuance of this happy condition. For the inevitable thing had happened. They had fallen in love.
It was very natural. Both were more than commonly attractive, and circumstances had thrown them together in the closest and most intimate companionship through every hour of the long days. They had worked together, though the work was more than half play; they had a common interest which kept them apart from the others. Together they had sat, talking endlessly, in little patches of shadow when the sun was high in the heavens, or leaned upon the bulwark rail and watched the porpoises playing round the idle ship or the Portuguese men-of-war gliding imperceptibly past on their rainbow-tinted floats. They had paced the heaving deck together when the daylight was gone and earnestly studied the constellations ‘that blazed in the velvet blue,’ or peered down into the dark water alongside where the Nautilus shone like submarine stars and shoals of fish darted away before the pursuing dolphin lurid flashes of phosphorescent light. No more perfect setting for a romance could be imagined.
And then the personality of each was such as to make a special appeal to the other. In the eyes of the girl, Osmond was a hero, a paladin. His commanding stature, his strength, his mastery of other men, and above all his indomitable courage, had captured her imagination from the first. And in his rugged way he was a handsome man; and if he could be a little brutal on occasion, he had always been, to her, the soul of courtesy and chivalry. As to the ‘past’ of which she had a strong suspicion, that was no concern of hers; perhaps it even invested him with an added interest.
As to Osmond, he had been captivated at once, and, to do him justice he had instantly perceived the danger that loomed ahead. But he could do nothing to avoid it. Flight was impossible from this little self-contained world, so pleasantly cut off from the unfriendly world without; nor could he, even if he had tried, help being thrown constantly into the society of this fascinating little lady. And if, during the long, solitary night-watches, or in his stifling berth, he gnashed his teeth over the perverseness of Fate and thought bitterly of what might have been, that did not prevent him from succumbing during the day to the charm of her frank, unconcealed friendliness.
It was in the forenoon of the eighth day of the calm that the two cronies were leaning on the rail, each holding a stout line. The previous day Osmond had discovered a quantity of fishing tackle among Redford’s effects, and a trial cast had provided not only excellent sport, but a very welcome addition to the ship’s meagre diet. Thereupon an epidemic of sea-angling had broken out on board, and Bill Foat, the cook, had been kept busy with the preparation of snappers, horse and other deep-sea fish.
“I wonder,” the girl mused as she peered over the side, “how much longer this calm is going to last.”
“It may last for weeks,” Osmond replied. “I hope it won’t for your sake. You must be getting frightfully bored.”
“Indeed, I’m not,” she rejoined. “It is the jolliest holiday I have ever had. The only fly in the ointment is the fear that my father may be a little anxious about me. But I don’t suppose he is really worrying. He is like me—not much given to fussing and he knows that I am fairly well able to take care of myself, though he doesn’t know that I have got a Captain James Cook to stand by me. But I expect you are getting pretty sick of this monotonous life, aren’t you, Captain J.?”
Osmond shook his head. “Not a bit,” he replied. “It has been a delightful interlude for me. I should be perfectly satisfied for it to go on for the rest of my life.”
She looked at him thoughtfully, speculating on the inward meaning of this statement and noting a certain grave wistfulness that softened the grim face.
“That sounds rather as if Adaffia were not a perfect Paradise, for it has been a dull life for you since the mutiny collapsed and the calm set in, with no one to talk to but me.”
“Adaffia would be all right under the same conditions,” said he.
“What do you mean by the same conditions?” she asked, flushing slightly; and as he did not immediately answer, she continued: “Do you mean that life would be more pleasant there if you had your second mate to gossip with?”
“Yes,” he answered, reluctantly, almost gruffly. “Of course that is what I mean.”
“It is very nice of you, Jim, to say that, but you needn’t have spoiled it by speaking in that crabby tone. It is not
hing to be ashamed of. I don’t mind admitting that I shall miss you most awfully if we have to separate when this voyage is over. You have been the best of chums to me.”
She flushed again as she said this and then looked at him a little shyly. For nearly a minute he made no response, but continued to gaze intently and rather gloomily at the water below. At length he said, gravely, still looking steadily at the water:
“There is something, Miss Burleigh, that I feel I ought to tell you; that I wouldn’t tell any one else in the world.”
“Thank you, Jim,” she said. “But please don’t call me Miss Burleigh. It is so ridiculously stiff between old chums like us. And, Jim, you are not to tell me anything that it might be better for you that I should not know. I am not in the least inquisitive about your affairs.”
“I know that,” he replied. “But this is a thing that I feel you ought to know. It has been on my mind to tell you for some days past.” He paused for a few seconds and then continued: “You remember, Betty, that man Osmond that you spoke about?”
“Yes; but don’t call him ‘that man Osmond.’ Poor fellow! I don’t suppose he had done anything very dreadful, and at any rate we can afford to speak kindly of him now that he is dead.”
“Yes, but that is just the point. He isn’t dead.”
“Isn’t dead?” she repeated. “But Captain Cockcram saw that other man, Larkom, painting the name on his grave. Was it a dummy grave?”
“No. But it was Larkom who died. The man Cockeram saw was Osmond.”
“Are you sure? But of course you would be. Oh, Jim! You won’t tell anybody else, will you?”
“I am not very likely to,” he replied with a grim smile, “as I happen to be the said John Osmond.”
“Jim!” she gasped, gazing at him with wide eyes and parted lips. “I am astounded! I can’t believe it.”
“I expect it is a bit of a shock,” he said bitterly, “to find that you have been socialising for more than a week with a man who is wanted by the police.”
“I didn’t mean that,” she exclaimed, turning scarlet. “You know I didn’t. But it is so astonishing. I can’t understand how it happened. It seems so extraordinary, and so—so opportune.”
Osmond chuckled grimly. “It does,” he agreed. “Remarkably opportune. Almost as if I had polished Larkom off ad hoc. Well, I didn’t.”
“Of course you didn’t. Who supposed for a moment that you did? But do tell me exactly how it happened.”
“Well, it was quite simple. Poor old Larkom died of blackwater fever. He was a good fellow. One of the very best, and the only friend I had. He knew all about me—or nearly all—and he did everything he could to help me. It was an awful blow to me when he died. But he never had a chance when once the fever took hold of him. He was an absolute wreck and he went out like the snuff of a candle, though he managed to make a will before he died, leaving the factory and all his effects to his friend James Cook. It was he who invented that name for me.
“Well, of course, when he was dead, I had to bury him and stick up a cross over his grave. And—then I just painted the wrong name on it. That’s all.”
She nodded without looking at him and a shadow seemed to fall on her face. “I see,” she said, a little coldly. “It was a tempting opportunity; and events have justified you in taking it.”
Something in her tone arrested his attention. He looked at her sharply and with a somewhat puzzled expression. Suddenly he burst out: “Good Lord, Betty! You don’t think I did this thing in cold blood, do you?”
“Didn’t you?” she asked. “Then how did you come to do it?”
“I’ll tell you. Poor old Larkom’s name was John, like mine. I had painted in the ‘John’ and was just going to begin the ‘Larkom’ when I happened to look along the beach. And there I saw Cockeram with his armed party bearing down on Adaffia. Of course, I guessed instantly what his business was, and I saw that there was only one thing to be done. There was the blank space on the cross. I had only to fill it in with my own name and the situation would be saved. So I did.”
Her face cleared at this explanation. “I am glad,” she said, “that it was only done on the spur of the moment. It did seem a little callous.”
“I should think so,” he agreed, “if you thought of me sitting by the poor old fellow’s bedside and calmly planning to use his corpse to cover my retreat. As it was, I hated doing it; but necessity knows no law. I have thought more than once of making a dummy grave for myself and shifting the cross to it and of setting up a proper memorial to Larkom. And I will do it when I get back.”
She made no comment on this; and as, at the moment her line tightened, she hauled it in, and impassively detaching a big red snapper from the hook, re-baited and cast the line overboard with a curiously detached, preoccupied air. Apparently, she was reflecting profoundly on what she had just learned, and Osmond, glancing at her furtively from time to time, abstained from interrupting her meditations. After a considerable interval she turned towards him and said in a low, earnest tone: “There is one thing that I want to ask you. Just now you said that you felt you ought to tell me this; that I ought to know. I don’t quite see why.”
“There was a very good reason,” he replied, “and I may as well make a clean breast of it. To put it bluntly, I fell in love with you almost as soon as I saw you, and naturally, I have grown to love you more with every day that has passed.”
She flushed deeply, and glancing at him for an instant, turned her eyes once more on her line.
“Still,” she said in a low voice, “I don’t see why you thought I ought to know.”
“Don’t you?” he rejoined. “But surely it is obvious. You accepted me as your chum and you seemed to like me well enough. But you had no inkling as to who or what I was. It was my clear duty to tell you.”
“You mean that there was the possibility that I might come to care for you and that you felt it your duty to warn me off?”
“Yes. It wasn’t very likely that there would be anything more than friendship on your side; but still it was not impossible. Women fall in love with the most unlikely men.”
At this she smiled and looked him squarely in the face, “I thought you meant that,” she said, softly, “and, of course, you were quite right. But if your intention was to put me on my guard and prevent me from caring for you, your warning has come too late. You would have had to tell me before I had seen you—and I don’t believe it would have made a scrap of difference even then. At any rate, I don’t care a fig what you have done—I know it was nothing mean. But all the same, I am glad you told me. I should have hated to find it out afterwards by myself.”
He gazed at her in dismay. “But, Betty,” he protested, “you don’t seem to grasp the position. There is a warrant out for my arrest.”
“Who cares?” she responded. “Besides, there isn’t. John Osmond is dead and there is no warrant out for Captain James Cook. It is you who don’t grasp the position.”
“But,” he expostulated, “don’t you realize that I can never go home? That I can’t even show my face in Europe?”
“Very well,” said she. “So much the worse for Europe. But there are plenty of other places; and what is good enough for you is good enough for me. Now, Jim, dear,” she added, coaxingly, “don’t create difficulties. You have said that you love me—I think I knew it before you told me—and that is all that matters to me. Everything else is trivial. You are the man to whom I have given my heart, and I am not going to have you crying off.”
“Good God, Betty!” he groaned, “don’t talk about ‘crying off.’ If you only know what it means to me to look into Paradise and be forced to turn away! But, my dearest love, it has to be. I would give my life for you gladly, joyfully. I am giving more than my life in refusing the sacrifice that you, in the nobleness of your heart, are willing to make. But I could never accept it. I could never stoop to the mean selfishness of spoiling the life of the woman who is more to me than all the world.”
“Not to share such a life as mine,” he replied, bitterly. “Think of it, Betty, darling! For the rest of my days I must sneak about the world under a false name, hiding in obscure places, scanning the face of every stranger with fear and suspicion lest he should discover my secret and drag me from my sham grave. I am an outcast, an Ishmaelite. Every man’s hand is against me. Could I allow a woman—a beautiful girl, a lady of position—to share such a sordid existence as mine? I should be a poor lover if I could think of such contemptible selfishness.”
“It isn’t so bad as that, Jim, dear,” she pleaded. “We could go abroad—to America—and make a fresh start. You would be sure to do well there with your abilities, and we could just shake off the old world and forget it.”
He shook his head, sadly. “It is no use, darling, to delude ourselves. We must face realities. Mine is a wrecked life. It would be a crime, even if it were possible, for me to take you from the surroundings of an English lady and involve you in the wreckage. It was a misfortune, at least for you, that we ever met, and there is only one remedy. When we separate, we must try to forget one another.”
“We shan’t, Jim,” she exclaimed, passionately. “You know we shan’t. We aren’t, either of us, of the kind that forgets. And we could be so happy together! Don’t let us lose everything for a mere scruple.”
At this moment all on deck were startled by a loud hail from aloft. One of the men had climbed up into the swaying foretop and stood there holding on to the topmast shrouds and with his free hand pointing to the north. Osmond stepped forward and hailed him.
“Foretop there! What is it?”
“A steamer, sir. Seems to be headin’ straight on to us.”
Osmond ran below, and having fetched Redford’s binocular from the berth, climbed the main rigging to just below the cross-tree. There, securing himself with one arm passed round a shroud, he scanned the northern horizon intently for a minute or two and then descended slowly with a grave, set face. From his loftier station he had been able to make out the vessel’s hull; and the character of the approaching ship had left him in little doubt as to her mission. His comrade met him with an anxious, inquiring face as he jumped down from the rail.
The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack Page 33
