“In the meantime I kept to my promise which was to prepare a good supper against their return. And that brings me back to the native—Romeo’s father-in-law to be, we hoped. I had raised my head from the stew-pot, expecting, as usual, to see nothing but the mist, when he stood there with a primitive harpoon in his hand. I must have cried out in my astonishment, for he sprang towards me, but stopped suddenly when I gave him a salutation in his own tongue, and incidentally pushed my revolver in his face.
“He asked me if I were a white servant of the great white god with the wheel, who had been blown back to the island on the wind. I told him ‘Nothing of the sort.’ I didn’t see why the Captain should get away with it as far as I was concerned. I wasn’t going to be labelled as a servant of that ridiculous wheel. He had lashed it to his back before starting off with Romeo and I thought how stupid he looked. I think what annoyed me most about it was that he had lost his sense of humour and really began to believe in the wheel as a symbol of godhead. At first, like any sane person, he had kicked at having to wear the thing at all, but since he had been drinking, he developed a sanctimonious pride in putting it on, and one day he had spoken with tears in his eyes of Christ bearing His Cross for sinners, at which I lost my temper and told him not to be a blasphemous ass.
“Well—I got talking to Juliet’s father, and was glad to get first innings behind the Captain’s back. I told him that I was altogether a superior god to my servant with the wheel, and because I saw that I had gone down in his estimation by reason of my menial task, I added that I, and I only, knew the magic way to make the food of the highest heaven. A lot of bilge, but it sounded all right to him, especially when I finished up by playing him a lively tune on a tin whistle, and then presented him with a pocket mirror, for we had brought plenty of gaudy knick-knacks with which to propitiate the natives. By that time he was showing me the greatest respect.
“I said that if he did everything I told him, he should have a magic pipe for himself, which threw him into an ecstasy, and so I thought it the right time to announce why the white gods had come to his contemptible island.
“From him I gleaned that Juliet was married at the moment. Her husband was a whaler, but that as he happened to be away for a few days, Romeo might go to Juliet’s cave and love her. This gross piece of advice shocked me beyond words. When the whaling husband returned a fight could be arranged, he informed me, and his daughter would abide by the decision of strength. He seemed quite easy in his mind on that score, but what he wasn’t so sure about was the possibility of getting the dozen skulls from the temple in the mountain. Of course, I told him that if he didn’t get them there would be trouble for someone, and that someone would also be the loser of much silver and many trinkets.
“He promised to return and discuss the matter after sunset, so at that I gave him a whistle pipe, with the warning that should he break faith, the voice inside the whistle pipe would take shape and rend him, which alarmed him very much. Now, as luck would have it, Romeo and the Captain had discovered his cave while he was talking to me, and Romeo had chalked a sign which ordered the old fellow to visit our camp secretly and alone that evening.
“Finding this further command from me, as he thought, made the old rascal think that I had repeated my command by magic writing, and from that moment I became a full-blown god in his estimation.
“That night, when we were huddled round our cheerful camp fire, the old whaler crawled towards us. The Captain was for giving him plenty to drink, but I told him not to be a fool, and added that in future when he wanted a drink himself he must come and ask me for it, as, for our own security, I had hidden the keys of the chests. He flew into a peevish rage at this, but as he spoke in English, Juliet’s father was none the wiser. It annoyed the Captain still more to notice how I had somehow stolen the thunder of his godhead, for Juliet’s father, though even respectful to Romeo, paid me all the homage which the Captain thought should be his perks. He certainly didn’t like Romeo and himself being lumped together as ‘the favoured of the god’—meaning me. The Captain took not the least interest in my plans for procuring the skulls, though he was enthusiastic about the arrangements for Romeo’s fight, and he kept making Juliet’s father shake hands with his excellent son-in-law to be. The whole thing was becoming just damned silly, except that I found myself becoming more and more sorry for Juliet’s present husband, who, as far as I could see, was not going to get a dog’s chance of his life. I had no quarrel with Romeo. I liked the little man—but I was not going to sit back and see murder done. That, I knew, would be the Captain’s way of it, for when they discussed the possibility of Romeo losing, he told them not to worry on that score, as he would have a knife ready himself. After which they all three took the absent whaler’s extermination as a settled thing. As to Juliet’s feelings on the subject—well, they just didn’t exist as far as that trio were concerned, and I determined to contact her myself and get at the truth of what she thought.
“On this point, however, I was quickly disillusioned, for she made her first appearance that same night.
“I never had such a shock about anyone in my life. So entirely different was she from the Juliet of my imagination, for I had naturally taken everything Romeo had said about her with a grain of salt.
“By what I had read of the native women, and indeed from what the Captain had told me in his sensible moments, I was quite justified in seeing her as a weather-beaten, mahogany-coloured girl, attractive, perhaps, to Romeo, but positively lousy and repellent to a white man.
“Not a bit of it.
“Juliet—for we always called her that, though her own name which meant Maid of the Mist was more descriptive—Juliet was a glamorous minx. She certainly owed her good looks to her mother’s lack of morals, and I could see that her father, far from being the ugly old scamp squatting by our fire, had been some handsome white sailor, shipwrecked on the coast. How else could she have come by her auburn curls? In the light of our flickering fire, her complexion appeared to be olive, and seemed to be reasonably clean. I dare say she was quite grubby really. However—her eyes were distinctly blue, and her well-developed young figure was lithe. In fact, the little frippet was damnably alive and mischievous. I wouldn’t have trusted her a yard.
“She wore a sort of jerkin made from an old sail, but it was lined with white fox, and she carried a tough staff whittled sharp at one end. I don’t know what she did with that. Spiked fish, perhaps—or rivals.
“Without a word she sat herself down between the whaler and me and for some reason, best known to herself, gazed across the flames at the Captain.
“Romeo had risen when she entered the circle, and although he drew his knife to show he was ready to do battle for her, I suppose, his sheepish glances made him look quite ridiculous. He had what Shakespeare calls—‘the very quotidian of love upon him.’
“To my frayed nerves what followed was just about the limit. The Captain’s eyes were devouring her, and she was deliberately leading him up the garden. I have never witnessed such a flagrant flirtation, and I began to see that as far as our mission was concerned, the burden would fall on me. I suspected too that all the time the Captain had been using us for his own ends. Or couldn’t he have been quite such a fool? Had he met the girl before when he had wandered through the island with his damned ship’s wheel? Had he come back to get her? If so, poor Romeo’s life wasn’t worth much. I didn’t think it was, anyway.
“All this time the whaler talked of the arrangements for the great fight, and of the impossibility of getting away with the sacred skulls.
“After a long time of this sort of thing, the girl stood up, and for the first time looked at Romeo. I can only describe it as the look of a queen dismissing a favourite who had fallen from grace.
“Poor Romeo was stunned. It was quite shocking to see.
“Then looking at the Captain, who, by the way, was still wearing his wheel, she slowly backed towards the mist.
“Like a mesme
rized animal he got to his feet. Then with a laugh—she ran, and before I could stop him, he leapt after her, and just as he disappeared, I caught sight of the unsealed neck of a whisky bottle. The swine!
“I heard him cry out and her distant laugh—and then silence and nothing to see but the mist. And the whaler went on talking as though nothing unusual had happened. Then in sheer rage I got up and ordered him to get out.
“He slouched off, mumbling that he dared not get the skulls, but that Romeo was welcome to fight for his daughter. I thought we were rid of him, but not quite, for he came back, just a vague shadow in the mist to add with a devilish grin at Romeo, ‘Seems, son, you’ll have two to kill now.’ Then he sprang away to avoid my clenched fists.
“Poor Romeo. I vented my rage on him. He was far stronger than I was, but these events had beaten him, so that I was able to shake him like a rat. Then I flung him to the ground and, as he lay there whimpering, ordered him to go at once to Juliet’s cave and to tell his master the Captain, that failing to return to camp immediately, I would make his name stink in every port where the red ensign flew.
“I thought he would refuse point-blank, but no—I had another surprise, and at that moment I own I found it a pleasant one.
“ ‘I will give him your order, Mister Charles,’ he said quietly, as he got to his feet, ‘and if he does not obey you on the instant, then they shall all see what the Land of the Gods and Devils is like.’
“He turned and strode away with a great show of dignity, and I liked the way his powerful hand took a firm grip on the handle of his knife.
‘So I was left again, but with the hope that Romeo would play the man and give the three devils, girl and all, their passports back to hell.
“I listened for some time but could hear nothing, and, of course there was nothing to see. When I turned back to the fire I saw a man warming himself by it and grinning.
“This enraged me, too, and I said rather stupidly in English, ‘And what the hell are you thinking funny?’
“He answered in grave Spanish, explaining that he was the Juliet’s husband, and had listened to our conversation or rather to the talk of the old whaler, and he wanted to bargain with me concerning the skulls, before tackling his rivals, Romeo and the Captain.
“He explained that he was the only foreign trader upon the island; that he did business with the Argentine ports, with Uruguay and Brazil, and that he was the only one who was free from the superstitions of the island: in short, that he was the only hope I had of getting the twelve skulls, about which he had heard us talking.
“The upshot was that he agreed to procure the specimens for one pound sterling a brace.
“He refused my offer to accompany him, on the plea that my presence would add to his own danger.
“He asked me for a drink. I gave him a hot rum. He drank to my good health, which he said would be kept in better condition if I would remain where I was until his return.
“He thought it would take him a week to get to the temple in the mountain, a day or so in which to plan and execute the theft, and a little less than a week for his return, which would be easier as the land sloped down from the high plateau to the coast.
“ ‘I will execute your business for you, señor, with the greatest despatch,’ he said politely, ‘and it is a pleasure to have dealing with a foreign gentleman like yourself, who can speak my Spanish tongue so well.’
“I thanked him for the compliment and then asked him what I should do if by some unlucky chance he should fall in the fight.
“He made light of that, and said that he was well used to the duel of the knife, and that I need not worry. Whereupon I told my new ally that he would not be facing a duel, but attempted murder and foul play. Whereupon my Spaniard grinned again, showing his white teeth.
“ ‘I am a good Catholic, señor, and educated. I know that you English are famous for tact—and it must have been your blessed English saint and archbishop who first taught it to you. Before he was sent to England by Pope Gregory, he said to his blessed mother, Santa Monica, “When I am in Milan, I do as they do at Milan; but when I go to Rome, I do as Rome does.” So, señor, with me. When I talk to the clean, I talk—clean—as with you. But I act dirtier than the dirtiest when dealing with the dirty.’ He spat in the fire and jerked his thumb in the direction taken by the others, adding, ‘I will speedily deal with my domestic affairs, but I go now to get skulls.’
“Then began my awful solitude, the like of which I never wish to experience again. I must have spent three weeks by that flagpole. A certain amount of exercise I took by tying the end of a ball of twine to it, and then walking out into the mist with this lifeline in my hand to guide me back, for my great dread was that of losing the camp.
“Otherwise I ate a little, drank a little more, allowing myself the extra tot forfeited by the Captain, and sleeping only when I couldn’t help myself. Of course, the whole time I was listening and trying to see beyond the mist. But I saw nothing and all I heard was the wind, the seas, and the massed whisperings after dusk.
“No news of Juliet or her two ill-assorted lovers.
“At last I could stand it no longer, and made up my mind to go into the mist and look for them.
“I filled a fat flask, packed up some food, put a supply of chalk in my pocket, and started off one morning along the lifeline. This I soon had to say good-bye to, creeping on away from it and carefully, oh, how carefully, chalking the rocks as I went. How cautious I was never to get out of sight of my last mark until I had chalked another.
“I found myself tired out with watching and anxiety, and when I had gone not much more than a mile in this tedious fashion, I was quite done. So I sat down, had a snack and a smoke, and then dozed off.
Was I wet? Was I soaking wet? Yes—for I awoke to find a dreadful rain storm raging. How long I had slept in it, I had no means of telling, as my watch had stopped. The mist had grown thicker, and had closed in upon me. To my horror I found that the chalk marks I had made upon the stone against which I had been leaning had been completely obliterated by the rain.
“I crawled back the way I had come. Not a chalk mark could I find.
“I started walking, at first slowly and then faster, till I broke into a run.
“That finished me.
“I lost my head. I began to shout. This somehow developed into a continual screaming. Still I ran. I tried but I could not pull myself together. Over clay-slate, green-stone and granite I stumbled on, and when night fell I still ran. I know that I fell exhausted once and slept. When I awoke, I ate what was left of my rain-sodden food and set off to run again. I felt that I must reach somewhere soon. But it was all the same. Just boulders, stones, pebbles.
“All that day I ran, and again far into the second night. Then I fell, striking my head against a rock and I remembered no more.
“When I came to myself I imagined I was still dreaming. But I soon discovered that I was awake, and I could not believe it. What I saw didn’t make sense.
“I had fallen close to the edge of the cliffs. The sun was shining on the sea far beneath me, and upon it rode a sturdy man-of-war. Yes—they were called that in those days, you youngsters.
“She must have been a mile off shore, but what thrilled me was the fact that I could plainly see the white ensign flying from her stern. I went mad. I sprang to my feet on the very lip of that precipice and shouted. As I did so, something caught in my boots and nearly threw me down. It was my lifeline entangled round my feet.
“Now although the sea was clear, the infernal mist still clung over the island.
“Indeed, as I ran back with my fingers burning along the lifeline for very friction, and sped to find the flagpole, I was swallowed up in it once more.
Quickly I set the rockets and fired them off—rapid fire it was—and then ran back to the cliff edge with one of our flags, which I waved frantically. Oh, but the suspense was ghastly, for I could not make out whether the rockets had been seen, and I’
m bothered if the mist didn’t thicken again and shut out the sea.
“I yelled myself hoarse and fired my revolver till my ammunition was exhausted.
“Then I stood quite still and listened. Nothing. Not even whisperings.
“Then, just as I was despairing, I heard the most wonderful sound of oars getting nearer, for the wind had dropped, and by their rhythmic regularity, I thought the rowers could be none other than British sailors pulling towards shore. I clambered down to the shingle. I knew the quickest way, for how often had I planned this heavenly moment? I shouted and kept on shouting, and at last my shouts were answered by the heartening voices of British bluejackets. H.M.S. Reputation had visited the Falkland Islands, and was bound for British Columbia. So was I saved.
“I confided my story to Captain Harker, who was not only most sympathetic, but very angry on my behalf.
“How he railed against my employers for having sent me on such a hopeless quest, which even had it been successful, he maintained was totally unnecessary. Who wanted to look at Fuegian skulls, anyway? he asked.
“For Captain Smith he had no sympathy at all. Had he not sold his friend a pup? Had he not deceived his servant? Had he not done that unspeakable act of running off with a native’s wife? And when I repeated that the native was to me a Spanish gentleman, he answered, ‘Anyone who is not British is just a native. I know, my lad. I’m older than you.
“ ‘The blackguard Smith, for I will not keep hearing you refer to him as “Captain,” has generally lowered the prestige of the white man, and deserved all the trouble that he asked for.’ He stoutly refused to let me land again in search for him, and would not countenance risking the lives of his men by sending a search party. In fact, he stated emphatically that he had not got the power to do so. He had no wish for his interference to plunge him into any international complications. And yet much as I hated Smith for what he had done to me, I could not bring myself to abandon him to his fate without an effort. But with Captain Harker, all my efforts were of no avail. All he would consent to do was to stand by for twenty-four hours after firing a warning gun to bring Smith aboard.
The Master of the Macabre Page 20
