Long Odds

"What shall I say?" he asked. "I don't think there are many people who would see anything commendable in what I have done. In fact, those who heard about it would probably consider it a piece of futile rashness, and it is very likely that they would be right. After all, the restraints of the city may become intolerable to the girl."

"Then why did you undertake it?"

Ormsgill laughed, though there was a faint ring in his voice, for he saw that she had not asked out of idle curiosity. "I don't exactly know. For one thing, I had made a promise, but to be candid I think there were other reasons. You see, I have borne the burden myself. I have been plundered of my earnings, driven to exhaustion, and have fought against long odds for my life. It left me with a bitterness against any custom which makes the grinding of the helpless possible. One can't help a natural longing to strike back now and then."

Benicia nodded. It was not surprising that there was a certain vein of vindictiveness in her, which rendered it easy for her to sympathize with him, and once more the man noticed that where Ada Ratcliffe would in all probability have listened with half-disdainful impatience she showed comprehension.

"Still," she said, "in a struggle of this kind you have so much against you. After all, you are only one man."

"I almost think there are a few more of us even in Africa and, as Father Tiebout says, it is, perhaps, possible that one man may be permitted to do – something – here and there."

He spoke with a grave simplicity which curiously stirred the girl. It is possible that the sorrows of the oppressed did not in themselves greatly interest her, for she had certainly never borne the burden, but the attitude of this quiet man who, it seemed, had taken up their cause, and was ready to ride a tilt against the powers that be, appealed to her. She had, at least, courage and imagination, and there was Irish blood in her.

"Ah," she said, "the fight is an unequal one, but though there will be so many against you I think you have also a few good friends – as well as the Señor Desmond."

Ormsgill started. Her knowledge of his affairs was disconcerting, but he forgot his annoyance at it when she leaned forward a trifle looking at him. Her mere physical beauty had its effect on him, and the soft moonlight and her clinging white draperies enhanced and etherealized it, but it was not that which set his heart beating a trifle faster and sent a faint thrill through him. It was once more her eyes he looked at, and what he saw there made it clear that the reckless, all-daring something that was in her nature was wholly in sympathy with him. He also understood that she had asked him to count her as one of his friends. His manner was, however, a little quieter than usual.

"It is a matter of gratification to me to feel that I have," he said. "Still, what do you know about Desmond?"

Benicia laughed. "Not a great deal, but I can guess rather more. Still, I do not think you need fear that I will betray you. In the meantime I venture to believe that this is another of your friends."

She rose and turned towards the door as her father came in. He shook hands with Ormsgill, and then taking off his kepi drew forward a chair. Benicia said nothing further, but went out and left them together. Dom Clemente lighted a cigarette before he turned to his guest with a little dry smile.

"Trade," he said, "is not brisk up yonder?"

"I do not know if it is or not," said Ormsgill simply.

"Then, perhaps, you have accomplished the purpose that took you there?"

"A part of it. Because I have ventured to ask your daughter's interest in a native woman I brought down I will tell you what it was."

He did so, and the olive-faced soldier nodded. "I think you have done wisely in making me your confidant," he said. "At least, the woman will be safe here. It is also possible that I shall have a few words to speak to our friend Herrero some day." Then his tone grew a trifle sharper. "I have heard that there are rifles in the hands of some of the bushmen up yonder."

Ormsgill took a cartridge from his pocket and pointed to the dint in the rim. "One might consider this as a proof of it. You will notice the caliber, and I fancy I should recognize the rifle it was fired out of. In that case the man who carries it will have an account to render me."

"Ah," said the little soldier quietly, "it is a confirmation of several things I have heard of lately. I think I mentioned that the bush was not a desirable place for you to wander in. Still, you are probably going back there again?"

"I believe I am."

His companion looked at him with a little smile. "It is what one would expect from you. One may, perhaps, venture to recall the circumstances under which I first met you. Two soldiers brought you before me – and, as it happened, I had, fortunately, finished breakfast. You made certain damaging admissions with a candor which, though it might have had a different effect a little earlier, saved you a good deal of unpleasantness. I said here is an unwise man whose word can be depended on. You know what the people of this city say of me?"

"That you are a great soldier."

Dom Clemente's eyes twinkled. "Also that like the rest I am willing to abuse my office if it will line my pockets. The latter, it seems, is the purpose which influences me in the unpopular things I do. I make no protestations, but after all it is possible that I may have another one. In any case, I have received you into my house, and admitted a certain indebtedness to you. In return, I ask for your usual frankness. You have heard of a native rising up yonder?"

The question was sharp and incisive, and Ormsgill nodded.

"To be precise," he said, "I heard of two."

"Then we will have your views about the first one. It is not what one could call spontaneous?"

"At least, it is scarcely likely to take place without a little judicious encouragement. The results, it is expected, would be repression and reprisal. It seems that a lenient native policy does not please everybody."

This time Dom Clemente nodded with the twinkle a trifle plainer in his eyes. "There are, one may admit, certain trading gentlemen in this city who do not like it, but I will tell you a secret," he said. "There are also a few well meaning people of some influence in my country who can not be brought to believe that commercial interests should count for everything. They seem to consider one has a certain responsibility towards the negro. I do not say how far my views coincide with theirs. That may become apparent some day. But the second rising?"

"Will, at least, be genuine, and, I almost fancy, formidable. It is a little curious that the people who are most interested in the other do not seem to foresee it. It may break upon them before they are quite ready with the bogus one."

Dom Clemente smoked out his cigarette before he answered, and then he waved one of his hands.

"Now and then," he said, "things happen that way. Perhaps, the Powers who direct our little comedy can smile on occasion. At least, we frequently afford them the opportunity. It is certain that there is no fool like the over-cunning man. But we will talk of something else. In the meantime, and while you stay here, you will consider this house of mine your home, and those in it your friends and servants."

"Thanks," said Ormsgill. "And when I go away?"

His host made a little gesture. "Then it will depend upon where you go and what you do. We may be friends still, or our ideas of what is expected from us may render that impossible. Perhaps, it is unfortunate when one has any ideas upon that point at all. Still, that is a subject one must leave to the priests and those who reckon our work up afterwards. Being simply a soldier, I do not know."

CHAPTER XI

DESMOND VENTURES A HINT

It was blowing hard, and the deluge which had blotted out the dingy daylight and beaten flat the white spouting along the hammered beach had just ceased suddenly when Desmond lay upon a settee at the head of the Palestrina's companion stairway. Though the long, sandy point to the north of her afforded a partial shelter, she was rolling savagely with a half-steam ready and two anchors down. Desmond had wedged himself fast with his feet against the balustrade, but he found it somewhat difficult to remain where he was, and the little room was uncomfortably hot, though one door and the lee ports were open. The two that looked forward were swept by spray that beat on them like a shot, and overhead funnel-guy and wire rigging screamed in wild arpeggios under the impact of the muggy gale.

The Palestrina's owner was, however, used to that. It rains and blows somewhat hard on that coast at certain seasons, and he had lain there several weeks growling at the heat and the weather, for he was also one of the men who can keep a promise. Just then he had an unlighted pipe and a letter which he had received from Las Palmas a month earlier in one hand. It was from an Englishman he had brought out to Grand Canary, and though its contents did not directly concern him he had given it a good deal of thought once or twice already. His forehead grew a trifle furrowed as he opened it again.

"We have been wondering what Lister came back for, and the general notion is that you had had enough of him," said his friend. "In any case, he seems quite content with Las Palmas, and the British colony are watching his proceedings with quiet interest. After cleaning out several Spaniards at the casino he has apparently devoted himself to Miss Ratcliffe's service. It is not evident that he receives a great deal of encouragement from the lady herself, but her mother is ostentatiously gracious to him. She may have a purpose in this."

Desmond crumpled the letter in one hand. "Crosbie always was a – tattler, but it's more than possible that he's right," he said. Then he sighed. "And I put Lister on board the mail-boat and sent him there! If I'd only known what the result would be I'd have drowned him."

He lay still for another few moments filling his pipe, and then flung the tobacco pouch across the room, for a sojourn off those beaches would probably try the temper of most white men, and the Hibernian nature now and then came uppermost in him.

"Damp," he said. "Reeking, dripping, putrid, like everything else on this forlorn coast! It would be a boon to humanity if somebody bought the besotted continent and scuttled it."

He rose to his feet as a man in bedraggled white uniform appeared in the doorway.

"You were speaking, sir?" he said.

"I was," said Desmond. "I suggested that it was a pity somebody couldn't torpedo this benighted continent. Any word from the men you sent ashore?"

"They've signaled from the rise," said the Palestrina's mate. "No sign of him yet. I don't expect them off until to-morrow. The surf's running steep." Desmond made a gesture of concurrence as he glanced at the filmy spray-cloud that drove like smoke up the wet and glistening beach. It was flung aloft by a wild white welter of crumbling seas, and he realized that the boat's crew who had gone ashore could not rejoin the Palestrina before the morning, at least. They went every day to watch for a lumbering ox team or a band of carriers plodding seaward across the littoral, and it seemed they had once more signaled that there was no sign of either. Then he moved towards the door bareheaded, with only an unbuttoned duck jacket over his thin singlet, and the mate ventured a deprecatory protest.

"She's throwing it over her in sheets forward," he said.

Desmond disregarded him, and staggering clear of the deck-house stood with feet spread well apart gazing at the stretch of leaden sea while, as the Palestrina's bows went up, the spray that whirled in over her weather rail wet him to the skin. He saw the livid tops of the combers that rolled by the point and heard the jarring cables ring, and then turned his eyes shorewards and gazed across the waste of misty littoral.

"It's a cheerful place, but now and then you feel you might get to like it," he said. "Perhaps it's the uncertainty as to when the fever will get you that gives living here a zest. When you come to think of it, some of us have curious notions."

He appeared to be considering the point as they edged back under the lee of the deck-house, and the mate grinned.

"The men don't take kindly to it, sir," he said. "They've been worrying me lately as to how long we're stopping here."

"A week," said Desmond. "Ormsgill's time is running out, and he'll be here or send us word by then. He said he would, and what that man says you can count on being done."

Something in his tone suggested that the question might be considered as closed, and they discussed other matters while the deck heaved and slanted under them until a man forward flung up an arm and turned towards them with a cry which the wind swept away. In another moment Desmond scrambled half-way up the bridge ladder, and clung there with the mate close beneath him gazing at the white welter where the seas swept by the point. There was a sail just outshore of it, a little strip of gray canvas that appeared and vanished amidst the serried ranks of tumbling combers. It drew out of them and drove furiously towards the Palestrina, and when a strip of white hull grew into visibility beneath it Desmond looked down at his mate.

"A big surf-boat. It's Ormsgill," he said.

There was certainty in his tone, as well as a little ring of satisfaction which was, perhaps, warranted, for it is, after all, something to be the friend of a man who does just what he has promised and never arrives too late. In the meanwhile the object they were watching had grown into a bellying lug-sail that reeled to lee and to weather with the sea streaming from the foot of it, and a patch of foam-swept hull. The boat came on furiously, and when the mate sprang from the ladder roaring orders Desmond could see three or four black figures through the spray that whirled over her. There was also another man in white garments standing upright in her stern, and Desmond was wholly sure of his identity. Then she was lost for awhile, and only swept into sight again abreast of the Palestrina's dipping bows, hove high with half her length lifted out of the crest of a breaking sea.

She drove forward with it, the foam standing half a man's height above her stern and the foot of the slanted lug-sail washing in the brine, while a bent white figure struggled with the great steering oar. She swooped like a toboggan plunging down an icy slide when she was level with the Palestrina's bridge, and some of the men who watched her from the latter's rail held their breath as the smoking sea passed on and another gathered itself together astern of her. The helmsman, they knew, must bring the dripping, half-swamped boat on the wind to reach the strip of lee beneath the steamer's stern, and when he did it there was every prospect of her rolling over.

In another moment several black objects rose and grappled with the lug-sail sheet, and the big boat tilted until all one side of her was in the air. Then she went up in the midst of a white spouting as the slope of water behind fell upon her. Still, the slanted lug-sail rose out of it, and then came down thrashing furiously while naked black figures half-seen in the spray bent from her gunwale with swinging paddles as she drove towards the Palestrina's quarter. After that there was a hoarse shouting, and the lines flew from the reeling taffrail as she slid under the steamer's stern.

In another minute or two Ormsgill swung himself on board through the gangway. He had no hat, and the water ran from him, but he shook hands with Desmond unconcernedly.

"Ask them to hand that fellow up," he said pointing to a man who sat huddled in the water that swirled up and down inside the plunging boat. "We took rather a heavy one over two or three hours ago, and he brought up on the after thwart when the big oar jumped its crutch. As he's the only Kroo among them, I took the helm myself after that. I don't fancy he has broken anything."

Desmond hustled him into the deck-house when the negro had been brought on deck and the dripping boat rode astern, and an hour later he sat at dinner with his comrade in the little white saloon. Darkness had closed down in the meanwhile, and the lamp that swung above their heads flung a soft light across the table, where dainty glassware and silver glittered on the snowy cloth. Ormsgill smiled as he glanced at it and the glowing blotch of color in his wine glass.

"After all, this kind of thing has its advantages, especially when one has been accustomed to squatting in the wood smoke over a calabash of palm oil or some other unhallowed nigger compound," he said. "It's a trifle pleasant to wear clothes that fit you, too. Father Tiebout's and those Dom Clemente lent me didn't. I had to cut the wrists off the latter's jacket."

Desmond looked at him reflectively over his cigar, for he had something to say, and was a trifle uncertain as to how he should set about it.

"Well," he said, "I suppose it is nice for a while, especially, as you say, when it's a change. The point is, would it satisfy you long?"

"A dinner like this one is generally acceptable."

"We'll admit it. The trouble is that these civilized comforts are apt to cost you something. I mean one has usually to give up something else for the sake of them. You begin to understand?"

"I'm not sure that I do," said Ormsgill. "I'll ask you to go on."

Desmond laughed, though he did not feel quite at ease. He remembered the letter in his pocket, and felt that there was a responsibility on him, and that was a thing which, inconsequent as he was, he seldom shrank from. This was not a man who talked about his duty; in fact, any reference to the subject usually roused in him a sense of opposition. He contented himself with doing it when he recognized it, and since singleness of purpose is not invariably an efficient substitute for mental ability, it was not altogether his fault when at times he did it clumsily. There was also a subtle bond between him and the man who sat opposite him. Affection was not the right term, and it was more than camaraderie, an elusive something that could not be defined and was yet in their case a compelling force.

"Well," he said, "those quagmires and forests up yonder appeal to you. It's a little difficult for any reasonable person to see why they should, but they certainly do. So does the sea. The love of it's in both of us."

He stopped with a lifted hand, and, for the ports were open, Ormsgill heard the deep rumble of the eternal surf on the hammered beach. He also heard the onward march of the white hosts of tumbling seas, and the shrill scream of the wire rigging singing to the gale. It was the turmoil of the elemental conflict that must rage in one form or another by sea and in the wilderness while the world endures, and there is a theme in its clashing harmonies that stirs the hearts of men. Ormsgill felt the thrill of it, and Desmond's eyes glistened.

"Lord," he said, "we're curiously made. What in the name of wonder is it that appeals to us in driving a swamping surf-boat over those combers, or standing on the bridge ramming her full speed into it with the green seas going over her forward and everything battened down? Still, there is something. While we can do that kind of thing we can't stay at home."

Ormsgill smiled curiously. He was acquainted with some of the characteristics of the wild Celtic strain, and knew that his comrade now and then let himself go. "I think," he said, "considering where you come from, you should understand it more readily than I can do."

"You're not exempt," said Desmond, "you cold-blooded Saxons. What did you run that boat down the coast under the whole lug-sail for when she'd have gone nearly dry with two reefs tied down?"

"I don't know. Still, she lost the wind in the hollows. One had to keep her ahead of the seas."

Desmond laughed scornfully. "Is that it? When the boy went down with the breath knocked out of him as she took in a green sea, something came over you as you grabbed the steering oar. You went suddenly crazy, fighting crazy. You'd have rolled her over or run her under before you tied a reef in."

He stopped a moment, and made a little gesture as of one throwing something away. "Still, you'll have to give all that up when you marry and settle down, though it's a little difficult to imagine you going round in a frock coat and tight patent boots, growing fat, and overfeeding yourself like a – Strasburg goose. I suppose it is your intention to be married some day?"

"I believe it is," said Ormsgill quietly.

Desmond laid down his cigar and looked at him. "Well, I may be on dangerous ground, but when I get steam up I seldom allow a thing like that to influence me. Anyway, I've been worrying over you lately. The question is – are you going to marry the right girl, one who would take you as you are and encourage you to be more so? It isn't every woman who could put up with a man of your kind, but there are a few."

His comrade's expression might have warned another man, but Desmond went on.

"I don't know if my views are worth anything, and some of my friends doubt it, but you shall have them. After all, the matter's rather an important one. The wife for you is one who would sympathize with your notions even if she knew they were crazy ones, because they were yours, and when they led you into lumber, as such notions generally do, stand beside you smiling to face the world and the devil. There are such women. I've met one or two."

There was silence for a moment or two when he stopped, and Ormsgill, gazing straight before him with vacant eyes, saw a dark-eyed girl with dusky hair and a face of the pale ivory tint sitting where the moonlight streamed in between a colonnade of slender pillars. As it happened, Desmond saw her, too, and sighed. Then Ormsgill seemed to rouse himself.

"I am," he said, "going to marry Miss Ratcliffe, as I think you must be quite aware."

Desmond could have laughed. He fancied that it would have been almost warranted, but he laid a restraint upon himself. "Then," he said, "if you have both made up your minds and the thing is settled what in the name of wonder are you wandering about Africa for? The fact that you like it doesn't count. Why don't you go back – now – to her? It would be considerably wiser."

Ormsgill looked at him with half-closed eyes. "I'll have to ask you to speak plainly."

"I'll try," and Desmond made a little deprecatory gesture. "There are women it isn't wise to leave too long alone. They were not made to live that way, and if they find it insupportable you can't blame them. How many years is it since Miss Ratcliffe has had more than a few weeks of your company, and is it natural that a young woman should be quietly content while the man she is to marry wanders through these forests endeavoring to throw his life away? Besides that, the thing might very possibly not commend itself to her mother."

The lines grew a trifle deeper on Ormsgill's forehead, and his eyes were grave. "I have," he said, "been a little afraid of what her mother might do myself."

"Then why don't you go across to Grand Canary and make sure she doesn't try to influence the girl? Isn't it only reasonable that she should expect you to be there and save her all unpleasantness in case of anything of that kind happening?"

Ormsgill said nothing for several minutes, but it was borne in upon his comrade that his efforts had been thrown away. He had, however, after all, not expected them to be successful. At length Ormsgill spoke quietly.

"I can't go," he said. "Domingo has carried those boys away into the interior and I pledged myself that they should go home when their time was up. As it is, unless I can take them from him they will be driven to death in a few years. For that, I think, I should be held responsible."

He rose with a little sigh. "Dick," he said, "I have this thing to do, and even if it costs me a good deal it must be done. I am going back inland, and may be three or four months away. You can't stay here. After all, I don't know that I shall have much difficulty in getting the boys out of the country when I come down again."

Desmond smiled. "I may go to Las Palmas or Madeira, but I'll be here when you want me. We can fix that later. It seems to me I've said quite enough to-night."