For Jacinta

"Por misericordia," he said, "echadle agua!"

Somebody swung a bucket, and a cloud of steam whirled up; but the man who had cleaned the fire let his scraper fall, and lurching with a half strangled cry, went down amidst the vapour. He lay with scorched chest and arms on the floor-plates, making little stertorous noises, until Tom, who tore the bucket from his comrade's hands, flung the rest of its contents over him.

"Drag him away!" he said, and turned to Austin. "He's the second one, but he'll come round by and by. Did you come down to look on or give us a hand?"

He flung open another door, and Austin took a shovel from a weary man. He had studied the art of firing up on deck, where it was considerably cooler, before the locomotive boiler, but he discovered that the work now demanded from him was an entirely different matter. The heat was overpowering, the bed of glowing fuel long, and it was only by the uttermost swing of shoulders and wrench of back and loins that he could effectively distribute his shovelful. He felt his lowered face scorching, and the sweat of effort dripped from him, but he toiled on in Berserker fury while Tom encouraged him.

"Spread it!" he said. "Next lot well down to the back end. You needn't be afraid to move yourself. Keep her thin!"

Austin wondered whether he had any eyebrows left when that furnace was filled, but it was done at last, and then there was coal to be trimmed from the bunkers. The dust that whirled about the shovels blackened and choked him, but he worked on savagely. Every man was needed, with half the Spaniards sick, and he felt that if this was the cost of success it was not fitting that he should shirk his part in it. Social distinctions counted for nothing there; the barriers of creed and nationality had also melted. They were all privates in that forlorn hope, with death as the penalty of failure, and while they could not be more, none of them that day dared be less, than men.

He never remembered all he did. There was a constant clanging of shovels, whirring of coal trucks, and slamming of iron doors that opened to let out fiery heat and radiance and take the flying fuel in. Men came and went like phantoms, gasping, panting, groaning now and then, and the voice of their leader rose stridently at intervals. He was a man of low degree, and his commands were not characterised by any particular delicacy, but he was the man they needed, and when he emphasised his instructions with a grimy hand, and now and then the flat of the shovel, nobody resented it. During one brief interlude he found breath for a deprecatory word or two with Austin.

"If she was doing her eight or ten knots it wouldn't be as hard as this," he said. "Then the ventilators would cool her down. The fires won't burn themselves now – you have got to make them; but you'll find her steam sweet and easy when she's going up the trades head to breeze."

"I wonder," said Austin grimly, "how many of us will be left when she gets there."

Then Bill, who had been busy at the locomotive boiler, came down the ladder with a message, and he and Tom vanished into the engine room, while Austin, who greatly desired to go with them, put a restraint upon himself. For some minutes he felt his heart beat as he listened to a premonitory wheezing and panting, and then his blood seemed to tingle as this merged into the steady rumble of engines. The faint quiver of the floor-plates sent a thrill through him, and he drew in a great breath of relief when beam and angle commenced to tremble. The rumbling grew steadily louder, the whirl of the reversed propeller shook the ship, and it was evident that the engines were running well.

After that, however, the work became harder still, for the big cylinders must be fed, and it was with a sensation of thankfulness that he had not broken down beneath the strain Austin dragged himself up the ladder when a message was brought him that he was wanted to drive the after winch. It was raining heavily, but he found it a relief to feel the deluge beat upon his beaded face and scorched skin, though he could scarcely see the mangroves to which the wire that ran from the winch drum led. It was shackled to a big bridle, a loop of twisted steel that wound in and out among a rood or two of the stoutest trees. The winch was also powerful, and it remained to be seen whether it would heave the Cumbria out of her miry bed, or pull that portion of the watery forest up bodily. A great cable that slanted back towards him rose out of the water forward in a curve, and he could dimly see Jefferson's lean figure outlined against the drifting mist high up on the bridge. On the forecastle beyond it more shadowy men stood still, and Austin wondered whether their hearts beat as his did while they waited. The man beside him stooped ready, with body bent in a rigid curve, and bare, stiffened arms, clenching the wire that led to the winch-drum. There was a minute's waiting, and then Jefferson, moving along the bridge, flung up a hand.

"Heave!" he said.

Austin felt his pulses quicken and a curious sense of exultation as he unscrewed the valve, for it seemed to him that flesh and blood had borne the strain too long, and now they had steel and steam to fight for them. The deck beneath him quivered as the screw whirled faster, and he could see the poop shaking visibly. Then the winch wheezed and pounded, and there was a groaning forward as the rattle of the windlass joined in. Wire and hemp and studded chain rose ripping from the river, creaked and groaned and strained, but when they had drawn each curve out they could get no inch of slack in. Austin clenched his fingers on the valve-wheel, but his eyes were fixed on the lonely figure pacing feverishly up and down the bridge, and just then he felt all the bitterness of defeat. The rattle forward died away, and though the winch still whirred and hammered, none of the wire rope ran over the drum into the crouching Spaniard's hands. The tension lasted for some minutes, and then Jefferson's voice came down harshly through the rain.

"Let up!" he said. "Get down, half of you, and see if you can help them with the firing. We'll try her again when you have raised more steam."

There was, by contrast, a curious silence when the roar of steam died away, and the thudding of the big engines below decks sank to a lower pitch. The men who could be spared went down in a body, and toiled for another hour in a frenzy. The fierce Latin blood was up; they knew it was the last round, and they would not be beaten now. The throbbing blast which rushed skywards from the blow-off valve when they came up again showed what they had done, and Austin walked aft, singed and blackened, to his winch, with his heart in his mouth. It must be now or never, for it was clear to him that the men were making their last effort, and the boilers would not bear another pound of steam.

The windlass was groaning horribly when he opened the valve, and the whole ship trembled with the whirring of the screw. He saw the drums spin round futilely for a moment or two, and then the Spaniard, who crouched behind one of them, howled, as a foot of the uncoiling wire came back to his hands. Simultaneously, the groaning of the windlass changed to a clanking rattle, and no sound had ever seemed half so musical to Austin. The ship shook beneath him, and creaked in all her frame, while the hammering and rattling swelled into a frantic din as she commenced to move. He felt as though he were choking, and his sight momentarily failed him; but as yet the battle was not quite won, and closing blackened fingers on the valve-wheel, he watched the rope come home with dazzled eyes. It ran in faster and faster; he could hear the great stud-cable splashing and grinding as it came in, too, and for five breathless minutes he held himself to his task, feeling the Cumbria creep down stream, stern foremost, under him. Then her pace grew faster, and the clanging of his winch seemed to deafen him, until at last a shrill-pitched voice fell through the din.

"Bastante!" it said. "She's clear now! 'Vast heaving!"

Then the tension slackened as the long, rusty hull swung out into midstream, and flesh and blood were left shaken, and, as yet, unable to recover from the suddenly lifted strain in the silence, as winch and engines stopped. Tom, the donkey-man, was chanting some incoherent ribaldry forward; here and there a Canario howled or flung up dripping arms; while the one beside Austin sat down upon the hatch and rocked himself to and fro as he called upon the Queen of Heaven. Only Jefferson stood very still, a tall, lean figure, on the bridge, with his torn and drenched clothing sticking to him, and Austin leaned heavily upon his winch. He did not wish to move, and was not sure he could have done so had he wanted to. The Cumbria was clear afloat, and they had won; but there was nothing he could say or do which would sufficiently celebrate that triumph.

Jefferson gave them five minutes to recover their balance, and then his voice came down again. The windlass clanked its hardest, wire hawsers splashed, and the Cumbria had swung across to the opposite forest when the big anchor rose to her bows. In the meanwhile the surfboat had been busy, too; and when the winch whirred again they slid away, stern foremost, with propeller churning slowly, against the muddy stream. It was twenty minutes later when, with a roar of running cable, the anchor plunged once more, and she brought up abreast of the creek where the coal and oil were stored. Jefferson came down from his bridge and sat down on the table in the skipper's room when Austin flung himself on to the settee, with the water trickling from him.

"Well," he said, "we have floated her, but there's still a good deal to be done. There are the coal and oil to get on board, and then we have to find the gum."

Austin looked up at him with a little smile.

"That's rather a prosaic epilogue when one comes to think of it," he said.

"Then you can paint a picture of it when you get home, if you fancy it worth while," said Jefferson drily.

"I don't think it would be," and Austin smiled again. "After all, a picture either goes beyond or falls a long way short of the real thing, and the subject's rather too big for me. Man's domination symbolised by a staggering scarecrow with a fireman's shovel."

Jefferson dropped his hand on his shoulder, and gripped it hard. "Well," he said, "you can drive a winch and sling a palm oil puncheon like a sailorman. I guess that's 'most as useful as the other thing, any way."

"Ah!" said Austin, "you're skirting rather a big question, but we are practical now. Are you going to dig the gum up before you heave in cargo?"

"I'm not. It seems to me it's safer where it is in the meanwhile, so long as Funnel-paint doesn't know where to look for it. If you'll give me a dose of quinine I'd be obliged to you."

Austin glanced at him sharply. "Have you any special reason for asking for it?"

"I've been in the rain quite a long while now, and it's a good deal wiser to head off a fever than wriggle out of its clutches once it gets a good grip on you. One gets cautious in this country."

Austin said nothing further, for he was by this time well acquainted with his comrade's characteristics, but he was not quite contented with the latter's reason when he lugged out the medicine chest.

CHAPTER XXVI

JEFFERSON FINDS THE GUM

A half-moon shone in a rift between the massed banks of cloud when Austin stood looking down into the trench four of the Spaniards were digging. It ran partly across the islet, which was small and sandy, intersecting another excavation that had a palm at one end of it, while a half-rotten cottonwood, from which orchids sprang, stood in line with the trench the men were toiling in. They were shovelling strenuously, and the thud of the sand they flung out jarred on the silence, for the night was very still. Austin could hear the creek lapping on the beach, and the deep humming of the Cumbria's pump, softened by the distance. She lay, with a light or two blinking fitfully on board her, half a mile away, ready at last for sea. Then he glanced at Jefferson, who stood close beside him, shivering a little, though the night was hot, as he leaned upon a shovel.

"We have been at it, at least, a couple of hours," Austin said suggestively.

Jefferson laughed. "And we'll be here this time to-morrow unless we find the case. There's only one on this islet, that fellow said, and, as I tried to point out, the men who buried it probably wanted to get the thing done quickly. They'd have run a line from the two trees, and either dumped the case at the intersection or a few paces outside it on a given bearing. If we don't strike it in a few minutes we'll work a traverse."

Ten minutes passed, and then one of the Canarios cried out excitedly as he struck something with his shovel. Austin saw his comrade's hands quiver on the shovel-haft in the moonlight, but that was all, and next moment two of the Spaniards fell on hands and knees in the sand. They flung it up in showers with their fingers, while Austin, by an effort, stood very still, for he felt that he might do things he would be sorry for afterwards if he let himself go. The Latins were panting in their eagerness, and wallowing rather like beasts than men amidst the flying sand. Then one of them, who dragged something out, hove it up and flung it at Austin's feet with a gasp of consternation.

"Ah, maldito! Es muy chiquitita!" he said.

Austin set his lips as he glanced at his comrade, whose face grew suddenly hard.

"Yes," he said, with portentous quietness. "It is remarkably small, and by the way he hove it up there can't be very much in it."

They stood still a moment, looking down at the little wooden case, while the Spaniards clustered round them, with eyes that gleamed in the moonlight, breathing unevenly. Then Jefferson said: "Light that blast-lamp, and we'll open it."

Austin's fingers trembled, and he wasted several matches before the sheet of flame sprang up. Then he fell furiously upon the case with a hammer and splintered the lid. He plunged his hand in and took out a quill, which he twisted until it burst, and spilled a little heap of gleaming grains in his palm.

"It's gold," he said.

"Empty the lot!" said Jefferson, and his voice was hoarse. "Your hat is big enough. It will all go into it."

There was a low murmur from the Spaniards when Austin obeyed him, and he handed the wide-brimmed hat to Jefferson.

"Would you make it four pounds?" asked the latter.

"I certainly would not."

Jefferson laughed harshly. "Then it's probably worth some £200," he said. "It's rather a grim joke, considering what has no doubt been done for the sake of it."

He laid the hat down, and one of the Spaniards, glancing at the little pile of quills, broke into a torrent of horrible maledictions, while Austin, who said nothing, gazed at his comrade until the latter made a curious little gesture.

"There is still the gum," he said.

Austin smiled sardonically. "If you can still believe in it you are an optimist of the finest water. Any way, we'll go and look for it. It will be a relief to get done with the thing."

They waded to the surfboat, which lay close by on the beach, and slid down stream to an adjacent island, where they had no difficulty in finding the tree the man who made the note in the engineers' tables had alluded to. The moon had, however, sunk behind a cloud, and they toiled by the light of the blast-lamp for half an hour, until once more one of the Canarios struck something with his shovel. They dragged it out with difficulty, and found it to be a heavy, half-rotten bag, with something that appeared to be a package of plaited fibre inside it. Other bags followed, and hope was growing strong in them again when they had disclosed at least a score. Jefferson looked at Austin with a little smile in his eyes.

"There's a couple of hundred pounds, any way, in each of those bags, and if the man who told me was right, that stuff is worth anything over £100 the ton," he said. "So far as we have prospected, this strip of sand is full of them. It's going to be more profitable than gold-mining. We'll get this lot into the surfboat first. Put that lamp out."

Austin did so, and they staggered through a foot or two of water with the bags on their backs. Some of them burst as they carried them, but the fibre packages remained intact, and the big boat was almost loaded when Austin, who was breathless, seated himself for a moment on her gunwale. He could see by the silvery gleam on the cloud bank's edge that the moon was coming through again, and he was glad of the fact, for he had stumbled and once fallen heavily under his burden when floundering through the strip of thorny brushwood which fringed the beach. Still, he agreed with Jefferson that it was not advisable to use the big blast-light any longer than was absolutely necessary, for they both had an unpleasant suspicion that they had not done yet with Funnel-paint. It was, indeed, for that reason they had made the search at night and used the surfboat, which could be paddled almost silently, instead of the launch, though Tom had repaired her boiler, and she was then lying alongside the Cumbria, with steam up, ready.

The black hull of the latter was faintly visible, and as he glanced at it he fancied that a puff of white steam sprang up where he supposed the locomotive boiler to be. A moment later a thin, shrill scream rang through the stillness, and one of the Spaniards, startled by the sound, fell heavily against the boat with the bag he was carrying. Austin made a sign to Jefferson, who was staggering across the beach with a bag upon his back.

"They're whistling," he said. "I fancy I can hear the launch coming."

There was another hoarser scream, and when it died away a low thudding sound crept out of the darkness. Austin swept his gaze upriver, but could only see the shadowy mangroves, for the moon had not come through yet.

"Funnel-paint!" said Jefferson, breathlessly. "There are four more bags in sight. We'll get her afloat before we go for them."

They did it up to their waists in water, and it cost them an effort, for the big boat was heavy now; and then, though the Spaniards glanced longingly at the Cumbria's blinking lights, Jefferson insisted upon their carrying down the bags. When that was done, nobody lost any time in getting on board; and, grasping the paddles, they drove her out into the stream.

"Paddle!" said Jefferson grimly. "I guess it's for your lives!"

It is probable that the Spaniards did not understand him, but they did what they could, for while the clank of the launch's engines grew louder the sound of paddles was also rapidly drawing nearer. There were, however, very few of them, and the boat was big, so that Austin gasped with relief when at last the little steamer swept round her stern.

"Stand by for the line!" said Tom, who sprang up on her deck. "They can't be far off. It's ten minutes, any way, since we first heard their paddles."

The tow-line was caught, and tightened with a jerk, and the surfboat went upstream with the yellow water frothing about her, while Austin could hear the rhythmic thud of paddles through the clank of hard-pressed engines. Jefferson said nothing, but stood rigidly still, with hands clenched on the big steering oar, until they drove alongside the Cumbria.

"Up with you, Tom, and see they whip those bags in!" he said. "I want the case you'll find under the settee in my room, too. You'll sing out for two or three men who can be relied on, Austin."

"What are you going to do?" asked Austin.

Jefferson laughed unpleasantly. "Head the devils off from the island, any way, and, if it's necessary, obliterate some of Funnel-paint's friends. It's fortunate the launch has twice the speed of any canoe."

He clambered on board the launch, and when a few more men came scrambling down, swung her out before they could decide whether it would be wiser to climb back again. After that, he left the helm to Austin, and moving towards the engine, opened the valve wide.

"Head her for the islet. If they have had anybody watching us in a canoe, they'll go there first," he said.

Austin made a sign of comprehension, but said nothing until his comrade, sitting down, opened the case he had asked for. Then he became possessed by unpleasant apprehensions as he saw Jefferson take out several rolls of giant-powder with fuses attached to them. They looked exactly like candles now, only the wicks were black, and unusually long. Sitting still, very grim in face, he tied one or two together, and then nipped a piece or two off the fuses with his knife.

"I guess it would be as well to make sure," he said.

"Of what?" asked Austin.

"That they'll go off when I want them," and Jefferson laughed a little grating laugh. "I've had them ready for some while, and took a good deal of trouble timing the fuses. Now, the effect of giant-powder's usually local, and I figure one could throw these things far enough for us to keep outside the striking radius. They'd go better with a little compression, but there's a big detonator inside them which should stir them up without it. If these two sticks fell upon a nigger they wouldn't blow him up. They'd dissolve him right into gases, and it's quite probable there wouldn't be any trace of him left."

Austin asked no more questions. Worn as he was by tense effort and the climate, kept awake as he had been to watch when he might have slept at night, and troubled by vague apprehensions that the loathsome plague might be working in his blood, he was ready, and, perhaps, rather more than that, to turn upon the man who had made their heavy burden more oppressive still. Indeed, it would have been a relief to him to feel the jump of a rifle barrel in his hand, but from Jefferson's scheme he shrank almost aghast. To run amuck, with flashing pistol or smashing firebar, among the canoes, would have appeared to him a natural thing, but the calculating quietness of his comrade, who sat so unconcernedly, making sure that the rolls of plastic material should not fail, struck him as wholly abnormal, and a trifle horrible. Pistol shot, machete slash, and spear thrust, were things that one might face; but it seemed beyond toleration that another man should unloose the tremendous potentialities pent up in those yellow rolls upon flesh and blood.

He was, however, quite aware that there was nothing to be gained by protesting, and while Jefferson went on with his grim preparations he turned his gaze upriver towards the approaching canoes. He could see them clearly, black bars that slid with glinting paddles athwart a track of silvery radiance, for the half-moon had sailed out from behind the cloud. They were coming on in a phalanx, five or six of them, and the splash and thud of the paddles rose in a rhythmic din. He swung the launch's bows a trifle down stream, to run in between them and the island.

Then he turned again, and saw Bill, the fireman, watching Jefferson. The light of the engine lantern was on his face, and it showed wry and repulsive with its little venomous grin. Forward, the Spaniards were clustered together, and they were, by their movements, apparently loosening their wicked knives; but they showed no sign of consternation, and Austin became sensible of a change in his mood. It seemed to him that he and they had grown accustomed to fear, and felt it less in the land of shadow. If they were to be wiped out by a spear thrust, or Jefferson's giant-powder, which seemed equally likely, nothing that he could do would avert it; but by degrees he became possessed by a quiet vindictive anger against the man who had forced this quarrel on them when their task was almost done. There were, he fancied, fifty or sixty men in the canoes, and he felt a little thrill of grim satisfaction as he reflected that if he and his comrades went under they would not go alone. In fact, he could almost sympathise with Jefferson.

In the meanwhile the canoes were drawing level with them as they approached the islet. He could see the wet paddles glinting, and the naked bodies swing, while presently Jefferson, who made Bill a little sign to stop the engine, stood up on the deck. The case of giant-powder lay open at his feet, and Bill laid a glowing iron on the cylinder covering. The men in the canoes ceased paddling, and while the craft slid slowly nearer each other there was for a moment or two an impressive silence, through which Austin fancied he could hear a faint rhythmic throbbing. Then Jefferson, who cut one of the rolls of giant-powder through, flung up his hand.