For Jacinta

Austin was a trifle startled. "You told Miss Gascoyne that?" he said. "How did she take it?"

Jefferson made a curious little gesture. "Of course," he said simply. "I had to. She believed in me; but do you think I'm going to tell – you – how it hurt her?"

It was borne in upon Austin that, after all, he understood very little about women. A few days earlier it would have seemed impossible to him that a girl with Muriel Gascoyne's straitened views should ever have linked her life with one who had played a leading part in that revolting tragedy. Now, however, it was evident that there was very little she would not do for the man who loved her.

"I'm sorry! You'll excuse it," he said. "Still, that scarcely explains how you came to Las Palmas."

"I came as deck-hand on board a barque bringing tomato boxes over. They were busy at the coaling wharf just then, and I got put on. You know the rest of it. I was left forty thousand dollars."

"You haven't told me yet how you're going to turn them into eighty thousand."

"I'm coming to it. You know we coaled the Cumbria before she went out to West Africa. A nearly new 1,500-ton tramp she was, light draught at that, or she'd never have gone where she did. You could put her down at £15,000 sterling. She went up into the half-charted creeks behind the shoals and islands south of Senegal, and was lost there. Among other things, it was a new gum she went for. It appears the niggers find gums worth up to £5 the hundredweight in the bush behind that country. A Frenchman chartered her, but he's dead now, as is almost everybody connected with the Cumbria. They've fevers that will wipe you out in a week or two yonder – more fever, in fact, than anywhere else in Africa. Well, as everybody knows, they got oil and sundries and a little gum, and went down with fever while they crawled about those creeks loading her. She got hard in the mud up one of them, and half of the boys were buried before they pulled her out at all, and then she hit something that started a plate or two in her. They couldn't keep the water down, and they rammed her into a mangrove forest to save her. More of them died there, and the salvage expedition lost three or four men before they turned up their contract."

"That," said Austin, "is what might be termed the official version."

Jefferson nodded. "What everybody doesn't know is that the skipper played the Frenchman a crooked game," he said. "There was more gum put into her than was ever shown in her papers; while they had got at the trade gin before she went ashore. In fact, I have a notion that it wasn't very unlike the Sachem affair. I can't quite figure how they came to start those plates in the soft mud of a mangrove creek. Any way, the carpenter, who died there, was a countryman of mine. You may remember I did a few things for him, and the man was grateful. Well, the result is I know there's a good deal more than £20,000 sterling in the Cumbria."

Austin surmised that this was possible. It was not, he knew, seafarers of unexceptional character who usually ventured into the still little known creeks of Western Africa, which the coast mailboats' skippers left alone. He was also aware that more or less responsible white men are apt to go a trifle off their balance and give their passions free rein when under the influence of cheap spirits in that land of pestilence.

"Well?" he said.

"I've bought her, as she lies, for £6,000."

Austin gasped. "You will probably die off in two or three weeks after you put your foot in her."

"I'm not quite sure. I was at Panama, and never had a touch of fever. Any way, I'm going, and if you'll stand in with me, I'll put you down a quarter-share for a dollar."

It was in one respect a generous offer, but Austin shook his head. "No," he said decisively. "Have you forgotten that Miss Gascoyne expects you to marry her?"

Jefferson's eyes glowed. "I'm remembering it all the time. That's why I'm going. Would you take a refined and cultured girl and drag her through all the hard places men of my kind make money in up and down the world? Has she to give up everything and come down to me? No, sir! It seems to me, the man who wants to marry a girl of that kind has got to do something to show he knows her value before he gets her, and it would be way better for both of us that she should be sorry for me dead than that I should live to drag her down."

It seemed to Austin that there was a good deal to be said for this point of view, and it also occurred to him that there was in this latter-day American, who had still the grime of the coaling wharf upon him, something of the spirit which had sent the knight-errant out in the days of chivalry. Still, he naturally did not say so, for he was, after all, what Jefferson called a hide-bound Englishman.

"Well," he said, "you're taking a big risk, but perhaps you are right."

Jefferson rose with the abruptness which usually characterised his movements.

"You're not coming?"

"No. I haven't your inducement, and I'm afraid the contract's too big for me."

"You have a week to consider it in," said Jefferson, who opened the door. "In the meanwhile there's another fellow ready for his coal, and I'm going along."

CHAPTER V

THE TOMATO FINCA

Three weeks had passed since his interview with Austin before Jefferson was ready to sail, and he spent most of the time in strenuous activity. He had cabled to England for a big centrifugal pump and a second-hand locomotive-type boiler, while, when they arrived, Macallister said that five hundred pounds would not tempt him to raise full steam on the latter. He also purchased a broken-down launch, and, though she was cheap, the cost of her and the pump, with other necessaries, made a considerable hole in his remaining £2,000. It was for this reason he undertook to make the needful repairs himself, with the help of a steamer's donkey-man who had somehow got left behind, while Austin and Macallister spent most of the week during which the Estremedura lay at Las Palmas in the workshop he had extemporised. He appeared to know a little about machinery, and could, at least, handle hack-saw and file in a fashion which moved Macallister to approbation, while Austin noticed that the latter's sardonic smile became less frequent as he and the American worked together.

Jefferson was grimly in earnest, and it was evident that his thoroughness, which overlooked nothing, compelled the engineer's admiration. It also occurred to Austin that, while there are many ways in which a lover may prove his devotion, few other men would probably have cared for the one Jefferson had undertaken. He was not a very knightly figure when he emerged, smeared with rust and scale, from the second-hand boiler, or crawled about the launch's engines with blackened face and hands; but Austin, who remembered it was for Muriel Gascoyne he had staked all his little capital in that desperate venture, forebore to smile. He knew rather better than Jefferson did that it was a very forlorn hope indeed the latter was venturing on. One cannot heave a stranded steamer off without strenuous physical exertion, and the white man who attempts the latter in a good many parts of Western Africa incontinently dies.

At last all was ready, and one night Jefferson steamed off to the African liner from Las Palmas mole, taking with him the steamboat donkey-man and another English seafarer, who were at the time disgracefully drunk, as well as six Spaniards from the coasting schooners. He said that when he reached the Cumbria he would hire niggers, who would be quite as reliable, and considerably cheaper. As it happened, the Estremedura was going to sea that night, bound for the eastern islands, and Mrs. Hatherly, who was never seasick, and had heard that the climate of one of them where it scarcely ever rained was good for rheumatic affections, had determined to visit it in her. Jacinta, for no very apparent reason, decided to go with her, and it accordingly came about that most of her few acquaintances were with Muriel Gascoyne when she said good-bye to Jefferson at the head of the mole. She kissed him unblushingly, and then, when the launch panted away across the harbour, turned, a little pale in face, but with a firm step, towards the Estremedura, and an hour later stood with Jacinta on the saloon deck, watching the liner's black hull slide down the harbour. Then as the steamer lurched out past the mole, with a blast of her whistle throbbing across the dusky heave, Muriel shivered a little.

"I don't know whether we shall ever meet here again, but I think I could bear that now, and it really couldn't be so very hard, after all," she said. "It would have been horrible if he had gone and had not told me."

Jacinta looked thoughtful, as in fact she was. She was of a more complex, and, in some respects, more refined nature than her companion, while her knowledge of the world was almost startlingly extensive; but wisdom carries one no further than simplicity when one approaches the barriers that divide man's little life from the hereafter. Indeed, there is warrant for believing that when at last they are rolled away, it is not the wise who will see with clearest vision.

"I am not – quite – sure I understand," she said.

There was a trace of moisture on Muriel Gascoyne's cheek, but she held herself erect, and she was tall and large of frame, as well as a reposeful young woman. Though she probably did not know it, there was a suggestion of steadfast unchangeableness in her unconscious pose.

"Now," she said, very simply, "he belongs to me and I to him. If he dies out there – and I know that is possible – it can only be a question of waiting."

Jacinta was a little astonished. She felt that there had been a great and almost incomprehensible change in Muriel Gascoyne since she fell very simply and naturally in love with Jefferson. It was also very evident that she was not consoling herself with empty phrases, or repeating commendable sentiments just because they appealed to her fancy, as some women will. She seemed to be stating what she felt and knew.

"Ah!" said Jacinta, "you knew he might die there, and you could let him go?"

Muriel smiled. "My dear, I could not have stopped him, and now he is gone I think I am in one way glad that it was so. I do not want money – I have always had very little – but, feeling as he did, it was best that he should go. He would not have blamed me afterwards – of that I am certain – but I think I know what he would have felt if hardship came, and I wanted to spare it him." Then, with a faint smile, which seemed to show that she recognised the anti-climax, she became prosaic again. "One has to think of such things. Eight thousand pounds will not go so very far, you know."

Jacinta left her presently, and, as it happened, came upon Austin soon after the Estremedura steamed out to sea. He was leaning on the forward rails while the little, yacht-like vessel – she was only some 600 tons or so – swung over the long, smooth-backed undulations with slanted spars and funnel. There was an azure vault above them, strewn with the lights of heaven, and a sea of deeper blue which heaved oilily below, for, that night, at least, the trade breeze was almost still.

"The liner will be clear of the land by now," she said. "I suppose you are glad you did not go with Jefferson? You never told me that he had asked you to!"

Austin, who ignored the last remark, laughed in a somewhat curious fashion.

"Well," he said, reflectively, "in one respect Jefferson is, perhaps, to be envied. He is, at least, attempting a big thing, and if he gets wiped out over it, which I think is quite likely, he will be beyond further trouble, and Miss Gascoyne will be proud of him. In fact, it is she I should be sorry for. She seems really fond of him."

"Is that, under the circumstances, very astonishing?"

"Jefferson is really a very good fellow," said Austin, with a smile. "In fact, whatever it may be worth, he has my sincere approbation."

Jacinta made a little gesture of impatience. "Pshaw!" she said. "You know exactly what I mean. I wonder if there is one among all the men I have ever met who would – under any circumstances – do as much for me?"

She glanced at him for a moment in a fashion which sent a thrill through him; but Austin seldom forgot that he was the Estremedura's purser. He had also a horror of cheap protestations, and he avoided the question.

"You could scarcely expect – me – to know," he said. "Suppose there was such a man, what would you do for him?"

There was just a trace of heightened colour in Jacinta's face. "I think, if it was necessary, and he could make me believe in him as Muriel believes in Jefferson, I would die for him."

Austin said nothing for a space, and looked eastwards towards Africa, across the long, smooth heave of sea, while he listened to the throbbing of the screw and the swash of the water beneath the steamer's side. He was quite aware that while Jacinta, on rare occasions, favoured her more intimate masculine friends with a glimpse of her inner nature, she never permitted them to presume upon the fact. He had, he felt, made some little progress in her confidence and favour, but it was quite clear that it would be inadvisable to venture further without a sign from her. Jacinta was able to make her servants and admirers understand exactly what line of conduct it was convenient they should assume. If they failed to do so, she got rid of them.

"Whatever is Mrs. Hatherly going to Fuerteventura for?" he asked.

"Dry weather," said Jacinta, with a little smile.

Austin laughed. "One would fancy that Las Palmas was dry and dusty enough for most people. I suppose you told her there is nowhere she can stay? They haven't a hotel of any kind in the island."

"That," said Jacinta, sweetly, "will be your business. You are a friend of Don Fernando, and he has really a comfortable house. Still, I expect three days of it will be quite enough for Mrs. Hatherly. You can pick us up, you know, when you come back from Lanzarote."

Austin made a little whimsical gesture of resignation. "There is, presumably, no use in my saying anything. After all, she will be company for Confidencia."

"Who is, by the way, a friend of yours, too."

"I have artistic tastes, as you know. Confidencia is – barring one or two – the prettiest girl in these islands."

He moved away, but he turned at the top of the ladder, and Jacinta smiled.

"It is almost a pity a taste of that kind does not invariably accompany an artistic talent," she said.

Austin went down to his little room, which was almost as hot as an oven, and strove to occupy himself with his papers. The attempt, however, was not a success, for his thoughts would follow Jefferson, who was on his way to Africa with a big centrifugal pump, a ricketty steam launch, and a second-hand boiler of the locomotive type. In view of his ulterior purpose, there was, it seemed to Austin, something ludicrously incongruous about this equipment, though he realised that the gaunt American possessed in full degree the useful practical point of view in which he himself fell short. Jefferson was, in some respects, primitive, but that was, after all, probably fortunate for him. He knew what he desired, and set about the obtaining of it by the first means available. Then he dismissed the subject, and climbing into his bunk went to sleep.

Next morning he took Jacinta, Mrs. Hatherly, and Muriel Gascoyne ashore, and afterwards went on with the Estremedura to the adjoining island. It was three days later, and the steamer had come back again, when he and her captain rode with the three ladies towards the coast, after a visit to the black volcanic hills. Mrs. Hatherly and Muriel sat in a crate-like affair upon the back of a camel, with distress in their faces, for there is probably no more unpleasant form of locomotion to anyone not used to it than camel-riding. The beast possesses a gait peculiarly its own, and at every lurch of its shoulders the two women jolted violently in the crate. The camel, however, proceeded unconcerned, with long neck moving backwards and forwards like a piston-rod. The rest rode horses, and a gun and several ensanguined rabbits lay across the Captain's saddle. He rode like a Castilian, and not a sailor, and Jacinta had noticed already that Austin was equally at home in the saddle. The fact had, naturally, its significance for her.

It was then about two o'clock in the afternoon, and very hot, though the fresh trade breeze blew long wisps of dust away from under the horses' feet. Nobody could have called that part of Fuerteventura a beautiful country, but it had its interest to two of the party, who had never seen anything quite like it before. Behind them rose low hills, black with streams of lava, red with calcined rock, and every stone on them was outlined in harsh colouring in that crystalline atmosphere. In front lay a desolation of ashes and scoriæ, with tracts of yellow sand, blown there presumably from Africa, which swirled in little spirals before the breeze. It was chequered with clumps of euphorbia and thorn, but they, too, matched the prevailing tones of grey and brown and chrome, and there was not in all the waste a speck of green. Further still in front of them the sea flamed like a mirror, and a vault of dazzling blue hung over all.

They wound down into a hollow, through which, as one could see by the tortuous belt of stones, a little water now and then flowed, and dismounted in the scanty shadow of a ruined wall. It had been built high and solid of blocks of lava centuries ago, perhaps by the first of the Spanish, or by dusky invaders from Morocco. As it was not quite so hot there, Austin and the Captain made preparations for a meal when a bare-legged peon led the beasts away. Then the Captain frowned darkly at the prospect.

"Ah, mala gente. Que el infierno los come!" he said, with blazing eyes, and swung a brown hand up, as though appealing to stones and sky before he indulged in another burst of eloquence.

"What is he saying?" asked Muriel Gascoyne. "He seems very angry."

Austin smiled. "I scarcely think it would be altogether advisable to enquire, but it is not very astonishing if he is angry," he said. "Don Erminio is not, as a rule, a success as a business man, and this is a farm he once invested all his savings in. I am particularly sorry to say that I did much the same."

Miss Gascoyne appeared astonished, which was, perhaps, not altogether unnatural, as she gazed at the wilderness in front of her. There were, she could now see, signs that somebody had made a desultory attempt at building a wall which was nearly buried again. A few odd heaps of lava blocks had also been piled up here and there, but the hollow was strewn with dust and ashes, and looked as though nothing had ever grown there since that island was hurled, incandescent, out of the sea. It was very difficult to discover the least evidence of fertility.

"Ah!" said Jacinta, "so this is the famous Finca de La Empreza Financial?"

Oliviera overheard her, and once more made a gesture with arms flung wide.

"Mira!" he said. "The cemetery where I bury the hopes of me. O much tomate, mucho profit. I buy more finca and the cow for me. Aha! There is also other time I make the commercial venture. I buy two mulo. Very good mulo. I charge mucho dollar for the steamboat cargo cart. Comes the locomotura weet the concrete block down Las Palmas mole. The mole is narrow, the block is big, the man drives the locomotura behind it, he not can look. Vaya, my two mulo, and the cart, she is in the sea. That is also ruin me. I say, 'Vaya. In fifty year she is oll the same,' but when I see the Finca de tomate I have the temper. Alors, weet permission, me vais chasser the conejo."

"The unfortunate man!" said Jacinta, when he strode away in search of a rabbit. "Still, the last of it wasn't quite unexceptional Castilian."

Austin laughed. "Don Erminio speaks French almost as well as he does English. In fact, he's a linguist in his way. Still, I'm not sorry he didn't insist upon me going shooting with him. It's risky, and I would sooner he'd borrowed somebody else's gun."

They made a tolerable lunch, for the Estremedura's cook knew his business, and, though it very seldom rains there, some of the finest grapes to be found anywhere grow in the neighbouring island of Lanzarote. Then Mrs. Hatherly apparently went to sleep with her back against the wall, while Muriel sat silent in the shadow, close beside her. Perhaps the camel ride had shaken her, and perhaps she was thinking of Jefferson, for she was gazing east towards Africa, across the flaming sea. Jacinta, as usual, appeared delightfully fresh and cool, as she sat with her long white dress tucked about her on a block of lava, while Austin lay, contented, not far from her feet.

"You never told me you had a share in the Finca," she said.

"Well," said Austin, "I certainly had. I also made a speech at the inaugural dinner, and Don Erminio almost wept with pride while I did it. I had, though he did not mention it, a share in his mule cart, too, and once or twice bought a schooner load of onions to ship to Havana at his suggestion. You see, I had then a notion that it was my duty to make a little money. Somehow, the onions never got to Cuba, and our other ventures ended – like the Finca."

"Then you have given up all idea of making money now?"

"It really didn't seem much use continuing, and, after all, a little money wouldn't be very much good to me. A chance of making twenty thousand pounds might, perhaps, rouse me to temporary activity."

"Ah," said Jacinta, looking at him with thoughtful eyes, "you want too much, my friend. You are not likely to make it by painting little pictures on board the Estremedura."

A faint trace of darker colour showed through the bronze in Austin's cheek. "Yes," he said, "that is exactly what is the matter with me. Still, as I shall never get it, I am tolerably content with what I have. Fortunately, I am fond of it – I mean the sea."

"Of course," said Jacinta, with a curious little sparkle in her eyes, "contentment is commendable, though there is something that appeals to one's fancy in the thought of a man struggling against everything to acquire the unattainable."

"So long as it is unattainable, what would be the good? Besides, I am almost afraid I am not that kind of man."

Jacinta said nothing further, and half an hour slipped by, until a trail of smoke with a smear of something beneath it, crept up out of the glittering sea.

"The Andalusia," said Austin. "She takes up our western run here under the new time-table. I hope she's bringing no English folks from Las Palmas to worry us."

As it happened, there was a man on board the Andalusia who was to bring one of the party increased anxiety and distress of mind, but they did not know that then, and in the meanwhile the peon with the horses and Don Erminio came back again. He brought no rabbits, but he had succeeded in badly scratching one of the Damascene barrels of Austin's gun.

"The conejo he no can eat the stone, and here there is nothing else," he explained. "Otra vez – the other time, comes here a señor Engleesman, and we have the gun, but there is no conejo. Me I say, 'Mira. Conejo into his hole he go!' Bueno! The Engleesman he put the white rat into that hole, and wait, oh, he wait mucho tiempo. Me, away I go. I come back, the Engleesman has bag the Captain of puerto."

Then he turned with a dramatic gesture to the camel, which stretched out its little head towards his leg. "Bur-r-r. Hijo de diablo. Aughr-r-r. Focha camello! Me, I also spick the Avar-r-ack. The condemn camello he comprehend."

The long-necked beast at least knelt down as though it did, and Mrs. Hatherly climbed into the crate with a somewhat apprehensive glance at the gallant captain.

CHAPTER VI

AUSTIN'S POINT OF VIEW

Mrs. Hatherly decided during the ride to the beach that she had seen quite enough of that island in the three days she had spent there, and she had already gone off to the Estremedura with Muriel and Jacinta when Austin stood smoking on the little mole. Long undulations of translucent brine seethed close past his feet to break with a drowsy roar upon the lava reefs, and the Estremedura lay rolling wildly a quarter of a mile away. A cluster of barefooted men were with difficulty loading her big lancha beneath the mole with the barley-straw the row of camels, kneeling in the one straggling street behind him, had brought down. The men were evidently tired, for they had toiled waist-deep in the surf since early morning, and Austin decided to spare them the journey for his despatch gig.