For Jacinta

Austin walked with her to the ladder, and stopped a moment at the head of it. "Well," he said, "one has to remember that all men are not built on the same model, and, what is more to the purpose, they haven't all the same opportunities. No doubt the latter fact is fortunate for some of them, since they would probably make a deplorable mess of things if they undertook a big enterprise."

"Ah!" said Jacinta, who remembered it afterwards, "one never knows when the opportunities may present themselves."

She went down the ladder, and it was about an hour later when a boat slid alongside, and a man came up, asking for Austin. The latter, who sat on the bridge-deck amidst a group of Farquhar's guests, looked at him curiously when he handed him an envelope. His garments had evidently not been made for him, and there were stains of grease and soot on his coarse serge jacket, while the coal dust had not been wholly washed from his face. It was not difficult to recognise him as a steamer's fireman.

"You're Mr. Austin?" he said.

Austin admitted that he was, and after a glance at the letter turned round and saw that Muriel Gascoyne, who sat close by, was watching him with a curious intentness. Then he once more fixed his attention on the paper in his hand.

"S.S. Cumbria" was written at the top of it, and there followed a description of the creek, and how the steamer lay, as well as the cargo in her holds. Then he read: "I'm beginning to understand why those wrecker fellows let up on the contract, though they hadn't the stake I have in the game. There are times when I get wondering whether I can last it out, for it seems to me that white men who work in the sun all day are apt to drop out suddenly in this country. I make you and Mr. Pancho Brown my executors in case of anything of that kind happening to me. If you come across anybody willing to take the Cumbria over as a business proposition, do what you can, on the understanding that one-third of the profit goes to Miss Gascoyne, the rest as executors' and wreckers' remuneration. I don't know how far this statement meets your law, but I feel I can trust you, any way. In case either party is not willing to take the thing up, the other may act alone."

Austin turned to the fireman. "You have another letter for Mr. Brown?"

"Yes, sir," said the man. "Mr. Jefferson – "

Austin, who heard a rustle of feminine draperies and what seemed to be a little gasp of surprise or alarm, made the man a sign.

"Come into the skipper's room. I've two or three things to ask you," he said. "Miss Brown, will you please hand that letter to your father?"

They disappeared into the room beneath the bridge, and it was some time before they came out again. Then Austin sent the man down the ladder with a steward to take him to Brown, and leaned against the rail. Jacinta, Muriel, and Mrs. Hatherly were still sitting there, but the rest had gone. He told them briefly all he had heard about Jefferson, and then descended the ladder in search of Brown. The latter met him with the letter in his hand, and they found a seat in the shadow of the Carsegarry's rail. Nobody seemed to notice them, though the fluttering dresses of the women brushed them as they swung in the waltz.

"You have read it," said Austin. "What do you think?"

Pancho Brown tapped the letter with the gold-rimmed glasses he held in his hand.

"As a business proposition I would not look at it. The risks are too great," he said.

"It struck me like that, too. Still, that's not quite the question. You see, the man isn't dead."

"I almost think he is by this time," said Brown, reflectively. "Now, he did not seem quite sure when he wrote those letters that there was really any gum in her. At least, he hadn't found it, and I understand that circumstances had made him a little suspicious about the Cumbria's skipper, who we know is dead. Taking oil at present value, in view of what we would have to pay for a salvage expedition and chartering, there is, it seems to me, nothing in the thing."

"I'm not quite sure of that; but you are still presuming Jefferson dead."

Brown turned and looked at him. "The first thing we have to do is to find out. Somebody will have to go across, and, of course, he must be a reliable man. I should be disposed to go so far as to meet the necessary expenses, not as a business venture, but because Jacinta would give me no peace if I didn't."

"There would be no difficulty about the man."

Brown turned to him sharply. "You?"

"Yes. If Jefferson is dead I should probably also undertake to do what I can to meet his wishes as executor."

Brown sat silent a space, and then tapped the letter with his glasses again. "In that case I might go as far as to find, say, £200. It should, at least, be sufficient to prove if there is any odd chance of getting the Cumbria off."

"I think I shall do that with £80, but I should prefer that you did not provide it. That is, unless you decide to go into the thing on a business footing, and take your share of the results, as laid down by Jefferson."

Brown seemed to be looking hard at him, but they sat in shadow, and Austin was glad of it.

"Ah!" he said quietly, though there was a significance in his tone. "Well, somebody must certainly go across, and if you fail elsewhere you can always fall back on me for – a loan. When are you going?"

"By the first boat that calls anywhere near the creek."

He rose and turned away, but Pancho Brown sat still, with a curious expression in his face. If any of the dancers had noticed him, it would probably have occurred to them that he was thinking hard. Pancho Brown was a quiet man, but he often noticed a good deal more than his daughter gave him credit for. Still, when at length he rose and joined Farquhar there was nothing in his appearance which suggested that he was either anxious or displeased.

In the meanwhile Austin came upon Mrs. Hatherly, who was wandering up and down the deck, and she drew him beneath a lifeboat.

"Miss Gascoyne is, no doubt, distressed? I am sorry for her," he said.

The little lady held his arm in a tightening grasp. "Of course," she said, and there was a tremour in her voice. "Still, after all, that does not concern us most just now. Somebody must go, and see what can be done for Mr. Jefferson."

"Yes," said Austin. "I am going."

"Then – and I am sure you will excuse me – it will cost a good deal, and you cannot be a rich man, or – "

"I should not have been on board the Estremedura? You are quite correct, madam."

Mrs. Hatherly made a little deprecatory gesture. "I am not exactly poor; in fact, I have more money than I shall live to spend, and I always meant to leave it to Muriel. It seems to me that it would be wiser to spend some of it on her now. You will let me give you what you want, Mr. Austin?"

Austin stood silent a moment, with a flush in his face, and then gravely met her gaze.

"I almost think I could let you lend me forty pounds. With that I shall have enough in the meanwhile. You will not think me ungracious if I say that just now I am especially sorry I have not more money of my own?"

The little lady smiled at him. "Oh, I understand. That is what made me almost afraid. It cannot be nice to borrow from a woman. Still, I think you could, if it was necessary, do even harder things."

"I shall probably have to," said Austin, a trifle drily. "I don't mind admitting that what you have suggested is a great relief to me."

"You would naturally sooner let me lend it you than Mr. Brown?"

"Why should you suppose that?" and the flush crept back into Austin's face.

Mrs. Hatherly smiled again. "Ah," she said, "I am an old woman, and have my fancies, but they are right now and then. I will send you a cheque to-morrow, and, Mr. Austin, I should like you to think of me as one of your friends. Do you know that I told Muriel half an hour ago you would go?"

Austin made her a little grave inclination, though there was a smile in his eyes.

"I am not sure that any of my other friends has so much confidence in me, madam," he said. "After all, it is another responsibility, and I shall have to do what I can."

The little lady smiled at him as she turned away. "Well," she said quietly, "I think that will be a good deal."

It was ten minutes later when Austin met Jacinta, and she stopped him with a sign.

"You are going to Mr. Jefferson?" she said.

"Yes," said Austin, with a trace of dryness. "I believe so. After all, he is a friend of mine."

Jacinta watched him closely, and her pale, olive-tinting was a trifle warmer in tone than usual. His self-control was excellent, to the little smile, but she could make a shrewd guess as to what it cost him.

"Soon?" she asked.

"In two or three days. That is, if the Compania don't get the Spaniards to lay hands on me. By the way, you may as well know now that I had to get Mrs. Hatherly to lend me part, at least, of the necessary money."

Jacinta flushed visibly. "You will not be vindictive, though, of course, I have now and then been hard on you."

"I shouldn't venture to blame you. As we admitted, there are occasions on which one has to resort to drastic remedies."

Jacinta stopped him with a gesture. "Please – you won't," she said. "Of course, I deserve it, but you will try to forgive me. You can afford to – now."

She stood still a moment in the moonlight, an ethereal, white-clad figure, with a suggestion of uncertainly and apprehension in her face which very few people had ever seen there before, and then turned abruptly, with a little smile of relief, as Miss Gascoyne came towards them.

"He's going out, Muriel. You will thank him – I don't seem able to," she said.

Muriel came forward with outstretched hands, and in another moment Austin, to his visible embarrassment, felt her warm grasp.

"Oh," she said, "Mrs. Hatherly knew you meant to. I feel quite sure I can trust you to bring him back to me."

Austin managed to disengage his hands, and smiled a little, though it was Jacinta he looked at.

"I think," he said, "I have a sufficient inducement for doing what I can. Still, you will excuse me. There are one or two points I want to talk over with Captain Farquhar."

He turned away, and twenty minutes later Jacinta, standing on the bridge-deck, alone, watched his boat slide away into the blaze of moonlight that stretched suggestively towards Africa.

CHAPTER X

JACINTA IS NOT CONTENT

Darkness was closing down on the faintly shining sea, and the dull murmur of the surf grew louder as the trade-breeze died away, when Jacinta and Muriel Gascoyne sat in the stern of a white gig which two barefooted Canarios pulled across Las Palmas harbour on the evening on which Austin was to sail. In front of them the spray still tossed in filmy clouds about the head of the long, dusky mole, and the lonely Isleta hill cut black as ebony against a cold green transparency, while skeins of lights twinkled into brilliancy round the sweep of bay. Jacinta, however, saw nothing of this. She was watching the Estremedura's dark hull rise higher above the line of mole, and listening to one of the boatmen who accompanied the rhythmic splash of oars with a little melodious song. She long afterwards remembered its plaintive cadence and the words of it well.

"Las aves marinas vuelen encima la mar," he sang, and then while the measured thud and splash grew a trifle faster, "No pueden escapar las penas del amor."

He did not seem to know the rest of it, and when she had heard the stanza several times Jacinta, who saw Muriel's eyes fixed upon her enquiringly, made a little half-impatient gesture.

"It's the usual sentimental rubbish, though he sings passably well. 'Even the sea birds cannot escape the pains of love,'" she said. "Absurd, isn't it? like most of the men one comes across nowadays, they probably spend all their time in search of something to eat. Still, I suppose – you – would sympathise with the man whose perverted imagination led him to write that song."

Muriel looked at her with a hint of reproach in her big blue eyes, which were very reposeful. "I don't think I ever quite understood you, and I don't now, but I once went to see an English gullery," she said. "There were rows of nests packed so close that one could scarcely pick a way between, with little, half-feathered things in most of them. They all had their mouths open."

Jacinta laughed musically. "Of course," she said. "You are delightful. But never mind me. Go on a little further."

"It was the big gulls I was thinking of," said Muriel gravely. "They didn't fly away, but hung just above us in a great white cloud, wheeling, screaming, and now and then making little swoops at our heads. It didn't seem to matter what happened to them, but any one could see they were in an agony of terror lest we should tread upon some of the little, half-feathered nestlings. I came away as soon as the others would let me. It seemed a cruelty to frighten them."

"It seems to me," said Jacinta, "that you are anticipating, or confusing things considerably, but I'll try not to offend you by making that a little plainer, though, I should almost like to. I'm in quite a prickly humour to-night."

She sat silent a moment or two, while a trace of colour crept in her companion's face, looking out towards the eastern haze, as she had done of late somewhat frequently.

"Yes," she said, reflectively, "I feel that it would be a relief to make you upset and angry. You are so aggravatingly sure of everything, and serene. Of course, that is, perhaps, only natural, after all. You have, in one respect, got just what you wanted, and have sense enough to be content with it."

Muriel turned and looked at her with a trace of bewilderment, for there was an unusual hardness in Jacinta's tone.

"Wouldn't everybody be content in such a case?" she asked.

"Oh, dear no!" and Jacinta laughed. "I, for one, would begin to look for flaws in the thing, whatever it was, and wonder if it wouldn't be wiser to change it for something else. In fact, I don't mind telling you I feel like that to-night. You see, for a year at least, I have been trying to bring a certain thing about, and – now I have succeeded – I wish I hadn't. Of course, you won't understand me, and I don't mean you to; but you may as well remember that it's a somewhat perilous thing to keep on giving people good advice. Some day they will probably act upon it."

"But that ought to please one."

Jacinta glanced once more into the soft darkness that crept up from the East with a little shiver. "Well," she said sharply, "in my case it certainly doesn't."

They were alongside the Estremedura in another minute, but the seaman they found on deck did not know where Austin was, and led them down to Macallister's room. It was beneath the spar-deck, and very hot, for the dynamo was not running that night, and a big oil lamp lighted it. It was also full of tobacco smoke, and – for the port was open – the rumble of the long swell tumbling against the mole came throbbing into it. A big man in very shabby serge, with a hard face, sat opposite the engineer, until the latter, seeing the two women, laid a hand upon his shoulder.

"Out ye get!" he said, and his guest was projected suddenly into the dimly-lighted space about the after-hatch.

Then he smiled upon the newcomers affably. "Come away in," he said. "Was it me or Mr. Austin ye came to see?"

"On this occasion it was Mr. Austin," said Jacinta, who found a place opposite him, beside Muriel, on a settee. "Of course, that was because he is going away. Isn't he here?"

"He is not," and Macallister beamed at her. "In one way, it's not that much of a pity. There's twice the light-heartedness in me that there is in Mr. Austin."

"I can quite believe it. Still, light-heartedness of one kind is now and then a little inconvenient. Where has he gone?"

"To the town. I don't expect him until he calls for his man – the one I've just hove out – when the West-coast mailboat comes in. She won't stop more than half an hour, but there's no sign of her yet."

Jacinta sighed whimsically, perhaps to hide what she felt.

"Then I'm afraid we shall not see him, which is a pity, because I've been thinking over the nice things I meant to say to him, and now they're all wasted," she said. "You will tell him that we came to say good-bye to him, won't you, and that I'm just a little vexed he never called to tell us anything about his expedition."

Macallister grinned sardonically, and though Jacinta was usually a very self-possessed young woman, she appeared to find his gaze a trifle disconcerting.

"Well," he said, "I know all about it. He has sold everything he had, and he borrowed £40. One way or another he has another £60 of his own."

Jacinta looked up sharply. "He has no more than that?"

"It's not likely," and Macallister watched her with a faint twinkle in his eyes. "I do not know why he would not have the £200 Mr. Brown offered him. Maybe ye do."

There was a just perceptible trace of colour in Jacinta's cheek. "I hardly see how you could expect me to when I never heard of it until this moment," she said. "Would £100 be enough for Mr. Austin?"

"I'm thinking it would. No for everybody under the same circumstances, but enough for him. There are folks in these islands who have only seen the outside of Mr. Austin, which, ye may observe, is in one sense quite a natural thing."

He stopped a moment, and smiled upon her genially. "It's not his fault that he's no quite so well favoured as I am. What would ye expect of an Englishman? Still, there are men aboard here who have seen what's underneath – I mean the other side of him – at nights when he brought the dispatch off through the surf, and once – though that was not his business – when I was sick, an' they let water down in the starboard boiler."

"Still," said Jacinta, "he would naturally have to have so many things."

"He has four good men, a little box o' drugs, and a case o' dynamite. Farquhar's going on to Australia with mining stores, and he gave it him."

It seemed absurdly insufficient, and Jacinta struggled with an almost hysterical inclination to laugh. It was, she realised, a very big thing Austin had undertaken, and his equipment consisted of a case of dynamite and a box of drugs, which, on his own confession, he knew very little about. Still, she saw that Macallister, who, she fancied, ought to know, rated manhood far higher than material. It was Muriel who broke the silence.

"But they will want a doctor," she said, with a little tremour in her voice.

Macallister shook his head. "Ye would not get one to go there for £500, and he would be no use if he did," he said. "Ye will remember that malaria fever does not stay on one long. It goes away when it has shaken the strength out o' ye – and now and then comes back again – while by the time Austin gets there Mr. Jefferson will be – "

He stopped with some abruptness, but though she shivered, Muriel looked at him with steady eyes.

"Ah!" she said, "you mean he will either be better, or that no doctor could cure him then?"

Macallister made her a little inclination, and it was done with a grave deference that Jacinta had scarcely expected from him.

"Just that," he said. "I'm thinking ye are one of the women a man can tell the truth to. It is a pity there are not more o' them. It is no a healthy country Mr. Austin is going to, but I have been five years on the coast o' it, and ye see me here."

"I wonder," said Jacinta, "whether you, who know all about ships and engines, did not feel tempted to go with Mr. Austin?"

The engineer smiled curiously. "Tempted!" he said. "It was like trying to be teetotal with a whisky bottle in the rack above one's bunk; but I am a married man, with a wife who has a weakness for buying dining-room suites."

"Dining-room suites! What have they to do with it?"

"Just everything," and Macallister sighed. "She will only have the biggest ones the doors will let in, and she has furnished a good many dining-rooms altogether. Ye will mind that we lived here and there and everywhere, while she's back in England now. Ye would not meet a better woman, but on £20 a month ye cannot buy unlimited red-velvet chairs and sideboards with looking-glasses at the back o' them."

Jacinta laughed as she rose. "You will tell Mr. Austin we are sorry we did not see him."

"I will," and Macallister stood up, too. "Perhaps ye mean it this time, and I'm a little sorry for him myself. There are men who get sent off with bands and speeches and dinners to do a smaller thing, but Mr. Austin he just slips away with his box o' dynamite and his few sailormen."

He stopped and looked hard at her a moment before he turned to Muriel. "Still, we'll have the big drum out when he brings Mr. Jefferson and the Cumbria back again, and if there's anything that can be broken left whole in this ship that night it will be no fault o' mine."

They went out and left him, but Jacinta stopped when they came upon the man he had ejected from his room, sitting on the companion stairway and smoking a very objectionable pipe. She also held a little purse concealed beneath her hand.

"You are going back with Mr. Austin to the Cumbria?" she said.

The man stood up. "In course," he said. "It's eight pound a month, all found, an' a bonus."

"Ah!" said Jacinta. "I suppose there is nothing else?"

The man appeared to ruminate over this, until a light broke in on him.

"Well," he said, "Mr. Jefferson does the straight thing, an' he fed us well. That is, as well as he could, considering everything."

Jacinta smiled at Muriel. "You will notice the answer. He is a man!" Then she held out a strip of crinkly paper. "That will make you almost a month to the good, and if you do everything you can to make things easier for the man who wants to get the Cumbria off, there will probably be another waiting for you when you come back again."

The man, who took the crinkly paper, gazed at it in astonishment, and then made a little sign of comprehension. "Thank you kindly, miss, but which one am I to look after special? You see, there's two of them."

Jacinta was apparently not quite herself that night, for the swift colour flickered into her face, and stayed there a moment.

"Both," she said decisively. "Still, you are never to tell anybody about that note."

The man once more gazed at her with such evident bewilderment that Muriel broke into a little half-audible laugh. Then he grinned suddenly, and touched his battered cap.

"Well, we'll make it – both," he said.

They went up the companion, and left him apparently chuckling, but Jacinta appeared far from pleased when she got into the waiting boat.

"That was to have gone to England for a hat and one or two things I really can't do without – though I shall probably have to now," she said. "Oh, aren't they stupid sometimes – I felt I could have shaken him."

In the meanwhile the man in the fireman's serge went back to Macallister's room.

"Give me an envelope – quick!" he said.

Macallister got him one, and he slipped a strip of paper inside before he addressed it and tossed it across the table.

"You'll post that. There's a Castle boat home to-morrow, and I'd sooner trust you with it than myself," he said, with a little sigh, which, however, once more changed to a chuckle.

"If there's money inside it ye're wise," said Macallister drily. "Still, what are ye grinning in yon fashion for?"

"I was thinking it's just as well I've only – one – old woman. It would make a big hole in eight pounds a month – an' a bonus – if I had any more of 'em. But you get that letter posted before I want it back."

"Wanting," said Macallister, reflectively, "is no always getting. Maybe, it's now and then fortunate it is so, after all."

It was two hours later, and Jacinta stood on the flat roof of Pancho Brown's house looking down upon the close-packed Spanish town, when the crash of a mail gun rose from the harbour and was lost in the drowsy murmur of the surf. Then the other noises in the hot streets below her went on again, but Jacinta scarcely heard the hum of voices and the patter of feet as she watched a blinking light slide out from among the others in the harbour. It rose higher and swung a little as it crept past the mole, then a cluster of lower lights lengthened into a row of yellow specks, and she could make out the West-coast liner's dusky hull that moved out with slanting spars faster into the faintly shining sea. Jacinta closed one hand as she leaned upon the parapet and watched it, until she turned with a little start at the sound of footsteps. She was, one could have fancied, not particularly pleased to see Muriel Gascoyne then.