The End of the Tether Part 14

Seven. A long time.

He sat on the veranda with a closed book on his knee, and, as it were, looked out upon his solitude, as if the fact of Captain Whalley's blindness had opened his eyes to his own. There were many sorts of heartaches and troubles, and there was no place where they could not find a man out. And he felt ashamed, as though he had for six years behaved like a peevish boy.

His thought followed the Sofala on her way. On the spur of the moment he had acted impulsively, turning to the thing most pressing. And what else could he have done? Later on he should see. It seemed necessary that he should come out into the world, for a time at least. He had money--something could be arranged; he would grudge no time, no trouble, no loss of his solitude. It weighed on him now--and Captain Whalley appeared to him as he had sat shading his eyes, as if, being deceived in the trust of his faith, he were beyond all the good and evil that can be wrought by the hands of men.

Mr. Van Wyk's thoughts followed the Sofala down the river, winding about through the belt of the coast forest, between the b.u.t.tressed shafts of the big trees, through the mangrove strip, and over the bar. The s.h.i.+p crossed it easily in broad daylight, piloted, as it happened, by Mr.

Sterne, who took the watch from four to six, and then went below to hug himself with delight at the prospect of being virtually employed by a rich man--like Mr. Van Wyk. He could not see how any hitch could occur now. He did not seem able to get over the feeling of being "fixed up at last." From six to eight, in the course of duty, the Serang looked alone after the s.h.i.+p. She had a clear road before her now till about three in the morning, when she would close with the Pangu group. At eight Mr.

Sterne came out cheerily to take charge again till midnight. At ten he was still chirruping and humming to himself on the bridge, and about that time Mr. Van Wyk's thought abandoned the Sofala. Mr. Van Wyk had fallen asleep at last.

Ma.s.sy, blocking the engine-room companion, jerked himself into his tweed jacket surlily, while the second waited with a scowl.

"Oh. You came out? You sot! Well, what have you got to say for yourself?"

He had been in charge of the engines till then. A somber fury darkened his mind: a hot anger against the s.h.i.+p, against the facts of life, against the men for their cheating, against himself too--because of an inward tremor of his heart.

An incomprehensible growl answered him.

"What? Can't you open your mouth now? You yelp out your infernal rot loud enough when you are drunk. What do you mean by abusing people in that way?--you old useless boozer, you!"

"Can't help it. Don't remember anything about it. You shouldn't listen."

"You dare to tell me! What do you mean by going on a drunk like this!"

"Don't ask me. Sick of the dam' boilers--you would be. Sick of life."

"I wish you were dead, then. You've made me sick of you. Don't you remember the uproar you made last night? You miserable old soaker!"

"No; I don't. Don't want to. Drink is drink."

"I wonder what prevents me from kicking you out. What do you want here?"

"Relieve you. You've been long enough down there, George."

"Don't you George me--you tippling old rascal, you! If I were to die to-morrow you would starve. Remember that. Say Mr. Ma.s.sy."

"Mr. Ma.s.sy," repeated the other stolidly.

Disheveled, with dull blood-shot eyes, a snuffy, grimy s.h.i.+rt, greasy trowsers, naked feet thrust into ragged slippers, he bolted in head down directly Ma.s.sy had made way for him.

The chief engineer looked around. The deck was empty as far as the taffrail. All the native pa.s.sengers had left in Batu Beru this time, and no others had joined. The dial of the patent log tinkled periodically in the dark at the end of the s.h.i.+p. It was a dead calm, and, under the clouded sky, through the still air that seemed to cling warm, with a seaweed smell, to her slim hull, on a sea of somber gray and unwrinkled, the s.h.i.+p moved on an even keel, as if floating detached in empty s.p.a.ce.

But Mr. Ma.s.sy slapped his forehead, tottered a little, caught hold of a belaying-pin at the foot of the mast.

"I shall go mad," he muttered, walking across the deck unsteadily. A shovel was sc.r.a.ping loose coal down below--a fire-door clanged. Sterne on the bridge began whistling a new tune.

Captain Whalley, sitting on the couch, awake and fully dressed, heard the door of his cabin open. He did not move in the least, waiting to recognize the voice, with an appalling strain of prudence.

A bulkhead lamp blazed on the white paint, the crimson plush, the brown varnish of mahogany tops. The white wood packing-case under the bed-place had remained unopened for three years now, as though Captain Whalley had felt that, after the Fair Maid was gone, there could be no abiding-place on earth for his affections. His hands rested on his knees; his handsome head with big eyebrows presented a rigid profile to the doorway. The expected voice spoke out at last.

"Once more, then. What am I to call you?"

Ha! Ma.s.sy. Again. The weariness of it crushed his heart--and the pain of shame was almost more than he could bear without crying out.

"Well. Is it to be 'partner' still?"

"You don't know what you ask."

"I know what I want . . ."

Ma.s.sy stepped in and closed the door.

". . . And I am going to have a try for it with you once more."

His whine was half persuasive, half menacing.

"For it's no manner of use to tell me that you are poor. You don't spend anything on yourself, that's true enough; but there's another name for that. You think you are going to have what you want out of me for three years, and then cast me off without hearing what I think of you. You think I would have submitted to your airs if I had known you had only a beggarly five hundred pounds in the world. You ought to have told me."

"Perhaps," said Captain Whalley, bowing his head. "And yet it has saved you." . . . Ma.s.sy laughed scornfully. . . . "I have told you often enough since."

"And I don't believe you now. When I think how I let you lord it over my s.h.i.+p! Do you remember how you used to bullyrag me about my coat and _your_ bridge? It was in his way. _His_ bridge! 'And I won't be a party to this--and I couldn't think of doing that.' Honest man! And now it all comes out. 'I am poor, and I can't. I have only this five hundred in the world.'"

He contemplated the immobility of Captain Whalley, that seemed to present an inconquerable obstacle in his path. His face took a mournful cast.

"You are a hard man."

"Enough," said Captain Whalley, turning upon him. "You shall get nothing from me, because I have nothing of mine to give away now."

"Tell that to the marines!"

Mr. Ma.s.sy, going out, looked back once; then the door closed, and Captain Whalley, alone, sat as still as before. He had nothing of his own--even his past of honor, of truth, of just pride, was gone. All his spotless life had fallen into the abyss. He had said his last good-by to it. But what belonged to _her_, that he meant to save. Only a little money. He would take it to her in his own hands--this last gift of a man that had lasted too long. And an immense and fierce impulse, the very pa.s.sion of paternity, flamed up with all the unquenched vigor of his worthless life in a desire to see her face.

Just across the deck Ma.s.sy had gone straight to his cabin, struck a light, and hunted up the note of the dreamed number whose figures had flamed up also with the fierceness of another pa.s.sion. He must contrive somehow not to miss a drawing. That number meant something. But what expedient could he contrive to keep himself going?

"Wretched miser!" he mumbled.

If Mr. Sterne could at no time have told him anything new about his partner, he could have told Mr. Sterne that another use could be made of a man's affliction than just to kick him out, and thus defer the term of a difficult payment for a year. To keep the secret of the affliction and induce him to stay was a better move. If without means, he would be anxious to remain; and that settled the question of refunding him his share. He did not know exactly how much Captain Whalley was disabled; but if it so happened that he put the s.h.i.+p ash.o.r.e somewhere for good and all, it was not the owner's fault--was it? He was not obliged to know that there was anything wrong. But probably n.o.body would raise such a point, and the s.h.i.+p was fully insured. He had had enough self-restraint to pay up the premiums. But this was not all. He could not believe Captain Whalley to be so confoundedly dest.i.tute as not to have some more money put away somewhere. If he, Ma.s.sy, could get hold of it, that would pay for the boilers, and everything went on as before. And if she got lost in the end, so much the better. He hated her: he loathed the troubles that took his mind off the chances of fortune. He wished her at the bottom of the sea, and the insurance money in his pocket. And as, baffled, he left Captain Whalley's cabin, he enveloped in the same hatred the s.h.i.+p with the worn-out boilers and the man with the dimmed eyes.

And our conduct after all is so much a matter of outside suggestion, that had it not been for his Jack's drunken gabble he would have there and then had it out with this miserable man, who would neither help, nor stay, nor yet lose the s.h.i.+p. The old fraud! He longed to kick him out.

But he restrained himself. Time enough for that--when he liked. There was a fearful new thought put into his head. Wasn't he up to it after all? How that beast Jack had raved! "Find a safe trick to get rid of her." Well, Jack was not so far wrong. A very clever trick had occurred to him. Aye! But what of the risk?

A feeling of pride--the pride of superiority to common prejudices--crept into his breast, made his heart beat fast, his mouth turn dry. Not everybody would dare; but he was Ma.s.sy, and he was up to it!

Six bells were struck on deck. Eleven! He drank a gla.s.s of water, and sat down for ten minutes or so to calm himself. Then he got out of his chest a small bull's-eye lantern of his own and lit it.

Almost opposite his berth, across the narrow pa.s.sage under the bridge, there was, in the iron deck-structure covering the stokehold fiddle and the boiler-s.p.a.ce, a storeroom with iron sides, iron roof, iron-plated floor, too, on account of the heat below. All sorts of rubbish was shot there: it had a mound of sc.r.a.p-iron in a corner; rows of empty oil-cans; sacks of cotton-waste, with a heap of charcoal, a deck-forge, fragments of an old hencoop, winch-covers all in rags, remnants of lamps, and a brown felt hat, discarded by a man dead now (of a fever on the Brazil coast), who had been once mate of the Sofala, had remained for years jammed forcibly behind a length of burst copper pipe, flung at some time or other out of the engine-room. A complete and imperious blackness pervaded that Capharnaum of forgotten things. A small shaft of light from Mr. Ma.s.sy's bull's-eye fell slanting right through it.

His coat was unb.u.t.toned; he shot the bolt of the door (there was no other opening), and, squatting before the sc.r.a.p-heap, began to pack his pockets with pieces of iron. He packed them carefully, as if the rusty nuts, the broken bolts, the links of cargo chain, had been so much gold he had that one chance to carry away. He packed his side-pockets till they bulged, the breast pocket, the pockets inside. He turned over the pieces. Some he rejected. A small mist of powdered rust began to rise about his busy hands. Mr. Ma.s.sy knew something of the scientific basis of his clever trick. If you want to deflect the magnetic needle of a s.h.i.+p's compa.s.s, soft iron is the best; likewise many small pieces in the pockets of a jacket would have more effect than a few large ones, because in that way you obtain a greater amount of surface for weight in your iron, and it's surface that tells.

He slipped out swiftly--two strides sufficed--and in his cabin he perceived that his hands were all red--red with rust. It disconcerted him, as though he had found them covered with blood: he looked himself over hastily. Why, his trowsers too! He had been rubbing his rusty palms on his legs.