SCENE II

The ship’s saloon, fitfully lighted by the swinging lamp with a green shade, furnished a picturesque framing for the two figures it contained. Mr Dick Denver, in loose garments of spotless white, sat leaning carelessly back in one chair, with his legs resting on another; a cigar in his mouth, his hands, with the cards in them, from habit well held up, and the usual indifferent look upon his face. A great contrast was the man sitting on the other side of the long, narrow saloon table. Major Massinger, late of Her Majesty’s Service, a large, bull-necked man with eyes like a cod fish, in a white mess jacket and scarlet cummerbund, was sitting forward, burying a somewhat red face in a beaker of brandy and soda. A box of cigars and picquet markers testified to a long evening’s play, the last indeed of a series. To those who knew him, the gallant Major’s boisterous joviality would have betokened a winning night. His luck was ‘in,’ even to and beyond Dick’s bottom dollar, but this beyondness, which might have been somewhat disquieting to his opponent, was not to be gathered from Dick’s impassive face.

‘Eleven o’clock--shall we conclude?’ said the latter.

‘Not a bit of it, unless you’re afraid of the luck?’

Dick answered by an amused look and a shrug of his shoulders, but he said:

‘Won’t you disturb your wife if you stay here much longer?’

‘D----n my wife; you’ve evidently never been spliced, or you wouldn’t be so beastly particular.’

Massinger turned as he said this to open another bottle of soda, and missed the ugly look in Dick’s half-shut eyes.

‘All serene, then,’ said the latter--‘guess I owe you twelve hundred and fifty dollars; well, now, I’ll play you double or quits, the best of three games.’

‘What’s that in pounds? Two fifty, isn’t it? Very good! Go ahead, my sportsman; double or quits, five hundred or nothing.’

Dick shuffled the cards and cut them; a breeze stole in at the open skylight, and sighed fitfully through the saloon, and as it died away, his sharp ears caught the ‘frou frou’ of a silk dress descending the hatch.

‘One moment,’ he said--‘reckon I’ll just shut that door; there’s kind of a hurricane playing around here;’ and, rising quickly, he moved to the saloon door and stood there a moment, hat in hand, as a slender white figure passed down the stairs. Her hand rested a moment in his as she glided by, and Mr Denver shut the door and returned to his seat. Massinger, manufacturing his fourth drink, saw nothing of this by-play, and the game was resumed. But the tide had turned, and Massinger was ‘rubiconed’ twice running.

‘As you was before you was! Look here, Denver, can’t end up like this, you know--it’s too infernal slow;’ his voice was getting thick and his hand shook somewhat.

‘Mussh’t see the luck through, y’know, somehow’n other--no craning.’

Dick, a covert sneer on his face, was far too considerate to disappoint him, and once again the cards were shuffled and dealt; the Major more boisterous, Dick more impassive than ever. With the end of the partie came the transference of £200 in notes from Massinger’s pocket-book to Mr Denver’s. Undaunted, the Major slapped the latter on the back, declaring him thickly to be a jolly good sportsman.

‘Have my revenge to-morrow night,--too tight now,’ said he.

‘Yes,’ assented Dick, cheerfully, ‘but I guess we get to St Martin to-morrow, and I leave the ship.’

‘Oh, hang it! Never mind; I suppose we stay there a bit, eh?’

‘Two days,’ said Dick.

‘All right! I’ll play you on shore. Is there any solitary thing to see in the d----d hole? My wife always wants to see everything, confound her!’

Mr Denver apparently paid no heed to this remark; he was sitting tilted back in his chair, his hat slouched over his brows, and only the slight twitching of the hand holding the pocket-book, and a curious smouldering fire in his half-closed eyes, showed that a struggle was going on in his mind. Presently, with a sudden jerk, he returned to a right-angled position, and stared straight at Massinger. The man looked particularly like a cod-fish at that moment, and breathed heavily. Dick shivered slightly and disgustedly. Through the open skylight above the wind could be heard sighing in the sails, ‘God! How I hate him! How long? How long?’ That was the refrain it took. A cold look of purpose and resolution settled in Dick’s eyes--the crystallisation of a vague idea.

‘Why, certainly no, not the smallest use! ’Pears to me as if there might be a chance,’ he muttered unintelligibly to himself; and fingering the pocket-book in his hand, he looked at the man opposite with a calculating eye.

‘What’s the matter with you? You’re drunker than I am,’ said the latter. ‘I ask you simply if there’s anything to see in the island, and, begad, you’re jibbering like a boiled owl.’ He stooped unsteadily to reach his glass under the table.

Mr Denver’s look was that of one who measures the distance for a spring.

‘Malūa! Malūa!’ (which is by interpretation ‘Go easy’). ‘I guess it can be done,’ he drawled softly to himself. ‘Anything to see? No--o. Stop, though,’--to the intelligent eye, as he drew himself together in his chair, the spring was very near now--‘I guess I’m wrong all the time, there _is_ something almighty curious to see, for those who have the sand.’

‘What’s that?’

‘We--ell, it mightn’t interest _you_, but it’s a place they call “La boîte du diable”--kind of a cavern in the side of a hill. Considerable few people have been to see it, and none stayed very long. Reckon _you_ won’t care about it.’

An indescribable sneer was in Mr Denver’s voice, and the Major, though far gone, was not _too_ far gone to seize upon it as an insult.

‘You mean, I wouldn’t dare,’ he said, huskily. ‘Confound you, sir, d’you think I’ve not got as much pluck as you?’

‘Guess not,’ said Dick, drily.

‘D----n you, sir!’ said Massinger, furiously; ‘I’ll bet you that £200 I’ve just paid you, I go to that hole, whatever it is, and stay there as long or longer than you do.’

For answer, Mr Denver rose slowly.

‘Put it in writing,’ he said, and, producing pen and paper out of his pocket, he reached down the saloon ink-bottle, and pushed them over to Massinger. The latter, quite sobered, stared a minute at his nonchalant companion, then sat down, and without saying a word penned the following lines in a shaky hand:

‘“I bet Mr Dick Denver the sum of £200 that I visit with him a condemned hole called ‘La boîte du diable,’ and stay there as long or longer than he does.”

‘Will that do?’

‘Play or pay,’ added Mr Denver, calmly.

‘“Play or pay.”

‘“Albert Massinger, October 9th, 188-”--he signed his name, and threw it across to Dick, who signed his own, and pocketed the document.

‘Guess I’ll call for you after dinner at your hotel,’ he said; ‘might be happier with pistols, it’s kind of a skeery place. Good-night,’ he nodded, and without another word, lounged up on to the silent deck, the suspicion of an unholy smile flickering on his impassive features.