CHAPTER XIX

SENHOR CASCAES

Now, as the servant of O'Neill and Craven, Carter had done his work well and indeed enthusiastically, and after he had left the firm's employ he had neither competed with them in business nor done them harm in any way whatever. It is true that at his memorable interview with the King of Okky with a little persuasion he could have got that grateful monarch to take off the embargo which he had laid on the factories at Monk, Malla-Nulla, and Smooth River, though the fact that he did not put forward pressure on this point could hardly have reached the ear of Miss O'Neill. Indeed it is to be doubted if she ever knew that any reference to her name or affairs cropped up at all.

But be that as it may, she certainly from the date of sending her cable to Cascaes began to interest herself in opposing Carter's schemes.

The first he knew of it was a typewritten letter from Liverpool on the firm's note-paper beginning "Dear sir," and ending "O'Neill & Craven, per K. O'Neill." In arid business sentences it understood he had "a tin-mining proposition up Smooth River," it pointed out that "our firm for many years has had very far-reaching interests in this neighborhood," and it suggested that O'Neill and Craven should buy the mine "to prevent any clash of interests."

Carter replied to this curtly enough that Tin Hill was not in the market, and took the next boat home to Liverpool. He had picked up a distressed merchant skipper named Kettle, and put him in charge of the motor boat, and the canoes, and the mining work generally, and though in their short interview he decided that Kettle was the most tactless man in Africa, he believed him to be honest, and instinctively knew him to be capable.

"One thing I must ask," he said at the end of their talk, "and that is that you do not try any proselytizing up here. Your creed, I have no doubt, is very excellent at home, but out here where they are either Moslemin or nothing it will only stir up disputes, and that I won't have. Is that quite agreed?"

"I have learned, sir," said the sailor, "to obey orders to the letter even though I know them to be against an owner's best interests."

"Um," said Carter, and stared at him thoughtfully. "Well, Captain, I think it would be safest if you went on those lines. You will find your chief engineer, who carries the name of White-Man's-Trouble, beautifully unreliable in most things, but he understands the launch's engines wonderfully, and I like him. I'd take it as a favor if you'd deal with him as lightly as possible."

"I'll bear your words in mind, sir, though, as a man who has handled everything colored that serves afloat, I'd like to point out that pampering spoils them."

"The only other point to remember is that I've made my name up these rivers mainly by being known as a ju-ju man--sort of wizard, in fact. You'll have no difficulty, I suppose, in following up that line now I've given you the hint?"

"You'll pardon me, sir, but if that's made an essential, I must chuck up the job, sorely in need of employment as I am at the moment. I have my conscience to consider. And besides as a liar I am the poorest kind of failure."

"Pooh, man, it's only a little acting that's required."

"Mr. Carter," said the sailor still more stiffly, "you see in me a man who's sunk very low, but I've never descended yet to working as a theatrical. According to our Persuasion, we hold that play acting is one degree less wicked than bigamy, and indeed often leads to it."

"Well," said Carter, "that mail-boat sails in half an hour's time, and I've got to go by her. I've been building on you, Captain, as the most trustworthy man now knocking about in West Africa."

"I'm all that, sir."

"So I shall have to respect your scruples and give you the billet."

"You shall never regret it for one minute, sir. You'll find the address of Mrs. Kettle on this slip of paper, and if you'll post three-quarters of my wages to her as they fall due, I'd take it as a favor. I've been out of--well, I won't pester you with domestic matters, sir, but the fact is I'm afraid she must be in very poor circumstances just at the moment."

"She shall have a check posted the day after I land in Liverpool. I give you my word for that."

"I thank you, Mr. Carter. Now, if you wanted another officer, there's a Mr. McTodd, an engineer who's just now at Akassa, that I could get."

"Thanky, Captain, but not for me."

"I believe I could persuade him to take a low wage."

"Not for me, Captain. I know McTodd. He's far too thirsty and far too cantankerous. You'd find him a ugly handful."

"Me! By James, sir, I can handle that swine in a way that would surprise you. He's had a bad up-bringing; he belongs to the Free Kirk; but after I've had the manipulation of Mr. McTodd for a week, I can make him as mild as Norwegian Swiss milk."

"Well, we'll say 'not for the present,' at any rate. With the organization I've got together, and the backing from the King of Okky that I've told you about, you'll be able to haul down all the available ore if you follow out my instructions, and when it comes to bonus, Captain, if you've been successful, you'll find me a generous paymaster. I don't toil for nothing myself. I work about ten times as hard as my neighbors, and draw in about seventeen times as much pay. I like a man who has got the same ambitions."

The little sailor sighed. "I've always done ten times the normal whack of work, sir, but somehow I've missed fingering the dibs. I tell you flat, fourteen pounds a month has been good for me, and month in and month out I've not averaged ten."

"Then, if that's the case," said Carter briskly, "just here should come the turn in your fortunes. Shake hands, Captain. Good-bye to you, good health and good luck. Here's my surf boat. The steamer's heaving short."

"Good-bye, sir," said Kettle, "I'm sure you'll remember to send that check."

* * * * *

The mail-boat called as usual at Las Palmas and was boarded on arrival by the usual batch of invalids and Liverpool trippers for the run home. Carter landed as soon as the port doctor gave clearance papers, rowed to the mole and chartered a tartana, between whose shafts there drooped a mouse-colored mule. In it he bumped over the badly laid tram lines from the Isleta to the city, and then left the city by the Telde road.

Las Palmas is the meeting place of all West Africa, and if one is there long enough, one expects to meet sooner or later every man who has business or other interests on the Coast. Carter waved his hand to a Haûsa constabulary officer in the gateway of the Catalina, and to a Lagos branch boat skipper who was standing on the steps of the Elder Dempster office. Coming down from the telegraph station he saw one of the Germans who had been frightened out of Mokki, and under a café awning by the dry river bed no less a personage than Burgoyne of Monk River waved a hospitable hand and invited him to try a glass of Bass.

But further on, where the Telde road leaves the city, he saw a man whose walk he knew, and instinctively leaned out from the tartana's awning to show himself, and to wave a greeting. The man was Cascaes. But the Senhor Cascaes stared him coolly in the face, and--cut him dead.

The tartana rattled on, and Carter nodded after the Portuguese thoughtfully. "You have always hated me pretty tenderly," he mused. "I wonder why. I've hammered you a dozen times, but it's only been in the ordinary way of business, and what any half-baked Portuguese has got to expect. You surely can't be up against me for that."

Laura was not living in the convent, but lodged in the house of a banana farmer just beyond. Carter found her in the garden. She was sitting on the end of a bench overhung with great lavender clots of wistaria at one end and shaded by a purple mass of bougainvillea at the other. He noted with a queer thrill that there was something cold in the outward form of her greeting.

She returned his kiss accurately enough, but without enthusiasm. Still, from the moment she saw him, the light came into her eyes that he had grown to know so well. The two things did not seem somehow or other to tally. Carter sat himself on the bench and took a good hold on his nerves. Then he slid an arm round her waist and drew her to him. "Well," he said, "out with it. What's the trouble?"

She dropped her head on his shoulder contentedly enough. "Oh, the usual. When you're away from me, dear, I never feel quite certain if I ought to marry you."

"Now, that's awkward, isn't it? But as I have been up country colloguing with your other suitor, old Kallee, you couldn't very well have been with me there."

"I wish you hadn't gone."

"How delightfully unreasonable! We'd nothing to boil the pot on before, and now we've plenty, and neither of us is a bit the worse. What's broke since I've been away?"

"The world, I think," said Laura miserably.

"Then I hope I'm the sticking plaster that will mend it. Now, I want to hear all about Las Palmas, and what you have been doing. I see most of West Africa's here. Great Christopher! but it is fine to smell even the outside edge of civilization once more. My mother used to get tired of Wharfedale occasionally--ah, well, but that wouldn't interest you."

"No, you always cut yourself short when you begin to talk about your people."

"Do I? Well, what's sauce for the gander's sauce for the goose and you're the goose. Did you ever speak to me about your folk? Not one word, unless I dragged it out. Look here, Laura, are you trying to wrangle? Because if so, and if it's my fault, just say what's the crime, and give me my licking and get it over. I've got a clear conscience, and I'll be as penitent as you please."

"My dear, you've been perfect."

"Oh, I say," said Carter, "not too sudden. That sort of thing brings on heart attacks."

"I know your temptations, and you've been an honorable gentleman all through."

"I wish," said Carter whimsically, "you could persuade other people to look at me in that light. A missionary on the steamer yesterday called me a gin-selling ruffian because I happened to be sitting in his deck chair; one of the Protectorate officials a week ago accused me of being a smuggling gun-runner, because I've been up country and happened to get on with the native local headmen instead of scrapping with them, and Miss K. O'Neill, of our mutual acquaintance, has given me to understand that if I don't quit poaching on what she's pleased to call O'Neill and Craven's territory, she'll run me out of business. To give her her due I gather she proposes to pay me something to clear out."

"And you're going to take it from her?"

"Don't say 'her' so tragically. I'm not going to take anything from her, or from anyone else. I've got a mine, and it's a nailing good mine, and I'm going to run it by my lone or bust. It isn't a thing you could sell to a company, and besides it isn't one of those mines one would care to sell. It's too good for that. It's just a fortune for two people, and one of them is presently going to sign herself Laura Carter."

"George, you're quite the best man on earth."

"I doubt it myself at times. By the way, who should I see down in Las Palmas just now but Cascaes. He did me the honor of ignoring my existence. It wasn't the unshaved Coast Cascaes either; he'd got a clean blue chin, and the rest of him was dressed fit to kill. Now, what is the mysterious Cascaes doing here?"

"He's O'Neill and Craven's agent for Grand Canary. I thought you'd heard."

"No, it's news to me. It's news, moreover, that they had any business here that required an agent."

"They haven't."

"Hum," said Carter. "Miss O'Neill doesn't pay a salary without getting value for it. Now this is one of her deep-laid schemes."

Laura looked at him queerly. "Yes," she said, "this is one of Kate's deep-laid schemes, George. I wonder if you can see through it."

The sun above them scorched high, and the cool white buildings of the banana farmer threw the shortest of purple shadows. The fresh breath of the trade rustled the ferns and the palm leaves of the garden, and stirred the great masses of the bougainvillea into rhythmical movement. "It's grand to be in a place like this after a spell on the Coast," said Carter.

"Do you prefer it to England?" Laura asked pointedly.

Carter held down a sigh. "I believe I do," he said steadily. "Come, now, old lady, what do you say? Shall we buy a property here in Grand Canary, and settle down, and grow the finest flower garden in the island?"

"But roses are your favorite flower and they don't do well here in the South."

"Oh, it's roses that my father cares for, at least he and the mater together run the roses at home. But I think my taste runs more to bougainvillea, say--and great trees of scarlet geranium with stalks as thick as one's leg, and palms, and tree ferns. Besides, a garden means irrigation here, and I've never had a real water-works scheme of my own to play with since I was a kid and worked out a most wonderful system by the old smelt mill at home. Yes, we should have great times gardening out here."

They had never said so in words, but both of them knew that George Carter would never take Laura back to England when once he had married her, and the girl through all her fierce tropical love for him recognized what this self-denial must cost and valued it to the full. But presently she brought him back to the matter they had been talking of before.

"Can't you see why Kate sent Senhor Cascaes here, George?"

"I haven't given him another thought. Besides, although Miss O'Neill is seeing fit to interfere with me, I don't intend to meddle with her."

"I think you ought to defend what's your own."

"Certainly I shall. Can anyone accuse me of not doing so? But I don't see why you keep harping on Cascaes. The man is an open admirer of Miss O'Neill's, and I suppose she's tickled thereby. Anyway that's the only reason I can see why she should have provided him with a job."

"Do you mean to say you think it is Kate the Senhor Cascaes is running after?"

"Certainly I do. Who else was there at Mokki?"

"Do you think I've so few attractions then?"

"But, my good girl, you're engaged to me, and he knew it all along. There was no secret about our engagement. Everybody about the factory knew of it."

"And because a girl is engaged, or even married, do you think that's any bar to another man admiring her?"

Carter whistled. "I've been a blind ass, and I must say I did refuse to listen to the highfalutin' nonsense Cascaes wanted to pour into my sympathetic ear. How often have you seen him here in Grand Canary?"

"He has called every day."

"That's not answering my question."

"George, dear, give me credit for loyalty. He told me one day when you were building that fort at Mokki that he liked me, and that if the Okky-men came he would die cheerfully before any harm should come to me; and I told him that he had no right to say such things to a girl who was engaged to you."

"Why wasn't I told of this?"

"Because he said to me he had nearly shot you once, and I was afraid that if there was any trouble, dear, you might be hurt."

"You could have trusted me," said Carter dryly, "to keep my end up with a dago like that. Besides, if you'd given me the tip, I could have seen to it that I had the drop on him first."

Laura shivered. "You are rather mediæval. I don't want to be fought for."

"Still, I gather from what you say that you've been seeing the fellow here?"

"Never when I could help it. Each day I've refused to see him when he came to the house. But he has waited for me when I went out into the country, and once he was here in the garden, sitting on this very seat, when I came out after lunch."

"Does he always tell the same old tale?"

"He says always he wants to marry me."

"I thought you said you refused to listen to him?"

"George, don't be unreasonable. I've told him over and over again it's no use; I've gone away every time we've met; but it seems to be the one occupation of his life."

"Except for running after you, I can imagine he does have plenty of time on his hands out here."

"Don't you think, George, he was sent to the island to have nothing to do except that?"

"Sent here who by? By Miss O'Neill, do you mean? Great Christopher! Laura, what morbid idea will you have in your head next? I don't flatter myself that outside business Miss O'Neill cares whether I'm alive or dead, and as for you, well, the pair of you may be friendly enough when you were kids, but you seemed to have outgrown any past civilities last time I saw you together on the Coast. Don't you go and run away with any wild cat notions about Miss O'Neill. She's got one amusement in the world, and that's business, and if she's sent Cascaes here to Las Palmas, you can bet your best frock the only job he's got in view so far as she's concerned is dividend hunting. Apropos of which, I nearly forgot. Here's something to practise your autograph in."

"Why, it's a check-book."

"Clever girl. Guessed it in once. I just opened a credit for you down at the bank in Las Palmas for £500 to be going on with. That's for chocolate, and hairpins, and a mantillina, and the latest thing in Spanish slippers. I say, Laura, you must get a pair of those tan ones, with the laces tied in a bow just down over the toe. And if you don't go through the lot whilst I'm away squaring mine matters up in England, I shall take you solemnly round the shops when I come back here, and buy you a trousseau of all the ugliest and most unbecoming garments they have in stock."

"You are good to me, dear. But I can never spend all that."

"If you've any balance you find unwieldy, buy Cascaes a smile with it, if you can find one that will fit. No, seriously, old lady, you will be marrying a rich man, although you did not know it when you took him, and you may as well get used to spending. It's no use for us preparing to save."

"No use preparing to save," poor Laura repeated miserably to herself. "There will be no--no one except ourselves to look forward to." But she said nothing of this aloud. She just thanked him, and snuggled in to his shoulder and patted his sleeve.

Far away over the corner of the isle a steamer hooted in the harbor of the Isleta, and the sound came to them dimly through the foliage plants. Carter looked at his watch. "Hullo, I must go, or the criminal who drives my tartana will flog that poor beast of a mule to death in his effort to catch the boat. So now, Miss Slade, just please give me a sample of your best good-bye."

Twilight does not linger in the summer months, even so far north as Grand Canary. The sun was balanced in lurid splendor on the rocky backbone of the isle as Carter said his last words of farewell, making the dead volcanoes look as though at a whim they could spring once more into scarlet life. It was dark when he got on the road, and the evening chill rode in on the Trade. The mouse-colored tartana mule sneezed as he pressed his galled shoulders into the collar.

Carter wedged himself in a corner of the carriage and resolutely looked on life with a reckless gayety. After all, what was this ache called Love? To the devil with it! Hereafter he would eat, and drink, and work, especially work, and--well, Laura was a good sort, and he intended to play the game, and please her. He had given his word to Laura, he forgot exactly why, but he had given it, and that was enough. For good or evil he was one of those dogged Englishmen who keep to a promise that had once been given.

Then with an equal doggedness he thrust all these things from his mind, and resolutely clamped down his thoughts to Tin Hill and the details of its working. No news had reached him of the importance which the freakish British public had placed upon his little arrangement about that detail of the human sacrifices. He saw himself merely as an unknown business man who in the near future would be able to sway a thing which at present he knew nothing about, and that was the tin market. The idea unconsciously fascinated him. He had no enmity against the present producers of tin, did not know indeed who they were, but he smiled grimly as he thought of the way in which presently he would govern them. It was the lust for power, which is latent in so many men, leaping up into life.

The brilliant stars shone down on him from overhead, and the cool Trade carried to him salt odors of the sea, but they got from him no attention. His mind was journeying away in the African bush, on spouting river-bars, in offices, on metal exchanges....

He was roused from these dreams with much suddenness. In his up country journeying in Africa he had developed that animal instinct for the nearness of danger which is present in us all, but in nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of the thousand becomes atrophied for want of use. In the river villages the natives had given him a name which means Man-with-eyes-at-the-back-of-his-head.

It was this slightly abnormal sense that sprang into quick activity, and Carter made so sudden a stoop that his face smacked against the shabby cushions on the opposite side of the tartana. But simultaneously he turned and clutched through the night, and seized a wrist, and held it with all his iron force. A moment later he found with his other hand that the wrist was connected with a long bright-bladed knife, so he twisted it savagely till that weapon fell onto the dirty carpet on the floor. And all the time, be it well understood, no sounds had been uttered, and the mouse-colored mule jogged steadily on with the tartana through the dust and the night.

Then Carter began to haul in on the wrist, and the man to whom it was attached came over into the body of the vehicle, bumping his knees shrewdly against the wheel-spokes en route.

"Ah, Cascaes, that's you, is it? And I thought once you claimed to be a gentleman, and agreed not to go at me from behind? Well, I'm afraid there's only one kind of medicine that will suit you, and that's the kind one gives to dogs that turn treacherous. Have you got any suggestions to make?"

The Portuguese held his tongue.

"Ready to take your gruel, are you? Well, I propose to give you a full dose. Hi there, driver, pull up. Wake, you sleepy head! What is it? Why, I've picked up a passenger whilst you've been nodding, and now we want to get down for a minute. Here, give me your whip."

* * * * *

Carter's arm was lusty and his temper raw. Moreover, the whip, being the property of a Las Palmas tartana driver, was made for effective use.

"I may not cure you," said Carter between thumps, "of a taste for cold-blooded assassination, but I'm going to make the wearing of a coat and breeches an annoyance to you for the next three weeks at any rate." After which statement, as the whip broke, he flung the patient into the aloe hedge at the side of the road, got back into the tartana and told the driver to hurry on to the Isleta, or they'd miss the boat.