CHAPTER IV

THE BEACH BY MOONLIGHT

White-Man's-Trouble was abominably frightened during that night march along the beach to Malla-Nulla, and did not mind showing it. Indeed, the fact that he screwed up his determination sufficiently to make the trip at all, says a great deal for his admiration of Carter.

Carter, on the other hand, though he was fully alive to the desperate risks that lay ahead, felt himself to be the white man in command, and adjusted his demeanor accordingly. To look at him one might have thought that he was merely taking exercise and the evening air for the general good of his health.

Had there been cover he would have taken it, but there was none. The beach was the only path; the bush which walled it on one side was impassable, and though the sea might have been considered an alternative route, they had only cotton-wood dug-outs at the Smooth River factory, and it would have taken at least a surf-boat to get out over the Smooth River bar, to say nothing of landing, when the time came, through the rollers which crashed always on Malla-Nulla beach. So he marched along where the sand was wet and hard, just above the cream of surf, and he carried the twelve-bore, hammers downwards, over his shoulder, with his forefinger on the trigger guard above. He was very grateful for those past days of rabbit shooting in Upper Wharfedale which had taught him to be so quick and deadly on a sudden mark.

The surf on one side, and the night noises of Africa on the other, roared in their ears as they marched, and every now and again they came into a cloud of fireflies, which switched their tiny lamps in and out with inconceivable rapidity, and left them quite blinded during the intervals of darkness.

So that on the whole, as Carter realized very fully, if the King of Okky had set men to waylay them, these could scarcely be incompetent enough to miss their mark. But he did not admit this knowledge to White-Man's-Trouble. When that Krooboy stated things exactly as they were, Carter pooh-poohed his deductions lightly enough, and stormed at the man because he was ignorant of the most approved method of pipe-claying shoes.

An African moon floated cleanly overhead, and great African stars punctured the purple roof of heaven, and to Carter's chilled fancy he and the Krooboy were as conspicuous as two actors strutting under lime light. But there were two things he overlooked, and these I believe must have been the salvation of the pair of them. The thick night mists were steaming out of the forest, and from the surf the thick white sea smoke drove in on the land breeze to meet them. This translucent fog, though it might not be very apparent to the eyes of the walkers themselves, would be quite enough to screen them from the gaze of hostile pickets who, after the manner of Africans, were already half scared out of their dusky skins by the fear of ghosts.

They had made the journey out to Smooth River in five and a quarter hours; they completed the journey back to Malla-Nulla in four, which meant good travelling; and because a heavy march like this may not be undertaken without physical payment in the stewy climate of the Coast, Carter felt certain premonitory symptoms which told him that a good thumping dose of fever would be his when once he slackened his efforts and gave it a chance to take charge. But he was not much alarmed at the circumstance. As he told himself coolly enough, either by the time the fever came on he would have rejoined Mr. Smith at Malla-Nulla, who in that case was perfectly capable of looking after him, or he would have rejoined Mr. Smith in the Shades Beyond, and a fever owing to his body left behind on earth would not matter. As it happened neither of these alternatives had to be bargained with.

Malla-Nulla factory was eaves deep in white wet mist when they got to it, and found it earthy-smelling and empty. It was unmarked by fire, unsmirched by signs of battle, and, strangest of all, unlooted.

The pair of them charged up the veranda steps, Carter in the lead, with the twelve-bore held ready for an instant discharge. The Krooboy with matchet uplifted and teeth at the snarl looked the very picture of savage desperation and ferocity. They stepped into the empty mess-room and lit matches and a lamp. The land breeze sang through the bamboo walls, and Carter's home-made punkah swished overhead to the unseen impulse of the water wheel; but of quick human life, there was not a trace.

He had fitted up bells about the place, or rather strings that actuated wooden clappers which could beat on wooden drums. He set these all a-clang and listened. The place reeked of its usual mildew, and the smell nauseated him. They had got rid of the mildew scent at the Smooth River factory. But there was not a murmur of reply to his clamor.

White-Man's-Trouble delivered himself of wisdom. "Oh, Carter, I think dem Smith, an' all dem boys at factory lib for die. Dis place lib for full of ghosts. I fit for run back for Smooth River."

"Run away, then," said Carter, who was beginning to examine the mess-room systematically.

The Krooboy cowered in a chair and covered his eyes. "Oh, Carter, I no fit for march back alone. Dem ghosts plenty-too-much fond o' Kroo chop. Oh, Carter, you no be dam fool an' stay here. You lib back for Smooth River all-e-same me."

"My pagan friend, don't get too familiar. The next time I hear you calling me names, I shall break my knuckles up against one of the places where the worsted's been shaved off your skull. Observe"--said Carter, and poured some whiskey onto the table top and set light to it--"Observe those blue flames that crawl and flicker about, but do not burn the wood. In those the ghosts that have been threatening you are now being most painfully consumed. Do you believe it?"

"I fit for see 'em die," said White-Man's-Trouble devoutly. "Oh, Carter, you plenty-much-fine witch doctor. I fit for pipe-clay dem shoes, three pair a day. Oh, Carter, if Okky men lib for come, you burn them, too?"

"Certainly," said Carter, "anything to soothe your nerves. Though, as a matter of fact, I should demonstrate to them with a shotgun, not by burning methylated. Now, just nose around, boy, and help me to find out where Mr. Smith's evaporated to. They can't have eaten him, or some of them must have stayed behind to digest the meal; and they can't have kidnapped him, or he'd have broken up the happy home before he condescended to go, and as we see it now, it's no more squalid than usual. So now, Trouble, produce Mr. Smith."

"Smith? Oh, Carter, dem Smith lib for surf boat."

"How on earth do you know that?"

"Dem surf boat no lib for beach. Dem paddles no lib for veranda, Okky man no fit for boat boy. So Malla-Nulla Krooboy, dey boat boy for dem Smith in Malla-Nulla surf boat. Savvy?"

"I do clearly. But why the deuce didn't you tell me all this before?"

"Because," said the Krooboy simply, "I too plenty-much frightened o' dem ghosts before you burn 'em."

"I wonder," said Carter thoughtfully, "if I shall ever understand all the workings of the African mind." He went onto the veranda and peered out into the mists. A fleecy blanket covered the sea and blotted out the water, and all things of low elevation that floated thereon. In the distance, between him and the moon, the two black mastheads of an invisible steamer ploughed through the whiteness, but between him and it a whole fleet of canoes and surf boats might have been snugly tucked away from his sight.

Then a sudden pang of coldness came upon him, which made him button up his white drill coat, and step back into the mess-room and huddle into a chair.

"Fever lib," said White-Man's-Trouble looking at him critically.

"I'm in for my usual two days' touch," said Carter, with the listlessness of the malaria already creeping over him.

"You fit for quinine-palaver?"

"I suppose so."

The Krooboy fetched the quinine bottle from Mr. Smith's well-filled medicine shelf.

"I'd some pills of my own somewhere."

"Steamah pills. Dem Cappy Image pills no dam good. I eat dem box myself."

"You thieving scoundrel!"

"Oh, Carter, I tell you dem pills no good." He laid a hand on his midriff. "No fit for give you even small-small twist there. Oh, Carter, I save you lose your temper over dem pills when I eat 'em mine self."

"I wish they'd been calomel. You'll get poisoned one of these days, Trouble, if you don't stop stealing. I've some corrosive sublimate tabloids for skin preserving stowed away somewhere, and if you bolt one of those, you lib for die one-time. Here, give me a dose of quinine."

The Krooboy found a cigarette paper, tapped it full of the feathery white powder, and rolled it up. Carter put it on his tongue and swilled it down with whiskey and water. "Quick, now, get me some blankets," he chattered. "I shall burst if I don't sweat directly."

White-Man's-Trouble packed him with rugs and coats, till in the baking atmosphere of the mess-room one wondered that any skin could resist the invitation.

But presently the wraps were flung aside, and Carter sat aching and burning in his clammy drill clothes, with his skin bone-dry, and a feel in his head as though it were moving in and out like a concertina.

"That last's the quinine," he told himself; and then, "I say, Trouble, you'd better think for your own neck now. I shall be otherwise occupied for the next thirty hours. You'll be well advised if you went away back to Smooth River. If the Okky men come here and knock me on the head, I really don't care. And if they'll only chop my unwholesome carcass, and get indigestion from it afterwards, I feel I shall get a grim enjoyment from watching their writhings from my own comfortable (or maybe uncomfortable) seat on the Other Side."

"You lib for bad fever," said White-Man's-Trouble thoughtfully.

Carter clutched at the Krooboy's brawny hand and wrung it enthusiastically. "Hullo, Pater! Fancy seeing you out here in this filthy hole! Well, sir, it is real good of you to leave Wharfedale and come all this way to look me up. How's the Mater? All right, eh? And did she do you in the eye this year over the roses, or did you manage to snip off the buds ahead of her? You didn't happen to bring any beer with you, did you, sir? Nice cool draught of Pateley ale, in your big silver tankard that you won for stewing Hindoo babies alive at the burning ghats? We've got muggers here, too.... Lord, what rot I'm talking, and you aren't the Pater at all, but only a dashed good sort of an ugly nigger with a blue frying pan tattooed across the bridge of your nose. White-Man's-Trouble, tell me solemnly and truly. Why do noses have bridges? Why, for instance, not ferries? Wake up, you image, and give me a civil answer."

"You lib for dam bad fever," said White-Man's-Trouble still more thoughtfully, "an' if you lib for die, Okky men catch me one-time. So I fit for make you well one-time. Oh, Carter, you hear, I plenty-much fine doctor."

"You a doctor! With peacock's feathers growing out behind your ears instead of whiskers!"

"I savvy nothing white-man's drug-palaver. But I savvy plenty cure fever Krooboy fashion."

"Do you? Which of you? What rot I'm talking! But upon my Sam, the Pater's gone, and there are three distinct White-Man's-Troubles standing there all in a row. I'll just talk to the middle one, and you others shut up. Now, then, sir, you say you savvy Krooboy doctor-palaver?"

"Savvy plenty."

"Then, doc, I offer myself as a patient. Never mind sending in to Grasington for your amputating tools. Remember you are a Dales doctor, and as you've pointed out with offensive cheerfulness many times, you saw me into this hot and wicked world, and I know you jolly well hope to see me out. You catch the patient and we do the rest, as the undertakers say when they send round their cards about top hats and gun cases. Special quotations for fever patients F.O.B., for then a couple of firebars out of the engine room does the trick, and saves the cost of an elaborate coffin."

"Oh, Carter, listen to me."

"Well?"

"I lib for Krooboy quarters for fetich ju-ju. You sit here. No run away. Savvy?"

"Be long gone?"

"I come back one-time."

"All right. Give my compliments to Miss Slade, and say we had a jolly walk in the moonlight and found everything all right when we got here, except that Mr. Swizzle-Stick--whose other name I forget--had eloped with the assistant typewriter. Say, it was rather a nuisance about the typewriter woman, because she was the one who made the jellies, jolly cool yellow jellies with just a drop of sherry in them that were perfectly ripping when you had been sick. My mother used to make jellies like that herself for us kids when we were sick----"

He was still rambling on when the Krooboy returned, and by that time the fever was burning dangerously high. It was not running its normal course. He had undergone abnormal exertion, and the resulting fever was correspondingly fierce.

White-Man's-Trouble came in out of the warm moist night outside, with some liquid in a cracked teacup. The patient refused to know him, and so the Krooboy picked him up in his enormous arms and got the liquid down his throat by drenching him as a nurse might drench a fractious child.

Carter coughed and spat, but the dose was down, and in three minutes it had started its work. In five minutes it had laid him out, and then White-Man's-Trouble carried him into the next room and laid him on a bed. Then from a bag he produced materials and did with them what will not be set down here.... And after that he groped around inside the mosquito bar, killed what insects were lodged there, pulled down the netting, and tucked it accurately round the mattress.

Then he took up his matchet again, spat in his great right hand to get a good grip on the hilt, lay down on the mat before the door and went to sleep.

The room pinged with mosquitoes; a leopard roared persistently from the bush at the back of the factory, and a rat somewhere up in the rafters gnawed at a sounding piece of board with irritating persistence. Moreover, of course there was the probability of the Okky men coming to the factory at any moment for that much talked-of massacre. But none of these things disturbed White-Man's-Trouble. He suddenly wished for sleep, and therefore to sleep he promptly resigned himself. All thoughts of anything beyond that immediate desire were blotted out from his simple brain. The patient might awake, and rave, or want assistance; but that did not matter. Nothing mattered beyond his wish there and then for sleep.

The beautiful unreliability of his tribe was strongly present in White-Man's-Trouble.