Part 11

‘That’s exactly what Terence said. I wonder you set it the same way so pat if ’e ’asn’t been talkin’ to you. ’E sez to me--“You ought to ’ave more sense,” ’e sez, “at your time of life. What differ do it make to you,” ’e sez, “whether ’e ’as a commission or no commission? That’s none o’ your affair. It’s between man an’ man,” ’e sez, “if ’e ’eld a general’s commission. Moreover,” ’e sez, “you don’t look ’andsome ’oppin’ about on your ’ind legs like that. Take him away, Jock.” Then ’e went inside, an’ that’s all I got outer Terence. Jock, ’e sez as slow as a march in slow time,--“Stanley,” ’e sez, “that young beggar didn’t _go_ for to ’it you.” “I don’t give a damn whether ’e did or ’e didn’t. ’It me ’e did,” I sez. “Then you’ve only got to report to Brander,” sez Jock. “What d’yer take me for?” I sez, as I was so mad I nearly ’it Jock. An’ he got me by the neck an’ shoved my ’ead into a bucket o’ water in the cook-’ouse an’ then we went back to the Fort, an’ I give Samuelson a little more trouble with ’is kit. ’E sez to me, “_I_ haven’t been strook without ’ittin’ back.” “Well, you’re goin’ to be now,” I sez, an’ I give ’im one or two for ’isself, an’ arxed ’im very polite to ’it back, but he didn’t. I’d ha’ killed ’im if ’e ’ad. That done me a lot o’ good.

‘Ouless ’e didn’t make no show for some days,--not till after you was gone; an’ I was feelin’ sick an’ miserable, an’ didn’t know what I wanted, ’cept to black his little eyes good. I ’oped ’e might send me some money for my tunic. Then I’d ha’ had it out with him on p’rade and took my chance. Terence was in ’orspital still, you see, an’ ’e wouldn’t give me no advice.

‘The day after you left, Ouless come across me carrying a bucket on fatigue, an’ e’ sez to me very quietly, “Ortheris, you’ve got to come out shootin’ with me,” ’e sez. I felt like to bunging the bucket in ’is eye, but I didn’t. I got ready to go instead. Oh, ’e’s a gentleman! We went out together, neither sayin’ nothin’ to the other till we was well out into the jungle beyond the river with ’igh grass all round,--pretty near that place where I went off my ’ead with you. Then ’e puts his gun down an’ sez very quietly: “Ortheris, I strook you on p’rade,” ’e sez. “Yes, sir,” sez I, “you did.” “I’ve been studying it out by myself,” ’e sez. “Oh, you ’ave, ’ave you?” sez I to myself, “an’ a nice time you’ve been about it, you bun-faced little beggar.” “Yes, sir,” sez I. “What made you screen me?” ’e sez. “I don’t know,” I sez, an’ no more I did, nor do. “I can’t ask you to exchange,” ’e sez. “An’ I don’t want to exchange myself,” sez ’e. “What’s comin’ now?” I thinks to myself. “Yes, sir,” sez I. He looks round at the ’igh grass all about, an’ ’e sez to himself more than to me,--“I’ve got to go through it alone, by myself!” ’E looked so queer for a minute that, s’elp me, I thought the little beggar was going to pray. Then he turned round again an’ ’e sez, “What do you think yourself?” ’e sez. “I don’t quite see what you mean, sir,” I sez. “What would you like?” ’e sez. An’ I thought for a minute ’e was goin’ to give me money, but ’e run ’is ’and up to the top-button of ’is shootin’ coat an’ loosed it. “Thank you, sir,” I sez. “I’d like that very well,” I sez, an’ both our coats was off an’ put down.’

‘Hooray!’ I shouted incautiously.

‘Don’t make a noise on the butts,’ said Ouless from the shooting-place. ‘It puts the men off.’

I apologised, and Ortheris went on.

‘Our coats was off, an’ ’e sez, “Are you ready?” sez ’e. “Come on then.” I come on, a bit uncertain at first, but he took me one under the chin that warmed me up. I wanted to mark the little beggar an’ I hit high, but he went an’ jabbed me over the heart like a good one. He wasn’t so strong as me, but he knew more, an’ in about two minutes I calls “Time.” ’E steps back,--it was in-fightin’ then: “Come on when you’re ready,” ’e sez; and when I had my wind I come on again, an’ I got ’im one on the nose that painted ’is little aristocratic white shirt for ’im. That fetched ’im, an’ I knew it quicker nor light. He come all round me, close-fightin’, goin’ steady for my heart. I held on all I could an’ split ’is ear, but then I began to hiccup, an’ the game was up. I come in to feel if I could throw ’im, an’ ’e got me one on the mouth that downed me an’--look ’ere!’

Ortheris raised the left corner of his upper lip. An eye-tooth was wanting.

‘’E stood over me an’ ’e sez, “Have you ’ad enough?” ’e sez. “Thank you, I ’ave,” sez I. He took my ’and an’ pulled me up, an’ I was pretty shook. “Now,” ’e sez, “I’ll apologise for ’ittin’ you. It was all my fault,” ’e sez, “an’ it wasn’t meant for you.” “I knowed that, sir,” I sez, “an’ there’s no need for no apology.” “Then it’s an accident,” ’e sez; “an’ you must let me pay for the coat. Else it’ll be stopped out o’ your pay.” I wouldn’t ha’ took the money before, but I did then. ’E give me ten rupees,--enough to pay for a coat twice over, an’ we went down to the river to wash our faces, which was well marked. His was special. Then he sez to himself, sputterin’ the water out of ’is mouth, “I wonder if I done right,” ’e sez. “Yes, sir,” sez I. “There’s no fear about that.” “It’s all well for _you_,” ’e sez, “but what about the comp’ny?” “Beggin’ your pardon, sir,” I sez, “I don’t think the comp’ny will give no trouble.” Then we went shootin’, an’ when we come back I was feelin’ as chirpy as a cricket, an’ I took an’ rolled Samuelson up an’ down the verandah, an’ give out to the comp’ny that the difficulty between me an’ Lieutenant Ouless was satisfactory put a stop to. I told Jock, o’ course, an’ Terence. Jock didn’t say nothing, but Terence ’e sez: “You’re a pair, you two. An’, begad, I don’t know which was the better man.” There ain’t nothin’ wrong with Ouless. ’E’s a gentleman all over, an’ ’e’s come on as much as B Comp’ny. I lay ’e’d lose ’is commission, tho’, if it come out that ’e’d been fightin’ with a private. Ho! ho! Fightin’ all an afternoon with a bloomin’ private like me! What do you think?’ he added, brushing the breech of his rifle.

‘I think what the umpires said at the sham-fight; both sides deserve great credit. But I wish you’d tell me what made you save him in the first place.’

‘I was pretty sure that ’e ’adn’t meant it for me, though that wouldn’t ha’ made no difference if ’e’d been copped for it. An’ ’e was that young too that it wouldn’t ha’ been fair. Besides, if I had ha’ done that I’d ha’ missed the fight, and I’d ha’ felt bad all my time. Don’t you see it that way, sir?’

‘It was your right to get him cashiered if you chose,’ I insisted.

‘My right!’ Ortheris answered with deep scorn. ‘My right! I ain’t a recruity to go whinin’ about my rights to this an’ my rights to that, just as if I couldn’t look after myself. My rights! ’Strewth A’mighty! I’m a man.’

The last squad were finishing their shots in a storm of low-voiced chaff. Ouless withdrew to a little distance in order to leave the men at ease, and I saw his face in the full sunlight for a moment, before he hitched up his sword, got his men together, and marched them back to barracks. It was all right. The boy was proven.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Ortheris meant _soors_--which means pigs.

A MATTER OF FACT.

And if ye doubt the tale I tell, Steer through the South Pacific swell; Go where the branching coral hives Unending strife of endless lives, Where, leagued about the ’wildered boat, The rainbow jellies fill and float; And, lilting where the laver lingers, The starfish trips on all her fingers; Where, ’neath his myriad spines ashock, The sea-egg ripples down the rock; An orange wonder dimly guessed, From darkness where the cuttles rest, Moored o’er the darker deeps that hide The blind white Sea-snake and his bride Who, drowsing, nose the long-lost ships Let down through darkness to their lips.

--_The Palms._

Once a priest, always a priest; once a mason, always a mason; but once a journalist, always and for ever a journalist.

There were three of us, all newspaper men, the only passengers on a little tramp steamer that ran where her owners told her to go. She had once been in the Bilbao iron ore business, had been lent to the Spanish Government for service at Manilla; and was ending her days in the Cape Town coolie-trade, with occasional trips to Madagascar and even as far as England. We found her going to Southampton in ballast, and shipped in her because the fares were nominal. There was Keller, of an American paper, on his way back to the States from palace executions in Madagascar; there was a burly half-Dutchman, called Zuyland, who owned and edited a paper up-country near Johannesberg; and there was myself, who had solemnly put away all journalism, vowing to forget that I had ever known the difference between an imprint and a stereo advertisement.

Ten minutes after Keller spoke to me, as the _Rathmines_ cleared Cape Town, I had forgotten the aloofness I desired to feign, and was in heated discussion on the immorality of expanding telegrams beyond a certain fixed point. Then Zuyland came out of his cabin, and we were all at home instantly, because we were men of the same profession needing no introduction. We annexed the boat formally, broke open the passengers’ bath-room door--on the Manilla lines the Dons do not wash--cleaned out the orange-peel and cigar-ends at the bottom of the bath, hired a Lascar to shave us throughout the voyage, and then asked each other’s names.

Three ordinary men would have quarrelled through sheer boredom before they reached Southampton. We, by virtue of our craft, were anything but ordinary men. A large percentage of the tales of the world, the thirty-nine that cannot be told to ladies and the one that can, are common property coming of a common stock. We told them all, as a matter of form, with all their local and specific variants which are surprising. Then came, in the intervals of steady card-play, more personal histories of adventure and things seen and suffered: panics among white folk, when the blind terror ran from man to man on the Brooklyn Bridge, and the people crushed each other to death they knew not why; fires, and faces that opened and shut their mouths horribly at red-hot window frames; wrecks in frost and snow, reported from the sleet-sheathed rescue-tug at the risk of frost-bite; long rides after diamond thieves; skirmishes on the veldt and in municipal committees with the Boers; glimpses of lazy tangled Cape politics and the mule-rule in the Transvaal; card-tales, horse-tales, woman-tales, by the score and the half hundred; till the first mate, who had seen more than us all put together, but lacked words to clothe his tales with, sat open-mouthed far into the dawn.

When the tales were done we picked up cards till a curious hand or a chance remark made one or other of us say, ‘That reminds me of a man who--or a business which--’ and the anecdotes would continue while the _Rathmines_ kicked her way northward through the warm water.

In the morning of one specially warm night we three were sitting immediately in front of the wheel-house, where an old Swedish boatswain whom we called ‘Frithiof the Dane’ was at the wheel, pretending that he could not hear our stories. Once or twice Frithiof spun the spokes curiously, and Keller lifted his head from a long chair to ask, ‘What is it? Can’t you get any steerage-way on her?’

‘There is a feel in the water,’ said Frithiof, ‘that I cannot understand. I think that we run downhills or somethings. She steers bad this morning.’

Nobody seems to know the laws that govern the pulse of the big waters. Sometimes even a landsman can tell that the solid ocean is atilt, and that the ship is working herself up a long unseen slope; and sometimes the captain says, when neither full steam nor fair wind justifies the length of a day’s run, that the ship is sagging downhill; but how these ups and downs come about has not yet been settled authoritatively.

‘No, it is a following sea,’ said Frithiof; ‘and with a following sea you shall not get good steerage-way.’

The sea was as smooth as a duck-pond, except for a regular oily swell. As I looked over the side to see where it might be following us from, the sun rose in a perfectly clear sky and struck the water with its light so sharply that it seemed as though the sea should clang like a burnished gong. The wake of the screw and the little white streak cut by the log-line hanging over the stern were the only marks on the water as far as eye could reach.

Keller rolled out of his chair and went aft to get a pine-apple from the ripening stock that was hung inside the after awning.

‘Frithiof, the log-line has got tired of swimming. It’s coming home,’ he drawled.

‘What?’ said Frithiof, his voice jumping several octaves.

‘Coming home,’ Keller repeated, leaning over the stern. I ran to his side and saw the log-line, which till then had been drawn tense over the stern railing, slacken, loop, and come up off the port quarter. Frithiof called up the speaking-tube to the bridge, and the bridge answered, ‘Yes, nine knots.’ Then Frithiof spoke again, and the answer was, ‘What do you want of the skipper?’ and Frithiof bellowed, ‘Call him up.’

By this time Zuyland, Keller, and myself had caught something of Frithiof’s excitement, for any emotion on shipboard is most contagious. The captain ran out of his cabin, spoke to Frithiof, looked at the log-line, jumped on the bridge, and in a minute we felt the steamer swing round as Frithiof turned her.

‘Going back to Cape Town?’ said Keller.

Frithiof did not answer, but tore away at the wheel. Then he beckoned us three to help, and we held the wheel down till the _Rathmines_ answered it, and we found ourselves looking into the white of our own wake, with the still oily sea tearing past our bows, though we were not going more than half steam ahead.

The captain stretched out his arm from the bridge and shouted. A minute later I would have given a great deal to have shouted too, for one-half of the sea seemed to shoulder itself above the other half, and came on in the shape of a hill. There was neither crest, comb, nor curl-over to it; nothing but black water with little waves chasing each other about the flanks. I saw it stream past and on a level with the _Rathmines’_ bow-plates before the steamer hove up her bulk to rise, and I argued that this would be the last of all earthly voyages for me. Then we lifted for ever and ever and ever, till I heard Keller saying in my ear, ‘The bowels of the deep, good Lord!’ and the _Rathmines_ stood poised, her screw racing and drumming on the slope of a hollow that stretched downwards for a good half-mile.

We went down that hollow, nose under for the most part, and the air smelt wet and muddy, like that of an emptied aquarium. There was a second hill to climb; I saw that much: but the water came aboard and carried me aft till it jammed me against the wheel-house door, and before I could catch breath or clear my eyes again we were rolling to and fro in torn water, with the scuppers pouring like eaves in a thunderstorm.

‘There were three waves,’ said Keller; ‘and the stoke-hold’s flooded.’

The firemen were on deck waiting, apparently, to be drowned. The engineer came and dragged them below, and the crew, gasping, began to work the clumsy Board of Trade pump. That showed nothing serious, and when I understood that the _Rathmines_ was really on the water, and not beneath it, I asked what had happened.

‘The captain says it was a blow-up under the sea--a volcano,’ said Keller.

‘It hasn’t warmed anything,’ I said. I was feeling bitterly cold, and cold was almost unknown in those waters. I went below to change my clothes, and when I came up everything was wiped out in clinging white fog.

‘Are there going to be any more surprises?’ said Keller to the captain.

‘I don’t know. Be thankful you’re alive, gentlemen. That’s a tidal wave thrown up by a volcano. Probably the bottom of the sea has been lifted a few feet somewhere or other. I can’t quite understand this cold spell. Our sea-thermometer says the surface water is 44°, and it should be 68° at least.’

‘It’s abominable,’ said Keller, shivering. ‘But hadn’t you better attend to the fog-horn? It seems to me that I heard something.’

‘Heard! Good heavens!’ said the captain from the bridge, ‘I should think you did.’ He pulled the string of our fog-horn, which was a weak one. It sputtered and choked, because the stoke-hold was full of water and the fires were half-drowned, and at last gave out a moan. It was answered from the fog by one of the most appalling steam-sirens I have ever heard. Keller turned as white as I did, for the fog, the cold fog, was upon us, and any man may be forgiven for fearing a death he cannot see.

‘Give her steam there!’ said the captain to the engine-room. ‘Steam for the whistle, if we have to go dead slow.’

We bellowed again, and the damp dripped off the awnings on to the deck as we listened for the reply. It seemed to be astern this time, but much nearer than before.

‘The _Pembroke Castle_ on us!’ said Keller; and then, viciously, ‘Well, thank God, we shall sink her too.’

‘It’s a side-wheel steamer,’ I whispered. ‘Can’t you hear the paddles?’

This time we whistled and roared till the steam gave out, and the answer nearly deafened us. There was a sound of frantic threshing in the water, apparently about fifty yards away, and something shot past in the whiteness that looked as though it were gray and red.

‘The _Pembroke Castle_ bottom up,’ said Keller, who, being a journalist, always sought for explanations. ‘That’s the colours of a Castle liner. We’re in for a big thing.’

‘The sea is bewitched,’ said Frithiof from the wheel-house. ‘There are _two_ steamers!’

Another siren sounded on our bow, and the little steamer rolled in the wash of something that had passed unseen.

‘We’re evidently in the middle of a fleet,’ said Keller quietly. ‘If one doesn’t run us down, the other will. Phew! What in creation is that?’

I sniffed, for there was a poisonous rank smell in the cold air--a smell that I had smelt before.

‘If I was on land I should say that it was an alligator. It smells like musk,’ I answered.

‘Not ten thousand alligators could make that smell,’ said Zuyland; ‘I have smelt them.’

‘Bewitched! Bewitched!’ said Frithiof. ‘The sea she is turned upside down, and we are walking along the bottom.’

Again the _Rathmines_ rolled in the wash of some unseen ship, and a silver-gray wave broke over the bow, leaving on the deck a sheet of sediment--the gray broth that has its place in the fathomless deeps of the sea. A sprinkling of the wave fell on my face, and it was so cold that it stung as boiling water stings. The dead and most untouched deep water of the sea had been heaved to the top by the submarine volcano--the chill still water that kills all life and smells of desolation and emptiness. We did not need either the blinding fog or that indescribable smell of musk to make us unhappy--we were shivering with cold and wretchedness where we stood.

‘The hot air on the cold water makes this fog,’ said the captain; ‘it ought to clear in a little time.’

‘Whistle, oh! whistle, and let’s get out of it,’ said Keller.

The captain whistled again, and far and far astern the invisible twin steam-sirens answered us. Their blasting shriek grew louder, till at last it seemed to tear out of the fog just above our quarter, and I cowered while the _Rathmines_ plunged bows under on a double swell that crossed.

‘No more,’ said Frithiof, ‘it is not good any more. Let us get away, in the name of God.’

‘Now if a torpedo-boat with a _City of Paris_ siren went mad and broke her moorings and hired a friend to help her, it’s just conceivable that we might be carried as we are now. Otherwise this thing is----’

The last words died on Keller’s lips, his eyes began to start from his head, and his jaw fell. Some six or seven feet above the port bulwarks, framed in fog, and as utterly unsupported as the full moon, hung a Face. It was not human, and it certainly was not animal, for it did not belong to this earth as known to man. The mouth was open, revealing a ridiculously tiny tongue--as absurd as the tongue of an elephant; there were tense wrinkles of white skin at the angles of the drawn lips, white feelers like those of a barbel sprung from the lower jaw, and there was no sign of teeth within the mouth. But the horror of the face lay in the eyes, for those were sightless--white, in sockets as white as scraped bone, and blind. Yet for all this the face, wrinkled as the mask of a lion is drawn in Assyrian sculpture, was alive with rage and terror. One long white feeler touched our bulwarks. Then the face disappeared with the swiftness of a blindworm popping into its burrow, and the next thing that I remember is my own voice in my own ears, saying gravely to the mainmast, ‘But the air-bladder ought to have been forced out of its mouth, you know.’

Keller came up to me, ashy white. He put his hand into his pocket, took a cigar, bit it, dropped it, thrust his shaking thumb into his mouth and mumbled, ‘The giant gooseberry and the raining frogs! Gimme a light--gimme a light! Say, gimme a light.’ A little bead of blood dropped from his thumb-joint.

I respected the motive, though the manifestation was absurd. ‘Stop, you’ll bite your thumb off,’ I said, and Keller laughed brokenly as he picked up his cigar. Only Zuyland, leaning over the port bulwarks, seemed self-possessed. He declared later that he was very sick.

‘We’ve seen it,’ he said, turning round. ‘That is it.’

‘What?’ said Keller, chewing the unlighted cigar.