Part 11

The breeze Trawnbeigh had referred to developed in the violent Mexican way, while I was enjoying the bath tub, into an unmistakable norther. Water fell on the roof like so much lead, and then sprang off (some of it did) in thick, round streams from the tin spouts; the wind screamed in and out of the tiles overhead, and through the north wing’s blurred window the writhing banana trees of the dingle-dangle looked like strange things one sees in an aquarium.

As soon as I could get into my clothes again—a bath was as far as I was able to live up to the Trawnbeigh ideal—I went into the _sala_, where the dinner table was already set with a really heartrending attempt at splendor. I have said that nothing happened with which I had not a sort of literary acquaintance; but I was wrong. While I was standing there wondering how the Trawnbeighs had been able all those years to “keep it up,” a window in the next room blew open with a bang. I ran in to shut it; but before I reached it, I stopped short and, as hastily and quietly as I could, tiptoed back to the “wing.” For the next room was the kitchen, and at one end of it Trawnbeigh, in a shabby but perfectly fitting dress coat, his trousers rolled up half way to his knees, was patiently holding an umbrella over his wife’s sacred dinner gown, while she—be-bangled, be-cameoed, be-plumed, and stripped to the buff—masterfully cooked our dinner on the _brassero_.

To me it was all extremely wonderful, and the wonder of it did not lessen during the five years in which, on my way to and from Rebozo, I stopped over at the Trawnbeighs’ several times a year. For, although I knew that they were often financially all but down and out, the endless red tape of their daily life never struck me as being merely a pathetic bluff. Their rising bells and dressing bells, their apparent dependence on all sorts of pleasant accessories that simply did not exist, their occupations (I mean those on which I did not have to turn a tactful back, such as botanizing, crewel work, painting horrible water colors and composing long lists of British sounding things to be “sent out from the Stores”), the informality with which we waited on ourselves at luncheon and the stately, punctilious manner in which we did precisely the same thing at dinner, the preordained hour at which Mrs. Trawnbeigh and the girls each took a bedroom candle and said good night, leaving Trawnbeigh, Cyril and me to smoke a pipe and “do a whisky peg” (Trawnbeigh had spent some years in India), the whole inflexibly insular scheme of their existence was more, infinitely more, than a bluff. It was a placid, tenacious clinging to the straw of their ideal in a great, deep sea of poverty, discomfort and desolation.

And it had its reward, for after fourteen years of Mexican life, Cyril was almost exactly what he would have been had he never seen the place; and Cyril was the Trawnbeighs’ one asset of immense value. He was most agreeable to look at, he was both related to and connected with many of the most historical sounding ladies and gentlemen in England, and he had just the limited, selfish, amiable outlook on the world in general that was sure (granting the other things) to impress Miss Irene Slapp, of Pittsburgh, as the height of both breeding and distinction.

Irene Slapp had beauty and distinction of her own. Somehow, although they all needed the money, I don’t believe Cyril would have married her if she hadn’t. Anyhow, one evening in the City of Mexico he took her in to dinner at the British Legation, where he had been asked to dine as a matter of course, and before the second entrée Miss Slapp was slightly in love with him and very deeply in love with the scheme of life, the standard, the ideal, or whatever you choose to call it, he had inherited and had been brought up, under staggering difficulties, to represent.

“The young beggar has made a pot of money in the States,” Trawnbeigh gravely informed me after Cyril had spent seven weeks in Pittsburgh—whither he had been persuaded to journey on the Slapps’s private train.

“And, you know, I’ve decided to sell the old place,” he casually remarked a month or so later. “Yes, yes,” he went on, “the young people are beginning to leave us” (I hadn’t noticed any signs of impending flight on the part of Edwina, Violet and Maud). “Mrs. Trawnbeigh and I want to end our days at home. Slapp believes there’s gold on the place—or would it be petroleum? He’s welcome to it. After all, I’ve never been fearfully keen on business.”

And I rode away pondering, as I always did, on the great lesson of the Trawnbeighs.

_Charles Macomb Flandrau_.

THE LIFE BELT

Out of doors, darkness and sleet; within the cottage parlor, a grand fire and a good supper, the latter, however, no longer in evidence.

Four people sat round the hearth: a woman not so old in years as aged in looks by what the war had done to her; a burly, bearded, middle-aged man, her brother; a young, rather stern-visaged fellow, the last of her sons; and a girl of twenty or so, with a sedate mouth and bright eyes, her daughter-in-law to be. The two men were obviously seafarers. As a matter of fact, the uncle was skipper of an ancient tramp which had somehow survived those three years of perilous passages; the nephew, a fisherman before war, afterwards and until recently in the patrol service, was now mate on the same old ship, though he had still to make his first trip on her.

Said Mrs. Cathles, breaking silence, to her brother: “Did ye see any U-boats comin’ home, Alick?” Possibly she spoke then just to interrupt her own thoughts, for it was not like her to introduce such a subject.

The skipper was busy charging his pipe. “Is it U-boats ye’re askin’ about, Maggie?” he said slowly, in his loud voice. “I’m tellin’ ye, on that last home’ard trip, the peeriscopes was like a forest!”

David Cathles winked to his sweetheart; then perceiving that the answer had scared his mother, he said:

“Come, come, Uncle! Surely ’twasn’t quite so bad as that. ‘A forest’ is a bit thick, isn’t it?”

“Well, there was room for the Hesperus to get through, I’ll allow,” the skipper said, striking a match extracted from his vest pocket, “otherwise I wouldn’t be settin’ here tellin’ the blessed truth every time.” He lay back and puffed complacently, staring at the fire.

“Never you mind him, Mother,” said the young man. “’Tis me he’s seekin’ to terrify: he’d just as soon I didn’t sail wi’ him, after all; ’fraid o’ me learnin’ what a poor skipper he is!”

Now David ought to have known better. People who are good at giving chaff are seldom good at taking it. The girl, however, was quick to note the stiffening of the burly figure.

“Captain Whinn,” she remarked promptly, but without haste, “ye must be a terrible brave man to ha’ come through all ye ha’ come through, since the war started.”

“Not at all, my dear,” was the modest reply; “I’m no braver’n several cases I’ve heard on.”

David, who had seen his own blunder, was grateful to Esther for the diversion, and sought to carry it further.

“Well, Uncle Whinn,” he said respectfully, “I think we’d all like to hear what yourself considers the pluckiest bit o’ work done by a chap in the Merchant Service durin’ the—”

“Haven’t done it yet.” With a wooden expression of countenance, the skipper continued to stare at the fire.

Mrs. Cathles spoke. “Ah, David, ’tis little use tryin’ to pick the bravest when all is so brave. But I do think none will ever do braver’n what that fishin’ skipper did—him we was hearin’ about yesterday.”

“Ay, that was a man!” her son agreed.

“What was it?” the girl inquired, with a veiled glance of indignation at Captain Whinn, who appeared quite uninterested, if not actually bored.

“You tell it, David,” said the mother. “Big moniments ha’ been put up for less.”

“Go on, David,” murmured Esther.

“’Twas something like this,” he began. “They had hauled the nets and was makin’ for port in the early mornin’, in hazy weather, when a U-boat comes up almost alongside. I reckon they was scared, for at that time fishin’ boats was bein’ sunk right and left. Then the commander comes on deck and asks, in first-class English, which o’ the seven was skipper. And the skipper he holds up his hand like as if he was a little boy in the school. ‘All right,’ says the ’Un, ‘I guess you can navigate hereabouts—eh?’ The skipper answers slow that he has been navigatin’ thereabouts ’most all his life. ‘Very well,’ says the ’Un, ‘there’s a way you can save your boat, and the lives o’ them six fine men, and your own.’ He waits for a little while; then he says: ‘This is the way. You come on board here, and take this ship past the defenses and into —. That’s all. I give you three minutes to make up your mind.’

“’Tis said the skipper looked like a dyin’ man then, and all the time one o’ the U-boat’s guns was trained on the fishin’ boat. ‘Time’s up,’ says the ’Un; ‘which is it to be?’ And the skipper says: ‘I’ll do what ye want.’ I never heard what his mates said; and I should think their thoughts was sort o’ mixed. But they puts him on board the U-boat and clears out, as he told them to do; and the last they see of him was him standin’ betwixt two ’Uns, each wi’ a revolver handy. And then him and the ’Uns goes below, and so does the U-boat.”

“He was surely a coward!” the girl exclaimed.

“Wait a bit,” said David. “Can’t ye see that he saved the lives o’ his mates?”

“And his own!” she cried. “And he took the U-boat in!”

“Ay, he did that—and her commander, too! Oh, he took her in right enough—safe into the big steel net! . . . They found him there wi’ the dead ’Uns, later on—only he had been murdered.”

Esther clasped her hands. “None braver’n that!” she said in a whisper.

Mrs. Cathles turned to her brother, who had not altered his attitude, though he had let his pipe go out.

“Alick,” she said, “what do ye say to that?”

“’Twasn’t so bad,” he said softly, “’twasn’t so bad, Maggie. Ha’ ye any matches?”

Shortly afterwards he took his departure, and then David saw Esther home.

On the way she broke a silence by remarking: “David, I wish ye wasn’t sailin’ wi’ that man.”

“How so?”

“He’s not natural. Something’s wrong about him.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be sayin’ that, Esther,” said David. “I allow I can’t make anything o’ Uncle Whinn nowadays, but the war has turned many a man queerish. Still, I never heard him so boastful-like afore tonight—”

“‘’Twasn’t so bad,’” she quoted resentfully, “‘’twasn’t so bad!’—and it the bravest thing a human man could do? Oh, David, I do wish ye wasn’t sailin’ wi’ him, though he is your uncle. He’s a coward—that’s what he is, I’m sure.”

“I wouldn’t be sayin’ that, neither,” the young man gently protested. “He’s maybe feared—I surely doubt he is—but that’s not the same as bein’ a coward—not by a long chalk.”

“He’s got neither wife nor family, and he’s oldish,” she persisted.

“But I s’pose life’s sweet even when a man’s oldish. As for bein’ feared—out yonder wi’ the patrol, I was seldom anything else,” said David quietly.

“David Cathles, I don’t believe ye!”

“I’m feared now; I’ll be feared all this comin’ trip. Uncle Whinn has got more to be feared o’ ’n me.

“I don’t see that.”

“Well, if a U-boat gets the better o’ the old Hesperus—and she hasn’t got a gun yet—’tis ten to one the ’Uns make a prisoner o’ Uncle Whinn. ’Tisn’t cheerful to ha’ that on your mind all the time—is it now, Esther?”

“I grant ye that, David,” she said, with unexpected compunction. “Only he shouldn’t be so big about hisself and so small about the pluck o’ other men. I’d ha’ said he was feared o’ the very sea itself.”

“A common complaint, my dear! But now ye ha’ touched on a thing which is maybe only too true, for I could ’most allow my uncle is feared o’ death in the water—not that his fear is aught to be ashamed on.”

“Not if a man be modest about hisself!”

“Uncle Whinn used to be modest enough, and careless enough, too, about what happened to him,” said David. “But when I was on board wi’ him, this mornin’, I see a thing so queer and strange, it makes me creep yet.”

“David, I knew there was something wrong!”

“And ’twas only a simple matter, after all,” he proceeded. “’Twas all about a life belt hangin’ above his bunk, in the chart room, where he berths nowadays. ’Twas an ordinary, everyday life belt, but all the time we was settin’ there smokin’ an’ chattin’, I noticed he never hardly took his eyes off o’ it. And at last I gets up and goes over, just to see if there was anything extra about it. Well, he was after me like a tiger! ‘Don’t ye put finger on that, my lad!’ he says, not so much as if he was angered as feared. And then he draws me back to the table, and says, as if he was a bit ’shamed o’ hisself: ‘Ye’ll excuse me, David, but I can’t bear to see that there life belt touched. T’other day, I was as near as near to killin’ the cook—the poor sinner said it needed dustin’. ’Tis my foolishness, no doubt, but we’ve all got our fancies, and I don’t want the belt to be missin’ or unhandy when the time comes. So there it hangs, an’ I’ll thank ye for your word, here and now, David, that ye won’t never touch it.’ Of course I give him my word, but wi’ no great feelin’ o’ pleasure. . . . What do ye think about it, Esther?”

“’Tis terrible that a great big man should be so feared. Now I’m sort o’ sorry for him. I daresay he needs ye badly on his ship, and so I’ll say no more about it, David.”

“Ye always see things right, once ye let your kind heart go,” he said tenderly. “And I can’t think that Uncle Whinn’ll play the coward if ever he’s really up against it. . . . And now, what about us two gettin’ married on my next leave?”

* * * * *

The Hesperus sailed a couple of days later. The outward voyage was completed without mishap or adventure, and she was within a day’s run of the home port when her end came.

After a brief but havoc-working bombardment, her helpless skipper gave orders to abandon ship, and signaled the enemy accordingly. There were two lifeboats,—the third had been smashed,—and in the natural course of things David would have been in charge of one of them. But Captain Whinn decreed otherwise.

“I want ye wi’ me,” he said to his nephew, as they came down from the tottering bridge. “Cast off!” he bawled at the boat whose crew included the second mate.

He drew David into the chartroom.

When they emerged, a couple of minutes later, he was wearing the belt, and his countenance was pale. But the young man’s was ghastly.

Now there were blurs of smoke on the horizon. Captain Whinn indicated them, remarking:

“A little bit too late. Poor old Hesperus!”

The blurs had evidently been observed from the U-boat also, for a “Hurry up!” came in the form of a shell aimed just high enough to clear the deck.

Skipper and mate went down the ladder, and the boat was cast off. At a safe distance, the rowers, at a sign from the skipper, lay on their oars. Speedily the U-boat put her victim into a sinking condition. During the operation Whinn neither moved nor spoke; seemingly he did not hear the several remarks softly addressed to him by his nephew. His face was set; all the skin blemishes stood out against the tan of many years, upon which had come a grayish pallor; there was moisture on his brow.

Then through the slightly ruffled sea the U-boat, her gunners’ job over, moved toward them. A hail came from the commander, a tall young man with an unslept, nervous look on his thin face.

“Come alongside, and look sharp about it. I want the captain,” he called.

None of the boat’s crew moved, but all at once the elderly cook broke forth in a voice of grievous exasperation:

“Godalmighty, Cap’n, whatever made ye put on your best duds? Why the hell didn’t ye get into some old slops?—an’ then I could ha’ passed for ye easy!”

The glimmer of a smile appeared in the skipper’s eyes, and his mouth quivered pathetically just for an instant. Then he said briefly:

“Get alongside.”

“Maybe they would take me instead,” said David, but again his uncle seemed not to have heard.

Whinn did not speak again until he was standing on the submarine’s deck. Then steadily he addressed his nephew:

“Kind love to your mother, David; best respects to your young lady.”

To the crew: “So long, lads,” he said, and gave a little wave of the hand.

Then he was hurried below, and almost before the Hesperus’ boat was clear, the great engine of destruction began to submerge.

David sat with his face bowed in his hands, and now and then a shudder went through him.

* * * * *

Two nights later he was back in his mother’s house, seated with Esther at the parlor fire, which burned as grandly as on that night a month ago. Mrs. Cathles had gone to the kitchen to make the supper.

There had been a long silence. Suddenly David’s clasp of the girl’s hand tightened almost painfully.

“Why, what is it, lad?” she exclaimed.

“Esther, I don’t know what to do. . . . Ye see, when I was telling you an’ mother about Uncle Whinn, I kept back something—a lot. I couldn’t think how to tell the whole tale—to mother, anyway.”

“Is it—dreadful, David?”

“Ay, dreadful—in a way. Well, I’ll try and tell yourself now, an’ then, perhaps— ’Sh! I bear her comin’! ’Twill have to wait.”

Mrs. Cathles came in, but without the expected laden tray. She crossed to her accustomed place and seated herself. Presently she looked over at her son.

“David, I was thinkin’ just now, and it came on me that ye hadn’t told me everything about your uncle, my own brother, Alick. Now, dearie, ye must not keep aught back. ’Tis my right to know, and I can bear a lot nowadays.” She wetted her lips. “David, tell me true, what happened to my brother when they got him on board the U-boat. Did they—shoot him?”

“No, Mother”—David cleared his throat—“‘’twas far finer’n that! . . . Ah, well, now I’ll tell everything. ’Twas this way. You—we’ll never see Uncle Whinn again, Mother, but he was a great man. He stepped on board that U-boat as brave as a lion, and when the ’Un commander spoke to him, polite enough, too—he looked at him as if he was dirt. And then he give me the messages I ha’ told ye. And then they took him below. And then the U-boat started for to dive— Now don’t ye be too upset, Mother.”

“Go on, David.”

“Well, then, the U-boat, as I was tellin’ ye, started for to dive. . . . But she wasn’t half under when—when she blowed up—all to smash—exploded into little bits, it seemed—our boat was near to bein’ swamped.” David ceased abruptly.

In the silence the girl rose and went to the woman, and put her arm about the bent shoulders.

David spoke again, in little more than a whisper. “’Tis not all told; and now comes the worst—and the best, too. . . . When all was over on the old Hesperus, and we was makin’ ready to leave her, Uncle Whinn draws me into the chartroom. Without sayin’ anything he takes off his old coat and cap and puts on split new ones. After that, he takes down the life belt that hung above his bunk, and puts it on very careful. Then, at last, he speaks to me. ‘David,’ he says, ‘they’re nailin’ us skippers in these times, so maybe you and me shan’t meet again.’ And he holds out his hand. Hardly knowin’ what to say, I says: ‘Even if they do take ye prisoner, the war won’t last for ever and ever, and maybe ye’ll escape afore long.’ He shakes his head, smilin’ a little. ‘If they takes me, they takes the consequences, and so does I.’ And then he tells me his secret— God! to think o’ the man’s pluck!”

David wiped his face.

“My Uncle Whinn says to me: ‘My lad, I thought to tell nobody, but ’twould be too lonesome-like for me to go like that. But ye needn’t make a story about it. . . . This here life belt,’ says he, ‘was my own idea. ’Tisn’t made o’ corks. T’is made o’ high, powerful explosive—enough to wreck a battleship. And all I ha’ got to do is just to pull this little bit o’ string.’ . . .”

_J. J. Bell_.

AMINA

Waldo, brought face to face with the actuality of the unbelievable—as he himself would have worded it—was completely dazed. In silence he suffered the consul to lead him from the tepid gloom of the interior, through the ruinous doorway, out into the hot, stunning brilliance of the desert landscape. Hassan followed, with never a look behind him. Without any word he had taken Waldo’s gun from his nerveless hand and carried it, with his own and the consul’s.

The consul strode across the gravelly sand, some fifty paces from the southwest corner of the tomb, to a bit of not wholly ruined wall from which there was a clear view of the doorway side of the tomb and of the side with the larger crevice.

“Hassan,” he commanded, “watch here.”

Hassan said something in Persian.

“How many cubs were there?” the consul asked Waldo.

Waldo stared mute.

“How many young ones did you see?” the consul asked again.

“Twenty or more,” Waldo made answer.

“That’s impossible,” snapped the consul.

“There seemed to be sixteen or eighteen,” Waldo reasserted. Hassan smiled and grunted. The consul took from him two guns, handed Waldo his, and they walked around the tomb to a point about equally distant from the opposite corner. There was another bit of ruin, and in front of it, on the side toward the tomb, was a block of stone mostly in the shadow of the wall.

“Convenient,” said the consul. “Sit on that stone and lean against the wall; make yourself comfortable. You are a bit shaken, but you will be all right in a moment. You should have something to eat, but we have nothing. Anyhow, take a good swallow of this.”

He stood by him as Waldo gasped over the raw brandy.

“Hassan will bring you his water bottle before he goes,” the consul went on; “drink plenty, for you must stay here for some time. And now, pay attention to me. We must extirpate these vermin. The male, I judge, is absent. If he had been anywhere about, you would not now be alive. The young cannot be as many as you say, but, I take it, we have to deal with ten, a full litter. We must smoke them out. Hassan will go back to camp after fuel and the guard. Meanwhile, you and I must see that none escape.”

He took Waldo’s gun, opened the breech, shut it, examined the magazine and handed it back to him.

“Now watch me closely,” he said. He paced off, looking to his left past the tomb. Presently he stopped and gathered several stones together.

“You see these?” he called.

Waldo shouted an affirmation.

The consul came back, passed on in the same line, looking to his right past the tomb, and presently, at a similar distance, put up another tiny cairn, shouted again and was again answered. Again he returned.

“Now you are sure you cannot mistake those two marks I have made?”

“Very sure indeed,” said Waldo.

“It is important,” warned the consul. “I am going back to where I left Hassan, to watch there while he is gone. You will watch here. You may pace as often as you like to either of those stone heaps. From either you can see me on my beat. Do not diverge from the line from one to the other. For as soon as Hassan is out of sight I shall shoot any moving thing I see nearer. Sit here till you see me set up similar limits for my sentry-go on the farther side, then shoot any moving thing not on my line of patrol. Keep a lookout all around you. There is one chance in a million that the male might return in daylight—mostly they are nocturnal, but this lair is evidently exceptional. Keep a bright lookout.