CHAPTER XII

AMBER SAILS

Amber went down to Southampton one cheerless day in December, when a grey, sad mist lay on the waters, and all that was land spoke of comfort, of warm, snug chimney corners and drawn curtains, and all the sea was hungry dreariness.

He did not expect to see Cynthia when he came to Waterloo, for he had taken a shaky farewell the night before.... She had been irritatingly calm and self-composed, so matter-of-fact in her attitude, that the words he had schooled himself to say would not come.

He was busily engaged composing a letter to her--a letter to be posted before the ship sailed--and had reached the place where in one sketchy sentence he was recounting his worldly prospects for her information, when she came along the train and found him.

An awkward moment for Amber--he was somewhat incoherent--remarked on the beauty of the day oblivious of the rain that splashed down upon the carriage window--and was conventionally grateful to her for coming to see him off.

He could not have been lucid or intelligent, for he caught her smiling--but what is a man to say when his mind is full of thoughts too tremendous for speech, and his tongue is called upon to utter the pleasantries of convention?

All too quickly it seemed, the guard’s whistle shrilled. “Oh, hang it!” Amber jumped up. “I am sorry--I wanted to say---- Oh, dash it!”

She smiled again.

“You will have plenty of time,” she said quietly. “I am going to Southampton.”

An overjoyed and thankful man sank back on to his seat as the train drew out of the station. What he might have said is easy to imagine. Here was an opportunity if ever there was one. He spoke about the beauty of the day--she might have thought him rude but for understanding. He spent half an hour explaining how the hatters had sent him a helmet two sizes larger than necessary and gave her a graphic picture of how he had looked.

She was politely interested....

Too quickly the train rattled over the points at Eastleigh and slowed for Southampton town. It was raining, a thin cold drizzle of rain that blurred the windows and distorted the outlines of the buildings through which the train passed slowly on its way to the docks.

Amber heaved a long sigh and then, observing the glimmer of amusement in the girl’s eyes, smiled also.

“Rank bad weather, my lady,” he said ruefully, “heaven’s weepin’, England in mourning at the loss of her son, and all that sort of thing.”

“She must bear her troubles,” said the girl mockingly, and Amber marvelled that she could be so cheerful under such distressing circumstances--for I fear that Amber was an egotist.

In the great barnlike shed adjoining the quayside they left the carriage and made their way across the steaming quay to the gangway.

“We will find a dry place,” said Amber, “and I will deposit you in comfort whilst I speak a few kindly words to the steward.” He left her in the big saloon, and went in search of his cabin.

He had other matters to think about--the important matters; matters affecting his life, his future, his happiness. Now if he could only find a gambit--an opening. If she would only give him a chance of saying all that was in his heart. Amber, a young man remarkably self-possessed in most affairs of life, tossed wildly upon a tempestuous sea of emotion, in sight of land, with a very life-line at hand to bring him to a place of safety, yet without courage to grasp the line or put the prow of his boat to shore.

“For,” he excused, “there may be rocks that way, and it is better to be uncomfortable at sea than drowned on the beach.”

Having all these high matters to fill his mind, he passed his cabin twice, missed his steward and found himself blundering into second-class accommodation amongst shivering half-caste folk before he woke up to the fact that his errand was still unperformed.

He came back to the saloon to find it empty, and a wild panic came on him. She had been tired of waiting--there was an early train back to town and she had gone.

He flew out on to the deck, ran up and down companionways innumerable, sprinted along the broad promenade deck to the amazement of stolid quartermasters, took the gangway in two strides and reached the damp quay, then as quickly came back to the ship again to renew his search.

What a hopeless ass he was! What a perfect moon-calf! A picture of tragic despair, he came again to the saloon to find her, very cool and very dry--which he was not.

“Why, you are wet through,” was her greeting. Amber smiled sheepishly.

“Yes, lost a trunk, you know, left on the quay--just a little rain--now I want to say something----” He was breathless but determined as he sat beside her.

“You are to go straight to your cabin and change your clothes,” she ordered.

“Don’t worry about that, I----”

She shook her head.

“You must,” she said firmly, “you will catch all sorts of things, besides you look funny.”

A crowning argument this, for men will brave dangers and suppress all manner of heroic desires, but ridicule is a foe from which they flee.

He had an exciting and passionate half-hour, unlocking trunks, and dragging to light such garments as were necessary for the change. For the most part they lay at the bottom of each receptacle and were elusive. He was hot and dishevelled, when with fingers that shook from agitation he fastened the last button and closed the door on the chaos in his cabin.

There was a precious half-hour gone--another was to be sacrificed to lunch--for the ship provided an excellent déjeuner for the passengers’ friends, and my lady was humanly hungry.

When he came to the covered promenade deck the mails were being run on board, which meant that in half an hour the bell would ring for all who were not travelling to go on shore, and the blessed opportunity which fate had thrown in his way would be lost.

She seemed more inclined to discuss the possibility of his reaching her brother--a pardonable anxiety on her part, but which, unreasonably, he resented. Yet he calmed himself to listen, answering more or less intelligently.

He writhed in silent despair as the minutes passed, and something like a groan escaped from him as the ship’s bell clanged the familiar signal.

He rose, a little pale.

“I am afraid this is where we part,” he said unsteadily, “and there were one or two things I wanted to say to you.”

She sprang up, a little alarmed, he thought--certainly confused, if he judged rightly by the pink and white that came to her cheek.

“I wanted to say--to ask you--I am not much of a fellow as fellows go, and I dare say you think I am a----” He had too many openings to this speech of his and was trying them all.

“Perhaps you had better wait,” she said gently.

“I intended writing to you,” he went on, “as soon as we touched Sierra Leone--in fact, I was going to write from here.” A quartermaster came along the deck. “Any more for the shore?” He glanced inquiringly at the pair. “Last gangway’s bein’ pulled off, m’am.”

Amber looked hopelessly down at her. Then he sighed.

“I am afraid I shall have to write after all,” he said ruefully, and laughed.

Her smile answered his, but she made no movement.

Again the bell clanged.

“Unless you want to be taken on to the Alebi Coast,” he said, half jestingly, “you will have to go ashore.”

Again she smiled.

“I want to be taken out to the Alebi Coast,” she said, “that is what I have paid my passage money for.”

Amber was wellnigh speechless.

“But--you can’t--your luggage?”

“My luggage is in my cabin,” she said innocently; “didn’t you know I was coming with you?”

Amber said nothing, his heart being too full for words.

* * * * *

When they were five days out, and the sugar-loaf mountain of Teneriffe was sinking behind them, Amber awoke to the gravity of the situation.

“I’ve been a selfish pig,” he said; “if I’d had the heart to do it I could have persuaded you to leave the ship at Santa Cruz--you ought not to come.”

“_J’y suis--J’y reste!_” she said lazily. She was stretched on a wicker lounge chair, a dainty picture from the tip of her white shoes to the crown of her pretty head.

“I’m an explorer’s daughter,” she went on half seriously, “you have to remember that, Captain Grey.”

“I’d rather you called me Amber,” he said.

“Well, Mr. Amber,” she corrected, “though it seems a little familiar; what was I saying?”

“You were boasting about your birth,” he said. He pulled a chair to her side--“and we were listening respectfully.”

She did not speak for some time, her eyes following the dancing wavelets that slipped astern as the ship pushed through the water.

“It is a big business, isn’t it?” she said suddenly. “This country killed my father--it has taken my brother----”

“It shall not take you,” he said between his teeth. “I’ll have no folly of that kind; you must go back. We shall meet the homeward Congo boat at Grand Bassam and I shall transfer you----”

She laughed out loud, a long low laugh of infinite amusement.

“By force, I suppose,” she rallied him, “or wrapped up in canvas labelled ‘Stow away from boilers.’ No, I am going to the base of operations--if no further. It is my palaver--that is the right word, isn’t it?--much more than yours.”

She was wholly serious now.

“I suppose it is,” he said slowly, “but it’s a man’s palaver, and a nasty palaver at that. Before we catch up to Lambaire and his party even----” He hesitated.

“Even if we do,” she suggested quietly; and he nodded.

“There is no use in blinking possibilities,” he went on. His little drawl left him and the gentleness in his voice made the girl shiver.

“We have got to face the worst,” he said. “Lambaire may or may not believe that the River of Stars is in Portuguese territory. His object in falsifying the compass may have been to hoodwink the British Government into faith in his bona fides--you see, we should have believed your father, and accepted his survey without question.”

“Do you think that was the idea?” she asked.

Amber shook his head.

“Frankly, no. My theory is that the compass was faked so that your father should not be able to find the mine again: I think Lambaire’s idea was to prevent the plans from being useful to anybody else but himself--if by chance they fell into other hands.”

“But why take Francis?” she asked in perplexity.

“The only way they could get the plan--anyway their position was strengthened by the inclusion of the dead explorer’s son.”

This was the only conversation they had on the subject. At Sierra Leone they transferred their baggage to the _Pinto Colo_, a little Portuguese coasting steamer, and then followed for them a leisurely crawl along the coast, where, so it seemed, at every few miles the ship came to an anchor to allow of barrels of German rum to be landed.

Then one morning, when a thick white mist lay on the oily water, they came to an anchor off a low-lying coast--invisible from the ship--which was the beginning of the forbidden territory.

“We have arrived,” said Amber, an hour later, when the surf-boat was beached. He turned to a tall thin native who stood aloof from the crowd of boatmen who had assisted at the landing.

“Dem Consul, he lib...?”

“Massa,” said the black man impressively, “him lib for bush one time--dem white man him lib for bush, but dem bush feller he chop um one time, so Consul him lib for bush to hang um bush feller.”

To the girl this was so much gibberish, and she glanced from the native to Amber, who stood alert, his eyelids narrow, his face tense.

“How you call um, them white man who go dead?” he asked.

Before the man could answer something attracted his attention and he looked up. There was a bird circling slowly above him.

He stretched out his arms and whistled softly, and the bird dropped down like a stone to the sandy beach, rose with an effort, waddled a step or two and fell over, its great crop heaving.

The native lifted it tenderly--it was a pigeon. Round one red leg, fastened by a rubber band, was a thin scrap of paper. Amber removed the tissue carefully and smoothed it out.

“To O. C. Houssas.

“Messrs. Lambaire and White have reached Alebi Mission Station. They report having discovered diamond field and state Sutton died fever month ago.

(Signed) H. SANDERS.”

He read it again slowly, the girl watching with a troubled face.

“What does it say?” she asked.

Amber folded the paper carefully.

“I do not think it was intended for us,” he said evasively.