Part 6

The ends of the Doctor’s dusky crimson sash hanging over the upper bunk quivered slightly, with the faint rolling of the ship, against the mate’s smoothly dark head, as he crouched forward with his back hunched, and his bearded chin thrust out. His hands were clasped round one knee, the thin leg below them working incessantly with a quick, nervous movement. All the time he was speaking, he looked straight at young Raymond with his mournful eyes, and the latter, who had never moved from his leaning attitude against the cabin side, gazed abstractedly in front of him from out of a growing halo of flame-coloured light. The ship’s cat purring softly was rubbing itself slowly against the white trousered leg.

‘Dis thing had to hãppen, you know,’ said the mate at last. ‘It was written, you see, there’--he raised a hand and pointed to the still face. ‘_I_ knew it a long time. I think I knew it when he first came on board at Adelayde; he walkéd down the quay, you know, with that fatiguéd walk he had, poor fallow, and it was written in his eyes--they were quite hunted, you know. _I’ve_ rrãally been the doctor on the old galley this journey, you know, _he_ wasn’t fit for it. Hãng it all, I have been doseing the shellbacks, you know, poor devils--ah--ha!’ he laughed that sudden spontaneous laugh that must have come from his lips even in death, if an idea had commended itself to his sardonic humour.

‘The skipper should never have taken him on board, you know; but the old fallow was in a hole, he had to get off, and he had to have a doctor. The old galley is an invalid ship, you know, and so she has to have a doctor and a cow,--that blessed cow hasn’t given anny milk, still she hãs four legs, you know--and _I_ am the doctor.’ He gnawed at his moustache and muttered some words under his breath.

Then young Raymond spoke for the first time.

‘Did you know that?’ he said, pointing with a shrinking gesture to the opium box in the mate’s hand.

‘After Cape Town, I knew it. Guessed it when he came on board, you know, and shut himself into his cabin for two days. I got in once, and then I saw what the trouble was, you know. I lookéd for that’--he held up the box--‘but dosé fallows are so cunning. _He_ knew it too, he knew he was going to hand in his checks, you know. He uséd to talk to me, and he often said, “_If_ I get home.”’ The mate paused. ‘Well! that is ãll over, it had to hãppen, you know.’ His voice and face and the resigned dejection of his whole figure embodied the word ‘Kismet’; the threads of the situation, for the moment, had slipped through his fingers. He sat quite quiet, staring mournfully in front of him, but the leg beneath his clasped hands never ceased a second in its nervous movement.

The tramp above, and the ‘lip-lip’ of the little green waves against the ship’s side, were still the only sounds that broke in on the early silence.

‘For the sake of his people,’ said young Raymond suddenly, taking the little box from the mate’s hand.

‘Yes, he had an ayged father, you know, a parson in Yorkshire, he was going home to him--after seven years--that is harrd, you know,’ the mate said dreamily.

‘Well?’ said Raymond impatiently, and he put the hand that held the box through the open port-hole.

‘No--no--look here,’ said the mate, holding out his hand for the box, ‘I must tell the skipper, you know,’ and he put the box away in his pocket. ‘But you will see, it will be ãll right, he will leave the whole rãcket in my hands; he hates a fuss, you know, that old fallow. Besides, it wasn’t rrãally the opium at the end, you know, it was the heat--his hãart was so weakenéd, you see.’ He got up and looked earnestly, with narrowed eyes, at the dead man’s wasted figure.

‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘it was a little joke, the breeze would have savéd him, you know, ... but it will be ãll right,--failure of the hãart from the heat ... and then we shall put him over the side; anyway there will be no post-mortem. Nobody will come in here, you see, except the skipper, and the box will be in my pocket,--the wind will take away the smell in time.’ There was a faint, sweet, sickly smell as of drugs in the close air of the confined space.

‘So be it!’ said young Raymond, moving from his station against the cabin wall.

‘Let us put him to rest, though; his face haunts me, even when I don’t look at it,’ and he shuddered; ‘the light is too cruel.’ Keeping his head averted, he took a handkerchief from a drawer, and covered the dead man’s face. The flaming East was sending a shaft of orange light through the open port-hole full upon it, and the effect was not pretty.

‘When did he go?’ I said, breaking the silence that followed.

‘I don’t know,’ said the mate, ‘but it could not have been long before the breeze came, anyway--he was hardly cold, you know.’

Young Raymond faced round to the light with strained eyes.

‘_I_ know,’ he said suddenly, ‘_I_ know, I saw him go, I saw it all. I shall never get it out of my head--never! never!’

The mate looked at him half cynically, half concernedly.

‘Hãng it all, my dear fallow,’ he said, ‘death is not an aymiable joker, when you are not uséd to him, you know; but you musn’t let him play with your narves.’

‘Nerves!’ said young Raymond hoarsely, ‘you shall tell me if it _is_ nerves, Armand, for, by George! I should like to know.’

‘Well?’ said the mate; he had seated himself again in his favourite attitude.

The world seemed suddenly enclosed within the walls of this wooden crib, time was annihilated, everything stood still, there was no longer anything outside--just the cabin--we three--and the dead man. I felt giddy and stifled, but the moment young Raymond began to speak, all that feeling merged in wonder at the intense earnestness in his face and the tones of his voice.

‘After we left _him_, last night,’ he said, ‘I slung my hammock on the main deck, starboard side, just where the gymnastic bars are rigged by the main mast; it seemed cooler there than on the poop. Cotter came out on watch just after I turned in, so it was about midnight, I suppose. I couldn’t get the idea of _him_ out of my head;’ he avoided looking at the dead man always, and stared straight in front of him.

‘I could see him tossing and twisting in that bunk, and I couldn’t get to sleep for ages; I suppose I must have dropped off at last, though, because I didn’t hear two bells go. I woke suddenly out of an awfully jolly dream about home and my people. The moon was down, but it wasn’t very dark; there was just that light that comes before the dawn, you know. Oh! yes, I could see all right; I could see pretty clearly right to the starboard hatchway leading up to the poop--that was just facing me as my hammock was slung. It was frightfully hot, suffocating--there wasn’t a breath of air, not a breath. I lay awake a few minutes, and then I suppose I dozed off again; but though my eyes were shut, I seemed to have the feeling that something was coming towards me. It grew upon me, so that I must have half raised myself in my hammock, because when I woke again I was sitting up. There _was_ something--a figure; it came from under the starboard hatch out of the saloon. I could hardly see it in that horrible, misty, unreal light, but it came slowly along the deck close to the bulwark without making any noise. I don’t know why I was in a ghastly funk, but it seemed somehow uncanny--I wasn’t properly awake, you see. I waited for it--it seemed hours coming. When it was almost within touch, I saw what--it was--it was--_him_. His head was bent back and his hands thrown up; he was like a shot bird that’s towering for air, you know, but there was no sound, no choke or gasp--I listened for it, but there was none, not even a sigh’--he paused. ‘There ought, there must have been a gasp, if it _was_ he,’ he muttered to himself; ‘he couldn’t have stood like that without a sound. Oh! Armand, the face!’

He spoke in short broken sentences, and his hands twisted here and there in the full agony of recollection.

‘The eyes were staring open, as they were before you--and nothing moved in it--it was a _dead_ face ... and then it went away again, you know,--I don’t know _how_ it went. I shall never get that look out of my head--never!’ He drew his hands across his eyes.

‘It was far worse than _that_ dead face,’ he said solemnly, pointing to the bunk; ‘it was the dead face of a _living_ man.’

‘Then?’ said the mate.

‘Then I lay back in my hammock, not more than a minute, I think,--and then I got out and came here, and as I crossed the deck the first of the breeze crossed it too--too late!--he died for want of air, I _know_ he did--just too late, you see.’

‘Too late!’ echoed the mate softly, nodding his head. ‘_That_ is the joke.’

‘He was lying here as you found him. I didn’t touch him before I came and told you. And, look here! Armand, what have I seen? It scared me.’

An infinite and sombre gentleness was in the look the mate bent to meet the trouble in the young face turned to him, but he only said, ‘That is most interésting. You are not to be pitied, you know, you are to be envied; a man does not often see these things, you know.’

‘But _what_ did I see? _What?_ I tell you it scared me.’

‘I _think_,’ said the mate slowly--‘I don’t know, of course,--but I think you have seen what very few people have seen. I think there is a time, you know, which comes between life and death. It is perhaps the twilight of the body you know, and the dawning of the soul,--it is that breathless space which these old crãfts of our bodies have to go through, you know, where there is no life, and not yet death,--the Doldrums of our individuãlities hanging in the wind.’ There was a long silence.

‘Thanks,’ said young Raymond at last, and the old sunny look seemed to creep back into his face through the haunting shadow of fear cast there by the thing he had seen.

‘Thanks, old fellow! The dawning of the soul! I like that.’

He had caught, like a child, at the one idea in the mate’s words which appealed to his narrow, sanguine optimism; and only _I_ saw the look of wearily gentle cynicism in the mate’s face, and heard his words as he turned away out of the cabin, ‘Yes? if there _is_ such a thing, you know.’

So I turned away too from the ‘valley of the shadow,’ but young Raymond knelt softly by the bunk and drew the handkerchief from the dead man’s face. He could bear to look on him now. The breeze stole in and stirred the hair on the two heads close together.

The words came to me at the door.

‘You’re all right now, old fellow, aren’t you? You’ve gone home.’ Then through a choke in the voice, ‘but, oh! my God! your luck was hard.’

THE CAPITULATION OF JEAN JACQUES

S.S. Wapiti. _May 16th, 188 ._

... To-day, fine again, gorgeous, but mighty hot. Left Suva at daybreak. Very one-horse place, with a lovely harbour. We got a lot of bananas and pines from a Fijian’s canoe as we went out--they ought to last till we get to Sydney....

A rum thing happened about five o’clock; some 150 miles sou’-west of Suva we sighted a small cutter with two men in her. They were making signals with a pair of breeches. The Captain stopped for them, and lowered a boat to see what was up. I got leave to go. The poor beggars were burnt up--I never saw men so completely frizzled; Frenchmen--one a very big man, one a very little--awfully plucky little chap, said he was ‘all ar-right,’ only wanted water, and was trying to make Suva from Tahiti! ’m! _In a ten-ton cutter!_ Double ’mm!!

He asked his course,--we gave it him, and a cask of water. I was the last to go over the side of the cutter, and he said to me: ‘Monsieur, you gentlemens, is it not?’ ‘Hope so,’ said I. ‘Going to Noumea, is it not?’ ‘Yes,’ said I. ‘Will it ’ave ze _extrêmement_ kindness to inform _ce cher Gouverneur_ zat “Jean Jacques” made to ’im ze compliments?’ With that he put his finger to his lips, and smiled sweetly upon me.

I don’t think any nigger could have given him points for brownness, but I liked the looks of him hugely.

As we were pulling back, the second officer said to me:

‘Scaped convicts, you bet, poor devils--no business of mine.’

I thought of that smile and forbore to wink....

(Extract from the Diary of a Passenger.)

‘_Sacré!_ these walls are high! lift me, Pierre.’

A very small lean man raised himself with the agility of a cat from his perch in the uplifted grasp of the giant below, and was through a window twelve feet from the ground, and crouching in the shadow of the white curtains without a sound stirring the silence of the night air.

Jean Jacques, Frenchman, man of genius, man of diminutive stature, man of sun-baked countenance, political convict, crouched in the shadow of the curtains and reflected. His reflections were the résumé of a carefully matured plan,--in fine, his reflections were these:

‘I, Jean Jacques, am at large; I have not been at large for some time; certainly, then, I wish to remain at large; I wish also my friend Pierre below to remain at large. _Que faire?_’ The reasoning unconsciously took the form of Ollendorf.

‘I am in the room of the four-year-old daughter of the Governor. How do I know this? Because I can see her little socks hanging over the end of the bed. Is not the four-year-old daughter of the Governor the apple of the Governor’s eye? Certainly, she is the apple of the eye of the Governor. Given, then, Jean Jacques, the apple of the eye of the Governor, and the desire to remain at large, what happens? P--s--s--t, it is apparent, any child can see what _must_ happen!’

Jean Jacques rose to the height of his five feet two, his lean, dark face glowing, and his crisp black hair curling with the greatness of his ideas, and advancing, drew aside the curtains of the little bed.

A small figure in a wisp of a nightgown stretched her limbs thereon in childish abandon, and turned her elf’s face up to her nocturnal visitor in the unconscious serenity of sleep. That Jean Jacques was a humane man was evidenced by the thoughtful way in which he bestowed dress, socks, slippers, dolls, and sun-bonnet within the capacious folds of his convict’s blouse; that he was a man of energy and action, by the manner in which he enveloped the child’s head in a soft shawl, and her little body in a discarded blanket, and, before she had time or breath to wake and scream, passed himself and her into the upstretched arms of Pierre, and regained the ground.

Then two dim figures, with a hostage to liberty, flitted through the deserted streets, and the night swallowed them up.

* * * * *

Noumea was looking its best; what that means one must have been there to know. Not yet astir with the day, the town and harbour were pretending an innocence of the twin spirits of despair and misery throbbing and raging within their boundaries. Out of the blue Pacific, also pretending a non-existent innocence, the sun was rising, and causing the ruddy copper tints of the island rocks to shine with a morning glory, the foam of the reefs to sparkle, and the green and red of leaf and flower to glint and glow with a tender and dewy freshness. The native market was already beginning to stir with the busy sellers of most conceivable, and some inconceivable, fruits and vegetables. Soon, above the everyday droning hum of the vending of merchandise, rose and swelled an ever-increasing buzz, like the tuning of an orchestra, in dozens of discordant quirks and twitters, till, hushing every sound, as does the uplifting of the conductor’s baton, there boomed forth once and twice over the stillness of the harbour the deep angry tone of the convict escape-gun. Then the buzz broke out again, but this time with the unanimity of knowledge and conviction. Not that a convict’s escape was any rare occurrence in a community boasting the possession of some nine thousand such, in a greater or less degree of captivity; the buzz had a deeper and a wider meaning; there were nine thousand convicts; there was but one Governor, and to that Governor was but one daughter. The ‘buzz,’ with an intelligence which did it credit, connected the two disappearances, it was even whispered--that is to say, it was bewailed and lamented at the top of the shrill native voice--that there was a third disappearance, of knives and ropes, and good food-stuff, to wit; this formed a tail to the comet in the opinion of the buzz. The buzz was immensely tickled and interested, it was even compelled to open its mouth--which was bad for it--when from the barracks issued patrols armed to the teeth, and from the quay departed snowily-breeched officials to the various ships lying at anchor. Grievously agape was the mouth of the buzz when from Government House marched the Governor, grey-headed and of soldierly bearing. The Governor was a widowed man, and had but one child; it amused the buzz and affected it to tears to see what he had suffered. In spite of his soldier’s pride, suffering had lined his face during the last hour, and the furrows deepened as he marched on with head up into the middle of the Place, and spoke to the buzz with wingéd words, that hushed it completely, distending its mouth and stimulating its stomach by the liberality of the promised reward.

There was a scattering and a hurrying, such as the official methodism of the town had not known since the French and English blue-jacket fight--a tussle of unquenchable memory and much friendly shedding of gore.

The hours rolled on, the sun blazed, the world forgot its siesta, while the shadow on the Governor’s face deepened with the waning of the day. He sat in the Place and waited--round him a staff of messengers coming and going, as fresh thoughts and possibilities thronged his anxious mind. Presently, as hope faded and grew wan, he said--

‘I can bear it no more here, I will go up and wait in the Cathedral--perchance God will send me inspiration,’ and he took his way thither....

Now, if one desires to see the most perfect picture in the world, one may look upon it--if one goes in the evening to the Cathedral at Noumea, and, standing at the eastern end, looks down the aisle to the west. There, framed in the grey walls, hangs a picture as of heaven--not, indeed, of canvas and paint, but of the sea and the air and the earth, as a man sees them when the glow of a setting sun is flooding and filling all with an unearthly glory of light. So the Governor, even in his great grief, saw the vision of heaven, and bowing his head upon his hands, sat gazing thereon--silent and alone. As the sun dipped he fell, worn out, into a sort of trance, rousing himself with a start as the rim of the fiery globe rested lightly on the horizon, seeming to poise itself before sinking to rest, while the grey shadows of the twilight crept out, as if eager before their time to whelm the last hopes of the day in a filmy maze. Out of the West, before the eyes of the Governor--far away in a reverie of pain--floated a white cloud, and dimly his mind became conscious of it. ‘Very odd cloud,’ he thought abstractedly, ‘that comes so suddenly and close;’ then he sprang up as though he had been shot. ‘Was it a cloud? No, assuredly it was not.’ It floated, it quivered, it waggled with the breeze, it was--bathos--it was a nightgown.

Suspended between sky and earth in the middle of that picture of heaven, fading already with the growing darkness, waved a child’s nightgown. Instinctively the answer to the whole problem of the day’s disappearance flashed before the Governor’s mind, and what he saw when he had hurried through the door under the folds of that flag of truce came as no surprise. He stood and gazed upwards. Down below in the streets of the town, in all the country round, the buzz was still actively engaged in pursuing the promised satisfaction of its stomach.

Now this was what the Governor saw on the roof of the Cathedral, thirty feet above him. Over the stone parapet a lean, dark face surmounting a bare brown arm and hand, from which hung the rope of the flag of truce; behind, what seemed to him a vast blue statue, astride the neck of which sat a little figure in a cotton blouse, dangling two bare legs, and patting the statue’s head with one hand, while with the other it blew kisses to the amazed and horrified Governor. His hand caught the butt of his revolver. Escaped convicts were wild beasts--and his child sat on the shoulders of one and played with what was left of its hair! The Governor’s aristocratic and sporting instincts were aroused.

Jean Jacques, leaning over the parapet, smiled genially, and his other hand, in which glistened the long blade of a knife, rested for a moment on the parapet. Only for a second, but the Governor let fall the pistol, and covered his face in his hands with a shrinking gesture of physical pain and fear.

‘_Bien! Monsieur_,’--Jean Jacques took the word in courteous tones, and with a caressing upward wave of the hand that no longer held the knife to the little white atom on his comrade’s shoulders. ‘_Bien!_ decidedly Monsieur and I shall understand one another. I have the honour of addressing Monsieur le Gouverneur? Good.’ Jean Jacques made a polite bow with what could be seen of him in response to the Governor’s sign of assent.

‘Monsieur, I will be brief. I am Jean Jacques. My friend Monsieur Pierre Legros--Monsieur le Gouverneur!’

He indicated the silent Pierre with a backward and airy wave.

‘My friend and I were bored--it was not your fault, Monsieur, do not be distressed--we were in want of distraction, we were also in want of being free--ah! Free----’

Jean Jacques looked up with a sigh that spoke volumes even to the Governor, pre-occupied as he was with dread anxiety.

‘_Nous voila!_ distracted and free--do you think we will again return to the other state?’ An accent of menace crept into his voice, but passed as quickly as it came.