Chapter I: Part 1

FROM THE FOUR WINDS

FROM THE FOUR
WINDS

BY
JOHN SINJOHN

LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN
PATERNOSTER SQUARE, 1897

[All rights reserved.]

CONTENTS

Page

The Running Amok of Synge Sahib 2

Dick Denver’s Idea 26

Ashes 56

‘Tally-ho’--Budmash 72

The Doldrums 100

The Capitulation of Jean Jacques 124

The Spirit of the Karroo 152

A Prairie Oyster 176

According to his Lights 206

The Demi-Gods 228

THE RUNNING AMOK OF SYNGE SAHIB

A yellow stain is a yellow stain,
Though the heart is white and the brain is white;
And a lonely man is a lonely man,
That’s reason eno’ for me.

--Doggerel Meditations of John Hay.

‘You lucky beggars. Oh! You lucky beggars!’

The speaker rose, and stood stretching a languid length against the railing of the verandah, his tall figure outlined in its white clothes against the overhanging foliage.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Clemenson, ‘you fellows don’t seem to have such a bad time out here; only wish I were going to stay, instead of toddling back to the beautiful and salubrious climate of the British Isles which you seem to covet so much; what d’you say, Taplin?’

He waved the end of his cigarette, glowing in the dark, towards another recumbent figure.

‘Um--um,’ the second globe-trotter lay back, looking curiously at the face of the man standing, and offered no further reply.

‘I can’t stay up to see you off,’ said the first speaker--‘I should go cracked. “You can ’ear their paddles chunkin!”’--he broke into the air of ‘Mandalay,’ and shook his hand with an almost menacing gesture towards the lagoon.

‘Well! _Saiandra_, you fellows, you’ve cheered us up amazingly; don’t forget to look in on me if you’re ever fools enough to come back to this forsaken paradise. Send me that new magazine if you can get it in Sydney, Clemenson. Good-night, Mrs Hay; I know you won’t think me rude for making tracks. Look after them, Hay; see you up in court to-morrow afternoon, I suppose? Got to go round the coolie quarters in the morning. _Bon soir, la compagnie._’ He shook hands with the globe-trotters, swung himself over the verandah rails, and walked uncertainly down the narrow path that threaded the grove of shadowy palms. For a minute nobody spoke; then Clemenson said with a sigh:

‘Poor old Synge, how down he is to-night. He _is_ a good chap. I wish he’d stayed to see us off. I hate saying good-bye before it’s necessary.’ He flicked off a mosquito, and bent down to adjust the bath-towel wrapped round his feet and ankles.

‘Barring mosquitoes and flies, this is heaven, I believe,’ he went on, lying back to look up at the sky gleaming with stars through the fern-like tracery of the flamboyante trees.

‘Pardon me, under certain circumstances it’s hell,’ said a fourth voice.

‘Hay, you’re an unsentimental brute, you’ve no poetry in your carcase; ask Taplin and Mrs Hay what they think. Wake up, Taplin, old chap; hanged if you’re not sleeping away the last chance of heaven you’ll ever get.’

‘Am I?’ grunted the latter. He was gazing intently from under the broad brim of his hat at Mrs Hay. Sitting forward in her chair, her face ashy white, she was looking with an intent, scared expression at her husband.

‘I must go, too, I’m afraid,’ she said, ‘the infant will want me; little wretch, she always cries on hot nights if she’s left long. Good-bye, Mr Clemenson; good-bye, Mr Taplin; _bon voyage_; come and see me in England when I come home next year.’

Her manner was nervous and hurried, and her face, still turned towards her husband, had not lost its scared expression.

‘You won’t be long, Jack, will you?’ With a wave of her hand she disappeared into the house. The men had all risen, their bath-towel armour, dislodged, lay in heaps on the verandah floor, and the increasing ‘Ping! Ping!’ announced a winged attack along the line.

‘I say, this _is_ a sell. I thought you and Mrs Hay were coming out to see us off; it was to have been an all-night sitting for the last, you know, and now here you are one by one deserting, and leaving us to face this abominable melancholy departure alone.’ Thus Clemenson, ruefully. Taplin lit a cigarette.

‘What’s wrong, Hay?’ he said, and pointed with it down the path.

‘Oh! It’s all right. Nothing, nothing; my wife’s tired, and the infant’s not well; that’s all.’

‘Nonsense, man, I saw Synge’s face, and I saw your wife’s, that’s enough; I say again, what’s wrong?’

Hay leant silently against the rail, a cloud gathering upon his face.

‘Upon my honour I believe there’s nothing wrong,’ he said slowly, as though weighing a thought within himself, ‘only my wife’s rather given to nervous fits, you know.’ This apologetically.

‘Ummm.... Well, if you won’t tell us you won’t--beg your pardon for asking; are we keeping you up?’

Again a silence, then Hay said to himself:

‘Oh! D----n it, it can’t be.’

He turned to the other two.

‘Look here, you fellows,’ he said, ‘you’re gentlemen, and you’re both of you fond of old Synge; what I say to you now, whatever you may think of it, goes no further?’

‘Certainly not,’ from Clemenson. Taplin shook his head; he was nothing if not brief.

‘Well! It’s a longish yarn, and I think I’ll just go in and speak to my wife before I begin.’

He turned and went into the house.

The two globe-trotters, left to themselves on the verandah, looked at each other without a word. Through the darkness and stillness of the tropical night the humming of mosquitoes was waning, and the silence was only broken by an occasional cry, or the barking of a dog from the coolie quarters. A table covered with drinks and packs of cards was pushed aside, and the dying lamp cast a flickering glow on the two recumbent figures. The fragrance of lime and pepper trees came floating gently in on the warm night air. Clemenson sat flicking restlessly and distractedly at the now sleepy mosquitoes with his handkerchief, and Taplin, smoking quietly, looked down the path where Synge had disappeared. Both were relieved when Hay reappeared from the house, and sinking into a long chair, took up the word.

‘I’m going to tell you chaps one of the most extraordinary yarns you’ll ever hear. I don’t attempt to explain it--I don’t know anything about heredity--thank heaven _I’m_ not a doctor--but I’ve been in the Strait Settlements, and I’ve seen things there that--Still I _don’t_ understand, and I don’t care to,--all I know is, the thing happened.’

He paused a minute to concoct himself a drink, and then went on:

‘You fellows have been here three weeks--jolly glad we’ve been to have you--and you’ve seen a lot of Synge. I suppose you’ve both noticed that somewhere or other about him there’s blood that isn’t white?’ Nods from his listeners.

‘Yes; there’s not much of it, it hardly shows, but there’s no doubt it’s there. What it is I’ve never asked him, of course. I believe he’s very sensitive about it,--why, I don’t know, I’m sure--I only mention this, you know, because it hits off my theory of the why of what I’m going to tell you; besides,’ he muttered half to himself, ‘one mustn’t talk to him about the Strait Settlements. Well,’ he lighted a cigar, and pulled deeply at it for some minutes before going on, ‘when I first came to the Fijis they sent me up as Commissioner to a small island about a hundred miles north of this, called Luma. Why in heaven’s name they wanted a Commissioner there, the Colonial Office only knows. I went up with the wife and the infant, and for six months we were the only white people on the island; then the measles came, and they sent up a doctor--for his sins, poor old Synge. That place was a paradise for beauty, but a regular hell for loneliness. We had Judy (whom you know we brought over from Singapore with us), and another coolie, for servants, and Synge abode in a large native hut about a quarter of a mile away. Barring a ship’s calling, perhaps once in three months, with mails, not a soul ever came near that blessed place; solitary confinement was a joke to it.’

He paused, and drew a long whiff from his cigar; a breeze growing amongst the palm leaves sighed thro’ the verandah and blew the smoke into a wreath around his head. Clemenson shivered; the spirit of desolation seemed to have got into the tone of Hay’s voice.

‘Those beastly measles! Synge worked like a horse; the unfortunate devils of natives did their level best to die, and it was the work of two average men and a boy to save the life of any one of them--stupid beggars--but he pulled a lot of ’em through somehow. Then my infant got ’em, only a year old, and had a roughish time; there again Synge did the trick, and then--hanged if, to put the finishing touch, he didn’t go and get ’em himself--and badly too. Measles in a climate like this aren’t any kind of a joke, and the poor old chap nearly turned up his toes: but he came round at last--mainly thanks to Judy’s cooking. They left him awfully weak and depressed; I used to go and sit with him a lot, and he was fearfully down, always talking about the misery of dying in a dog’s hole of a prison, as he called the place, and pining for home. He had a fox-terrier called Wasp, that he was awfully fond of, and when we weren’t with him he used to lie and talk to her by the hour about his people at home and a certain girl, and Cambridge, and the cursedness of things generally, and the poor little beggar would sit up at the end of the bed, catching flies, and blink her eyes at him, and let on to understand the whole caboodle. I often heard him yarning away when I was coming in; you can hear anything in those native houses. He had a sort of double one--one for a bedroom and one for a sitting-room. Well, he got better by degrees, but the stronger he got physically, the more gloomy and depressed he seemed to grow; it was like having a funeral in your coat-tail pocket to be with him; it didn’t cheer matters up for us, and to make things worse, the mail missed--through a hurricane or some misbegotten reason--and we didn’t see a ship, except at a distance, for nearly six months.’

Hay paused and shook himself, as if to free his mind from the recollection. Clemenson muttered, ‘Lively!’ Taplin bit his forefinger sympathetically.

‘Well,’ Hay went on rapidly, ‘one morning Synge came down to us at breakfast, and said in his sarcastic way, “Something’s gone wrong with the works of Providence; there’s actually a ship in.” So there was; she brought the mails; Synge had some letters; and she went away that afternoon. I remember Judy saying to me at tiffin, “Wasp hab had five chickens, in honour ob de ship. Synge Sahib dip dem in de big punch-bowl and call dem names--say he chrisey dem. Will de Sahib hab gravy wid de blue man?” Judy’s information is always dished up with some cookery--he meant blanc-mange--but good Lord! How infernally long-winded I am! In the afternoon I went over to see Synge; he’d gone asleep in his chair--it was beastly hot weather. His letters and papers were all strewn about the place, and a big Malay kriss that he’d been cutting papers with was lying beside him. Wasp, licking those five blessed puppies, was sitting at his feet. He looked so tired that I went away without waking him; perhaps if I had, things would have been different.’

Hay paused again, and turned with a shiver to look over his shoulder down the path, listening intently; the other two noticed for the first time that the butt of a revolver was sticking out of his coat pocket.

‘Well, my boys, I expect I’ve bored you so far, but I shan’t with the rest of my yarn.’ He turned to them again, speaking hurriedly and low.

‘That night I was sitting in the dining-room pretty late, writing up my Commissioner’s log. The wife had gone to bed; it was a mighty hot night, and the infant had been making herself felt. I was smoking, and not over and above busy--the Luma Commissioner isn’t given that way. There was a bright moon, and it was very still and peaceful, much the same as this. It happened I was just thinking what rummy noises one hears at night, when I heard quite the rummiest noise I’ve ever heard or ever want to; it was the cry as of a creature that had lost its soul and “couldn’t tell whe--ere to find it.” He broke into the old tune, which came on the top of the intense solemnity of the last few words with a weird effect that sent a shudder through his listeners.

‘By George! You fellows may just “lift up your hearts” that you’ve never heard a sound like that; it sent the blue creeps through _me_--I sat there wondering what the deuce it was, till, looking through the window, I saw in a bright patch of moonlight in front of the house a naked figure, dancing a kind of fantastic dance, and brandishing a streak of silver above its head; then I heard that awful cry again, and the figure darted forward and disappeared. I sat there rubbing my eyes, and wishing for a drink, when the door opened with a crash, and Judy almost fell into the room, his eyes starting out of his head with fright, and his teeth chattering. “Sahib! quick! quick! Synge Sahib kill Wasp, and kill de chickens; Synge Sahib run amok! Synge Sahib run amok!” and the beggar fell on the floor, and grovelled underneath the table. “What the devil!” I began--then suddenly came that cry again, quite close this time. I dashed out of the room, and made down the landing for my wife’s room. My God! What do you think I saw?’

In his intensity he leaned forward, staring straight at the opposite wall, with his hand gripping the butt of the pistol, and in his eyes they could almost read the words that followed.

‘Over the child’s cot stood that naked figure, with that devilish streak in its hand. My wife, in her nightdress, stood shrieking and clutching at the figure’s arm with both hands. I reeled back, then I picked up the first thing that came handy, a knob of sorts, or a boot-jack--I don’t know--and threw it with all my force. Praise the Lord! I hit it; it turned, and by all the great and awful powers, it was Synge--Synge transfigured--a Malay,--you chaps make no mistake--a Malay, if ever there was one, in every line of his face and figure. Barring a towel wound round him, he was stark naked, and his flesh was yellow, not white; and whether my eyes went wrong or not I don’t know, but his hair seemed to hang down his naked back, instead of being cropped short, as it always is. His eyes were blazing and glaring with a sort of green light like a wild cat’s. That devilish silver streak was his Malay kriss, and he brandished it like one possessed. I’ve seen Malays run amok twice--once in Bangkok, and once in Sumatra--and if Synge wasn’t at that moment a Malay, and a Malay amok, I’m a German Jew. He didn’t look mad, only mad murderous. But there wasn’t much time for psychological speculation, I can tell you; I just had that one look from him, and then he came for me. It flashed through me, there was only one chance, and that was tracks away from the house. I took that chance, and went through the window--which I concluded afterwards must have been shut--and made those tracks. There was a straight path from the house through the native village, leading out beyond on to a long stretch of hard white sand. We went through the village--what a funk the natives were in! They scattered on each side for us--the cry had drawn them, as it had me. I remember thinking--just shows how little the mind is in hand--how amusing it must have been for them to see their revered Commissioner hunted by their respected doctor in a state of nature, and wondering if they had humour enough to appreciate the situation; we were the only white men in the island, you know. I used to be a bit of a sprinter at school, and in the ordinary course of things could give Synge about 30 yards in the 100, but that night I could only just keep away, if it can be called keeping away from a man whose breath you can feel on your neck, and whose hand you can see coming over your shoulder. It wasn’t the sort of seclusion I could have wished for. Twice he grabbed at me and missed, and then we got on to the sand, and, for some reason or other, I drew away a yard or two--perhaps my wind was better than his, though for that matter I don’t believe he had a wind, or legs either, that night.’ Hay spoke in a meditative voice that was half comic.

‘But altogether,’ he went on, ‘it was a rum business. Well, I knew that what I had to do was to hold on ahead till we got to a creek about 100 yards wide that ran from the lagoon, inland. If I could get there first I was safe; I was a good swimmer, and in those days old Synge couldn’t swim more than a few strokes. Still, if murder-madness could make a man run half as fast again, it could probably make him swim. However, it was the only chance. That was a ghastly run, and a ghostly one, too. The moon was full, and the sea gleamed in silver and black ridges, and that blessed sand shone in the bright moonlight like burnished plate, and we two white figures fled over it like disembodied spirits, with the whole of Nature--sea, sky, and land--looking on and mocking at what was meant to be as grim a tragedy as ever came about. And yet all the time, you know, I couldn’t help seeing the comic side--the only two white men on the island--sworn pals, you beggars! sworn pals--and the one chasing the other for dear life, and no mortal reason--it appealed to me very much, that is, as much as the discomfort of the blamed thing would allow. All things come to an end, and so did that run. I must have made record time, but it seemed like a couple of hours. I never got more than about two yards away--it varied from that to about two inches--and I can tell you I was all out at the end of that half mile, when we came to the creek. There wasn’t time or space to dive, and I went in plum bang--anyhow. I could see or feel the whirr of the kriss in the air as he came after me. When I came up and struck out, he was a yard or so behind, swimming desperately for me, with the kriss still in his hand. “Good Lord!” I thought, “it’s all over now; the beggar can swim, and I’m about done.” Quick as lightning I turned on my back and kicked out with all my might, and, as luck would have it, I caught him on the head with my foot, and down he went. I twisted round and drew myself out on to the bank--phew! I _was_ done. In a minute or so he came to the surface panting and gasping, and turned himself round and round, looking for me, with that wolfish glare still in his eyes, and the kriss still grasped firm. When he saw me, I sang out from the bank, “Drop it, old man, the game’s up.” He gave that hideous cry again, and tried to swim ashore, but in a stroke or two he threw up his hands and went down. I lay still, trying to get my wind, and watching for him to come up again. In a minute he did, almost black in the face, but still with that murderous light in his eyes and the kriss in his hand. I called out--“Synge, dear old chap, easy on, that’ll do,” but just as I sang out he went down the third time, and this time he stayed there.’

Hay stopped short with a shiver. The dawn was breaking in a long grey streak over the distant reef, and with it came a wave of chill air. The faces of all three men looked almost haggard in the growing light, and Taplin said, ‘Go on, man,’ in a voice that sounded harsh and strange.

‘There was only one thing to be done,’ continued Hay, slowly, ‘and I can tell you I didn’t care about doing it one little bit. Diving for a madman with a kriss in his hand in twelve feet of water, even if he _has_ gone down three times, is no sort of a pastime. Well, I found him at the second go, quite motionless at the bottom, and pulled him up ashore. He was unconscious all right, but I had the devil’s own trouble to get that silver streak out of his paw. Then I sat on my haunches, and rubbed him, and prayed the gods to send me help. Presently they did, in the shape of my wife and Judy, on horseback, with brandy and pistols. Judy wouldn’t come anywhere near, though he could see him lying like a log; but my wife, who, like most women where there’s illness, is an angel, helped me to get him on to a horse. Poor old chap, he was mighty limp and light, and the madness had clean gone out of him; his skin was white again, and his hair shorn--I suppose I must have been a bit mixed there. We held him on, and got him back somehow, and gave him brandy, and gradually he came back to life; but he had brain fever and was delirious for days. Then I got to know how fearfully the loneliness had weighed on him, and bitten into his marrow. At last he came round, and got all right again by degrees. He’s never had the faintest idea of what happened that night; the fever seemed to have wiped it clean out of his memory, and of course we’ve never told him. We got shifted here soon afterwards, and this place is chalks better than Luma, if it isn’t exactly the vortex of society. The saddest thing, as it turned out, over that business, was poor little Wasp. After we got back with him I went over to his quarters to fetch away his things, and there, lying on his bed, was that poor little beggar and four of the pups dead as door-nails, with kriss stabs right through them. The fifth pup was alive and whining piteously; we took her home and dragged her up somehow, and here she is.’

Hay touched a sleepy fox-terrier with his foot.

‘We had to tell Synge a yarn about Wasp’s death. I’ve forgotten how it went now, but I remember it was very artistic and untrue, and the whitest sort of a lie. Well, I’m tired of yarning, and that’s the whole show, and now perhaps you understand why my wife looked so queer to-night, and why’--he broke off, and tapped the butt end of the revolver. There was a long silence, which Clemenson broke with:

‘You don’t mean to say that you can go on living here with the possibility of that happening again?’

‘Oh! This is different; Luma was specially designed by a beneficent Providence for lone madness. Personally I don’t admit the possibility--wouldn’t do, you know,’ he shuddered,--‘and forewarned is forearmed; besides, these things are with the Fates, and if it _should_ come about, it’s better with _us_ than with people who don’t know and wouldn’t understand, and--we’re fond of Synge.’

Clemenson lay back and whistled softly, and the three sat on in silence and watched the grey turn to red, and the glow steal from over the lagoon, flecking the green growing things with light, and chasing the sentinel stars back into their boxes; and they listened to the murmurs of the wakening island world, till the splash of oars in the narrow winding river hard by warned the globe-trotters that the time for departure was come.

‘Time’s up,’ said Hay, ‘there’s Missa Tanner and his boat,’ and he pointed through the red clusters of the flamboyante trees to the tall figure of a Fijian coming up the bank of the stream towards the house. Taplin rose and stretched himself, then he walked over to Hay and shook him hard by the hand.

‘You’re a good chap,’ he said, ‘a thundering good chap; and your wife’s a brick--tell her so.’

‘Thanks,’ said Hay.

Half an hour later, the boat, held in the stream by the oars of the convict crew, waited, while from the stern-sheets the two globe-trotters said good-bye to their host.

‘Remember, you fellows, nobody’s ever heard a word of that yarn--you won’t forget that?’

‘All right, old chap,’ said Clemenson; ‘but I say, just one thing: how do you account for it? Wasn’t it temporary insanity, pure and simple?’

‘Certainly not; that I’ll take my solemn Dick--but I don’t account for it, and I don’t try to; all I know is, as Judy says: “Synge Sahib run amok.”’

* * * * *

The boat drifted away down the stream to join the steamer lying out beyond the line of white reef. The globe-trotters lay back in the stern silently, and from across the lagoon as they watched, the group of houses grew smaller and smaller through the palm-groves, and the sugar plantations, beginning to teem with working life and labour, faded into a blurr.

Presently Clemenson, still looking backward, said, with a sigh, ‘By gum!’

Taplin nodded.

DICK DENVER’S IDEA

‘A woman, a dog, and a walnut tree,
The more you beat ’em the better they be.’

This was always a good lie; there is such an amount of truth in it.

SCENE I

‘You are quite mistaken, I didn’t speak to him.’

‘That’s a lie! I saw you myself,--and I tell you, if you can’t behave yourself better than to go talking to a blackguard adventurer like that, you stay down here till this d----d voyage is over.’

The brutal voice, raised in anger, subsided into a sort of growl; the first, a woman’s, was silent.

‘Why don’t you answer? Curse it, d’you think it’s your “duty,”’ with a sneer, ‘to stand there like a mummy? By God, a mummy’s a fool to you!’ The man’s voice rose again in a harsh crescendo.

Dick Denver, leaning against the ship’s side, involuntarily took his cigar from his lips, and ground his teeth.

‘I judge domestic felicity has its shady side,’ he muttered, with a soul-satisfying drawl; ‘thank the Almighty for His infinite mercies!’--presumably referring to his own unencumbered condition.

‘Poor little woman, she looked very sweet at dinner. Gosh! _I_ was the blackguard adventurer!’ He laughed softly, and shrugged his shoulders.

‘What an everlasting brute the fellow is; that unfortunate woman must have considerable of a bad time. Ah! Well,--no affair of yours, Dick, my son.’

He turned, and from over the ship’s side watched the rings of smoke curling away from his cigar. A rustle as of silken garments caught his ear, and over his shoulder he saw a woman’s figure coming from the hatchway. Standing back in shadow, he watched her move listlessly towards a long deck chair, half-way between him and the hatch. He could catch a long-drawn sigh, half a sob, and see the shiver of the slight form as she sank into it. A whisper came floating along the deck to where he stood. ‘God! How I hate him! How I hate him! How long? How long?’

Dick Denver, vagabond, adventurer, gambler--what you will--was a man with a soft heart, and a curious hardened inability to witness distress without a desire to offer his help, which, owing to his manner of life, was generally found to be worse than useless. Watching her as she lay with profile half-turned from him, her chin resting dejectedly in her hand, the fair hair clustering low on her white forehead, and a pitiful droop in the corner of the little mouth,--he was conscious of a desire, gradually concentrating in the toe of his boot, to kick the originator of so much unhappiness. As he leant forward for a better look, a puff of wind caught the brim of his large felt hat, and blew it along the deck to the chair where she was sitting. Glad of the excuse, he moved towards her. She turned her head, and a gleam from the moon, half-hidden in the hurrying clouds, lit up a sweet pale face with deep grey eyes. A word of apology, and he bent forward to pick up his hat, catching a glimpse, as he did so, of a tear on her cheek. A great compassion smote his vagabond heart. He straightened himself and said:

‘Aren’t you cold, sitting up here so late?’

A soft musical voice was one of Mr Denver’s chief accomplishments; it was useful at poker, and was found attractive even by victims.

‘Oh! no, thank you; see, I have this shawl,’ pointing to a flimsy concoction of silk and lace that hung over the arm of the chair in a sufficiently useless way. Without a word he took it up, and with the deftest fingers--was not Mr Denver a dealer of the first water?--wrapped it round the shoulders and slender throat. A little smile, half surprise, half thanks, was his reward.

‘The dew’s very heavy in these seas. Guess my cigar’ll bother you?’

‘Oh, no, not in the least, thank you. Don’t throw it away,’ as Dick made a motion in that direction. Thankfully retaining it, he stretched his length on the next chair, and emitted silent but contented puffs.

An attractive length, sinewy but slight; under the shady hat a drawn, clean-cut, clean-shaven face, bronzed from original fairness to a deep tan; lazily veiled grey eyes, rather deep-set, and a firm mouth--all these things Dick turned to his companion, and spake in his most musical and least nasal voice. She listened with pleasure, but with an apparent and growing uneasiness, and with ear strained to catch the least sound of an approach from the cabin; and, in spite of the nonchalance of his voice and attitude, Mr Denver was no less on the strain than she; ‘for,’ thought he, ‘the powers forbid that I cause her to have more abuse from my friend below.’

The moon had burst through the clouds and was flooding the deck with silver light, and Dick improved the shining hour. The ship was bound for the West Indies; he discoursed of the islands and his own experiences there, and she listened, with an evident interest in spite of her fears. Never yet was woman (or man either, for the matter of that) uninterested when Dick Denver talked, which he did but seldom; his voice, as he might have phrased it himself, was ‘kind of seductive.’ Presently, however, he rose, and hat in hand, said:

‘You’ll pardon me, but I guess you’d better go down; your shawl’s quite wet.’

She rose with a little shiver, held out her hand without a word, and turning, went down the hatchway with the same listless, dejected step as before. Dick watched her go, pushed his hat high up on his head, and whistled softly and expressively; then he stooped suddenly, raising himself again with a handkerchief in his hand, the corners of which he examined with unscrupulous care till he read a name. Holding it softly in his hand, he pitched away the end of his cigar. Presently he began whistling again. Nobody ever heard Mr Denver whistle, except in moments of profound thought; evidently he was cogitating deeply. After a minute or two he took a pack of cards out of his pocket, and caressing them with his unoccupied hand, raised his head and voice, and spake to the moon with a meditative drawl:

‘’Pears I can feel kind of a sorrow for the animal!’ He then put the handkerchief in his breast-pocket and idled down the hatch. Dick Denver was always solitary in his habits, and made a point of a cabin to himself, otherwise his conduct that night with a small lace pocket-handkerchief might have been considered somewhat out of keeping with the character of a professional black sheep. It is impossible to disguise the fact that Mr Denver, in spite of his notorious insouciance, was an impressionable man.

SCENE II

The ship’s saloon, fitfully lighted by the swinging lamp with a green shade, furnished a picturesque framing for the two figures it contained. Mr Dick Denver, in loose garments of spotless white, sat leaning carelessly back in one chair, with his legs resting on another; a cigar in his mouth, his hands, with the cards in them, from habit well held up, and the usual indifferent look upon his face. A great contrast was the man sitting on the other side of the long, narrow saloon table. Major Massinger, late of Her Majesty’s Service, a large, bull-necked man with eyes like a cod fish, in a white mess jacket and scarlet cummerbund, was sitting forward, burying a somewhat red face in a beaker of brandy and soda. A box of cigars and picquet markers testified to a long evening’s play, the last indeed of a series. To those who knew him, the gallant Major’s boisterous joviality would have betokened a winning night. His luck was ‘in,’ even to and beyond Dick’s bottom dollar, but this beyondness, which might have been somewhat disquieting to his opponent, was not to be gathered from Dick’s impassive face.

‘Eleven o’clock--shall we conclude?’ said the latter.

‘Not a bit of it, unless you’re afraid of the luck?’

Dick answered by an amused look and a shrug of his shoulders, but he said:

‘Won’t you disturb your wife if you stay here much longer?’

‘D----n my wife; you’ve evidently never been spliced, or you wouldn’t be so beastly particular.’

Massinger turned as he said this to open another bottle of soda, and missed the ugly look in Dick’s half-shut eyes.

‘All serene, then,’ said the latter--‘guess I owe you twelve hundred and fifty dollars; well, now, I’ll play you double or quits, the best of three games.’

‘What’s that in pounds? Two fifty, isn’t it? Very good! Go ahead, my sportsman; double or quits, five hundred or nothing.’

Dick shuffled the cards and cut them; a breeze stole in at the open skylight, and sighed fitfully through the saloon, and as it died away, his sharp ears caught the ‘frou frou’ of a silk dress descending the hatch.

‘One moment,’ he said--‘reckon I’ll just shut that door; there’s kind of a hurricane playing around here;’ and, rising quickly, he moved to the saloon door and stood there a moment, hat in hand, as a slender white figure passed down the stairs. Her hand rested a moment in his as she glided by, and Mr Denver shut the door and returned to his seat. Massinger, manufacturing his fourth drink, saw nothing of this by-play, and the game was resumed. But the tide had turned, and Massinger was ‘rubiconed’ twice running.

‘As you was before you was! Look here, Denver, can’t end up like this, you know--it’s too infernal slow;’ his voice was getting thick and his hand shook somewhat.

‘Mussh’t see the luck through, y’know, somehow’n other--no craning.’

Dick, a covert sneer on his face, was far too considerate to disappoint him, and once again the cards were shuffled and dealt; the Major more boisterous, Dick more impassive than ever. With the end of the partie came the transference of £200 in notes from Massinger’s pocket-book to Mr Denver’s. Undaunted, the Major slapped the latter on the back, declaring him thickly to be a jolly good sportsman.

‘Have my revenge to-morrow night,--too tight now,’ said he.

‘Yes,’ assented Dick, cheerfully, ‘but I guess we get to St Martin to-morrow, and I leave the ship.’

‘Oh, hang it! Never mind; I suppose we stay there a bit, eh?’

‘Two days,’ said Dick.

‘All right! I’ll play you on shore. Is there any solitary thing to see in the d----d hole? My wife always wants to see everything, confound her!’

Mr Denver apparently paid no heed to this remark; he was sitting tilted back in his chair, his hat slouched over his brows, and only the slight twitching of the hand holding the pocket-book, and a curious smouldering fire in his half-closed eyes, showed that a struggle was going on in his mind. Presently, with a sudden jerk, he returned to a right-angled position, and stared straight at Massinger. The man looked particularly like a cod-fish at that moment, and breathed heavily. Dick shivered slightly and disgustedly. Through the open skylight above the wind could be heard sighing in the sails, ‘God! How I hate him! How long? How long?’ That was the refrain it took. A cold look of purpose and resolution settled in Dick’s eyes--the crystallisation of a vague idea.

‘Why, certainly no, not the smallest use! ’Pears to me as if there might be a chance,’ he muttered unintelligibly to himself; and fingering the pocket-book in his hand, he looked at the man opposite with a calculating eye.

‘What’s the matter with you? You’re drunker than I am,’ said the latter. ‘I ask you simply if there’s anything to see in the island, and, begad, you’re jibbering like a boiled owl.’ He stooped unsteadily to reach his glass under the table.

Mr Denver’s look was that of one who measures the distance for a spring.

‘Malūa! Malūa!’ (which is by interpretation ‘Go easy’). ‘I guess it can be done,’ he drawled softly to himself. ‘Anything to see? No--o. Stop, though,’--to the intelligent eye, as he drew himself together in his chair, the spring was very near now--‘I guess I’m wrong all the time, there _is_ something almighty curious to see, for those who have the sand.’

‘What’s that?’

‘We--ell, it mightn’t interest _you_, but it’s a place they call “La boîte du diable”--kind of a cavern in the side of a hill. Considerable few people have been to see it, and none stayed very long. Reckon _you_ won’t care about it.’

An indescribable sneer was in Mr Denver’s voice, and the Major, though far gone, was not _too_ far gone to seize upon it as an insult.

‘You mean, I wouldn’t dare,’ he said, huskily. ‘Confound you, sir, d’you think I’ve not got as much pluck as you?’

‘Guess not,’ said Dick, drily.

‘D----n you, sir!’ said Massinger, furiously; ‘I’ll bet you that £200 I’ve just paid you, I go to that hole, whatever it is, and stay there as long or longer than you do.’

For answer, Mr Denver rose slowly.

‘Put it in writing,’ he said, and, producing pen and paper out of his pocket, he reached down the saloon ink-bottle, and pushed them over to Massinger. The latter, quite sobered, stared a minute at his nonchalant companion, then sat down, and without saying a word penned the following lines in a shaky hand:

‘“I bet Mr Dick Denver the sum of £200 that I visit with him a condemned hole called ‘La boîte du diable,’ and stay there as long or longer than he does.”

‘Will that do?’

‘Play or pay,’ added Mr Denver, calmly.

‘“Play or pay.”

‘“Albert Massinger, October 9th, 188-”--he signed his name, and threw it across to Dick, who signed his own, and pocketed the document.

‘Guess I’ll call for you after dinner at your hotel,’ he said; ‘might be happier with pistols, it’s kind of a skeery place. Good-night,’ he nodded, and without another word, lounged up on to the silent deck, the suspicion of an unholy smile flickering on his impassive features.

SCENE III

The night was dark, and the two figures taking a winding way up the narrow hillside path had much ado to keep from going astray. The leader, ploughing along, head down, with eyes diligently on the move to save his precious shins, was betrayed by a running accompaniment of his favourite language. He was volubly cursing his folly in having made ‘such a d----d silly bet,’ and Mr Denver for having inveigled him into a fool’s errand. The latter, sauntering along a few steps behind, apparently quite oblivious of his companion, was humming a favourite little tune, and turning from time to time to look down on the twinkling lights of the little town scattered here and there amid the tall stems of the palms outlined against the further sky. The faint murmur of the surf breaking on the reef seemed to chime in with his mood better than the tune, for he stopped humming, and bent forward to listen. Massinger had exhausted his vocabulary for the present, and was silent also; only the fitful chirping of a cicala and the occasional bark of a dog from below broke the stillness of the tropical night. The moon was just rising over the sea, throwing a long silvery line of light, which gradually spread, as if eager to embrace the land, awaiting it in silent expectancy. The solemnity and stillness of the scene, however, only served to increase the Major’s irritation.

‘Come on,’ he said, impatiently; ‘don’t stand moonstruck there; let’s get this infernal foolishness over as soon as possible. How much further have we got to go up this beastly path? If it’s far I’d sooner pay £500 than go on.’

‘We’re almost there,’ said Dick, and passing his companion, he swung along up the track. In about ten minutes he came to a halt, and said in his soft drawling voice, ‘We turn down here, and in a minute or so we’ll be right there. Then look to your shooting-iron, and harden your heart, and in we go. Malūa, my son,’ he added to himself, ‘it’s no part of the game to “show” a while yet--mustn’t skeer the gentleman;’ he chuckled grimly and audibly.

‘What the devil’s wrong with the infernal place, and why do we want pistols?’ said Massinger, testily; but even as he spoke he drew a revolver from his side pocket. For all answer, Mr Denver led on down a zig-zag path to the left, until brought up sharp by the face of a rocky cliff, grown over with bushes and creepers. After standing there a minute to see that his companion had followed him, he stooped suddenly, raising with his hand a huge, hanging creeper, and dived as it were into the face of the rock. Astonished at his sudden disappearance, Massinger stood a minute before the rock irresolute, but a mocking voice, with that peculiar high drawl, came from within.

‘Reckon you’re going back, Major; is that so?’

With a muttered oath, Massinger raised the creeper, and, imitating his companion, crawled through a hidden opening in the rock, till he found himself standing upright beside Dick in an open space. When his eyes had become somewhat accustomed to the gloom, he saw that they were in a natural vault or chamber, formed in the rock of the hillside, nearly square, and about forty feet from side to side. In the centre was a huge jagged hole of cavernous depth, and above it, a large cleft in the rock ceiling of the vault, letting in a glimpse of the starry heavens. The sides of the walls, of a reddish-grey stone, were damp and clammy, and the air hot and steamy. In the far corner of the cavern, opposite the entrance, was a natural stone seat. When by degrees and uncertain glances he had taken in his surroundings, Massinger looked round for his companion. Mr Denver was seated in a _degagé_ attitude on a stone, with his back to the entrance, carefully selecting a weed from his cigar-case. This he lighted, and got well under weigh, before he said, with the drawl that had become hateful to the other:

‘Nice place, a’nt it, Major? Take a seat; there’s a tolerable spry pew opposite.’

He waved with his cigar to the stone seat. Massinger, though secretly far from comfortable, was not to be outdone in coolness by this Yankee blackguard. Taking a cigarette, he lit it from the other’s cigar, and strolled, with a fine assumption of indifference, to the seat indicated. A long silence followed; the moon was gradually creeping up in the sky, and long ghostly shadows were cast on the floor and walls of the ‘Devil’s Box.’ Massinger’s feelings during this night had been far from enviable; starting after a good dinner, he had looked upon the affair as an amusing freak by which he would save himself the payment of £200. The steep, difficult ascent had thoroughly disillusioned him, and the eerie look of the cavern was fast completing his discomfiture. He was conscious, too, of a vague feeling of distrust as to his companion’s conduct. Why had he brought him to this unearthly hole,--where apparently there was nothing to prevent their staying till Doomsday to decide this fool of a bet. There was something sinister about the entertainment.

As if reading the thoughts that were pressing on his companion’s brain, Mr Denver broke the silence,--

‘Guess you’re feeling up a considerable high tree, Major; this is going to be an interesting occasion for you.’ There was a look as of a cat playing with a mouse about the speaker, and Massinger was not slow to read a menace into the suave tones of the high-pitched voice.

‘What in God’s name is the meanin’ of this foolery?’ he broke out, harshly; ‘why have you brought me here? There’s something behind all this d----d skittlin’, and I’ll trouble you to tell me what it is.’ He rose as he spoke, and took a step with clenched hands towards Dick. The latter did not move.

‘I should mind that little orifice if I were you,’ he said, pointing to the yawning chasm that separated them in the centre, and from the murky depths of which ascended a faintly hissing, bubbling sound as of boiling water. Massinger, who in his excitement had advanced almost to its edge, started back again with an alacrity that showed the unstrung state of his nerves. When he had again dropped into his seat, and was playing nervously with the butt of the revolver in his coat pocket, Mr Denver took up the word.

‘Major,’ he said, ‘I’m going to have some talk with you, and you’ll pardon me if I deliver a little exordi_um_’--he pronounced it with an ominous emphasis on the ‘um.’ ‘I reckon the moon won’t be full up for another half hour, so we’ve considerable time.’

‘What’s the moon got to do with it, and what the devil is it you want? Fire away and come to the point,’ said Massinger, twisting the ends of his moustache, and endeavouring to conceal his now genuine alarm under a boisterous bluffness. Mr Denver smiled a quaint little smile, as though his spirits were rising.

‘Things will begin to move right along about the time the moon’s overhead,’ he said, consulting his watch. ‘Now, see here, Major, I don’t want to bore you, but I’ve got to say you’re kind of the worst specimen of a man I’ve had the luck to meet’--a smothered curse from Massinger. ‘Keep cool, Major; you’ll want all your language before I’m through; guess I’ve brought you here,--at your own request, you know,’--he smiled,--‘just to explain to you a little idea of mine, which I reckon you’ll appreciate.’ Mr Denver’s resemblance to a cat at this moment was not reassuring to the mouse. For a moment he paused, changing his attitude, and leaning back against the wall with his hands in his pockets and his legs crossed. Massinger had taken out his revolver, and fingered it nervously.

‘Nice little iron,’ said Mr Denver, approvingly; ‘you’re a good shot, too, Major, I know.’

‘Pretty fair,’ said the latter, grimly.

‘So much the better. We--ell now, I’ve been thinking a good deal ’bout you since I’ve had the honour of making your acquaintance, and--now don’t be wild, Major--you really are--as you Britishers say--a great cad.’

A furious oath and a sudden movement forward from Massinger was as suddenly checked by the appearance of a little shining tube held straight at his head, and the imperturbable drawl resumed,--

‘Guess I see you, and go one better; presently, my dear sir, you’ll have _your_ chance, but just now I must beg you to sit still and hear my little exordi_um_.’ A pause.

‘Four years ago you married the present Mrs Massinger.’

‘You blackguard, how dare you mention my wife’s name?’

For the first time Dick Denver’s face betrayed emotion; his mouth twitched, and a sullen fire burned slowly up into his deep-set eyes, but his voice was none the less impassive as he continued:

‘I guess I’ve as much show; I’m a good bit fitter to talk of your wife than you are, you--you hound.’ The words in the slow drawl were maddening, and this time it was Massinger’s revolver that was levelled, but Mr Denver sat idly as ever, looking full at his companion, and presently the latter dropped his arm.

‘Malūa, Major, Malūa! even _you_ won’t commit murder, you see.’--A longer hiss from the inky depth in the centre, and a thin jet of water spurted up a foot or two above the level of the ground. Mr Denver took out his watch and looked at the opening above.

‘The show’s beginning,’ he said. Massinger was wiping some drops of water off his trousers.

‘I say,’ he said excitedly, ‘that water was boilin’; will it come any higher?’

‘Don’t alarm yourself, Major, the moon’ll be up before the next demonstration.’

‘What in the fiend’s name has the moon got to do with it? If you think I’m goin’ to stay here to be boiled for you or any other madman, I’m not takin’ any, I can tell you.’

‘No? Well, I guess you’re _going_ to stay here some, while I finish what I’ve got to say.--Four years ago you married the present Mrs Massinger; and I guess you’ve led her the life of a dog.’

‘You’re a liar! a d----d liar! I’ve never ill-used her.’

‘You’ve never struck or kicked her, you mean, but by God, in every other way you’ve been a brute to her, and I reckon you’ve spoilt her life.’

He held the other with his look, and went on rapidly.

‘I know you, Major; you’re a mean, sullen, sordid cur, not fit to live with any woman, much less with _her_. We--ell! so--o I guess I’ve fixed up a little idea which I’m going to explain to you right along.’ Another low, soft hiss from the bottomless pit. The rays from the moon were now striking almost vertically into the cavern, on Massinger sitting motionless in an angry but half-cowed amazement, on Mr Denver again consulting his watch. He returned it to his pocket and said:

‘In ten minutes from that first jet, there’ll be a geyser, and if we’re here I calculate we’ll be boiled and carried down that hole,--I know its little ways. There’s just upon six minutes left, but in three the moon’ll be right above, and there’ll be considerable light in the shooting gallery.’

Massinger opened his mouth, but Mr Denver went on sharply and distinctly:

‘You see, Major, my idea’s just this, _one_ of us has got to stay right here. Now its likely you’ll prefer being shot to being boiled; when I say the words “one, two, _three_,” we shall both of us fire, and if you pass out over my body you are to be congratul_at_ed. I shall shoot you if I can, because’--he paused, then very slowly, ‘I guess Mrs Massinger has no kind of use for you. It’s a fair and square business, Major, and you bet’--he pointed with his pistol to the bubbling, hissing chasm--‘the devil’ll take the hind-most.’

Dick Denver smiled grimly as he finished his exordium--his composure was devilish; he rose, looked once up at the opening above, through which the moon was now visible directly overhead, and then stood immovable, watching his companion. The full horror of his position had at last dawned on Massinger; he was on his feet now, leaning irresolutely against the wall, with staring eyes fixed alternately upon the awful chasm between them and his opponent’s set face.

‘My God!’ he said; ‘you must be mad,--for heaven’s sake, let’s end this fooling.’ But his ashen face showed that he knew it was no fooling, but a grim reality.

‘Time’s up. I shall say “one, two, _three_”; at three we fire.’

The words acted like a cold douche on Massinger; he shivered all over, then braced himself against the rock and set his teeth.

‘D----n you,’ he muttered, ‘I’ll pass out over your body yet.’ Turning to bay with a wolfish glare in his eyes, he lifted his pistol.