第 19 页

He lugged from his pocket a small tin of salmon, and opening it with his knife gave me half on a slab of heavy corn bread. I ate it greedily. I only put one other question then.

"If," said I, " you picked up my trail, why could not they?"

"Because I destroyed the sign of the pair of us. I'm not altogether a fool, sonny, and if woodcraft 'ud pull us through, our insurance might be worth purchase. But it won't. You'd better sleep if you can. You'll want your strength."

IV

I must, through sheer weariness, have slept throughout the greater part of that day, because when I awoke the sun had already dived from sight. It was twilight then, and since a Louisi ana summer day has but a short gloaming, I knew that soon it would be night. But it was not this that had roused me: it was a reek of smoke biting in my chest. I stood up and looked about me.

Good God! the reeds had been fired along a line five miles in length. They were as dry as tinder, and a wind had sprung up which was driving the flames towards me. The murderer stood at my elbow watching them moodily.

"We must run," I cried.

"Where to? That would be playing their game. Don't you see they want the fire to act as beater? They expect it to drive us to the creek down yonder, and they've got guns posted every ten yards to pot us as we come up. If you're eager for the battue, you go. I stay here."

To be burnt to death?"

"Not if I can help it. But I tell you it's an outside chance. We must take to the water. Come."

He led the way to one of the black pools of the swamp, and I followed. The flames had crept so near that we could hear the crackle of the reedgrass as it caught; and overhead the wind was carrying glowing cinders which lit new fires as they fell. We stepped over the edge, sinking deeply in nauseous slime. Sulphurous gases rushed up from below in glistening bubbles which almost suffocated us. An eel squirmed away from under my foot.

The stinging smoke by this time well-nigh blinded us, but ever and anon canals of clear air drifted through it, and adown these we could see the tawny billows of flame standing out crisply against the night. A heat wave swept in front of them, scorching us like the breath of a furnace.

We cowered in the stinking yellow water, coughing and choking, every minute finding it more difficult to breathe. The sedges by the side of our pool caught fire and shot out at us tongues of greedy flames. We had to drop our heads beneath the surface to avoid them.

Then, as though our miseries were not suffi cient, another thing happened. The pool, it seemed, had a more regular tenant than chance lodgers like ourselves. On our entrance he had been lying en perdu amongst the reeds; but when the fire touched his shelter, he too made instinc tively for the water an eight-foot alligator.

Now alligators have been so hunted for their skins throughout the South that the survivors are eager to flee at the sight of man; but here the circumstances were unusual. I think I have shown that the murderer was a man of physical courage; but, chancing to look up at him when the hideous reptile came in to share our refuge, I saw a face of livid terror. I dare say my own was not much different, but his fright seemed to me then an apology for my own, and, strange though it may seem, I drew comfort from it. With the waves of flame still singing and booming overhead it was sheer death to attempt a withdrawal; yet to my dying day I shall never forget my sensations then. I had seen the foul brute's jagged yellow teeth, when it flopped beneath the surface, and every second I expected to find the great jaws clamped upon my body. If ever a man can perspire with terror under water, I did it then.

But at last the thick of the fire rolled away from us, and in the dim half-light which followed its passage I saw the great alligator slowly rise to the surface and swim away from us down a narrow gut which had opened in the swamp.

My companion also saw the reptile rise, and drew the wrong conclusion. He thought it was about to attack him, and with a scream scrambled out of the pool. Then a rifle-shot rang out above the din, and he gave another scream, and threw up his hands and fell upon the black surface of the pool and sank from sight amid fountains of yellow splashes.

Then some one from behind said, " Hullo! by gum, there's another of them," and I heard a click of a hammer.

"For God's sake, don't shoot!" I yelled.

"I should know that voice. Faith! Martin Brail, by all that's wonderful. So it was you we were chivvying all yesterday afternoon, was it? Well, old man, I'm very sorry for the mistake, though you certainly did give us a rat tling good run. However, that's over now, so come out of your lair and we'll go back to town and have the best dinner Victor can fix up for us, even if it takes till six o'clock to-morrow morning to eat it. I'm glad I plugged that damned murdering nigger. I say, though, let's look at you again. D' you know, old chap, you are really very much like him. It's quite simple how the mistake arose."

"It was mighty near being an awkward mis take for me."

"But not quite," laughed the Southerner; "and misses don't count. Come along. You'll have heaps to talk about at the clubs for the next week to come. And I say, Brail, of course you aren't a nigger, old man, and don't get your back up by thinking that I even suggest such a thing but sometimes it isn't healthy even to look like one down in the South here. If I were you, I'd let those short crisp curls on your head grow, and then dye 'em an aggressive red, and soap 'em down flat and lanky. You'll find your life go a heap safer and easier that way."

"I think," I said, my hair is likely to turn grey within the next day or two. You have knocked about twenty years off my life by this little mistake of yours. As hosts, you South erners are glorious; but as hunters, I may say you are devils."

XIII

THE FASCINATING MRS. WHITEHEAD

THE worst of a steamer flirtation is that you are more or less bound to see it through. Gilchrist went to Las Palmas in Grand Canary by a British African boat because they start from Liver pool, near which port he resided. Mrs. Whitehead went by the same steamer because she thought there was less likelihood of meeting people who knew her there than there would be on one of the bigger and faster Cape boats which go from the South of England. And to further this coy desire she decapitated her name, and appeared on the purser's list as Mrs. White. Gilchrist fore gathered with her before they had brought Holyhead over the quarter, because he and she were the only two passengers who had not seen the necessity of going below to lie down.

"Will you let me lash your deck chair?" he said by way of introduction. " The sea'll get worse as soon as we open up the Channel more, and you may get a nasty spill."

He very naturally got leave to do that, and (quite as naturally) wedged himself in a corner beside her, and began to talk. That was the beginning of it all. By the time they had got abreast of Land's End he had discovered that her Christian name was Elsie, and by the time they had crossed the Bay, and were carrying the brown hills of Portugal along on their port beam, he had dropped into the habit of letting slip the name of Elsie with the most skilled unconsciousness whenever there was no one else within ear-shot.

He was not exactly new to this sort of game, and no more was she. They owned up to the fact cheerfully. " I do hate callow youths," said Mrs. White; and, " When I find myself paired off with schoolgirls under two-and-twenty," said Gilchrist, " I bolt as soon as I conveniently can, and have a comfortable swear. Let me drag you a chair behind the lifeboat there, and then you can smoke a cigarette."

"One more cushion, please, just under my head," said Mrs. White, and now tuck the rug in round my feet. There, thanks, that's nice. Now some men would be shocked at my sitting here and smoking, when half Portugal might be looking on at us through race-glasses, for any thing we know. Others would be greedy and keep all their cigarettes to themselves. You are neither one nor the other, and therefore I like you."

"Therefore Pm an infinitely lucky man," said Gilchrist.

"I think you are pretty lucky all the way round. Nothing to do except amuse yourself. You certainly aren't going to Grand Canary for the good of your health, because you're the pic ture of that already; and I can't say you've got quite the cut of a man who's going there on business."

"Oh, I'm going to kick up my heels, and walk about, and climb the mountains, and eat oranges and avocado pears. At intervals I shall play a little golf."

"Delightful programme. Nothing to do but amuse yourself. But don't you get rather tired of it sometimes?"

"It hasn't bored me so far. When a man's had enough of one thing he can try another."

"That depends on the man's income. It's an expensive game ringing the changes too often."

"Well, I suppose it is, come to think of it," said Gilchrist. " I started the yachting mania last summer. That came in rather heavy for a first outfit of materials."

"Evidently," said Mrs. White, with a sigh, "you are a young man having many possessions. What a blessed comfort it must be to get away from the region of narrow means."

Gilchrist thought the matter over at greater length that night when the lights had been switched off in the smoke-room and the other passengers had turned in; and he came to sev eral conclusions. Above all things he was satis fied that it was entirely without drawbacks to be well off. He also gave a good deal of his time to thinking over Mrs. White. He didn't quite know whether he was in love with her or not; he couldn't quite define what being in love meant; but he was completely satisfied she was the nicest woman on that particular steamer, and possibly on many steamers. Moreover, he reminded himself that he was thirty-two, and was under instructions from various relatives who took an interest in him, to get married without any further dawdling over it.

To think over a matter of this kind, solus, at sea, and under the suggestive stars, is a very different affair from doing the same prosaically at home. Mrs. White did not turn up all the next morning; and not caring for anybody else on board, he was bored with his own society. In the afternoon she was also absent, and he grew more bored. And in the evening, when she showed up again, he proposed in the first ten minutes, out of sheer relief at seeing her again.

"Oh, and now I am happy," said Mrs. White.

He kissed her a great many times she had an excellent method of kissing and they ar ranged to get married in three months' time in London, and spend the honeymoon at his shooting place in Scotland. " But we won't let the cat out of the bag yet, dear," said Gilchrist, "and then we can have our fun in Las Palmas without being pointed out and giving a free comic entertainment to all the other people."

No, darling," said Mrs. White. " We'll keep the engagement as our own dear sweet secret till we get back to England."

But from what source no one seemed exactly to know the little episode was being passed about the ship in strictly confidential whispers during the very next morning; and by midday everybody was chuckling over it and ostentatiously avoiding stares; and at dinner the captain stood champagne all down the tables, and the health of the pair of them was drunk with enthusiasm and music. Gilchrist smiled as he returned thanks, and tried not to feel savage; and the hard-up men who were going down to serve on the West Coast of Africa got drunk that night, or mournfully sentimental, according to their natures. But they one and all during the course of the evening came and hit Gilchrist on the back several times, and told him what a lucky chap he was; and each time Gilchrist thanked them most cordially, and assured him self with unnecessary emphasis that they were undeniably right.

When the steamer was coming into Las Palmas harbour, Mrs. White was examining with a glass the semi-detached island which carries the light house. " They've taken it down," said she.

Gilchrist asked what.

"That staring white notice on the hillside there. 'Grand Canary Engineering Company,' it used to be."

"Oh, you've been here before, have you? I didn't know. You never told me."

"Ye-es didn't I tell you? at the Metropole. But I shall stay at the Hotel Catalina now."

"That was before you were left a widow?"

"Oh, of course, my husband was there. Do run down, there's a dear boy, and make them bring up my boxes. I tipped that wretched steward, and he hasn't done it yet."

Gilchrist went away below, and as he had his own packing to finish, he did not see an English gentleman come off in the doctor's boat, greet Mrs. White very warmly, exchange a few words with her, and then return hurriedly to shore consumed with abundant laughter. But he was up in time to see the letters brought into the saloon by the shore agent, and to watch Mrs. White take up a telegram most legibly addressed to Whitehead."

"Ah," said Mrs. White, with a sigh of vast relief, "then it is all right."

Gilchrist experienced a peculiar little thrill. The name of Whitehead carried recent memories for him. It would have done the same for any one who had been lately in England. So he inquired, " What's all right?"

"My news," said Mrs. White, cheerfully.

"Mayn't I share them?"

"Sure you want to, dear?"

"Of course," said Gilchrist, and hoped that he was speaking in his natural voice.

"It's all right, dear," said his fiancee. " I can marry you. I wasn't quite sure before, because law is so risky, although this was nearly a certain thing. But they've wired me to say that we've got the decree nisi, so as soon as the time's run out "

"What!" cried Gilchrist, " you're the Mrs. Whitehead the papers have been crammed with? Oh Lord!" And his mind galloped through a ream of unrefreshing details.

"I'm the lady," said she.

"But I knew nothing of this."

You never asked me."

"Well, our little farce can't go on."

Which, pray?"