第 6 页

But Nancy did not see it, and said so with point and argument. However, for once in his life Seale was firm. He had a feeling that he would have a much better chance, and a much better time of it, if he started this new life on the Coast as a bachelor without encumbrances.

Still, he did not work openly upon this principle. He said he was leaving Nancy behind, entirely for Nancy's good. But in the end, of course, he got his way.

A B. and A. boat took Seale across the Bay, and after calling at several African ports, brought up to an anchor head-on to a heavy swell in the Lagos Roads. A small branch-steamer came out to her from inside the bar, and Seale tasted the joys of being transhipped in a tossing surf-boat paddled by yelling Elmina boys. The branchsteamer deposited him at one of the wharves which jut out from the boulevard of the Marina into the lagoon, and his new chief met him there with a pink 'rickshaw and a white umbrella.

Knowing that Lagos is a town of negroes, Seale had somehow or other been prepared to find unlimited stinks; and because these were entirely absent, the air of the place came to him as a pleasant surprise. He settled down in two large, cool, whitewashed rooms, and proceeded to enjoy himself.

Being newly landed and full of health, he natu rally found the work expected of him ridicu lously light; and as he had occasion to put on his dress clothes every night, and discovered that white men in Lagos are addicted to gorgeous dinners and much hospitality, he told himself with confidence that the Coast had been unjustly maligned, and that he had tumbled into a very snug berth. He retained this ecstatic frame of mind for exactly fourteen days, and then one morning a man came into his office and asked him to dinner for that evening.

"Can't," said Seale. " Much obliged all the same. I'm chopping with Anderson to-night. And so, by the way, are you, although I sup pose you've forgotten. He asked us yesterday."

"You've got to go to Anderson's funeral in two hours' time," said the other man, dryly. "He pegged out with heat apoplexy during the night, just before that tornado came on. Ta-ta, see you at the cemetery. And mind you turn up to dine with me. Seven-thirty sharp."

The other man nodded and left, and Seale mopped a very moist brow with his pockethandkerchief. This," he told himself, " was the very devil of a climate." And by way of having the lesson rammed home, he was invited to stand and frizzle in the sun, precisely one week later, whilst the flippant other man was himself being buried.

Seale was consumed with a mild touch of Coast fever that night, and the fear of death gripped him by the heart. He reviewed much of his past life, and was truly sorry that he had not amended his ways earlier, and so avoided coming to Lagos. He laid much solid blame upon Hankin, and told himself that he could dance with calm delight upon Hankin's tomb. Incidentally he remembered Nancy, and tried to carry his resentment along to her; but that did not act. No, it was no fault of Nancy's that he was out in this abominable exile. She was a good little beggar anyhow, and a hot, new trouble rose in him when he thought of what must happen to her after he died, as (he was quite sure) must take place within the next few hours.

However, of course, he did not die then; and as an early dose of fever is the very best thing to acclimatize a man, he soon settled down into a very healthy fellow from a Coast point of view. But that early scare had bitten in deeply, and it prevented him from remaining popular with the Lagos community. Where every one is lavishly free-handed, the careful man who does not keep open house is not called careful merely. They give him an uglier name. And if a man of any obstinacy once overhears himself spoken of as " that stingy brute," he is rather apt to act up to the character. Besides, every time the dangers of the place were brought home to him more nearly, either by illness within the marches of his own proper body, or by the news of death amongst the white community, Seale could have screamed aloud in his agony of dread as to what would happen if Nancy were left unprovided for.

Yet torment himself how he would, the fund which he was making for her grew with exasper ating slowness. He had to eat and drink to live; and everything was expensive; and the pay and allowances which had seemed dazzling enough at a distance, shrivelled wofully when counted on the spot. Moreover, he had always possessed the unwieldy knack of making two shillings go as far as one, and had never contrived to shake himself adrift from it. And so when the time of his first leave came round, he drew his home-pay and accepted a six months' billet in the bush for extra lucre. He wrote home to tell Nancy that he was so hard-worked that he could not get away which was scarcely true and also that he was in brilliant health at the time of writing, which was a solid lie.

His next leave he also tried to miss, but broke down with dysentery, and had to spend a muchgrudged two months in Grand Canary to save his life. But he came back to the Coast again with new health, and hammered desperately at the dollar-mill to make up his leeway. He was not liked in Lagos still; but a rumour had got about that there was a reason for his stinginess, and some of the men had got a respect for him though of course that is a vastly different thing from a liking.

And at the end of four and a half years from his leaving England, Captain Charteris came to him again and put a change into his life, as he had done once before.

Scale had not forgotten his old animosity against the man; and when he first brought his face into the office quite unexpectedly for Charteris had come into money, and was living at home as a decent English gentleman now Seale bade him uncivilly enough to get out, one time.

"You must hear my message first," said Charteris, "although I'm repeating an old offence."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm bringing Nancy to you. She's upstairs, waiting in your house this minute, and I've just come down here to break the news."

"What! Nancy here! Man, you're either dreaming or drunk."

"I am neither, although I wish I was both. The Lord knows I've no cause for rejoicing."

Seale sat at his office desk and passed a finger round inside his shirt collar. " You'd better explain," he said.

"Quite so. To begin with, Hankin or rather his ghost is interfering again. It seems he once invested money in one of the Coast mines here at Axim. That followed the habit of most gold mines by going pop. But they've found magnifi cent quartz reefs on either side of his property; and so the ground has been valued at ninety thousand pounds; and, what is better still, has been sold for eighty thousand pounds and paid for. That's Nancy's now, and nothing would suit her but that she must come down here and give you news of it herself."

My God!" said Seale. Then after a minute he added, " But what have you come down here for?"

"Because," said Charteris, slowly and quietly "because I love her."

"You love Nancy! You! You love that child 1 But there, I suppose she's grown up. Well, are you going to tell me next that the pair of you are to be married?"

Charteris looked at him queerly. " Shouldn't you mind," he asked, if I did tell you that?"

"I shouldn't like it. To be candid, I don't particularly care for you, as you know. But I suppose she'll marry some day. I always have pictured that, ever since I've been on the Coast, because, you see, she must be provided for some way."

"But man! don't you care for her yourself?"

"Care for her!" Seale gave a mirthless laugh. If you knew what I've been doing here all these years, you wouldn't ask that. Of course I care for her."

But how?"

"Oh, I've never defined it. Paternally, I suppose, or like a brother. That kid and I were the best of friends."

"Seale, you're a fool! Kid, you say. She's a woman. She's the loveliest But I'm not going to talk. You must see for yourself. Only, don't you go upstairs and make any mistake. She's got no daughter's feelings for you, or sister's; and if you go and break her heart over any nonsense of that kind, I've got it in me to shoot you for your pains. I've had my life ruined for me during these last months by you being in the way, and if hers is to be spoiled too by your blundering, you can understand that I shall want to kill you very badly."

"Wait a minute," said Seale, unsteadily. " This has come upon me with so much suddenness that I hardly grasp "

"I have no more to say to you," said Charteris, and he went out into the dazzling sunshine of the Marina, where the shouting negroes were carrying loads over the brick-red dust.

Seale swayed and tottered, then pulled himself together with an effort, and went up the stairs which led to his house above. Nancy knew his footstep and met him at the door, a radiant vision in tropical white. He felt himself tangled by her arms. Her lips were against his ear. " Oh, Ted! my love," she was saying to him, " I could not wait away from you any longer. Ted, darling, I had to come. Oh! my own love, if you only knew how I had hungered for you, you would have come to me sooner."

Then Scale's eyes were opened. He did not make the blunder which Charteris had warned him against. He felt no inclination that way. A new feeling towards the girl surged within him like a glow of fire. " Sweetheart," he whispered back to her, " I never knew you would be like this. If I had known, I could never have kept myself away from you."

IV

THE CHOLERA SHIP

SHE was not the regular Portuguese mail. She was an ancient seven-knot tramp, which had come across from Brazil to Loanda, and had been lucky enough to pick up half a cargo of coffee there for Lisbon. She called in at Banana, the station on the mangrove-spit at the mouth of the Congo, where the river pilots live (and on occasion die), and where the Dutch factory used to bring trade till the Free State killed it with duties; and at Banana she had further fortune. There were two hundred and thirty negroes there, Accra men and Kroo-boys mostly, a gang that had made their fifteen or twenty pounds apiece on the railway, and were waiting to go home.

The passenger-boys had collected their chattels, and were gathering in a howling, chattering mob by the surf-boats ready to go on board, when the first notion came to me of joining her. It was the Danish harbour-master who gave it. He came up, under his old white umbrella with the green lining, to the house where I was staying, and told me that the tramp was going to call in at San Thom6 and the Bonny River. F 66

"Now, we don't hanker to get rid of you here, Mr. Calvert," he said, but if you want to climb that mountain in Fernando Po, you're not likely to get so good a chance for the next three months to come. Your place is on the road between San Thorn6 and Bonny, though, of course, you'll have to make it worth the skipper's while to stop. But that's your palaver."

"Can you put a figure on it?" I asked.

I should take it," said the harbour-master, "that you could hustle the man into Fernando Po for ten sovereigns. He's only a Portugee. Come aboard now in my gig and see him."

The tramp's interior was not inviting. We went into the chart-house and drank the inevi table sweet champagne with the captain; and whilst the bargain was being made, a thousand cockroaches crawled thoughtfully over the yellowwhite paint.

"I tell you straight," said the harbour-master in English, " she's a dirty ship, and the chop'll be bad enough to poison a spotted dog. But if you will go to these Portugee and Spanish places to sweat up mountains, that's part of the palaver."

"Oh, if the grub's good enough for them, it won't kill me."

"Then if you will go, I'll send my boy off in the boat for your boxes one-time, because the Old Man's in a hurry to be off. He's got a bishop on board below, very sick with fever, and he wants to be out of this stew and get to sea again as quick as it can be done. Thinks it'll give the ship bad luck, I suppose, if the bishop pegs out."

The harbour-master's boy was speedy, and the harbour-master himself piloted us out into the wide gulf of the river's mouth. The beer-coloured stream gave up its scent of crushed marigolds strongly enough to pierce through the smells of the ship and the smells of the crowded chattering negroes on the fore-deck, and the old steamer began to groan and creak as she lifted to the South Atlantic swell. The sun went down, and night followed like the turning out of a lamp. The lighthouse flickered out on the Portuguese shore away on the port bow, and above it hung the Southern Cross, a pale, faint thing, shaped like an ill-made kite.

The bumping engines stopped, and the Dane came down off the upper bridge. He stood with me for a minute on the brown, greasy deck planks, and then went down the ladder into his boat.

"Oscar-strasse, tretten, K jobnhavn!" he shouted, as the gig dropped astern. " Mind you come. I shall be home in another nine months."

"Wanderers' Club, London; don't forget; sorry I haven't a card left," I hailed back, and wondered in my mind whether in any of the world's turnings I should ever meet that good fellow again. But the steamer was once more under way, mumbling and complaining, and the store-keeper at that moment was beginning to open the case of dried fish baccalhao, as they call it on the coast to which we traced back the hideous plague which in the next few days swept away her people like the fire from a battery of guns.

There were only two other passengers besides the bishop and myself a pair of yellow-faced, yellow-fingered Portuguese from down the coast, traders both, with livers like Strasbourg geese. The Skipper was a decent, weak little chap from Lisbon, who might have been good-looking if he had sometimes washed; the Chief Engineer was a Swede, who spoke English and quoted Ibsen; and the other officers I never came specially across. There was only one of my own country men on board, a fireman from Hull, one of the strongest men I ever met, and certainly the most truculent ruffian. His name was Tordoff on the ship's books, but that was a "purser's name." He spoke pure English when he forgot himself, and certainly had once been a gentleman.