A Master of Fortune Part 23

Wenlock shrugged his shoulders good-humoredly.

"Neither do I, and if I were a rich man, I wouldn't have dreamed of it.

Just think of what the girl probably is: she's been with those n.i.g.g.e.rs since she was quite a kid; she'll be quite uneducated; I'm in hopes she's good-looking and has a decent figure; but at the best she'll be quite unpresentable till I've had her in hand for at least a couple of years, if then. Of course you'll say there's 'romance' about the thing.

But then I don't care tuppence about romance, and anyway it's beastly unconfortable to live with."

"I was not looking at that point of view."

"Let me tell you how I was fixed," said Wenlock with a burst of confidence. "I'd a small capital. So I qualified as a solicitor, and put up a door-plate, and waited for a practice. It didn't come. Not a client drifted near me from month's end to month's end. And meanwhile the capital was dribbling away. I felt I was getting on my back legs; it was either a case of the Colonies or the workhouse, and I'd no taste for either; and when the news of this girl Teresa came, I tell you I just jumped at the chance. I don't want to marry her, of course; there are ten other girls I'd rather have as wife; but there was no other way out of the difficulty, so I just swallowed my squeamishness for good and always. See?"

"It was Miss Teresa Anderson I was pitying," said Kettle pointedly.

"Good Lord, man, why? Isn't it the finest thing in the world for her?"

"It might be fine to get away from where she is, and land home to find a nice property waiting. But I don't care to see a woman have a husband forced on her. It would be n.o.bler of you, Mr. Wenlock, to let the young lady get to England, and look round her for a while, and make her own choice."

"I'm too hard up to be n.o.ble," said Wenlock drily. "I've not come here on philanthropy, and marrying that girl is part of my business.

Besides, hang it all, man, think of what she is, and think of what I am." He looked himself up and down with a half humorous smile--"I know nice people at home who would be civil to her, and after all, hang it, I'm not unmarriageable personally."

"Still," said Kettle doggedly, "I don't like the idea of it."

"Then let me give you an inducement. I said I was not down here on philanthropy, and I don't suppose you are either. You'll have my pa.s.sage money?"

"Two and a-half per cent of it is my commission. The rest goes to the owners, of course."

"Very well, then. In addition to that, if you'll help this marriage on in the way I ask, I'll give you 50."

"There's no man living who could do more usefully with 50 if I saw my way of fingering it."

"I think I see what you mean. No, you won't have to wait for it. I've got the money here in hard cash in my pocket ready for you to take over the minute it's earned."

"I was wondering, sir, if I could earn it honorably. You must give me time to think this out. I'll try and give you an answer after tea. And for the present I shall have to leave you. I've got to go through the ship's papers: I have to be my own clerk on board here just now, though the Company did certainly promise me a much better ship if I beat up plenty of cargo, and made a good voyage of it with this."

The _Parakeet_ worked her way along down the Red Sea at her steady nine knots, and Mr. Hugh Wenlock put a couple of bunk pillows on a canvas boat-cover under the bridge deck awnings, and lay there and amused himself with cigarettes and a magazine. Captain Owen Kettle sat before a table in the chart-house with his head on one side, and a pen in his fingers, and went through accounts. But though Wenlock, when he had finished his magazine, quickly went off to sleep, Captain Kettle's struggles with arithmetic were violent enough to keep him very thoroughly awake, and when a due proportion of the figures had been checked, he put the papers in a drawer, and was quite ready to tackle the next subject.

He had not seen necessary to mention the fact to Mr. Wenlock, but while that young man was talking of the Miss Teresa Anderson, who at present was "quite a big personage in her way" at Dunkhot, a memory had come to him that he had heard of the lady before in somewhat less prosaic terms.

All sailormen who have done business on the great sea highway between West and East during recent years have had the yarn given to them at one time or another, and most of them have regarded it as gratuitous legend.

Kettle was one of these. But he was beginning to think there was something more in it than a mere sailor's yarn, and he was anxious to see if there was any new variation in the telling.

So he sent for Murray, his mate, a smart young sailor of the newer school, who preferred to be called "chief officer," made him sit, and commenced talk of a purely professional nature. Finally he said: "And since I saw you last, the schedule's changed. We call in at Dunkhot, for that pa.s.senger Mr. Wenlock to do some private business ash.o.r.e, before we go on to our Persian Gulf ports."

Murray repeated the name thoughtfully. "Dunkhot? Let's see, that's on the South Arabian coast, about a day's steam from Aden, and a beast of a place to get at, so I've heard. Oh, and of course, that's the place where the She-Sultan, or Queen, or whatever she calls herself, is boss."

"So there is really a woman of that kind there, is there? I'd heard of her, like everybody else has, but I thought she was only a yarn."

"No, she's there in the flesh, sir, right enough; lots of flesh, according to what I've gathered. A serang of one of the B. and I. boats, who'd been in Dunkhot, told me about her only last year. She makes war, leads her troops, cuts off heads, and does the Eastern potentate up to the mark. The serang said she was English, too, though I don't believe much in that. One-tenth English would probably be more near the truth.

The odds are she'll be Eurasian, and those snuff-and-b.u.t.ter colored ladies, when they get amongst people blacker than themselves, always try to ignore their own lick of the tar-brush."

"Fat, is she?"

"The serang said she-was a big buffalo bull of a woman, with a terror of a temper. I don't know what's Mr. Wenlock's business, sir; but whether he wants to start a dry-goods agency, or merely to arrange for smuggling in some rifles, he'd better make up his mind to square her first and foremost. She will have a finger in every pie. She's as curious as a monkey, too, and there's no doing anything without letting her know. And when she says a thing, it's got to be done."

"Is she the head chief's favorite wife, then?"

"That's the funny part of it: she isn't married. These Orientals always get husbands early as a general thing, and you'd have thought that in her juvenile days, before she got power, they'd have married her to some one about the town, whether she liked it or not. But it seems they didn't, because she said she'd certainly poison any man if they sent her into his zenana. And later on, when she came to be boss, she still kept to spinsterhood. Guess there wasn't any man about the place white enough to suit her taste."

"H'm. What you've told me seems to let daylight on to things."

"Beg pardon, sir?"

Captain Kettle put his hand kindly on Murray's shoulder. "Don't ask me to explain now, my lad, but when the joke comes you shall share the laugh. There's a young man on this ship (I don't mind telling you in confidence) whose ways I don't quite like, and I think he's going to get a lesson."

He went out then under the awnings of the bridge deck, and told Wenlock that he would probably be able to earn his fee for helping on the marriage, and Wenlock confidently thought that he quite understood the situation.

"Skipper's a bit of a methody," thought Mr. Hugh Wenlock, "but his principles don't go very deep when there are fifty sovereigns to be earned. Well, he's a useful man, and if he gets me snugly married to that little girl, he'll be cheap at the price."

The _Parakeet's_ voyage to Dunkhot was not swift. Eight-and-a-half knots was her most economical pace for coal consumption, and at that gait she steamed. With a reputation to make with his new owners, and two and a-half per cent, commission on all profits, Kettle had developed into a regular glutton for cargo; and the knowledge of men and places which he had so laboriously acquired in former days served him finely. Three times he got doles of cargo at good stiff freights at points where few other men would have dreamed of looking. He was an ideal man for the master of an ocean tramp. He was exactly honest; he had a world of misfortunes behind to spur him on; he was quick of decision; and he had developed a nose for cargo, and a knack of extorting it from merchants, that were little short of miraculous. And, in fact, if things went on as they had started, he stood a very good chance of making 50 per cent, on the _Parakeet's_ capital for the voyage, and so earning promotion to one of the firm's better ships.

But though in the many days of his adversity Captain Kettle had never shunned any risks which came in his way, with this new prosperity fresh and pleasant at his feet, he was beginning to tell himself that risks were foolish things. He arrived off Dunkhot and rang off his engines, and frowned angrily at the sh.o.r.e.

The town stood on an eminence, snugly walled, and filled with cool, square houses. At one side, the high minaret of a mosque stood up like a bayonet, and at the other, standing in a ring of garden, was a larger building, which seemed to call itself palace. There was a small fringe of cultivation beside the walls of the town, and beyond was arid desert, which danced and shimmered under the violent sun.

But all this lay small and far off, like a tiny picture in some huge frame, and showing only through the gla.s.s. A maze of reefs guarded the sh.o.r.e, and tore up the sleek Indian Ocean swells into spouting breakers; and though there was anchorage inside, tenanted indeed by a score of sailing craft, the way to it was openly perilous. And so for the present the _Parakeet_ lay to, rolling outside the entrance, flying a pilot jack, and waiting developments.

Captain Kettle might have his disquieting thoughts, still outwardly he was cool. But Mr. Hugh Wenlock was on deck in the sprucest of his apparel, and was visibly anxious and fidgety, as befitted a man who shortly expected to enter into the bonds of matrimony.

A double-ended boat came off presently, manned by naked Arabs, and steered by a man in a white burnous. She swept up alongside, caught a rope and made fast, and the man in white introduced himself as a pilot.

They are all good Mohammedans down there, or nominally, and so of course there was no question of a clean bill of health. Islam is not impious enough to check the spread of any disease which Allah may see good to send for its chastening.

The pilot wanted to take them in at once. He spoke some English, and carried an air of confidence. He could guide them through the reefs in the most complete of safety, and he could guarantee fine openings for trade, once inside.

"I dare say," grunted Kettle under his breath, "but you're a heap too uncertificated for my taste. Why, you don't even offer a book of forged logs to try and work off your humbug with some look of truth. No, I know the kind of pilot you are. You'd pile up the steamboat on the first convenient reef, and then be one of the first to come and loot her."--He turned to Murray: "Now, look here, Mr. Mate. I'll leave you in charge, and see you keep steam up and don't leave the deck. Don't let any of these n.i.g.g.e.rs come on board on any pretence whatever, and if they try it on, steam out to sea. I'll get through Mr. Wenlock's business ash.o.r.e as quick as lean, and perhaps pick up a ton or two of cargo for ourselves."

Below, in the dancing boat which ground against the steamer's side, the pilot clamored that a ladder might be thrown to him so that he might come on board and take the _Parakeet_ forthwith into the anchorage; and to him again Kettle turned, and temporized. He must go ash.o.r.e himself first, he said, and see what offer there was of trade, before he took the steamer in. To which the pilot, though visibly disappointed, saw fit to agree, as no better offer was forthcoming.

"Now, sir," said Kettle to Wenlock, "into the boat with you. The less time that's wasted, the better I shall be pleased."

"All right," said Wenlock, pointing to a big package on the deck. "Just tell some of your men to shove that case down into the boat, and I'm ready."

Kettle eyed the bulky box with disfavor. "What's in it?" he asked.

"A present or a bribe; whichever you care to call it. If you want to know precisely, it's rifles. I thought they would be most acceptable."

"Rifles are liked hereabouts. Is it for a sort of introductory present?"

"Well, if you must know, Captain, it's occurred to me that Teresa is probably an occupant of somebody's harem, and that I shall have to buy her off from her husband. Hence the case of rifles."

A queer look came over Captain Kettle's face. "And you'd still marry this woman if she had another husband living?"