Command Part 23

"No, you done it for me. And I done it for this lady friend o' mine.

She's goin' to meet her sweetheart in Athens, you understand."

The bosun, whose eyes had gradually a.s.sumed an expression of having been poked out by the method he had spoken of, and replaced by an unskilful oculist, now gave an enormous smirk and drew himself into an att.i.tude of extreme propriety.

"Oh-ho! But the captinne...."

"Never mind him just now. I have a reason for thinking he won't mind. In fact, I believe he knows all about it but pretends he don't, to save himself trouble. Skippers do that, you know, Bos'."

"You bet they do!" said Joseph Plouff with immense conviction. "And then come back at you if things go wrong. I been with hundreds o' skippers and they was all the same."

This of course was a preposterous misstatement and of no significance whatever, a common characteristic of people who are both voluble and irresponsible. Mr. Spokesly let it pa.s.s. The riding-light threw the bosun's features into strange contortions as he stood with his round muscular limbs wide apart and his arms, tattooed like the legs of a Polynesian queen, crossed on the bosom of his blue-and-white check shirt.

"Well, what are you going to do about it?" asked the chief officer calmly. "You talk a h.e.l.l of a lot, Bos', but you haven't said much yet."

"Because you ain't give me a chance. You ask me all about that American bar where there ain't any American drinks and I had to tell you, didn't I? And I was goin' to sugges' something, only you wouldn't listen."

"What?"

"Go yourself. Come with me. You can get out into the street by the garden. It used to be a movin' picture place, but they stopped it because of the lights. And it's mostly French sailors go there. American bar, see? What the _matelots_ call _hig' lif'_. I speak French, so I go there. Now you come along and see what we can do."

"And leave the ship?"

"The ship won't run away, I can promise you that. And the watchman's there in the galley, ain't he? I'll get my coat."

"And how do I know when she'll come, supposing she does come to this place you're talking about?"

"You want me to tell you that!" said the bosun in a faint voice, lifting his broad features to the heavens in protest. "I thought you knew," he added, looking down again at Mr. Spokesly.

"Sometime before daylight," muttered that gentleman, getting up. "I'll go with you, but mind, you got to stand by to row me back whenever I want you. Understand? No going off with your _matelots_. Nice thing, if anything should happen and me out o' the ship."

"All right, all right. You don't need to get sore with your own bosun,"

said Plouff. "I can tell you, you might have a worse one. Here's me, sits all the evening, playin' rummy and one eye on the ship from that American bar, and all you can do's get sore. What do you think I am, a b.u.m? If it hadn't been for me havin' my eyes about me in Port Said, them A-rabs would ha' stove her in against the next ship twenty time. Me sittin' up half the night makin' fenders. Oh, yes!"

"Come on then. You're as bad as the Old Man when it comes to chewing the rag. Can you talk French like that?"

"As good as English. Faster. More of it. I know more French words than English."

"Lord help us." Mr. Spokesly poked the tiller-bar into the rudder and hung the latter over the stern of the boat, which Plouff had been hauling along to the gangway. "Now then. Got a lantern? Don't light it.

Bear away."

Instructed by Plouff, Mr. Spokesly steered due east away from the ship and concealed by it from the eyes on watch on the warships. Then after half a mile he turned sharply about and Plouff slowed down until the boat just moved through the water and they were quite lost in the intense darkness. Plouff said:

"Now we got nothing to be scared of except searchlights. But it's only Wednesday night they work 'em."

"Why do you get only Frenchmen at this place?" asked Mr. Spokesly.

"Because it's near their hospital and rest-camp. The English are all down by the Bersina Gardens. So the Frenchies go to talk to the poilus.

French sailors don't have much truck with English sailors, you can bet."

"Well, you wouldn't if you couldn't talk to them either," retorted Mr.

Spokesly. "Now where do we go in?"

"Ship the rudder," said the bosun. "I'll fetch round myself."

They were now in the profound shadows of a short back-water formed by the corner of the old _cafe-chantant_ and cinema garden which had been fashioned out of the romantic dwelling whose earlier history Plouff had recounted with such relish. The big doors of the water entrance had been removed and the shed itself partly boarded over. There was no one in sight, and only a small tin lamp on the wall, but there was an air of recent occupancy, of human proximity, of frequent appearances, about the place. A boat was thrust half under the planks, and the door at the back had a black patch where many hands had polished it in pa.s.sing through.

Beneath the door shone a crack of bright light. Plouff, shipping his oars, brought up softly alongside the other boat, and stepped ash.o.r.e across the thwarts with the painter in his hand.

"Here we are," he chuckled. "Snug as a bug in a rug. Bring her in under.

Make fast."

The door was opened about six inches and a face with an exceedingly drooping moustache peered out from beneath the slovenly looking cap of a French petty officer of marine.

"_Qu'est-ce que c'est?_" he demanded.

"_Comment ca va, mon vieux!_" retorted Plouff, advancing.

"_Mon lieutenant--bon garcon. Oh-h, mon vieux, il faut que je vous dis que nous avons une grande affaire. Ou est la belle Antigone?_"

"_Chez elle_," muttered the other. "_Entrez. Bon soir, Monsieur Lieutenant._"

Mr. Spokesly walked through into a lofty hallway. A door on the left led into the darkness of the garden, another on the right opened upon a large chamber, dimly lighted and bounded by a lattice-work terrace, and in front ascended one of those imposing staircases which the Latin inserts into the most insignificant edifices. The room on the right was simply a rough-and-ready cafe, with a small bar in the corner set up in an unfurnished residence. Upstairs was a select gambling hall for officers only. And practically French officers only. There was only one reason why English officers, for example, did not visit this place. They did not know of its existence. It was a club. Madame Antigone was the caretaker who also managed the canteen on the ground floor, and encouraged, by her formidable discretion, the maintenance of a small corner of France in an alien land. Not the France of popular fancy with _cocottes_ and _cancan_ dancing and much foolish _abandon_, but the France of the Cercle and the Casino, sober-minded devotees of roulette and connoisseurs of sound liquor.

Some of the latter was immediately forthcoming. Even Mr. Spokesly, whose conception of a drink was that of most English and Americans--a decoction of no ascertainable flavour and with the kick of a vicious horse--even he appreciated to a small degree the body and generous vintage of the wine brought to their table by a soldier in hospital dress. He looked round as he drank. There were men of all ranks of the land and sea forces, clean-shaven and boyish, ferociously moustached and obscured by short, truculent beards. They played dominoes or cards, smoked and sipped, or conversed with the grave gestures which are the heritage of a thousand emotional years. They were not demonstrative.

Indeed, the French Navy is so undemonstrative one might imagine it recruited entirely from the Englishmen of modern fiction. There is no doubt that the nature of their profession has left its mark upon them.

For them is no vision of conquest or gigantic death-grapple with a modern foe, but rather the careful guarding of a remote and insalubrious colonial empire. It has made them attentive to fussy details, faithful to fantastic conceptions of honour, partial to pensioned ease and married life if one escapes the fevers of Cochin China and Algeria.

Among them Plouff was accepted as a weird variant of undeniable home stock, a creature who led a double life as Englishman and Frenchman, _un monstre_, a grotesque emblem of the great _Entente_. They stood about him as he sat, his head far back on his shoulders, his large red mouth open beneath the great moustache, telling them the story of his lieutenant's incredible gallantry. They listened in silence, glancing deferentially towards Mr. Spokesly from time to time, as though he were acquiring a singular and heroic virtue in their estimation for his audacity in fumbling with a woman's destiny. But Mr. Spokesly himself felt neither heroic nor audacious. He was uneasy. He interrupted the eloquence of his bosun as soon as he had finished his drink. He had a picture in his mind of Evanthia waiting somewhere, waiting for him with her amber eyes smouldering and ready to break out into a torrent of reproaches for his sluggish obedience. She had achieved that ascendancy over him. He was conscious of a species of mingled terror and delight in her personality. He rose.

"What's the matter?" demanded Plouff, astonished.

Mr. Spokesly regarded him with considerable impatience.

"How can I stop here?" he inquired. "You ought to have more sense," and he walked away towards the garden.

Plouff looked round at his circle of listeners, as though calling them to witness the strenuous nature of service with the English, and followed. He found Mr. Spokesly pausing irresolutely by the foot of the stairs, confronting a large woman with strongly marked brows and a severe expression who was descending the stairs with the air of a proprietress.

"Ah, Madame Antigone," said Plouff in hurried French. "This gentleman is the lieutenant of my ship. He has an a.s.signation with a young lady who lives in a house near by."

The woman regarded Plouff steadily and shook her head. She was turning away as though she took no interest whatever in the matter.

"This is not a house of a.s.signation," she said gravely, merely recording a casual fact.

"Oh, most surely not!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the eloquent Plouff. "Madame totally misunderstands the situation. All that was suggested was that possibly Madame would permit the young lady to enter the garden. We have a boat, and here am I to row. Madame, to-morrow we sail; it is the last night for us. You can understand, Madame?"

Whether Madame understood or not was locked in her own broad, handsome bosom. She advanced as though Joseph Plouff and Mr. Spokesly had no corporeal existence, shaking her head and muttering softly that it was impossible. For a second the defeated bosun stood looking after her.

Impossible? The ma.s.sive form of Madame Antigone swam forward into the cafe and pa.s.sed out of view. So it was impossible. Plouff became aware of his chief officer's expression.

"What are we going to do now?" said Mr. Spokesly irritably, going towards the garden. "Lot of use you are with your Frenchy friends. Let's get out of this."