For Jacinta Part 15

Jacinta sighed whimsically, perhaps to hide what she felt.

"Then I'm afraid we shall not see him, which is a pity, because I've been thinking over the nice things I meant to say to him, and now they're all wasted," she said. "You will tell him that we came to say good-bye to him, won't you, and that I'm just a little vexed he never called to tell us anything about his expedition."

Macallister grinned sardonically, and though Jacinta was usually a very self-possessed young woman, she appeared to find his gaze a trifle disconcerting.

"Well," he said, "I know all about it. He has sold everything he had, and he borrowed 40. One way or another he has another 60 of his own."

Jacinta looked up sharply. "He has no more than that?"

"It's not likely," and Macallister watched her with a faint twinkle in his eyes. "I do not know why he would not have the 200 Mr. Brown offered him. Maybe ye do."

There was a just perceptible trace of colour in Jacinta's cheek. "I hardly see how you could expect me to when I never heard of it until this moment," she said. "Would 100 be enough for Mr. Austin?"

"I'm thinking it would. No for everybody under the same circ.u.mstances, but enough for him. There are folks in these islands who have only seen the outside of Mr. Austin, which, ye may observe, is in one sense quite a natural thing."

He stopped a moment, and smiled upon her genially. "It's not his fault that he's no quite so well favoured as I am. What would ye expect of an Englishman? Still, there are men aboard here who have seen what's underneath--I mean the other side of him--at nights when he brought the dispatch off through the surf, and once--though that was not his business--when I was sick, an' they let water down in the starboard boiler."

"Still," said Jacinta, "he would naturally have to have so many things."

"He has four good men, a little box o' drugs, and a case o' dynamite.

Farquhar's going on to Australia with mining stores, and he gave it him."

It seemed absurdly insufficient, and Jacinta struggled with an almost hysterical inclination to laugh. It was, she realised, a very big thing Austin had undertaken, and his equipment consisted of a case of dynamite and a box of drugs, which, on his own confession, he knew very little about. Still, she saw that Macallister, who, she fancied, ought to know, rated manhood far higher than material. It was Muriel who broke the silence.

"But they will want a doctor," she said, with a little tremour in her voice.

Macallister shook his head. "Ye would not get one to go there for 500, and he would be no use if he did," he said. "Ye will remember that malaria fever does not stay on one long. It goes away when it has shaken the strength out o' ye--and now and then comes back again--while by the time Austin gets there Mr. Jefferson will be----"

He stopped with some abruptness, but though she shivered, Muriel looked at him with steady eyes.

"Ah!" she said, "you mean he will either be better, or that no doctor could cure him then?"

Macallister made her a little inclination, and it was done with a grave deference that Jacinta had scarcely expected from him.

"Just that," he said. "I'm thinking ye are one of the women a man can tell the truth to. It is a pity there are not more o' them. It is no a healthy country Mr. Austin is going to, but I have been five years on the coast o' it, and ye see me here."

"I wonder," said Jacinta, "whether you, who know all about ships and engines, did not feel tempted to go with Mr. Austin?"

The engineer smiled curiously. "Tempted!" he said. "It was like trying to be teetotal with a whisky bottle in the rack above one's bunk; but I am a married man, with a wife who has a weakness for buying dining-room suites."

"Dining-room suites! What have they to do with it?"

"Just everything," and Macallister sighed. "She will only have the biggest ones the doors will let in, and she has furnished a good many dining-rooms altogether. Ye will mind that we lived here and there and everywhere, while she's back in England now. Ye would not meet a better woman, but on 20 a month ye cannot buy unlimited red-velvet chairs and sideboards with looking-gla.s.ses at the back o' them."

Jacinta laughed as she rose. "You will tell Mr. Austin we are sorry we did not see him."

"I will," and Macallister stood up, too. "Perhaps ye mean it this time, and I'm a little sorry for him myself. There are men who get sent off with bands and speeches and dinners to do a smaller thing, but Mr.

Austin he just slips away with his box o' dynamite and his few sailormen."

He stopped and looked hard at her a moment before he turned to Muriel.

"Still, we'll have the big drum out when he brings Mr. Jefferson and the _c.u.mbria_ back again, and if there's anything that can be broken left whole in this ship that night it will be no fault o' mine."

They went out and left him, but Jacinta stopped when they came upon the man he had ejected from his room, sitting on the companion stairway and smoking a very objectionable pipe. She also held a little purse concealed beneath her hand.

"You are going back with Mr. Austin to the _c.u.mbria_?" she said.

The man stood up. "In course," he said. "It's eight pound a month, all found, an' a bonus."

"Ah!" said Jacinta. "I suppose there is nothing else?"

The man appeared to ruminate over this, until a light broke in on him.

"Well," he said, "Mr. Jefferson does the straight thing, an' he fed us well. That is, as well as he could, considering everything."

Jacinta smiled at Muriel. "You will notice the answer. He is a man!"

Then she held out a strip of crinkly paper. "That will make you almost a month to the good, and if you do everything you can to make things easier for the man who wants to get the _c.u.mbria_ off, there will probably be another waiting for you when you come back again."

The man, who took the crinkly paper, gazed at it in astonishment, and then made a little sign of comprehension. "Thank you kindly, miss, but which one am I to look after special? You see, there's two of them."

Jacinta was apparently not quite herself that night, for the swift colour flickered into her face, and stayed there a moment.

"Both," she said decisively. "Still, you are never to tell anybody about that note."

The man once more gazed at her with such evident bewilderment that Muriel broke into a little half-audible laugh. Then he grinned suddenly, and touched his battered cap.

"Well, we'll make it--both," he said.

They went up the companion, and left him apparently chuckling, but Jacinta appeared far from pleased when she got into the waiting boat.

"That was to have gone to England for a hat and one or two things I really can't do without--though I shall probably have to now," she said.

"Oh, aren't they stupid sometimes--I felt I could have shaken him."

In the meanwhile the man in the fireman's serge went back to Macallister's room.

"Give me an envelope--quick!" he said.

Macallister got him one, and he slipped a strip of paper inside before he addressed it and tossed it across the table.

"You'll post that. There's a Castle boat home to-morrow, and I'd sooner trust you with it than myself," he said, with a little sigh, which, however, once more changed to a chuckle.

"If there's money inside it ye're wise," said Macallister drily. "Still, what are ye grinning in yon fashion for?"

"I was thinking it's just as well I've only--one--old woman. It would make a big hole in eight pounds a month--an' a bonus--if I had any more of 'em. But you get that letter posted before I want it back."

"Wanting," said Macallister, reflectively, "is no always getting. Maybe, it's now and then fortunate it is so, after all."

It was two hours later, and Jacinta stood on the flat roof of Pancho Brown's house looking down upon the close-packed Spanish town, when the crash of a mail gun rose from the harbour and was lost in the drowsy murmur of the surf. Then the other noises in the hot streets below her went on again, but Jacinta scarcely heard the hum of voices and the patter of feet as she watched a blinking light slide out from among the others in the harbour. It rose higher and swung a little as it crept past the mole, then a cl.u.s.ter of lower lights lengthened into a row of yellow specks, and she could make out the West-coast liner's dusky hull that moved out with slanting spars faster into the faintly shining sea.

Jacinta closed one hand as she leaned upon the parapet and watched it, until she turned with a little start at the sound of footsteps. She was, one could have fancied, not particularly pleased to see Muriel Gascoyne then.