For Jacinta Part 33

The last was in Castilian, and one of the Canarios went scrambling down the ladder, while when he came back with an armful of duck clothing Jefferson held out a jar to his comrade.

"No!" said Austin sharply. "Put it down!"

Jefferson did as he was bidden, and Austin, who stripped the thin garments from him and flung them over the rail, shook the permanganate into the bucket, and then, standing stark naked, when it had dissolved, sluiced himself all over with the pink solution. It was ten minutes later when he stepped into the room, dripping, with a wet rag about his waist, and shook his head when Jefferson handed him a towel.

"I think not," he said. "If there's any efficacy in the thing, I may as well let it dry in. After all, it's consoling to remember that it mayn't be necessary."

Jefferson's fingers quivered as he leaned upon the table. "No. Of course not!" he said, and added, inconsequently: "I don't think I'm unduly sensitive, but a very little thing would turn me deadly sick."

Austin struggled into his duck trousers, and Jefferson, whose face was also a little more pallid than usual, glanced at him again.

"You have a beautiful skin," he said. "It's most like a woman's. There's good clean blood in you."

"It's one of my few good points," and Austin's smile suggested comprehension. "I haven't been particularly indulgent in any direction, considering my opportunities, and I'm rather glad of it now. One could fancy that the man who seldom let one slip would be unusually apt to get the promised wages in this country."

He dragged his singlet over his arms, and a little twinkle slowly crept into Jefferson's eyes.

"Well," he said, "you carry your character with you. How long has the restraining influence been at work on you?"

"You are a little outside the mark," and a faint flush showed in Austin's hollow cheeks. "I am, as you know, not a believer in the unnecessary mortification of the flesh, but there's a trace of the artistic temperament, if that's the right name for it, in me, and it's rather apt to make one finickingly dainty."

Jefferson smiled drily. "That doesn't go quite far enough. I've seen men of your kind wallow harder than the rest. Still, whatever kept you from it, you can be thankful now."

Austin went on with his dressing, and then took a little medical treatise out of a drawer. He spent some time turning over it before he looked up.

"There's nothing that quite fits the thing here, and from what the West-coast mailboat men told me, craw-craw must be different," he said.

"In the meanwhile, it wouldn't do any harm to soak myself in black coffee."

He was about to go out when Jefferson stopped him. "This is a thing that is better buried, but there's something to be said. From my point of view, and it's that of the average sensible man, I was right; but yours goes higher, and in one way I am glad of it. I just want to tell you I'm satisfied with my partner!"

Austin smiled at him. "We'll both be guilty of some sentimental nonsense we may be sorry for afterwards if we continue in that strain, my friend.

Still, there's one thing to consider. Although I couldn't help it, what I did was, of course, absurd, if you look at it practically, and things of that kind have their results occasionally."

Jefferson seemed to shiver, and then clenched a hard, scarred fist.

"We won't think of it. Your blood's clean," he said. "But if, after all, trouble comes--I'll get even with that d.a.m.ned Funnel-paint if I spend my life in Africa trailing him, and have to kill him with my naked hands!"

CHAPTER XXIV

AUSTIN FINDS A CLUE

The grey light was growing clearer, and the mangroves taking shape among the fleecy mist, when Austin stood looking down upon the creek in the heavy, windless morning. There was no brightness in the dingy sky, which hung low above the mastheads, but the water gleamed curiously, and no longer lapped along the steamer's rusty plates. It lay still beneath her hove-up bilge, giving up a hot, sour smell, and Jefferson, who came out of the skipper's room, touched Austin as he gazed at it.

"The stream should have been setting down by now. Something's backing up the ebb," he said. "A shift of wind along the sh.o.r.e, most likely. The rain's coming!"

Austin glanced up at the lowering heavens, but there was no change in their uniform greyness, and no drift of cloud. The smoke of the locomotive boiler went straight up, and the mist hung motionless among the trees ash.o.r.e. Still, there was something oppressive and portentous in the stillness, and his skin was tingling.

"If it doesn't come soon we'll not have a man left," he said. "It isn't in flesh and blood to stand this much longer."

"Then," said Jefferson drily, "the sooner we get to work the better.

There's a good deal to do, and you're not going to feel it quite so much once you get hold of the spanner."

The pump had just stopped, and Tom came towards them, rubbing his greasy hands with a cotton rag, as they moved in the direction of the engine room. The lower part of it was dripping when they went down, and a foot or two of water still lay upon the floor-plates where they met the depressed side, but it was evident that another hour's work of the big pump would leave the place almost dry. Austin sat down on a tool-locker lid, with Jefferson standing beside him, but Tom floundered away towards the stoke-hold, and they could hear him splashing in the water. When he reappeared with a blinking lamp he crawled up the slippery ladder as though working out a clue, while it was several minutes before he came back and leaned against a column opposite Jefferson with the look of a man who had not found quite what he had expected.

"Sea-c.o.c.ks shut!" he said. "Ballast tank full-way c.o.c.k is screwed up, too. Of course, they could have closed that with the overhead screw-gear. You'll remember that manhole cover was off the forward section."

Jefferson glanced at Austin, though it was Tom he spoke to. "Did you expect to find them open?"

"Well," said the donkey-man, "to be quite straight, I did."

"I wonder why?"

Tom glanced at him with a little suggestive grin. "She has two plates started, but with the boiler blowing away half her steam we haven't very hard work to run all that came in that way down, and her bilge pump would have kept her clear. What I want to know is, what all that water was doing in her?"

"Ah," said Jefferson, "you must ask another. I guess n.o.body's going to find the full answer to that conundrum. There are only two or three men who could have told us, and we're not going to have an opportunity of worrying them about it, unless we get the fever, too."

"Well," said Tom, "the mill's looking good, but it's about time we made a start on her and got the cylinder covers off and hove the pistons up.

It's quite likely we'll want to spring new rings on them. There should be some of the spanners in that locker, Mr. Austin."

Austin rose and lifted the lid, while Tom held the lamp, but the first thing he saw was a sodden book. He drew it out, dripping, and opened it; but while a good many of the pulpy pages had fallen out, there were enough left to show that it was one of the little tables of strengths and weight of materials an engineer often carries about with him. There was a rather wide margin round the tabulated figures, and as he vacantly pulled out one of the wet pages he noticed a little close pencil writing upon a part of it.

"Hold that light nearer, Tom. Here's something that looks interesting,"

he said. "'Buried Jackson this morning--memo hand his share over to Mary Nichol.'"

He signed Tom to move the light again. "There follows an obliterated address, and the words, 'scarcely think she'll ever get it. My left arm's almost rotten now.'"

He stopped again a moment, and his face had grown hard when he went on: "You see, the thing--is--contagious, and that devil Funnel-paint, or somebody, has played the same trick before. I wonder if the man who wrote this looked quite as bad as the n.i.g.g.e.r did."

"Hold on!" said Jefferson sharply. "I guess none of us have any use for that kind of talking, and you swilled yourself with permanganate, any way."

"The result will probably be the same, whether one thinks of it or not.

You will, however, notice that the man's name was Jackson, and the woman's Mary Nicol."

It was evident that this was a forced attempt to break away from the subject, and though Tom grinned, it was in a sickly fashion.

"That's no how astonishing. She was the last," he said. "Hadn't you better turn over, and see if there's any more of it?"

Austin contrived to lift another of the pulpy pages, and once more the close writing appeared, but it was difficult to make out, and their faces were close together when Tom lowered the lamp. They showed curiously grave, as well as hollow, in the smoky light, for there was reason for believing that the man who had made those notes was dead, and it was clear that the horrible thing which had stricken him might also come upon them.

"The last of the bags buried this afternoon," Austin read. "Watson took a new bearing. W. half N. to the cottonwood, with twist of creek in line. Forty paces--he made it thirty-nine. Graham says one packet left in the old place where the n.i.g.g.e.rs got scent of it, and the quills on the second islet; memo, it makes 50 to me."

He dropped the book, and Tom came near letting go the lamp, while for a moment or two afterwards they stared at one another. Austin was quivering a little, but Jefferson made a restraining gesture as he laid a hand upon his shoulder.

"Steady! I guess we've got the clue," he said. "There are two islets two or three leagues back down the creek. You pa.s.sed them coming up. Still, what do they put up in quills?"