Gold Out of Celebes Part 2

Together they reached the locomotive of their train, and like a vision the strange lady emerged from nowhere and approached them, smiling brilliantly.

"How do you do, Mr. Little," she greeted, and Little's politeness was scarcely proof against his astonishment. He stared in amazement at her ready use of his name. And he was certain now that he had never set eyes on this radiant being before. The lady prattled on, with a note of reproof: "Captain Barry refuses to accommodate a lady in distress. Won't you persuade him to sell me a pa.s.sage in his ship, Mr. Little?"

Little was sharp-witted. But even he was nonplussed to find their errand so obviously known in part. As for Barry, simple, straight sailor that he was, he was dumbfounded.

What the outcome might have been was left in doubt. The warning whistle of the incoming train jarred the warm air, and the crowd surged every way, creating a diversion that precluded reply. The train from the north drew in and disgorged its pa.s.sengers, voluble or stolid, according to whether they were of the native subjects or the Dutch masters. Out of the scrambling chaos of chugging trains, first, second, and third-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers were directed or driven to their respective locations amid hoa.r.s.e or shrill orders of guttural European or musical Javanese trainmen.

Until the last few pa.s.sengers were mounting the train steps, Barry and Little lingered, watching the human kaleidoscope and awkwardly conscious that they made poor figures before the lady at their side. Then they were attracted by an altercation going on farther along the station platform, and when they turned again the mysterious lady had as mysteriously vanished.

"She's gone!" breathed Barry, with relief.

"Good egg!" echoed Little, then seized Barry's arm. "Come on, Barry, we must hustle too. Gosh! See that?"

A mild-mannered, soft-eyed Javanese porter had set down a heavy suitcase and was apparently trying to persuade its white owner to pay his small fee for carrying it. The white man, keen-faced, overbearing, immaculately dressed, cursed the porter in venomous Low Malay and picked up the suitcase himself. As he turned to board the train, leaving the fee unpaid, the porter trotted beside him with outstretched palm, asking civilly enough for his wage. The white man swung around, kicked him viciously, and sprang on the train, leaving his victim squirming in agony on the platform.

"Here, I'm going after that duck!" gritted Barry, b.u.t.toning his jacket and starting forward. "That's the sort of white man that makes me glad I'm sun-tanned brown!"

"Not here--not now," warned Little, seizing the sailor's sleeve. "We've got to hustle to keep our seats, son. Ain't that sort o' thing regular with white men in a black man's land? It is with these lordly Dutchmen, anyway."

"Regular? Huh! Not if I can stop it," snorted Barry. "Would you see a dog kicked like that? Not much you wouldn't. I don't like that white man."

"We'll sure agree not to like him, Barry, old scout; but for the love o'

Mother Dooley don't start something that'll tie our hands this early in the game."

Little led his obstinate friend to his seat, and until their fellow travelers melted away in the crowd at the Surabaya station he kept a wary eye on him. Barry snorted like a pugilist stung hard on the nose when the white corrector of insistent coolies marched from the station as if he owned the town; and the ex-salesman was forced to use all his diplomacy to restrain Barry from an outbreak.

"Have a heart, Cap, have a heart," he pleaded, when Barry barely escaped collision with a speeding barouche while following with his eyes his unknown enemy. "We're a pair o' tourists, remember. You'll get all the sc.r.a.pping you can handle when we get away from here. If you go after every white fellow you see slugging a coolie, we'll have no time to attend to our own business."

"You're boss of the job; I'm dumb," grunted Barry. "All the same, I'd pa.s.s up Houten's proposition for the pleasure of pushing that chap's jib three inches further inboard. Let's get something to drink. I'm on fire."

Little led the way to a quiet hotel whose veranda commanded a wide view of the harbor and the Island of Madura across the straits. He had stopped here many times in his capacity of salesman, had sold the landlord a typewriter, and was still a welcome guest in spite of it.

Ordering two tall schooners of imported beer, the only kind drinkable even in that hotel, he took the proprietor aside and made some inquiries. Presently he sauntered back to Barry.

"Going up town, Jack," he announced. "Too late for the bank. I'll go to the banker's villa for our _gulden_. Unless the bottom drops out of the _Barang_, she'll be in before morning, and we can't lose any time.

"When you've lowered that bar'l o' beer into your hold--more nautical stuff, see?--you get busy too. Mynheer host tells me Leyden's schooner, the _Padang_, is hauled out for caulking. The job's done. They float her on this evening's tide. He says Leyden drops in about sundown whenever he's in town. He'll surely be here to-night, being busy about his ship.

"Now, old salt, that schooner can sail rings around any shovel-nosed old boat with those funny little crosspieces on her masts. Houten admitted that. We must hinder that schooner, long enough to beat her to the Sandang River. That's your job, sailor. But don't pull stuff raw enough to get us clapped into the calaboose. Report back here. I'll be back like a shot. Then we'll camp on Leyden's trail and size him up."

Barry set down his empty beer mug and stood up, glad of the chance of action. He hesitated, though, and said doubtfully:

"If she's hauled out still, it's easy to fix her. But I'd feel easier about it if I knew that Leyden is actually the dog you say he is. If it turned out that he's only a keen fellow who's got to windward of Houten by straight methods, I'd feel as if I'd knifed him in the dark by playing tricks on his schooner to get a start of him."

"Oh, splash!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Little. He was hot and looked it. "I thought you were satisfied about that. Look here; go ahead, pull whatever stunt is up your sleeve. I give you my word that if you see Leyden and feel as you do about him then, we'll hold back our own vessel until he's under weigh, no matter what we lose by it. Does that soothe your blessed Quixotic scruples?"

"Good enough," agreed Barry heartily, throwing off the half-felt doubts that had obsessed him. "I shouldn't have said anything like that at all, after taking you up. That coolie business got me heated. I'll probably feel better with something to do."

They parted on the hotel steps, and Barry, after inquiring of the proprietor the whereabouts of the slipway where Leyden's schooner was, swung off in the given direction. Past wharves and warehouses he strode, throwing back his wide shoulders and inhaling great drafts of spicy ozone as he found himself once again among shipping, in the atmosphere that was meat and drink to him.

At the northern extremity of the water front the craft in port dwindled from steamers and deep-water square-riggers to "country" ships, schooners, junks, and other small fry; and among the forest of masts his experienced eye picked out two spars, straighter and more shipshape than the rest, which guided him unerringly to the _Padang_.

Blocked up on a tidewater slipway, every detail of the vessel was visible, even to the last fathom of oak.u.m now being hammered into her port garboard seam. White painted and trim, she spelled speed and weatherliness in every line, and a note of admiration escaped Barry as he regarded her clean underbody from a safe distance. A trickle of water was already creeping up towards her stern; the rudder would be wet again within an hour.

From the vantage point of a huge pair of sheer-legs Barry reconnoitered.

He saw the last muddy toiler crawl from beneath the keel and scramble ash.o.r.e. It was getting rapidly dusk as the sun dipped, and a lone figure high up on deck went around placing lanterns in readiness for working the schooner off when the tide served. Besides the solitary watchman, not a soul was visible. Barry stepped out cautiously and hastened down to the floor of the slip.

One of Jack Barry's most cherished possessions was a weird Yankee contraption that cost him heavily in the shape of worn pockets. Its maker named it a knife; as a matter of fact, the knife part was worthless; but snugly and cunningly fitted into the stout buckhorn handle was a serviceable file, a hacksaw, and a marlinespike.

In the brief time before the slipway employees and the schooner's crew returned from their supper, Barry worked swiftly and silently. He ripped out fathom after fathom of fresh caulking in the garboards, making a.s.surance doubly sure, by thrusting his knife-blade clear through the seam in a dozen places. The anchor, hanging at the cathead ready to let go when the schooner floated in the harbor, he loosely connected with one of the chain-plates by a length of small wire rope, so that, when let go, it would hang a few feet under water and the schooner must drift, possibly ash.o.r.e, before another anchor could be cleared and put over.

In little over half an hour he climbed out of the slip again, dripping sweat, minus the skin of all his knuckles, and blistered as to palms and knees, but with a cheerful grin that spoke of a satisfied soul. He confidently depended upon the darkness, now absolute, and native unthoroughness, for his work to remain undetected until the sea came up and concealed it.

After a bath at the hotel he sought Little and reported his achievement.

"Good work!" chuckled his friend. Then Little whispered: "And who d 'ye suppose Leyden is, after all?"

"Search me," said Barry, his eyes on a group of men along the veranda.

"Who?"

"Your coolie kicker of Solo!"

A flash of joy lighted Barry's bronzed face, to be shaded in a moment.

"That's the best news in months, Little. But Gosh! If I'd known, I could just as easily have ripped out another ten fathom of caulking!"

As he spoke, Barry leaned forward suddenly. The group of men along the veranda had drawn his attention by their noisy laughter and greetings, and now he saw his man of Solo appear in their midst. Leyden was flushed and in high good humor; that he was hail fellow well met was obvious. He flung himself into a long cane chair and plunged into a recital that induced a gale of merriment in his listeners. Barry's eyes glittered like points of flame and bored into Leyden's back as if to force notice.

"Go easy, Jack," warned Little, sensing trouble. "Don't start a fuss."

"Shut up!" growled Barry, holding his gaze. "I won't start anything.

I'll make him start something though; then I'll sail into him like a rat up a pump!"

Leyden had finished his story, and the cla.s.s of it was patent from the guffawed comments it excited. Another of the group capped it with another, grosser yet, and the party burst into an uproarious hilarity.

Then a flabby-jowled, paunchy fellow urged in throaty gutturals:

"Come, Leyden, tell us about the new flame. It's too good to keep to yourself. She's a good girl, isn't she--as yet?"

No attempt was made to keep the conversation private. The whole party oozed a blatant superiority over any possible audience, easily traceable to the copious flow of schnapps at their table. Leyden alone, Barry noticed, drank nothing. A roar greeted the last speaker's shrewd hint at Leyden's reputation as a ladies' man, which he replied to by taking a fat wallet from his breast pocket. This he opened ostentatiously, and after a suitable pause, produced a cabinet photograph which he pressed to his lips with a theatrical flourish.

Barry crouched in his chair, feet drawn under him, hands gripping the chair arms and supporting most of his weight. Little watched the group curiously, for the moment forgetting his inflammable friend. The picture went around, to the accompaniment of coa.r.s.e jests, the burden of which indicated that the Celebes Mission field was due to either gain a convert in Leyden or lose a valued worker in the person of the picture's original.

Leyden replied with a remark that would have procured him a beating in a sailor's dive, and Barry lurched to his feet with a lurid, rumbling oath. Little started up, too, but half-heartedly, then sat down to follow the action of his friend. He too had caught that last remark, and his fingers itched to feel Leyden's windpipe throb under them.

Barry staggered across the veranda, cleverly simulating drunkenness.

Furious as he was, he was cool enough to play a definite and reasonably safe game. He lost his balance ten feet from Leyden's chair, recovered himself with a damp hiccough and maudlin apology, then darted forward and sprawled among the hilarious group with hands outstretched for the table to support himself.

Mumbling incoherently, he slowly raised himself and glared owlishly around, caught sight of the picture in Leyden's hand, and grabbed for it.

"Pretty, pretty," he gabbled, leering at Leyden and prodding that fuming gentleman in the ribs with a hard finger. "'Zat your sister?"