The Beach of Dreams Part 31

CHAPTER x.x.xII

THE OPIUM SMOKERS

Raft had never seen a female swoon before. He thought for a moment that she had dropped dead and the shock of the business pulled him together like a douche of cold water. Then he saw that she was breathing and took heart, rubbing her hands and poking her in the ribs and calling on her to pull herself together. He would have been more frightened only that he put her condition down to her general unaccountableness in some ways.

In less than five minutes she had come to and was leaning on her elbow and declaring herself to be all right. Then she got on her feet and, taking her seat on the side of the open hatch, looked about her at the dingy deck c.u.mbered with a whale boat and all sorts of raffle. The slight swell of the bay rocked the barque to the creaking tune of block and cordage, whilst overhead the sea-gulls flitted mewing against the vast black cliff that rose three hundred feet sheer from the licking sea.

"You're all right now?" said Raft dubiously.

"Yes, I feel quite right and strong again--just a little dizzy, that's all."

"Mind and don't tumble back down that hatch," said he, "I'll drop below and see what's to be found if you keep your eye out for them Larrikens.

Give me a call if you sight them."

The Larrikens were nowhere to be seen; they were in the high ground hidden, and no doubt holding a council of war, but sight or sound of them there was none.

She nodded and he dropped below into the cabin.

The cabin of Chang was clean, almost dainty. Two smaller cabins opened from it, one evidently for Chang and the other for his second in command. Raft in his hurried look round saw a lot of things including a rack containing six rifles and two heavy revolvers resting on an ammunition box filled with hundreds of cartridges. He opened the lazarette beneath the cabin flooring; it seemed well-stored, and on a shelf in the main cabin there were some provisions including a tin of biscuits.

He brought up the biscuits, the two revolvers and a pocketful of ammunition and, taking his seat on the hatch edge beside the girl, opened the tin; then he went forward and hunted for water, found the water cask and, getting a tin pannikin from the galley, brought her a drink.

He had never loaded or fired a revolver; the girl had, and she shewed him how, the echoes of the cliffs answering to the ear splitting reports as he made a few practice shots, and the guillemots squalling and rising in clouds from their perches on the rock.

"We're fixed all right now," said he, "and we can have those chaps on board when they're ready to come."

"On board!"

"Oh, they'll come right enough, they've got no grub on land."

"Come--but do you mean to say you will let them?"

"Who's to work the hooker out of the bay?" he answered, "Not you and me.

We've got to get them aboard. There's no harm in them now they're licked."

He spoke with a knowledge of men absorbed from the whole world over. The Chinese were licked and like dogs they would come to heel. He knew it, for he knew men. He had put the fear of G.o.d into them, he and the girl; the thing was over. Give the "c.h.i.n.ks" time to lick their wounds and swallow their gruel and they would be right as pie. He had seen a whole ship's company licked by a little man of great will, and in hundreds of experiences and fights he had found that a beaten man, be he strong as ten, is to be led like a child. He was right. Next morning--they slept on deck that night keeping watch alternately--the "c.h.i.n.ks," hungry and starving for a suck at their opium pipes appeared, the whole eleven of them, and coming down the beach like a troop of children stood in a line; then they began to wail.

Wail and wag their heads and wave their hands. Kerguelen, coming on top of the licking, had broken them to pieces. Then the whole lot kow-towed like one man, knees and forehead on the shingle.

Raft got into the boat and rowed off for the beach bringing them aboard four at a time and as each lot reached the deck they kow-towed to the girl and then trotted forward to the fo'c'sle, disappearing like rats, their teeth chattering from exposure during the night, stripped to the waist as they were, and never could one have imagined these little cringing harmless looking men the jackals of the day before.

When the whole lot were in the fo'c'sle Raft gave them time to settle, then he went down amongst them revolver in pocket. They had lit a lamp, some had lit opium pipes and some were lighting them, and they lay about like creatures broken with cold and weariness. He nodded to them and left them to the opium that would drive the chill from their bones, then coming on deck stood beside the girl.

"They'll be able to work the ship to-morrow," said he, "told you they'd be all right; reckon they won't mind changing that big chap I knocked out for us."

"They don't seem to be able to speak a word of English," said she.

"Oh, I reckon I'll do the steering till we get clear of this place,"

said he, "they'll handle the sails without knowing English and once we're clear we have only to make north till we strike a Christian ship."

"They seem so harmless," she said, "and when I think of that fight--and of what I did--"

"You fought fine--d.a.m.ned fine," said Raft, "d.a.m.ned fine." He put his arm round her, not as a man puts his arm round a woman, but as a shipmate puts his arm round a shipmate.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

MAINSAIL HAUL

That night Raft and the girl took it in turns again to keep watch on deck. They might just as well have gone below for all the trouble the crew could have given them. These gentry had fought bitterly because they had been attacked. Raft had frightened them. There is a form of bravery which one might liken to inverted terror. Rats shew it when they are cornered, and so do men. They had seen their boss killed with a blow and the destroyer hurling himself on them and, though they were peaceable men, they fought. These same peaceable men, be it understood, would, all the same, have murdered a human being for profit could they have done so with reasonable safety.

When the girl came on deck in the morning, after her watch below, she found the deck busy and Raft with his hands in his pockets leaning against the port bulwarks and watching the busy ones.

"They're in a thundering hurry to get out," said Raft. "That chap,"

pointing to a "c.h.i.n.k" that seemed a cut above the others and was evidently the mate, "has been pointing to the sky and out there beyond the bay. They seem to smell bad weather coming. I nodded my head to him and he's working the hands now for all they're worth."

"The wind is blowing from the land," said the girl.

"Yes," said Raft, "it'll take us out without towing, unless it changes."

The hatch cover had been put on and the boat brought to the davits, some of the crew were up aloft scrambling about like monkeys, others were making ready to haul on the halyards and a fellow was unlashing the wheel. There was not a face in all the crowd that did not bear the signature of Anxiety writ on parchment.

The fear of weather, the fear of Kerguelen, and the fear of that bay, which was evidently haunted by evil spirits, drove them like a whip.

The mainsail was set to a chorus like the crying of sea fowl and the foresail and jib. The tide coming in held the barque to a taut anchor chain with her stern to the beach and the wind ready to take her. The mate was at the wheel and now from forward ought to have come the sound of the windla.s.s pawls and the rasp of the rising anchor chain. It didn't. From the group of Chinese collected there came, instead, a clang followed by a splash.

"Why, the beggars have knocked the shackle off the chain," cried Raft.

"Lord bless _my_ soul, never waited to raise the mud hook?"

"Does it matter?" she asked.

"Sure to have a spare one," answered he, "but it gets me, that's Chinee all over, they're rattled."

"Look!" she cried, "we're moving!"

The cliff's were beginning to glide landward and the bay's mouth to widen, sea-gulls flew with them screaming a challenge, and the guillemots lining the cliff ledges broke into voice, echoes and guillemots storming at them as they went.

Then the sea opened wide under the grey breezy day and the great islands shewed themselves away to the east. To the west and the north all was clear water.

Raft and the girl walked to the after-rail and looked at the coast they were leaving; it seemed horribly near and the great black cliffs only a gunshot away. If the infernal wind of Kerguelen were to arise and blow from the north even now they might be seized and dashed back on those rocks, but the south-east wind held steady and the cliffs drew away and the coast lengthened and new cliffs and bays disclosed themselves, till they almost fancied they could see, away to the east, the great seal beach where the remains of the dead man lay in the cave and where the great sea-bulls were without doubt taking their ease on the rocks.