The Great Quest Part 26

"Here I am," I cried. "I am coming." Then, when I turned to speak to the girl, I saw that she had gone.

I stepped off the porch, tripped, stumbled to my knees, got up again, and strode so recklessly down through the dark to the river that, before I knew I had reached it, I was ankle-deep in water.

"Well, my man," cried Gideon North, "you seem to be in a hurry now, though you were long enough starting."

Without a word, I got into the boat and took off my shoes and poured out the water. It irritated me to see Arnold looking at me keenly and yet with gentle amus.e.m.e.nt. I had come to have no small respect for Arnold's unusual insight.

All the way back to the brig my head was in such a whirl that, for the first time in my waking moments since we left Cuba, I completely forgot the one fundamental object for which we three were working, to save as far as possible poor Seth Upham and his property from the hands of Cornelius Gleazen and his fellows. Instead I kept hearing the voice that had said, "You're not of their kind," kept seeing the face that I had seen there in the dim light--not at all clearly, yet clearly enough to see that it had a sweet dignity and that it was good to look upon.

The boat b.u.mping against the brig woke me from my dreams. Scrambling aboard, I left my shoes in the galley to dry by the stove and ran aft in my stocking feet, and down below. In my eagerness to get dry shoes and stockings I quite outstripped the others, who were loitering in the gangway.

It was with no thought or intention of surprising the four men in the cabin that I burst in upon them on my way to my own stateroom.

They had pushed cards and chips to one side of the table and had gathered closely round it. In the centre, where their four heads almost met, was a handful of rough stones, which for all I knew might have been quartz.

That I had done anything to anger them, when I came down so unceremoniously, I was entirely unaware; but O'Hara, the newcomer, sweeping the stones together with a curse, covered them with his hands; Gleazen faced about and angrily stared at my stockinged feet; and Matterson, rising in fury, snarled through his teeth, "You sniveling, sneaking, prying son of a skulking sea-cook, I swear I'll have your heart's blood!"

Before I could turn, the man dived at me straight across the table.

I raised my hands to fend him off, with the intention of shoving his head into the floor and planting my feet on the back of his neck; stepped back, tripped and fell. I saw Gleazen lift a chair to bring it down on my head--even then I thought of the irony of my being his "lieutenant"! I saw that wild Irishman, Bud O'Hara, laughing like a fiend at my plight. Then I flung up my feet to receive the blow, and seizing the legs of the chair, twisted it over between Matterson and myself, and got up on my knees. Then in came the others.

Spinning on his heel, Matterson, his jaw out-thrust, stood squarely in the path of Gideon North.

"You are hasty," I said. "I came in to get my shoes."

"Ah," said Bud O'Hara, in biting sarcasm, "and then 't was in the eyes of us that you was looking for trouble."

"It was, indeed," I retorted.

"And perhaps you didn't see what was going on," he persisted.

"I did not," I replied, not knowing what he meant.

They looked doubtfully at one another, and then at me, and presently Gleazen said, "Then we're sorry we used you rough, Joe."

Meanwhile, I now perceived, the handful of stones had disappeared.

All this time my uncle had sat in his chair, looking like a man in a nightmare, and had raised neither hand nor voice to help me. In a way, so amazing was his silence, it seemed almost as if he himself had struck me. I could scarcely believe it of him. When I looked at him in mingled wonder and grief, his eyes fell and he slightly moistened his lips.

CHAPTER XVIII

A WARNING DEFIED

The brig Adventure, two thousand miles from home, lay now in the strong, silent current of a great tropical river, which seemed to me to have an almost human quality. In its depth and strength and silence, it was like a determined, taciturn man. I felt keenly its subtle fascination; I delighted to picture in my mind its course all the way from the mysterious hills far inland, of which Pedro and Gleazen and Matterson told stories filled with trade and slaves and stirring incidents, down to the low, marshy sh.o.r.e, which had already cast a spell upon me.

For months since that fearful night when we five fled from Topham, Arnold and Gideon North and I had been holding ourselves ready at every moment to stand up against Gleazen and Matterson and meet them man to man in behalf of my poor, deluded uncle, who now would go slinking about the deck, now would make a pitiful show of his old pompous, dictatorial manner. But when I burst in upon them in the cabin, there had been that in their manner, even after their anger spent itself, which told me more plainly than harshest words that the time for action had come very near.

To Arnold, when we were alone in our stateroom, I said, "What would you think, were I to load my pistols afresh?"

He looked curiously at me.

"You think," said he, slowly, "that there is already need?"

"I do," I replied.

I felt a new confidence in myself and in my own judgment. I regarded our situation calmly and with growing a.s.surance. Although I did not then realize it, I know now that I was crossing the threshold between youth and manhood.

He gravely nodded.

"It is a wise precaution," he said at last, "although I prophesy that they will use us further before the time comes when we must fight for our lives."

So we both slept that night with new charges in the pistols by our heads, and Arnold, very likely, as well as I, dreamed of the utterly reckless, lawless men with whom we were a.s.sociated. I question, though, if Arnold thought as much as I of the stern man in the cane house on the riverbank, or if he thought at all of the girl whose white face and dark eyes I could not forget.

For another day we continued to lie in the river; but the brig, alow and aloft, bustled with various activities. We sorted out firearms on the cabin floor, and charts and maps on the cabin table, and on the spar-deck we piled a large store of provisions. And in the afternoon Matterson took Captain North in the quarter boat down to the mouth of the river, and there taught him the bearings of the channel.

Side by side Arnold and I watched all that went forward, here lending a hand at whatever task came our way, there noting keenly how the stores were arranged.

"Well, sir," said Arnold, quietly, when Captain North for a moment stood beside us in preoccupied silence, "are we about to load a cargo of Africans?"

"I a.s.sure you I'd like to know that," the captain replied, with one of his quick glances.

Uncle Seth gave me an occasional curt word or sentence--he was in one of his arrogant moods; Matterson talked to me vaguely and at length of great times ahead; O'Hara watched me with hostile and suspicious glances. And still Arnold and I, whenever occasion offered, put our heads together and made what we could of the various preparations. Our surmises, time showed, were not far wrong.

And all this while I had watched the clearing ash.o.r.e and had seen neither the missionary nor any other white man.

When, in the evening, all hands were ordered aft, we on the quarter deck looked down and saw the men standing expectantly to hear whatever was to be said. A thousand rumors had spread throughout the vessel, and of what was really afoot they knew less, even, than Arnold and I. There was Abe Guptil with his kindly face upturned, Pedro with his monkey on his shoulder and what seemed to me a devilish gleam in his eye, and all the rest. As they gathered close under us, the light from the lanterns slung in the rigging revealed every one of them to my curious gaze.

"Men," said Captain North, quietly, "Mr. Gleazen has asked me to call you together. There are certain things that he wishes to tell you."

As the grizzled old mariner stepped back, Cornelius Gleazen advanced.

His beaver, donned for the occasion, was tilted over his eye as of old; his diamonds flashed from finger and throat; he puffed great clouds of smoke from his ever-present cigar.

"Lads," he cried in that voice which seemed always so fine and hearty and honest, "lads, that there's no ordinary purpose in this voyage, all of you, I make no doubt, have heard. Well, lads, you're right about that. It is no ordinary purpose that has brought us all the way from Boston. You've done good work for us so far, and if you keep up the good work until the end of the voyage has brought us home again to New England, we ain't going to forget you, lads. No, sir! Not me and Mr. Matterson and Mr. O'Hara--oh, yes, and Mr.

Upham! We ain't going to forget you."

Reflectively he knocked the ash from his cigar. Leaning over the rail, he said, as if taking all the men into his confidence, "All you've got to do now, lads, is stand by. Captain North will take the brig to sea for one week. There's a reason for that, lads, a good reason. At the end of the week he will bring the brig up off the mouth of the river, and some fine morning you'll wake up and find us back again.

"Meanwhile, lads, we're going to make up a little party to go exploring. Me and Mr. Matterson, Mr. O'Hara, Mr. Upham, and Pedro and Sanchez are going. And we are going to take John Laughlin with us, too. It's going to be a hard trip, lads, and you'll none of you be sorry to miss it. Now, then, lay to and load this gear into the boat. Be faithful to your work, and you'll be glad when you see what we're going to do for you."

As he turned away, proud of his eloquence, there was a low rumble of voices.

I looked first at Gleazen and Matterson and O'Hara; then I looked at poor Seth Upham, once as proud and arrogant as any of them.

Remembering how in little ways he had been kind to me,--how, since my mother died, his dry, hard affection had gone out to me, as if in spite of him,--I pitied the man from the bottom of my heart. Surely, I thought, he must not go alone into the wilds of Africa with such men as were to make up Gleazen's party.

No one had spoken, except in undertones, since Gleazen; some one, I thought, must speak promptly and firmly.