The Second Class Passenger Part 2

"Push it in."

Dawson laid his shoulder to it, his arms folded, and shoved desperately till his head buzzed. As he eased up he heard the near feet of the menacing police again.

"You must push it in!" cried the woman. "It is the only way. If not--"

"Here, catch hold of this," said Dawson, and she found the bronze image in her hands. "Let me come," he said, and standing back a little, he flung his twelve stone of bone and muscle heavily on the door. It creaked, and some fastening within broke and fell to the ground.

Once again he a.s.saulted it, and it was open. They pa.s.sed rapidly within, and closed it behind them, and with the woman's hand guiding, Dawson stumbled up a long, narrow, sloppy stair that gave on to the flat roof of the building. Above them was sky again. The rain had pa.s.sed, and the frosty stars of Mozambique shone faintly. He took a deep breath as he received the image from the hands of the woman.

"You hear them?" she said, and he listened with a shudder to the pa.s.sing of the men below.

"But we must go on," she said. "We are not safe yet. Over the wall to the next roof. Come!"

They clambered over a low parapet, and dropped six feet to another level. Dawson helped the woman up the opposite wall, and she sat reconnoitering on the top.

"Come quietly," she warned him, and he clambered up beside her and looked down at the roof before them. In a kind of tent persons appeared to be sleeping; their breath was plainly to be heard.

"You must walk like a rat," she whispered, smiling, and lowered herself. He followed. She was crouching in the shadow of the wall, and drew him down beside her. Somebody had ceased to sleep in the tent, and was gabbling drowsily, in a monotonous sing-song.

"If they see us," she whispered to him, "they will think you have come here after the women."

"But we could say----" he began.

"There will be nothing to say," she interrupted. "Hush! There he comes."

Out of the tent crawled a man, lean and black and bearded, with a sheet wrapped around him. He stood up and looked around, yawning. The woman nestled closer to Dawson, who gripped instinctively on the bronze image. The man walked to the parapet on their left and looked over, and then walked back to the tent and stood irresolutely, muttering to himself. Squatted under the wall, Dawson found room amid the race of his disordered thoughts to wonder that he did not instantly see them.

He was coming towards them, and Dawson felt the bare shoulder that pressed against his arm shrug slightly. The man was ten paces away, walking right on to them, and looking to the sky, when, with throbbing temples and tense lips, Dawson rose, ran at him, and gripped him. He had the throat in the crutch of his right hand, and strangled the man's yell as it was conceived. They went down together, writhing and clutching, Dawson uppermost, the man under him scratching and slapping at him with open hands. He drew up a knee and found a lean chest under it, drove it in, and choked his man to silence and unconsciousness.

"Take this, take this," urged the woman, bending beside him. She pressed her slender-bladed knife on him. "Just a p.r.i.c.k, and he is quite safe!"

Dawson rose. "No," he said. "He's still enough now. No need to kill him." He looked at the body and from it to the woman. "Didn't I get him to rights?" he asked exultantly.

She raised her face to his.

"It was splendid," she said. "With only the bare hands to take an armed man----"

"Armed!" repeated Dawson.

"Surely," she answered. "That, at least, is always sure. See," she pulled the man's sheet wide. Girt into a loin-cloth below was an ugly, broad blade. "Yes, it was magnificent. You are a man, my friend."

"And you," he said, thrilled by her adulation and, the proximity of her bare, gleaming bosom, "are a woman."

"Then----" she began spiritedly; but in a heat of cordial impulse he took her to him and kissed her hotly on the lips.

"I was wondering when it would come," she said slowly, as he released her. "When you spoke to the German about the bad word, I began to wonder. I knew it would come. Kiss me again, my friend, and we will go on."

"Are we getting towards the landing-stage?" he asked her, as the next roof was crossed. "I mustn't miss my boat, you know."

"Oh, that!" she answered. "You want to go back?"

"Well, of course," he replied, in some surprise. "That's what I was trying to do when I knocked at your door. I've missed my dinner as it is."

"Missed your dinner!" she repeated, with a bubble of mirth. "Ye-es; you have lost that, but,"--she came to him and laid a hand on his shoulder, speaking softly--"but you have seen me. Is it nothing, friend, that you have saved me?"

He had stopped, and she was looking up to him, half-smiling, half- entreating, wholly alluring. He looked down into her dark face, with a sudden quickening about the heart.

"And all this fighting," she continued, as though he were to be convinced of something. "You conquer men as though you were bred on the roofs of Mozambique. You fight like--like a hero. It is a rush, a blow, a tumble, and you have them lying at your feet. And when you remember all this, will you not be glad, friend--will you not be glad that it was for me?"

He nodded, clearing his throat huskily. Her hand on his shoulder was a thing to charm him to fire.

"I'd fight--I'd fight for you," he replied uneasily, "as long as--as long as there was any one to fight."

He was feeling his way in speech, as best he could, past conventionalities. There had dawned on him, duskily and half-seen, the unfitness of little proprieties and verbose frills while he went to war across the roofs with this woman of pa.s.sion.

"You would," she said fervently, with half-closed eyes. "I know you would."

She dropped her hand, and stood beside him in silence. There was a long pause. He guessed she was waiting for the next move from him, and he nerved himself to be adequate to her unspoken demand.

"You lead on," he said at last unsteadily.

"Where?" she asked breathlessly.

He did not speak, but waved an open hand that gave her the freedom of choice. It was his surrender to the wild spirit of the Coast, and he grasped the head of the bra.s.s image the tighter when he had done it.

She and Fate must guide now; it rested with him only to break opposing heads.

She smiled and shivered. "Come on, then," she said, and started before him.

They traversed perhaps a score of roofs enclosed with high parapets, on to each of which he lifted her, hands in her armpits, swinging her cleanly to the level of his face and planting her easily and squarely on the coping. He welcomed each opportunity to take hold of her and put out the strength of his muscles, and she sat where he placed her, smiling and silent, while he clambered up and dropped down on the other side.

At length a creaking wooden stair that hung precariously on the sheer side of a house brought them again to the ground level. It was another gloomy alley into which they descended, and the darkness about him and the mud underfoot struck Dawson with a sense of being again in familiar surroundings. The woman's hand slid into his as he stood, and they started along again together.

The alley seemed to be better frequented than that of which he already had experience. More than once dark, sheeted figures pa.s.sed them by, noiseless save for the underfoot swish in the mud, and presently the alley widened into a little square, at one side of which there was a fresh rustle of green things. At the side of it a dim light showed through a big open door, from which came a musical murmur of voices, and Dawson recognized a church.

"The Little Garden of St. Sebastien," murmured the woman, and led him on to cross the square. A figure that had been hidden in the shadow now lounged forth; and revealed itself to them as a man in uniform.

He stood across their way, and accosted the woman briefly in Portuguese.

Dawson stood fidgeting while she spoke with him. He seemed to be repeating a brief phrase over and over again, harshly and irritably; but she was cajoling, remonstrating, arguing, as he had seen her argue in that ill-fated room an hour back.

"What's the matter with him?" demanded Dawson impatiently.

"He says he won't let me go," answered the woman, with a tone of despair in her voice.

"The devil he won't! What's he got to do with it?"

"Oh, these little policemen, they always arrest me when they can,"

she replied, with a smile.

"Here, you!" cried Dawson, addressing himself to the man in uniform-- "you go away. Voetsaak, see! You mind your own business, and get out."