The Tale of Timber Town Part 4

Rose laughed. "Which is to say the comfort of you men."

"My gal," said her father sternly, "we have all we want. Me an' these gen'lemen will be quite happy till dinner-time."

Rose stooped to pick up the boots which her father had discarded for a pair of carpet-slippers, and rustled out of the room.

"Gen'lemen," said the Pilot of Timber Town, "we'll drink to better luck next time."

The three men carefully filled their gla.s.ses, emptied them in solemn silence, and put them almost simultaneously with a rattle on the polished table.

"Ah!" exclaimed the Pilot, after a long-drawn breath. "Four over proof.

Soft as milk, an't it? Goes down like oil, don't it?"

"Most superior tipple," replied the skipper, "but you had your losses in _The Witch_, same as me and the owners. I had aboard six cases of the finest port as ever you tasted, sent out for you by your brother; senior partner of the firm, Mr. Scarlett. 'Cap'n Sartoris,' he says, 'I wish you good luck and a prosperous voyage, but take care o' that port wine for my brother. There's dukes couldn't buy it.' 'No, sir,' I says to him, 'but shipowners an' dukes are different. Shipowners usually get the pick of a cargo.' He laughed, an' I laughed: which we wouldn't ha' done had we known _The Witch_ was going to be piled up on this confounded coast."

The Pilot had risen to his feet. His face was crimson with excitement, and his brow dark with pa.s.sion.

"Cap'n Sartoris!" he exclaimed, as he brought his fist with a bang upon the table, so that the decanter and tumblers rattled, "every sea-faring man hates to see a good ship wrecked, whoever the owner may be. None's more sorry than me to see the bones of your ship piled on that reef. But when you talk about bringing me a present o' wine from my brother, you make my blood boil. To h.e.l.l with him and all his ships!" With another bang upon the table, he paced up and down, breathing deeply, and trembling with pa.s.sion still unvented.

Sartoris and Scarlett looked with astonishment at the suddenly infuriated man.

"As for his cursed port wine," continued the Pilot, "let him keep it.

_I_ wouldn't drink it."

"In which case," said the skipper, "if I'd ha' got into port, I'd ha'

been most happy to have drank it myself."

"I'd have lent you a hand, Captain," said Scarlett.

"Most happy," replied Sartoris. "We'd ha' drank the firm's health, and the reconciliation o' these two brothers. But, Pilot, let me ask a question. What on this earth could your brother, Mr. Summerhayes, ha'

done to make you reject six cases o' port--reject 'em with scorn: six cases o' the best port as was ever shipped to this or any other country?

Now, that's what puzzles me."

"Then, Cap'n Sartoris--without any ill-feeling to you, though I do disagree with your handling o' that ship--I say you'll have to puzzle it out. But I ask this: If _you_ had a brother who was the greatest blackguard unhung, would _you_ drink his port wine?"

"It would largely depend on the quality," said the skipper--"the quality of the wine, not o' the man."

"The senior partner of your firm is my brother."

"That's right. I don't deny it."

"If he hadn't been my brother I'd ha' killed him as sure as G.o.d made little apples. He'd a' bin dead this twenty year. It was the temptation to do it that drove me out of England; and I vowed I'd never set foot there while he lived. And he sends me presents of port wine. I wish it may choke him! I wish he may drink himself to death with it! Look you here, Sartoris: you bring back the anger I thought was buried this long while; you open the wound that twelve thousand miles of sea and this new country were healing. But--but I thank G.o.d I never touched him. I thank G.o.d I never proved as big a blackguard as he. But don't mention his name to me. If you think so much of him that you must be talking, talk to my gal, Rosebud. Tell her what a fine man she's got for an uncle, how rich he is, how generous--but _I_ shall never mention his name. I'm a straight-spoken man. If I was to tell my gal what I thought of him, I should fill her with shame that such a man should be kindred flesh and blood."

The Pilot had stood still to deliver this harangue, and he now sat down, and buried his face in his hands. When he again raised his head, the skipper without a ship was helping himself sorrowfully to more of the whisky that was four over proof.

Slowly the rugged Pilot rose, and pa.s.sed out of the French window into the garden of roses and the sunlight.

"I think," said Sartoris, pa.s.sing the decanter to Scarlett, "that another drop o' this will p'raps straighten us up a bit, and help us to see what we've gone an' done. For myself, I own I've lost my bearings and run into a fog-bank. I'd be glad if some one would help me out."

"The old man's a powder-magazine, to which you managed to put a match.

That's how it is, Captain. These many years he's been a sleeping volcano, which has broken suddenly into violent eruption."

Both men, figures comical enough for a pantomime, looked seriously at each other; but not so Amiria, whose face appeared in the doorway.

"It's a mystery, a blessed puzzle; but I'd give half-a-crown for a smoke," said Sartoris, looking wistfully at the Pilot's tobacco-pipes on the mantelpiece. "I wonder if the young lady would object if I had a draw."

There was an audible t.i.tter in the pa.s.sage.

"A man doesn't realise how poor he can be till he gets shipwrecked,"

said Scarlett: "then he knows what the loss of his pipe and 'baccy means."

There was a scuffling outside the door, and the young lady with the brown eyes was forcibly pushed into the room.

"Oh, Rose, I'm ashamed," exclaimed the Maori girl, as the Pilot's daughter pushed her forward. "But you two men are so funny and miserable, that I can't help myself,"--she laughed good-naturedly--"and there's Captain Summerhayes, fretting and fuming in the garden, as if he'd lost a thousand pounds."

The scarecrows had risen respectfully to their feet, when suddenly the humour of the situation struck them, and they laughed in unison; and Amiria, shaking with merriment, collapsed upon the sofa, and hid her mirth in its cushions.

"Never mind," said the skipper, "it's not the clo'es that make the man.

Thank G.o.d for that, Scarlett. Clo'es can't make a man a bigger rogue than he is."

"Thank G.o.d for this." Scarlett tapped his waist. "I've got here what will rig you out to look less like a Guy Fawkes. You had your money in your cabin when the ship struck; mine is in my belt."

"I wondered, when I pulled you ash.o.r.e," said the Maori girl, "what it was you had round your waist."

Scarlett looked intently at the girl on the sofa.

"Do you mean _you_ are the girl that saved me? You have metamorphosed yourself. Do you dress for a new character every day? Does she make a practice of this sort of thing, Miss Summerhayes--one day, a girl in the _pa_; the next, a young lady of Timber Town?"

"Amiria is two people in one," replied Rose, "and I have not found out which of them I like most, and I have known them both for ten years."

"Most interesting," said Captain Sartoris, shambling forward in his marvellous garb, and taking hold of the Maori girl's hand. "The privilege of a man old enough to be your father, my dear. I was glad to meet you on the beach--no one could ha' been gladder--but I'm proud to meet you in the house of my old friend, Cap'n Summerhayes, and in the company of this young lady." There could be no doubt that the over-proof spirit was going to the skipper's head. "But how did you get here, my dear?"

"I rode," replied Amiria, rising from the sofa. "My horse is on the drive. Come and see him."

She led the way through the French-window, and linked arms with Rose, whilst the two strange figures followed like a couple of characters in a comic opera.

On the drive stood the Pilot, who held Amiria's big bay horse as if it were some wild animal that might bite. He had pa.s.sed round the creature's neck a piece of tarred rope, which he was making fast to the tethering-post, while he exclaimed, "Whoa, my beauty. Stand still, stand still. Who's going to hurt you?"

The Maori girl, holding her skirt in one hand, tripped merrily forward and took the rope from the old seaman's grasp.

"Really, Captain," she said, laughing, "why didn't you tie his legs together, and then lash him to the post? There, there, Robin." She patted the horse's neck. "You don't care about eating pilots, or salt fish, do you, Robin?"

"We'll turn him into the paddock up the hill," said Rose. "Dinner's ready, and I'm sure the horse is not more hungry than some of us."

"None more so than Mr. Scarlett an' myself," said Sartoris, "----we've not had a sit-down meal since we were wrecked."

CHAPTER IV.