Told in the East Part 37

Mr. White sent for whisky and poured out a stiff four fingers, to the awful disgust of Curley Crothers, who saw the whole transaction. The pilot consumed it so instantly that there seemed never to have been any in the gla.s.s.

"I suppose your name's Macnab-or Macphairson-which? Sign here, please."

The pilot took the proffered pen in unaccustomed fingers and made a crisscross scrawl, adorned with thirteen blots. The pen nib broke under the strain, and he handed it back with an air of confidential remonstrance.

"That thing's no mo-ah good," he volunteered.

"So I see. Now tell me your name in full, so that I can write it next to the mark. It's a wonder of a mark! Mac-what's the rest of it?"

"Ha.s.san Ah."

"Macha.s.san?"

"No, sah. Ha.s.san Ah."

"And you're English?"

"Yes, sah."

"With that name?"

"Mah name makes no diffunts, sah. Ah'm English."

"Well-here's your money. Cutter away, there! Put the pilot and his crew ash.o.r.e! Sorry about your boat, pilot, but it couldn't be helped."

"Makes me believe that I'm a n.i.g.g.e.r!" muttered Curley Crothers, not yet released from duty on the bridge.

"First time I ever wished I was a Dutchman!" swore Joe Byng, coiling up his sounding line.

Ten minutes later the cutter's captain swung the boat's stern in sh.o.r.e when he judged that he was reasonably near enough and too far in for sharks. He had his orders to put the pilot and his crew ash.o.r.e, but the means had not been too exactly specified.

"Get out and swim for it, you bally Englishman!" he ordered, using a boat-hook on the nearest one to make his meaning clear.

One by one they jumped for it, the pilot going last. He plainly did not understand the point of view.

"Ah'm English!" he expostulated. "Lissen he-ah, Ah'm English! Damwell English!"

"All right; let's see you swim, English!" jeered the cutter's captain, and the pilot took the water with a splash.

"Ah su-ah am English!" he vowed, as he swam for the sh.o.r.e, and he stood by the sea's edge repeating his a.s.sertion with a leathery pair of lungs until the cutter had rowed out of ear-shot.

"English, is he?" said Joe Byng to Curley Crothers in the fo'castle, not twenty minutes later. "I'd show him, if I had him in here for twenty minutes!"

"That fellow's interested me," said Crothers. "He's got me thinking. I vote we investigate him."

"How?"

"Ash.o.r.e, fathead."

"There'll be no sh.o.r.e leave."

"No? You left off being wet nurse to the dawg?" "I brush him, mornin's; if that's what you mean."

"Is he fit?"

"Fit to fight a b.u.mboat full o' pilots!"

"Could he be sick for an hour?"

"Might be did."

"Tomorrow?"

"Morning?"

"At about two bells?"

"It could be done."

"Then do it!"

"Why?"

"Because, Joe Byng my boy, you and I want sh.o.r.e leave; and the pup-and he's a decent pup-must suffer for to make a 'tween-deck holiday. Get my meaning? I've a propagandrum that'll work this tide. You go and set the fuse in the pup's inside; and mind you, time it right, my son-for two bells when the old man's in the chair!"

So Joe Byng, who was something of an expert in the way and ways of dogs, departed in search of an oiler with whom he was on terms of condescension; and he returned to the fo'castle a little later with the nastiest, most awful-smelling mess that ever emanated even from the engine-room of a destroyer in the Persian Gulf (where grease and things run rancid.)

II.

Lying lazily at anchor off the reeking beach of Adra Bight, the Puncher looked peaceful and complacent-which is altogether opposite to what she and her commander were, or had been, for a month. The ship hummed her shut-in discontent, as a hive does when the bees propose to swarm, and her commander-who never, be it noted, went to windward of the one word "d.a.m.n"-used that one word very frequently.

He sat "abaft the mainmast" at a table that was splotched already with abundant perspiration, and the acting engineer who stood in front of him shifted from foot to foot in att.i.tudes expressive of increasing agony of mind. It grew obvious at last that there was a limit to Mr. Hartley's store of courteous deference.

There had been news, red hot but wrong, of dhows loaded to the water-line with guns and ammunition somewhere up the Gulf. India, ever fretful for her tribes beyond the border, had borrowed Applewaite and his destroyer by instant cablegram, and jealously held records had been broken while the Puncher quartered those indecent seas and heated up her bearings. It was almost too much to have to come back empty-handed. It was quite too much to have to run for shelter under the lee of Adra's uninviting coral reef. And to be told by an acting engineer that he would have to stay a week was utterly beyond the scope of polite conversation.

"Why a week?" asked Commander Applewaite, with eyebrows raised to the nth power of incredulity.

"Why a week?" asked Mr. Hartley, breaking down the barrier of self-restraint at last. "I'll tell you why. Because, although the guts of her are so much sc.r.a.p-iron, you've a crew of engineers who could build machinery of h.e.l.l-slag-build it, mind-and could get steam out o' the Sahara, where there isn't any water at all.

"Because-conditional upon the act o' G.o.d and your permission-I'm willing to perform a miracle. Because the whole engine-room complement is dancing mad for sh.o.r.e leave, and there'll be none this side o' Bombay; and because, in consequence o' that, creation would be a mild name for what's about to happen under gratings until the shafts revolve again. Man, I wish ye'd take one peep at her bearings, though ye wouldn't understand.

"Because you're lucky; any other engineer in all the navies o' the world would take a month to tinker with her, even if he didn't have to send to Bombay for a tow. Because-"

"That'll do!" said Applewaite, his mind wandering already in search of suitable employment for the crew. "Get the repairs done as soon as possible; we stay here until you have finished what is necessary."