Where the Pavement Ends Part 5

We had been watching the widening gap of the bay off our quarter, the palm-tufted threads of beach, the sullen hills aquiver in the heat haze and the nameless dim mountains beyond. For an hour or more the only sounds had been Bartlet's gruff orders to the Kanaka at the wheel, the gentle crush of foam overside, the musical cry of the leadsman and the tap-tap of reef points and creak of tackle as our sails slatted and filled again. Each one of us was intent for some sign of the disaster.

Each one of us had a question pressing on his tongue--pretty much the same question, I judge--but n.o.body cared to voice it until the cap'n spoke. He had had, we knew, rather a special interest in Albro....

"Throw him how you like, he'd land on his feet," he said.

"Aye," confirmed Peters, the lank trader from Samarai. "Or if so be he couldn't stand, why the crowd would fairly fight for the privilege of proppin' him up and buying him the last drink in the house."

"You think he's alive?" piped Harris then.

"I think he's alive," said Bartlet, without turning his s.h.a.ggy gray head. "He weren't made to finish hugger-mugger in no such h.e.l.l hole. I'm backing the luck of Jim Albro, that always had his way."

"Like as not," said Peters, and span the cylinder of his big Webley revolver and chuckled a little; "like as not we'll find him sittin' on a stump all so lofty with the n.i.g.g.e.rs squatted round in rows, addressin'

of the congregation."

You will note--and a queer thing too--that this happened before we had learned the first sure detail of the affair at Barange Bay.

It was now the 20th of April. On the 2nd of November preceding, the pearling schooner _Timothy S._ had cleared from Cooktown on her lawful occasions for Joannet Harbor in the Louisiades. She had never reached Joannet. A month later she had been spoken by a Sydney steamer up among the Bismarck Group, where she had no ostensible business to be. And early in March some cannibal gossip of the West Coast, friendly or only boastful, had pa.s.sed word to some missionary of a British schooner cut off at Barange. That was strictly all. It remained for certain friends and backers at Cooktown, with or without lawful occasion, to link up the vaguely rumored outrage with the actual and private destination of the _Timothy S._, and to send our search party go-look-see.

But Jeckol snorted.... You could hardly blame him, at that. Among the five of us he was the only man who had never crossed Jim Albro at one point or another in the career of that eccentric luminary. And, besides, it was Jeckol's business to snort. You must have read his clever bits in the "Bulletin"--those little running paragraphs that snap and fume like a pack of Chinese crackers? He had been loafing about Bana.n.a.land on vacation just before we started, and of course he got wind and wished himself along. Trust a pressman to know the necessary people and a chance for copy.

"I've heard a deal of talk of this Albro since we weighed anchor," he said. "What's all about him? He wasn't commanding the _Timothy S._?"

"No," drawled Peters. "No--he didn't command. Mullhall was skipper."

"Did he launch the scheme then? Was he the discoverer of this wonderful virgin sh.e.l.l bed they were going to strip?"

"No," returned Peters. "No--you couldn't say he had any regular standin'

in the expedition.... He shipped as a sort of supercargo--didn't he, Cap'n Bartlet?"

"Cabin boy, more likely," said Bartlet in his slow way. "Or bos'n's mate--or even midshipmite."

Jeckol eyed us all around, but n.o.body smiled.

"You're getting at me," he said. "Never mind. Only I'm going to write the yarn, you know. You'd much better help me pick the right hero.

What's your famous Albro like?"

"The takingest chap that ever stood in shoe leather," cried young Harris with a rush. "Absolutely. I never saw him only twice, but I remember just how he looked and what he said. The first time he was drunk--but--but that was all right. He sang 'Mad Bess of Bedlam' to make your hair curl. And one night in Brisbane when he took on the Castlereagh Slasher for two rounds--"

"Six foot of mad Irishman," said Peters, "and about three inches of dreamy Spaniard atop of that--to put a head on the mixture, you might say. Blue-black wavy beard and an eye like a blue gla.s.s marble--"

"With the sunlight shining through!" Harris shot in.

"James O'Shaughnessy Albro." Peters lingered upon the name. "As to his luck, Cap'n Bartlet may be right, but I wouldn't call it so. He was born too late. He should ha' been a conquistador--d'y' call 'em?--and gone swaggerin' up and down in the old time holdin' pepper rajahs to ransom and carvin' out kingdoms. Whereas he was only Jim and anything you like between a navvy and a millionaire.

"n.o.body knows what he'd done back home--prob'ly he got to bulgin' over too many boundaries and needed room. He blew into the Endeavor River one season with a tradin' schooner of his own--curly maple saloon, satin divans, silver-mounted gun racks--by Joe, you'd ha' thought he was goin'

to trade with cherryubims for golden harps in the isles of paradise. And so he very nearly did, too, what with the dare-devil chances he took, till he lost craft and all on a race back from Thursday Island."

"Wrecked?" asked Jeckol.

"Just gambled. Old man Tyler could lay his _Hawfinch_ half a point nearer the wind than a chap has a right to expect from an archbishop.

Jimmie paid over at the dock head and went weavin' his way up Charlotte Street a beggar, turned into a political barney they were havin' there, and made them a roarin' speech on somethin'--temperance prob'ly. And, by Joe, if they didn't elect him a divisional councilor the next day!"

"I've heard of that," proffered Harris with a grin. "Wasn't it the same winter he did a quick dash to the tin mines for his health? It seems there was a beauteous and wealthy widow. He couldn't have loved her half so well had he not loved her pretty under-housemaid more. So he started for Mount Romeo!... My word, he'd turn the worst sc.r.a.pe into a romance, that fellow! They say he made a big winning at Romeo--just to console himself."

"He made a dozen winnings. And I've helped him to a job as warehouse clerk at Samarai when he wore no shirt under his coat, and gunny bags for trousies. That's what the cap'n here means by his luck, I fancy, because you couldn't keep him down. Capitalist, miner, politician, stevedore--it was all one to Jimmie. Look how he brought up the _Creswick_ that n.o.body else would touch when she went ash.o.r.e on Turn-again Island, cleared two thou' off her by the nerviest kind of work and dropped it all on the next Melbourne Cup. Little he cared. He was havin' his own way with life--as you say, Cap'n Bartlet."

But Jeckol frowned and pursed his thin lips.

"He never saw the game that was too big for him," said Harris, "nor held back his smile nor his fist."

"Darlinghurst jail is full of the same sort," observed Jeckol dryly.

"You ask what he was like?" Cap'n Bartlet swung around beside the wheel.

"I'll tell you. I'm married to a girl that was pretty chief with Jim Albro once. There's no living man dare stand and say a word agen my wife--the finest in Queensland, sir--but I knew all the talk when I married her. And yet you see me here."

"Ah? With an entirely friendly purpose?" queried Jeckol, peering at him.

"Or to make sure he won't come back?"

I saw the color flood to Bartlet's rugged cheek and ebb again.

"In friendship," he answered simply.

Jeckol made a gesture like a salute, with a hint of mockery perhaps, but he said no more. And we others said rather less. Bartlet brought the schooner smartly about on her heel and laid her square through the gap and we turned again to that sinister bay, opening before us like the painted depth of a stage set, whereon we were now to discover and reconstruct our obscure tragedy.

We drew a quick curtain on it. Scarcely had we come abreast the near headland when one of the brown, breech-clouted sailors leaped up forward with a yell, and each startled eye swept past his darting finger to the wreck of the _Timothy S._ There could be no manner of doubt--a green hull with a black water line, bedded low and on her side, hatches awash, just behind a shallow jag of the sh.o.r.e well away to leeward. We needed no gla.s.ses to pick her name or to see that nothing remained of life or value about the battered sh.e.l.l. She lay in her last berth, in the final stage of naval decay, stripped to the shreds of rigging, her masts broken short and bare as bleached bones; and from her whitened rail rose up a flight of b.o.o.bies that cried like shrill, mournful ghosts and vanished....

"Aye--that's the end of their pearlin' cruise," said Peters grimly.

"That's Mullhall's craft, sure enough. The southwest gales would drive her there. She must ha' been anch.o.r.ed just about where we're pa.s.sin'

now, and I shouldn't wonder."

"On the sh.e.l.l bank?" sniffed Jeckol, leaning to squint down into the sparkling blue.

"Fair under our keel, I'd say."

At a signal the leadsman had flown his pigeon again, though we were well past all reefs.

"Eleven fathom!" Harris echoed the cry. "That's diving! I heard it was a deep-water bed. D'you suppose they were at it when the n.i.g.g.e.rs jumped 'em?"

"I figger they were," said Peters. "See that scrubby bit of island?--the point's not a hundred yards away. A dozen canoes could ma.s.s up there and never be noticed. By Joe, it's plain as paint. The ship snugged down for business--the diver below, like as not--pumps and tackle goin'--all hands busy on board and the watch calculatin' profits to three decimals behind the windla.s.s. Aye, there's your treasure hunter, every time! Then perhaps a slant of wind settin' around that point to give the raid a runnin' start--and--"

"Him finish," concluded Harris briefly. "All over in ten minutes. They'd hardly know what hit 'em. A black cloud--that's all. A black cloud."

And Peters was right--it was all too plain. None of us but had heard tales enough, and stark history enough, of these blood-stained barriers that hedge the true unknown continent. To our waiting minds his few phrases threw a sharp picture of the careless ship, the stalking death, and the swift horror that must have followed. There lay the wreck and there the empty bay. The rest we could fill in for ourselves, or just about.

"Then what are we doing here?" asked Jeckol at last.

Peters was already dealing out rifles and ammunition by the deck house, and Bartlet, looking drawn and old, did not seem to hear, but Harris jerked an answer over his shoulder with the flippancy of emotion. "Oh, you can't tell--we might find some smoked heads to bring away."...