“What’s this?” I asked.
“That?” There was a curious something in Mr. Batters’ tone which set my nerves all jangling. “Where I’ve been they call that the God of Fortune. It’s my very own god. It watches over me. When you see it I’m never far away.”
I reached out my disengaged hand to take hold of it for examination. But I seemed to have grown dizzy all of a sudden, and clumsy. It must have been because I was clumsy that, instead of grasping it, I knocked it off its perch. It fell to the floor. I stooped to pick it up.
“I don’t think you’ll find it. I expect it’s gone.”
It did seem to have gone. Or perhaps my sudden dizziness prevented my seeing so small an object in the imperfect light. I certainly did feel strangely giddy. So overpowered was I by most unusual sensations that, yielding the £50,000 horror into Mr. Batters’ outstretched hand, almost before I knew I found myself on the other side of the cabin door.
I staggered up on deck. The night air did me good. I drew great breaths. The giddiness passed. I began to ask myself what could have caused it. Had Mr. Batters been practising a little hocus pocus? Playing up to the part of the Great Joss? If I had been sure, I would have put the ship about right there and then. Back he should have gone, to play the part out to the end.
Luke hailed me.
“Beggin’ pardon, captain, but may I go below? Mine’s the next watch. I should like a wink of sleep.”
“You may. A word with you before you go. You got me into this business. I’m not sure I thank you. What do you know about this man Batters?”
He looked up at the stars, as if for an answer to my question.
“Him and me was boys together.”
“And since?”
“We’ve come across each other once or twice. But it’s half a lifetime since we met.”
“You seem to have recognised each other pretty quickly when you did meet.”
“He knew me. I didn’t know him. And never should have done—never. I can’t hardly believe now it’s the Ben Batters I used to know. Only he’s proved it.”
“How came he to be what he is?”
“That’s more than I can say. He hasn’t told me no more than he’s told you. He always was a hot ’un, Ben was. Bound to get into a mess before he’d done. Always a-fightin’. But I never thought he’d have come to this. Fine figure of a man he used to be. They must have took the skin right off him—used him something cruel.”
I shuddered at the thought. Better to have died a dozen deaths.
“Do you think he’s to be trusted?”
“Well—as for trustin’—that depends. Seems to me no one’s to be trusted more than you can help.”
I felt, as he went, that he had summed up his own philosophy. He trusted no one. It was the part of wisdom for no one to trust him. I wished that, in my haste, I hadn’t berthed the two together. The first excuse which offered Luke should be shifted. I did not like the notion of such a pair hobnobbing. The stake was too big.
Someone touched me on the arm. It was the girl.
“Miss Batters! You ought to be in your berth. It’s late.”
Her answer surprised me.
“I’m afraid.”
She stood so close that I could hear a little fluttering noise in her throat, as if she found it hard to breathe. I wondered if she was affected by the motion. She did not look as if she were. She was straight as a dart. And beautiful.
“Afraid? Of what?”
“Of the water. There is trouble on the sea. Evil spirits live on it.”
“You needn’t be afraid of evil spirits while you’re with me. Who’s put such notions into your head? English girls aren’t afraid of the sea. And you are English.”
“Is it alive?”
“Is what alive?”
“The ship?”
“The ship!”
“What makes it go? It rushes through the water; it trembles, I feel it trembling beneath my feet; it makes a noise.”
“Those are the engines.”
“The engines? Are they alive?”
“Alive? Yes, while Mr. Rudd and his friends keep feeding them they’re alive. Come and have a look at them.”
“No. I dare not. I’m afraid.”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of. This is a steamer. The engines drive it along. Don’t you know what a steamer is? Haven’t you ever heard of one?”
She shook her head. I didn’t know what to make of her. Her ignorance was something beyond my experience. Presently she was off on a fresh tack.
“Is England far?”
“Pretty well. If we’ve luck we shall get there in about a month.”
“A month?—four weeks?” I nodded. “I cannot live—four weeks—upon the sea!”
She gave what seemed to me to be a gasp of horror.
“Oh, yes, you can. You’ll get to love it before you’ve done.”
“Love it! Love the sea! No one ever loves the sea.”
“Don’t they? That’s where you’re wrong. I do, for one.”
“My lord!”
All in a second down she flopped upon the deck. I was never so flummoxed in my life. I couldn’t think what was wrong.
“Miss Batters! What is wrong?”
She turned her lovely face up to me—still on her knees.
“Are you the lord of the sea?”
“The lord of the sea! For goodness sake get up. The watch ’ll think you’re mad. Or that I’m threatening to murder you.” I had to lift her before she’d move. Then she seemed reluctant to stand upright in my august presence. I tried my best to disabuse her mind of some of her wild notions. “I’m a plain sailor man, I am. I’ve sailed the sea, boy and man, the best part of my life; east and west, north and south. And though I don’t mind owning I like a spell of dry land for a change, it would be strange if I hadn’t grown to love it. I’m ready to grumble at it with any man. I’m no more lord of the sea than you are. I’m just captain of this ship. That’s all.”
“You are the captain of this ship.”
“That’s it, Miss Batters.”
“Why do you call me that?”
“Call you what?”
“Miss Batters. I am not Miss Batters. I am Susan.”
I had been looking away. When she said that I looked at her. I wished I hadn’t. There was something on her face—in her eyes—which set me all of a flutter. Something had come to me since I had entered those waters. I didn’t use to be easily upset. I couldn’t make it out at all. I couldn’t meet her glance, but looked down, smoothing the deck with the toe of my shoe, not recognising the sound of my own voice when I heard it.
“I don’t know that I quite care for the name of Susan. I think I prefer—Susie.”
“Susie? What is that?”
“That—that’s the name your friends will call you.”
“My friends?” She gave another little gasp. “Susie?” To hear her say it! “But I have no friends.”
“You will have; heaps.”
“But I have none now. Not one.”
“Well——”
I cleared my throat. I had never been so stuck for a word before. Could have kicked myself for being such a fool. She took my clownishness as implying a reproach. I could tell it from her tone.
“No. I have no friend. Not one.”
I made another effort. I wasn’t lacking as a rule. I couldn’t understand what ailed me then.
“Well, it’s early days for me to speak of friendship, since I’ve only known you for an hour or two; but if I might make so bold, Miss Batters——”
“Miss Batters!” She stamped her foot, her little bare foot. “I am not Miss Batters. I am Susie.” Her tone had changed with a vengeance. Her manner too. She was every inch a queen. A few feet more. “Can I not be Susie to you?”
I turned away. I only wanted to get hold of myself. She put my head in such a whirl. But before I had a chance of finding out whereabouts I was her voice rang out like a boatswain’s whistle.
“I hate sailor men.” I turned again to stare. “And I hate the sea!”
Before I could slip a word in edgeways she had swung herself round and vanished down the companion ladder. I took off my cap to wipe my forehead. Though the night was cool my brow was damp with sweat.
“This is going to be a lively voyage, on my word!”
I had never said a truer thing since the day that I was born.
CHAPTER XXX.
THE MORNING’S NEWS.
It was a lively voyage! Oh, yes! For those who like that kind of liveliness.
Everything went wrong, just in the old sweet way. Rudd had to sleep with his engines. As sure as he turned his back on them for five consecutive minutes something happened. I began to wonder if we shouldn’t have got on faster if we had had sweeps aboard. You don’t often see hands starting to row a steamer along. But anything was better than standing still; or being blown back—which was worse. It was no use rigging a sail against the winds we had, or we might have tried that. But the wind was against us, like everything else.
The weather seemed to have cleared on purpose to give us a chance of getting the Great Joss aboard. It broke again directly afterwards. More than once, and more than twice, I wished it hadn’t. Then perhaps we shouldn’t have been favoured with the company of Mr. Batters. In shipping him we’d shipped a Tartar. I became inclined to the belief that we owed half of our bad luck to him. The crew was dead sure that at his door could be laid the lot of it. They swore he was the devil himself, or his brother.
I wasn’t sure they were far out. Either what he had gone through had affected his brain, or he was possessed by the spirit of mischief, or there was something uncanny about him. I never knew anything like the tricks he was up to. Weather had no effect on him. As for decent hours, he scorned them. It’s my belief that what sleep he had was in the day. I know he was awake pretty well all night.
Once I was dragged out of my berth in the middle of the night because he was frightening the watch out of their senses. When I got on deck I found a heavy sea. Everything sopping. The seas breaking over the scuppers. Pitch darkness. And Mr. Batters up in the tops. The crew were of opinion that he was holding communion with his friends in hell. I shouldn’t have been surprised. He looked as if he was at something of the kind.
How he kept his place was a wonder. Although he had no legs he seemed to have a knack of gluing himself to whatever he pleased. Up there he had an illumination all on his own. It must have been visible for miles across the sea. He had smeared himself and everything about him with something shiny, phosphorus or something. He always was playing tricks with stuffs of the kind. It made him look as if he was covered with flames. He was waving his arms and going through an acrobatic performance. Snakes were twining themselves about the illuminated rigging. The old villain had smuggled a heap of them in his palanquin. He lived with them as if they were members of his family. They seemed to regard him as akin. Talk about snake charming! I believe that at a word from him they would have flown at anyone just as certainly as a dog would have done.
No wonder the watch didn’t altogether relish his proceedings. I sang out:
“Come down out of that, Mr. Batters, before there’s trouble.”
I did put a bullet into one of his precious snakes. It was this way.
I had a revolver in my hand. The boat gave a lurch. The trigger must have caught my coat sleeve. It snapped. There was a flash. A report. One of his snakes straightened itself out against the blackness like a streaming ribbon. You could see it gleam for a moment. Then it vanished. I suppose it dropped into the sea. A good thing too. The idea was that it had been hit by that unintentional shot. I can only say that if that was the case it was the victim of something very like a miracle.
Old Batters understood what had happened long before I did. He came down that rigging like ten mad monkeys. And he went for me like twenty. If the watch hadn’t been there he’d have sent me after that snake. It took the lot of us to get the best of him. If the men had had their way they’d have dropped him overboard.
I wished I had let them before I finished.
A more artful old dodger never breathed. I drew up the agreement of the spoils; but it was days before I could get him to set his hand to it. At first he pretended he couldn’t write. As it happened I had seen him write. It seemed to me he was always writing. When at last I had induced him to sign, in the presence of Luke, Rudd, and Holley, he eluded me on the subject of the inventory. I could not get one. His stock of excuses was inexhaustible. And they were all so plausible. It is true that I made notes of a good many things without his knowledge. But a formal inventory I never had. As to my suggestion that at least the more valuable things should be removed to my cabin for safe custody, when I renewed it he expressed his willingness on conditions that he went with them, and his snakes. I declined. On those terms I preferred that he should remain custodian.
Then there was his intimacy with Luke. That continued, in spite of my attempts to stop it. Though they grew slacker when I began to suspect that after all Mr. Luke might not be on such good terms with his boyhood’s friend as he perhaps desired.
I got my first hint in this direction when, one afternoon, someone was heard bellowing in Mr. Batters’ cabin like a bull. I made for it. I found Mr. Luke upon the floor; his friend upon his chest; his friend’s hands about his throat. He was not bellowing just then. Mr. Batters had squeezed the grip right out of him. He was purple. In about another minute he would have known what death by strangulation meant. We got his dear friend off him. The dear friend said unkind things about Mr. Luke.
By the time we had brought the first mate round he was about as limp a man as you might wish to see. He made one remark, which was unprintable. He turned round in his bunk, where we had laid him, and for all I know he went to sleep.
Since, before that, I had taken care to see that he was berthed apart from Mr. Batters, there was nothing to disturb his slumber.
After that I did not feel it necessary to keep quite so sharp an eye on the attentions which he paid our passenger. They did not seem to be so friendly as they had been before.
As if I hadn’t enough to plague me, there was the girl. When I begin to write of her my language becomes mixed. As were my feelings at the time. And there were moments when she got me into such a state that I didn’t know if I was standing on my head or heels.
She was her father’s own child, though it seemed like sacrilege to connect the two. Insubordination wasn’t in it along with her. She twisted me round her finger. Except when I stiffened my back, and felt like stowing her in the long-boat, and cutting it adrift, with a bag of biscuit and a can of water. And then five minutes afterwards I’d feel like suicide for ever having thought of such a thing.
She wore me to a shadow.
The sea agreed with her far better than I had expected, or she either, especially considering the weather we had. She was all over the boat. All questions, like a child. There was nothing you could tell her enough about. It was extraordinary how the taste for imparting information grew on one. If you didn’t explain everything that could be explained, and a good deal that couldn’t, it wasn’t for want of trying. She had got together a mixed up lot of facts before she had been upon that vessel long. Because when you begin to look into things you find that there are a good many you think you know all about till a sharp-witted young woman starts you on to telling her all you do know. Then, before you’ve time to wriggle, you are stuck. There are men who sooner than get that will say anything.
It is bad enough to feel you are making a fool of yourself when the subject is why steamers don’t sink when they’re floating, or why engines shove them along, or that kind of thing. But when the question’s what love is, and you feel but can’t tell, it’s worse.
“Why do you say you love me?”
I had mentioned to her casually that I did, being driven clean off my balance before I knew it, though I meant every word I had said. And about two hundred thousand more. In spite of my having had more trouble with her old villain of a father that very afternoon. And being full of hope that when it came to hanging him I should be there to see.
“Because I do.”
“But what is love?”
“Love? Why, love!”
It was evening. The wind had been falling away all day. Now it was dead calm, the first we had had since shipping Batters. We were something over twelve hundred miles from Aden. There’s the exact spot marked on my chart. But I should never forget it if it wasn’t. That mark means adjectives. I had had it all out with Batters about our route. The short cut was what he wanted. It was what I wanted too. But what I did not want was to pay the Canal dues. In fact I couldn’t. There was not enough money belonging to the ship on board. I hadn’t told Batters as much as that, but I had made it clear to him that he’d have to pay. So the arrangement stood that we were to come home by Suez; and he was to hand me over the coin to take us through. We should have to coal at Aden. How we had managed so far was beyond my understanding. Rudd was a marvel. He would make a skip of coal go as far as some men would a ton. Stores we had taken in here a little, and there a little, living from hand to mouth. But we had bought no coal. I had said to Rudd:
“Shall we run into Colombo and have some put into our bunkers there?”
He pondered—it was his way to ponder—then shook his head.
“I’m thinking we’ll last to Aden. I’m thinking it. And I don’t seem to fancy a stop at Colombo with Mr. Batters aboard.”
I looked to see from his face if his words had any hidden meaning. There seemed to be something behind everything he said, till you grew tired of trying to find out what it was. He was always dropping hints, was Rudd. There appeared to be nothing unusual about his wooden-looking countenance. So I concluded to give his words their dictionary meaning.
“If you think we can last to Aden, we will. It will save time. And coal’s cheaper there.”
So it was settled. And now we were heading straight for Aden. The weather had cleared. I had told that girl I loved her. Every vein in my body was on fire because of it. Luke was on the bridge. I felt that in spite of the darkness, and it was pretty dark—as well I remember!—his eye was on us as much as on the ship’s course. We had been walking up and down for exercise. She was leaning over the taffrail apparently preparing to enter on a kind of philosophical discussion about what love was.
“Is it good to love?”
“That depends.”
My tone was grim.
“Do I love you?”
“I should like to hear you say so.”
“I love you.”
I thought that was what she said. But she was leaning so far over, seeming to be watching the smudge of soapsuds we were leaving behind us, that I couldn’t quite catch her words. Though I was all of a quiver to.
“What do you say?”
“I say I love you.”
“Susie! Do you mean it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what love is. How should I? I’m only a savage. You said so the other day. I want telling things.”
“You don’t want telling what love is.”
“Do you mean that you don’t want to tell me? You never will tell me what I really want to know. I’ll ask one of the men. I’ll ask Luke. He tells me things.”
“Susie! Luke’s too fond of interfering in matters which are no business of his. He’ll get himself into trouble before he’s done.”
“Why?”
“Don’t you dare to ask Luke what love is!”
“Dare! I dare do anything. I’ll go and ask him now.”
She’d have been off if I hadn’t caught her arm.
“Susie! Don’t! For my sake!”
“Then tell me!—tell me yourself!”
Stamp went her foot. It was one of her favourite tricks. Directly she lost patience down it went.
“I’ll tell you, if you’ll give me time.” I tried to find the words, but couldn’t. I held out my arms instead. “It’s this.”
“What?”
“Don’t you understand?”
“What am I to understand?”
“Don’t you understand that I want you to be my wife?”
“Your wife! Your wife!” She spoke in a crescendo scale, as if I had insulted her. “You said you were my friend!”
“Don’t you understand that I want to be something more than your friend?”
“You want to beat me! to use me like a dog! to have me burned!”
“Susie!”
“My father said in England there were no wives.”
“No wives in England? He—he was making fun of you.”
“He was not making fun of me. He has told me all my life. When I asked him why they burned my mother, he said because she was his wife. He is an Englishman. In England they have no wives.”
I had a glimpse of the confusion which was in her mind. But at that moment I was incapable of straightening out the evil.
“Your—your father’s was a peculiar case. There are wives in England.”
“Is that true?”
She thrust her face close to mine. She was terrifically in earnest.
“It is perfectly true. They abound.”
“Then I will not go to England.”
“But—Susie!—you’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick. In—in England a wife’s the man’s superior.”
“It’s a lie. See how you stammer. You cannot lie like my father with an even tongue. A wife is her husband’s slave. At his bidding she fetches and she carries. He beats her as he beats his dog. When she grows old he takes another. And she dies.”
“My—my dear Susie, I assure you that that description doesn’t apply to England. There, unless she’s a wife, a woman isn’t happy.”
“Then in England women are more unhappy than in the country from which I come. I will not go there. I will not go to any place where there are wives.”
She strode past me as I stared at her, thunderstruck. I continued thunderstruck when she had gone.
She had a deal to learn.
That night I slept badly. In the morning I was roused by someone hammering at the door.
“Who’s there?”
“It’s me, sir; Holley. The cutter’s gone.”
“What!”
“The cutter’s gone. And the watch is hocussed.”
I was standing at the door in my nightshirt.
“What the devil do you mean? Where’s Mr. Luke?”
“He had the morning watch. He’s gone too. It’s his chaps as is hocussed. Leastways, they’re lying on the deck like logs. And Mr. Batters, he’s gone. And his things. His cabin’s stripped clean. And his daughter, she’s gone.”
“Holley!”
I was thrusting myself into a pair of trousers. All of a sudden the ship stopped dead, with an unpleasant shock.
“What’s that? She can’t have struck!”
I rushed up. Rudd met me.
“I have to report to you, sir, that the engine’s ceased to work.”
“Very well. Patch it up and start it again as soon as you can. It’s not the first time it’s stopped.”
“But I’m thinking it’ll be the last. Someone’s been playing tricks with the machine. I’m fearing it’s Mr. Luke.”
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE TERMINATION OF THE VOYAGE OF “THE FLYING SCUD.”
We had been completely done. So completely that it was some time before I was able to realise that I had been diddled quite to that extent. Not a detail had been overlooked. Mr. Batters and Mr. Luke had gone conscientiously to work. They had been thorough. They had left us the ship. That was about all. They would probably have taken that if they had had any use for it. It seemed they hadn’t. If I could only have laid hands on that latest thing in freaks, there would have been one Joss less. I would willingly have made a Joss of Luke if I had only had a chance. To have boiled, burned, and skinned him would have been a pleasure. He should not only have been legless, he should have been armless too. As for that girl, who didn’t want to go to a place where there were any wives, she should have become acquainted with a climate where there was something less agreeable.
That was how I felt towards her at first. But after a while I came to the conclusion that she had been under the domination of her father. Hadn’t dared to call her soul her own. So anger turned to pity. I would just simply take her to a place where there were wives. I’d let her know what it felt like to be one. That would be punishment enough for her.
As for Luke and Batters! What wouldn’t I have given for a quiet half hour with the pair, with boiling oil, branding irons, and everything just handy.
Mr. Luke must have stowed pretty well all our eatable stores inside that cutter. As first mate, under peculiar circumstances, I had let him do, in some respects, a good deal as he pleased. He had had the run of the stores. He had not gone far from collaring the lot. It seemed that certain of the hands had noticed him fiddling a good deal with the cutter of late. Especially when he had been in charge of either of the night watches. But, of course, they had said nothing to me till it was too late, which was a pity.
Mr. Batters had taken with him all the treasures of the temple. Those offerings of the faithful, half of which were to have been mine. No wonder he had not been of opinion that they would have been safer in my cabin. And he pledged his word that he would make it his especial business to see that not one of them left the ship until he did. That elegant monster which he valued at £50,000 had gone. Even the palanquin. Oh, it was pretty!
Mr. Luke had made everything snug by generously treating the members of the morning watch to a little drink directly they came on duty. That drink was no doubt one of Mr. Batters’ concoctions. They remembered no more so soon as they swallowed it. So for four hours Mr. Luke had the deck to himself. No watch was kept. The wheel was lashed. The cutter was filled with the treasures of the temple, then lowered. Goodness and Mr. Luke alone know how. And it must be remembered that Mr. Batters was an ingenious man.
It was reported from the engine room that the order was received to “Go slow.” Probably while The Flying Scud went slow the cutter was cast loose, with Mr. Batters and the girl inside it. Shortly afterwards the order was changed to “Full steam ahead.” The inference seems to be that immediately after giving that order the ingenious Mr. Luke went overboard to join the cutter. And The Flying Scud went full steam ahead, with no one on the look-out. Under the circumstances, it was, perhaps, just as well that the engines did break down.
It’s an elegant story for the commander of a ship to have to write. Especially one with a clean certificate, and of sober habits. There we were, without engines, without coal, without stores, without enough cargo to act as ballast, about half-way between Aden and Colombo. We were a mad ship’s company. For my own part I felt like cutting any man’s throat, including my own. All that day we hung about, doing nothing, except cursing.
Towards night, the engines proving hopeless, we rigged a sail. There was just about enough wind to laugh at us. So we let it laugh us along. There was no Canal for us. The man who was to have paid our shot had gone—the shot with him. So we headed for the Cape. The long way round was the only way for us. Engineless, the prospect was inviting.
There is no need to speak in detail of the remainder of that voyage, no need at all. In one sense it was over—quite. In another it was only just beginning. I won’t say how long it took us to reach home or what we suffered before we got there. And will only hint that by the time we sighted English waters, I felt as if I was a twin brother of Methuselah’s. We hadn’t walked the entire distance, but we might almost just as well have done.
It was evening when I landed. There was a mist in the river. A drizzling rain was falling. Appropriate weather with which to bid us welcome home. The lights of London gleamed dimly through the fog and wet. So soon as I had set foot on land I saw, coming at me through the uncertain light, the individual who, as he stood with his friends upon that moonlit shore, had cursed us for bearing the Great Joss to the ship across the motionless waters of the Gulf of Tongking.
Since that night we had ourselves anathematised someone else for serving us as we had served him.
I had only seen him once, and then from some little distance in the moonshine, but there was no possibility of mistaken identity. This was the man. He was dressed in the same fantastic garb, and came at me like a ghost out of shadowland. He took me by the shoulders, and he cried—as he had done upon that moon-kissed shore:—
“The Great Joss! The Great Joss! Give us back the Great Joss!”
Exactly what took place I cannot say. I was so taken aback by the unexpectedness of the encounter—having never dreamed that I should set eyes upon the man again—that, for some moments, sheer surprise robbed me of my faculties. Before I was myself again, the man had gone. Others had thrust him from me. Although I rushed here and there among the people who stood about I could not find him. He had vanished.
I had swallowed a good many bitter pills since last I left that wharf—the bitterest was still to come. I had to pay my visit to the owners. On the night of my arrival it was too late to see them. The pleasure was postponed to the morning. It was a pleasure!
I came out from their presence a disgraced man. Which was no more than I had expected, though it was no easier to bear on that account. The blame was wholly mine. So they would have it. For some of the language which they used to me I found it hard to keep my hands from off them. My tale of the Great Joss, and of all that I had hoped to gain for them by that adventure, they received with something more than incredulity. If the thing had resulted as I had hoped, that they would have pocketed their share of the spoils, and betrayed no scruples, I knew them too well to doubt. But because, as I held, through no fault of mine, the affair had miscarried, there was no epithet too opprobrious for them to bestow on me. By their showing I had been guilty of all sorts of crimes of which I had never heard. I had betrayed their trust; smirched their good name—as if in the eyes of those who knew them it could be smirched; been guilty of piracy; acted like a common thief; offended against the law of nations; brought shame on England’s mercantile marine.
Oh, it was grand to hear them talking! They might have been saints from whose brows I had plucked the halos. They were good enough to explain that it was only because they disbelieved my entire story, and placed no credence in any part of it whatever, that they refrained from handing me over to the properly constituted authorities, to be by them passed on to the Chinese Government, to be dealt with as my offences merited. They took me for a jay. And were so kind as to add that they looked upon the tale as a clumsy, dishonest, and disingenuous attempt to draw a red herring across their track—the phrase was theirs!—and so prevented them from taking proper and adequate notice of the scandalous neglect of duty, and of their interests, of which, to my lasting shame, I had been guilty.
It was a rare wigging that I had. And, to the best of their ability, they included in it everyone who had been with me on board The Flying Scud. There were four of us, at least, who swore that we’d be even for it with someone somehow. Isaac Rudd, Sam Holley, his chum, Bill Cox, and I; we were the four.
And all we had to go upon, to help us towards getting even, was a scrap of paper. Half a sheet of common note.
It was the only thing Mr. Batters had left behind him. I had found it in a corner of his cabin, crumpled up into a sort of ball, as though he had thrown it there and forgotten all about it. On it this was written:
“To my niece, Miss Mary Blyth, care of Messrs. Martin and Branxon, Drapers, Shoreditch.”
We would look the lady up. Where the niece was the uncle might not be far away. At least she might have some knowledge of his whereabouts. If she had we would have it too, or know the reason why. I still had the written undertaking, which he had signed, by which he was to divide with me equally, as a consideration for services rendered, the treasures of the temple. I had handed this to the owners as proof of the truth of my statements. They had thrown it back to me with a sneer. And something worse than a sneer.
That act amounted to a renunciation of all interest in any property which the document conveyed, or so it seemed to me. Good! They might smart for their scepticism yet. Let us find the niece; then the uncle. If Miss Blyth could only give us a hint as to where he might be found, though it was on the other side of the world, we’d find him. He had valued his belongings at a million. We might be snatched out of the gutter yet.
The search began badly. They knew nothing of a Miss Blyth at Messrs. Martin and Branxon’s, or so I was informed by an official individual in the counting-house. That was a facer. It looked as if Mr. Batters, at his tricks again, had purposely placed in our way what seemed like a clue to his lair for the sake of having still another game with us. But a night or two afterwards I tackled a young fellow as he was coming out of the shop after closing hours, and put my question to him. He turned it over in his mind before he answered.
“There’s no Miss Blyth here now, but there was. I believe her name was Mary. I could soon find out. She’s left some time; directly after I came. I can’t think where she went. I’ve heard the name, but I can’t remember. I might inquire if you like, and let you know to-morrow night.”
I agreed. He did inquire. The next night he let me know. Miss Blyth had gone to a big shop, which he named, at Clapham. The next day, being engaged, I let Rudd go over to Clapham to see what he could do.
He made a mess of things. The lady was pointed out to him by one of her fellow assistants. Before he could get within hail of her, she slipped round a corner and was out of sight. Came across her again in a restaurant where she couldn’t pay her bill. Paid it for her. Then, as he was about to follow her, with a view of pursuing his inquiries, he saw, standing on the pavement in front of the place, the individual who had cursed us on that moonlit shore.
The sight of him struck Rudd all of a heap. By the time he recovered his presence of mind, the lady had vanished, and the gentleman too.
The juxtaposition of Miss Blyth and that cursing gentleman seemed to suggest that we were on the track of the retiring Mr. Batters. What is more, that the scent was getting hot.
The evening after I called at that Clapham establishment, just as the premises were being closed, and asked to see Miss Blyth. Some jackanapes informed me that the young woman had been dismissed that very day. He didn’t know what her address was, but had heard that she had gone off with a party who called himself Frank Paine, and who said he was a lawyer.
At that it was my turn to be struck all of a heap. A short time previously I had called upon Mr. Frank Paine, intending to ask his opinion as to the validity of the document which had Mr. Batters’ name attached. But, somehow, the conversation got into other channels. I came away without it. Not by so much as a word had he hinted that he knew anything about Mr. Batters or his niece.
As I walked along, pondering these things, Rudd, at my side, suddenly exclaimed:
“Captain, there she is! that’s Miss Blyth! the young lady for whom I paid the bill!”
He was pointing towards two young women who were advancing in our direction, on the opposite side of the road. Having got it clear to which of the pair he referred, I sailed across to meet them. She was Miss Blyth. She admitted as much. But that was all the satisfaction I received. She staggered me with the information that her uncle, Mr. Benjamin Batters, was dead. As I was trying to understand how he had come to his death, and when, and where, she took umbrage at my curiosity, or manner, or something. She and her friend jumped into a hansom cab, which dashed off at the rate of about twenty miles, leaving Rudd and I on the kerbstone, staring after it like moonstruck gabies.
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE LITTLE DISCUSSION BETWEEN THE SEVERAL PARTIES.
That night we held a consultation. We four. It was getting dead low tide with us. If we didn’t light upon those treasures of the temple, we should have to find a ship instead. And that before long. If we had to go aboard of her as cabin boys.
It seemed to me that something might be got out of Mr. Paine. In the way of information. Things pointed that way. The more I thought, the more they seemed to point. I told the others. We decided to wait upon him in a body. And man the pumps for all we were worth. If he proved dry, if nothing could be got out of him, then we should have to admit that the tide was low. And that we were stranded. But we had hopes.
The morning after we were in Mitre Court, where his rooms were, betimes. The idea was that he shouldn’t escape us, that we should see him as soon as he was visible, and so play the part of the early bird that catches the worm. But when we found that the door into the street was open, I, knowing the lay of the land, without any parley, led the way upstairs. And it was well for him we did. For we came upon as lively a little scene as ever we’d encountered.
There was a larger company assembled than we had expected. Quite what was happening we couldn’t at once make out. The first thing I saw was a girl tied down upon a table, and—of all people in the world—that cursing gentleman leaning over her with a knife in his hand. Having torn her clothes open at the throat, he looked as if he was going to write his name on her nice white skin with the point of his blade. He got no farther than the start. I introduced myself. And landed him one. He didn’t seem to know whether he was glad or sorry to meet me. I loosed the girl. When I looked round I saw the room was in a mess, and on the floor, trussed like a fowl, was Mr. Paine. But what made me almost jump out of skin for joy, was the sight of our dear friend Luke tied up beside him.
I released that excellent first officer. Then things were said. When he understood that we were spoiling to cut him up into little pieces, and that it seemed likely that he had fallen from the frying-pan into the fire, he explained. What we wanted to know was the present address at which Mr. Batters could be found. It seemed, according to him, that he was aching to know it too.
“Bless my beautiful eyes!” He spat upon the floor. “Do you think if I knew where the hearty was that I’d be here? He used me shameful, he did that.”
“It seems incredible that he should have used you badly, Mr. Luke.”
“It does. After all I’d done for him. But he did. After we——”
He coughed. I finished his sentence.
“Had taken such a ceremonious leave of us all on board The Flying Scud. Yes? Go on.”
“We got picked up by a liner as was making Suez.”
“As you anticipated you would be. I see. You’re a far-sighted person, Mr. Luke.”
“They landed us at Suez. We stopped there two or three days getting packing-cases to—to——”
“To pack the treasures of the temple in. They must have been rather conspicuous objects to carry about with you anyhow. Go on.”
“Then hang me if one evening I didn’t wake up and find that I’d been senseless for close on two days. The devil had hocussed me.”
“Hocussed you? Impossible!”
“He had. Then he’d slipped away, him and his blessed daughter, while I was more dead than alive, leaving me with as good as nothing in my pockets. What I had to go through no one knows. If I ever do set eyes on him again, I’ll——”
The peroration was a study of adjectives.
“Then it appears that you are just as eager to have another interview with Mr. Benjamin Batters as we are. I am sorry your venture was not attended with better fortune. It deserved success. Pray what were you to have had out of it?”
“I was to have had half the blooming lot. And the girl——”
“And the girl! Indeed? And the girl! Mr. Luke, I should dearly like——”
Mr. Paine interposed.
“Excuse me, Captain Lander, but if it is of Mr. Benjamin Batters you are speaking, if it is to him so many mysterious references have been made as the Great Joss, then I may state that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, that gentleman is dead.”
“Dead?—to the best of your knowledge and belief?—what do you mean?”
As I stared at him, a remark was made by the young lady who so narrowly escaped being made the subject of an experiment in carving. Although evidently very far from being as much herself as she might have been, she had pulled herself together a little, and was holding both hands up to her throat.
“You’re forgetting that Pollie’s lying perhaps worse than dead in Camford Street.”
Mr. Paine gave a jump.
“I had forgotten it!—upon my honour!”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Miss Blyth—to whom Miss Purvis refers as Pollie—is the niece of the Mr. Batters of whom we have been speaking. She’s his heiress, in fact.”
“His heiress?”
“Yes; his sole residuary legatee. Among other things he left her a house in Camford Street—No. 84—on somewhat mysterious conditions. For instance, she was to allow no man to enter it.”
“No man?”
“No; only she and one feminine friend were ever to be allowed to put their feet inside the door.”
“Oh?”
I began to smell a rat. Mr. Paine waved his hand towards the young lady the cursing gentleman had been about to practise on.
“This is Miss Purvis, the feminine friend whom Miss Blyth chose to be her sole companion. Other conditions were attached to the bequest equally mysterious. Indeed, it would really seem as if there was something in that house in Camford Street the existence of which the late Mr. Batters was particularly anxious should be concealed from the world. Miss Blyth only entered on the occupation of her property yesterday. Yet Miss Purvis came at an early hour this morning to tell me that something extraordinary had happened in the middle of the night. Something, she doesn’t quite know what, but fancies it was some wild animal, made a savage attack upon Miss Blyth without the slightest provocation. And when Miss Purvis recovered from the shock which the occurrence gave her, she found that she herself had been thrown into the street.”
“Mr. Paine!” I laid my hand upon the lawyer’s shoulder. “Do you know what’s inside that house?”
“I haven’t the faintest notion. How should I have?”
“It’s the late Mr. Batters!”
“The late Mr. Batters?”
“The thing the existence of which Mr. Batters was most anxious to keep concealed, was Mr. Batters himself—for reasons. So he’s put about a cock and bull story making out he’s dead, and then hidden himself in this house of which you’re talking.”
“Captain Lander!”
“Mind, it’s only my guess, as yet. But I don’t think you’ll find that I’m sailing very wide of the wind. The more I turn things over, after listening to what you’ve said, the more likely it seems to me that the Great Joss, whom we’ve all been on tiptoe to get a peep at, has hidden himself in that house which he pretends to have left to his niece, and is waiting there for us to find him. And I’m off to do it!”
“Someone’s had the start of you.”
The interruption came from Rudd. The absence of the cursing gentleman, and his two friends, explained his meaning.
“They’ve gone hot-foot after him,” I cried. “What’s good enough for them is good enough for me!”
We journeyed in three cabs. Speed was a consideration. So we chartered hansoms. I went in front with Luke. He didn’t seem over and above anxious for my society. But I didn’t feel as if I could be comfortable without him. So we went together. Though I am bound to admit that I’m inclined to think that I enjoyed that ride more than he did. Rudd, Holley, and his chum came next. Mr. Paine and the young lady last. I liked his manner towards that young lady. In a lawyer, whom one naturally looks upon as the most hard-hearted of human creatures, it was beautiful. He could not have treated her more tenderly if she had been a queen. And, though she was still in a very sad condition, I have a sort of idea that, when they were once inside that cab, speed with them wasn’t much of a consideration.
And though those hansoms did rattle us along in style, we found that someone had got to that house in Camford Street in front of us.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
IN THE PRESENCE.
The cursing gentleman and his two friends were awaiting us upon the pavement. I said a word of a kind to the long ’un.
“Look here, my bald-headed friend, I don’t quite know who you are, or what you want, but I’ve seen enough of your little ways to know they’re funny; so if you take my advice you’ll make yourself scarce before there’s trouble.”
He held out his hands. Looking, on the dirty pavement of that shabby street, like a fish out of water.
“The Great Joss! The Great Joss! He is in there—give him back to us—then we go.”
I reflected. After all there was some reason in the creature. He was almost as much interested in Mr. Batters as I was. Considering how Mr. Batters had treated me I didn’t see why he shouldn’t learn what an object of interest he really was. It might occasion him agreeable surprise. The fellow was in such dead earnest. It beat me how he and his friends had got where they were. Reminding me of the flocks of migratory birds which one meets far out at sea. Goodness only knows by what instinct they pursue the objects of their search. I turned to Mr. Paine.
“This gentleman was high priest, or something of the kind, in the temple in which Mr. Batters was Number One God.”
“Number One God?”
“That’s about the size of it. He was a god when I first made his acquaintance. This gentleman’s own particular. Since he and his friends have come a good many thousand miles to get another peep at him, I don’t think there’ll be much harm in letting him have one if it’s to be got. So, so far as I’m concerned, right reverend sir, you can stop and see the fun.”
Mr. Paine stared. He didn’t understand. The look with which he regarded the foreign gentleman wasn’t friendly. The experience he had had of his peculiar methods was a trifle recent. Perhaps it rankled.
I turned my attention to the house in front of which the lot of us were standing, cabs and all.
“The question is, since no one seems inclined to open the door, how we are going to get in to enable us to pay our little morning call.”
Rudd practically suggested one way by hurling himself against the door as if he had been a battering ram. He might as well have tried his luck against a stone wall. As much impression would have been made. When I ran my stick over it, it sounded to me like a sheet of metal.
Luke proffered his opinion.
“You’ll want a long chisel for this job. Or a pair. Nothing else ’ll do it. That door’s been put there to keep people out. Not to let ’em in. It’ll be like breaking into a strong room.”
Luke proved right. All our efforts were unavailing. That door had been built to keep folks out.
“If this is going to be a case for chisels,” said Rudd, “we’d better start on it at once, before those police come interfering.”
We were already centres of attraction to a rapidly increasing crowd. Our goings-on provided entertainment of a kind they didn’t care to miss. Long before we had put that job through the police did come. What is more, we were glad to see them.
Rudd fetched a pair of crowbars from an ironmonger’s shop close by. With his assistance, and acting under his instructions, we started to shift that door. We never got beyond the starting. We might as well have tried to shift the monument. He rigged up contrivances; tried dodges. There was the door just as tight as ever. And just as we were thinking of breaking the heads of some of the members of that interested crowd, up the police did come.
Mr. Paine explained to them what we were after. Then he and the young lady and Rudd went off with one of them to the station, while another stayed behind. In course of time they returned, together with an inspector, three more policemen, and two specimens of the British working man, who were wheeling something on a barrow. The interest of the crowd increased. The new arrivals were received with cheers.
Those workmen, in conjunction with Isaac Rudd, fitted up a machine upon the pavement. It was some kind of a drill I believe. Presently not one but half a dozen holes had been cut right through that door. Into these were inserted crowbars of a different construction to those we had been using. We all lent a hand. And the door was open.
The crowd pressed forward.
“Keep back!” cried the inspector.
And the police kept them back.
The inspector entered, with the young lady, Mr. Paine, Rudd and I. The rest were kept out, including the cursing gentleman and his two friends, which seemed hard on them after all they must have gone through. But it was little that they lost. At the beginning anyhow.
For as soon as we set foot inside the passage we found that there was another door defying us. It seemed to lead into a room upon our left. Rudd called one of the workmen in to consult with him. They sounded the door, they sounded the wall, and concluded that the shortest way into the room was through the wall. So soon the house was being knocked to pieces before our eyes. There was sheet iron on the other side of that wall. But they were through it in what seemed no time. And there was a great hole, large enough to admit of the passage of a man.
And on the other side of this hole stood Susie.
She stared at us, and we stared at her, neither understanding who the other was. But when I did understand I felt as if my legs were giving way. And something inside me set up a clamour which was deafening. And when she saw it was me she called out:
“Max!”
She was through that wall like a flash of lightning. I had her in my arms almost before I knew it.
“Susie!” I said. “My sweet!”
I could tell by the way of her that she knew more about wives than she did when I saw her last. And that she had grown reconciled to the idea of being one. And perhaps a bit more than reconciled. The fates be thanked.
Miss Blyth was in the room with her. Alive and sound, and, indeed, unhurt. They had been frightened out of their wits when they heard us, and at the noise we made, thinking they were going to be murdered, at the least.
“Where’s your father?” I asked.
“When he brought her in,” she answered—meaning Miss Blyth—“he went out, shutting the door behind him, taking the key. He left us prisoners. We’ve been prisoners ever since. We’ve heard and seen nothing of him. Where he is I don’t know. Unless he’s above.”
He was above. In a room at the top of the house. With another door to it. So that we had to get through the wall again.
He had had a sort of throne rigged up. Intending, maybe, to have an imitation of the one which he had occupied when I had first come upon him in the temple. If that was so the imitation was a precious poor one. But he was on it. Dead. And cold. He had been gone some hours.
Whether he had committed suicide, or whether the end had come to him in the ordinary course of nature, there was nothing to show.
A colony of snakes was in the room. Those favourites of his. One shared the throne with the Great Joss. It was on the seat, in front of him, where his legs ought to have been. My idea was that the thing had killed him. But it seemed that that was not the case. The creatures were declared not to be venomous. And there was no mark of a snake-bite about him anyhow.
While we stood looking at the throne, and what was on it, there was a movement behind. The cursing gentleman and his two friends came in. At sight of the Great Joss they threw themselves on their faces, and bit the floor. I never saw men so scared. Or so surprised. I had a sort of notion that they had supposed him to be immortal, and that he couldn’t die. When the body came to be examined, and it was discovered what a torso it really was, and to what prolonged and hideous tortures the man must have been subjected, one began to understand that they might have had reasons of their own for thinking so. It might very well have been incomprehensible to them why, if he could die, he hadn’t died.
At the foot of the throne was the little doll-like thing which I had seen perched on the head of the fifty thousand pound monstrosity. He had called it the God of Fortune. Saying that where it was he was not far away.
The case seemed to present an illustration of the truth of his words. The doll was broken to atoms. The Great Joss and the God of Fortune seemed to have come to an end together.
BOOK V.
AUTHOR’S POSTSCRIPT.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
HOW MATTERS STAND TO-DAY.
I should have preferred that the close of Captain Max Lander’s statement should have been the conclusion of this strange history. But for the satisfaction of any reader who may desire to know what became of A, B, C, or D, these following lines are added.
What have been described by Captain Lander as “the treasures of the temple” were found in the house in Camford Street. So far as could be ascertained, intact. The question of ownership involved a nice legal problem. The native attendants of the temple vanished almost as soon as they appeared. No one knew where they went to. Nothing has been seen or heard of them since. It seemed, therefore, that they put forward no claims. There remained the girl, Susan, presumably the dead man’s daughter, though there was no legal proof of the fact; Mary Blyth, who had claims under her uncle’s will; Captain Lander, who held the document entitling him to a half share; and the owners and crew of The Flying Scud. All these had claims which required consideration. In the end, by great good fortune, an amicable settlement was arrived at, which gave satisfaction to all parties concerned.
As might have been expected, the value set on the property by Mr. Batters proved to be an exaggeration. It was worth nothing like a million. Still, it fetched a considerable amount when realised, and after the owners and crew of The Flying Scud had been appeased—excepting Mr. Luke, who was markedly dissatisfied because he only received an ordinary seaman’s share—an appreciable sum remained as surplus. To this was added the cash which had been bequeathed to Miss Blyth by the will whose validity was, at best, extremely doubtful; the whole being divided, in equal portions, between the niece and the daughter. As Miss Batters immediately afterwards became Mrs. Max Lander, the commander of The Flying Scud had no cause to be discontented with this arrangement.
No. 84, Camford Street is still without an owner. It appears, from the story told by the girl, Susan, that on reaching England, her father hurried her from place to place, seldom stopping for more than two or three days under one roof. They seem to have made their most lengthy stay in a barge in one of the lower reaches of the river. No doubt the notion of concealment was present to his mind from the first. Though how he lighted on the house in Camford Street is still a mystery. Nor has anything transpired to show by whose orders it was fortified in such ingenious and elaborate fashion; nor by whom the work was executed. Nothing has been found which goes to show that he had any right to call the house his property. Its actual ownership still goes begging.
The document purporting to be a will was possibly drawn up by his own hand. The letter signed “Arthur Lennard, Missionary,” pretending to announce his death on that far-off Australasian island, was probably concocted, at his instigation, by one of the miscellaneous acquaintances whom he picked up during his wanderings among the riverside vagabonds. From such an one he might have acquired Mr. Paine’s name, together with some side-lights on that gentleman’s character. Miss Batters made it abundantly clear that her father was the “freak” to whom Mr. Paine was of service by rescuing him from the too curious crowd in the Commercial Road.
His exact object in making his will has never been shown. No doubt the man’s brain was in disorder. He was actuated, perhaps, by three considerations. The desire for concealment; the consciousness that he and his daughter would fare very badly if shut up in a house alone together; the wish to avail himself of his niece’s services. To have gone to her with a straightforward tale would have been in accord neither with his character or policy. He had lived too long in what, for civility’s sake, may be called a diplomatic atmosphere, to be able to breathe in any other. Also, he knew nothing of his niece. Suspected that she knew nothing good of him. Was moved, possibly, by a very natural unwillingness to make himself, or his story, known to her until he had learned what kind of person she was.
So he invented his own death, making her his heiress, for the sole purpose of getting her inside the house. It is impossible to say what might have happened had she proved amenable to his wishes; and events moved along the road which he had laid down for them. The presumption is that, sooner or later—probably sooner—he would have made himself known to her, and endeavoured to purchase her fidelity, and services, on terms of his own.
As it is, the uncle is the constant theme of the niece’s conversation. Miss Blyth is now Mrs. Cooper. The Coopers are residents of one of the smaller south coast watering places, where they are regarded as leading lights among local social circles. Mr. Cooper is a vice-president of the boat-club, yacht-club, swimming-club, cricket-club, football club, and so on; his wife is the mother of an increasing family, and a lady with a tale. Its subject is Uncle Benjamin. That gentleman lived a life of strange and varied adventure. His history loses none of its marvels at his niece’s lips. Either because they are a trifle tired of the theme, or are merely jealous, some of the more frequent hearers have been heard to doubt if there ever was an Uncle Benjamin. If these doubts are serious they do the lady less than justice.
Mr. and Mrs. Lander are also happy. One would be reluctant to doubt it. Yet, at the same time, one cannot refuse to admit that there are occasions when the outward and visible signs of their happiness take a somewhat boisterous shape. He has a temper; she has a temper. There are moments when it would appear as if there was hardly room for the two tempers in a single house. Since they seldom remain in one place for more than three months, they can scarcely be said to live anywhere. In selecting their next abiding-place, they seem to act on the principle of letting it be as far from the present as possible. Mr. Lander has not pursued his profession since the last eventful voyage which he has herein set forth. Possibly by way of killing time he is apt to be a trifle too convivial. Nothing makes Mrs. Lander more indignant than an even hinted doubt of her positive assertion, made in and out of season, that every drop of blood in her veins is English. As her complexion is a little dusky, her aggressive attitude upon this point makes her rather a difficult person to get on with.
Mr. Frank Paine, oddly enough, has married Miss Purvis. And, what is perhaps still more odd, theirs is the happiest match of the three. About their complete and absolute content with their condition there can be no possible doubt whatever. He worships her; she worships him. If there is any finer recipe for matrimonial happiness than that, it has not come in the present writer’s way. His practice as a solicitor has grown large. Mrs. Paine is of opinion that he is rightly regarded with even fulsome reverence by the entire bench and bar. Since he would not dream of contesting any opinion which happened to be his wife’s, the position of affairs could not possibly be improved.
Mr. Benjamin Batters lies in Kensal Green Cemetery. In a deep grave, and in a full-sized coffin. Surrounded by dignitaries and respectabilities. In his coffin were placed the broken pieces of the curiosity which he called the God of Fortune. So they are still together. A handsome monument has been raised above him. There is no hint, in the inscription, that below are but the mangled fragments of what was once a human body; or any reference to the fact that he ever posed as a joss; or a god; or was ever believed, even by savages, to have put on immortality before his time. It simply says:
“BENEATH THIS STONE
REPOSES
BENJAMIN BATTERS,
WHO,
AFTER A LIFE OF VARIED ADVENTURE
IN DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE WORLD,
SLEEPS WELL.”
We will hope that it is so.
[THE END.]