Part 31 (1/2)

Over the clearing the shadows were already lengthening. The sun hung low; a ruddy glare lay on the burnt black patch in front of the bungalow, and slanted on the ground between the straight, tall, mast-like trees soaring a hundred feet or more without a branch. The growth of bushes cut off all view of the jetty from the veranda. Far away to the right w.a.n.g's hut, or rather its dark roof of mats, could be seen above the bamboo fence which insured the privacy of the Alfuro woman. The Chinaman looked that way swiftly. Heyst paused, and then stepped back a pace into the room.

”White men, Lena, apparently. What are you doing?”

”I am just bathing my eyes a little,” the girl's voice said from the inner room.

”Oh, yes; all right!”

”Do you want me?”

”No. You had better--I am going down to the jetty. Yes, you had better stay in. What an extraordinary thing!”

It was so extraordinary that n.o.body could possibly appreciate how extraordinary it was but himself. His mind was full of mere exclamations, while his feet were carrying him in the direction of the jetty. He followed the line of the rails, escorted by w.a.n.g.

”Where were you when you first saw the boat?” he asked over his shoulder.

w.a.n.g explained in Malay that he had gone to the sh.o.r.e end of the wharf, to get a few lumps of coal from the big heap, when, happening to raise his eyes from the ground, he saw the boat--a white man boat, not a canoe. He had good eyes. He had seen the boat, with the men at the oars; and here w.a.n.g made a particular gesture over his eyes, as if his vision had received a blow. He had turned at once and run to the house to report.

”No mistake, eh?” said Heyst, moving on. At the very outer edge of the belt he stopped short. w.a.n.g halted behind him on the path, till the voice of Number One called him sharply forward into the open. He obeyed.

”Where's that boat?” asked Heyst forcibly. ”I say--where is it?”

Nothing whatever was to be seen between the point and the jetty. The stretch of Diamond Bay was like a piece of purple shadow, l.u.s.trous and empty, while beyond the land, the open sea lay blue and opaque under the sun. Heyst's eyes swept all over the offing till they met, far off, the dark cone of the volcano, with its faint plume of smoke broadening and vanis.h.i.+ng everlastingly at the top, without altering its shape in the glowing transparency of the evening.

”The fellow has been dreaming,” he muttered to himself.

He looked hard at the Chinaman. w.a.n.g seemed turned into stone. Suddenly, as if he had received a shock, he started, flung his arm out with a pointing forefinger, and made guttural noises to the effect that there, there, there, he had seen a boat.

It was very uncanny. Heyst thought of some strange hallucination.

Unlikely enough; but that a boat with three men in it should have sunk between the point and the jetty, suddenly, like a stone, without leaving as much on the surface as a floating oar, was still more unlikely. The theory of a phantom boat would have been more credible than that.

”Confound it!” he muttered to himself.

He was unpleasantly affected by this mystery; but now a simple explanation occurred to him. He stepped hastily out on the wharf. The boat, if it had existed and had retreated, could perhaps be seen from the far end of the long jetty.

Nothing was to be seen. Heyst let his eyes roam idly over the sea. He was so absorbed in his perplexity that a hollow sound, as of somebody tumbling about in a boat, with a clatter of oars and spars, failed to make him move for a moment. When his mind seized its meaning, he had no difficulty in locating the sound. It had come from below--under the jetty!

He ran back for a dozen yards or so, and then looked over. His sight plunged straight into the stern-sheets of a big boat, the greater part of which was hidden from him by the planking of the jetty. His eyes fell on the thin back of a man doubled up over the tiller in a queer, uncomfortable att.i.tude of drooping sorrow. Another man, more directly below Heyst, sprawled on his back from gunwale to gunwale, half off the after thwart, his head lower than his feet. This second man glared wildly upward, and struggled to raise himself, but to all appearance was much too drunk to succeed. The visible part of the boat contained also a flat, leather trunk, on which the first man's long legs were tucked up nervelessly. A large earthenware jug, with its wide mouth uncorked, rolled out on the bottom-boards from under the sprawling man.

Heyst had never been so much astonished in his life. He stared dumbly at the strange boat's crew. From the first he was positive that these men were not sailors. They wore the white drill-suit of tropical civilization; but their apparition in a boat Heyst could not connect with anything plausible. The civilization of the tropics could have had nothing to do with it. It was more like those myths, current in Polynesia, of amazing strangers, who arrive at an island, G.o.ds or demons, bringing good or evil to the innocence of the inhabitants--gifts of unknown things, words never heard before.

Heyst noticed a cork helmet floating alongside the boat, evidently fallen from the head of the man doubled over the tiller, who displayed a dark, bony poll. An oar, too, had been knocked overboard, probably by the sprawling man, who was still struggling, between the thwarts.

By this time Heyst regarded the visitation no longer with surprise, but with the sustained attention demanded by a difficult problem. With one foot poised on the string-piece, and leaning on his raised knee, he was taking in everything. The sprawling man rolled off the thwart, collapsed, and, most unexpectedly, got on his feet. He swayed dizzily, spreading his arms out and uttered faintly a hoa.r.s.e, dreamy ”Hallo!” His upturned face was swollen, red, peeling all over the nose and cheeks.

His stare was irrational. Heyst perceived stains of dried blood all over the front of his dirty white coat, and also on one sleeve.

”What's the matter? Are you wounded?”

The other glanced down, reeled--one of his feet was inside a large pith hat--and, recovering himself, let out a dismal, grating sound in the manner of a grim laugh.

”Blood--not mine. Thirst's the matter. Exhausted's the matter. Done up.