Part 15 (2/2)

”Still, we'll have the big drum out when he brings Mr. Jefferson and the _c.u.mbria_ back again, and if there's anything that can be broken left whole in this s.h.i.+p that night it will be no fault o' mine.”

They went out and left him, but Jacinta stopped when they came upon the man he had ejected from his room, sitting on the companion stairway and smoking a very objectionable pipe. She also held a little purse concealed beneath her hand.

”You are going back with Mr. Austin to the _c.u.mbria_?” she said.

The man stood up. ”In course,” he said. ”It's eight pound a month, all found, an' a bonus.”

”Ah!” said Jacinta. ”I suppose there is nothing else?”

The man appeared to ruminate over this, until a light broke in on him.

”Well,” he said, ”Mr. Jefferson does the straight thing, an' he fed us well. That is, as well as he could, considering everything.”

Jacinta smiled at Muriel. ”You will notice the answer. He is a man!”

Then she held out a strip of crinkly paper. ”That will make you almost a month to the good, and if you do everything you can to make things easier for the man who wants to get the _c.u.mbria_ off, there will probably be another waiting for you when you come back again.”

The man, who took the crinkly paper, gazed at it in astonishment, and then made a little sign of comprehension. ”Thank you kindly, miss, but which one am I to look after special? You see, there's two of them.”

Jacinta was apparently not quite herself that night, for the swift colour flickered into her face, and stayed there a moment.

”Both,” she said decisively. ”Still, you are never to tell anybody about that note.”

The man once more gazed at her with such evident bewilderment that Muriel broke into a little half-audible laugh. Then he grinned suddenly, and touched his battered cap.

”Well, we'll make it--both,” he said.

They went up the companion, and left him apparently chuckling, but Jacinta appeared far from pleased when she got into the waiting boat.

”That was to have gone to England for a hat and one or two things I really can't do without--though I shall probably have to now,” she said.

”Oh, aren't they stupid sometimes--I felt I could have shaken him.”

In the meanwhile the man in the fireman's serge went back to Macallister's room.

”Give me an envelope--quick!” he said.

Macallister got him one, and he slipped a strip of paper inside before he addressed it and tossed it across the table.

”You'll post that. There's a Castle boat home to-morrow, and I'd sooner trust you with it than myself,” he said, with a little sigh, which, however, once more changed to a chuckle.

”If there's money inside it ye're wise,” said Macallister drily. ”Still, what are ye grinning in yon fas.h.i.+on for?”

”I was thinking it's just as well I've only--one--old woman. It would make a big hole in eight pounds a month--an' a bonus--if I had any more of 'em. But you get that letter posted before I want it back.”

”Wanting,” said Macallister, reflectively, ”is no always getting. Maybe, it's now and then fortunate it is so, after all.”

It was two hours later, and Jacinta stood on the flat roof of Pancho Brown's house looking down upon the close-packed Spanish town, when the crash of a mail gun rose from the harbour and was lost in the drowsy murmur of the surf. Then the other noises in the hot streets below her went on again, but Jacinta scarcely heard the hum of voices and the patter of feet as she watched a blinking light slide out from among the others in the harbour. It rose higher and swung a little as it crept past the mole, then a cl.u.s.ter of lower lights lengthened into a row of yellow specks, and she could make out the West-coast liner's dusky hull that moved out with slanting spars faster into the faintly s.h.i.+ning sea.

Jacinta closed one hand as she leaned upon the parapet and watched it, until she turned with a little start at the sound of footsteps. She was, one could have fancied, not particularly pleased to see Muriel Gascoyne then.

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