Part 32 (1/2)

Jefferson contrived to laugh. ”You take that pick-me-up, and in the meanwhile let up on your reminiscences. Things of that kind aren't cheerful--and I'm worried by one or two of them myself.”

Austin, who stooped and picked up the cigar, settled himself afresh on the settee after lighting it, and half an hour dragged by. Neither of them felt the least sign of drowsiness yet, and the jingle of the odds and ends in the rack, and tremble of the stout teak house, was, as he had said, vaguely rea.s.suring. The big pump was pounding on in spite of the climate, and neither heat nor fever had any effect on steam. Then he looked up sharply, and Jefferson straightened himself, for a faint sound of footsteps came out of the darkness. They were slow and dragging, as though somebody was groping his way warily towards the light.

”On deck!” said the American. ”What d'you want? Are you there, Wall-eye?

Que hay?”

There was no answer, but the shuffling steps drew nearer, slowly and falteringly, as though whatever made them was but indifferently capable of motion. There was also something unpleasantly suggestive about them, and Austin now sat very straight, while he saw that Jefferson's lips were pressed together. There was no apparent reason why they should shrink from what was coming, but Austin, at least, felt his nerves tingling. He was overwrought, and white men are apt to become fanciful when they work too hard in the fever swamps. It is a land where one realises the presence of influences beyond the definition of human reason, and he afterwards admitted that he was afraid.

”Mil diablos!” said Jefferson. ”Ven aca! What are you after, outside there?”

There was still no answer, though a clatter of booted feet now rose from the iron deck. It drowned the other footfalls, and Austin found that clang of nailed shoes curiously rea.s.suring. Then a figure that swayed from side to side emerged from the blackness and stood mowing in the stream of light.

”Good Lord!” said Jefferson, with horror in his voice. ”Slam that door to. Keep it out!”

Austin rose with a sense of sudden sickness, but the figure had moved again, and now stood with one foot inside the room and a horrible hand on the door-jamb, leering at them. It had the shape of a man, but the resemblance ended there, for there was no sign of human intelligence in the awful face. The thing had no eyebrows, the hair had almost gone, and nose and cheeks were formless with corruption, while naked chest and arms were smeared with festering scars. Austin stood still, s.h.i.+vering, with one hand clenched hard on the table, until Jefferson s.n.a.t.c.hed a glinting object from his bunk.

”Good Lord!” he said again. ”It's coming in!”

The figure seemed to brace itself for another move forwards, and Austin saw Jefferson straighten himself slowly with a big pistol in his hand.

He did not remember what his comrade said, but the negro seemed to recoil instinctively before his fierce e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, and, lurching backwards, faded into a formless shadow in the gloom again. Then Jefferson's hand fell upon Austin's shoulder.

”Shake yourself! There's something to be done,” he said. ”They have a light forward, and we can't have--that thing--groping among them in the forecastle.”

They went out, and as they did so a sudden glare of light sprang up.

Tom, the donkey-man, had lighted the air-blast lamp he used when anything had to be done to pump or boiler at night, and its smoky radiance showed that Jefferson's shouts had roused the Spaniards. They were cl.u.s.tered, half dressed, about the head of the ladder which led to the bridge deck, with consternation in their shadowy faces, glancing at one another as though afraid to move a step further. Tom leaned against the rail, holding up the lamp, and the thing that had the shape of a man sat gibbering on a coil of hawser in the midst of the bridge deck. The eyes of all who stood there were fixed upon it, but n.o.body seemed anxious to come any nearer.

Jefferson, standing very straight, opened the breech of his pistol, ran a finger across the back of the chamber, and then closed it with a little snap which, though the pump was humming, sounded startlingly distinct. His lips were tightly set, and his face was very grim. The loathsome figure on the rope mowed and grinned at him.

”I suppose the thing was human--once,” he said. ”Still, we can't have it here. These complaints are contagious, one understands, but I wish it hadn't happened. He's too like a man.”

He dropped the pistol to his side, as though his nerve had momentarily failed him, and Austin, who suddenly grasped his purpose, sprang forward as he raised it again.

”Hold on!” he said. ”Do you realise what it is you propose to do?”

Jefferson turned to him slowly, and there was a curious stillness among those who watched them. Austin was glad of the hum of the big pump and the pounding of the engine, for he felt that silence would have made the tension unendurable. Then Jefferson smiled, a little wry smile.

”I know,” he said, a trifle hoa.r.s.ely, ”it isn't nice to think of, but it's no more than happens to a superfluous kitten--and it's necessary.

Heaven knows what the poor devil suffered before he came to this, and we don't want to. He's animate carrion without reason or sensibility now.

It was only the light brought him here when Funnel-paint somehow sent him within sight of us.”

Austin saw that this was true. There was no glimmer of human intelligence in the creature's wandering gaze, but he still bore the shape of a man, and that counted for a good deal, after all.

”Jefferson,” he said, ”it can't be done!”

His comrade looked at him with half-closed eyes. ”Would you wish to live if you looked like that, or do you want the rest of us to find out what he went through? I'm responsible for those men yonder--and it's only antedating the thing a month or two. The life is almost rotted out of him. Stand clear! We must get it over!”

It was evident that the Spaniards understood what he meant to do, and a murmur of concurrence rose from them, for they knew a little about the more loathsome forms of skin diseases. Men who might have escaped from the sepulchre walk abroad in the hot Southern countries, where restraint is unknown and salt fish is a staple food, but, though they have often themselves to blame, the innocent also suffer in Western Africa, and none of those who stood by, tense and strung up, had ever seen a man who looked quite as this one did.