Bindloss Harold
For Jacinta
CHAPTER XV
STARTING THE PUMP
The bush was dim with steamy shade when Austin and Jefferson plodded along a little path behind the beach where the oil was stored. It was with difficulty they made their way, for the soil was firmer there, and a dense undergrowth sprang up among the big cottonwoods which replaced the mangroves. They were draped with creepers, and here and there an orchid flung its fantastic blossoms about a rotting limb, while the path twisted in and out among them and through tangled thickets. It was then the hottest part of the afternoon, and save for the soft fall of the men's footsteps everything was still. The atmosphere was very like that of a Turkish bath, and as Austin stumbled along the perspiration dripped from him.
He had toiled strenuously from early dawn until darkness closed down, of late, and though he had, as yet, escaped the fever, every joint in his body ached, and he was limp and dejected with the heat and weariness. His only respite from labour had been the few hours spent on watch beside the landed oil when his turn came, and he had now come down with two of the Spaniards to relieve Jefferson, who was going back to the Cumbria. The latter glanced towards a ray of brightness that beat into the dim green shadow, and here and there flung a patch of brilliancy athwart the great columnar trunks.
"I've been wondering where this trail goes, and it seems to me there's an opening close in front of us," he said. "We'll rest when we get there, and I don't know that I'll be sorry. You have to choose between stewing and roasting in this country, and, when it lets my skin stay on me, I almost think the latter's easier."
Austin felt inclined to agree with him, for they had blundered through the shadowy bush for half an hour, and its hot, saturated atmosphere made exertion almost impossible. Still, he said nothing, and in a few more minutes they came out upon a glaring strip of sand beside another creek. Jefferson stopped a moment, with a little gesture of astonishment, in the shadow of a palm.
"What in the name of wonder have they been turning that sand over for?" he said.
Austin walked out of the shadow, blinking in the dazzling brightness the creek flung back, and saw that the sand had certainly been disturbed every here and there. It seemed to him that somebody had been digging holes in it and then had carefully filled them up.
"There isn't a nigger village nearer than the one where Funnel-paint lives, or I could have fancied they'd had an epidemic and been burying their friends," he said.
Jefferson shook his head. "They wouldn't worry to bring them here," he said. "Still, somebody has been digging since the last wet season, for it seems to me that when the rain comes the creek flows over here."
It occurred to Austin that one or two, at least, of the excavations had been filled in not long ago, but his comrade made no comment when he suggested it, and they went back together to the shadow of the palm, where Jefferson, sitting down thoughtfully, filled a blackened pipe.
It was several minutes before he broke the silence.
"There is," he said, at length, "a good deal I can't get the hang of about the whole affair; but if I knew just how they came to start the plates that let the water in, I'd have something to figure on. You can't very well knock holes in an iron steamer's bottom on soft, slimy mud, and I don't know where they could have found a rock here if they wanted to."
"Ah!" said Austin. "Then you think they might have wanted to find one?"
Jefferson again sat silent for almost a minute, and then slowly shook his head. "I don't know – I've nothing to go upon," he said. "She's not even an old, played-out boat. Still, it seems to me that a heavily freighted steamer, hung up by her nose on the bank, might easily have started some of her plates when the waters of the creek subsided. Then she'd settle deeper – it's nice soft mud."
"But that would be – after – she went ashore."
"Yes," said Jefferson dryly. "That's the point of it."
Austin looked thoughtful. It had also occurred to him that there was a good deal it was difficult to understand about the stranding of the Cumbria, though that, after all, did not appear to concern them greatly just then.
"What puzzles me is why the salvage men let go," he said. "You see, they're accustomed to this kind of thing, and have money behind them."
Jefferson looked at him with a little smile, and Austin saw that he guessed his thoughts. Jefferson was as gaunt as ever, a fever-worn skeleton of a man, dressed, for the most part, in oil-stained rags, while Austin was quite aware that, so far as outward appearances went, there was very little that was prepossessing about himself. His big felt hat hung over his forehead, sodden with grease, and shapeless; his hands were hard and scarred, his nails were broken, and the rent singlet hung open almost to his waist. All this seemed to emphasise their feebleness, and the fact that there was no money behind them, at least.
"Well," said Jefferson, "that's quite easy. Those salvage men are specialists, and expect a good deal for the time they put in. Now they took some oil out of her, but there is reason for believing they were not sure they'd get the Cumbria off at all, and it would cost a good deal to charter a light-draught steamer to come up here. They tried towing it down to a schooner, and lost a good deal of it on the shoals. Then they towed the schooner in, and had to wait for a smooth surf before they could get her out, with no more than sixty tons at that. The game wasn't worth while, and the men were going down with fever."
"But the gum?"
"There wasn't a great deal down in the cargo sheets, and, any way, until they'd hove the oil out they couldn't come at it."
"You are still sure about the gum yourself?"
Jefferson laughed softly. "I think I am. I don't quite know where it is, but the skipper got it – a good deal of it."
"Still, the steamer would be worth a persistent effort. There was no doubt about her being there."
"No," said Jefferson, with a little gesture of comprehension. "Now I know just what you mean. You're wondering, since those men couldn't heave her off, what's the use of us trying. Well, specialists make their mistakes now and then, just like other men, and they took it for granted that things were normal when they were there. From what I've seen of the sand strips and the marks on the mangrove trunks, I don't think they were. You see, there's a good deal we don't know about the tides yet, and the Guinea stream doesn't always run quite the same along this coast; while, when there's less than usual of the southwest winds that help it along, it's quite likely to mean two or three feet less water in these creeks. Then you can have a wet season that's a little drier than the other ones, and it's fresh water here – the tide just backs it up."
"Then you're counting on the present season being a normal one?"
"Yes," said Jefferson quietly. "I've staked all I have on it – and a good deal more than that. If it isn't, I might as well have pitched my forty thousand dollars into the sea."
He stopped a moment, and then laid a little grey object in Austin's palm. "What d'you make of that?"
Austin started as he looked at it. "A pistol bullet!"
"Exactly," said Jefferson. "It has been through the barrel, too; you can see the score of the rifling. I picked it up along the trail, but I don't know how long it lay there, or who fired it. Still, the niggers don't carry pistols. Well, it's about time I was getting back on board if we're to start the pump to-night."
Austin glanced at him sharply, and noticed that there was a suggestion of tension in his voice, though his face was quiet. It was evident that a good deal would depend upon the result of the first few hours' pumping, for unless it lowered the water there would be little probability of their floating the steamer. Neither of them, however, said anything further, and when they went back to the beach where the oil was, Jefferson steamed away in the launch, and Austin, who was left with two Canarios, lay down in the shadow of a strip of tarpaulin. The Spaniards, tired with their morning's labour, went to sleep; and Austin, who filled his pipe several times, found the hours pass very slowly. There was nothing to hold his attention – only glaring sand, dingy, dim green mangroves, and tiers of puncheons with patches of whitewash clinging to them. It flung back an intolerable brightness that hurt his aching eyes, and he became sensible of a feverish impatience as he lay watching the shadows lengthen.
His thoughts were with Jefferson, who was, no doubt, now getting steam on the locomotive boiler and coupling up the big pump. Unless the latter did what they expected of it, the toil they had undergone, and Jefferson's eight thousand pounds, would have been thrown away. That was very evident, but Austin wondered a little at himself as his impatience grew upon him, until it was only by an effort he held himself still.
It was not the quarter share Jefferson offered him which had brought him there, for he realised that even with five thousand pounds he would still be, to all intents and purposes, a poor man, and his life on board the Estremedura had, in most respects, been one that suited him. He had, in fact, not greatly cared whether the Cumbria could be floated or not, when he came out, but since then Jefferson's optimism, or something that was born of the toil they had undertaken, had laid hold of him, and now he was almost as anxious as his comrade that their efforts should result in success. In fact, he was feverishly anxious, and felt that if it would gain them anything he would willingly stake his life on the venture. Then he smiled as he remembered that he had, without quite realising it, done so already.
Still, the long, hot afternoon dragged away, and when the sun dipped, and black darkness closed down upon the creek, the launch came clanking up to the beach. She brought two Canarios as well as Bill, the fireman, and Austin's voice was eager as he greeted the latter.
"Have you got the pump going yet?" he asked.
"No," said Bill. "Tom and Mr. Jefferson was packing something when I came away. He'd given her a spin, and found the engine blowing at a gland."
Austin asked him nothing further, but drove the launch at top speed through the blackness that shrouded the misty creek, and walked straight to where Jefferson was standing when he reached the Cumbria. The red glow from the open fire-door of the locomotive boiler fell upon him, and there were signs of tension in his face, while the red trickle from a hand he had apparently injured smeared his torn jacket. Steam was roaring from a valve beside him, and Austin could scarcely hear him when he turned to the donkey-man.
"Shut the fire-door. She'll go now," he said. "I'll let her shake down for a minute or two, and then we'll give her everything."
He walked forward towards where the light of a lamp fell upon the casing of the pump, which looked like a huge iron drum considerably flattened in. Then he touched a valve, and the machine became animate with a low pulsatory wheezing, while something commenced to hum and rattle inside it. The sound swelled into a fierce rhythmic whirring, the great iron case vibrated, and Austin could feel the rails he leaned on tremble. Jefferson turned and looked at him with a little smile, while he laid a hand, as it were, affectionately upon the pump.
"Yes," he said, "I've made her go, and she's going to earn me eighty thousand dollars. She's drawing air just now. Heave your hat down, and see if she'll take it along."
Austin, who became sensible that a little draught was shaking his duck trousers, did as Jefferson suggested, and the big felt hat rolled and flopped in a ludicrous fashion along the deck. Then it seemed to spring forward into the blackness, and groping after it, he found it glued to the iron grid which was screwed to the end of a big pipe. It was with some little difficulty he tore it loose. Then he saw Jefferson swing up one hand.
"Easy, while she's getting her first drink; then, if she's spouting full, you can let her hum," he said, and turned to Austin. "Now, come down with me."
They went down together into the musty hold, and when somebody lowered the big hose after them, Jefferson, standing upon the ladder, seized the rope, and looked up at the Canarios clustering round the hatch above.
"Where's that rake you made?" he said.
It was handed him, and Austin glanced down at the water, which glistened oilily under the light of a suspended lamp. It was thick with floating grease and strewn with fragments of rotten bags.
"Get hold and keep her clear!" said Jefferson, who thrust the rake upon him, and then waited a moment before he lowered the hose, while Austin, glancing round a moment, could see the faces of the men above them. They were intent, and almost as expectant as his comrade's.
Then the big pipe sank with a soft splash, and shook out its loose half-coil, as if alive, while it swelled. It grew hard and rigid, and the dim, oily water swirled and seethed about the end of it. In another moment there was a rush of floating objects towards it from the shadows. Strips of bagging, handspikes, clots of oil, and dunnage wood, came thicker and thicker, and Jefferson raised his voice.
"Let her hum!" he said.
The pipe palpitated as it further straightened itself, and now a hole opened in the oily water, and half-seen things came up with a rush from the depths of the flooded hold. Hundreds of little black kernels whirled and sank in the swing of the eddy, which grew wider as a deep, resonant hum descended from the deck above. It seemed to Austin that everything in the hold was coming to the top, but as he watched the bewildering succession of odds and ends that spun amidst the froth, Jefferson's voice rose harshly.
"It's water she's wanting! Keep her clear!" he said.
Austin contrived to do it for a while, though now and then the whirling rush of bags and wood almost tore the rake away from him. He was kept busy for half an hour, while Jefferson stood leaning out from the ladder, and steadily watching the water. Then the American swung himself down, with his knife in his hand, and scratched the iron at its level.
"We'll know in another hour or two whether we're pumping out the Cumbria or pumping in the creek," he said. "If it's the latter, I've got to let up on the contract. I can't undertake to dry out this part of Africa."
Then he signed to one of the Canarios. "Come down. Ven aca, savvy, and take this rake."
They went up together, but as they passed along the deck Jefferson stopped once more to lay his hand upon the pump. It was running with a dull, rumbling roar, and the deck trembled about it.
"She's doing good work," he said. "Now we'll have comida. I daren't go back there for another hour."
They went into the deck-house, where the Spaniard who acted as steward was waiting them, but in passing, Jefferson made a sign to Tom, who stood in the glow from the fire-door, with a shovel in his hand.
"All she's worth!" he said.
They ate as a matter of duty, and because they needed all the strength the climate had left them, but neither had much appetite, and Austin knew that Jefferson was listening as eagerly as he was himself to the deep, vibrating hum that came throbbing through the open door. It was a relief to both of them to hear, the persistent jingling of a cup that stood unevenly in its saucer. The pump was running well, but there remained the momentous question, was it lowering the water? And when the meal was over, Austin glanced at Jefferson as he pushed his plate aside.
"Shall I go down and look?" he asked.
"No," said Jefferson hoarsely. "Any way, if you do, don't come back and worry me. She's full up, fore and after holds and engine room – and there are things I don't stand very well. We'll give her two hours, and then, if she's doing anything worth while, the scratch I made will be dry."
Austin nodded sympathetically. "Under the circumstances," he said, "two hours is a long while."
Jefferson smiled, a curious, wry smile. "It's hard – the toughest thing one can do – just to keep still; but if I climbed up and down that ladder for two hours I'd probably break out, and heave somebody into the creek. There are things you have to get over once for all – and do it quick."
"I suppose there are," said Austin. "Still, it's the first time I've made the acquaintance of any of them, and I shouldn't have fancied one could get a thrill of this kind out of a centrifugal pump. There is, however, of course, a good deal at stake."
"Eighty thousand dollars," said Jefferson, "and all the rest of my life. You don't usually get such chances as the Cumbria is giving us twice."
Austin found that he, at least, could not keep still, however he tried, and he went out and paced up and down the slanted deck, where he fell over things, though he now and then endeavored to talk rationally to Tom the donkey-man. He did not find the attempt a success, but he saw that he was not the only one who felt the tension, for the Canarios, in place of resting, were clustered round the hatch, and apparently staring down the opening. Jefferson was still in the deck-house each time he passed, a gaunt, grim-faced object, with a lean hand clenched on an unlighted pipe, and at last Austin sat down on the deck beside the pump. He liked to feel the throb of it, but he remembered the half hour he spent there a long while afterwards.
Then Jefferson came out of the deck-house, walking slowly, though Austin fancied it cost him an effort, and they climbed down the ladder together. The man with the rake stood on the opposite one across the hatch, and Austin felt his heart beat painfully as he raised the lantern he held and Jefferson stooped down. He straightened himself slowly, though the blood was in his face.
"Dry!" he said hoarsely. "She's lowering it. It's a sure thing, Austin. If the fever doesn't get us we'll see this contract out."
Then he turned, and they went up and back to the deck-house, while an exultant clamour broke out from the Canarios; but Jefferson's lean hand quivered a little when he laid it on the table as he sat down.
"If she has started any plates, they're not started much," he said. "Now, talk about anything you like, so long as it isn't the Cumbria. I've got to slacken down to-night."
CHAPTER XVI
ELUSIVE GUM
It was in the small hours when Austin wakened, and, listening a moment, stretched his aching limbs with a little sigh of content. The odds and ends on the table beside him were rattling merrily, and a deep pulsatory humming rang stridently through the silence of the swamps. The pump was running well, for he could hear the steady splash of water falling into the creek, and once more a little thrill of exultation ran through him. He was not in most respects a fanciful man, for in him the artistic temperament was held in due subjection by a knowledge of the world and shrewd practical sense. Still, there were times when he vaguely recognised that there might, after all, be a reality behind the fancies he now and then indulged in with a smile, and that night it seemed to him that the big centrifugal pump was chanting a song of triumph.
He had tasted toil, and what toil really is only those know who have borne it in the steamy heat of the tropics, which saps the white man's vigour; while he had discovered what, artist as he was, he had not learned before: that, by way of compensation, man may attain a certain elusive spirituality by the stern subjugation of his body, even when it is accomplished by brutal manual labour. As the Estremedura's sobrecargo he had watched the struggle for existence between man and man with good-humoured toleration of its petty wiles and trickeries, but now it was the cleaner and more primitive struggle between man and matter he was called upon to take his part in with the faith in the destiny of his species which is capable of moving mountains, and not infrequently does so with hydraulic hose and blasting charges, as well as a few odd thousand tons of iron and water in a stranded steamer. Lying still a while, he heard the great pump hurling out its announcement of man's domination to swamp and forest, and then went peacefully to sleep.
He was astir with the dawn next morning, but when they went down the ladder into the hold he knew that the change in him had reached a further stage. Whether the water had sunk or not, he was going to see that fight out, and go back triumphant, or leave his bones in Africa. It was not alone to vindicate himself in Jacinta's eyes, for that, though it counted, too, seemed of less moment now; he was there to justify his existence, to prove himself a man, which many who have won honours in this world have, after all, never really done. As a sign of it, he was wholly practical when, hanging down from the ladder, he laid the fingers of one hand upon the scratch Jefferson had made on the iron. Then he held up the hand.
"Wet to the knuckles only," he said. "Last night the water was on the thumb."
They went up, and Jefferson looked at him keenly when they stood on deck; in fact, as he had done when Austin first clambered, half naked, out of the hatch.
"Yes," he said quietly, "she is heaving it out, and you have done more than start in. You mean staying with it now?"
Austin laughed. "I'm not sure how you know it, but I really think I do."
"No?" said Jefferson, with a twinkle in his eyes. "When it's in your voice, and stamped upon the rest of you. Well, I think we're going to float her, though it's perhaps not quite a sure thing yet. We seem to have bluffed off Funnel-paint, but the trouble is, you can't bluff the fever. In the meanwhile, we'll see if she's draining any out of the engine room."
They went in, and stood on the top platform, looking down on the water, which, so far as they could discern, stood at much the same level as it had done. Jefferson gazed at it with an air of reflection.
"If the bulkhead's strained and started so the water could get in, I don't quite see why it shouldn't run out into the hold again, but there's evidently no suction that way," he said. "You see how that tool-case lid is floating. There's another point that strikes me. Those started plates don't seem to be letting very much water in."
"As you have already pointed out, there is a good deal it's a little difficult to understand about the whole thing."
"Well," said Jefferson gravely, "it doesn't matter in the meanwhile, and we'll probably find out by and by. The first thing we have to do is to lay hands on that gum, and until the water's lower we can't start in. The boys can lay off to-day. Well, what are you wanting, Bill?"
"Two of the Canariers down!" said the fireman, who appeared in the doorway. "They was looking groggy yesterday, an' one o' them's talking silly now. I think it's fever."
Austin looked at Jefferson, whose face grew a trifle grim. "Ah," he said, "it's beginning. Well, I had expected we'd have that to grapple with before very long. We'll go along and look at them."
They went, and found one of the men raving in the forecastle, while Austin, who did what he could for him and his comrade, which was very little, afterwards spent a day of blissful idleness stretched at full length on the settee in the skipper's room, with a damp-stained treatise on navigation. He had never imagined that he could peruse a work of that kind with interest, but it served its purpose, for he felt he must have something to fix his attention on. In the meanwhile the big pump hummed on, as it did for another day and night, until on the third morning Jefferson stopped it and turned steam on the winch again.
"You have got to keep your eyes open as well as hustle, boys," he said, as he stood with his hand on the lever. "There'll be forty dollars, Spanish, for whoever finds the first bag of gum."
Austin made this clear to them, and they went down the ladder, but two men who had gone with them before were not there that day. The water had sunk, and tiers of rotting bags lay, half afloat, in it, giving out a sickening smell of fermentation. They were filled with little black nuts, the oleaginous kernels of the palm fruit from which the layer of oil had been scraped off, and these were evidently worth little in their damaged condition. Austin, however, had very little time to notice them in, for the winch above him rattled, and the day of feverish toil began.
The bags burst when they dragged them into piles and laid them upon the sling, while when the winch swung them up, a rain of kernels and slimy water came pattering and splashing down. Putrefying kernels floated up into every hole they made, and now and then a man sank waist deep among the crumbling bags. Still, there was no stoppage or slackening of effort. Forty dollars is a large sum to a seaman of the Canaries, who can bring up a family on one peseta, which is rather less than ninepence, a day, while the bonus contingent on getting the Cumbria off would set up most of them for life. They remembered it that day as they floundered and waded about the stifling hold, for the work of the big pump had renewed their ardour.
Still, the task before them was one most men would have shrunk from. The heat below decks was suffocating, the smell of the steaming, fermenting mass of slime and oil and kernels nauseating. The water it swam in was putrescent, and the weight to be hauled out of it and sent up into the sunlight apparently enough to keep them busy for months ahead, though they had, as everybody knew, very little time to move it in. It was to be a grim struggle between man and inert material, for unless the Cumbria was hove off when the rains came, it seemed very probable that she would stay there until she fell to pieces.
They set about it in silence, which, in the case of Spaniards, was a significant thing; but nobody had any breath to spare, and Austin gasped distressfully as he toiled, almost naked, in their midst. His hair was filled with grease, clots of oil smeared his shoulders, and the bags that burst as he lifted them abraded his dripping skin. Still, they went up, opening as they swung out of the dusky hold, and the winch rattled on, while there could be no rest for any man while sling succeeded sling.
He was half blinded by perspiration, the wounds on his raw hands had opened again, and there were now red patches on his uncovered breast and arms. His muscles had, however, grown accustomed to the strain since the first arduous day, and he did a man's part, as their comrade, with the rest. There were no distinctions down in the stifling hold. It was a community of effort for the one result, and again Austin wondered at the forethought of the fever-wasted man above who drove the hammering winch.
Jefferson was, beyond all question, boss; but with singular clearness of vision, or, perhaps, that higher, half-conscious faculty of doing the right thing, that characterises the leader of men, he had recognised that what he called bluff was of no service here, and had gone straight to the strength there is in simple human nature. There was, those untaught sailormen knew, no labour he was not ready to bear his part in, and no command was flung at them for a show of authority. Jefferson spent his strength and dollars freely, and while he asked no more than a hundred cents' worth for the latter, he got it with interest, a hundredfold.
It grew hotter and hotter, and there were curiously mingled ejaculations of Latin prayer and imprecations that had somehow lost their sting. The man with calumniated ancestry took it as a jest, and amidst the roar of running chain and fierce rattle of the winch the work went on. The rains were coming, there was very much to be done, and human courage braced itself to the task. Hard hands were torn and bleeding, veins showed gorged on dusky foreheads, muscles rose and bunched themselves under the olive skin, and Englishman and Iberian gave freely all that was in them, the sweat of the hard-driven body and tension of controlling will. They were alone in the land of the shadow, with a deadly climate against them, but the conflict they were engaged in has been waged before by Spaniards and Englishmen in half the wilder lands.
Then the winch stopped suddenly, and Jefferson came backwards down the ladder. He alighted knee deep in water among the rotten bags, and all his observations were not recordable. He had put off conventionality, and was once more the reckless sailor and the optimistic American, so he spoke of the lower regions, and called the men who had stowed the Cumbria's cargo condemned loafers in barbarous Castilian and good American, while the olive-faced Canarios gasped and grinned at him.
"The man who packed those bags there should be hung," he said. "We can't break the bulk out until we've shifted most of them. Then I'll send you down the sling-tub, and we'll heave the stuff to – ! It's sixty dollars now for the man who finds the gum."
"No sign of it yet," said Austin. "They'd never have stowed it among the bulk kernels. They're worth something. Hadn't you better make sure of them?"
Jefferson laughed grimly. "They're worth – how do I know? Call it £12 a ton when they're not rotten. It's the gum we came for, and I'm going to find it if I tear the ballast tanks and limbeys out of her. Clear that bag bulkhead, and then stand by for the sling-tub. We'll heave every blue-flamed kernel over."
The tub came down by and by, in fact, two of them, and those who had no shovels bailed up the slimy kernels with their hats and hands; but each time the chain swung through the hatch the tub below was full. It was two o'clock when they desisted, and some of them were waist deep in water then, while soon after they came up the big hose splashed in again. There were steampipe collars to unbolt and pack, and bolt again, before that was done; while when Austin came upon Jefferson, he held up one hand from which the scalded skin was peeling.
