Island Gold/Chapter 5

sun was up; but the air was still delightfully fresh and the verdure yet glistened with the heavy night dews. Beyond the fringe of wavy palms which marked the shore the sea glittered and sparkled, its deep blue melting to a paler shade where on the horizon the sea mingled with sky. Past the tangle of white and yellow houses where the city stood, a creamy dead-white edging of foam, like ermine laid on an azure mantle, marked the intricate windings of the coast until once more ocean, shore, and sky imperceptibly blended in the glorious blue.

It was a morning on which one was glad to be alive. The champagne-like quality of the air sent a zest for action thrilling through my veins. The world seemed very fair, and, as I crossed the market-place, I pau-sed an instant to gaze with utter satisfaction on that brilliant mass of colour, the scarlet umbrellas of the stalls, the countrywomen with their heads enveloped in kerchiefs of flaming hues, the bold reds and greens and yellows of the masses of fruit and vegetables set forth in magnificent profusion for sale.

I felt that I was standing on the threshold of a great adventure. The strain of romance which Celtic blood bestows leaped to answer its appeal. In my head ran the mysterious jingle in which, as I was now convinced, a treasure lay concealed. So engrossed was I with my thoughts that, on mounting the broad flight of steps which led to the long, cool verandah of the British Consulate, I collided violently with a man who was coming out.

He was a short, stocky fellow, enormously strongly built, so massive in bulk, indeed, that one might almost say of him that he was as broad as he was long. His clean-shaven face, big and smooth and freckled, was tanned a deep brick-red, and, especially about the good-natured, firm mouth, was lined with innumerable creases. The hair visible beneath his rather battered yachting-cap was close-cropped and of a flaming red tint and his tufted eyebrows were of the same shade. A pair of brave and honest eyes shone very bluely out of his sunburnt face. He was wearing a clean but somewhat creased suit of white drill and in his hand he carried a sheaf of papers.

The mere sight of him carried me straight away back to Southsea or Plymouth, or one of those queer steep little towns of the Isle of Wight where so many masters of our merchant marine have their homes. From the crown of his head to the sole of his foot he was British, of a type that, I imagine, has scarcely changed through the ages.

“Sorry!” he said, as though realizing that in the impact it could only be my less substantial frame which could suffer, and, taking a step back, scrutinized me.

“My fault!” said I, rubbing my head, for I felt as if I had butted it against a stone wall.

“If you're going to see the Consul,” said the big man—and in his speech was a pleasant touch of the Hampshire burr—“you'll not find him. And the Vice-Consul's not in, either! He don't come to the office before nine o'clock: leastwise that's what I figured out the Dago within was tryin' to tell me! They don't overwork in the Government offices!”

With the perfect complacency of the Britisher, he addressed me in English, probably assuming that if I were a foreigner, I should understand him.

He stood on the steps and mopped his brow.

“I wonder whether you could tell me,” I said, “where the steam yacht Naomi is lying?”

The big man smiled and crinkled his face into a thousand fresh creases.

“Aye,” he replied. “That I can! She's lying about a hundred yards off the Customs House jetty—a white craft flying the Thames Yacht Club burgee. You can't mistake her! Do you know anybody aboard?”

“Not exactly,” said I. “But I wanted to call on Sir Alexander Garth, the owner.”

“Then you come right along with me,” placidly observed the big man. “I'm the captain of the Naomi—I sail her for Sir Alexander. I've got our mail here and I'm going straight back on board. I left the launch at the steps! And, by the way, my name is Lawless—Harvey Lawless...”

“I should be delighted to come with you,” I replied. “My name is Okewood!”

We turned our backs on the Consulate and, crossing the Cathedral square, followed a shabby, grass-grown street which rejoiced in the grandiose name of the Avenida de la Liberación. As we strolled along in the shade, Captain Lawless entertained me with some of his ideas on the shortcomings of the Central American republics and, in particular, of the State whose hospitality we were then enjoying. But with becoming reticence he did not question me as to the object of my desire to call upon his employer, nor, on the other hand, did he volunteer any information about that gentleman or his friends.

Presently we emerged into a great white square on the sea, a place of blinding glare and whirling dust. Here at the foot of some white stone steps a trim motor launch was heaving to and fro in the bright green swell under the silent gaze of a knot of loafers. Two men were in the launch, one wearing a white jersey with “S.Y. Naomi” embroidered in blue and a round sailor's cap with the yacht's name on the ribbon. The other was in a blue suit and wore a yachting cap.

“You'll want to bring the launch back in a couple of hours' time, Parsons,” said the Captain, addressing the man in the yachting cap. “The Vice-Consul won't be there till then. You'll have to get a move on him about those fittings. Mr. Mackay will not be very pleased, I'm thinking! He expected me to bring 'em back with me.”

I stood a little to one side during the brief dialogue which ensued and feasted my eyes on the picturesque scene. Viewed from the water the city presented a beautiful spectacle. The houses rose in tiers amid masses of greenery which rested the eye from the pitiless glare of the sea. In the distance I noted the pleasant green hill where the long low line of John Bard's bungalow was just discernible among the trees. The square in which we stood was in itself a wonderful picture with its great white warehouses, public buildings and the like built over deep high arcades where with shrill cries newspaper boys and boot-blacks plied their trade and lemonade sellers and beggars drowsed in the cool shadows.

The little knot of spectators fringing the quayside were as picturesque a bunch of picaroons as I have ever set eyes on. Their complexions ran through the whole series of shades from light coffee to Brunswick black. Their attire was as varied as their colour; but for the most part it consisted in a ragged Panama hat, a dirty vest, and a pair of thin striped cotton trousers.

I noticed one unusually striking figure, a stunted negro with a pock-marked face who wore a gaudy yellow handkerchief bound about his head and heavy gold rings in his ears. I observed this sportsman looking hard at me and was a little nonplussed to see him apparently draw the attention of the man at his side to me. The negro's companion was a swarthy, lissom young fellow with handsome features and a pair of bold black eyes. The negro nudged him and broke into a torrent of words. I was not near enough to make out what was said (and, if I had been, I doubt if I should have understood their rapidly spoken lingo). But I felt tolerably certain that the black was speaking about me; for twice he nodded his head in my direction. The upshot of it was that the swarthy young man turned and—a remarkable thing in this indolent population—sprinted hard away in the direction of the city.

I must say I felt disquieted. Since I had left John Bard's house that morning, I had kept a careful watch to see if I were followed. But no one had appeared to take any notice of me whatsoever and I felt reasonably sure that I was not shadowed. But now it distinctly looked as though I had been recognized. And in that moment, I believe, there hardened into determination in my mind the great resolve which had come into my head as I was taking leave of John Bard.

But the Captain was summoning me to step into the launch. I dropped in, he followed, and in a moment we were “touf-toufing” through the rolling green swell of the harbour towards the long and graceful shape of the Naomi as she tugged at her moorings over against the battered white bulk of the Customs House. It was with feelings of profound satisfaction that I saw the square with its fringe of loafers, the white houses, and the tufted palms recede as the natty little boat cleaved a foaming path through the green water. I had got clear away. It was up to me to secure for myself an invitation to join the party on Sir Alexander Garth's yacht.

She was a beautiful craft, with a good turn for speed, to judge by her design. As we drew nearer, I could see, by the many evidences of comfort displayed, that her owner must be a man of wealth. The snowy decks, the burnished brass and copper fittings, the clean, well-turned-out sailors who were busy on the deck beneath the striped sun-awnings, the neat gangway let down over the side with its clean white hand-rope—the whole impression given was one of luxury regardless of cost. As we turned to run alongside, I found myself wondering what manner of man this Sir Alexander Garth was. Was he a wealthy industrialist of pre-war England, or merely one of the new rich? If the latter, he would be less easy to handle than the former, I reflected:—besides, I reckoned, a war profiteer would not wear well on a long cruise to the South Seas! The next moment I stood on the deck of the Naomi in the modulated light which penetrated through the green-and-white awning.

The Captain bade the man whom he had addressed as Parsons, whom I found to be the head steward, take me to the smoke-room while he asked “Sir Alexander” if he could receive me. Treading almost noiselessly on his rubber soles, the steward led me along the deck to the back of the bridge, where a door hooked back revealed a glimpse of a long low-ceilinged saloon set about with comfortable settees and club chairs in soft green morocco leather, the portholes screened against the blinding light from without.

Even beneath the awning the light outside was so much stronger than the comparative obscurity within the smoke-room that at first I could not distinguish much. Parsons left me at the door, and I was about to sit down when I discovered to my surprise that I was not alone. At a desk set in one of the two recesses which flanked the doorway a girl was sitting. She was dressed in a plain white silk tennis shirt and white pique skirt, and her Panama hat lay on a chair at her side. She was writing letters. In the stillness of the room I could hear her pen scratching across the paper. So engrossed was she in her writing that she did not turn round.

I felt a little embarrassed. I felt it would be too farcical to cough mildly, in the manner of a stage comedian, in order to announce my presence; while, on the other hand, to make some violent noise like dropping on the floor one of the books which were lying around might, I conceived, unduly frighten the young lady. So I sat where I was, enjoying the pleasant half-light of the room after the heat and glitter outside, and amused myself by guessing at the appearance of the stranger from her back.

She had beautiful hair of a glossy golden brown, “bobbed” after the modern fashion, but so exquisitely brushed and tended that I decided she must have a good maid. Her figure was admirable, her neck very white and slender and matchless in the grace of its poise as she inclined her head to the paper. Her clothes, simple as they were, were faultless both in their cut and the way she wore them. I suppose there are fashions in a tennis blouse and skirt the same as there are in other kinds of women's clothes. At any rate, there was a flawless chic about this girl's appearance which told me that she was Paris-clad.

Presently the scratching of the pen stopped. A white hand stole up and patted the golden brown hair. Then some intuitive sense told me that the girl knew there was some one in the room. It was as though our two minds communed in that still, cool place. At the same moment she swung round on her chair and, seeing me, rose abruptly to her feet.

As she confronted me, I realized that I must have divined her beauty; for it came as no surprise to me to find her extremely good-looking. I have met many women in my time and, as is not uncommon in my profession, many were of the “charmer” order.

But the girl who stood facing me, a little perturbed, somewhat nonplussed by the unexpected apparition, had an indefinite quality of beauty which would have made her remarkable in any society. A beautifully shaped head, an oval face, delicately pencilled eyebrows throwing into relief the large grey eyes, a fine white skin, and unusually good teeth—all these attributes of beauty she possessed. But with them went a curiously strong attraction, some quality of magnetism, which, to speak quite personally, made me want to see her radiantly happy, to conjure up a smile which I felt must be unusually sweet.

“Oh,” she exclaimed, and blushed very prettily, “I didn't hear you come in. How do you do? I am Marjorie Garth. Does Daddy know you're here?”

With the empressement of the exiled Briton, to whom the vision of a fresh young English girl is as the first violets of spring or the fragrance of the forest after summer rain, I took the slim cool hand she offered me.

“The steward,” I said, “has gone to tell him!”

“I'm afraid,” she went on, scrutinizing me dispassionately after the manner of the modern young girl, “that you're in for a very slow time. There's nobody but just Daddy and me. Of course, that was the idea of this cruise. Daddy overworked terribly in the war and the doctors told him he'd never get his nerves right unless he dropped business absolutely for a whole year.”

I wondered how she had divined the nature of my mission to her father. Perhaps the Captain had jumped to conclusions and had imparted them to her. But her next remark puzzled me horribly.

“Of course, I'm perfectly fit,” she observed and smiled with a glint of white teeth. “But Daddy is very difficult to handle. He has cables sent to him at every port, and when we're in harbour his cabin looks like his office at the Manchester Cotton Exchange. You'll have to be very severe with him about it..

“I don't know really,” I replied, very puzzled, “whether I should feel justified...”

“Oh,” laughed the girl, “that's no way to handle Daddy. He's from the north, remember! He made his money by knowing when to say 'No';—at least, that's what he says. And you'll have to say 'No' to him. And to me as well. I'm like Daddy. I adore having my own way. And I usually get it...”

“That I'm fully prepared to believe!” I answered, and we both laughed. It was as though we were old friends. Then, growing serious on a sudden, the girl very deliberately started rolling up the left sleeve of her blouse. I gazed at her in bewilderment. What was coming now? I asked myself. With the utmost composure she unbared to the shoulder a firm, round, and very white arm.

“Don't give me away to Daddy,” she observed confidentially. “But my idiotic French maid burnt my arm the day before yesterday with the electric tongs, and it's rather sore. I wish you would just have a look at it. I haven't said a word to Daddy, for, if he knew, he would insist on dismissing Yvonne. Would you mind...?”

She extended her white arm to me whilst I, like an idiot, blushed furiously in my embarrassment and vainly cudgelled my brains to discover who this charming girl thought I was. And why the devil should I look at the burn on her arm?

A calm voice at the doorway delivered me from my dilemma.

“Sir Alexander will see you, sir!”

The steward, Parsons, was there. Marjorie Garth pulled her sleeve down.

“Don't keep Daddy waiting!” she warned, and added: “You shall dress my arm afterwards!”

I said “Oh, rather!” or something equally idiotic and followed the steward out. As I passed the girl, she leant forward and whispered:

“Mind you stand up to him!”

As we crossed the blinding sunshine of the deck and went down a companionway, Parsons confided to me that the owner was at breakfast. My heart sank rather. It is poor tactics to ask a man for favours before noon.

The saloon, which was panelled in some light-coloured wood, maple or birch, resembled, with its little domed sky-light, the restaurant of a liner. It was a small, snug little place with rose-coloured silk curtains and carpet and a profusion of silver and flowers. At the far end was a door which, I imagined, led to the cabins.

At the sound of my entrance, Sir Alexander Garth looked up from his egg. As he stood up to greet me, I saw he was a tall, heavily built man in the fifties with a heavy iron-grey moustache. He had about him an air I have noticed in other prosperous business people—a sort of “moneyed manner” which reveals itself in a great deal of self-confidence with just a touch of parade. The hard grey eyes and the firm chin denoted the man of action; but the physiognomist in me (which my work has considerably developed) took mental stock of the arched nostril and the downward dip to the corners of the mouth which are the unmistakeable signals of a violent temper.

These and other little details I noticed about him as we shook hands and he asked me if I had breakfasted. And because I was really pretty peckish, and because I believe one can always do business best over a meal, I accepted his invitation and started in on a luscious grapefruit. When he had poured out my coffee, pushed the toast-rack at me, and generally put me at my ease, Sir Alexander Garth, who had been scrutinizing me rather closely, remarked:

“I should never have taken you for a doctor!”

“I'm not a doctor, sir!” I answered.

“I see—not taken your degree, eh? Well, well, I told our New York office in my cable to do the best they could: indeed, I wasn't at all sure that our manager could manage it in the time. But Lowry's a spry chap—he don't come from Bolton for nothing—and he knows that when th' oud man gives an order he expects it to be carried out. Did you meet Lowry, Doctor?”

Now I understood Miss Garth's inexplicable and embarrassing desire to show me her burnt arm.

“I'm afraid you've made a mistake, Sir Alexander,” I said. “I'm not a doctor...”

“Eh?” ejaculated the baronet, sitting back in his chair and looking at me. “Then who the devil are you?”

“My name is Okewood, Major Desmond Okewood,” I replied as boldly as might be, though my host's countenance was hoisting all manner of storm signals in the shape of a reddening of the cheeks and the twitching of the nostrils, “and I have rather a strange request to make...”

But I got no farther, for Garth exploded.

“Damn it!” he exclaimed, pounding the table, with his big sunburnt hand, “I knew it. You're from Allan's. My Manchester office turned their proposition down without reference to me and, as soon as I heard about it, I wrote and confirmed the decision. And they've done nothing but badger me about it ever since. At every port there's been a cable. And now you have the brass to come interfering with my holiday, asking yourself to breakfast under false pretenses.... Parsons!”

He yelled for the steward, at the same time putting forth his hand to pound a bell that stood on the table at his side.

“Stop!” I said.

“Will you stop me from ringing for my own servants?” he demanded truculently.

“I'll stop you from making yourself look a fool before your own steward!” I retorted, “if you'll quit shouting and listen to me for a minute. I have nothing to do with Allan's or any other business concern...”

At the first glimpse of this resolute-looking cotton-spinner I knew that, to achieve my end, I should have to take him more fully into my confidence than either my inclination allowed or my instructions warranted. I took my letter-case from my pocket and, extracting a folded blue paper, laid it before Sir Alexander on the white damask tablecloth. These were my credentials, which we are supposed to show only in moments of direst necessity.

“Will you read that?” I said.

The baronet looked questioningly at me, then slowly put on a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles which he took from a case in his pocket. He carefully perused my blue paper and then handed it back to me.

“Eh,” he remarked without a trace of apology in his manner, “and we all thought you were the doctor I ordered our New York office to send to join the yacht at Rodriguez. Well, young man, and what can I do for you?”

With the utmost candour I told him. Thereafter, for ten minutes or more, our heads were close together. Then he rang the bell.

“My compliments to Captain Lawless,” he said to the steward, “and I should be obliged if he could spare me a few minutes! We will come to him in the chart-house!”

He gave the steward the start of us by lingering to offer me a cigar and to light one for himself. Then we made our way up on deck and presently entered the chart-house, a room abaft the bridge and above the smoke-room. Here the Captain, looking very red and shaggy without his cap, awaited us.

“Ah, Captain,” said our host, “let me make you acquainted with Major Okewood, who is coming a cruise with us. I want you to show me on the chart Cock Island in the Eastern Pacific. And let's hear, too, what the 'Sailing Directions' have to say about it!”

Thus I learnt that my pleading had prevailed with him and that, behind a hard and business like exterior, there flickered a little spark of romance that had burst into flame at the magic tale of treasure trove I had poured into his ears. As the skipper spread out upon the mahogany top of the chart-locker the section in which, amid weird whorls and lines signifying tides and depths, Cock Island figured, I felt once more the strong tug at my heart from that secluded islet whence at the foot of volcanic peaks an enigmatic grave seemed to beckon...