Magic

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

V.

Now when a man finds himself in his grave he may like it or not, but he cannot get out; and so it is with a ship.

Uliami presently found himself in the fo’c’s’le of that ship where the hands were having their supper by the light of a stinking lamp, and so far from eating, it was all he could do to breathe.

Neither did the men please him, being different from the men he had always met with. There were men from the Solomons, with slit ears and nose rings; and there were men from the low islands, whose language he could scarcely understand; and he would have been the unhappiest man in the world, just then, had it not been for the thought of Tauti so close to him hidden among the cargo and fancying himself safe.

At the same time, on board the schooner, Tauti was in the same way, wishing himself in any other place, but upheld by the thought of Uliami hiding from him, yet so close.

Then, with an empty belly, but a full mind, Uliami turned in, to be aroused just before break of day by the mate. On deck he was put to haul on ropes to raise the sails, and on the deck of the schooner, lying close by, he might have seen, had there been light, Tauti hauling likewise.

Then he was put to the windlass which pulls in the chain that raises the anchor, and as the sun laid his first finger upon Paulii the anchor came in and the brig, with the tide and the first of the land wind, drew toward the reef opening and passed it. Uliami, looking back, saw Tilafeaa standing bold from the sea and the reef and the opening with the schooner passing through it, and he wished himself back for a moment, till the remembrance of Tauti came to him and the picture of him hidden there among the cargo.

He reckoned that he would knock to be let out as soon as the ship told him by her movement that she was well on her voyage, and, being on the morning watch, he managed to keep close to the cargo hatch with his ears well open to any sound. At first the straining and creaking of the masts and timbers confused him, but he got used to these, but he heard no sound. An hour might have gone by when a new thought came to Uliami. He would lay no longer waiting for the other to make a move, but go straight to the captain and tell him that a man was hidden there under the hatch, for he was more hungry for the sight of Tauti’s face and the surprise on it at their meeting than a young maiden is for the sight of her lover.

At that moment the captain himself came on deck and began to look at the sun, holding to his face a thing so strangely formed that Uliami would have laughed, only that laughter and all gay thoughts were now as far from him as Tilafeaa.

The captain was a big man with a red face, and when he had done looking at the sun, and when he heard what Uliami had to say, he swore a great oath, and, calling to the mate, he ordered the tarpaulins to be taken off the hatch and the locking bars undone, and then the hatch was opened, but there was no man there.

Then the captain kicked Uliami, and the mate kicked him, and at that very time, or near it, they were kicking Tauti on board the schooner for also giving them word that a man was hidden in the cargo.

Of a truth these two, who had set out so gayly to kill one another, were receiving payment through the hands of Sikra; each of these men had seized the devil by the tail and they could not let go, and here he was galloping over the world with them, from wave to wave, like a horse over hurdles, for the brig and the schooner, though separated by many leagues, were going in the same direction.