X
THE STAR OF TROY
CHAPTER THIRTY
CYNICS
I
The inhabitants of Sandakan are still talking about it. You can corner any one, native or trader, and get a first-hand account of the amazing spectacle which saluted the eyes of the awaking town on a certain morning late in March. If the drinks are on you, and all the circumstances of the hour conspire toward your informer’s temporal well-being, you will hear with the full vividness of which a Bornean is capable, when in the mood, how the slumbering sea delivered up a couple of over-crowded life-boats with “Skipping Goone” badly stencilled on the sides. You will hear also how a bald impresario, bewailing incoherently the loss of a certain black toupee, clad only in a night shirt and blanket, but hugging to his breast a huge leather wallet in which reposed all the receipts from the Manila engagement, led a bedraggled lot of songbirds up into the town. It was a visitation such as never before was heard of—at once so tragic and so screamingly funny. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Most of the women were in hysterics. The captain of the outfit, drenched but dressed like an admiral in honour of the flying moor which never came off, walked a little by himself with chin plunged despondently into the fiery midst of such splendid whiskers as the town had never seen till now. It became a matter of waterfront gossip that the captain of the vanished schooner was something of a pariah.
But the town recovered from its amazement and opened its arms. Within twenty-four hours there wasn’t a single surviver of this the most picturesque disaster in the history of the China sea who couldn’t sit up and give a wholly original version of the affair.
II
Two days later, Jerome departed alone for a hike about the island. The catastrophe had temporarily upset his universe, just as it had upset everybody’s universe; but this was no longer the old Jerome, but one who rebounded with far more elasticity from upheavals. The Skipping Goone was gone, and with this untimely and sad demise had come an end to Mr. Curry’s erstwhile triumphant world tour. But Jerome still had his own life to grapple with.