The Sea and the Jungle

by H. M. Tomlinson

The engines stopped. There was a shout from the steamer’s bridge and a thunderous rumbling as the cable ran out, and then a remarkable quiet. The old man came sideways down the bridge ladder with a hurricane lamp, and stood with us, striking a light for his cigar. “Here we are, Chief,” he said. “What about coals in the morning?” The night was hot, there was no wind, and as we sat yarning on the bunker hatch another cluster of stars moved in swiftly together, came to a stand near us, and a peremptory gun was fired. That was the British mail steamer.

We looked at her with awe. We could see the toffs in evening dress idling in the glow of her electric lights. What a feed they had just finished! But the greatest wonder of her deck was the women in white gowns. We could hear the strange laughter of the women, and listened for it. That was music worth listening to. Our little mob of toughs in turns used the night glasses on those women, and in a dead silence. There were some kiddies, too.

We were looking at the benign lights of the island and trying to make out what they meant. The sense of our repose, and the touch of those warm and velvet airs, and the scent of land, were like the kindness and security of home. “I know this place,” drawled Sandy. “I was here once. Before I went into steam I used to come out to the islands, when I was a young ’un. I made two voyages in the ‘Chocolate Girl.’ She was my first ship. She was a daisy, too. Once we lifted St. Vincent twenty-five days out of Liverpool. That was going, if you like. If old Wager—he was the old man of the ‘Chocolate Girl’—if he could only get a trip in a ship like this, like an iron street with a factory stack in the middle! But he can’t. He’s dead. He had the ‘Mignonette,’ and she went missing among the Bahamas. There’s millions of islands in the Bahamas. They’re north of this place. You couldn’t visit all those islands in a lifetime.

“If you ask me, some of the islands in these seas are very funny. There’s something wrong about a few of them. They’re not down in the chart, so I’ve heard. One day you lift one, and you never knew it was there. ‘What’s that?’ says the old man. ‘Can’t make that place out.’ Then he reckons he’s found new land, and takes his position. He calls it after his wife, and cables home what he’s done. The next thing is a gunboat goes there and beats about and lays over the spot, but she doesn’t find no island. The gunboat cables home that the merchant chap was drunk or something, and that he steamed over the spot and got hundreds of fathoms. They’re always so clever, in the navy. But I’ve heard some of these islands are not right. You see one once, and nobody ever sees it again.

“I knew a man, and he was marooned on one of those islands. He sailed with me afterwards on one of the Blue Anchor steamers to Sydney. One time he was on a craft out of Martinique for Cuba. She was a schooner of the islands, and fine vessels they are. You’ll see a lot about us in the morning. This man’s name was Moffat—Bill Moffat. His schooner had a mulatto for a master, and that nigger was a fool and very superstitious, by all accounts. They ran short of water, and it’s pretty bad if you fall short of water in these seas. Off the regular routes there’s nothing. You might drift for weeks, and see nothing, off the track.

“Then they sighted an island. The mulatto chap pretended he knew all about that island. He said he had been there before. But he was a liar. It was only a little island, like some trees afloat. They came down on it, and anchored in ten fathoms and waited for daylight.

“Next morning some wind freshened off shore, and Moffat takes a nigger and rows to the beach. There was only a light swell breaking on the coral, and landing was easy. Moffat told the nigger to stay by the boat while he took a look round. There was a bit of a coral beach with a pile of high rocks at the ends of it, like pillars each side of a doorstep. What was inside the island Moffat couldn’t see, because at the back of the beach was a wood. He said he heard a sound like a bird calling, but he reckoned there wasn’t a soul in that place. The schooner was riding just off. He turned and was crunching his way up the coral with the idea of looking for a way inside. He got to the trees, and then heard the nigger shout in a fright. The black beggar was pushing out the boat. He got in it too, and began rowing back to the schooner as if somebody was coming after him.

“Moffat yelled, and ran down to the surf, but the nigger kept right on. There was Moffat up to his knees in the water, and in a fine state. The boat reached the schooner—and now, thinks Moffat, there’ll be trouble. Do you know what happened though? For a little while nothing happened. Then they began to haul in her cable. She upanchored and stood out. That’s a fact. Bill told me he felt pretty sick when he saw it. He didn’t like the look of it. He watched the schooner turn tail, and soon she found more wind and got out of sight past the island, close-hauled. He watched her dance past one of the piles of rocks till there was nothing but empty sea behind the rock. Then his eye caught something moving on the rock. Something moved round it out of his sight. He never saw what it was. He wished he had.

“Well, he had a pretty bad time. He couldn’t find anyone on the island, in a manner of speaking. But somebody was always going round a corner, or behind a tree. He caught them out of the tail of his eye. He said it was enough to get on a man’s nerves the way that thing always just wasn’t there, whatever it was. ‘Curse the goats,’ Bill used to say to himself.

“One day Bill was strolling round figuring out what he could do to that mulatto when he met him again, and then he found a sea cave. He went in. It was a silly thing to do, because the way in was so low that he had to crawl. But the cave was big enough inside for a music-hall. The walls ran up into a vault, and the water came up to the bottom of the walls nearly all round. The water was like a green light. A bright light came up through the water, and the reflections were wriggling all over the rocks, making them seem to shake. The water was like thick glass full of light. He could see a long way down, but not to the bottom. While he was looking at it the water heaved up quietly full three feet, and the reflections on the walls faded. Then he saw the hole through which he had crawled was gone. ‘Now, Bill Moffat, you’re in a regular mess,’ he says to himself.