Austin glanced suggestively towards the men, who stood with backs still bent with weariness, about the entrance to the forecastle.
"I suppose so," he said. "Still, the question is, can they stand it long?"
Jefferson laughed harshly. "They'll have to. We have the blazing sun against us, and the evening fever-mist; in fact, 'most everything that man has to grapple with, and the worst of all is time. Still, they can't break us. We have got to beat them—the river, the climate, and all the man-killing meanness nature has in Western Africa."
He stopped a moment, and, standing very straight, a haggard, grim-faced scarecrow, flung up his scalded hands towards the brassy heavens in a wide, appealing gesture. "When you come to the bottom of things, that's what we were made for. There's something in us that is stronger than them all."
Austin said nothing, though once more a little thrill ran through him as he slipped away quietly in search of his comida. What they were doing had, he felt, been sung in Epics long ago, and Jefferson had, it seemed, blundered upon the under-running theme. It was the recognition of the primal ban again, the ban that had a blessing for man to triumph in, and by it win dominion over the material world and all there is therein. He and his comrade were men whose creed was crudely simple, though it was also, on points they did not often mention, severe; but they bore the bonds of service, which are never worn without compensation, willingly, and the tense effort of will and limb had clarified and strengthened the vague faith in them until they were ready to attempt the impossible.
Still, Austin had little time for his comida. The men in the forecastle were very sick indeed, and he packed them in foul blankets, and dosed them with green-lime water, boiling hot to start the perspiration, which was, he recognised, likely to accomplish more than his prescriptions. There were limes in Funnel-paint's village, and they had not scrupled to requisition them. One of the men lay still, moaning faintly through blackened lips, and the other, raving, called incoherently on saints and angels. It seemed to Austin, standing in that reeking den, that there was small chance for his patients unless they heard him. Two of those whose names he caught had once, he remembered, been, at least, fresh-water sailormen, and half unconsciously he also appealed to them. One creed appeared much the same as another in that dark land, and something in him cried out instinctively to the great serene influences beyond the shadow. When he had finished his work of mercy the Spaniards were stripping the covers off the after hatch, and he had scarcely a minute for a mouthful before he joined them to heave the kernels up by hand. They went up, basket after basket, and splashed into the creek, but there was no sign of a gum bag or package anywhere among them. Bill, who hove them out through the open gangway, once turned to grin at Austin, who stood next the hatch.
"I've never been a millionaire, an' it's —— unlikely that I'll ever be one, either; but I know what it must feel like now," he said. "Here are you an' me slingin' away stuff that's worth twelve pounds a ton, an' one o' them goes a long way with a man like me."
Austin said nothing. He had no breath to spare, but he thrust a brimming basket upon the fireman, and that did just as well. They toiled throughout that afternoon, under a broiling sun, but when the black darkness came again they had still found no gum. Then, as they ate together, Austin looked at Jefferson.
"You are sure the gum was really put into her?" he said.
"It was," said Jefferson, with a little grim smile. "Whether it's there now, or not, is another thing. We'll know when she's empty, and if we haven't found it then, we'll consider. Not a pound reached Grand Canary, and it's quite certain that the fellows who went—somewhere else—took none of it with them."