Jacinta laughed. "I daresay I am. I had, as a matter of fact, sunk into a state of pessimistic apathy, which naturally found expression in ill-humoured pleasantries lately, but I have been getting to work again. It has rather a bracing effect, you see. In the meanwhile, it might be advisable for you to make yourself as nice as possible to Lieutenant Onslow, who is now coming up on deck again. Go and ask him to show you a flying fish, or something."
Muriel went, for she had discovered that there was usually a sufficient reason for most of what Jacinta did, and the latter lay still in her chair.
"There is," she said, "still a fly in the amber. I wonder what he wanted with that photograph, though, after all, he didn't think it worth while carrying to Africa."
CHAPTER XXII
FUNNEL-PAINT'S PROPOSITION
Deep stillness hung over the dingy mangroves, and there was not a breath of air astir, while Austin, who lay among the palm oil puncheons beside the creek, was oppressed by a sense of suffocation. A few yards away two Spaniards lay, apparently asleep, huddled, shapeless heaps of ragged clothing, beneath a strip of tarpaulin raised on poles, and it was then, though there was no sun visible, a little past the hottest part of the afternoon. A yellow vapour that seemed suffused with heat had obscured the heavens for a week or more, and the swamps lay sweltering beneath it waiting for the rain. Austin longed for it ardently, for there was an almost unendurable tension in the atmosphere.
He had shaken off the fever, but he was worn and dazed by toil, for the strain was not without its effect upon him, and he had become subject to curious tricks of fancy. He had brought the coal from Dakar, and it now lay piled upon a down river beach; but he had obtained only two or three men, and the steamy heat of the swamp belt had melted the sustaining energy out of the Cumbria's company. Individually, he felt that it was a hopeless struggle they were making. They had untrammelled nature against them, and, he could almost fancy, the malevolent spirits of the bush the negroes believed in. A man, he admitted, could believe in anything in that country, and he had of late been troubled by a feeling that something sinister and threatening was hovering near him.
He was unpleasantly conscious of it then, which was partly why he lay raised on his elbow, with his eyes fixed on the bush that shut in the narrow strip of land. It rose before him, laced with tangled creepers, mysterious, and shadowy, and it seemed to him that somebody or something was watching him from its dim recesses. He had been conscious of the same sensation when he plodded with a Spanish seaman along the narrow trail to the dug up beach, an hour earlier, but it was stronger now, and instinctively he slipped his hand into a pocket where the pistol he had bought in Grand Canary lay. Then he laughed in a listless fashion, for they had seen no more of the negroes since the blowing up of the headman's house, and he felt that he had not them to fear. There was, in fact, no tangible cause for apprehension at all.
Presently something seemed to materialise amidst the shadows where the creepers streamed from a cottonwood in dense festoons, and, lying still, with fingers closing on the pistol, he could almost fancy he made out a dim human form. There was, at least, one black patch among the leaves that suggested greasy naked skin. It vanished again, however, and Austin, who felt his heart beating, abused the intolerable glare the sand flung up that dazzled his vision, and then stiffened himself in tenser watchfulness as for a moment he made out a pair of rolling eyes. The creepers rustled, a twig snapped, and he was about to call out, when one of the Canarios raised himself a trifle.
"Ave Maria!" he said, with drowsy hoarseness, and, though the words are frequently used to express astonishment in his country, it was evident that he meant them as a pious appeal.