For Jacinta

by Harold Bindloss

A week had slipped by since the negro's visit, and Austin and Jefferson were sitting late in the skipper's room. There had been no change in the weather, and it was then, if possible, hotter than ever. The muggy land breeze had died away, and a thick woolly mist shut the stranded steamer in. Door and ports were open wide, but the oil lamp that hung beneath the beams burned unwaveringly, and the ray of light that streamed out from the doorway made the blackness outside more apparent. The big pump was running behind the deck-house, and its deep vibratory humming rang startlingly through a stillness so intense that it seemed unnatural, as it hurled the water out of the engine room.

Austin sat huddled in a corner, attired only in duck trousers, and torn singlet which came no lower than his elbows, and, for want of buttons, fell open at his neck. He had an unusually clean skin, and his sun-scorched lower arms and scarred hands, with the battered knuckles and broken nails, emphasised by contrast the clear whiteness of his half-covered chest. That night it was beaded with perspiration, for which he was sincerely thankful, since there are times in the tropics when the healing moisture fails to find its way through the fevered skin, and its afflicted owner burns in torment.

Jefferson sat on the little table, a blackened pipe in his hand, and the listless pose of both suggested that the last trace of energy had been sapped out of them. At last Austin laughed, hollowly and dejectedly.

"I don't know why we're sitting here saying nothing when we have to begin again at five o'clock to-morrow, but I don't feel like sleep," he said. "In fact, I scarcely think I've slept for more than a couple of hours at a time since I came back again. I suppose I ought to be in the forecastle now—four or five of them seemed very sick when I last looked in—but there's an abominable tension in the air that makes any exertion out of the question."

Jefferson nodded. "You can't do anything for them, and there's nobody we could spare to send with them down river," he said. "They've got to take their chances with the rest of us now, and it seems to me one might figure them out as three or four to one if the rains don't come. Still, if you don't want to do anything, why can't you keep still?"

"I don't know," and Austin, who had been rolling a damp cigar in his fingers, flung it down. "If that pump stopped I should probably make an exhibition of myself. The hum and thump it makes has a soothing effect on me. It's suggestive. Even here man has something to say. I don't know whether you understand me."

Jefferson looked at him curiously. "I guess I do. I'd mix myself a good strong pick-me-up if I were you. You have had something on your mind the last day or two."

"I have," said Austin. "I'm afraid of that infernal Funnel-paint, I think. I can't help a fancy that we haven't done with him yet; and, though the connection isn't very apparent, the fact that the first thing we came across after landing when I came out was a dead nigger, insists on obtruding itself on my recollection. Bill told me he was singularly unpleasant to look at."

Jefferson contrived to laugh. "You take that pick-me-up, and in the meanwhile let up on your reminiscences. Things of that kind aren't cheerful—and I'm worried by one or two of them myself."

Austin, who stooped and picked up the cigar, settled himself afresh on the settee after lighting it, and half an hour dragged by. Neither of them felt the least sign of drowsiness yet, and the jingle of the odds and ends in the rack, and tremble of the stout teak house, was, as he had said, vaguely reassuring. The big pump was pounding on in spite of the climate, and neither heat nor fever had any effect on steam. Then he looked up sharply, and Jefferson straightened himself, for a faint sound of footsteps came out of the darkness. They were slow and dragging, as though somebody was groping his way warily towards the light.