Jacinta turned to him with a curious little smile in her eyes. "You and I are, of course, sensible people, and fancies of that kind have nothing to do with us. In the meanwhile, it is really necessary that I should appear in one or two of the dances."
Austin made a little gesture that might have expressed anything, and she rose and left him standing on the veranda.
CHAPTER IV
A BIG CONTRACT
It was the day after the dance at the Catalina, and Austin was running into Las Palmas harbour in a powerful steam launch which had been lent him to convey certain documents to a Spanish steamer. The trade-breeze had veered a little further east that day, as it sometimes did, and the full drift of the long Atlantic sea came rolling inshore. The launch was wet with spray, which flew up in clouds as she lurched over the white-topped combers that burst in a chaotic spouting on a black volcanic reef not far away from her. It also happened that the coaling company's new tug had broken down a few minutes earlier, and when the launch drove past the long mole the first thing Austin saw was a forty-ton coal lighter, loaded to the water's edge, drifting towards the reef. There was a boat astern of her, out of which a couple of Spanish peons seemed to be flinging the water, preparatory to abandoning the lighter to her fate, but Austin could see very little of the latter. The sea washed clean across her, and she showed no more than a strip of sluicing side amidst the spray.
What became of her was no business of his, but when the whistle of a big grain tramp rolling across the mouth of the harbour, and apparently waiting for her coal, roared out a warning, it occurred to Austin that the Spaniards in the boat might have considerable difficulty in pulling her clear of the reef against the sea. Accordingly, he unloosed the launch's whistle, and while it screeched dolefully, put his helm over and ran down upon the lighter. She was wallowing sideways towards the reef when he rounded up close alongside and saw, somewhat to his astonishment, that there was a man still on board. He was very black, though the spray was dripping from his face, and the seas that swept over the lighter's deck wet him to the knees. Austin shouted to him:
"I'll run round to leeward, Jefferson, so you can jump!" he said.
The wet man swung an arm up. "Stand by to take our rope. I'm not going to jump."
Austin considered. He was by no means sure that the launch had power enough to tow the lighter clear, and the long white seething on the jagged lava astern of her suggested what would happen if she failed to do it.
"Come on board. I haven't steam to pull her off," he said.