For Jacinta

by Harold Bindloss

"Dead. I've been up to his place in the launch. I found it caved in, and trees growing up in it already. Nature straightens things up quite smartly in this country. Any way, I'll show you round to-morrow; and, in the meanwhile, it's about time that Spaniard brought you some supper."

"It seems to me that everybody who had anything to do with this unfortunate vessel invariably died."

Jefferson smiled a trifle grimly. "That's a fact," he said.

Then one of the Canarios brought in a simple meal, and when they had eaten and talked for another hour, Austin stretched himself out on the settee and Jefferson climbed into his slanted bunk. They left the light burning and the door wide open, and both of them lay down dressed as they were; but while Jefferson seemed to fall into a somewhat restless doze, Austin found that sleep fled the further from him the more he courted it that night. It was very hot, for one thing, and stranded steamer and mangrove forest alike seemed filled with mysterious noises that stirred his imagination and disturbed his rest. It was only by a strenuous effort he lay still for a couple of hours, and then, rising softly, with a little sigh, went out into the night.

The darkness closed about him, black and impenetrable, when he stepped out of the stream of light before the deck-house door, and the feeble flame of the match he struck to light his pipe as he leaned upon the rail only made it more apparent. He could see nothing whatever when the match went out, but the oily gurgle of the creek beneath him suggested the height of the steamer's hove-up side. She lay, so Jefferson had told him, with her inshore bilge deep in the mire, and two big derrick-booms slung from the wire hawser that ran from her stern to the mangroves along what should have been the bank, as a precaution against any nocturnal call by negroes in canoes. Her outshore side, which he looked down from, was, he surmised by the slant of deck, between ten and fifteen feet above the creek.

It was a little cooler there, and the sounds were less disquieting than they had been in the room. He could localise and identify some of them now—the splash of falling moisture, the trickle of the stream, and the soft fanning of unseen wings as one of the great bats which abound in that country stooped towards the light. Still, behind these were mysterious splashings among the mangroves and wallowings in the creek, while the thick, hot darkness seemed to pulse with life. He could almost fancy he heard the breathing of unseen things, and it did not seem strange to him that the dusky inhabitants of that country should believe in malevolent deities. Indeed, as he leaned upon the rail, with its darkness enfolding him, he was troubled by a sense of his own insignificance and a longing to escape from that abode of fear and shadow. Other men, including those who had come out with a salvage expedition, had found the floating of the Cumbria too big a thing for them, and he already understood that there are parts of the tropics where the white man is apt to find his courage melt away from him as well as his bodily vigour.

Then he commenced to wonder dispassionately why Jacinta had sent him, or if he had, after all, been warranted in considering that she had done so. She had, though he admitted it unwillingly, at least, not bidden him go, but she had certainly done what she could to make him understand that he was wasting his life on board the Estremedura. It would have been a consolation to feel that he was obeying her command and doing her a definite service, if it was only to bring Jefferson home to Muriel Gascoyne; but she had not laid one upon him, and even Jefferson seemed to understand that her purpose went further.

He was less pleased with the fancy that Jacinta had undertaken what she apparently considered his reformation. He had been, in some respects, content as he was, for while there was no other woman he had the same regard for, he had forced himself to recognise that it was quite out of the question that she should ever entertain more than kindliness for him. Austin could be practical, and remembered that young women with her advantages, as a rule, looked higher than a steamboat purser, while even if Jefferson succeeded in his venture, and he went home with four or five thousand pounds, which appeared just then distinctly unlikely, Jacinta was the only daughter of a man whose income was supposed to amount to as much a year.

Austin sighed a little as he decided that he did not really know why he had come. In the meanwhile he was there, and there was nothing to be gained by being sorry, especially as he could not even console himself with the fancy that Jacinta was grieving over him. She was probably, as usual, far too busy by that time with somebody else's affairs. He was also averse from permitting himself to feel any glow of self-congratulation over the fancy that he was doing a chivalrous thing. In fact, he saw it with realistic clearness of vision as one that was wholly nonsensical, and it did not occur to him that the essence of all that was best in the old knightly days might be surviving still, and, indeed, live on, indestructible, even in the hearts of practical, undemonstrative Englishmen, as well as garlic-scented Spaniards, and seafaring Americans. Still, when he had yielded himself instinctively to Jacinta's will he had vaguely realised that, after all, the bonds of service are now and then more profitable to a man than dominion.

In the meanwhile the damp soaked through his clothing, and his physical nature shrank from the hot steaminess and the sour odours of putrefaction. It was unpleasant to stand there in that thick darkness, and even a little hard upon the nerves, but he had had enough of the deck-house, and he could not sleep, which is by no means an unusual difficulty with white men in the tropics. It was a relief when at last a sound that grew louder fixed his attention, and resolved itself into a measured thudding. Here were evidently canoes coming down the creek, but Austin was a little uncertain what to do. He had no wish to rouse the worn-out men, who probably needed all the sleep they could get, if this was a usual occurrence; but it did not appear advisable that there should be nobody but himself on deck in case the canoes ran alongside. He was considering what he should do when Jefferson, who held a glinting object in his hand, appeared in the door of the deck-house. Then there was a patter of feet on a ladder below, and another dim figure materialised out of the darkness.