"What are you going to try it on?" asked Austin, who stepped back a pace or two expeditiously.
Jefferson looked up with a little grim smile. "On the house of the headman of the village where Funnel-paint lives," he said. "If we can get in a good morning's work, we'll go up and remonstrate with him this afternoon. You might take that stick of powder and fuse and wrap it up in something."
Austin picked up the yellow roll, and then held it as far as he conveniently could from him, while Jefferson laughed.
"I guess you needn't worry. You could pound it with a hammer, or put it in the fire, and it wouldn't show fight—that is, ninety-nine times out of the hundred," he said. "Still, there might be considerable trouble on the other one. The sure way to stir it up is to pat a shred of it with a piece of wood, though the man who tries it is scarcely likely to see what it does."
Austin got rid of the dynamite as speedily as he could, and when he came back one of the Spaniards was laying out breakfast on the deck. It was not a sumptuous meal, consisting, as it did, of coffee, a can of meat that Austin fancied was tainted, ship's bread, which is biscuit, and a pale fluid that had presumably been butter; but he did not feel hungry, and Jefferson ate little. In the meanwhile a blaze of light beat through the mists which melted under it, and flaming yellow creek and dingy mangroves sprang suddenly into being as by the unrolling of a transformation scene. Their pale stems dripped slime, and just there their foliage was blotched and spotted as with smears of flour. It gave them a diseased appearance, and Austin, who felt he loathed the sight of them already, remembered that where the mangrove grows the white man not infrequently dies. He was almost glad when breakfast was over and Jefferson rose.
"I want to be quite clear," he said. "You're going to see this thing out with me on a quarter share?"
"I am," said Austin. "Anyway, I'll do what I can, though I'm afraid I haven't given the question of the share much consideration."
Jefferson looked at him intently. "Well," he said, "I've worried a good deal about my three-quarters. That's what I came for, and if we float her off you'll get yours, just as sure as you'll earn it—hard. It's a big thing you're going into, and you'll find it calling on all the grit that's in you. We're on results here, and, now you understand that, we'll start in."
He went to the forward winch, and Austin, obeying his directions, descended to the hold with a vague recognition of the fact that there was a change in Jefferson. As coaling clerk in Grand Canary, Austin had found him a quiet and somewhat reserved man, who conducted himself in everything, at least, as conventionally as most of his English friends in that island. Now it was as though he had sloughed off the veneer so that the primitive man beneath it appeared, which is a thing that not infrequently happens in such places as the swamps he was toiling in. His voice, even, was different. It was harsh, with a suggestion of command; and the fierce, resolute nature of the man became revealed in it and the penetrating glance of his steady eyes.
Austin, however, discovered that he had very little time to think of Jefferson. The Spaniards were on results, too, and when the chain sling came rattling down the strenuous toil began. The hold was dim and shadowy, as well as insufferably hot, and filled with nauseating smells. The tiers of barrels slanted so that one could scarcely stand on them, but when somebody gave Austin a handspike he took his place with the rest, and set about prizing loose the puncheons so that they could get a sling round them or the hoisting-crabs on the stave-ends. Now and then the crabs slipped, or tore through the oil-soaked wood when the great barrel swung up into the sunlight, and it came crashing down; while each time they made an opening, the rest slipped down, grinding upon each other, and squeezed it up again. Those on the lower side were water-borne, but the others were only held in place by those beneath them on the incline, and the men could not keep the untouched tiers intact as they would have done had the Cumbria been floating level.