Hell's Hatches

by Lewis R. Freeman

An impatient toot from his launch carried the Doctor to the door again, where he paused long enough to assure me for the third or fourth time that it would be most unlikely that permission would be granted me to see the Mate or the Boatswain of the Cora until their spell of quarantine was over. If I was really anxious about it, he would gladly put in a word for me with the Chief. I would have to show good reason for my request, of course. Perhaps, if it chanced that I was able to shed any light on how the schooner came to get into such a mess—I cut him short by saying that I might call at the Quarantine Station when I came ashore a little later. What I knew about the sailing of the Cora from Kai happened to be the one thing I didn't care to confide to anyone—just yet. Asking the Mate to order my boat to stand by for me a few minutes longer, I went to my cabin to be alone while I turned the fresh developments over in my mind.

I had been prepared to await the coming of the Cora indefinitely. In fact, what I expected above anything else was that the final news would be a report that she had been found piled up on any one of a thousand reefs that spread their coral claws all the way from the Louisiades to the Great Barrier. And in case she did get through, I was quite prepared to learn that both of the white men and the girl had succumbed to the plague. But to be told that, after the schooner had avoided disaster, and all three of them the plague, that the two upon whom my interest and affection had centred were gone—dead,—was just a bit staggering. It was now up to me to determine upon a definite course of action, and, since it was now out of the question attempting to follow my first impulse of going to Allen at once and forcing a showdown, I wanted time to think.

What the Doctor had told me of the way Bell appeared to have died had instantly reawakened my suspicions of Allen. Had the kor-klee, working with a recurrent effect, finally proved fatal? Or had Allen, perhaps, administered a second and stronger dose? He would have had a hundred opportunities to do that had he desired to. Rona's attacks on the Mate, indicating the deadliest hatred, seemed to prove that her first suspicions of him had not weakened during the voyage—more likely, indeed, had hardened to a certainty. The belief I had been entertaining that Allen had made up his mind to play the game out on the square was not very deeply grounded.

My sense of personal loss in the passing of Bell and Rona was not a thing I cared to let myself dwell upon for the moment. There was no question that the news of Rona's death had shocked me even more than that of Bell's. Not that there was anything more between us than I have already told. I had never let myself think of her in terms of physical possession, though the sheer animal attraction of the girl was beyond anything I had ever experienced in a woman. But her appeal to the artistic side of me had been stronger even than that. Just as the thrill I felt at the first sight of her bathing in the pink-lipped bowl of the reef had made the very world itself seem more wonderful and beautiful, so now the depression that filled me on realizing that I was never again to have sight of her made the world seem emptier and drearier.

Another thing: there was no denying that Bell, splendid fellow that he was, had shot his bolt. A real come-back with him was too much to expect. The most that could have been hoped for was that he would "finish in style," and that I was assured he had done, no matter in what agony of soul and body his brave spirit had taken flight. But Rona's bolt was still unsped. The girl had hardly begun to finger Life's bowstring. It was almost as hard to think of the flaming, soaring spirit of her as quenched, as it was to believe that the matchless perfection, the supple gracefulness of her body—shooting alligators to see if any of them had been enjoying anything extra-special in tucker lately! I could not pursue that line of thought any further. I agreed with the Doctor that the fact that the girl had parted with her beloved shawl indicated that she had reached a jumping-off place—a point where she had no further use for it. I could not picture her—living—without its amber-bright flame streaming about her limbs. The wonder was that she had not kept it for a shroud. As I came out upon the deck to go to my boat, the intermittent crack of rifle shots along the shore told me that the "search" had not been abandoned.

Beyond deciding to go ashore and see if anything further could be learned, I had made no plans. It seemed that about the best I could do would be to wait in Townsville until Allen and Ranga were out of quarantine, and then let things shape as they would; but always assuming that, in case the former could not satisfy me he was innocent of Bell's death, I should do what I could to settle the reckoning with him. That would be my atonement—to Bell and to myself—for my sorry failure to "measure up" the day the Cora Andrews came to Kai Lagoon.

Captain Tancred, who had never quite settled it in his own mind how a man who openly admitted he had been living in the Kai colony for months would not have to be smuggled ashore on the quiet if he expected to avoid arrest in Australia, met me at the gangway.

"Best to leave the luggage aboard, lad," he began genially; "then that'll be ain less thing ye'll hae to bother wi' if ye're haen' to cut an' run for it. If ye're not back ag'in by the time I'm gettin' awa', than I'll be sendin' it in for ye on the Company's launch. But ye'd best be hangin' on wi' me a bittie, an' tak' me to see them pictur's ye've been tellin' me aboot in Sydney toon."

My pictures! The Exhibition had slipped my mind completely, driven out by the news of the Cora and the anxieties that had followed in its train. I had told Captain Tancred something of my coming show, but had hardly convinced him. He was far too considerate to say outright that he didn't believe me, but my Kai origin could not be ignored. If I was to have an exhibition of paintings in Sydney, then why was I stopping off in Townsville? On that point—since I didn't want to go into the Cora affair with anyone until I knew how things were going to shape—I had hardly been able to reassure the old sceptic. I might be an artist all right enough—I don't think he had any serious doubts on that score,—but I must also be some kind of a crook. He was plainly convinced in his own mind that I was trying to slip into Australia on the quiet, and was rather hurt because I would not take him into my confidence and let him help me.

But why not take in the Exhibition? In nine days, with any luck in connections, I could go to Sydney and back, with a day or two to spare. Even if the trip ran over that time, it was not likely that the man I wanted to see would be getting away immediately.... And, in any event, I would know how to find him, whether in Australia or the Islands. Further, it could not but have a salutary effect on my nerves to get quite beyond the attraction I felt that Quarantine Station would have for me if I lingered within physical reach of it. Nothing but absinthe, and more absinthe, and then more absinthe, could be depended upon to relieve my nerves once they were fully wrought up, as I knew they must be if I remained in Townsville in enforced inaction, fretting my heart out with impatience. And too much absinthe would mean only one thing—that I would begin the day on which I was to meet "Slant" Allen for a final showdown in a condition of mind and body precisely similar to that in which I had entered upon another day of accursed memory—and, doubtless, with equally shameful consequences to myself.