I gave "Pisco" his course for the first leg in by the lights of the big sugar central, and then, as we opened up the inner bay, gave him a bearing on the notch—barely guessable against the overcast west—where the old cartroad grade pierced the brow of the cliff. The clouds were racing overhead and the baffling cross-gusts on the surface would have made it bad business for a sailing craft. But for a launch the task was a comparatively simple one. The loom of the old mill was discernible against the darker opacity of the cliff at a couple of hundred yards, and the right-angling lines of the pier at half that distance. As the latter was sure to have been built of the eternally-lasting jarra, I knew that it would be as solid and serviceable as the day it was abandoned.
I had not thought it best to risk dampening Captain Tancred's enthusiasm by confessing that I thought it was a good ten-to-one against my man's turning up at the rendezvous. Indeed, I could see no grounds whatever for hoping that Ranga had shaken the pursuit—already at his heels—and won through to the appointed place. Nothing short of a miracle could have compassed it, I told myself. It was on the off chance that the miracle had been wrought that I was keeping my promise.
"'Bout half a point to sta'boa'd, Tuan. Way nuf now! Steady!" That deep rumbling voice from the darkness was a welcome surprise. "Pisco," heeding the quiet directions, brought his launch alongside the broad solid flight of steps as neatly as he would have laid her up to the Mambare's gangway in broad daylight.
Ranga was coming down the steps—with a slowness which I attributed to the fact that they were probably very slippery—when I heard a thud on the deck behind me, such a sound as a heavy, soft bundle thrown down from above might have made in striking. A second or two later there was an ejaculation of astonishment somewhere aft, probably from "Pisco," I thought, as the words were Spanish. I did not try to puzzle out the purport of them at the moment, as my attention was occupied with Ranga, who seemed to be hesitating at the last moment about coming aboard. Twice or thrice he drew back his foot from the rail, as though uncertain of his balance. And when the great bulk of him finally did surge forward, it was with a lurch that took all my strength to check it and prevent his reeling on across the narrow bow and over the other side. He steadied himself slowly, with a great intake of breath. "Sorry—make trouble,—Tuan. Now—I go aft."
"I am leaving you here, Ranga," I said quickly, for I was getting nervous about a movement of lights I had observed along the flume in the rear of the big sugar mill. "Captain Tancred will look after you on the steamer, and put you off wherever you want to go. He also has some money for you. Good luck!"
The big fellow took a long shuddering breath, and when he spoke it was as though he had rallied himself from a spell of faintness by sheer force of will. "Some day, Tuan—I pay you back—for all you do. So long." He turned with painful deliberation and started to edge along aft. I was a bit surprised that he had not grasped my extended hand, but could not be sure that he had been aware of it in the dark. It did not occur to me until afterwards that he had not used his own hands on the rail of the stairway in descending, and that he had seemed to shoulder his way back to the cockpit rather than to grope. I waited until his swaying shoulders ceased to blot the blinking of the phosphorescent seas astern, and then swung off to the stairs.
"All clear!" I called softly to "Pisco," as I felt the solid step underfoot. "Shove off when you're ready. Buena fortuna!"
It was doubtless "Pisco's" ejaculation in Spanish a few moments before, lurking in the back of my mind, that prompted me to speed the spirited coxswain in his own tongue. On the heels of that "Buena fortuna!" the words he had spoken flashed up in my memory. "Cristo! Porqué la muchacha?" It could hardly have been a sarcastic dig at Ranga's hesitancy in stepping aboard, I reflected as I mounted the slippery—astonishingly slippery—steps. He would not have expressed it quite that way in that case. A sudden slip in a slimy patch at the head of the steps put an end to conjecture for the moment, and when I regained my feet the answer was written across the cabin doorway of the turning launch. The lamp inside had—purposely—been turned very low, and the blurred silhouette of the figure that came groping out to where Ranga had collapsed on a cockpit transom might easily have been that of any one of old "Choppy's" true and tried launch crew. But wet amber silk reflects a deal of light, and there was only one peacock shawl in the world—or in that neck of the world at least.