Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (274 page)

‘I am sure we shall be very glad,’ he said. ‘At half-past six? Thank you

so very much.’

     ‘“For my voice has been tuned to the note of the gun

     That startles the deep when the combat’s begun,”‘

quoted Attwater, with a smile, which instantly gave way to an air of funereal solemnity. ‘I shall particularly expect Mr Whish,’ he continued. ‘Mr Whish, I trust you understand the invitation?’

‘I believe you, my boy!’ replied the genial Huish.

‘That is right then; and quite understood, is it not?’ said Attwater. ‘Mr Whish and Captain Brown at six-thirty without fault — and you, Hay, at four sharp.’

And he called his boat.

During all this talk, a load of thought or anxiety had weighed upon the captain. There was no part for which nature had so liberally endowed him as that of the genial ship captain. But today he was silent and abstracted. Those who knew him could see that he hearkened close to every syllable, and seemed to ponder and try it in balances. It would have been hard to say what look there was, cold, attentive, and sinister, as of a man maturing plans, which still brooded over the unconscious guest; it was here, it was there, it was nowhere; it was now so little that Herrick chid himself for an idle fancy; and anon it was so gross and palpable that you could say every hair on the man’s head talked mischief.

He woke up now, as with a start. ‘You were talking of a charter,’ said he.

‘Was I?’ said Attwater. ‘Well, let’s talk of it no more at present.’

‘Your own schooner is overdue, I understand?’ continued the captain.

‘You understand perfectly, Captain Brown,’ said Attwater; ‘thirty-three days overdue at noon today.’

‘She comes and goes, eh? plies between here and...?’ hinted the captain.

‘Exactly; every four months; three trips in the year,’ said Attwater.

‘You go in her, ever?’ asked Davis.

‘No, one stops here,’ said Attwater, ‘one has plenty to attend to.’

‘Stop here, do you?’ cried Davis. ‘Say, how long?’

‘How long, O Lord,’ said Attwater with perfect, stern gravity. ‘But it does not seem so,’ he added, with a smile.

‘No, I dare say not,’ said Davis. ‘No, I suppose not. Not with all your gods about you, and in as snug a berth as this. For it is a pretty snug berth,’ said he, with a sweeping look.

‘The spot, as you are good enough to indicate, is not entirely intolerable,’ was the reply.

‘Shell, I suppose?’ said Davis.

‘Yes, there was shell,’ said Attwater.

‘This is a considerable big beast of a lagoon, sir,’ said the captain. ‘Was there a — was the fishing — would you call the fishing anyways GOOD?’

‘I don’t know that I would call it anyways anything,’ said Attwater, ‘if you put it to me direct.’

‘There were pearls too?’ said Davis.

‘Pearls, too,’ said Attwater.

‘Well, I give out!’ laughed Davis, and his laughter rang cracked like a false piece. ‘If you’re not going to tell, you’re not going to tell, and there’s an end to it.’

‘There can be no reason why I should affect the least degree of secrecy about my island,’ returned Attwater; ‘that came wholly to an end with your arrival; and I am sure, at any rate, that gentlemen like you and Mr Whish, I should have always been charmed to make perfectly at home. The point on which we are now differing — if you can call it a difference — is one of times and seasons. I have some information which you think I might impart, and I think not. Well, we’ll see tonight! By-by, Whish!’ He stepped into his boat and shoved off. ‘All understood, then?’ said he. ‘The captain and Mr Whish at six-thirty, and you, Hay, at four precise. You understand that, Hay? Mind, I take no denial. If you’re not there by the time named, there will be no banquet; no song, no supper, Mr Whish!’

White birds whisked in the air above, a shoal of parti-coloured fishes in the scarce denser medium below; between, like Mahomet’s coffin, the boat drew away briskly on the surface, and its shadow followed it over the glittering floor of the lagoon. Attwater looked steadily back over his shoulders as he sat; he did not once remove his eyes from the Farallone and the group on her quarter-deck beside the house, till his boat ground upon the pier. Thence, with an agile pace, he hurried ashore, and they saw his white clothes shining in the chequered dusk of the grove until the house received him.

The captain, with a gesture and a speaking countenance, called the adventurers into the cabin.

‘Well,’ he said to Herrick, when they were seated, ‘there’s one good job at least. He’s taken to you in earnest.’

‘Why should that be a good job?’ said Herrick.

‘Oh, you’ll see how it pans out presently,’ returned Davis. ‘You go ashore and stand in with him, that’s all! You’ll get lots of pointers; you can find out what he has, and what the charter is, and who’s the fourth man — for there’s four of them, and we’re only three.’

‘And suppose I do, what next?’ cried Herrick. ‘Answer me that!’

‘So I will, Robert Herrick,’ said the captain. ‘But first, let’s see all clear. I guess you know,’ he said with an imperious solemnity, ‘I guess you know the bottom is out of this Farallone speculation? I guess you know it’s RIGHT out? and if this old island hadn’t been turned up right when it did, I guess you know where you and I and Huish would have been?’

‘Yes, I know that,’ said Herrick. ‘No matter who’s to blame, I know it. And what next?’

‘No matter who’s to blame, you know it, right enough,’ said the captain, ‘and I’m obliged to you for the reminder. Now here’s this Attwater: what do you think of him?’

‘I do not know,’ said Herrick. ‘I am attracted and repelled. He was insufferably rude to you.’

‘And you, Huish?’ said the captain.

Huish sat cleaning a favourite briar root; he scarce looked up from that engrossing task. ‘Don’t ast me what I think of him!’ he said. ‘There’s a day comin’, I pray Gawd, when I can tell it him myself.’

‘Huish means the same as what I do,’ said Davis. ‘When that man came stepping around, and saying “Look here, I’m Attwater” — and you knew it was so, by God! — I sized him right straight up. Here’s the real article, I said, and I don’t like it; here’s the real, first-rate, copper-bottomed aristocrat. ‘AW’ I DON’T KNOW YE, DO I? GOD DAMN YE, DID GOD MAKE YE?’ No, that couldn’t be nothing but genuine; a man got to be born to that, and notice! smart as champagne and hard as nails; no kind of a fool; no, SIR! not a pound of him! Well, what’s he here upon this beastly island for? I said. HE’S not here collecting eggs. He’s a palace at home, and powdered flunkies; and if he don’t stay there, you bet he knows the reason why! Follow?’

‘O yes, I ‘ear you,’ said Huish.

‘He’s been doing good business here, then,’ continued the captain. ‘For ten years, he’s been doing a great business. It’s pearl and shell, of course; there couldn’t be nothing else in such a place, and no doubt the shell goes off regularly by this Trinity Hall, and the money for it straight into the bank, so that’s no use to us. But what else is there? Is there nothing else he would be likely to keep here? Is there nothing else he would be bound to keep here? Yes, sir; the pearls! First, because they’re too valuable to trust out of his hands. Second, because pearls want a lot of handling and matching; and the man who sells his pearls as they come in, one here, one there, instead of hanging back and holding up — well, that man’s a fool, and it’s not Attwater.’

‘Likely,’ said Huish, ‘that’s w’at it is; not proved, but likely.’

‘It’s proved,’ said Davis bluntly.

‘Suppose it was?’ said Herrick. ‘Suppose that was all so, and he had these pearls — a ten years’ collection of them? — Suppose he had? There’s my question.’

The captain drummed with his thick hands on the board in front of him; he looked steadily in Herrick’s face, and Herrick as steadily looked upon the table and the pattering fingers; there was a gentle oscillation of the anchored ship, and a big patch of sunlight travelled to and fro between the one and the other.

‘Hear me!’ Herrick burst out suddenly.

‘No, you better hear me first,’ said Davis. ‘Hear me and understand me. WE’VE got no use for that fellow, whatever you may have. He’s your kind, he’s not ours; he’s took to you, and he’s wiped his boots on me and Huish. Save him if you can!’

‘Save him?’ repeated Herrick.

‘Save him, if you’re able!’ reiterated Davis, with a blow of his clenched fist. ‘Go ashore, and talk him smooth; and if you get him and his pearls aboard, I’ll spare him. If you don’t, there’s going to be a funeral. Is that so, Huish? does that suit you?’

‘I ain’t a forgiving man,’ said Huish, ‘but I’m not the sort to spoil business neither. Bring the bloke on board and bring his pearls along with him, and you can have it your own way; maroon him where you like — I’m agreeable.’

‘Well, and if I can’t?’ cried Herrick, while the sweat streamed upon his face. ‘You talk to me as if I was God Almighty, to do this and that! But if I can’t?’

‘My son,’ said the captain, ‘you better do your level best, or you’ll see sights!’

‘O yes,’ said Huish. ‘O crikey, yes!’ He looked across at Herrick with a toothless smile that was shocking in its savagery; and his ear caught apparently by the trivial expression he had used, broke into a piece of the chorus of a comic song which he must have heard twenty years before in London: meaningless gibberish that, in that hour and place, seemed hateful as a blasphemy: ‘Hikey, pikey, crikey, fikey, chillingawallaba dory.’

The captain suffered him to finish; his face was unchanged.

‘The way things are, there’s many a man that wouldn’t let you go ashore,’ he resumed. ‘But I’m not that kind. I know you’d never go back on me, Herrick! Or if you choose to — go, and do it, and be damned!’ he cried, and rose abruptly from the table.

He walked out of the house; and as he reached the door, turned and called Huish, suddenly and violently, like the barking of a dog. Huish followed, and Herrick remained alone in the cabin.

‘Now, see here!’ whispered Davis. ‘I know that man. If you open your mouth to him again, you’ll ruin all.’

CHAPTER 8. BETTER ACQUAINTANCE

The boat was gone again, and already half-way to the Farallone, before Herrick turned and went unwillingly up the pier. From the crown of the beach, the figure-head confronted him with what seemed irony, her helmeted head tossed back, her formidable arm apparently hurling something, whether shell or missile, in the direction of the anchored schooner. She seemed a defiant deity from the island, coming forth to its threshold with a rush as of one about to fly, and perpetuated in that dashing attitude. Herrick looked up at her, where she towered above him head and shoulders, with singular feelings of curiosity and romance, and suffered his mind to travel to and fro in her life-history. So long she had been the blind conductress of a ship among the waves; so long she had stood here idle in the violent sun, that yet did not avail to blister her; and was even this the end of so many adventures? he wondered, or was more behind? And he could have found in his heart to regret that she was not a goddess, nor yet he a pagan, that he might have bowed down before her in that hour of difficulty.

When he now went forward, it was cool with the shadow of many well-grown palms; draughts of the dying breeze swung them together overhead; and on all sides, with a swiftness beyond dragon-flies or swallows, the spots of sunshine flitted, and hovered, and returned. Underfoot, the sand was fairly solid and quite level, and Herrick’s steps fell there noiseless as in new-fallen snow. It bore the marks of having been once weeded like a garden alley at home; but the pestilence had done its work, and the weeds were returning. The buildings of the settlement showed here and there through the stems of the colonnade, fresh painted, trim and dandy, and all silent as the grave. Only, here and there in the crypt, there was a rustle and scurry and some crowing of poultry; and from behind the house with the verandahs, he saw smoke arise and heard the crackling of a fire.

The stone houses were nearest him upon his right. The first was locked; in the second, he could dimly perceive, through a window, a certain accumulation of pearl-shell piled in the far end; the third, which stood gaping open on the afternoon, seized on the mind of Herrick with its multiplicity and disorder of romantic things. Therein were cables, windlasses and blocks of every size and capacity; cabin windows and ladders; rusty tanks, a companion hutch; a binnacle with its brass mountings and its compass idly pointing, in the confusion and dusk of that shed, to a forgotten pole; ropes, anchors, harpoons, a blubber dipper of copper, green with years, a steering wheel, a tool chest with the vessel’s name upon the top, the Asia: a whole curiosity-shop of sea curios, gross and solid, heavy to lift, ill to break, bound with brass and shod with iron. Two wrecks at the least must have contributed to this random heap of lumber; and as Herrick looked upon it, it seemed to him as if the two ships’ companies were there on guard, and he heard the tread of feet and whisperings, and saw with the tail of his eye the commonplace ghosts of sailor men.

This was not merely the work of an aroused imagination, but had something sensible to go upon; sounds of a stealthy approach were no doubt audible; and while he still stood staring at the lumber, the voice of his host sounded suddenly, and with even more than the customary softness of enunciation, from behind.

‘Junk,’, it said, ‘only old junk! And does Mr Hay find a parable?’

‘I find at least a strong impression,’ replied Herrick, turning quickly, lest he might be able to catch, on the face of the speaker, some commentary on the words.

Attwater stood in the doorway, which he almost wholly filled; his hands stretched above his head and grasping the architrave. He smiled when their eyes Met, but the expression was inscrutable.

‘Yes, a powerful impression. You are like me; nothing so affecting as ships!’ said he. ‘The ruins of an empire would leave me frigid, when a bit of an old rail that an old shellback leaned on in the middle watch, would bring me up all standing. But come, let’s see some more of the island. It’s all sand and coral and palm trees; but there’s a kind of a quaintness in the place.’