Arthur Quiller-Couch

“ So I upped helm on the heave of a comber, and drove her for it, the walls of rock so close on either hand that twice the end of our short boom brushed them before Farrell, who held the sheet, could avoid touching.... And then, rushed by a heave of the swell through this gorge, we were shot into a round lake of the bluest water I ever set eyes on; a lakelet, rather; calm as a pond except by the entrance, where the waves, broken and spent, spread themselves in long ripples that melted and were gone. ”

“ So, weak as we were, we managed to lift Santa's body ashore and carry it up the few yards of sand beyond what we judged to be a faint tide-mark, close under the ferns.... After this we fetched ashore the tool-chest and some loose articles that we judged to be necessary—such as the cooking-pot, binoculars, and a spare coil or two of rope and a ship's mallet; and Farrell searched the undercliff for sea-birds' eggs, whilst I gave the boat a cleansing with baler and sponge, redded her up after a fashion, and finally moored her off with a shore-line, some twenty yards out on the placid water. ”

“ I might have piled up the torture on Farrell, and at the same time have played on that other passion, by setting myself to debauch Santa. No, I'm not complaining. You shall have as bad to condemn before I've done, so you needn't apologise. But, as it happens, I wasn't that sort of blackguard. Moreover, it wouldn't have worked, anyhow. Santa was as good as her name—
"No, damn it! I will clear myself of that!... You'll understand that I loved the woman, and—well, in the old days, as you'll do me the justice to remember, I hated men who played loose among women. ”

“ A tall mountain backs it. The Pacific kisses its feet. A spring bursting from the mountain, about four thousand feet up, has cut a gorge down which it tumbles in cascades to the beach and the salt water. Where the source leaps from the rock the vegetation begins, as you would expect. It widens and grows more luxuriant all the way down. The stream comes to a forty-foot waterfall between sheer rock curtained with creepers; whence it hurries down through plantations of banana, past San Ramon, which perches where it can, house by house, on shelves hidden in greenery. ”

“ It always seems to me with you English, you Americans, you white-skinned men—with all the ones I have known—that the fault is not all mine when I find you alike just at first; that every one of you ought to be a man quite different from all other men; that you, of your race—yes, every one—were meant for something you have missed—were meant to be—Oh, what is the word?"
"'Distinguished?'" suggested Farrell, standing up. "I never was that, Santa—though, back in England, at one time, I had a notion to make some sort of a mark." ”

“ He sat, all hunched, crouching forward over a third small lamp—the binnacle lamp with which our boat, like the others, was providentially fitted. The rain, however, beat on its glass in such sheets that he could not possibly have read the compass card floating by the wick. Nor—I am sure—was he trying to read it. He just sat and steered by the feel of the seas as they lurched ahead and sank abaft. The lamplight glowed up on his cheek-bones, but was lost under the pent of his sou'wester, which had a sort of crease or channel in its fore-flap, that shed down the rain in a flood. ”

“ But Santa's cross was there, standing yet on the small beach where the castaways had landed, and no doubt it stands yet. No storm ever seriously troubles the water within that lovely protected hollow.
Returning to Valparaiso, I travelled north by steamer, by rail, by steamer and rail again, to New York, hunted up Renton, and found that my luck held; that I was dealing with a man as honest as Hales and keen as either of us. ”

“ They had risen in alarm at the sound of barking, high up the slope. A dog came leaping down it, tore through the fern, and, as our boat drew to shore, raced to and fro by the water's edge, barking wildly in an ecstasy of welcome. A yellow dog, Roddy—a largish yellow dog—and, as I live by food, the living image of my murdered Billy! ”

“ It's not a ship—it's a continent—that vanishes. The little hole it has made in the water calls to the whole ocean to cover it, and the ocean widens out its horizon by ten times all around, at once pouring in and spreading itself to isolate you ten times farther from help.... Nobody who hasn't been through this and felt it for himself can understand how promptly and easily— without help of quenching their thirst in salt water—men go mad, in open boats, at sea. ”

“ Foe and Farrell were apt to yield, at intervals, to an abandonment of weariness, but so that they alternated, the exhaustion of one seeming ever to double the other's fever. Foe sought his bunk and lay there like a log. Farrell, after the first shock of reading his pursuer's name in the Passengers' Book—where it sprang to his eyes fair and square—fell to haunting the passage-way, low down in the vessel, on which one dreadful door refused to open. ”

“ Her words came in faint, hurrying wafts, much as for days the wind had been ruffling after us. The sunset struck slantwise across her cheek and hung entangled in the brown tress that drooped low by her right temple. I tell you, Roddy, that if the old gods and goddesses in our school-books ever turned out to be mortal after all, she was one, and thus looked, and spoke as she died.... ”

“ There, seventy minutes from Liverpool Street, you pose—yes, pose, Jack—as the urbane man, Horatius Flaccus life-size; whereas your job as a citizen is confined to cursing the rates, swearing if a pit in the wood pavement jolts you on the way home from the theatre, supposing it's somebody's business, supposing there's graft in it, and talking superciliously of Glasgow and Birmingham, provincial towns, while you can't help to cheapen the price of a cabbage in Covent Garden! ”

“ You can't call it idling when you sit—say in the Bois, on any chance bench anywhere—seeing nothing, letting the carriages go by like an idle show of phenomena, but with your whole soul thrilling to a new idea, drinking it in, pushing out new fibres which grow as they suck in more of it through small new ducts, with a ripple and again a choke and yet again a gurgle, which you orchestrate into a sound of deep waters combining as you draw them home.... ”

“ But these last, though they wear shoes and keep up among themselves a pretence to be the aristocracy of the place, have really resigned life for this anticipatory Paradise where they grow grey on remittance money, eating the lotus, drinking smoked Scotch in the hotel veranda, swapping stories, and—since they know one another all too well in this drowsy decline of their day—feebly and falsely pretending to one another what gallant knowing fellows they had been in its morning. ”

“ Farrell's fatal propensity for steering to the right had fetched us around, almost full circle.
"There she stood, with her mute appealing headlights. 'Wha's matter?' asked Farrell. 'Oh, I say—Oh, come! More of 'em?'
"'I dragged him and Petunia back into the shadow under the side-wall of the Picturedrome, and leaned back against the edifice while I mopped my brow. My shoulder-blade encountered the sharp edge of a rainwater pipe. A bright and glorious inspiration took hold of me. Farrell had made all the running, so far: it was time for me to assert my manhood. ”

“ Haven't you had that trouble with people of other races than your own—among a crowd of Japanese, say? And the shepherds on the mountains behind here—have you not wondered how they can know every sheep in a flock of many hundred?"
Farrell was on his feet by this time, and in something of a passion. "Am I, then," he stammered out; "—am I, then, so like any of the others, up at Engelbaum's?"
"Calm yourself, O beloved," said Santa, brushing her finger-nails, gipsy-wise and soft as butterflies, over, the strings of her guitar. "Calm yourself, and hearken. ”

“ All the drinking water awash in the boat was foul with it, and this bloodied flood was running, as the boat rocked, in and out among our small bags of pork and ship-bread. My job ended, I looked aft. Farrell was leaning over the gunwale in uncontrollable nausea. The face of Prout at the tiller, was dogged but inexpressive. Grimalson stood like a man dazed. ”

“ THE CASTAWAYS. (Foe's Narrative Continued.)
"A miracle? Well, I had always supposed poor Billy to be a mongrel of such infinite variety of descent that the world might never hope to behold his like. But, after all, the strains even of dogs are limited in number; and what Nature has produced she can reproduce.
"But the apparition, just there, and at that moment, was a miracle to me. I sat staring at it even when the boat's stem took the beach gently, and it was Farrell who first crawled over her side to land. His knees shook, and the dog, leaping against him, nearly bowled him over. ”

“ I tell you, Roddy, that this Macnaughten, who aboard the Eurotas had been an ordinary skipper conning his ship, and nowise hearty or communicative, of a sudden proved himself as great as any man I've read of in history.... You may smile if you will. But here was a man abandoned by Heaven in the waste of the South Pacific, with all his prospects blasted and all the hopes built on the Eurotas line (in which, I learned, he had piled his money) ; with a wife at home, moreover, and a daughter. ”

“ They say that living with an enemy in a confinement such as ours, makes you hate him worse and worse.... It wasn't so with me. My hate, by this time, was set and annealed, so to speak; quite cold, and almost judicial. I had no more jealousy than Jove. The air that, to the others, quivered so damnably, so insufferably around the boat under a sky without shade, swam around me like incense.... As for Farrell, his eyes watched mine like a dog's. ”

“ Jack answered testily. "Surely I made it clear? All I ask of you is to post me out from time to time the money I ask for travelling expenses.... That doesn't compromise you, eh? ... Damn it all, Roddy," he exploded, "I counted you were my friend to that extent!"
"That's all right, Jack," said I. "But a friend is one thing and an accomplice is another. What's your game with Farrell? You haven't told me yet, though you're asking what gives me the right to know."
He picked up his coat and hat and turned on me with a smile, very faint and weary and a trifle absent-minded. ”

“ Afterwards, I got the truth out of Jimmy Collingwood."
"Well?" I prompted her, as she paused.
"Well, it was shocking of Jack, I admit. But, after all, this Mr. Farrell had ruined his life, and—of course I don't quite understand men and their code—but isn't it a trifle uncharitable of you, Roddy, not to allow that the shock may have unhinged his mind for a time?... No, I'm playing the humbug in my turn, and I'll own up. It was wicked, if you will: but it was great in its way, and determined... and women, you know, always fall slaves to that sort of thing. ”

“ Pretending that my purpose was only to cross and report, I waded the stream and dodged upward through the undergrowth; recrossed it, about a hundred yards above, crawled another yard and again recrossed, all to baffle the hound's scent, since from Farrell I could have hidden by this time securely enough. In a very few minutes I heard his voice hallooing to me, and then the dog's yelp began to chime in with it. By and by the beast, well baffled, was baying hard through the undergrowth between me and the surf. ”

“ Again Farrell pondered. "I dare say he was right, too," he said thoughtfully. "When two men are made for one another, I guess their souls—if that's not too good a word—must exchange flesh and clothing now and then, so that for the moment there's a puzzle to separate t'other from which.... Has Foe told you about her— about Santa?"
"He has," said I.
"Yet he can't have told you all: for he doesn't know it all—about Renton, for instance, and how I did that bolt from him to Costa Rica, and from Costa Rica to San Ramon. ”

“ Farrell let out a guttural sort of ah-h! and sat up somewhat higher against her knee, opening his chest and breathing in new life as the Chartreuse coursed through his veins. Santa turned the flask upside-down, and handed it to me.
"'I have won!' she said softly. 'Men at the last are—what is the word?—magnanimous, mostly: and that is why a woman can usually win in the end.'
"'You have thrown away,' said I, 'so much of life as I gave you, renouncing much. ”

“ Santa let the neck of the guitar fall back against her breast and clasped her hands suddenly. "Yes, that is it;—to make your mark! Every woman who loves a man wants him to make his mark somehow, somewhere.... I cannot tell you why: but it is so."
Farrell took a turn on the veranda. "My dear," he said tenderly, coming back and halting before her, "do you realise that I am fifty years old?" She pressed her palms over her eyes. "You keep telling me that, and it hurts! Besides, you grow younger every day... ”

“ It was a silly, useless question: but Grimalson, already rattled, swung round upon a man he knew to be weak. 'Damn me!' cried he in a gust of rage, 'if I can't teach it to doctors, I'll teach seamen who gives orders here!' and snatching out a marling-spike from a sheath in his belt, hurled it full at the seaman's head.
"The act was brutal enough in itself; for the iron, though a light one, was full heavy enough, flung with that force, to lay a man out. It did worse: for Martinez, instead of ducking his head, made a spring to his feet, putting out his hands much as if fielding a cricket-ball. ”

“ Farrell mused over this for a while. "I can't explain it to you," he said. "I can't explain it to myself. But that man and I simply can't give one another up. As I woke it in him, so he wakes in me something that I can't be without, having once known it. It seems to be a necessary part of myself."
"There are a great many 'Can'ts' in that confession—for a strong man," was my comment; "and a trifle too much 'myself' for a man who has found himself. But you remember that meeting at the Baths, when you and Jack Foe first made acquaintance? Of course you do. ”

“ I went on patiently; "envy, hatred, and malice— especially hatred—are Jack's special lay; the Grand Research we call it. Take simple anger, for instance. What is it makes a man angry?"
"Lots of things.... Being called a liar, for one."
Foe took the mischief in the boy's eye, and let out a laugh. "I can't be angry with you, anyway. Go on, Roddy. You're doing it quite well so far, though I'm almost too sleepy to listen."
"It isn't as simple as you think," I pursued seriously (but glad enough in my heart to have heard Jack laugh—he wasn't given to laughter at any time) . ”

“ I dare say it crossed to the Atlantic in time: for again it was the kind of story that starts by being funny and gets funnier as each man chooses to improve on it.... All I can say is, that if the body you and I, Foe, looked down upon, that afternoon, belonged to Vliet's missionary, I don't want to hear any more fun about it.... So you see, gentlemen, this God-forsaken lot, down in the I'll Away's fo'c'sle, patched it up amongst them that this man, in his hurry, had deserted his dog. Now, as I shall tell you, if they had reasoned, they'd have known that the dog wouldn't starve, anyway. ”