Caybigan Part 17

But it was a good hour before the Maestro finally rose to his feet.

"Ah," he said, "here she comes."

Behind the fish-corral, at its lower end, a thin thread of vapour was mounting toward the sky. The Maestro's heart expanded queerly within his breast. But as he looked, behind the exasperating barrier a big yellow ring, as from some gigantic pipe, rose slowly, then another that broke through the first, and a third that enveloped them all in one ugly smother.

"Good golly," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Maestro, "but the little kettle is steaming!"

And the smoke, beginning to crawl along the corral, ceased puffing up in rings; it rose in one dense, funnel-shaped cloud. "It's that soft j.a.panese coal," murmured the Maestro, "that darned j.a.panese coal!"

But with eyes staring ahead, as if hypnotised, he was walking down the beach. A ripple washed over his feet, then a curling comber splashed up to his knees; but he took another step, unconscious of the water now about his hips.

Suddenly he turned, and was running back up the beach toward a shed full of drying copra. He climbed one of the thick corner-posts to the roof.

The nipa thatch gave beneath his weight, and it was changing ground with fierce plunging stride that he looked out to sea. But he was not high enough. The fish-corral still made inscrutable the mystery behind, and he could see only the smoke, now a sooty black, rising in heavy volutes to the green sky.

He slid down and paced the sand, trying to calm himself. But the smoke, ever more voluminous and threatening, allowed him no peace. He ran back farther up the sh.o.r.e to a coconut palm and tried to climb the lithe, slippery trunk. The notches cut by the monkey-like tuba-men were too far apart; the silvery bark was like a greased pole. Twice he went up some twenty feet, only to slip, fighting and clawing, clear back to the ground again. He tore off his shoes and started up again, cutting his feet, scratching and biting in a frenzy of impotent effort. He went up higher this time, and then the slender, elastic trunk began to sway back and forth gracefully, dizzying him, making it difficult merely to hold on; and with bitterness he realised that the northern monsoon was now on, the wind for which he had prayed in vain for three days. He could go no higher, and still he could not see what was happening behind that stolid barrier of bamboo poles out at sea, only the black threat of the smoke, now drifting south like a great piratical banner, and he slid back to the ground full of a terrible unsatiated curiosity.

He looked down at his feet, torn and b.l.o.o.d.y, at his disordered clothing, and noticed with strange, objective curiosity that his whole body was trembling as if palsy-stricken. "Oh, shucks," he said, pulling himself together; "I guess it's all right. It's that j.a.panese coal, that darned j.a.panese coal." He sat down upon the sand, trying to keep command over himself, but his hands, independently of his will, began wringing each other between his knees. And then he was up and running along the crazy, sagging wharf, his dog barking playfully at his heels. At the end he found a banca, a little, narrow dug-out, steadied with long outriggers.

He sprang into it, cast off the rotten piece of rope, seized the only paddle, and shoved off with one big heave. He swirled the boat's nose around till it pointed at the upper end of the corral, then bent down to mad toil, slapping the water in vibrating rhythm. And as he strained, his whole strength in each stroke, his eyes, round with terrible curiosity, followed the smoke as it crawled slowly along the corral, blacker, denser, more significant every moment. For a while he was in the smooth water, in the shelter of the northern cape, but ahead he could see the monsoon tearing the liquid surface into white shreds. He bore up and was soon in the midst of it, the short waves pounding the flanks of the boat, the spray spitting spitefully into his eyes. He added a new frenzy to his efforts, and then he shot past the end of the fish-corral and saw.

Not a quarter of a mile away, the s.h.i.+p was coming toward him, and it was a phantom s.h.i.+p. Of the material thing, of the fabric of wood and iron, there showed nothing; but from what was about the height of the deck a cataract of smoke poured down the sides in opalescent plays of grays and blacks till it met the water and rebounded, banking up in rolling, s.h.i.+fting gauze about the s.h.i.+p-nucleus hidden within, while, above, the monsoon seized the vapour, shaping it with twists and whirls into a huge, flaccid, black hand suspended like a curse in the sky. A sudden great calmness came over the Maestro. Wavering from side to side, as if the craft itself were staggering beneath the horror of the thing, the whole phantasmagoric fabric was coming toward him; and with slow, deliberate stroke he paddled to meet it, his eyes searching for a clew of the conditions, his mind working to meet them. The air became vibrant with a low growl, split with explosive cracklings, and, in the inky smother at the bow, little red tongues flashed up and out. He twisted his canoe around till its nose pointed with the course of the approaching vessel and waited, keyed up to some last possible opportunity that must be met swiftly and unerringly. And then the steamer pa.s.sed slowly above him. A cataract of smoke poured down upon him, a hot, furnace-breath whelmed him with its fevered exhalation; and he was paddling madly beneath the stern, peering into the trailing smoke. A more furious puff of the monsoon tore the thing to shreds, and then he saw the boat's population. They were cl.u.s.tered at the stern, hanging to p.o.o.p-rail and rope and moulding and anchor chain and to each other, like a troop of panic-stricken apes at a river crossing, snarling and fighting for the safer positions. But on the deck behind them, apart in the spiritual retirement of higher nature and greater courage, was a slim, blue-garbed form. She was standing straight and proudly, her skirts, gathered in her left hand in a familiar movement, drawn close about her, away from that defiling moral puddle of humanity.

"Girlie!" he shouted, his whole being going out to her.

"Lad!" came back the answer, clear and true. She moved forward a step, her arms stretched gropingly before her.

"Jump! Jump! Jump!" he commanded. "Jump!"

She took another step and with unhesitating confidence leaped out into the void.

She disappeared beneath the water; he sent the banca ahead with two long strokes, and then she rose to the surface alongside. He leaned over and, pa.s.sing both arms below hers, he let her float back to the stern of the boat. But before raising her he suddenly let go with his right arm, seized the paddle, and hit at the water a blow that struck some slimy, slippery body. Then with a great effort he raised her into the boat and laid her down gently. For a moment he did not look at her, but gazed behind, shuddering, at a sharp fin cutting the water behind in a circle.

When he turned to her she was standing, and the light of their eyes met in a spiritual caress. Slowly his arms spread out in an unconscious movement and with a little choking cry she threw herself upon him, hiding her face on his breast, while his arms closed about her. "I knew you would be there," she murmured. He clasped her a little closer, and they stood there on their crazy little craft, in the clash of waters, wrapped together into one being, the shudder of the past uniting them in the same thrill, the ecstasy of the present stealing through their veins like bubbling wine. A squall had the little boat in its grasp; it pa.s.sed above in the upper layers of air with great sharp cries; the boat drifted madly down the coast and away from it; but they knew of no danger, knew only that they were in each other's arms, that the past was fading away from them like a gone and impotent nightmare. Vague and faint, a sound like the bursting of a paper bag came to his ears, and toward the sh.o.r.e he saw, with eyes that did not understand, incongruous objects falling from the sky--a twisted smokestack, half of a jolly-boat, a bucket, boards, a mult.i.tude of smaller shredded bits, and aperch on the reef was a sh.e.l.l of a s.h.i.+p, undecked, the blackened interior opened to the skies, pouring out a cone of black smoke. He held her closer, her eyes against his breast, and a palm-lined cape drifted past, hiding the thing from view, hiding the last vestige of what had happened, and they slid on into the illimitable sea, into the future of far horizons.

After a while she disengaged herself a bit and, toying with the middle b.u.t.ton of her jacket, "You love me a whole lot, don't you?" she asked in a question that was not a question.

"Yes, little girl," he answered obediently.

There was another long silence and the boat drifted another two hundred yards.

"Oh, what a pretty dog!" she exclaimed, for her eyes had been wandering below his arms. "Is it yours?"

And then he became aware of Jack beneath the thwart, whining, with eye apologetic and tail conciliatory, in the warring impulses of friendliness and reserve. She stooped down with inviting gesture, and the pup, with a little yelp, leaped into her arms. The Maestro looked down upon them, a little jealousy in his approving smile. But the interruption had suddenly made him alive to the situation.

"Jehoshaphat!" he exclaimed, looking at the now distant sh.o.r.e, down which and away from which they were drifting at a rapid rate; "it's about time to pull in!"

But this very sane remark was not immediately followed by action. The Maestro was looking blankly at the bottom of the canoe where lay what once had been a paddle, but was now only a handle without blade. The memory of the manner in which this transformation had taken place sent his eyes back over the water behind, and a frown came on his face. Right and left, with a movement regular as that of a sentinel pacing his beat, a black fin like a butcher's cleaver was cutting the water.

"What's the matter, Lad?" asked the young lady, still stooping over the dog, and astonished at the silence. "Can't you find the oars?"

"Well, no; fact is--these boats have no oars."

"Oh," cried the bride, immediately interested by this picturesque fact, and rising to her feet; "don't they have any oars? How do you make them go?"

"Paddle them, usually," answered the groom ruefully.

Her eyes fell upon the lamentable remains of the lone paddle, and suddenly the air was a-thrill with a joyous laughing peal.

"Oh, how jolly!" she exclaimed. "We're s.h.i.+pwrecked, aren't we? We'll go away out in the ocean, won't we? Isn't this a land of adventure, though!"

"Well, rather," said the Maestro dryly.

And, there being nothing else to do, he sat down at the bottom of the boat and drew her to his knees. She, with feminine altruism, completed the chain by taking Jack upon hers, and they drifted on upon the flas.h.i.+ng sea. "It's just delicious," murmured the bride, feeling the warm tropical sun drying her clothes upon her. But the groom did not chime in. He was thinking.

There was no immediate danger in the situation, but the prospects for the future were hardly to be termed "delicious." The monsoon that, probably aided by the tide-current, was sweeping them on, had not yet kicked up much of a sea and seemed to be abating in strength; and the little banca, buoyant like a cork upon its outriggers, rode the waves with cheerful alacrity. The spray that now and then dashed upon them was blood-warm and occasioned no discomfort, and their wet clothes were fairly steaming under the rays of the tropical sun. Still they were drifting steadily, with the island of Panay some thirty miles to their right, Negros to their left, its sh.o.r.es, diverging from their course, farther and farther away. They might drift on thus between the islands without touching either of them for days, till out into the China Sea, though the lack of food made even that undelightful alternative but a vague one. As for the chances of meeting a vessel, they were slighter still, only a few lorchas plying between the islands at long intervals.

And then there was the grim diagnosis of the being with the fin, swimming back and forth, back and forth, behind the boat, with ominous patience.

"If we're s.h.i.+pwrecked, we ought to be doing something," said the bride suddenly, in the tone of one announcing the concluding clause of a syllogism.

"That's right," acquiesced the Maestro; "we ought to do something."

"We should empanel a jury," said the bride briskly.

"Empanel a jury," repeated the Maestro, somewhat dazed.

"Oh," said the bride, blus.h.i.+ng, "I mean a jury-rudder. We should empanel a jury-rudder."

"You mean rig up a jury-rudder," exclaimed the Maestro, a flas.h.i.+ng light of understanding in his eyes; "rig is the more nautical term."

"Oh, yes," cried the bride delightedly; "that's it; we must rig up a jury-rudder!"

"Well," said the Maestro, after a moment's thought; "jury-rudders, you know, are rigged up when the real rudder has been carried away. But we never had a real rudder; therefore we can't very well have a jury one."

"Oh," said the bride, disappointed.

She was silent a moment; then inspiration again flamed up.

"We should signal a s.h.i.+p," she said decidedly.

"Signal a s.h.i.+p," repeated the Maestro, looking about him idiotically.

"Yes," said the bride; "put up the flag upside down in sign of distress."

"But we have no flag," said the groom hopelessly.

"Use my kerchief," said the bride resourcefully.

"Upside down?" queried the Maestro. "But there is no mast."

"Put up an oar," she said bravely.