CHAPTER VII
CHALMERS HAS A CLOSE CALL
THE burial of the dead sea-captain took place at night beneath a blaze of stars. Tuan Yuck cajoled Hamaku and Tomi ashore by explaining to them the mystery of the flashing mirrors, and a grave was dug in the deep soil of the first ridge of the hills.
The rude coffin was interred before Chalmers called the bereaved girl from the tent to which she had taken her sorrow after performing the last few personal offices for the dead that she had insisted on carrying out with her own hands. As they reached the grave beside which two great fires were leaping, sending out the incense of burning sandalwood, the Hawaiians tossed into the pit fragrant masses of wood orchids and maile vine, then stepped back into the shadows. Suddenly Tomi's sweet tenor chanted softly a native lament to the chords of Sayers' zither.
It was theatrical but somehow it did not seem bizarre. The night-wind waved the palm crests like funeral plumes and set the long grasses shivering on the ridge. The reef below them sighed faintly; beyond, the sea ran out in lonely leagues to where it blended with the starry sky. They seemed very remote from all the world and very close to the things that lie beyond it.
Chalmers stood beside the weeping girl in a silence full of sympathy but embarrassed for lack of words. Across the grave Tuan Yuck in his Oriental, priestlike robes was a mystic figure in the swift alternations of flame and shadow. It was he who had planned the obsequies and had persuaded Sayers into at least an outward show of sympathy. Yet Chalmers felt instinctively that all his deferential courtesy toward the girl covered some hidden purpose of his own to accomplish which it was necessary to win her confidence.
As the music ended Tuan Yuck stepped to the other side of Leila Denman.
“Your philosophies and mine, Miss Denman,” he said in his silken voice, “hold many minor differences, but in one main matter they agree—that there is no death. And I think your father, like Robert Louis Stevenson, would choose such a place as this for the last sleep. You remember:
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.”
The girl turned to him gratefully.
“Thank you,” she said, “and thank you for him, too.”
She took his arm and he led her down the ridge. Sayers came forward and joined Chalmers.
“The Chink's a wonder, isn't he?” he said. “You've got to hand it to him. A bit too smart for my way of thinking. We've got to keep our weather eyes open, Chalmers, or he'll get the best of us.”
There was a quality in Sayers's voice that suggested that the Australian's admiration for Tuan Yuck was not unalloyed with envy. Chalmers determined to foster any spark of ill-will that existed. It might reduce the odds later on if any issue arose over his determination to protect the girl's interests.
“He likes to play the leader,” he prompted.
“And he'd like to get a leader's share,” said Sayers who had been drinking and whose voice was husky. “You and I have got to stick to each other, Chalmers,” he went on. “White against yellow, you know. He's a sly one. A regular Mongolian Mephistopheles, he is.”
They had been watching the natives pile a cairn of loose lava boulders above the dead and now they moved on down the hill.
“The girl's a wonder,” said Sayers. “Did you notice her skin, Chalmers? Put pearls around that throat of hers and you couldn't see 'em, they'd match that close. And her figure!” His tongue clucked suddenly. “A man might do worse—eh? A beauty like that, fortune or no fortune!”
The reek of gin was on the Australian's breath and Chalmers turned away to conceal his disgust. They had crossed the clearing. Tuan Yuck and Leila Denman were standing by the veranda of the little house. The light of two lanterns showed her face wan and tired. But she held it proudly erect. As they came up she turned to them.
“I don't know what to say to you all,” she said. “You've been—just wonderful.”
She choked back a sob and stretched out her hand to each of them. Chalmers bit his lip in restraint as Sayers held it while he gazed at her appraisingly.
She turned to him.
“Good night, Mr. Chalmers,” she said. “You have been very kind and thoughtful.”
Chalmers, who had felt himself a blunderer all day as he tried to express his sympathy in ways that would not jar her sensitiveness, stammered something in reply. He fancied he felt a faint pressure return his handclasp. He watched her go into her tent, saw it faintly illumined through the trees and followed Tuan Yuck into the little house.
SAYERS had already established himself at the little table with his deck of cards and a bottle of gin. He looked up from arranging his layout at Canfield as the others entered.
“Going to stay ashore tonight, Chalmers?” he asked. “I am. I've staked out the cot in the next room. I've no fancy for that. You're welcome to it.” He jerked his head in the direction of the bed in which the captain had died.
“There's a hammock on the veranda,” replied Chalmers. “I'll use that.”
“Going to play sentinel over the lady, eh? All right, you watch me and I'll watch you. She's the best pearl on the island, and so far she's the only one in sight. Some figure, Chalmers. I envy you!”
He broke off, checked by the look in Chalmers' eyes.
“You needn't look at me as if you wanted to murder me, son,” he said. “You needn't be jealous of me. I'm a married man. Hang it, I'll lend you my zither to serenade her if you think it'll help you any.”
Tuan Yuck interrupted.
“I shall sleep on the schooner,” he said silkily. “I prefer my own cabin. And let me recommend to you both the maxim that sex and business do not go together.”
“You're a cold-blooded squid,” said Sayers as the Chinaman went out.
For the first time the Australian showed the effects of liquor. His blotched face was crimsoned, the muddy whites of his eyes transfused with blood, and the veins on his temples stood out in painful relief.
“Listen, you young Puritan,” he said, pouring some liquor into a cup and pushing it across the table to Chalmers, “have a drink for once. Drink to the lady, and no offense meant. An' good luck to you. 'Member what I said? A man might do worse. 'Member what else I said about that slit-eyed yellow devil that's just gone out. He don't pull any wool over my eyes with his smooth tricks.”
He drained his own cup and took up his cards, shuffling them in nervous fingers, oblivious of the other's presence.
Chalmers left him, glad to breathe the outer air. He walked down to the edge of the water. The light in Leila's tent was out, he noticed. The lamp in Tuan Yuck's cabin showed like a baleful eye. Back in the dead man's room he heard Sayers singing in maudlin mood:
“Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss within the cup,
And I'll not ask for wine.”
He strode the full length of the lagoon, responsibility heavy upon him and, taking advantage of the low tide, rounded a promontory that jutted out from the precipitous cliff that formed the handle of the is land's sickle formation. He clambered over the scattered rocks at the end of the cape and jumped on to the wet beach.
Instantly he sank halfway to his knees, the sand holding him in a vise, while something tugged at him as if some buried monster was trying to pull him down. He had leaped into a quicksand. Instantly he flung himself forward, spreading his arms wide, flat on the surface as he felt himself buried almost to the hips.
The treacherous sand sucked at his finger-tips. Try as he would he could not free either of his legs. He battled ceaselessly, fighting off the panic that attacked him. As well as he could he raised his head and shouted. The cliff echoed it, a few startled seabirds rose screaming but, even as he called, he knew the uselessness of it. The schooner was too far away, almost half a mile from shore, and he had walked nearly two miles from the landing-place. His only help lay with himself and already he felt that he was weakening, the insidious steady pull of the sand winning its victory inch by inch.
Every effort only worked against him. At last he lay exhausted, his cheek against the sand. Above him the Southern Cross burned in a sky of velvet. The tide was at the slack. Presently it would turn, and long before morning, if the sand had not buried him, the water would act as his shroud. He could hear the ripples lapping as if they were chuckling at his predicament.
Leila would be left to the scant mercy of Tuan Yuck and Sayers. Tuan Yuck, who had said that “dead men neither told tales nor needed pearls,” and Sayers, who had leered as he talked of the skin of her throat. And he would be as helpless as the dead captain lying in his grave on the ridge.
He lay quiet for a while, summoning all his energies. His body slowly sank into the treacherous surface. Once more he raised his head and shouted, only to hear the echo from the cliff and the cries of the protesting birds.
He turned his head shoreward. The rock he had jumped from was not very far away. Seaweed fringed its base. By a supreme effort he threw himself in its direction, twisting his body at the waist and struggling to free his legs from the steady suction of the sand. Cramped until rupture seemed imminent, his fingers just touched the fronds of the seaweed—and no more.
Fight as he might he could not gain a hand-grasp. And the pain of his position was paralyzing him below the waist.
His clawing fingers sank deep, his head dropped and the grit entered his lips. He had come to the end of his struggle. The sand clogged his nostrils and his hands twitched convulsively, burying themselves.
They struck something solid beneath the sand—the surface of a submerged rock. Hope marshaled the retreating remnants of his will and strength.
Groping while he raised his body, he found a crevice and wedged his fingers into it. The rock was only a few inches below the surface; his forearms rested on it. He gained an inch, two inches; at the expense of agony, three inches. One more and he clutched a stout stem of kelp weed. It was slippery but it held, and he got a second hand-grip.
In five minutes he had dragged himself clear, crawling to the top of the rock. He lay there exhausted for a while, then sat up to chafe his numbed legs. Far off, the tiny light in Tuan Yuck's cabin winked and went out.
Midway along the tall cliff the waterfall streamed down like a silken scarf in the wind. At the base of the precipice low feathery vegetation grew luxuriantly. The sand was dotted with clumps of lava. Close to shore it was probably firm, but Chalmers was in no mood for further adventure. At the cliff's end a high buttress of rock ran out into deep water. At flood tide the place was shut off from the rest of the island. At all but low tide the quicksand made it unapproachable.
As he rested, Chalmers reviewed the situation. He had cheated the quicksand, but the human odds were still against him. The death of Captain Denman had complicated matters.
He had anticipated Tuan Yuck and Sayers driving a hard bargain with the skipper, but at least it would have been two men against two for fair play. He felt certain that his own ideas of chivalry were not shared by either of his partners. The Chinaman had frankly said that sex and business were incompatible. Sayers regarded womanhood only from the coarser standpoint. The best thing would be, he decided, to wait until Tuan Yuck showed his hand, which he would undoubtedly when the pearls materialized.
The pearls! Chalmers chafed at his own stupidity. That was the reason of Tuan Yuck's kindliness to the girl and his persuasion of Sayers into a semblance of respect for the dead. They wanted to find out where the pearls were before they uncovered their real motives. And as soon as they did, he must be ready to act.
He freed himself from the useless labyrinth of conjecture. He would need all his wits about him on the morrow, and perhaps his strength. Every muscle in his body ached as he made his way back to the house. The lamp still burned above Sayers' head where he had fallen asleep amid the scattered cards.
There was a canvas hammock slung at one end of the veranda and Chalmers rolled into it. Almost instantly he was asleep, and for the first time a girl's face filled his dreams, the face of Leila Denman.