McClure's Magazine/Volume 31/Number 1/In the Dark Hour
IN THE DARK HOUR
BY PERCEVAL GIBBON
The house overlooked the starlit bay, nearly ringed with a sparse fence of palms, and on its roof, a little scarlet figure on the white rugs, Incarnacion sat waiting till Scott should come. Below her, the reeking city was hushed to a murmur, through which there sounded from the Praca a far throb of drums and pipe-music; and overhead the sky was a dome of velvet, spangled with a glory of bold stars. Save to the east, where the blank white walls of the house overlooked the water, there was on all sides a shadowy prospect of parapets, for in Superban the houses are close together and folk live intimately upon their roofs. As she sat, Incarnacion could hear a voice that quavered and choked as some stricken man labored with his prayers against the plague that was laying the city waste. Through all Superban such petitions went up, while daily and nightly the tale of deaths mounted and the corpses multiplied faster than the graves.
Incarnacion lit herself a cigarette, tucked her feet under her, and wondered why Scott did not come. But her chief quality was serenity; she did not give herself over to worry, content to let all problems solve themselves, as most problems will. She was a wee girl, preserving on the threshold of sun-ripened womanhood the soft and pathetic graces of a docile child. Her scarlet dress left her warm arms bare and did not trespass on the slender throat; she had all the charm of intrinsic femininity which comes to fruit so early in the climate of Mozambique and fades so soon. It was this, no doubt, that had taken Scott and held him; gaunt, harsh, direct in his purposes as he was quick in his strength, with Incarnacion he found scope for the tenderness that lurked beneath his rude forcefulness.
He came at last. She heard his step on the stair, cast her cigarette from her, and sprang to meet him with a little laugh of delight. He took her in his arms, lifting her from her little bare feet to kiss her.
"O-oh, Jock, you break me," she gasped, as he set her down. "You are strong like a bull. What you bin away so long?"
He smiled at her gravely as he let himself down on her rugs and put a long arm round her. "Did you want me, 'Carnacion?" he asked.
"Me? No," she answered, laughing; "I don' want you, Jock. You go away twenty—thirty—days; I don' care. Ah, Jock!"
He pressed her close and kissed the crown of her dark head gently. His strong, keen-featured face was very tender, for this small woman of the old tropics was all but all the world to him. "You're a little rip," he said, as he released her. "Make me a cigarette, 'Carnacion. I've found the boat."
She looked up quickly, while her deft fingers fluttered about the dry tobacco and the paper. "You find him, Jock?" she asked.
He nodded. "Yes, I've found it," he answered. "She's in a creek, about six miles down the bay. A big boat, too, with a pretty little cabin for you to twiddle your thumbs in, 'Carnacion. She's pretty clean, too; I reckon the old chap must have been getting ready to clear out in her when he dropped. It's a wonder nobody found her before."
Incarnacion sealed the cigarette carefully, pinched the loose ends away, kissed it, and put it in his mouth. "Then," she said thoughtfully, "you take me away to-morrow, Jock?"
He frowned; he was shielding the lighted match in both hands, and it showed up his drawn brows as he bent to light the cigarette. "I don't know," he said. "You see, 'Carnacion, there's a good many things I can't do, and sail a boat is one of 'em. I haven't got a notion how to set about it, even. I don't know the top end of a sail from the bottom."
"You make a Kafir do it?" suggested Incarnacion.
He smiled, a brief smile of friendship. "That would do first-rate," he explained; "only, you see, there's no Kafirs, kiddy. Every nigger that had ever seen a boat was snapped up a week ago, when the big flit was happening. That dead-scared crowd that cleared out then took every single sailorman to ferry 'em down the coast—white, black, and piebald. And the plain truth of it is, 'Carnacion, I've been up and down this old rabbit-warren of a city since sun-down, looking for a sailor, an' the only one I could hear of I found—in the dead-house."
He spat at the parapet upon the memory of that face, where the plague had done its worst.
"So," remarked Incarnacion gaily. "Then we stop, Jock; we stop here, eh?"
"There'll be something broken first," retorted Scott. "It's all bloomin' rot, Incarnacion; you can't have a town this size without a man in it that can handle a boat—a seaport, too. It isn't sense. It don't stand to reason."
"There was the Capitan Smeeth," suggested Incarnacion helpfully.
"Just so," said Scott; "there was. He's dead."
Incarnacion crossed herself in silence, and they sat for a while without speaking. From the Praca the music was still to be heard; some procession to the great church was in progress, to pray for a remission of the scourge. Over the line of roofs there was a dull glow of the watch-fires in the streets; where they sat, Scott and the girl could smell the pitch that fed them. And, over all, an unseen sick man gabbled his prayers in a halting monotone. A quick heat of wrath lit in Scott as his thoughts traveled around the situation; for Incarnacion sat with her head bowed, playing with her toes, and the ever-ready terror lest the plague should reach her moved in his heart. He had been away from Superban when the plague arrived, and though he had come in on the first word of the news, he had been too late to find a place for her on the ships that fled down the coast from the pest. And now that he had found a boat, there was no one to sail her; in all that terror-ridden city, he could find no man to hold the tiller and tend the sheet.
"You're feeling all right, eh, 'Carnacion?" he asked sharply.
She turned to him, smiling at once. "All right," she assured him. "An' you, Jock—you all right, too?"
"Fit as can be," he answered, fingering her hair where it was smooth and short behind her ear.
"You see," she said. "It is the plague, but the plague don't come for us, Jock."
"That's right," he said. "You keep your courage up, little girl, an' we'll be married in Delagoa Bay."
He rose to his feet. "Kiss me good night, 'Carnacion," he said. "I'm busy these days, an' I can't stop any longer."
She kissed him obediently, giving her fresh lips frankly and eagerly; and Scott came out to the narrow lane below with the flavor of them yet on his mouth and new resolution to pursue his quest for a sailor.
He moved on to the Praca, where the stridency of the music still persisted. Great fires burned at every entrance to the square, so that between them a man walked in the midst of leaping shadows, as though his feet were dogged by ghosts. The tall houses around the place were blind with shuttered windows; from their balconies none watched the crowd before the great doors of the church. Here a priest stood in a cart, with a great cross in his hand. His high voice, toneless and flat, echoed vainly over the heads of the throng, where some knelt in a passion of prayer, but most stood talking aloud. Through the doors the lights on the altar were to be seen in the inner gloom, sparkling from the brass and golden accouterments of the church. Scott shouldered a road through the crowd, scanning faces expertly. To a big brown man with empty blue eyes he put the question:
"Can you sail a boat?"
The man stared at him. "Have you got one?" he asked.
"Can you?" repeated Scott. "Do you know anything about sailing a boat?"
"No," said the other; "but"
Scott pushed on and left him. In the church, his heart leaped at sight of a man in the clothes of a Portuguese man-o'-war's-man, asleep by a pillar—a little swarthy weed of a man. He woke him with a kick, only to learn, after further kicks, that the man was a stoker and knew as little about boats as himself. At the door of a confessional lay another man in the same uniform. A kick failed to wake him, and Scott bent to shake him. But the hand he stretched out recoiled; the plague had been before him.
In that time men knew no difference between day and night, for death knew none, and the traffic of the close, twisted streets never lulled. The blatant cafés were ablaze with lamps, and in them the tables were crowded and the fiddles raved and jeered. In one Scott found a chair to rest in, and sat awhile with liquor before him. He had carried his search from the shore to the bush, through all the town, and to no end. Now, mingled with his resolution there was something of desperation. He sat heavily in thought, his glass in his hand; and while he brooded, unheeding, the café roared and clattered about him. To his right, a group of white-clad officers chatted over a languid game of cards; at his left, a forlorn man sang dolorously to himself. Others were behind. From these last, as he sat, a word reached him which woke him from his preoccupation like a thrust of a knife. He sat without moving, straining his ears.
"De ole captain, he die," said some one; "but hees boat, she lie on de mud now."
"An' ye know where she is?" demanded another voice, a deeper one.
"Yais," the first speaker replied. He had a voice that purred in undertones, the true voice of a conspirator.
There was a sound of a fist on the table. "Good for you," said the deeper voice. "We'll get away by noon, then."
Scott carried his glass to his lips and drained it; then he rose deliberately in his place and commenced to thread his way out between the tables. He had to pause to pay the waiter for his drink when he was a yard or two away; he gave the man an English sovereign, and thus, while change was procured, he could stand and look at the owners of the voices. They paid him no attention; he was unsuspected. One of the men he knew, a tall Italian with a heavy, brutal face, a knife-fighter of notoriety and a bully. The other was a square, humpy man, half of whose face was jaw. Not men to put in the company of little Incarnacion, either of them; Scott's experience of the Coast spared him any doubts about that. It would be easy, of course, to settle the matter at once—simply to step up and let his knife into the Italian, under the neck, where he sat. At that season and in that place it was an almost obvious remedy; but it would not be less than a week before he could get clear of the jail, and in that time any one might find the boat.
He grasped his change and went out. There was only one thing to do: he must go to the creek where the boat was, and lie in wait for them there. "Nobody'll miss 'em," he said to himself; "and there's crocodiles in that creek, all handy."
He struck across the Praca again, between the fires, and down an alley that would lead him to the beach. The voice of the priest in the cart seemed to pursue him till he outdistanced it, and he pressed on briskly. His way was between tall, dark houses; the path lay at their feet, narrow and tortuous, like some remote cañon. Here was no light, save when, at the turn of the way, a star swam into view overhead, pale and cold, and bright as a lantern. Indistinct figures passed him sometimes; when one came into sight, he would move close to the wall with a hand on his knife, and the two would edge by one another watchfully and in silence.
He was almost clear and could smell the sea, when he came round a corner and met some four or five white figures in the middle of the way, sheeted like ghosts and walking in silence. There was not a space to avoid them, and he stopped dead for them to approach and speak—or, if that was the way of it, to attack. Some of the others stopped too, but one came on. Scott marked that he walked with a shuffle of his feet, and made out, by the starlight, that his sheet clung about him as though it were wet. And, at the same time, he noticed some faint odor, too vague to put a name to, but sickly and suggestive of hospitals.
"Go with God," said the figure, when it was close to him. The words were Portuguese, but the inflection was foreign.
"Are you English?" demanded Scott sharply.
The other had halted a man's length from him. "Ay," he said, "I'm English."
"Well," said Scott, making to move on, but pointing to where the other white figures were waiting in a group near by, "what are those chaps waiting for?"
"They'll not hurt you," answered the other. He mumbled a little when he spoke, like a man with a full mouth.
"Anyhow," said Scott, "they'd better pass on; I prefer it that way. Superban's not London, you know."
There came a laugh from the sheet that covered the man's head, short and harsh. "If it was," he said, "you'd not be meeting us, me lad."
"Who are you?" demanded Scott. Some quality in the man—his manner of speech, the tone of his laugh, or that faint, unidentifiable taint—made him uneasy.
"Me?" said the man. "Well, I'll tell you. I'm Captain John Crowder, I am—what's left of me, and that's a sick soul inside a dead body. And them"—he made a motion toward the waiting ghosts—"them's my crew these days. We're the chaps that fetches the dead, we are."
Scott peered at him eagerly, and stepped forward.
The other avoided him by stepping back. "Not too near," he said. "It ain't sense."
"Captain, you said?" asked Scott. "Er—not a ship-captain, you mean?"
"Ay, I'm a ship-captain right enough," was the answer; "and in my day"
Scott interrupted excitedly. "See here," he said. "I've got a boat, and I want a man to sail her to Delagoa Bay. I'll pay; I'll pay you a level hundred to start by nine in the morning, cash down on the deck the minute you're outside the bar. What d'you say to it?"
The sheeted man seemed to stare at him before he answered. "You're on the run, then?" he mumbled at last. "You're dodging the plague, eh?"
"Yes," said Scott. "A level hundred, an' you can have the boat as well."
"Man, you must be badly scared," said the other. "What's frightened you? Are you feared you'll die?"
"Go to blazes," retorted Scott. "Will you come or won't you?"
The man laughed again, the same short cackle of mirth.
"Listen," urged Scott, wiping his forehead. "I've got a—er—I've got a girl. You say I'm scared. Well, I am scared; every time I think of her in this plague-rotten place, I go cold to the bone. Is it more money you want? You can have it. But there's no time to lose; I'm not the only one that knows about the boat."
"A girl." The other repeated the word, and then stood silent.
"Curse it!" cried Scott, "can't you say the word? Will you come, man?"
"It wouldn't do," said the sheeted man slowly. "You're fond of her, eh? Ay, but it wouldn't do. Any other man 'u'd suit ye better, me lad."
"There's no other man," said Scott angrily. "In all this blasted town there's no man but you. I've been through it like a terrier under a rick. And I'll tell you what." He took a step nearer; in his pocket his hand was on his knife. "You can have a hundred and fifty," he said, "and the boat, if you'll come. An' if you won't, by the Holy Iron, I'll cut your bloomin' throat here where you stand."
The other did not flinch from him. "Ay, an' you'll do that?" he said. "I like to hear you talk. Lad, do you know what fashion o' men it is that serve the dead-carts? Do ye know?" he demanded, seeming to clear his voice with an effort of the obstacle that hampered his speech.
"What d'you mean?" cried Scott.
"Look at me," bade the man, and drew back the sheet from his face. The starlight showed him clear.
Scott looked, while his heart slowed down within him, and bowed his head.
"And shall I steer your girl to Delagoa Bay?" the other asked.
"Yes," said Scott, after a pause. "There's nobody else, leper or not."
"Ah, well," said the leper, with a sigh, "so be it."
Scott fought with himself for mastery of the horror that rose in him like a tide of fever, and when the leper had put back the sheet and stood again a figure of the grave, he told him of the boat and how others knew of it besides himself. In quick, panting sentences he bade him get forthwith to the creek where the boat lay, directing him to it through the paths of the night with the sure precision of a man trained to the trek. He himself would go and fetch Incarnacion and beat up some provisions, and thus they might get afloat before the Italian and his mate came on the scene.
"It's every step of six miles," Scott explained. "Are you sure you can walk it?"
The leper nodded under his hood. "I'll do it," he said. "And if there's to be a fight, I'm not so far gone but what—" He broke off with a short spurt of laughter. "It'll be something to feel deck-planks under me again," he said.
"Then let's be gone," cried Scott.
"Wait." The captain that had been stayed him. "There's just this, matey. Have a shawl or the like on your girl's shoulders. They wear 'em, you know. An' then, when you come in sight o' me, you can rig it over her head an' all. For it's—it's truth, no woman should set eyes on the like o' me."
"I'll do it," said Scott. "You're a man, Captain, anyhow."
"I was," said the other, and turned away.
Scott had a dozen things to do in no more than a pair of hours. They were not to be done, but he did them. A couple of donkeys were procured without difficulty; he knew of a stable with a flimsy door. A revolver, his own small odds and ends, all his money, and such food as he could lay hands on—by rousing reluctant storekeepers with outcries and expediting commerce with violence—were got together. Then Incarnacion must be fetched. She came at once, smiling drowsily, with a flush of sleep on her little ardent face and all her belongings in a bundle no bigger than a hat-box. But, with all his urgency, the eastern sky was stained with dawn before he was clear of the town, bludgeoning the donkeys before him, with the gear on one and Incarnacion laughing and crooning on the other.
The beach stretched in a yellow bow on either hand, fringed with bush and palms, receding to where the ultimate jaws of the bay stood black and thin against the sunrise. Once upon it, they could be seen by whoever should look from the town, and there was peremptory occasion for haste. Scott had counted on forcing the journey into a little over an hour, but he was not prepared for the eccentricities of a pack adjusted on a donkey's back by an amateur. There is no art in the world more arbitrary than that of tying a package on a beast. It must be done just so, with just such a hitch and such an adjustment of the burden, or one's rope might as well be of sand. These refinements were outside Scott's knowledge, and he had not gone far before he saw his bags and bundles clear themselves and tumble apart. There was a halt while he picked them up and lashed them on the ass anew. Again and again it happened, till his patience was raw; and all the time the steady sun swarmed up the sky and day grew into full being.
Incarnacion sat serenely in her place while these troubles occupied him, smoking her cigarette and looking about her. He was involved in an effort to jam the pack and the donkey securely in one overwhelming intricacy of knots when she called to him.
"Jock," she said.
"Yes, what's up?" he grunted, hauling remorselessly on a line with a knee against the ass's circumference.
"A man," she said placidly. "He come along, too, behin' us."
"Eh? Where?" he demanded, putting a last knot to the tedious structure.
Incarnacion pointed to the bush. "I see him poke out hees head two times," she explained.
Scott passed his hand behind him to his revolver, and stared with narrow eyes along the green frontier at the bush. He could see nothing.
"A big man, 'Carnacion?" he asked. "Mustaches? Black hair?"
She nodded and lit another cigarette. "You know him, Jock?"
"I know him," he answered, and drove the donkeys on, thwacking the pack-ass cautiously for the sake of the load.
It was an anxious passage then, on the open beach. The men who followed had the cover of the shrubs; theirs was the advantage to choose the moment of collision. They could shoot at him from their concealment and flick his brains out comfortably before he could set eyes on them; or they could shoot the donkeys down, or put a bullet into Incarnacion where she rode, quiet and regardless of all. He flogged the beasts on to a trot with a hail of blows, and ran up into the bush to take an observation.
His foot was barely off the sand of the beach when a shot sounded, and the wind of the bullet made his eyes smart. Invention was automatic in his mind. At the noise, he fell forthwith on his face, crashing across a bush, so that his head was up and his pistol in reach of his hand. Thus he lay, not moving, but searching through half-closed eyes the maze of green before him. He heard the rustle of grass, and prepared for action, every nerve taut; and there came into sight the big Italian, smiling broadly, a Winchester in his hand.
In Scott's brain some nucleus of motion gave the signal. With a single movement, his knee crooked under him and he swung the heavy revolver forward. A howl answered the shot, and he saw the Italian blunder against a palm, drop his rifle, and scamper out of sight. Firing again, Scott dashed forward and picked up the Winchester, while from in front of him the Italian or his companion sent bullet after bullet about his ears. It was enough of a victory to carry on with, for Incarnacion would have heard the shots and might come back to him; so he turned and ran again, and caught her just as she was dismounting.
It was a race now. He silenced the girl's questions sharply, and thumped the donkeys to a canter, running doggedly behind them with his stick busy. In the bush, too, there was the noise of hurry; he heard the crash of feet running, and twice they shot at him. Then Incarnacion gasped, and held up her cloak to show him a hole through it; but she was not touched. He swore, but did not cease to flog and run. The strain told on him; his legs were water, and the sweat stood on his face in great gouts; and, to embitter the labor, suddenly there was a shout from ahead. The men had passed him, and he saw the Italian show himself with a gesture of derision, and disappear again before he could aim.
"They'll kill the leper," he thought, "and they'll get the boat. But they'll not get out. I'll be on my belly in the bush then, with this." And he patted the stock of the Winchester.
"You bin shoot a man, Jock?" asked Incarnacion, as the desperate pace flagged.
"Not yet," he answered grimly; "but there's time yet, 'Carnacion."
Already he could see, through the slim palms, the straight mast of the boat against the sky, with its gear about it, not a mile away. He cocked his ear for the shot that should announce its capture and the end of the leper.
"Ai, hear that!" exclaimed Incarnacion.
It was a sound of screams—cries of men in stress, traveling thinly over the distance. Scott checked at it as a horse checks at a snake in the road, for the cries had a note of wild terror that daunted him.
"You frightened, Jockie?" crooned Incarnacion. "See," she said, lifting her hand over him, "I make the cross on you."
"It's the confounded mysteriousness that gets me," said Scott, wiping his forehead. "Here, get on, you beasts. We'll have to take a look at 'em, anyhow."
He strode on between the animals, the rifle in the crook of his arm, ready for use, and all his senses alert and vivacious. Day was broad above them now and bitter with the forenoon heat. At their side the bay was rippled with a capricious breeze, and in all the far prospect of earth and sea none moved save themselves, detached in a haunting significance of solitude.
"Ah!" He stopped short and jerked the rifle forward. In the bush ahead there was a movement; for an instant he saw something white flash among the palms, and then the Italian burst forth and came toward them, running all at large, with head down and jolting elbows. He ran like a man hunted by crazy fears, and did not see Scott till he was within twenty yards.
"Halt, there, Dago," ordered Scott, and brought the butt to his shoulder.
The Italian gasped and blundered to his knees, turning on Scott a glazed and twitching face.
"For peety, for peety!" he quavered.
"Draw that shawl over your face, 'Carnacion," said Scott, without turning his head. "Can you see now?"
"No," she answered.
He fired, and the Italian sprawled forward on his face, plowing up the sand with clutching hands.
"Keep the shawl over your eyes, 'Carnacion," directed Scott, and soon they came round a palm-bunch and were on the bank of the creek, where a fifteen-ton cutter lay on the mud. A plank lay between her deck and the shore, and, as they came to it, the captain hailed them from the cockpit.
"Come aboard," he said. "All's ready."
Scott picked Incarnacion up in his arms, wound another fold of the shawl about her face, and carried her aboard. He set her down on the settee in the cabin, released her head, and kissed her fervently. "Now make yourself comfy here, little 'un," he said; "for here you stay till we make Delagoa."
He helped her to dispose herself in the cabin, showed her its arrangements, and saw her curious delight in the little space-saving contrivances. Then he went out, closing the door behind him. It did not occur to him to render her any explanations; what Scott did was always sufficient for Incarnacion.
Again on deck, he found the swathed leper busy, and started when he saw, along the banks of the creek, a gang of shrouded figures at work with a hawser.
"My crew," said the captain. "They're to haul us off the mud."
"Then," said Scott, "it was them"
The leper laughed. "Ay, they ran from us," he said. "They ran from the lazaretto-hands. The one we caught, we put him overside for the crocodiles; an' you got the other."
"They chased him?" asked Scott, trembling with the thought.
"Ay," said the leper; "they uncovered their faces and they chased. Ye heard the squealing?"
He broke off to oversee his gang. "Make fast on that stump!" he called. In spite of the disease that blurred his speech, there was the authority of the quarter-deck in his voice. "Now, all hands tally on and walk her down." And the silent lepers in their grave-clothes ranged themselves on the rope like the ghosts of drowned seamen.
When the mainsail filled and the cutter heeled to the breeze, pointing fair for the bar, the leper looked back. Scott followed his glance. On the spit by the mouth of the creek stood the white figures in a little group, lonely and voiceless, and over them the palms floated against the sky like tethered birds.
"There was some that was almost Christians," said the captain; "they'll miss me, they will." And after a pause he added: "And I'll be missing them, too; for they was my mates."
There were six days of sailing ere the captain made his landfall, and they stood off till evening. Then he put in to where the sea shelved easily on a beach four or five miles south of the town, and it was time to part.
"You can wade ashore," said the leper.
Scott opened the doors of the little cabin. On the settee Incarnacion lay asleep, her dark hair tumbled about her warm face. He was about to wake her, but stayed his hand and drew back. "You can look," he said to the leper in a whisper.
The shrouded man bent and looked in; Scott marked that he held his breath. For a full minute he stared in silence, his shoulders blocking the little door; then he drew back.
"Ay," he murmured, "it's like that they are, lad; and it's grand to be a man—it's grand to be a man!"
Scott closed the doors gently. "If ever there was a man," he began, but choked and stopped. "What will you do now?" he asked.
"Oh, I'll just be gettin' back," said the leper. "You see, there's them lads—my crew. It was me made a crew of 'em in that lazaretto. They was just stinking heathen till I come. An' I sort of miss 'em, I do."
"Will you shake hands?" said Scott, torn by a storm of emotions.
The leper shook his head. "You've the girl to think of," he said. "But good luck to the pair of ye. Ye'll make a fine team."
Half an hour later Scott and Incarnacion stood together on the beach and watched the cutter's lights as she stood on a bowline to seaward.
"Kiss your hand to it, darling," said Scott.
"I bin done it," answered Incarnacion.