The Unknown Passenger

by Ralph Stock

THE UNKNOWN
PASSENGER

By RALPH STOCK

WHEN James Strode came down from the mountains and looked upon the sea, he found it good. And after varying terms of servitude in the Ontario bush, on the prairies of the North-West, and amongst Rocky Mountain lumber camps, the Pacific Ocean is apt to be a refreshing sight.

At the moment he was holidaying in Vancouver on the proceeds of eighteen months' hard labour, and anyone who has been engaged in manual toil for that length of time, without a break, will know what a holiday means. It consists of occupying a room at the best hotel in the place, and lying in bed until noon each day, reflecting with relish that somewhere on the North American continent people are still tumbling out of their bunks at dawn—if not before—and wielding axe, lariat, or canthook, as the case may be, while you remain comatose between clean sheets or luxuriate in a real hot bath.

How long this blissful state of affairs would last in Strode's case depended entirely on the physical condition of his bank roll, and bank rolls have a notoriously delicate constitution. At the end of a pleasant fortnight Strode's became sufficiently emaciated to make him think, and to think on holiday signifies the beginning of the end.

He had no desire to retrace his steps Eastward; North, for reasons not unconnected with an already frozen foot, attracted him not at all; and South spelt California, unequalled as a resort, but as a field for white manual labour not exactly promising. There seemed nothing for it, then, but to continue the motion Westward, and to do that meant passage by mail boat or a header from the American continent into Puget Sound.

After an alternate examination of the sea and his financial resources. Strode returned to the town and interviewed a sleek young man across the equally sleek counter of a shipping office.

"Honolulu's your medicine," this gentleman advised. "Read those!"

Strode found himself inundated by a young library of illustrated literature dealing with the Hawaiian Islands, and proceeded to digest as much of it as was possible at one sitting.

It appeared that the group consisted for the most part of mammoth hotels, people poised on surf-boards, and native orchestras wreathed in flowers. It all looked very nice, as nice as the Great American Advertisement, that can cause the mouth to water over tinned beans, could make it. But as a penurious world-wanderer, what Strode wanted to know was how much it cost to reach this delectable spot, and what one did for a living when there, and on neither of these prosaic subjects was there a word of information.

The sleek young man promptly supplied it. Fares ranged in dollars from So-and-so to Such-and-such—neither of which Strode could afford—and when there he would find himself in "The Premier Playground of the Pacific."

The thing looked pretty hopeless.

"How about working my way as a steward?" he suggested as a last resort. But the sleek young man was very properly uninterested in stewards, and said so, before turning abruptly to more promising clients.

For a few moments Strode stood watching money pass over the counter in exchange for transportation. It was a fascinating and enviable sight. To Strode it seemed that each printed slip was a magic carpet wafting its owner where he willed, and when a packet of labels bearing the bold inscription "Cabin—Honolulu" was handed to an expensive-looking lady at his elbow, he could have wept from sheer covetousness. Here evidently was someone bound for "The Premier Playground of the Pacific." Well, he hoped she would enjoy it. In the meantime he had better be thinking about a job.

He had stopped mechanically before a blackboard outside an employment agency, and was regarding the now familiar list of human requirements blazoned on it in chalk, when he became aware that someone was watching him from the other side of the street. It was the lady of the shipping office.

Now, Strode was not the sort of person to imagine that strange ladies could be interested in him for the sake of his blue eyes or anything like that, and when she deliberately crossed the road and addressed him, his surprise was genuine.

"Excuse me," she said, "but could you direct me to the Craven Hotel?"

"Certainly," said Strode. "You take the second on the left the way you were going, and the hotel's on the first corner to the right."

A hint of puzzlement came into the girl's face. "Thank you," she said. "But how did you know which way I was going, considering your back was turned?"

"By your reflection in the window," Strode explained.

"Then you saw me—accost you?"

"If you care to put it like that."

"I do," said the girl with quiet deliberation, "because that's exactly what I did."

"If I can be any manner of use——" Strode began.

"We'll cut out the introductory stuff, if you don't mind," said the girl crisply. "You can be of use, or I shouldn't have taken such a liberty. You're looking for work, aren't you?"

Strode admitted the fact.

"And, by your actions in the shipping office, you want to get to Honolulu."

"Badly."

"Well, I can satisfy you in both respects. if you care to undertake what I have to offer."

"Short of murder, I'm prepared for anything," Strode assured her.

"English, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"And a stranger in these parts?"

"I don't know a soul in Vancouver."

The girl subjected him to a steady glance of appraisement. "Can you sail a boat?" was her next startling inquiry.

"It depends on the kind of boat and where you want her sailed," he answered guardedly.

"I'm glad you said that," exclaimed the girl, "because it shows that you can."

"I once owned a ten-tonner," Strode confessed, "and sailed her from Southampton to Vigo and back. I'm not sure that I handled her according, to Leckey, but we got there."

"That's all I need to know for the present." The girl glanced quickly up and down the street. "There are reasons why we mustn't be seen together more than can be helped. What wages are you asking?"

"I've been getting three dollars a day," said Strode.

"I'm offering ten and a passage to Honolulu," snapped the girl.

"In that case," said Strode, "I'm yours."

The girl spoke rapidly and as though repeating a lesson: "You receive your passage money and a month's wages now. You go second class on the Ottawa, sailing the day after to-morrow. I go first on the same boat, but we are entire strangers from now until you receive further instructions. Is that clear?"

"Perfectly," said Strode, and, as a roll of bills was thrust into his hand: "Aren't you taking rather a chance?"

"I don't think so," said the girl, and with a fleeting smile she was gone

Speculation is of small worth at any time, and in this particular instance Strode decided that it was useless. He had received on trust what seemed to him a stupendous sum of money and certain orders that he was determined to carry out. He could do no less.

In due course the Ottawa sailed, and Strode with her, but he saw nothing of his employer until three days out, and then only a glimpse of a neat white frock, a wide-brimmed straw hat, and a pair of dark eyes beneath it that met his own across the rail separating the first and second class without a flicker of recognition.

It was a pleasant voyage. As day succeeded day, Strode revelled in the subtle changes that heralded the tropics. The impossible blue of the ocean, the shimmer of flying-fish in yellow sunlight, dolphins tumbling like marine clowns at the vessel's bows, sunsets of magic beauty, all conveyed to him a sense of unreality that stirred the soul. His only regret was that he had not set out on the tropic trail before.

It was not until a day before the scheduled landing at Honolulu that his employer gave any indication that she wished to communicate with him, and even then he was not sure about it. But she stood so long close to the barrier between the two classes, and stared so intently seaward, that Strode decided to find out. Taking up a position about a yard distant, he, too, appeared to be engrossed in the horizon. Without movement even of the lips, the girl spoke.

"I shall be staying at the Moana Hotel. Put up where you like. At noon on the fourteenth next, meet me as though by accident on one of the swimming floats off Wakiki beach."

"Right," said Strode with equal immobility.

She shivered, as though the chill of the evening had caught her unawares, drew a wrap closer about her slim body, and moved away.

Two days later Strode proved to his own satisfaction that as regards Honolulu "The Great American Advertisement" had not lied. He took up residence at an hotel that actually transcended its own photograph in magnificence, tried, with indifferent success, to poise himself on a surf-board, and listened to a native orchestra wreathed in flowers. He would ask nothing more than to stay on Wakiki beach the rest of his life, he decided; and, lying in a bathing suit on the hot sand, his thoughts turned involuntarily towards ways and means of accomplishing such an ideal, until they were dispelled by the sudden realisation of how he came to be there. He was no longer foot-loose and fancy free. He was in pawn—to the unknown. Well, to-morrow at noon he would know the worst. In the meantime—— He purged himself of all care by running down the beach and diving through a Pacific roller.

At the appointed time he found his employer swinging her legs from a raft moored off the beach. They were alone, but even then the girl insisted on Strode remaining in the water on the seaward side of the raft.

"So you've come," she said, looking down at him with her curiously penetrating gaze.

"What did you imagine I should do?" Strode demanded.

"I didn't imagine anything. I just waited to see."

"So did I," said Strode.

"It seems I've been lucky," mused the girl, staring seaward with a gravity that seldom left her. "You just do what you're told without wanting to know any more. Do you think you can keep it up?"

"Why not?" said Strode. "Most of us did that for five straight years not so very long ago."

The girl nodded understandingly. "Anyway, I've found out all that I wanted to," she went on. "If you can obey orders on Wakiki beach, you can obey them anywhere."

"I'm inclined to agree with you," said Strode.

The girl took an oiled-silk package from her bathing suit and consulted some written notes it contained.

"I want you," she said, slowly and distinctly, "to buy a boat—a thoroughly sea-worthy yacht of about twenty tons, flush-decked, and capable of being taken anywhere by three hands. Do you think a twenty-tonner big enough?"

"It's not a question of size," said Strode; "it's design and build."

"Well, that's what you're expected to find," continued the girl, again referring to her notes. "Then fit her out with everything necessary for making a passage, and provision her in the simplest possible way for three months."

"And if I fail to find a suitable craft?" Strode suggested.

"Take the next best," ordered the girl between compressed lips. "A craft of some sort has to be found. And if you're asked any questions," she added, reading from her notes, "you're an eccentric English yachtsman bent on cruising through the Hawaiian Island single-handed."

The girl studied the blue dome of the sky.

"I wonder if there's anything else," she mused. "Yes. If you want to see me at any time, swim out to this float and sit here. I shall recognise you through the glasses. Don't come, unless it's absolutely necessary, until the yacht's ready. Is that all?" Suddenly she looked tired, as though the strain of months was beginning to show through the adamant of her self-control. It was the first intimation Strode had received that she was anything more than an exceedingly efficient machine, and he experienced a sudden desire to comfort her. But what was there to be done? Nothing, he decided, while swimming ashore, nothing except carry out her instructions.

In the oiled-silk package she had given him he found a sum in currency large enough to buy three twenty-tonners, and a list of requirements ranging from charts of the entire Pacific to a particular brand of tobacco. Strode took both list and money to his room at the hotel, locked the door, and for the first time gave way to speculation. Either he must go on with this extraordinary business, or return the young fortune he had received forthwith. And why not go on with it? He did not know, except that he was still in the dark, and darkness is uninviting, Then it occurred to him that he was weakening, even as his employer had imagined that he might, and the next morning found him setting out on an exhaustive search of every harbour in the group.

Like their owners, no craft is everything that can be desired. There is bound to be a compromise somewhere. But on the whole, and when the shipyard had done with her, Strode was passably satisfied with the auxiliary cutter that he found. The hull was sound and on seaworthy lines, and the accommodation practical if plain. By expending vast sums in overtime, he succeeded in getting rid of about half the money he had been allowed, and having the vessel ready for sea at the end of three weeks.

It was with pardonable pride that he kept his appointment on the float, and sat there sunning himself He had been so inundated with work of late that he had hardly given a thought to his employer, and when he saw her swimming towards him, and at last clinging to the hand-rope, he was struck by the change in her. The strain of waiting had left its mark.

"I'm ready," he told her.

The smile of relief that parted her lips was his reward, but when he made a movement to help her on to the float, she waved him back. "You don't want to spoil it all, do you?" she demanded. "I've told you we can't be too careful."

"But surely now——"

"You don't know," she insisted. "Now is just the time when a single slip can undo all that has been done. We sail at dusk to-morrow," she added quietly.

Strode contrived not to show surprise, and, chancing to glance downward, caught a hint of appreciation in the girl's eyes.

"You must have made a good soldier," she told him.

"As a matter of fact, I was an extraordinarily bad one," said Strode.

"'Theirs not to reason why,'" she quoted.

"Please," he protested.

"Very well." Her voice hardened as she gave further instructions. Strode was to sail from the shipyard alone, heave to in open water beyond Diamond Head at eight o'clock the following evening, and await events.

"I hope I haven't given the impression that I'm a deep-sea navigator," he suggested, "because I'm not."

The girl stared at him in silence for a moment. "There's still time for you to back out if you want to," she said in a small, cold voice.

"I don't," Strode returned. "But I know my limitations, and thought I'd better let you know them."

"Have my instructions exceeded your limitations so far?"

"No."

"Well, then"—the girl turned with a hint of impatience—"I think you'd better be getting ashore."

"There's one other matter," said Strode, producing the oiled-silk package, "your change."

"For you," said his employer, as though tipping a waiter.

"Have you any idea how much it is?" he demanded.

"It doesn't matter—how much it is. Please take it—and go."

Strode obeyed on the instant by taking a header from the float and swimming shoreward. He had no wish to witness the collapse that was evidently imminent, and which he could do nothing to avert.

Events thenceforth took on the curiously abstract quality of a dream. It seemed to Strode that he was outside them, an automaton, accepting each unusual happening without consideration of cause or effect. He was aware that he slipped out of harbour on the auxiliary, and hove to under mainsail and jib; that his employer came alongside in a native dug-out, clambered aboard, and gave instructions for the canoe to be sunk till awash and set adrift; and that they sailed into the star-pricked night.

The girl took the tiller, and it was soon evident that she knew what she was about. Strode caught a momentary glimpse of the compass, and her face, tense and eager, staring into the lighted binnacle, before a curt order to set the topsail sent him for'ard. After that he was ordered below, and had no notion how long he lay on the fo'castle bunk, because down there in the darkness, with the musical ripple of water slipping past the vessel's side, the accumulated weariness of the past weeks overcame him.

When he awoke, and thrust head and shoulders through the fo'castle hatch, they had made land—land that towered above them in mighty cliffs of volcanic rock, blotting out the stars. This they skirted by means of fitful breaths from the shore, until the girl called him aft to point out a red light low down on a distant beach.

She was trembling visibly as she gave instructions, and, still carrying them out with the precision of machinery, Strode rowed shoreward in the dinghy and rested on his oars outside the surf. The light vanished, and presently the dripping figure of a man clambered over the gunwale sank breathless on to a thwart, and motioned him toward the cutter.

It was afterwards, alone in the fo'castle, where he had been sent the instant the unknown passenger had set foot aboard, that Strode allowed himself to recall details, and then it was the meeting of these two that leapt to his mind—not a word, not a look; a tall, grey-bearded man, in dripping ducks, seizing the tiller like one possessed, getting under way, and heading for the open sea under every stitch of canvas the cutter would carry; the girl, crouched in the cockpit, mute and motionless.

Whatever course had been set, a stiff following breeze held for two days and two nights, and during that time the man never left the tiller, nor Strode the fo'castle. Occasionally the girl came below and helped him to prepare food, but she seldom spoke. She was haggard from lack of sleep, yet her eyes shone with the brilliance of a consuming purpose.

"At midnight you'll relieve me at the tiller," she told him. "The course is south by east. Sail as near it as you can, that's all"

And at midnight Strode carried out his orders. The wind was fair, and the cutter sailed like a witch. He surrendered himself to the sensuous enjoyment of feeling life and movement under his hand. South by east. … Where would that land them? He did not know. He did not particularly care. He was sailing full and by for the unknown.

It was after five weeks of weather fair and foul that land loomed on the southern horizon, and at the end of that time Strode knew no more about his shipmates than he had known at the beginning. For one thing, he had constantly reminded himself that it was none of his business; for another, his world had consisted of the fo'castle and the deck. Bulkhead doors had remained locked throughout the voyage. The man was a navigator—there could be no doubt of that from the way he handled the sextant, if nothing else, and his short, pithy orders in time of stress. And now he had made a bow-on landfall after a five weeks' passage in a cockleshell.

They came to anchor in a land-locked harbour of surpassing beauty. The place was an island, a deserted fragment of verdure-clad volcanic rock on the far-flung outskirts of a group. The anchor had no sooner taken hold than the dinghy was in commission, taking ashore load on load of camp equipment until the cutter was practically gutted.

By nightfall the task was completed, the dinghy lay alongside ready to take its unknown passengers ashore, and Strode was sitting on the for'ard hatch-combing with a pipe in full blast, when voices came to him through the saloon skylight. They were a mere jumble of sound, but rose and fell as though in altercation before ceasing abruptly. A moment later the man's head and shoulders appeared above the sliding hatch aft, and his towering form, clearly silhouetted against the stars, stepped from the cockpit and approached along the deck. A few yards distant he stopped in his tracks, braced himself against the port shrouds, and raised an arm.

It was not the first time Strode had looked into the muzzle of a levelled revolver, but never had he seen anything as coldly deliberate. The rest was nothing less than a cataclysm of happenings. How long the revolver remained levelled between his eyes, Strode had no notion—probably not more than a couple of seconds—but it was time enough for something to spring from the deck like a panther, and send man and weapon hurtling over the knee-high rail.

"Engine!" snapped the girl, and even as Strode yanked at the fly-wheel, a rumble of chain told that the cable had been slipped.

When he went on deck, the girl was at the tiller, staring out over their wake to where a fan of ripples on the glassy surface of the harbour marked a swimmer heading shoreward. Such was Strode's last glimpse of the unknown passenger.

The girl did not speak until the cutter slowed down on an easy swell in the harbour mouth.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly.

"Don't mention it," said Strode. "What next?"

She smiled faintly. "That's all, and thank you."

"I ought to thank you," Strode objected.

"What for?"

"Saving my life."

The girl looked up at him with her grave, direct gaze. "I shouldn't have done it unless I'd been sure of you," she said. "My father was not."

"You'd have let me be shot in cold blood?"

"Yes—if I hadn't been sure of you," she repeated meaningly.

"You're taking another chance."

"Oh, I don't know——" Her eyes fell to the glint of metal in her right hand.

"You mean," said Strode, "that if your trust in me happens to be misplaced, you'll finish off the job yourself?"

The girl nodded.

"I have only one other order to give you," she said. "Surely you can carry it out as you have the others."

"Perhaps," said Strode, "when you've given it."

"From now on you are the English yachtsman who sailed from Honolulu single-handed. The whim seized you to make a passage to the South Pacific, and you made it—alone."

"I see," said Strode.

"You will never return to this island, nor tell a living soul that anyone is here. And you swear to carry out these instructions."

"I swear," said Strode, "and not on account of that plaything in your hand, either."

A sudden glint came into the girl's eyes, and was gone.

"I know," she said, and, turning with a hint of weariness, climbed down into the dinghy.

"What about the boat?" Strode asked her, as the oars slipped into the rowlocks.

"The boat is yours," she said, and rowed off into the darkness.

•⁠•⁠•⁠•⁠•⁠•

Long before Strode made port at the main island of the group, he had solved the riddle of the unknown passenger.

There were charts below, and now that his mind was free to conjure with memories, he recalled how the compass had read from his glimpse of it on that night of their departure from Honolulu. And the wind had been fair. There had been no need to alter the course for the island of the lighted beach.

With the parallel rulers Strode projected a line that cut clean through Molokai. Molokai? He turned the pages of the North Pacific Directory, read a paragraph, and sat quite still, staring before him. Molokai was the island of the lepers.