CHAPTER XXX THE OPEN SEA

Floyd did not take the trouble to speak to Mountain Joe about Cardon's presence on board.

Cardon got into the upper bunk at about eleven o'clock and went promptly to sleep. As for Floyd, he could neither sleep nor lie still. During his stay in Sydney, he had been restless enough at times, but he had never felt like this. Ever since his departure from the island the idea of Isbel had followed him and been with him now clear and close, now more remote and partly obscured from him by everyday affairs.

To-night she haunted him.

All sorts of fears and imaginings rose in his mind. He had never known the extent of his love for her till just this moment, on the eve of his return. Suppose when he got back he found she was not there. Suppose the natives had revolted again; suppose that Schumer, playing every one false and on the chance of a passing ship, had gone off from the island, taking the pearls with him and Isbel. Suppose—suppose——There was no end to the suppositions that rose up before his mind as he paced the floor of the main cabin and listened to Cardon snoring in his bunk.

Cardon, in his idea of passing himself off as bag[Pg 253]gage, had not reckoned on his capacity for snoring. Floyd, however, did not trouble about it; even if Hakluyt were suddenly to come on board and see Cardon in the flesh, let alone hearing him snoring, it would not much matter.

In his present frame of mind, he would have bundled Hakluyt down the main hatch and closed it on him had he appeared to give any trouble.

He came on deck, leaving Cardon to his dreams, and paced the planks, still engaged in suppositions as to Isbel.

Then the night wind, balmy and warm, blew the evil fancies from his mind and restored its tone. Nothing could have happened in the few weeks that had elapsed since his departure. Isbel was well able to take care of herself, and as for the natives, they were not likely to try any more tricks with Sru dead and Schumer in command. The real danger was to come, and its name was Luckman. That was nothing. With Cardon at his elbow, he felt able to cope with a hundred Luckmans and Schumers. He was forewarned. Fate had declared for him—or so it seemed.

He remained on deck till dawn began to break upon the harbor, then he went down and woke Cardon.

Before going down, he had stirred up the cook and ordered coffee to be sent to the main cabin; and while they were drinking this they heard a boat coming alongside, and Mountain Joe shouted down the hatchway that the pilot was coming on board.

"I reckon I'd better stay hid till we are clear of the harbor," said Cardon. "There's no use in running[Pg 254] risks. Up with you, and interview the pilot and get the anchor out of the mud as quick as you can. Give me a word when you have dropped him. You won't have far to look for me."

Floyd went up and found the pilot already on deck. The wind was fair; all the port regulations had been complied with, and there was nothing to hold them but the anchor.

Cardon, down below, could hear the clank of the windlass pawls as the slack of the anchor chain was being hove in, the feet of the fellows on deck running to orders, their voices as they hauled on the halyards, and then again the welcome music of the pawls as the anchor was dragged from the mud and hauled, gray and dripping, to the catheads.

Instantly the schooner took the feel of a live ship, to use Cardon's words. She heeled ever so little, and, as he lay in the bunk, he could hear the warble of the water against her planking, to say nothing of the rattle of the rudder chain and the occasional creak of woodwork acknowledging mast pressure and strain.

After a while Cardon, tired with the stuffy air of the cabin, dropped asleep. When he awoke, Floyd was standing beside him, and by the movement of the cabin he knew that the Southern Cross had cleared the harbor and was making her bow to the Pacific.

"How about the pilot?" asked Cardon, rubbing his eyes.

"Dropped him long ago," replied Floyd. "Hop out and come on deck. The fellow is laying the things for breakfast, and a breath of air will do you good."

Cardon slipped from the bunk and came on deck.

A brave breeze was blowing, and the sea, roughed[Pg 255] up beneath the morning sun, had a hard, gemlike look. Foam caps showed, and in the west the setting moon hung, ghostlike, in a sky that suggested millions and millions of miles of depth and blueness.

All the east was hard and bright; all the west was blue and subtle and tender; and between the east and the west lay the sea like a country carved from sapphire and tourmaline, with the green hills of earth sinking slowly but surely away beyond the foam in the schooner's wake.

Then, as the sun mounted higher, the sea lost its look of solidity, cast it back on the land, now remote and hard, black fish came walloping along as if racing the rushing schooner. The wind, freshening, blew in great, steady gusts, filling the bellying canvas and pressing like a great hand so that the lee rail was almost awash and the spray came inboard, fresh, like the very breath of the sea.

Cardon, with his hand on the ratlines, stood taking it all in while Floyd stood beside him, his clothes flapping round him in the flogging wind.

Mountain Joe was at the wheel. He showed no surprise at Cardon's presence on board, nor did any of the others. They evidently looked on him as a passenger or supercargo of some sort approved of by Hakluyt.

"She's a good sea boat," said Cardon, "and she seems to steer well; but what in the nation can have become of Luckman?"

"That's what's bothering me," said Floyd. "I've been trying to figure the thing out ever since we got the anchor on board. He can't be stowed away anywhere. He's not in the fo'c'sle, for I went down there[Pg 256] under the pretense of seeing whether the hammocks were all right. He's not in the galley, he's not in the cabins, and he's not in the hold. He's not on board, in fact. Well, what is the meaning of it? The only thing I can imagine is that the affair has fallen through and he's gone off with the money Hakluyt gave him—either that or I must have imagined the conversation I heard."

"Oh, I reckon that wasn't any imagination of yours," said Cardon. "There was lots of reason why Hakluyt should have put the business against you. No; the only explanation is that the thing, as you say, must have fallen through. Luckman funked it and took his hook with the money. That's the only possible thing that can have happened. But it leaves the position just the same as far as you and I are concerned."

"How do you mean?"

"Just this: The plot was made against you, and it wasn't made in Sydney. It was all arranged on the island between Schumer and Hakluyt."

"Yes, it must have been."

"Well, then, the question turns up, are you going to go on working with this Schumer, who has made all the arrangements for doing you in and who would have done you in had not the thing fallen through?"

"Never!" said Floyd. "I have finished with Schumer."

"Oh, no, you haven't!" replied Cardon. "Not by a long chalk. There remains the question of the pearls, and the question of punishment. Schumer has got to pay for his villainy, and pay through the nose.[Pg 257] But there's the fellow bringing breakfast aft. Let's go down, and we can talk the matter out below."

They went down, and when breakfast was over Cardon lit a pipe, settled himself comfortably on the couch at the starboard side of the cabin, and, after a moment's silence, turned to Floyd, who was lighting a cigar.

"You have got to get even with Schumer, and from all you have told me of Schumer you will have your work cut out. I know the type. The Pacific is full of it. This chap is a trader and a sailor and a fighter all rolled in one. I know the sort—able to do anything, from playing a tune on a fiddle to playing a dirty trick. I know them."

"Don't you be too sure," said Floyd. "This man Schumer is not one of the ordinary sort of traders and swindlers. He's a very big man. He ought to have been anything, and the wonder to me is he has never risen to something in the world better than what he is."

"There you have his weakness," said Cardon. "I admit he may be a big man, as you say; and yet, as you say, he is only a little one as far as the world is concerned. There's something wrong somewhere in his make-up. He doesn't drink?"

"Not he!"

"Well, there's some crack in him we must try and feel for. I expect the chap is such a rightdown wrong one that he has failed in life just because of that. I don't say I'm not a failure in my way, but I have failed mostly through taking things easy and trusting in men. But Schumer hasn't those weaknesses, if I can judge by what you have told me. No; I suspect[Pg 258] his disease has been a pretty general one. He's a wrong un. I'm not a man given to moralizing, but I've seen a lot of the world, and I've seen that men who don't run straight don't get on. It's funny, but they don't. Now look at old man Schumer's case. He fell in with a pearl lagoon; he has taken twenty thousand pounds' worth of pearls out of it, and maybe more by this. He had a partner named Floyd. He couldn't run straight with that partner, but must lay plans for his wiping out. Floyd discovers his trick, and now Schumer is going to lose pearls and lagoon and all; and when he's lost them he will go back to his old way of life with his feathers clipped, and men will say: 'I can't understand that Schumer; he ought to have been anything, and yet there he is bumming around in bars.' That's what they will say. Honesty is the best policy, and that's God's truth and no copybook story, and that's what I'm going to teach Schumer."

"But, look here, you say he is going to lose pearls and lagoon and all——"

"I? He may keep the lagoon—we only want the pearls."

"Yes, but——"

"I know what you are going to say—we have to get them before we keep them. I know. The thing to worry out is how we are to get the weather gauge on him. You have taken me into this affair as a partner, offering me half your share. I don't want that. I want Schumer's share. The man is a murderer, and deserves hanging. I am only going to fire him, but I admit the thing will be difficult.

"If we sail into the lagoon and declare war openly[Pg 259] with him, he'll fight, and he'll be backed by all those natives he has got there."

"He will, and besides there's the—the girl."

"Just so; you don't want her injured."

"Cardon," said Floyd, "I tell you the truth as between man and man. She's everything. I don't care a straw about the pearls, about money, about Schumer. I don't care about life itself where she's concerned. She's the only thing I have ever cared for really."

"And yet," cut in Cardon, "if you care for her like that, it's all the more important for you not to be done out over the pearls. Pearls are money. Well, do you think you don't want money? To a single man, money is useful, but to a man with a woman in tow, by God, it's a blank necessity! What are you to do with her as a sailor? Leave her in some seaport while you are off sweeping the sea for tuppence a week in some dirty hooker owned by some dirty owner who feeds his men on salt horse and sends them to the bottom through overloading or for the sake of the insurance money? No. If you care for a woman, put a pistol to her head before you turn her into a sailor's wife, depending on a sailor's pay. You have got to get the money that's owing to you from Schumer, and you have got to get your satisfaction from him. I don't know how yet, but I'll find out by thinking over it."

"You are right," said Floyd. "I have got to get the money, anyhow, even if I don't get the satisfaction. But there's another point: Suppose I do get the pearls; there's always a difficulty in selling them."

"You needn't worry about that," said Cardon.[Pg 260] "I've got the means of selling anything that is come by honestly. I have a good name among a good set at 'Frisco. Now I'll tell you something you can't easily believe; but if I wanted to borrow money in 'Frisco, I could do so to the extent of thousands and thousands of dollars. There are two men there, rich men, who would let me draw on them for what I liked; and yet I have often borrowed a few dollars from a poor man—you remember that five dollars I got from you and which I owe you still, by the way. No, sir, I have never tapped those rich men because they are under an obligation to me, and because they are my friends, and because I know that they would be only too pleased to lend to me. Men are funny things, and I guess I'm a man. Anyhow, that's how things stand. Now, if I were to go to those men and say: 'Look here, I have got a fortune in pearls, and I want to turn it into dollars,' those fellows would put all their means at my disposal to get me the best price, and ten to one they'd buy the stuff themselves, and my difficulty would be to stop them from paying too big a price. One is Kane, of the union Pacific Company; the other is Calthorpe, the grain man. I knew them first twenty years ago, when we were all dead beats together. Kane started life as a newsboy, selling books on the cars of the Reading Railway. He builds them now. Calthorpe started in life on the docks at 'Frisco, helping to load sacks of wheat. They don't load wheat in sacks nowadays; his elevators do most of the work. Well, they are white men, and though they have wives and daughters and carriages, they are always glad to see me at their offices, and they are such gentlemen they have never[Pg 261] offered to start me in life. They take me as one of themselves, and we have a clack and a smoke and a drink. I generally stand the drinks, and I know they are green with envy of my stomach, for they are both eaten up with dyspepsia. Now those chaps have succeeded in life, but they haven't succeeded in keeping up their pleasure in life. I have, and I reckon, when all's said and done, the account is on my side. They are pretty well done to death with worry, living in stuffed-up rooms, fighting every moment of the day to keep what they've got, taking their food like medicine, and with gold teeth in their heads to help them chew it; and here am I with every tooth in my head and an appetite like a shark, clear two hundred, without an ache or pain, breathing God's good air, and sailing to belt a chap over the head and collar a pearl lagoon. I guess they'd change places if their wives would let them."

"You have never grown old," said Floyd.

"I'm forty-five," replied Cardon, "and I don't want to grow any older, and I wouldn't be an inch younger for worlds. A man only begins to live properly when he's forty, and at forty-five he has just about found himself. Well, I'm going on deck to have a breath of air. She seems to be going a bit steadier; I expect the wind has fallen."

When they got on deck, they found that the wind had lost its gusty character and had settled down into a steady blow. The land was very far away, and only one sail was in sight—a full-rigged ship, almost hull down on the horizon and white like a flake of spar. The Southern Cross was heading northeast, on a course that would leave Norfolk Island some two hun[Pg 262]dred miles to port; and before her lay that great, empty zone of sea which stretches from the Kermadec Islands to the Tongas, and from the Australs to the Isle of Pines.

Some ten days out from Sydney, they hailed a steamer; she was the mail boat from Auckland to Fiji, and the last trace of her smoke was the last sign of man for many days.

The weather was perfect and the wind favorable, though moderate, as they stole northward toward the line. Each day the sea became of a deeper and deeper blue, and each day the sense of remoteness from the world as we know it grew more intense.

The nights were tremendous with stars, and the days were scarcely days, as days are reckoned with us. They left on the mind only one enduring impression—great spaces of radiant blueness, infinite distance where there was nothing but the send of the sea and the blowing of a tepid wind.

One day, breaking the sea line on the starboard bow, came an island—a dream of the sea, foam-stained and waving palms to the wind, the tepid wind still blowing steadily and ceaselessly like the moist, warm breath of million-leagued Capricorn. It was Rarotonga.

It faded away, and at sunset it had vanished. Next day, toward noon, the Hervey Islands showed right ahead, and, like a white gull coming from the islands toward them, a schooner. She passed only a few cable lengths away, her canvas luminous and honey-colored with the sun. She was a trader bound for the Tongas, and in an hour she was a speck to the southward, while the Hervey Islands loomed more fully[Pg 263] ahead, only to be passed with the sunset and wiped away utterly by the night.

One evening Floyd, who had been working out the reckoning, said to Cardon:

"To-morrow, if this wind holds good, we ought to arrive—somewhere about noon, I should say."

"Good!" said Cardon. "And now I'll tell you of the plan that's been in my head for the last couple of days. We have no longer to reckon with Luckman; he has evidently miscarried. Still, Schumer will give us all the work we want. My plan is this, and it's simple enough. When we drop anchor, he's almost sure to come on board. Well, you must receive him on deck and ask him down into the main cabin. I'll be ambushed in your cabin.

"Out I'll step, put Joe's muzzle to his head, and say, 'Hands up!' When he's disarmed, we'll give him a fair hearing and a fair trial; you'll be judge, and I'll be jury. Then we'll lock him up in your cabin to pray for his sins, and I'll keep watch on him while you go ashore and collect the pearls and the girl.

"You'll bring them off, and then we'll put to sea. Outside the reef we'll put Schumer in a boat and let him row ashore. Then we'll upstick back to Sydney, and there you and I will have an interview with Hakluyt, fling Luckman and all that business in his teeth, and gag him with it. Then we'll make for 'Frisco by the mail boat. You see, we must take the schooner back to Sydney, or else be had, maybe, for stealing her. Well, what do you think of the plan?"

Floyd was silent for a moment.

"Suppose," said he, "Schumer doesn't put his hands[Pg 264] up when you tell him. Suppose he goes for his revolver?"

"Then I'll shoot."

"Suppose he comes on board with half a dozen of those natives and brings them armed? It's not likely, but Schumer is just the man to do an unlikely thing of that sort."

"If we see him coming off with a boatload of those scalawags, we must change our plan. I can hide till we are able to get him onto the schooner alone; but there's no use supposing too much. What we want is a plan to go on, and that's the best I can think of."

"Well," said Floyd, "I don't like it, and that's the truth. It's a good enough plan, no doubt, but there seems to me something treacherous about it. I don't mean that in a nasty way, or as reflecting on you. All the same, it's a plan I'd hate to carry out."

"Well, and who forces us to use treachery, as you call it? If you hide behind a bush to shoot a tiger, is that treachery? No, it would be if you were dealing with a man; it isn't if you are dealing with a tiger. Schumer is a tiger; or, more like, a polecat; and if you don't use treachery, he will. He has already, in fact."

"He'd still have the lagoon," said Floyd, wavering.

"Yes, we'd leave him the lagoon—not for love, but for our own sakes. I've been figuring the thing out, and we'd better let the lagoon go. If we tried to cling to it, we would have to tear Schumer's claws loose from it, not to speak of Hakluyt's. If we leave it to them, it will be a sop in the pan and will stop them from making any worry. We only want the pearls already captured. They'll do for us."

[Pg 265]Floyd heaved a sigh. He could not but see the force of Cardon's reasoning. Schumer deserved punishment, beyond all question; he had plotted with Hakluyt, and the plot had only failed to materialize owing to some accident or some rascality on the part of Luckman toward his fellow conspirators. Still, he hated the idea of the whole business. Inveigling a man into the cabin and then clapping a pistol to his head was a plan of action that would never have occurred to him. Cardon was thicker skinned. All the same, he could not help feeling that Cardon was right.

There are some men whom it is impossible to deal with as gentlemen, just as there are some men whom it is impossible to fight with according to the rules of the prize ring. Schumer was one of them.

Floyd thought the matter over for a moment, and came to the conclusion that Cardon was right. "I have no right to criticize your plan," he answered, "since I haven't any plan of my own to offer instead of it. We'll leave it at that, and trust to luck, and if it comes to doing what you say, I will, of course, back you, unless I hit on any idea between this and to-morrow."

He went on deck. The Southern Cross, carrying every stitch of her canvas, was making a good ten knots, and the foam in her wake had a phosphorescence as though she were leaving behind her a cloud of luminous smoke that clung to the water and refused to rise. Never had he seen the stars more wonderful, or a night more lovely. There was little of the heaviness and languor of the tropics; and but[Pg 266] for Canopus and the Cross blazing overhead it might have been a night of June in northern latitudes.

Floyd stood by the fellow at the wheel for a little while, and then he walked forward, and, leaning against the lee rail, looked over the sea. From the fo'c'sle came the sound of a concertina, faint and indistinct; that and the creak of cordage and the slashing of the bow wash were the only sounds in all that infinity of night and silence.

He was thinking of Isbel and the island invisible, but surely there beyond the rim of the sea. There were moments when the whole thing seemed a fantastic dream—Schumer, and the pearls, and the island, and the woman he loved. Was it possible that he would see her on the morrow?