Chapter XX: At Point Sebastian

Now the great rambling, wooden hotel in which Miss Elsie Kildare was staying under care of her friends, the Van Liews, though on the end of a telegraph-wire, and within easy day’s steam of a railroad, was not particularly far in crow’s-flight from that uncharted river where the _Port Edes_ lay stranded on a sand-bar. The hotel, in fact, backed upon the Everglades, and faced the blue, crisping waters of the Mexican Gulf. At one side of it was a plantation of sisal hemp, and beyond that thickets of saw-grass, and beyond again cypress-trees and cabbage-palms sprouting from an undergrowth which was bound into an impenetrable _cheveux de frise_ with wait-a-bit thorn. At the other side were newly planted umbrella-trees, two decrepit orange-bushes without fruit, twenty luxuriant chumps of elephants’ ears, and then straggles of palmetto-scrub right down to the soft white banks of Gulf sand. Beyond was clear blue water, with a rickety wooden wharf straddling a mile out into it, like some uncouth, gray-legged centipede. And beneath the water, dented rusty food-cans grew intimate with the coral polyp.

In winter time, Point Sebastian was a resting-place for nabobs of the north, and a congregation spot for those delightful American women who leave a convenient husband at work elsewhere on the dollar-mill. But, in the warmer months, these worthy people did their pleasure-living at the sea beaches of the north, or the hotels of the Alleghanies; and the rest-house at Point Sebastian locked and covered most of its glories. The Floridan who stays in Florida all summer does so usually because of a tightness in the exchequer; and for the few of him who came to dissipate a small but hardly scraped-up hoard in a spell of semi-civilization, a tenth of the available rooms made ample lodging place.

Still there was a summer season of sorts at Point Sebastian, which was merry enough in its way. Most nights, on the parquet of the hall, a cheery score danced under the glare of electric lights to the lilt of Teuton fiddles; and in the cool gloom of the piazzas outside, if straitened means did prevent the actual drafting of marriage contracts, even penury undisguised could enjoy the dallyings of the week’s flirtation. Mr. Kent-Williams and his tribe were entertaining fellows enough to meet for a limited time, and maidens, come into the hotel for an annual outing, basked in the odor of their pretty sayings, and frankly prepared themselves for nothing beyond temporary amusement.

Patrick Onslow met at least five men there he knew, which shows the great advantage of being a University man; because, since at Oxford and Cambridge they most successfully refrain from teaching anything that is of commercial use to any one except a parson or a doctor or a school-master, it naturally follows that many men from those seats of learning fail to make a living at home, and drift across the seas.

He did not make the smallest secret about his advent. As the newspapers had told them already, he had been on the unlucky _Port Edes_ when she came to grief, but had managed to get ashore by a marvelous streak of luck, and found himself at a spot where, less than a year ago, he had been wandering about on a shooting expedition. Thence he had made his way in a dug-out, bought from a Seminole, to the hotel on Point Sebastian. _V’la tout_. There was nothing surprising about it. He had had several opportunities for drowning before that, but none of them had ever come off. So he supposed that the _Parcæ_ marked him out to live. And—what would they have? His shout.

At that period Mr. Patrick Onslow was feeling extremely pleased with himself. He hated the work at which he had been engaged, as any man must hate being mixed with a swindle, be it great or small. And the end seemed near—the end, conjoined to full success.

He had had a struggle for it, because once more Captain Kettle had felt inclined to fight for his own hand rather than do all things for mere employers, who only paid him a small salary. It was when Onslow woke from that dead sleep on the wheel grating of the upper bridge, and came down to learn of the tragedy of the plume-hunters which had taken place during his unconsciousness, that he got the first hint of this. The little captain received him with cold stiffness, was wooden when asked for any suggestion, and snarled when Onslow inquired what ailed him. It was the donkeyman who put the difficulty into words.

“And, captain, now,” said he, “how much might yez be getting out of all this for yerself?”

“£500.”

“Begor it’s a mighty lot of money, and little enough too. I wish I’d it meself, an’ more. I’d like a house ashore, an’ a wife, an’ an ass-cart that I might dhrive her out in like a gentleman, besides other things.”

“Oh, stop that. Don’t tell me what a man might do if he’d his pick of the money in this ship. I can figure that out for myself without suggestions from any blasted Irishman. Have been doing in fact.”

“Ah, now, captain dear, don’t be cross wid me, because I was going on to say that in case of trouble—in case there was, we’ll say, a thrifling argument, I’d be on your side. Mr. Onslow, you’re a gentleman, an’ I like ye well, but the captain here’s me officer—an’—well, sor, a boy must look after himself sometimes, ’specially when there’s a chance like this ready to his fingers. ’Twon’t come again in a lifetime.”

“Probably not,” said Onslow. He lay back in his chair with linked fingers behind his head. “Look here, Kettle, if you want to shoot me, pull out your gun and get it over. Then you and Sullivan can run the cargo where you please, and share it how you like. But that’s the only way you’ll make me consent to your taking what’s beyond your due. Shelf trusted me, and, by Jove, I’m going to act fairly by Shelf if he were a ten times bigger thief than I know him to be already. Now then, jump quick; let’s have it over.”

They were in the chart-house. Captain Kettle puckered his head for a minute’s thought, and then, getting up, shut and locked the starboard door. He took that key, and the key also of the other door, which gave upon the head of the companion-way, and handed them both to Onslow.

“Now, sir,” said he, “you lock me and the donkeyman in here, and go and do as you like. But I advise you to take your infernal gold somewhere out of this ship, because as sure as it’s there when I next come out of this room, so sure do I go and loot it. That’s my bunk there, bang above the place where it’s stowed, and I’ve sat on top of those sovereigns like a hen every watch below I’ve had this voyage, and heard ’em chinkle, and wondered what they’d hatch out into. You perhaps, understand what I mean?”

Onslow nodded.

“Then take the synch from me, sir, and cart your boxes away as quick as you can. Poor men like me shouldn’t have big temptations. It isn’t healthy—for their neighbors. No, by James! Here, get out of this, Mr. Onslow, or I shall be doing you a violence yet; and mind you lock the door. Donkey-man, you hound, there’s whisky in that bottom locker. Take the clean glass yourself, and give me the dirty one.”

Onslow read the little man’s mind to a comma, and bowed gravely without speaking. Then he did as he was bidden with the door and key, and went below, and began the Herculean task of bringing up the iron-bound specie boxes one by one out of the cabin where they had ridden from the Mersey dock. He placed them in the port quarter boat, which he had lowered from its davits flush with the bridge deck rail; and when she was loaded he put the boat into the river. He rowed her far up stream, past bights and bayous, till he found a narrow canal leading off the main river through mangrove clumps, and held on up that till the boat reached a great round vat of black water, walled all around with solemn cypress-trees, and roofed to darkness by their fringing branches.

One by one the boxes were raised on the gunwale and launched with a sullen plunge; and it seemed an age before the foul-smelling bubbles came up to tell that they had sounded bottom. And then away back for another load. And then for a third. The inky water closed over all, and not so much as a splinter from one of the boxes floated on the surface.

Small fear of any one raiding that _cache_, Onslow thought; and two days later, with a clear mind, he was cabling “_Right_” to Theodore Shelf from the Eastern Union Telegraph Company’s Office in the hotel hall at Point Sebastian.

* * * * *

Now, modern science enables us to cry a message by wire round half the earth at breakfast time, and have an answer returned to us before the gong sounds for luncheon; and it was in anticipation of a quick exchange of news like this that Onslow had come to the nearest outpost of civilization.

He had hidden his £500,000 of gold, released the two men in the chart-house, with instructions that when they felt inclined (or sufficiently recovered) for work they should, with the negroes’ help, set about transforming the steamer’s appearance; and afterwards had made his way, partly overland by an Indian’s path he knew of, partly in dug-out through lagoon and bayou, to Point Sebastian. It was an entire surprise to him to meet Miss Kildare there. But this time it was no special shock. That early morning glimpse of her in the schooner had warned him of her neighborhood.

He got a return message to his cable it is true; but not before noon on the following day. It said “_Take no steps: am writing_,” and seemed to hint at a change of plan.

In another place he might have resented the delay. At least eleven days must pass, and probably more, before a letter could reach him; and all the while he would be condemned to inaction and anxiety. But, as it was, he read Mr. Theodore Shelf’s reply cablegram with a frown, which was quite evanescent, and felt a mild satisfaction in the respite. In the afternoon he took out Miss Kildare to fish for tarpon.

By one of those singular chances which occur every century or so, a tarpon they did actually catch on that first day of fishing, a thirty pound monster, with glittering silver scales on him as big as dollars, who gave three hours’ frantic fight before he turned his belly to the skies, and submitted to traveling beachwards in the boat.

“We got him between us,” said Miss Kildare. “That’s my first, and I’ve tried for him times out of number.”

“My first also, and I’ve tarpon-fished for weeks.”

“We seem to bring one another luck.”

“It’s an undoubted fact, Elsie, we do.”

The deduction seemed to give rise to thoughts in each of them, and they let their eyes rove vaguely over the blue Gulf waters for the next few minutes without speaking, whilst the boat rode gently over the windless swells which slid in through the outlying keys. A porpoise surged past them, coughing as he chased a shoal of mullet; and, overhead, a string of purple and yellow cranes screamed wearily as they flapped home to the Everglades after a day’s hard fishing on a growing reef.

“They’ve all got to make their living,” said Onslow.

“Who?” asked the girl.

“I was thinking of those animals in the water and in the air, and, by analogy, the rest of the animal world. We all of us prey on something else, down to the ass who eats grass; or else we die.”

“That’s a very sage remark, Pat. Have you been reading Schopenhauer lately, or is your bank account unhealthy?”

Onslow laughed. “Was it pessimistic? I’m not given that way as a general thing. It’s so much pleasanter, for one’s self and everybody else, to look at matters from the cheerful point of view. But I was thinking at the time that if I’d been well off, and if other things had not happened as they did, my life would have been written very differently.”

“You mean you might have been her Majesty’s Ambassador to the Court of Timbuctoo?”

“Or something in that line, possibly—yes.”

“Mabel,” said the girl, “is free now.”

Onslow nodded dreamily, and once more let his gaze roam out across the waters. The boat rode uncared for over the gentle oily swells, and the sound of the surf crumbling on the distant keys fell on his ears, and droned to him a lingering tale of might-have-been. Mabel was free! The woman who had once promised to be his wife—the woman whose memory had driven him from pillar to post across the world through all those long, wild years, because his abiding love for her was too great a torment to be borne when he rested for a breathing space in one spot, and had time for thought. The woman who had, by pressure, been made to marry another man, whom neither on her wedding day nor at any after time did she ever love, was free again. Mabel Duvernay now, and Mabel Kildare no longer; but Mabel still, and free.