"Gold-dust! The n.i.g.g.e.rs bring it down from the Western Soudan, and I believe they're ostrich quills. One of the trader fellows told me a good deal about them over a dinner at the Metropole. A bushman had once stuck him with a lot of bra.s.s filings. Are you going down to look for them?"

Jefferson, it was evident from his face, laid a strong restraint upon himself.

"No," he said, with curious quietness. "Funnel-paint knows nothing about these islets yet, or he wouldn't have come to you, and it's my first business to heave this steamer off. To do it we'll want her engines, and there's a heavy job in front of us before we start them. The rains won't wait for any man."

He broke off, for a glare of blue light fell through the open frames above and flooded the engine room. It flickered on rusty columns and dripping, discoloured steel, and vanished, leaving grey shadow behind it, amidst which the smoky lamplight showed feeble and pale. Then there was a crash that left them dazed and deafened, and in another moment was followed by a dull crescendo roar, while a splashing trickle ran down into the engine room. The gla.s.s frames quivered under the deluge, and one could almost have fancied that the heavens had opened. Jefferson whirled round and gripped the donkey-man's arm, shaking him as he stood blinking about him in a bewildered fashion.

"If you tell any of the rest what you have heard, I'll fling you into the creek! And now up with you, and bring every man who is fit to work.

There's no time to lose," he said.

Tom made for the ladder, and Austin, who went with him, carrying the book, was drenched before he reached the skipper's room. The air was filled with falling water that came down in rods, and blotted out the mangroves a dozen yards away. Steam rose from the sluicing deck, the creek boiled beneath the deluge, but there was no longer any trace of the insufferable tension, and he stood a moment or two relaxing under the rush of lukewarm water that beat his thin clothing flat against his skin. Then he splashed forward to the forecastle, where Tom had little difficulty in rousing the men. They crawled out, gaunt and haggard, in filthy rags, some of them apparently scarcely fit to stand, for the rain had come, and every inch the water rose would bring them so much nearer home. There was no need to urge them when they floundered into the engine room, and hour after hour they strained and sweated on big spanner and chain-tackle willingly, while the big cylinder-heads and pistons were hauled up to the beams. The one thought which animated them was that the engines would be wanted soon.

It mattered little that platform-grating and slippery floor-plates slanted sharply under them, and each ponderous ma.s.s they loosened must be held in with guy and preventer lest it should swing wildly into vertical equilibrium. That was only one more difficulty, and they had already beaten down so many. So day after day they worked on sloping platforms, slipping with naked feet, and only grinned when Tom flung foul epithets, and now and then a hammer, at one of them. Much of what he said was incomprehensible, and, in any case, he was lord supreme of the machinery; and Bill, whose speech was also vitriolic, acted as his working deputy. The latter had served as greaser in another steamer, and for the time being even Jefferson deferred to him.

They stripped her until the big cylinders stood naked on their columns, and the engine room resembled the erecting shop of a foundry, and then the work grew harder when the rea.s.sembling began. Since the skeleton engines slanted, nothing would hang or lower as they wanted it, and they toiled with wedge and lever in semi-darkness by the blinking gleam of lamps, while the rain that shut the light out roared upon the shut-down frames above. It was very hot down in the engine room, and when a small forge was lighted to expand joints they could not spring apart, and to burn off saponified grease, men with less at stake would probably have fancied themselves suffocated. Still, each ma.s.sive piece was cleaned and polished, keyed home, or bolted fast, and, when the hardest work was over, the slope of the platforms lessened little by little as the _c.u.mbria_ rose upright. It was evident to all of them that the water was rising in the creek.

In a month her deck was almost leveled, but the muddy flood that gurgled about her still lay beneath her corroded water line, and Jefferson seized the opportunity of laying out an anchor to heave on before the stream ran too strong. The launch's boiler had given out, and they lashed her to the surfboat, with the hatch covers as a bracing between, but they spent an afternoon over it before Jefferson was satisfied, and the thick, steamy night was closing in when they warped the double craft under the _c.u.mbria_'s forecastle. It rose above them blackly, with a blaze of flickering radiance over it where the blast-lamp hurled a shaft of fire upwards into the rain. Floundering figures cut against the uncertain brilliancy, voices came down m.u.f.fled through the deluge, and there was a creaking and groaning as the ponderous stream anchor swung out overhead.

Austin stood, half naked, on the platform between launch and surfboat, with the water sluicing from him, and though he had toiled since early dawn, he was sensible only of a feverish impatience, and no weariness at all. He had had enough of the dark land, and what they were about to do was to ensure a start on the journey that would take them out of it. It grew rapidly darker, the long hull faded, and the flare of the lamp alone cut, a sheet of orange and saffron, against the blackness above them. Jefferson's voice fell through it sharply.

"Stand by!" he said. "We'll ease her down!"

There was a fresh groaning and creaking. Something big and shadowy that racked the complaining chain descended towards them, and then there was a scuffle and a shout on the deck above. Austin heard the rattle of running chain and a hoa.r.s.e cry.

"Jump on it!" Jefferson's voice ran out, fierce with alarm. "Nip the slack around the bollard. Hang on! Oh, hang on, until he gets a turn!"

Feet shuffled about the light, there was stertorous gasping, another cry, and a scream, and again Jefferson's voice broke through the confused sounds:

"Stand from under--for your life!" it said.

The warning was unnecessary, for the Canarios were already crouching forward in the surfboats bottom, and as Austin sprang in among them there was a whirr and a crash. The craft swayed beneath him; he could feel her dipping in the flood, but she rose with a staggering lurch, slanted slightly, and held down by something huge and heavy.

"Are you still on top there?" Jefferson asked.

"We seem to be," said Austin. "Something's gone, but it's too dark to see. How d'you come to let her go with a run?"

"Wall-eye let her surge too soon," said Jefferson. "He was getting an extra turn on, and nipped his hand in. She has 'most wrung it off him.

Handspike your anchor where you can tilt her clear before we slack cable."

They contrived to do it somehow, with the flare that was lowered from the cat-davit dropping blazing oil about them, and then coiled down a length of the ponderous cable. One of the twin craft was tilted to the water's edge now, and still the ma.s.sive iron links came clanking down.

Then, as the last fell with a crash, Jefferson leaned out over the rails above.

"Bend the wire on below the break. You'll want a clear link for the shackle when we couple her up," he said. "Hang on to your anchor until you're in the mangroves on the other bank. We want to heave towards deep water out in the stream."

More barefooted men came swinging down the hanging wire, and they slid away into the blackness, b.u.mping against the steamer's plates. The twin craft were top-heavy, and lurched in the grip of the stream. It was a minute or two before they had cleared the _c.u.mbria_, and by then they were almost under her quarter; while when they had crept away from her a fathom or two all of them knew there was a task in front of them that would severely tax all their strength.

They had the uncoiling wire rope to drag them back into line, the stream swept them down a fathom for every one they made ahead, and, as ill luck would have it, bore upon the launch's pressed down side so that they could hear the water gurgling into her in ever faster swirl. Still, they had to reach the opposite bank, or be hauled back to commence the task again, and, gasping and panting, they heaved on the wet rope that led into the rain ahead. Most of them were used to work of that kind, but during the first five minutes Austin felt his arms grow weary and nerveless, and the veins distend on his forehead, while a curious singing commenced in his ears. He choked with every fresh grasp he laid upon the rope, and a Canario behind him gasped out breathless s.n.a.t.c.hes of Castilian obscenity.

Still, in spite of all they could do, the blaze of red light leaping in the rain showed that they were making nothing, and now and then the rope ran out again through their clinging hands. There was no sign of the mangroves on the opposite bank, while the tilt of the platform grew steeper, and it was evident that the launch was filling under them.

Then, little by little, the wire rope that ran out into the darkness astern commenced to curve--they could hear the swirl of the stream across it--and after another five minutes' tense effort they swung into a slacker flow or reflex eddy. There was, however, no slackening of the strain, and it was not until a dim, black wall rose up above them that Austin loosed his grasp upon the rope, and, floundering and stumbling in the rain and darkness, they strove to clear the anchor.

It went over with a mighty splash, the platform rose with a jerk under them; then, as they backed clear, there was a rattle of cable, and they seized the wire. The lashed craft swung like a pendulum athwart the stream, the rattling winch hauled them back fathom by fathom to the _c.u.mbria_, while, when he had crawled on board her, Austin dropped limply, and a trifle grey in face, on to the settee in the skipper's room.

"Well," he said, "that's done, though I think a little more of it would have made an end of me. It is rather an astonishing thing, but while I felt fiercely anxious to get that anchor out before we started, it hardly seems worth the trouble now."

"We couldn't heave her off without it," said Jefferson. "That means going home--eventually."

"I suppose it does," said Austin, with a little mirthless smile. "Still, I haven't any home, you see, and I'm not sure that a lazar hospital of some kind isn't what is awaiting me. You will remember the encouraging words that fellow left--'My arm's almost rotten now.'"

Jefferson slowly clenched one scarred hand. "That's a thing we are neither of us strong enough to think about. It's a little too horrible--it couldn't happen!"

"It's scarcely likely in your case, at least. He didn't put his arm round you, and I had nothing worth mentioning on that night. Men do die rotten, and I fancied once or twice I felt a suggestive tingling in my skin."

Jefferson seemed to be holding himself in hand with a struggle, but Austin smiled.

"Well," he said, "if it comes at all, it will get the right one. I'm not going home to be married. In fact, I was told that it would be rather a graceful thing to come back upon my shield, though I don't know that I would like to do so looking as that n.i.g.g.e.r did. In the meanwhile, I had, perhaps, better see to Wall-eye's hand."

He went out into the darkness, and Jefferson stood still, with his lips set tight, leaning on the table. He was, in some respects, a hard man, and his sojourn in Africa had not roused his gentler qualities, but just then he felt an unpleasant physical nausea creeping over him again.

CHAPTER XXV

HOVE OFF

The rain came down in sheets, and the mangrove roots were hidden by the yellow flood, when Jefferson stood, dripping, on the _c.u.mbria_'s bridge.

Her iron deck was level, the stumpy pole masts ran upright into the drifting mist, and a column of black smoke floated sluggishly from her rusty funnel. Dingy vapour also rose from the slender one of the locomotive boiler, and cables--hemp and wire and chain--stretched between the mangroves and the steamer's bow and stern. Jefferson, leaning heavily on the bridge rails, considered them each in turn. He shivered a little, though the rain was warm, and his wet face looked unusually gaunt and worn; but his eyes were intent and steady, for at last all was ready for the supreme effort of heaving the _c.u.mbria_ off.

He looked down when Austin stopped at the foot of the ladder. His face and hands were black, and the thin singlet, which was all he wore above his duck trousers, seemed glued to him.

"Hadn't you better keep inside the wheelhouse until we start the mill?"

he said.

Jefferson smiled drily. "Do you think you could? What are you wandering up and down the deck for?"

"I'm not. I've been firing the locomotive boiler, and spent the last twenty minutes in the forecastle. It isn't as dry as it should be there."

He spoke lightly, though there was a suggestion of tension in his voice, and it was evident that both of them were anxious. Indeed, Jefferson fancied that his comrade found it difficult to stand still at all.

"Well?" he said.

"There are a third of them I daren't turn out, and two or three of the others who are down with Tom look a good deal shakier than I care about.

Still, you see, I couldn't keep them in. They've had about enough of this country, and I don't blame them. You can figure on about half of us as reasonably effective, but what everybody wants to know is, when we are to begin."

"When you can give me eighty pounds of steam. Then we'll shake her up for an hour or two with reversed propeller, and heave on everything when you get up to the hundred. Still, although we have blown a good deal of the mud out forward, I expect she'll want another fifty before she'll move."

Austin glanced at the gap in the forest beneath the bows, across which the shattered mangroves were strewn. He and Jefferson had gone over all this before, but since he had stopped by the ladder they must talk of something, for silence would have been intolerable just then.