The surgeon promised to attend to them, but just then Onslow turned to Jefferson.

"Have you opened up any of the gum yet?" he asked.

Jefferson said he had not, and was rather anxious to do so, whereupon Onslow and the surgeon offered to accompany him, and they went down the ladder together to where the bags still lay upon the forward hatch.

"I shouldn't wonder if you were right about its value," said the surgeon, when Jefferson held up the lantern one of the Spaniards had handed him. "We took a Senegal Frenchman down the coast last trip, and he had rather a craze upon the subject. There is, I understood from him, a particular gum the n.i.g.g.e.rs find somewhere between here and the head of the Niger, for which one could get almost what he liked to ask from the makers of special high-cla.s.s varnishes. In fact, the man said that one of them who had been trying it told him that it must be used in certain processes whatever its cost might be. The only trouble was that it appeared very difficult to get hold of, except in the smallest quant.i.ties; but perhaps your Frenchman had got on the track of it."

Austin tore one of the bags, which were very rotten, across, and then slit the fibre package beneath it. The surgeon, who stooped beside him, was the first to thrust his hand into the opening.

"The nodules seem very uniform in size," he said, and then stood up suddenly, with astonishment in his face. "I'm almost afraid that somebody has been beforehand with you."

"What do you mean?" asked Austin, still tearing at the package.

The surgeon turned and gazed hard at Jefferson. "This is certainly not gum. It looks very like an ordinary palm kernel."

He held up a little, round, black object, and Jefferson's face grew grim, while he clenched one hand. Then he wrenched the knife from Austin and fell on his knees, ripping at the fibre package savagely. It opened beneath the steel, and when its contents poured out on deck he rose with a little bitter laugh. There was no doubt whatever. They were palm kernels. A curious silence followed, during which Jefferson leaned against the rail, looking down upon the bags with expressionless eyes, until he made a little gesture.

"Well," he said, very quietly, "it seems we have had our trouble for nothing. You may as well open the rest of them."

Austin was not sure how he contrived to do it. He felt suddenly limp and feeble, but holding himself in hand by an effort, he slit the remaining bags, and flooded the deck with kernels. There was nothing else, and the kernels appeared half rotten.

"This must be a little rough on you," said Onslow, with a trace of awkwardness. "I understand you expected to find more of the stuff yonder."

"I did," said Jefferson. "Funnel-paint can have it now. We have had about enough of this country, and if your artificers fancy we could trust that starboard boiler, we'll set about raising steam to take her out first thing in the morning."

Onslow made a little gesture of sympathy. "I almost think it is the wisest thing you can do," he said. "In the meanwhile, it is getting late, and we have a long trip in front of us to-morrow. I have no doubt you don't feel much like entertaining anybody just now."

He and the surgeon withdrew to the rooms prepared for them, and when Austin, who went with them, came back, he stood a moment by the doorway of the one beneath the bridge which Jefferson now occupied alone. The latter looked up at him with half-closed eyes.

"We have the oil and the ship--and that will have to be enough," he said, and then straightened himself with a fierce gesture. "Get out, and sleep--if you feel like it. The thing has shaken me, and I'm not sure I'm very well."

Austin went away, but it was almost daylight before sleep came to him, and he had only been on deck an hour when their guests departed in the morning. Jefferson, who bade them good-bye at the gangway, stood leaning on the rail while the pinnace steamed away, and then walked, with curious heaviness, towards his room. He crawled into his bunk when he reached it, and lay there, while Austin looked down on him with concern.

"I've had the fever on me for quite a while, and at last it has gripped me hard," he said. "I'll probably be raving in an hour or two. Get steam up as soon as you're able, and take her out of the devilish country."

Austin was very busy between his comrade's room, forecastle, and stoke-hold during the rest of that day, and he had very little time for rest at night, but though half the men were sick, and his own limbs were aching portentously, it was with a little thrill of exultation he climbed to the bridge early on the following morning. The windla.s.s was rattling on the forecastle, Wall-eye stood by the winch astern, and the surfboat was sliding towards the mangroves, where a big wire hawser was made fast, in the rain. Austin was not a professional sailor, but he could handle surfboat and steam launch, and in the good days had sailed his yacht along the coast at home. He also had confidence in the grizzled, olive-faced Spaniard who stood gravely behind him, gripping the steering-wheel.

The anchor came home to the bows at last, somehow the fever-worn men on the forecastle hove it in; the after winch hammered when he made a sign, and the long, rusty hull moved backwards towards the forest as her head swung slowly round. There was a splash of dripping wire, and he swung up an arm with a cry of "Largo!"

Then the winch rattled furiously, a gong clanged below, and a wild, exultant shouting went up when the _c.u.mbria_'s engines commenced to throb. The gaunt, hollow-faced men who stood, dripping, in the rain, had borne everything but cold, and now they were going home. Austin felt his eyes grow hazy for a moment as he leaned upon the rails, and then, with a little shake of his shoulders, he fixed his gaze steadily upon the mangroves that came sliding back to him ahead. He had, he felt, a task that would demand all his attention in front of him.

They slid down stream unchecked until the afternoon, and the _c.u.mbria_ steered handily, which, since there were awkward bends to swing round, was fortunate for all of them; but Austin had misgivings when at last they approached one that appeared sharper than the rest, for he could only see the close ranks of dingy mangroves in front of him as he gazed into the rain and mist. The creek was too narrow to swing the steamer to an anchor, and it was evident that if she was to get around the bend at all he most go at it hard, for the yellow stream was running fast with them, and unless she steamed faster the vessel would not steer. He signed to the helmsman, who edged her in near one bank to gain a little room; and then set his lips tight as he clenched his telegraph and rang for full speed ahead. It was consoling to remember that Tom was below, for a good donkey-man is, as a rule, more to be trusted than a junior engineer.

Ahead, the oily current was sliding through the mangroves as well as among them, covering all their high-arched roots, and he knew that there were a good many feet of water there, for the creek was full, and he had heard of steamers going full tilt into the watery forest at such times.

Still he breathed unevenly as he watched the dingy trees slide past one another, for the bend was opening very slowly, and there was a long tongue of mangroves close in front of him. The bridge planks were trembling beneath him now, and he could hear the thud-thud of the hard-driven screw; but the stream seemed to be running very fast at the bend, and, glancing round, he saw something very like fear in the face of the man who held the wheel. When he looked ahead again the long tongue of mangroves seemed flying towards him.

He strode to the end of the bridge and glanced down at the lift of rusty side. There was a good deal of it above the water, for the _c.u.mbria_ was loaded easily, and she was also, he was very glad to remember, light of draught. He could not check her with an anchor under foot. She would only swing to it, and that would land her among the mangroves broadside on. If he backed his propeller he would as surely go ash.o.r.e, and his face grew very grim as he made the helmsman a little sign. Since he must strike the forest, he would strike it fair, as hard as the engines could drive her, bows on; and he thrust down the telegraph once more for the last pound of steam.

The throb of plank and rail grew sharper, the trees seemed rushing at the forecastle, the helmsman gazed forward with drawn face over his moving wheel, and a shouting broke out on deck. Austin, however, did not move at all, save when he raised a hand to the helmsman. Once more, easy-going artist as he was, the Berserker fit was upon him, and it was with a light only one or two of his friends had ever seen there in his eyes he hurled her full speed at the forest.

She struck it, with a crash that flung two or three of the Spaniards staggering, and it crumpled up before her. Mangrove boughs came streaming down on her grinding forecastle, torn limbs clutched at rail and stanchion, and were smashed by them. Mire was whirled aloft by the thudding screw, and Austin, gripping his telegraph, laughed a harsh laugh as he saw that she was going through. How thick that belt of trees was, or what water flowed among their roots, he did not know, but he remembered that he had found no bottom among them in other places with a boathook, now and then.

In another few moments the white-stemmed trunks fell aside again, and they drove out once more into clear and swiftly-flowing water. Then the Spaniards howled together, and Austin, twining his hand in the lanyard, unloosed the whistle, and hurled back a great vibratory blast at the beaten forest. It was, he admitted afterward, a somewhat feeble thing, but he said he felt the occasion demanded something then.

After that they had no great difficulty, and by nightfall they drove her out with sluicing decks over the smoking bar, dipping the bleached and rotten ensign to the little white gunboat that lay rolling behind the island. Then Austin felt a great weight lifted off him as he flung himself into a canvas chair upon his bridge. There was now only open sea in front of them, and he had seen that the big pump could keep the water down. He felt that he could contrive by some means to make Las Palmas.

CHAPTER XXVIII

IN COMMAND

Austin was quite aware that he had his work cut out when he was left in command of the _c.u.mbria_, with half her crew sick, and her skipper raving deliriously. He knew very little about medicine, and certainly no more about what he termed the astronomical side of navigation, and after several attempts decided that it was beyond his ability to take an accurate solar observation. There were, however, other, though not very reliable, means of approximately ascertaining the ship's position which he was acquainted with, and he nerved himself afresh for a grapple with what most men would, under the circ.u.mstances, have considered insuperable difficulties.

He had two Spaniards who could be trusted to keep the steamer more or less on the course he gave them, while the _c.u.mbria_ steerd handily, which is more than all steamers do. There was a large-scale chart, considerably mildewed, but still legible, in the skipper's room, as well as a pilot guide to the West African coast, while the patent log that towed astern to record the distance run appeared to be working accurately. He could thus, it was evident, depend in some degree upon what is termed dead reckoning, which is comparatively reliable in the case of short distances run in the vicinity of a high, well lighted coast. The one the _c.u.mbria_ steamed along was, however, not lighted at all, and most of it scarcely rose a foot above sea-level, while when he had ruled the line she was presumed to be travelling on across the chart, and p.r.i.c.ked off the distance the patent log told him she had run, there remained the question how far the tide and the Guinea stream had deflected it, and whether the steering and her compa.s.ses could be trusted.

It was also rather an important question; and when he had, on several occasions, peered for an hour at a time through Jefferson's gla.s.ses in search of a cape or island which the chart indicated should be met with, and saw only a hazy line of beach, or a dingy smear on the horizon which might be mangroves, or, quite as likely, a trail of mist, the probability of his ever reaching the Canaries seemed very remote indeed.

There would, he fancied, be no great difficulty in obtaining a mate and two or three seamen from one of the steamers he came across, but in that case the strangers would expect half the value of the _c.u.mbria_'s hull and cargo, and very likely make their claim to it good. He was also aware that more experienced skippers than he was had put their ships ash.o.r.e upon that coast. But what troubled him most was the fact that if he lost sight of it, or found no point that he could identify, he would have nothing to start from when he must boldly head her out across the open ocean.

She had rolled along at six to eight knots, with the big pump going, for several days, when a trail of smoke crept out of the Western horizon.

Austin watched it anxiously, and when at last a strip of black hull and a yellow funnel grew into shape beneath it, summoned the donkey-man, and with his a.s.sistance, which was not especially reliable, worried over the signal code painted on the flag rack in the wheel-house when he had stopped the engines. It was almost obliterated, and most of the flags themselves were missing; but between them they picked out sundry strips of mildewed bunting and sent them up to the masthead. The little West-coast mailboat was close alongside now, and flags also commenced to flutter up between her masts, while her whistle screamed in long and short blasts. Austin, anxious as he was, laughed a little.

"That is apparently the Morse code, and it's unfortunate that neither of us understands it," he said. "I presume it means that they can make nothing of our flags, and one could hardly blame them. Any way, we have got to stop her."

Tom grinned as he pulled an armful of tattered ensigns out of a locker.

"This one should do the trick," he said. "I'd start the whistle."

Austin drew the lanyard, and when the ensign blew out on the hot air Union down, the mailboat stopped, and, considering that they were steamboat men, her crew had a white gig over in a very creditable time.

She came flying towards the _c.u.mbria_ with four negroes at the oars, and when she slid alongside a young mate in trim white uniform came up a rope.

"You might have slung me the ladder down," he said, gazing about him in blank astonishment. "Paint is evidently scarce where you come from. I've seen smarter craft in a wrecker's yard. Still, I can't stop here talking. What do you want?"

"A doctor, for one thing," said Austin, to gain time.

"We have half the crew down in the forecastle."

The mate walked to the rails and shouted to his boat-boys, while, when the gig slid away, he pointed up at the drooping flags as he turned to Austin.

"I suppose it's artistic, the colouring, I mean," he said.

"Still, it's a trifle difficult to make out by either code." Austin laughed. "Come into my room and have a drink. There are one or two things I want to ask you."

Five minutes later he spread a mildewed chart on the table as they sat with a bottle of Jacinta's wine before them.

"Now," he said, "if you will tell me exactly where we are, I'd be much obliged to you."

"You don't know?" and the mate looked at him curiously.