Complete Works of William Hope Hodgson

by Hodgson, William Hope

  “But I assure you, dear Madam, that, where a lady is concerned, it has been my rule in life to avoid making one of a crowd. Also, as Captain of this vessel, I have facilities for keeping an eye on things which might surprise you and your friends.

  “In proof of this, let me mention the names of your gang.... They are Messrs. Tillosson, Vrager, Bentley and finally Mr. Alross, your husband.

  “I had the names of three of them before we had been at sea twenty-four hours; and now I think I may say I can put my finger on the whole lot of you.

  “It is quite within my power to cause the arrest of you and your party; but there is no need.

  “Neither Mr. Black nor I have any fear of what your friends can do; for let me tell you, the only Mona Lisa on view aboard this ship, is the copy which you see hanging up there on the bulkshead.

  “Surely you did not suppose that if Mr. Black has or had a valuable picture to transmit to New York, he would advertise the fact to people of your sort, by travelling in the same vessel with it!

  “That is almost all I have to say. You had better go now. Provided I receive from your party before to-night, the sum of one hundred and two pounds, fifteen shillings (which is the chief steward’s estimate of the damage done to Mr. Black’s suite last night), I shall allow affairs to pass; and your party may land free in New York.

  “But, if the money is not delivered before six o’clock to-night, and if afterwards I have any further trouble with Messrs. Tillosson, Vrager, Bentley, Alross or yourself, I shall order the arrest of the entire party, and shall hand you all over to the police, when we enter New York.”

  She had spoken not a single word; only once had she shown any sign of feeling, and that was when I announced my knowledge of her relationship to Mr. Alross, a tall, thin, blond man, of quiet manners and an unhappy skill at cards. Then the hand which held the cigarette had begun to shake a little; but, beyond this, never a sign of the shock, except the absolutely ghastly whiteness of her face. She certainly is a woman of nerve, and a good pluck too, I grant her.

  Then she stood up suddenly, and what do you think she said?

  “Cap’n, your cigarettes are as treacherous as you seem to imagine all women to be. See how it’s burnt me, while I was listening to your scolding.... I must run away now.”

  And she turned and walked out of the chart-house, as calmly as if she had just been in for one of her usual chats.

  “How’s that for ‘some’!” I said to Mr. Black. “Let me tell you, man, I respect her courage. She’s got the real female brand of pluck, and full strength at that. She’s stunned half dead at the present moment, yet she carried it off! But, Lord! She’s a conscienceless creature.”

  Mr. Black was all questions; and he wanted to know why I’d tried to make them think the picture wasn’t aboard.

  “I told them what I told ‘em,” I said, “in the gentle hope that they may try to believe it, and so not consider it worth while to lay information with the Customs, which is a thing they’d do in a moment, as you mentioned, just to make things ugly for us, and to ease their own petty spite.”

  “Why not arrest them?” he asked.

  “Don’t want any unnecessary Mona Lisa talk in New York, do you?”

  “My hat! No!” he said.

  “And now they know I’m on to the crowd of them, they’re bound to walk a bit like Agag — eh?” I said. “No, I guess we’ll have no more trouble with ‘em, this side of New York. And I bet they pay up within the hour.”

  April 12th. Night.

  I was wrong in one respect, and right in the other. The money was sent up to me by a steward, inside of half an hour; and I sent back a formal receipt.

  But we have not seen the end of our troubles about the picture; for the gang approached Mr. Black quite openly, last night, and told him that if he’d let them come in on a quarter-share of the profits, they’d hold their tongues, and give him all the assistance they could. If he said no; then the New York Customs were going to get the tip, as soon as ever the search officers came aboard.

  They told him quite plainly that they knew the picture was aboard; and that they were satisfied I was the one who had it hidden away. But, as they put it to him, it was one thing to hide contraband Jewels, like small packets of pearls, of which a hundred thousand dollars worth could go into one cigar; but that I could never hope to hide from the Customs, if they were put on the scent, a thing the size of the Mona, which being painted on a panel of wood, could not be rolled up small, like a picture on canvas, etc., etc.

  They quite worked on poor old Mr. Black’s feelings. I guess he may be some expert at picture stealing, like any other dealer; but he’s out of it when it comes to real nerve — the kind that’s wanted for running stuff through the Customs!

  However, I’ve got him pacified; and I guess he’ll manage now to keep a stiff upper lip. I pointed out to him that a twenty-thousand-ton ship is a biggish affair, and there are quite some hiding places aboard of her; and that I know them all.

  I told him, in good plain American, that the picture would not be found.

  “You needn’t fear they’ll start to break the ship up, looking for it!” I told him. “Ship-breaking is an expensive job. Don’t you get fretful. They’ll never find her, where I’ve put her!”

  April 13th. Evening.

  We docked this morning, and the gang did their best to do us down.

  I reckon they’d guessed I wasn’t keen to arrest them; and they just put the Customs wise to the whole business, before they went ashore, that is, as far as they had it sized up.

  Well, next thing I knew, the chief searcher was in my place, demanding Mona Lisas, as if they were stock articles; but I disabused him, to the best of my ability.

  “No, Sir!” I told him. “The only Mona Lisa picture we’ve got on exhibition in this gallery, is the one there on the bulkshead; and I guess you can have that for fifty dollars, right now, and take it home. I reckon that’s a good painting now, don’t you, Mister, for an amateur?”

  But I couldn’t enthuse him; not up to a sale! He was out for big things it seemed, by his talk; so I let him search....

  They’re still at it, and Mr. Black, last I saw of him, as he went ashore, was looking about as anxious as a man who’s bet someone else’s last dollar on a horse race!

  April 14th.

  Still searching.

  April 15th.

  Still searching.

  April 16th. Afternoon.

  Mr. Black sent a messenger down aboard this morning, to ask when ‘it’ was going to come.

  I swore; for if that note had got into the wrong hands, the game would have been all up. I’ve warned him to keep away from the ship, and not to communicate with me, in any way. I’ll act as soon as it’s safe.

  I decided to give him a heart-flutter, as a lesson to be patient.

  “Look here,” I said to the hotel messenger; and I pulled down the cardboard on which was my painted version of the Mona. I rolled it up and handed it across to him. “Take this ashore,” I told him. “Go to a picture dealer’s, and tell them to frame it in a cheap frame, and send it up to A. Black, Esq., Room 86, Madison Square Hotel, with the compliments of Captain Charity. Tell them to wrap it up well; as if it were something valuable. Here’s a dollar for you, my son. Tell them he’ll pay! When you see Mr. Black, tell him that ‘it’ — mind you say ‘it’ — is coming! ... It is! ... When I say so! And not before!”

  When he had gone, I sat down and roared at poor Black’s digestion, when he found what ‘it’ amounted to. I guess I’ll not be bothered with him now, until I’m ready to see him.

  April 16th. Night.

  I went ashore to see Mr. Black this evening. The Customs nabbed me en route, as usual, and I had a search that would have unmasked a blushing postage stamp. But they needn’t fear. I’m not carting Mona Lisas ashore in the thick of this hue and cry!

  When I saw Mr. Black, it was for the first time since he left the ship, and he rushed at me.

&
nbsp; “Where is it?” he asked. He looked positively ill.

  “Dear man,” I said, “I don’t hawk the Mona around with me. Perhaps that’s what you want,” and I pointed to the caricature of the Mona, in its cheap frame, which stood on the top of a book-case.

  “Quit it!” he snapped, almost ugly; but I only laughed at him.

  Then I took out my hanky, and a bottle of solution. I lifted the picture down and put it on the table; I wet my hanky with the solution, and wiped the picture over gently but firmly.

  The eyebrows came away; also one or two other parts where I had laid my fake paint on pretty thick.

  “There’s the Mona, Mr. Black,” I said; “and I guess you owe me twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  He looked; then he yelled; yes, he fairly yelled; first his delight, then his questions. I endured the first, and answered the second.

  “You saw me paint a picture, didn’t you?” I asked.

  “Sure!” he said.

  “Well, I did that, as I told you, for a keepsake,” I said. “Afterwards, I took the Mona, soaked her off the board-backing you had glued her to, and remounted her on cardboard. Then I painted her a pair of eyebrows with fake paint, and touched up one or two other parts of the picture; and you and Miss Lanny spent most of the voyage criticising the immortal da Vinci. You see, I hung my own copy on the bulkshead first; but afterwards replaced it with the Gioconda.

  “Miss Lanny called her even worse things than I did. She told me, if I remember right, that the painting was like a ginger-pop bottle compared with Venetian glass!

  “I think I said he was not a big artist; and as for you, you looked as if you backed up what Miss Lanny said. Altogether, poor old da Vinci had a lot of hard things said against him. And all the time, his masterpiece, plus a pair of eyebrows, and some surface polish, was looking down at us from the bulkshead. I offered her to the Customs officer for fifty dollars; but I couldn’t get him to bid.

  “Yes, Mr. Black, I’ve enjoyed myself this trip, That’s what I call doing the thing in style.

  “Thanks, yes, twenty-five thousand dollars is the figure. I guess we’ve got to celebrate this!”

  THE ISLAND OF THE UD

  Pibby Tawles, Cabin-boy and deck-hand stood to lee-ward of the half-poop, and stared silently at the island, incredibly lonely against the translucence of the early dawn — a place of lonesome and mysterious silence, with strange birds of the sea wheeling and crying over it, and making the silence but the more apparent.

  A way to wind’ard, Captin Jat, his Master, stood stiff and erect against the growing light, all his leathery length of six feet, five inches, set into a kind of grim attention as he stared at the black shadow upon the sea, that lay off his weather bow.

  The minutes passed slowly, and the dawn seemed to dream, stirred to reality only be the far and chill sound of the birds crying so dreely. The small barque crept on, gathering the slight morning airs to her aid, whilst the dawn-shine grew subtly and strengthened up, so that the island darkened the more against it for a little while, and grew stealthily more real. And all the time, above it, the sea birds swung about in noiseless circling against the gold-of-light that hung now in all the lower sky.

  Presently, there came the hoarse hail of the lookout man, who must have waked suddenly: “Land on the weather bow, Sir!”

  But the lean, grim-looking figure to the wind’ard vouchsafed no reply, beyond a low growled “grrrrr!” of contempt.

  And all the time, Pibby Tawles, the boy, stared, overwhelmed with strange imaginings — treasure, monsters, lovely women, weirdness unutterable, terror brooding beyond all powers of his imagination to comprehend! He had listened to some marvelously strange things, when Captain Jat had been in drink: for it was often then the Captain’s whim to make the boy sit at the table with him, and dip his cup likewise in the toddy-bowl.

  And presently, when Captain Jat had drunk his toddy steadily out of the big pewter mug, he would begin to talk; rambling on in garrulous fashion from tale to tale; and, at last, as like as not, mixing them quite inextricably. And as he talked, the long, lean man would throw his glance back over his shoulder suspiciously every minute or so, and perhaps bid the boy go up to the little half-poop, and discover the wherabouts of the officer of the watch, and then into the cabin of the officer whose watch it might chance to be below, and so to make sure that neither of his Mates were attending listening ears on the sly.

  “Don’t never tell the Mates, boy!” he would say to Pibby Tawles, “Or I’ll sure maul you! They’d be wantin’ profits.”

  For that was, in the main, the substance of all his talks — treasure, that is to say. To be exact, treasure and women.

  “Never a word boy. I trusts you; but no one else in this packet!”

  And truly, Captain Jat did seem to have a trust in the boy; for in his cups, he told him everything that came up in his muddled mind; and always the boy would listen with a vast interest, putting in an odd question this time and that to keep the talk running. And indeed it suited him very well; for though he could never tell how much to believe, or how little, he was very well pleased to be sitting drinking his one cup of toddy slowly in the cabin, instead of being out on the deck, doing ship work.

  It is true that the Captain appeared both to like the boy, in his own queer fashion, and to trust him; but for all that, he had with perfect calmness and remorseless intent, shown him the knife with which he would cut his throat, if ever he told a word of anything that his master might say to him during his drinking bouts.

  Captain Jat’s treatment of the lad was curious in many ways. He had him sleep in a little cabin aback the Mate’s where through the open door he could see the boy in his bunk. When he ran out of toddy, he would heave his pewter mug at the lad’s head as he lay asleep, and roar to him to turn-out and brew him fresh and stronger; but this trick of the Captain’s was no trouble to Pibby; for he rigged a dummy oakum-head to that end of his bunk which showed through the open doorway and slept then the other way about.

  And so with this little that I have told you may know something of the life aft in the cabin of the little barque Gallat, which vessel belonged stick-and-keel, to Captain Jat; and some pretty rum doings there were aboard of her, first and last, as you may now have chance to judge.

  At times, another side of Captain Jat would break out, and he would spend the whole of a watch having a gorgeous pistol-shooting match against Pibby; and a wonderful good shot the boy was, both by natural eye, and by the training he had this way. In the end, the boy became a better shot than Captain Jat himself, who was an extraordinarily fine marksman; though somewhat unequal. Yet for all that Pibby beat him time after time, this peculiar man showed no annoyance, but persisted in the matches, as if his primary intention were to make the boy an expert with the weapon; and indeed, I have little doubt but that this was his real desire.

  Now, although Pibby Tawles had tremendously confused and vague ideas as to what strangeness of mystery was concerned with the island, yet he knew perfectly that it was no chance that had brought them that way; for all the Captain’s talks over his toddy had gone to show that the true aim of the voyage was to bring up near the island for some purpose that the lad could only guess at in a mystified way, owing to the muddling fashion in which Captain Jat had run his yarns one into another; treasure, women, monsters, and odd times a queer habit of muttering to himself about his little priestess — his little priestess! And once he had broken out into a kind of hazy ramble about the Ud, rolling his eyes at the boy strangely and gesticulating so impressively with his pewter mug that he managed to spread his toddy in an unprejudiced manner over Pibby, the table and the floor generally.

  Therefore, having, as I have said, a sure knowledge that the island they approached was the real goal of the voyages, though there was an honest enough cargo below hatches, you may imagine something of Pibby’s blank astonishment when Captain Jat allowed the barque to sail quietly past, touching neither brace, sheet nor tack; so that, b
y the morning was full come, the island lay upon the weather quarter, and presently far away astern.

  Yet, as they had gone past, the lad had studied it very eagerly, and had seen in the light of the coming day that it was wooded almost everywhere, even close down to the shores, with a long, bold reef of stark rock running out in a great sweep upon the South side, so that it was plain a boat could be landed there very safely and easily under its lee. The island, Pibby had noticed, rose towards the centre, into a low, seemingly flat-topped hill, with the forests of great trees very heavy on its slopes.

  All the morning the Gallat stood to the Southward, until they had sunk the island below the horizon. They hove-to then, and drifted until near evening, when they filled once more on her, and stood back to the Northward. By four bells that night they sighted the island, looking like a doleful smudge in the darkness away to the Northeast.

  Presently, the barque was put in irons, and orders given to lower the dingy. When she was in the water, Captain Jat flipped Pibby on the ear, and growled to him to jump down into the boat. The boy climbed over, and Captain Jat followed, after having first directed the Second Mate, whose watch it was, to reach out into the open, and run in again about midnight.

  The Captain took the after oar, and rowed standing up, with his face to the bows, whilst Pibby, the boy, took the bow oar and rowed sitting down.

  “Easy with that oar, boy!” said Captain Jat presently, after he had pulled awhile. “Put your shirt round it.” And this, Pibby had to do, and row naked to the waist, whilst his shirt muffled the sound of his oar between the thole-pins. But, after all, the night was pretty warm.

  Meanwhile, the Captain had pulled off his own coat and ripped out one of the sleeves, which he reeved onto his oar, and so made it silent as the lad’s. And this was the way, almost as quietly as a shadow boat in the darkness, they came in presently under the shelter of the great barrier reef, and very soon then to the uncomfortable silence of the shore under the dark trees that came down so near to the sea.