Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  The Greek — for his is a garrulous race — wasted the first few plunging moments in explaining that to land anywhere else that night would be stark impossible. I could judge that well enough, without his wet breath in my ear. Then he explained that the sentry was posted there expressly to prevent unauthorized landings — that the immigration officers were very strict — and that only he, Georgos Aleutherios, had cunning and popularity enough to pass me by. He offered to spiflicate his conscience, take chances, and perhaps even ruin his good standing with the authorities forever, all for the trifling sum of fifty pounds.

  We came to terms at last for five pounds, he to pay the sentry; and I learned afterward that I might have bought a lieutenant’s services, with half a company of infantry thrown in, for that sum. But rain and wind and darkness — the plunging of a small boat in the lee of a pier — armed sentries — immigration laws — and treaties that call for the surrender to their ships of all deserting seamen, spur youth’s eagerness without sharpening youth’s wit. A young man afraid and five gold sovereigns are very easily parted, and the Greek could have had the double of it if he had only known.

  At any rate, there I stood presently on the rain-soaked sand of Portuguese East Africa, with two good suits of clothes to my name, and ten remaining pounds between me and the fort jail. I had yet to learn to fear that jail, or to know of its existence; but I began with such gratitude to feel steady earth underfoot that no forebodings troubled me.

  The first night was spent — what was left of it — trudging the streets; for there were no hotels open, and I did not care to risk being followed into some dry corner by an armed policeman and asked questions in a tongue I did not know. It was a miserable, very hungry, dirty, weary night, but it came to an end, and dawn found me still an optimist.

  As soon as doors began opening, and Hindus and Chinese came out to rinse their teeth and hawk, and clean themselves over the gutter, I entered the best hotel in sight, and for the first time since I went to sea had the advantage over a sailor to the manner born; for having removed my oilskins I bore no resemblance whatever to a deserter.

  The keeper of that hotel was an Afrikander, not in love with Portuguese, and glad of the chance to unburden himself to ears uncalloused by the constancy of such refrains.

  “An Englishman’s one chance,” he said, “if he goes broke in this place, is to appeal to his consul. He can never do anything for you at the time: there are too many broken Englishmen for the consulate funds to cover a tenth of the cases. But if a ship should put in short of hands he’ll get you out of jail and have you sent aboard to work a passage to somewhere else. So, if you go broke, mind you tell him before the Portuguese arrest you as a vagrant.”

  He little guessed what vinegar he was pouring into open wounds! I was minded to try that jail rather than the fo’castle of the Heatherbell again.

  “Why talk of going broke?” I asked with the bravest air I could summon. He and I were eating breakfast at the same table, and I was trying to disguise my craving for Christian ham and eggs.

  “Because none but a Portugee, or a man on contract, or a merchant with more money than morals can hope to get a living here! I could tell you tales that would make you sick! They’ll skin you of your last coin — what they can’t steal they’ll take in taxes — and then arrest you as a vagrant and throw you in the jail to starve.”

  “And the cost of living here is — ?”

  “At this hotel? A pound a day.”

  I made a swift calculation: Ten pounds=ten days= jail!

  “No jobs to be had?” I asked.

  He jeered at the notion.

  “Black boys — natives — do the menial work. Chinese run the laundries, chickens, eggs, and odds and ends. Indians monopolize money-changing and the larger shops. Bank clerks and business managers are all contract men from home. Greeks do the fishing and run restaurants. Portuguese hold all the official jobs. Where’s your chance?”

  It looked to me as if my chance of jail was pretty obvious. He had no means of guessing the amount of my resources, but my facial expression must have hinted that his pessimism was sinking into me.

  “Get away from here before you’re stranded!” he urged. “Book your passage to British East!”

  How should he know that I had not enough to take me up to British East!

  “I’ll look around first,” I said, screwing up courage again.

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you!” he answered. “Shall you stay here?”

  “Let you know later,” I told him; and I paid him for the breakfast and went out.

  The first thing I did was to walk all over the town. They were laying the trolley-lines in those days, and the street corners were ablock with construction material and gear. While I watched one party at work the English foreman came and tried to sell me an enormous drum of copper wire.

  “Yours?” I asked him.

  “Of course not! The company’s.”

  “What’s it worth?”

  “Lord knows! Gimme ten pounds and it’s yours to take away!”

  By noon, with an unmixed notion of the place’s charms I returned to one of the restaurants on the main street that the Afrikander had told me Greeks kept. It was a cheaper place than the hotel. There was nowhere to sit after lunch but in the bar, and the Greek proprietor grew insolent unless one kept a glass at work; but by dint of taking small sips, and pretending to fall asleep at intervals on the shabby plush-covered divan in a corner, it was possible to keep sober, and expenses down to a minimum.

  There was nothing for it but to spend some money, for I was tired, and curious besides, to watch and listen, believing I could, perhaps, get a line on opportunity. It was in that way that I met Charles du Maurier, and saw revealed the despicableness of that colonial Government.

  I was more actually drowsy than pretending — having had no sleep at all the night before — when I noticed a sudden stir in the street outside, and at the door, and in the café. The men at the bar made room for a newcomer before he appeared on the scene, and three Portuguese officers at a little table on the far side of the door from me ceased talking and looked uncomfortable.

  I heard a sharp, disagreeable voice outside, speaking English — nobody except the Portuguese officers spoke any other language in that restaurant — and a moment later a man of middle height strode in, with a hunting-rifle balanced in the crook of his right arm, and a cartridge-bag slung over his shoulder.

  “Hello, du Maurier!” said every one at once — except the Portuguese officers. “Glad to see you, du Maurier! Come and have a drink, du Maurier!”

  It was obvious that everyone desired to have the man’s goodwill; yet I did not get the impression that he was popular. He was of stoutish build, but looked active as a cat; rather good-looking in a fat-lipped brunette sort of way; and he had cold blue eyes that rested appraisingly on every face in the room in turn. In the course of their casual inspection they fell presently on me.

  “Good afternoon!” he sneered, leaning back against the bar and reaching with his free hand for the whisky bottle that the Greek produced without instructions. “How do, stranger? What’s your name?”

  I did not inform him.

  “Ceremonious, eh? Very well — I’ll make the introductions. You want to know who I am first, eh? That’s natural. But everybody in Lourenço Marques knows me. Still — I’ll tell! I’m Charlie du Maurier! Charles du Maurier and I are one and the same individual, and now you know! Now everybody knows, and we’re all agreeable!”

  He filled his glass with neat whisky, and swallowed half the dose at a gulp. Then his eyes traveled past me to the three officers in uniform, whose conversation had so suddenly damped off. One guessed, without knowing details, that they were hesitating between retreat and dignity.

  “Aha!” said the du Maurier person, finishing the whisky at a gulp. He was not in the least drunk. “Here are three gentlemen who know me well! Three Portuguese officers, by —— , swords and all! Why don’t you up
and arrest me, gentlemen? If it’s true there’s a warrant out for Charles du Maurier, here he is! You’ve only to come and take him! I’m Charles du Maurier — afraid of no man, and least of all afraid of the Portuguese Government! Come and take me if you dare! Turn out your garrison and take me!”

  The three officers rose and went out, omitting to sign vouchers or pay cash, and the Greek set up a great wail. There was a roar of laughter in which du Maurier joined noisily.

  “I’ll pay for their vino tinto!” he volunteered. “Then they can say they’ve been drinking with Charles du Maurier. They can go to their commandant and brag to him about it! Ha-ha-ha! That’s a good joke! Portuguese officers bragging to their commandant, by —— , that they’ve had a drink with Charles du Maurier! Oh, Lord, that’s a good one!”

  In not coming forward, and not joining in the rounds of drinks that his arrival was the excuse for, he paid me no more attention except that every once in a while his cold eye fell on me and I knew I was not out of his mind. He stood at the bar, and drank, or refused to drink, with whom he chose, all that afternoon, continuing as sober as a shark but bragging more and louder as his audience grew drunker and its mood less critical. His bragging was mostly of shooting men.

  “I don’t encourage the devils myself by paying them money,” I heard him say more than once. “But the price, if you’ll pay in advance, for killing a white man is ten pounds gold, and do the job yourself. A native costs half. That’s thirty miles back from the coast, of course. They say there’s a zone near here where the tariff’s higher!”

  The strange part was that nobody appeared to doubt him. Several men nodded acquiescence. Only one or two shook their heads, and I divined that their objection was to his giving such publicity to the facts, rather than to the facts themselves.

  “What are you doing for a living now?” somebody asked him at about supper-time; and he laughed with a hard, dry cackle that made my blood run cold.

  The brutality aboard ship had been unalloyed and shameless, but it had been born, one might say, of necessity and took no joy in itself; but this man du Maurier loved cruelty for its own sake, and the very lack of mercy was the essence of a joke to him.

  “I’ll tell you,” he sneered. “Don’t say I didn’t tell you, now! You’ve heard of the Premier Diamond Mine? You’ve all heard of that, haven’t you? The big new pipe that’s made de Beers look like a four-flush — you’ve heard of that? Well — they haven’t even got it paddocked off with barbed wire yet. There are guards here and there, but there’s a lot of clay dug and lying in the open to be weathered. The diamonds are sticking out of it like dew in the morning, and there are nearly as many thieves as stones!

  “The plan is to get a bag of diamonds, seal ’em up, and trust ’em to a native. He runs with ’em overland to this place, where an Indian buys ’em for the Bombay market, sending a check back through the mail. The game is to lie up in the bush and watch for natives. If you happen to shoot the right one, you get a fine bag o’ diamonds, and the Indian ‘ud just as soon buy from you as from anybody else! Ha-ha-ha-ha! Good game, what?”

  A man who sat beside me — a nondescript individual — recovering from East Coast fever, and probably on board allowance from the concern that hired him — for he had no money to spend, yet was not destitute — leaned and whispered in my ear.

  “If that was really his game, he’d not be telling it,” he argued. “But if he hadn’t done it he wouldn’t trouble to pretend he had — he’s that proud and original! It ‘ud be like him, the cold-hearted swine, to skin all there was in the game and then set others on to trying it! That ‘ud be like him, that would!”

  I went to supper, and to bed above the restaurant; and having slept so many months in the Heatherbell’s abominable fo’castle, it needed more than the babel of that bar room to keep me awake. The clean sheets and the open window were paradise by comparison; and although the morals of the Heatherbell seemed, looking back, like those of a Sabbath-school compared to what Lourenço Marques boasted, I reminded myself that corruption came from within and not without a man, and was not troubled much on that score.

  My dreams that night were brilliant, and I awoke a little after dawn feeling under my skin the tingle of unborn happenings. Anyone who has chanced his arm must know that tingling. It comes as a rule when hope has no excuse, and invariably presages good fortune. I have known men to own to the tingling, and yet go down, but that was because their courage failed them, not because inspiration lied.

  But, although board and bed at that Greek place cost less than half the hotel price, it was obvious enough that yet more economical quarters must be found at once, if I hoped to keep vagrancy and the jail in the offing while I hunted a job of sorts. Life and the talk at sea gives a man strange notions, and after breakfast, and some thinking, no amount of argument could have persuaded me that it was impossible, or even unwise, to camp out on the outskirts of the town.

  I saw the man du Maurier at the other end of the long table in the dining-room, and flattered myself that he did not notice me. I managed to slip out without having word with him, and — careless of direction, provided I left the town behind — set out for what are known as Kilos One and Two. Those are fills alongside the harbor, of which the Portuguese are quite inordinately proud — an acre or two of level land where swamps once were, held at enormous prices for factory and dock sites, in the belief that Delagoa Bay was destined to be the greatest, richest, busiest harbor in all Africa. A strange delusion! But all the real estate in that part of the world is held for a fabulous rise on fabulous excuses, and the Governments are as sanguine as the down-and-outs.

  It looked a good enough place to camp on, and I spied an old abandoned wagon with broken wheels, whose top was mostly watertight. A little sailor lore, a little luck in finding jetsam — perhaps an old sail, and doubtless some timber along the foreshore — an hour or two’s work, and I would have that abandoned wagon fit to live in.

  I sat down on its broken tail-board to think out how best to tackle the task and was growing more and more pleased with the treasure-trove when, to my sudden disgust, I saw the man du Maurier, gun on his arm as usual, sauntering along toward me. There was no use in trying to avoid him. He was coming straight in my direction.

  I did not doubt he had followed me from the Greek’s place.

  “Considering things?” he asked as soon as he came within talking distance.

  I nodded, and he came and sat beside me on the wagon, chewing tobacco and spitting at remarkably regular intervals.

  “See that snake?” he said presently.

  I followed the direction of his eyes, and after staring through the glare for a minute I could just distinguish a little dark snake upreared above some twigs a hundred yards away.

  “Ever see their heads cut off with a bullet?” he asked, and he brought the rather heavy-bored rifle to his shoulder.

  He did not aim long, nor did he fire twice. The snake disappeared.

  “Go and look at it,” he said; and principally because I was glad of the excuse to leave his side I got up and walked to where the snake had been.

  Sure enough, its head was severed cleanly and the body lay squirming in the sun.

  “Did I hit it?” he called, and I turned to nod to him, only to discover that he was reloading his rifle and had it pointed at me.

  There was no cover. Whichever direction I might take he would have a clear view of me against an open background at short range. He had not raised the rifle, but his eye was on me, and the sensation was as mortifying as if he had deliberately taken aim. I decided on the instant to choose the lesser of two evils and call his hand, preferring, if I must be shot, to take it in the face.

  So I walked toward him, as casually as I could contrive. I could see his finger on the trigger, and his cold eye never left me for an instant, but he did not shoot, and presently I stood within six feet of him.

  Then he grinned, rather approvingly, I thought.

  “You are
a man of nerve!” he said, with his objectionable nasal snarl. “Most men would have made for town as fast as their legs ‘ud carry them, beginning slowly for the sake of dignity, but running as soon as the range was in their favor. I wouldn’t have shot you! What should I shoot you for? I’ve nothing against you. I don’t want your money!”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him I hadn’t any money, but some trick of fortune determined me instead to hold my tongue and find out what his game might be. Surely he had not followed me so far for nothing.

  “But you’re a young fool!” he added. “I’ve known more than one man to lose his life by turning his back that way on a rifle. Let me tell you something: when one gentleman has a loaded rifle, another gentleman should walk behind him! When two gentlemen have rifles they walk side by side, or else each sees the other unload! That’s bush law. What were you doing out here?”

  “As you suggested, considering things,” I answered.

  “There’s mighty little here that’s worth considering!” he sneered. “This is no place for a greenhorn. More men without money come ashore here and end up in the jail than in any other port in Africa! Oh, you can’t fool me! You’ve an English university accent, and your kind don’t put up at Greek hotels while you’ve money left!

  “You’re hoping to find a job. You won’t find one, because there ain’t any! You can’t get away, either, and I’ll tell you how I know. Your kind no more like the looks o’ this place than a parson likes the breath of hell. If you’d had any money, you’d have gone away again on the same boat. Which boat did you come by?”

  To have answered truthfully would have been to put myself entirely in the blackguard’s power. He could either have had me arrested then as a deserting seaman or have held the threat over me. Yet I resented the notion of having to lie to the brute, so I answered nothing.

  “None o’ my business, eh? All right, you can’t offend me. I’m good-natured, I am, and everybody knows it. Charlie du Maurier’s not the man to take offense because a gentleman won’t answer questions. Let me tell you something, though. You’ve got no money. Mighty soon the Portuguese’ll find that out. Next thing, they’ll arrest you. Next, you’re in jail! Know what happens after that?”