“The little brown man he called Romeo brought in two silver goblets on a tray. I took one and drank the Captain’s health. I must say it was the first time I had ever liked rum and milk. Romeo knew how to mix it. Plenty of nutmeg.
“ ‘Two for lunch, Romeo,’ he roared. ‘And what are you giving us? Where’s the bill of fare? Something decent, I hope?’
“His queer servant disappeared and returned again smartly with a menu card, which was neatly written in French. The Captain took it—glanced through it quickly, then handed it to me.
“ ‘Not bad,’ he muttered. ‘Hope it will be to your liking, Mr. Hogarth.’
“It promised to be a most excellent meal, and I told him so.
“ ‘Very well then, Romeo. In half an hour’s time in the saloon. In twenty-five minutes, two mint juleps in here. Go.’
“Strange drinks for a strange man, I thought, and then he began to talk.
“ ‘I regret that I cannot claim to be a real Smith. I took the name on my twenty-first birthday, because it was my favourite name. My real name was Ackstart. Hans Ackstart. I followed the sea because I liked it. I followed shady business on the seas, because it gave me a chance to bully shady people. I cannot tell you all my history. Not that I’m ashamed of it. Far from it—though you might be if it had been yours. I just cannot tell it because it is too long. You have handled a Bible? My history, for bulk, would make it look like a two-leaved programme at a ship’s concert. A bully history, mine is. I must have bullied more people than any man that has ever lived. Some have tried to bully me. I’ll never forget one skipper, God rest his soul in hell, and he’s there all right—a great fellow as big as me with a crew of dirty dogs who helped him like a pack of rats. I was mate, and we’d agreed to do the underwriters one in the eye, and pile up the old whaler Albatross in the Straits of Magellan. For that voyage we had taken on a wheel in place of the old whale-bone tiller. So fearful was I that my good seamanship would stand me in bad stead before the smash came, for you see, I was going to get my own back in the way of bullying, and put that whole crew where they belonged in hell along of the ship—where was I? Ah, yes. To avoid failure, I lashed myself to the wheel, when I’d fixed it to the required destruction point. I knew I was asking for death, but I didn’t care, and I was better off than the rest. They had no chance in the hereafter like I had. You see, I was never really dirty as they were. In fact, I’d done so much good one way and another that I remember feeling a bit ashamed of myself. Made me feel priggish. But there wasn’t much time to think. It was blowing half a gale which at the mouth of the Straits is some gale. Before the crash came I shouted, “Every man for himself,” just to hear ’em squeal. Half an hour later I came to myself on a rock, with that wheel still lashed to my chest. I was the sole survivor. That was when I crossed the Land of Fire. The wheel saved my life. The natives took it for a halo. If I pointed the spokes at them they shivered. It’s the wheel down below by the banisters. Romeo fears it yet.’
“ ‘But what on earth made you carry a ship’s wheel across the island? Not just gratitude because it had saved your life, I take it?’
“ ‘No—just common sense,’ he answered. ‘It was a material proof that I had hold of the wheel when she went down crash. I belied the damned owners, who when things went against them with the underwriters, fastened the blame on me. I walked in with the wheel. The simple-hearted skipper willing to risk his life by carrying out orders. They lapped up as much of that bunk as I cared to dish ’em out. I got heavy damages against them. But as far as their firm went, I was done, and they influenced others for a time.’
“ ‘And they didn’t give you another chance?’ I asked.
“ ‘Didn’t give them one,’ he laughed. ‘The blighters died. I wiped out that firm as quick as I had sent their foul crew to the bottom. I just mention this so that you’ll have confidence in me. I’m not the fellow to run foul of. That trip did another good turn for me. It was on that occasion when I crossed Tierra Del Fuego and kidnapped that servant of mine I call Romeo.’
“ ‘Kidnapped him?’ I repeated.
“ ‘Had to,’ answered the Captain. ‘You may not credit it, but that ugly little devil is an ardent lover. He didn’t want to come with me, when I got rescued, because of a girl he was in love with. He still hankers to go back because he’s afraid someone else may run off with her.’
“ ‘Perhaps you would let him go with me when I visit the place,’ I suggested. ‘I don’t know what you feel about it, but I expect I shall go with you or someone else as skipper. Anyway, my uncle told me you were the only man who could give me any practical advice and perhaps help.’
“ ‘Neither your uncle nor that old dead-bone setter, Knocker, know the difficulties. I’ll tell you some of them after lunch, when you’ll feel better able to cope with them. Go and get skulls, eh? Sounds all right—but it’s going to be hell. Do you know that Tierra Del Fuego is the one spot on this earth which makes me afraid. It’s a place that gives you the staggers. If I refuse to go, you’d better sheer off too. That’s my advice. As to help—well, I don’t think I could lend you Romeo. He’d never come back. Oh, hell—and it means leaving this ship here all so snug.’ He suddenly got up, took a turn or two outside the Round House, then crashed back through the door, his face contorted with rage.
“ ‘All right, then, damn you. I’ll go with you, Mr. Hogarth. I’ll call you Charles. You call me Smith. I’ve dropped the Hans. But in front of the crew, mind, it’ll be Cap’n and Mr. Hogarth. That’s for discipline.’
“ ‘But I don’t know that it’s as easy and as quick as all that. You say you don’t want to go and the next second you change your mind. I know this—I have by no means decided.’
“He then astonished me more than ever. He came over to me and in the most fatherly manner he patted my shoulder, while a most seraphic smile spread over his huge face. He looked like a benign patriarch.
“ ‘There, there, you are not the sort to go back on me,’ he said quietly. ‘No one else in God’s earth could have swung me over as you have. I’ll look forward to being a sailing companion to you. Charles, from now on we’re friends. We’ll get those skulls and, damn it, we’ll find Romeo’s Juliet for him too. Here are the juleps. Come, let’s drink to our enterprise.’
“He was a most bewildering man. I didn’t know whether I was standing on my head or my heels. I had never been so rushed into anything in my life.
“ ‘Mind you,’ he added as we went below to the dining-room, which certainly looked much more like a ship’s dining-saloon, ‘If I hadn’t liked the trim of your sails, I should have refused point blank to follow you on this mad trip. But since I do, Smith is with Charles and Mr. Hogarth’s with the Cap’n. I’ll get your skulls for you if I have to sacrifice mine own, just as we’ll get Romeo’s Juliet for him, though she be married to twenty Parises. Oh, yes, Mr. Hogarth, I know my Shakespeare.’
“After an admirable meal he told me something of the country we were being sent to, and I found that he could be practical and business-like when it suited him. At least I had found a companion who promised to help me to a good story for my collection.
“The very next day we gave our signatures to the undertaking, and with Romeo for my coach I started in to learn the lingo. Meantime, the Captain saw to the necessary equipment, while I continued my studies, and he put his house into the hands of a caretaker, an ex-seaman friend of his, who promised to bully the tenants in his absence.
“In one respect old Professor Knocker was too much for the Captain, who wanted to fit out a ship in London Docks. The Doctor pointed out that this would be altogether too expensive, and would curtail our own expense money. In this latter, however, he was prepared to be more than generous, and partly for my sake the Captain knuckled under and agreed that the three of us would sail as passengers on whatever boats were convenient, and when my uncle promised the Captain the next command of any expeditionary boat that the Museum authorities sent anywhere, he cheered u
p and we left England in high spirits.
“On our voyage to Rio, we discussed all sorts of voyages the Museum might sponsor for us, and if it had not been for Romeo, I fear we should not have talked much about Tierra Del Fuego. But Romeo could think of nothing else. He delighted in the present trip. He was inspired. I have never seen anyone so hopelessly affected by the devastating disease called Love. He couldn’t do enough for us, especially when the Captain made him understand that he would be able to bring his wife with us on our next voyage.
“ ‘Where go with my wife? What land?’ he asked eagerly.
“ ‘We shall go to buy her gifts in many places,’ the giant rogue said solemnly with a wink behind his back. ‘We shall ride dromedaries along the road to Samarkand. We shall get her Persian rugs there. We shall sail on many ships amongst the Spice Islands. There we shall buy her nutmegs. Then to India for jewels. She must have jewels. Then if we have time we’ll slip over to the Ivory Coast and get her a parrot who can talk.’
“ ‘And then?’ asked Romeo greedily lapping up the fairy tale.
“ ‘I’ll think out a lot more places, and a lot more things to buy,’ he said.
“ ‘Tell me, please, one more place and one more thing,’ pleaded the love-sick one.
“ ‘Well——’ hesitated the rascal, rather stumped, as he was getting bored with the subject. ‘Certainly to the Arctic to get her a stylish seal coat.’
“When I expostulated with him, he merely said, ‘Well, it’s not so impossible. Besides, if he brings a wife in tow we’ll get an extra servant for nothing, shan’t we?’
“I suggested that all this depended very largely on whether the Fuegian Juliet would be willing in the first place to leave her island home, and secondly to take Romeo for better or for worse.
“He dismissed this with a laugh. ‘You don’t know these people. They’re not like Romeo. I’ve bullied him into being a good and faithful servant. The Fuegians are a lousy, ill-moraled gang. Their women do what the stronger man tells them. It will be a case of finding Juliet’s present husband, if he hasn’t strangled her, for she’s bound to have a husband you know, and then he and Romeo will have to fight for her. With us to back him up, Romeo will win, although let me tell you, our task is not going to be too easy. If we get away with our twelve skulls and our blushing bride, we shall be some pirates.’
“We reached Rio better for the voyage. The Captain proved a good and amusing companion at sea, though it was irksome to him lounging in a deckchair when he was itching to be up and doing on the Captain’s bridge.
“We had to spend a few weeks in Rio, waiting to get a passage on a south-bound vessel. At last we were fixed up to the Captain’s satisfaction.
“The Stevedore was an old tramp of miscellaneous lading that traded with Chile. Her owners agreed to have us landed on a point opposite Staten Island. Our plans were all settled. We should use the landing-point as our base, and erect a high flagpole for signalling ships. The Stevedore would read our signal on her return trip, while her sister ship, the Lascar, would do us the same service. In the event of our non-appearance at the signal station for three months, a rescue party would be organized to find us.
“By the horror with which the crew of the Stevedore viewed the place, I saw that it would be difficult for a rescue party to be formed.
“However, the money had all been deposited by the Darwin Trust and the owners had assured us of their full collaboration. I strongly suspected, however, in spite of all the Captain’s optimism, that if we did not return from the interior on our quest for skulls, that the ship owners would but shrug their shoulders and leave us to our fate.
“Now, Romeo had persuaded us to bring along the wheel of the Albatross, and it was agreed that the mighty Smith should strap it to his back and once more play the ‘god’ before the ignorant natives.
“Our main goal was to be a certain mountain known to Romeo as very sacred, in which existed an ancient cave temple, guarded and greatly revered by the island medicine men, or whatever their holy devils were called.
“In this place were collected hundreds of skulls of bygone Fuegians, which were worshipped, apparently, as devil-gods. We agreed that we would somehow beg, borrow or steal our round dozen skulls from this cheerful depository.
“We were also to call upon Juliet’s father. He was a freelance whaler, and inhabited a cave not far from our proposed landing-place. We could learn from him the whereabouts of Juliet.
“We had all three of us by this time definitely decided that Romeo’s sweetheart was married. Even Romeo thought it by now highly probable in spite of his attractions, for he was very vain.
“He kept explaining to us how the fight would be arranged. There would be no unpleasantness between the husband and himself, until they met with knives and settled their domestic difficulties by the death of one. I must mention that by this time I had well mastered the Fuegian lingo, and now that I am playing Carnaby’s trick of coming out of the picture in my narrative, let me say, too, that were I given the chance of living my life all over again, I should refuse it on account of those dreadful weeks spent upon Tierra Del Fuego.
“They say that Magalhaens, the Portuguese navigator who discovered the Straits, gave it that name by reason of the numerous fires he saw on the coast during the night; but that rugged hell never meant ‘The Land of Fire’ to me. For ‘Fire’ read ‘Mist’ and you’ve got it. As far as I was concerned the whole adventure might have happened upon a rockery in any London Square garden during a fog, for though I climbed for miles over those dreadful rocks, I never saw farther than a radius of five yards the whole time.
“The sailors who rowed us and our supplies ashore, helped us to erect our flag-staff, but fearing that the weather would continue to be misty, they thoughtfully added a case of rockets and flares.
“But in spite of the kind consideration the officers showed us, I could see that the men who had sailed there before held the place in dread by the alacrity with which they landed our stuff, and I confess that when the last of them pulled away for the ship, I would have given anything to have gone with them. A dreadful feeling of loneliness seized me, and I cursed the day on which I had signed on for the crazy adventure.
“Right from the start of setting up our base camp, the obscurity of our whereabouts became scaring. We were always losing sight of each other in the mist, and I know that I never got a clear idea of what the lay of the land looked like.
“We soon discovered that when we moved from our flag-staff, we had to chalk arrows on the rocks in order to find our way back again. Wherever we went, we went on tiptoe. Whatever we said, we whispered, for that eternal mist, and the fear of what it hid, made us painfully cautious.
“There was another thing which helped to demoralize our nerves. We would hear whisperings when none of us was talking. Sometimes these sounds seemed to come from one or two people unseen, but very often at dusk it seemed to be the whisperings of a vast crowd. This went on for over a week, whisperings all round one; and when it sounded like a crowd I can’t tell you the trapped feeling I had.
“Yes—it was well over a week and in all that time we never saw a soul—only heard. It was quite a relief when we saw our first native. It chanced to be Juliet’s father. I believe he had been watching us for days—creeping behind boulders on the fringe of the mist wall. When he first appeared I happened to be alone cooking the dinner. It was the first time I had that experience, for much as Romeo assured us that he could find his family caves about a mile away and be back within the hour, the Captain wouldn’t let him out of his sight. No—we must all stick together, he said. I once heard him telling Romeo that if he attempted to break away into the mist in search of his damned Juliet, he would be shot in the back as a traitor. Romeo was very afraid of him, and I began to think that it had been more fear than devotion which had made him stick to his master for so long.
“On this particular occasion the Captain had agreed that he would let Romeo try to find h
is home, but insisted on going with him. He asked if I minded staying behind to guard the camp and I told him no, not from any heroic zest of doing my duty, but for a private reason of my own—a plan I wished to carry out behind the Captain’s back.
“You see, I had noticed that ever since the ship had sailed he was deteriorating. His nerves were more on the jump than ours. Romeo was nervy through wanting to learn about Juliet. That you can understand. I was nervy through sheer damned dread of the mist and the invisible circles behind it. But our Captain, who had been such a gay companion on the voyage, was nothing more than a bundle of ill-tempered nerves, and I suspected that the cause of it was drink.
“He had himself suggested to me that neither of us should touch our stock of spirits unless through necessity—illness or the like. I applauded the plan as we couldn’t possibly know how long we should be marooned, and although we had plenty of cases both of brandy and whisky with us, it would not last for ever. We had agreed to limit ourselves to a tot each at nightfall. That small amount to a hardened old sinner like the Captain could not have made him thick in his speech and somewhat unsteady on his pins when he would wake me to take my turn at the watch. Therefore, to satisfy myself, the first thing I did when they had disappeared beyond the curtain of white was to unlock the chest we had already drawn three bottles from. It seemed at first sight that I had wronged him, for the bottles were unopened and untouched. However, since my suspicions could not rest at that, I opened one of our spare cases, and already nearly half the packing slots were empty. This enraged me, not that I grudged the old man having a binge in secret, but that he should have been so cunning as to help himself to the reserves which he knew I might not look at for weeks, and heaven only knew what might not happen before then. It was the deceit and unfairness, and worst of all a sort of fear of me that made me know his nerves were driving him to cowardice, and I resolved to tax him with it at the first opportunity.
The Master of the Macabre Page 19