第37章

There's no broken link.That means a thousand pounds for me.No less.A thousand the day after we get ashore - prompt.I won't wait till she breaks up, Mr.Cloete.To the underwriters I go if I've to walk to London on my bare feet.Port cable! Look at her port cable, I will say to them.I doctored it - for the owners -tempted by a low rascal called Cloete.

"Cloete does not understand what it means exactly.All he sees is that the fellow means to make mischief.He sees trouble ahead...

Do you think you can scare me? he asks, - you poor miserable skunk.

..And Stafford faces him out - both holding on to the cabin table: No, damn you, you are only a dirty vagabond; but I can scare the other, the chap in the black coat...

"Meaning George Dunbar.Cloete's brain reels at the thought.He doesn't imagine the fellow can do any real harm, but he knows what George is; give the show away; upset the whole business he had set his heart on.He says nothing; he hears the other, what with the funk and strain and excitement, panting like a dog - and then a snarl...A thousand down, twenty-four hours after we get ashore;day after to-morrow.That's my last word, Mr.Cloete...Athousand pounds, day after to-morrow, says Cloete.Oh yes.And to-day take this, you dirty cur...He hits straight from the shoulder in sheer rage, nothing else.Stafford goes away spinning along the bulk-head.Seeing this, Cloete steps out and lands him another one somewhere about the jaw.The fellow staggers backward right into the captain's cabin through the open door.Cloete, following him up, hears him fall down heavily and roll to leeward, then slams the door to and turns the key...There! says he to himself, that will stop you from making trouble.""By Jove!" I murmured.

The old fellow departed from his impressive immobility to turn his rakishly hatted head and look at me with his old, black, lack-lustre eyes.

"He did leave him there," he uttered, weightily, returning to the contemplation of the wall."Cloete didn't mean to allow anybody, let alone a thing like Stafford, to stand in the way of his great notion of making George and himself, and Captain Harry, too, for that matter, rich men.And he didn't think much of consequences.

These patent-medicine chaps don't care what they say or what they do.They think the world's bound to swallow any story they like to tell...He stands listening for a bit.And it gives him quite a turn to hear a thump at the door and a sort of muffled raving screech inside the captain's room.He thinks he hears his own name, too, through the awful crash as the old Sagamore rises and falls to a sea.That noise and that awful shock make him clear out of the cabin.He collects his senses on the poop.But his heart sinks a little at the black wildness of the night.Chances that he will get drowned himself before long.Puts his head down the companion.Through the wind and breaking seas he can hear the noise of Stafford's beating against the door and cursing.He listens and says to himself: No.Can't trust him now...

"When he gets back to the top of the deck-house he says to Captain Harry, who asks him if he got the things, that he is very sorry.

There was something wrong with the door.Couldn't open it.And to tell you the truth, says he, I didn't like to stop any longer in that cabin.There are noises there as if the ship were going to pieces...Captain Harry thinks: Nervous; can't be anything wrong with the door.But he says: Thanks - never mind, never mind...

All hands looking out now for the life-boat.Everybody thinking of himself rather.Cloete asks himself, will they miss him? But the fact is that Mr.Stafford had made such poor show at sea that after the ship struck nobody ever paid any attention to him.Nobody cared what he did or where he was.Pitch dark, too - no counting of heads.The light of the tug with the lifeboat in tow is seen making for the ship, and Captain Harry asks: Are we all there?..

.Somebody answers: All here, sir...Stand by to leave the ship, then, says Captain Harry; and two of you help the gentleman over first...Aye, aye, sir...Cloete was moved to ask Captain Harry to let him stay till last, but the life-boat drops on a grapnel abreast the fore-rigging, two chaps lay hold of him, watch their chance, and drop him into her, all safe.

"He's nearly exhausted; not used to that sort of thing, you see.

He sits in the stern-sheets with his eyes shut.Don't want to look at the white water boiling all around.The men drop into the boat one after another.Then he hears Captain Harry's voice shouting in the wind to the coxswain, to hold on a moment, and some other words he can't catch, and the coxswain yelling back: Don't be long, sir.

..What is it? Cloete asks feeling faint...Something about the ship's papers, says the coxswain, very anxious.It's no time to be fooling about alongside, you understand.They haul the boat off a little and wait.The water flies over her in sheets.Cloete's senses almost leave him.He thinks of nothing.He's numb all over, till there's a shout: Here he is!...They see a figure in the fore-rigging waiting - they slack away on the grapnel-line and get him in the boat quite easy.There is a little shouting - it's all mixed up with the noise of the sea.Cloete fancies that Stafford's voice is talking away quite close to his ear.There's a lull in the wind, and Stafford's voice seems to be speaking very fast to the coxswain; he tells him that of course he was near his skipper, was all the time near him, till the old man said at the last moment that he must go and get the ship's papers from aft;would insist on going himself; told him, Stafford, to get into the life-boat...He had meant to wait for his skipper, only there came this smooth of the seas, and he thought he would take his chance at once.