"Dang it, I've a 'ole bloomin' 'ospital on me 'ands, what with Mr. 'Ammer as 'e is and Mr. Harcourt on 'is beam ends! And worse luck, it comes just when—ah, all ready, miss? And what'll it be this time?"
"Whatever you say," rejoined the voice of Sara Helmuth, grave and self-contained. "Is there any change in Mr. Harcourt?"
"No, miss. 'E's crying fretful like—or at least 'e was. Seems like a woman's step and tongue quiets 'im a bit, miss: werry unusual, o' course, but when so be as a man's off 'is 'ead, I says——"
"Darn you, Jenson! Stop your bally grinning! He stabbed me, I tell you——"
Harcourt's shrill cry pierced through the low-toned voices and sent cold sweat starting on Cyrus Hammer's brow as he stared up into darkness.
Where was he? What was this terror that had seized on Harcourt? For answer the soft murmur of Sara Helmuth's soothing voice came to him, followed by the wheeze of a harmonica.
"All right, miss, I've got me instrument in ship-shape order, so to speak. Let's give 'em that 'ere lullaby you was a-singing of last night, miss—them Irish things fair brings the music out o' me, though bein' born and bred in Wapping I ain't got much use for the Irish in general. But let 'er go, miss; I'll come in somewheres."
Silence for a moment; then the girl's voice rose—a soft, deep-toned contralto, with Solomon "coming in somewheres" with his harmonica in a monotone accompaniment which did well enough, however, and must have satisfied him amazingly. Hammer's eyes glistened as the words came sweetly to him, for the words and air brought many things back to him, things that he thought long forgotten——
"Out on the sea where the sad winds wail
(Sad and low, sad and low!)
Watch for the flash of thy father's sail
Dipping from sight in the sunset glow!
He comes no more till the dim stars die
And the day gleams, red in the eastern sky;
Baby of mine—
Oh, baby of mine, hush, hush thy cry,
For the deep sea-moan holds grief of its own—
Grieve not my heart with thine!
"Out on the sea where the slow gulls wheel
(Sad and slow, sad and slow!)
Watch how the writhing night-mists steal.
Veiling the infinite ocean's wo!
Father will come when the nets are drawn
With a kiss for thee, as the night is gone;
Baby of mine—
Oh, baby of mine, in the rosy dawn
He will come to me, with a kiss for thee,
On the crest of the tossing brine!
"Dang it—'e's asleep—excuse me, miss, while I see to Mr. 'Ammer."
Solomon's voice was husky and jerky, and the American, who felt much the same way himself, saw a flood of light spread through his darkness for a moment. A step sounded, and Solomon dropped into a creaking chair beside Hammer.
"Dang it," came a mutter, "I didn't 'ave the 'eart to tell 'er, bless 'er sweet face! 'E's done for, 'e is, and 'ere I be, tied up wi' the missus and the two on 'em while that danged pasty-faced scoundrel's been and got clean off. But wait, me friend! Them as stabs in the dark shall perish in the dark, as the Good Book says; but when I gets me 'ands on 'im—Lud! So you've been and woke up, Mr. 'Ammer?"
The American, wondering what sort of nightmare he was passing through, had raised his hand and felt a thick bandage around his head, and the movement had startled Solomon from his soliloquy.
Despite the bandage and his bewilderment, Hammer felt very well, and announced that fact as he tried to sit up. Solomon's hand repressed him.
"Down wi' you, if you please, sir! It's still a-workin' in you, but to-morrow morning you'll be fit to—Lud help us all! If 'e don't last——"
"If who doesn't last?" queried Hammer, lying back among his pillows. "Who is it that's done for?"
"You've 'ad a sleeping potion, Mr. 'Ammer," came Solomon's reply, a curious note in the man's voice. "It's been and give you bad dreams, sir, so just drink this, and in the morning——"
Obediently, Hammer swallowed a few drops from the spoon that Solomon held to his mouth, and still wondering what the conversation had been all about, slipped off into slumber before he could speak his thoughts.
He woke to find it broad daylight. He was lying on a mosquito-curtained cot beside an open window, and gained a glimpse of green trees and white-boiled cotton-fields before he turned his head to inspect his quarters. For a space the wonder of the thing gripped him, keeping him from recalling what had last taken place.
He had gone to sleep in an open launch off the Sabaki River, and he had wakened in a room that might have housed a prince. Save for his cot and a small stand of plain ebony beside it that held medicines, there was no furniture in the room but rugs—rugs on walls and floor, and ceiling, even. Though knowing nothing of such things, the American sensed the fact that they were such rugs as he had never seen before.
Opposite him was a royal Ispahan prayer-rug of solid fawn and blue silk, with unbroken lines of Arabic worked in solid gold thread, and the cypress, the tree of life, rising over all in white.
On another wall beside the one door hung a rug of pale-blues and yellows, bearing the five-clawed dragon of the imperial family of China; it could have come from no place save the imperial palace, so much Hammer knew.
These were but two of the many which struck his eye in that first moment, and utterly bewildered, he sat up, feeling slightly dizzy but perfectly sound, save for a slight pain in his head. As he sat, a voice came to him; at first he took it for Harcourt's, then recognized his error.
"I have notified the authorities, Mr. Solomon, as you wished, and have no doubt that all will be right as far as you are concerned. No, I am sorry that there is no hope whatever; this bally fever has complicated the thing, don't you know, and I am frank to say that I can do nothing. He'll be conscious for an hour or so before——"
The voice died away, and Hammer sat staring dumbly at the Ming dragon, for now he recalled that wild dream he had had. What was going on here, anyway? Where was he?
Suddenly conscious of hunger and a feverish thirst, he seized a glass of water from the ebony stand and drained it. As he set it down the door opened, and into the room came John Solomon, holding open the door for Sara Helmuth, pale-faced but steady-eyed as ever.
He could do nothing but stare at them blankly, Solomon, his pudgy face very pale, heaped up a large rug for the girl at the head of the bed; and as she sat down she looked up at Hammer with a smile, but it was a smile that struck a cold fear to his heart.
"What's the matter?" he asked hoarsely. "For Heaven's sake talk!"
"You tell him, Mr. Solomon," and there was a catch in the girl's voice. Solomon nodded and sank down on a rug with his legs crossed: Hammer noted absent-mindedly that he wore dingy carpet-slippers and held his empty clay-pipe in one hand.
"Mr. 'Ammer, sir," the supercargo cleared his throat, "let me say first as 'ow you're all right, or will be after a bit, though you've been off your 'ead for a matter o' three days. You're in my own 'ouse, sir, and werry safe you are, if I do say it as shouldn't. It's a werry crooked story, sir—dang it, Mr. 'Ammer, don't interrupt!"
For a wonder the last words were so irritably shot out that Hammer sank back, listening, his questions stilled. So he heard what had chanced, with a slowly-gathering horror in his heart, and a great grief filling his soul, for the words of John Solomon bit into him ineffaceably.
When the launch had drifted in toward the shore, Harcourt had just been bringing up the Daphne to Melindi, and had picked up the launch with her searchlight. Harcourt himself had contracted a slight touch of fever, but had insisted on bringing the senseless Hammer and Miss Helmuth aboard personally, and the off-shore breeze had not aided his fever to any extent.
Alarmed at the story told by the girl, and the condition of Hammer, who had remained unconscious that night, Harcourt had gone ashore early the next morning intent on getting a doctor.
He had barely left his boat when a figure had started out from the crowd of natives about him with a shriek, and the next thing anyone knew was that Harcourt was lying in a pool of blood, stabbed in the side.
Solomon had appeared on the spot, and being known, it seemed, to the native constabulary, had assumed charge of Harcourt. Getting the story of Hammer and Miss Helmuth from the four German sailors who had rowed the captain ashore, he had sent for them as well, installing all three at his cotton plantation a mile outside the town.
Here an English physician had come to attend them from the Juba, then in port, and had remained until a few moments before. Hammer had been given a sleeping-draught the day previous, his own slight fever had vanished altogether, and he was perfectly well: but Harcourt was dying.
From his delirium Solomon and the girl had gathered that his attacker had been Jenson—probably rendered insane by fear at sight of Harcourt. At this juncture the American disregarded Solomon and broke in with a single curt question, his face grim.
"Where is Jenson?"
"No one knows, Mr. Hammer," answered the girl gently, placing her hand on his wrist for a moment. "Wait, please! It was not found out who had stabbed Captain Harcourt until we found it out from his ravings. Then Mr. Solomon said not to tell the authorities anything about it."
Hammer looked at the supercargo, a flame of grief and fury in his hard, grey eyes, his face tense.
"Explain this, Solomon, or by Godfrey——"
"Mr. 'Ammer," and for a brief instant the American was all but awed by the look in the wide blue eyes, "I liked you, and I liked Mr. Harcourt, more than I like most men. If so be as you're bound to do it, then report the thing; but I says, wait. Just like that, Mr. 'Ammer—wait. I 'as me own ways of doing a thing up ship-shape, and I'm older than you be, Mr. 'Ammer, havin' learned a mortal lot in me day. I knows the authorities, Mr. 'Ammer, and I knows John Solomon, and I gives you me Bible oath that this 'ere Jenson answers to us for what 'e's been and done."
The eyes of the two men gripped and held for a long moment. Hammer, struck to the heart by the news of Harcourt as he was, a furious madness for revenge tearing at his brain, yet felt a curious impulse to obey this John Solomon.
All the obsequiousness of the latter had vanished, and in its place had come a quiet assurance, a steadiness, that could not but impress the American. More than this, even, did the next words of Sara Helmuth restrain him.
"Please, Mr. Hammer, don't be hasty in this affair. Believe me, I know a good deal more than I did that night in the launch, and when you know it, too, I think that you will agree fully with me. Beside, Mr. Harcourt is—is—the doctor said that he would not live more than a few hours longer."
Not until that moment did Hammer fully realize how dear his friend had become to him. It was to him an incredibly dreadful thing that after all he had passed through, after finding Harcourt, after coming to like and to be liked—that the gods had now snatched this gift from him, just when he was coming to most depend on the other man.
"My God!" he said under his breath, and dropped his head into his hands. "Harcourt dying!"
It was horrible; a thing almost beyond his comprehension. But, so deep down in his soul that even he did not realize it, was fear—fear that he would go back to what Harcourt had dragged him from—fear that the old terrible bitterness would sweep back over him and smother him. Suddenly he looked up, his face drawn and grey.
"You—last night you were singing!" he cried hoarsely, and his eyes shot accusation into the brown pitying gaze of Sara Helmuth. "What do you mean? Are you playing with me——"
"Be quiet!" Solomon's voice rang harsh and stern. "'Ow dare you, Mr. 'Ammer! I says this 'ere lady is an angel—why, dang it, sir, she 'asn't slept for two blessed nights, what o' watching wi' you and 'im! Yes, she was a singing, Mr. 'Ammer, 'cause Mr. Harcourt 'e thought she was 'is mother, 'e did, and wouldn't go——"
"Oh, stop it, stop it!" Hammer groaned, waving his hand in desperation. "I'm sorry, Miss Helmuth—I understand now. Take me to Harcourt, please."
He gained his feet, careless of the fact that he was dressed only in a suit of pyjamas. Sara Helmuth looked after him, her eyes brimming, but did not move; Solomon led him out into a wide hallway and across into another room.
Harcourt was lying in a cot, wasted, pale to ghastliness, dark circles under his eyes, but none the less with his mouth wearing its same good-humoured lines. By his side was a chair, and into this Hammer dropped, gazing down at the sleeping face of the man who had been his friend.
How long he sat there he did not know. He was vaguely aware that Solomon had gone away on tiptoe, but before his mind's eye were passing scenes, pictures of Harcourt as he had known him from day to day, now sharp and clear-cut, now dim and ill-remembered.
And three days had wrought this change! Three days, death in their wake, had transformed the broad-shouldered, clean-minded Englishman into this wasted semblance of himself.
"Good God," muttered Hammer, licking his dry lips. "It's horrible!"
As he breathed the words to himself, leaning over the bed, the dark eyelids flickered and opened, and Harcourt's blue eyes met his—at first with blank unrecognition, then with surprised delight. Harcourt smiled faintly, and his voice came clear but weak.
"Hello, old chap! You're—by Jove, where's that Jenson?"
The blue eyes had suddenly flashed out with anger as Harcourt remembered. The American, with more tenderness than he had ever thought to show any man, put out a hand to the cold brow of his friend.
"Quiet, old man; we'll take care of all that."
For the life of him he could not repress the message that leaped from his own eyes to those of the other. Harcourt looked up steadily; he had read the message aright, but the clear blue eyes never faltered.
"So bad as all that, old chap?"
Hammer nodded, his mouth quivering as he bit at his lips; then the words burst forth brokenly.
"God knows I wish—he'd taken—me instead, Harcourt!"
The other put out a weak hand to his, still smiling.
"I say, old chap, don't be so bally broken up! How long?"
Before Hammer replied a step sounded, and he looked up to see Solomon.
"What-o!" exclaimed that individual cheerily. "Inwalid woke up? We'll——"
Solomon's voice died away, and into his wide blue eyes crept a look of utmost sympathy and kindness as he saw that Harcourt knew.
"How long can I count on, Solomon?"
"It's 'ard to say, sir. An hour, the doctor said——"
"All right. I want to make a will, don't you know. I say, Hammer, brace up! 'Pon my word, I'm having a splendid time, old chap; I've always wanted to have a look in on the stage and see how things were run."
"I'm a notary public, sir, if so be as you wants to——" suggested Solomon.
"Very well. Hammer, you don't mind leaving us alone for a bit?"
The American, choking, rose and left the room, returning to his own. Miss Helmuth had vanished, and he stood over his cot, looking out the window, and fighting back his emotion with grim intensity. It seemed untold ages before his door opened and he turned to face the master of the house.
"'E's all through, Mr. 'Ammer, and wants you. Werry weak 'e is, sir."
Hammer strode back hurriedly and dropped beside Harcourt.
"Hammer, old chap," and Harcourt's voice was faint. "I'm not afraid to meet the Stage Manager; but, Christian or not, I do wish that you'd get Jenson for me, will you? Not that I object particularly, don't you know, but I do object to being hurried in such a bally indecent way."
"I'll get him," muttered Harcourt, meeting the clear blue eyes.
"I'll get him, Harcourt, and I'll get his master with him, by Godfrey!"
"Werry good, sir!" echoed the voice of Solomon behind.
Harcourt's gaze shifted and the trace of a smile crept into his colourless cheeks.
"Tell me, Solomon, do you know who killed that bally second mate?"
"I did, sir."
Hammer heard the words dully, but they did not pierce to his brain, nor would he have heeded them if they had done so. Harcourt's vitality was ebbing fast, and their hands came together for the last time.
"Well, old chap," and his voice was little more than a whisper, "no bally preaching, you know—but take care of yourself. And I wish you'd take me cut to sea for the last scene, if you don't mind. Beastly country to rot in, this. What's the time, John?"
"Four bells, sir, afternoon watch."
"Thanks very much."
Silence ensured, while Hammer's grey eyes fastened hungrily on the face of his friend, and Harcourt gazed up, still smiling faintly.
Then the blue eyes closed, but the hand that the American held still pressed his feebly. After a moment Harcourt looked up again, a tinge of colour in his cheeks, and spoke in his old voice.
"Don't forget—Jenson. Good luck, old chap!"
And there were but two men in the room.