The Ebbing Of The Tide - George Lewis Becke (best books to read ever txt) 📗

you do," and Challoner laughed with Satanic passion. "And so we meet again--with our positions reversed. Once, unless my memory fails me, you put me in irons. Now, Captain Cressingham, I have you seized up, and we can have a quiet little chat--all to ourselves."

No answer came from Cressingham. With dilated, horror-stricken eyes and panting breath he was turned into stone. The wretched man's silence at last broke up the depths of his maddened tormentor's hatred, and with a bound he sprang to his feet and raised his hand on high.

"Ah! God is good to me at last, Cressingham. For ten years I hungered and thirsted for the day that would set me free, free to search the world over for the lying, murderous dog that consigned me, an innocent man, to a lifelong death. And when the day came, sooner than I thought or you thought--for I suffered for ten years instead of for life--I waited, a free man till I got you into my power."

His hand fell to his side again, and then he leaned forward and laughed.

Cressingham, with death creeping into his heart, at last found his voice.

"Are you going to murder me?" he said.

"Yes," said Challoner, slowly, "I am going to murder you. But not quickly. There would be no joy in that. I want you to taste some of my hideous past--some little space, if only for a day or two, of that ten long years of agony I spent in Pentridge."

Then he sat down again, and opening the locker in the stern sheets, took out food and water, and placing it beside him, ate and drank. But he gave none to Cressingham.

He finished his meal, and then looked again at his prisoner, and spoke calmly again.

"You are comfortable, I trust, Captain Cressingham? Not cold, I am certain, for you have my overcoat in addition to your own. Do you know why I gave it to you? Just to keep you nice and warm during the night, and--alive. But, as I feel chilly myself now, I'll take it from you. Thanks," and he laughed mockingly as he leaned over and snatched it away.

"You see, sir, we are going on a long cruise--down to the Snares, perhaps--and I must keep warm myself, or else how can I talk to you to break the monotony of the voyage?... It is no use looking astern, my friend. There's only one tug in port, and she is not in sea-going trim, so we've got a good start of any search party. And as I don't want to die myself, we won't run away from the land altogether."

And so the day passed, agony and deadly fear blanching the face of one, and cruel, murderous joy filling the heart of the other. Once, as the last dying gleams of the wintry sun for a few brief moments shone over the blackened waters, Challoner saw a long stream of steamer's smoke between the boat and the misty line of coast, and he lowered the sail and let the boat drift till darkness enwrapped them again.

Once more he took out food and water, and ate and drank, and then lit his pipe and smoked, and watched with eyes that glared with the lust of murder and revenge the motionless being before him.

Only once in all that night of horror to Cressingham did he speak, and his voice shook and quivered, and came in choking gasps.

"Challoner, for the love of Christ, kill me and end my misery."

"Ha! still alive, Captain Cressingham! That is very satisfactory--to me only, of course. Kill you, did you say?" and again his wild demoniac laugh pealed out through the black loneliness of the night. "No, I don't intend to kill you. I want to see you suffer and die by inches. I want you to call upon God to help you, so that I can mock at you, and defy Him to rob me of my vengeance."

A shuddering moan, and then silence again.

Again the day broke, and as the ocean mists cleared and rolled away, and the grey morning light fell upon the chilled and stiffening form of his enemy, Challoner came up and looked into his face, and spoke to him.

No answer came from his pallid lips, and Challoner thrust his hand under Cressingham's coat and felt his heart. He was still alive, and presently the closed and swollen eyelids opened, and as he met the glance of the man who leaned over him an anguished groan burst from his heart.

Challoner looked at him intently for awhile; then he hoisted the sail again, and, taking the tiller, headed the boat in for the land. The wind had hauled round during the night, and although the boat made a lot of leeway there was no danger now of being blown away from the land altogether.

As the sun mounted higher, and the grey outlines of the shores darkened, he glanced carefully over the sea to the north-west. Nothing in sight there. But as the boat lifted to a sea he saw about five miles to leeward that a big steamer was coming up. In half an hour, unless she changed her course, she would be up to the boat and could not fail to see her.

In five minutes more Cressingham lay in the bottom of the boat unbound, but dying fast, and Challoner was speaking to him.

"Cressingham, you are dying. You know that, don't you? And you know that I am not lying when I tell you that there is a steamer within five miles of us. In less than half an hour she will be up to us."

One black, swollen hand was raised feebly, and then fell back, and a hoarse sound came from his throat.

"Well, now listen. I said I wanted to see you die--die as you are dying now--with my face over yours, watching you die. And you die and I live. I can live now, Cressingham, and perhaps the memory of those ten years of death in life that I suffered through you will be easier to bear. And yet there is one thing more that you must know--something that will make it harder for you to meet your Maker, but easier for me.... Listen." He knelt beside him and almost shrieked it: "I had no one in the whole world to care for me when I was tried for my life but my wife--and you, you fiend, you murderer--you killed her. She died six years ago--starved and died."

Cressingham, with closed eyes, lay with his head supported on Challoner's left arm. Presently a tremor shook his frame, a fleck of foam bubbled from between his lips, and then the end.

With cold, merciless eyes the other regarded him, with clenched hands and set teeth. Then he went for'ard and unbent the boat's kedge, and with the same lashings that had bound the living man to the thwart he lashed the kedge across the dead man's chest.

He stood up and looked at the approaching steamer, and then he raised the body in his arms and dropped it over the side.

*****


A few days later the papers said that the steamer _Maungatapu_ had picked up a man named Harry, who with Captain Cressingham, of the _Belted Will_ had been blown out to sea from Port ------. It appeared from the survivor's statement that during a heavy squall the same night Captain Cressingham had fallen overboard, and his companion was unable to rescue him.



"THE BEST ASSET IN A FOOL'S ESTATE"

A slight smile lit up the clear-cut, sombre face of Lawson from Safune, as looking up from his boat at Etheridge's house he saw the glint of many lights shining through the walls of the roughly-built store. It was well on towards midnight when he had left Safune and sailed round to Etheridge's, a distance of twelve or fifteen miles, and as his boat touched the sand the first streaks of dawn were changing the dead whiteness of the beach into a dull grey--soon to brighten into a creamy yellow as the sun pierced the heavy land-mist.

A native or two, wrapped from head to foot in the long _lava lava_ of white calico, passed him as he followed the windings of the track to Etheridge's, but gave him no sign of greeting. Had he been any one of the few other white men living on Savaii the dark men would have stopped him and, native-like, inquired the reason of his early visit to their town. But they knew Lawson too well. _Mataaitu_ they called him--devil-faced. And in this they were not far wrong, for Lawson, with his dark olive skin, jet black beard, and eyes that belied the ever-smiling lips, was not a man whom people would be unanimous in trusting.

The natives knew him better than did his few white acquaintances in Samoa, for here, among them, the mask that hid his inner nature from his compeers was sometimes put aside, though never thrown away. But Etheridge, the hot-blooded young Englishman and friend of six months' standing, thought and spoke of him as "the best fellow in the world."

Etheridge had been taking stock, and the wearisome work had paled his usually florid features. His face flushed with pleasure at Lawson's quiet voice:--

"Hard at it, Etheridge? I don't know which looks the paler--you or Lalia. Why on earth didn't you send for me sooner? Any one would think you were some poor devil of a fellow trading for the Dutchmen instead of being an independent man. Now, I'm hungry and want breakfast--that is, if Lalia isn't too tired to get it," and he looked compassionately at Etheridge's young half-caste wife, sister to his own.

"I'm not tired," said the girl, quietly. "I've had easy tasks--counting packets of fish-hooks, grosses of cotton, and things like that. Billy wouldn't let me help him with the prints and heavy things," and with the faintest shadow of a smile on her lips she passed through into the sitting-room and thence outside to the little thatched cook-house a few yards away. With ardent infatuation Etheridge rested his blue eyes on the white-robed, slender figure as she stood at the door and watched the Niue cook light his fire for an early cup of coffee--the first overture to breakfast at Etheridge's.

"By Jove, Lawson, I'm the luckiest man in Samoa to get such a wife as Lalia--and I only a new-chum to the Islands. I believe she'd work night and day if I'd allow it. And if it hadn't been for you I'd never have met her at all, but would have married some fast creature who'd have gone through me in a month and left me a dead-broken beachcomber."

"Yes," said Lawson, "she _is_ a good girl, and, except her sister, about the only half-caste I ever knew whom I would trust implicitly. Their mother was a Hervey Island woman, as I told you, and Lalia has been with Terere and me all over Polynesia, and I think I know her nature. She's fond of you, Etheridge, in her quiet, undemonstrative way, but she's a bit shy yet. You see, you don't speak either Rarotongan or Samoan, and half-caste wives hate talking English. Now, tell me, what is it worrying you? You haven't had another attack?"

"Yes," said the younger man, "I have--and a bad one, too, and that's why I sent for you. The stocktaking is nothing; but I was afraid I might get another that would stiffen me properly. Look here, Lawson, you've been a true friend to