The Fourth Man - John Russell (read more books .txt) 📗

professional black bag — and rolled out the thimble by some swift sleight of his flexible fingers while he held Perroquet’s glance with his own.

“I will measure it for you.”

He poured the thimbleful and handed it over quickly, and when Perroquet had tossed it off he filled again and again.

“Four — five,” he counted. “That is enough.”

But The Parrot’s big grip closed quietly around his wrist at the last offering and pinioned him and held him helpless.

“No, it is not enough. Now I will take the rest. Ha, wise man! Have I fooled you at last?”

There was no chance to struggle, and Dubosc did not try, only stayed smiling up at him, waiting.

Perroquet took the bottle.

“The best man wins,” he remarked. “Eh, my zig? A bright notion — of yours. The — best –-”

His lips moved, but no sound issued. A look of the most intense surprise spread upon his round face. He stood swaying a moment, and collapsed like a huge hinged toy when the string is cut.

Dubosc stooped and caught the bottle again, looking down at his big adversary, who sprawled in brief convulsion and lay still, a bluish scum oozing between his teeth…

“Yes, the best man wins,” repeated the doctor, and laughed as he in turn raised the flask for a draft.

“The best wins!” echoed a voice in his ear.

Fenayrou, writhing up and striking like a wounded snake, drove the knife home between his shoulders.

The bottle fell and rolled to the middle of the platform, and there, while each strove vainly to reach it, it poured out its treasure in a tiny stream that trickled away and was lost.

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It may have been minutes or hours later — for time has no count in emptiness — when next a sound proceeded from that frail slip of a raft, hung like a mote between sea and sky. It was a phrase of song, a wandering strain in half tones and fluted accidentals, not unmelodious. The black Canaque was singing. He sang without emotion or effort, quite casually and softly to himself. So he might sing by his forest but to ease some hour of idleness. Clasping his knees and gazing out into space, untroubled, unmoved, enigmatic to the end, he sang — he sang.

And after all, the ship came.

She came in a manner befitting the sauciest little tops’l schooner between Nukahiva and the Pelews — as her owner often averred and none but the envious denied — in a manner worthy, too, of that able Captain Jean Guibert, the merriest little scamp that ever cleaned a pearl bank or snapped a cargo of labour from a scowling coast. Before the first whiff out of the west came the Petite Susanne, curtsying and skipping along with a flash of white frill by her forefoot, and brought up startled and stood shaking her skirts and keeping herself quite daintily to windward.

“And ‘ere they are sure enough, by dam’!” said the polyglot Captain Jean in the language of commerce and profanity. “Zose passengers for us, hey? They been here all the time, not ten mile off — I bet you, Marteau. Ain’t it ‘ell? What you zink, my gar?”

The second, a tall and excessively bony individual of gloomy outlook, handed back the glasses.

“More bad luck. I never approved of this job. And now — see! — we have had our voyage for nothing. What misfortune!”

“Marteau, if that good Saint Pierre gives you some day a gold ‘arp still you would holler bad luck — bad job!” retorted Captain Jean. “Do I ‘ire you to stand zere and cry about ze luck? Get a boat over, and quicker zan zat!”

M. Marteau aroused himself sufficiently to take command of the boat’s crew that presently dropped away to investigate…

“It is even as I thought,” he called up from the quarter when he returned with his report. “I told you how it would be, Captain Jean.”

“Hey?” cried the captain, bouncing at the rail. “Have you got zose passengers yet, enfant de salaud?”

“I have not,” said Marteau in the tone of lugubrious triumph. There was nothing in the world that could have pleased him quite so much as this chance to prove Captain Jean the loser on a venture. “We are too late. Bad luck, bad luck — that calm. What misfortune! They are all dead!”

“Will you mind your business?” shouted the skipper.

“But still, the gentlemen are dead –-”

“What is zat to me? All ze better, they will cost nozing to feed.”

“But how –-”

“Hogsheads, my gar,” said Captain jean paternally. “Zose hogsheads in the afterhold. Fill them nicely with brine, and zere we are!” And, having drawn all possible satisfaction from the other’s amazement, he sprang the nub of his joke with a grin. “Ze gentlemen’s passage is all paid, Marteau. Before we left Sydney, Marteau. I contrac’ to bring back three escape’ convicts, and so by ‘ell I do — in pickle! And now if you’ll kindly get zose passengers aboard like I said an’ bozzer less about ze goddam luck, I be much oblige’. Also, zere is no green on my eye, Marteau, and you can dam’ well smoke it!”

Marteau recovered himself with difficulty in time to recall another trifling detail. “There is a fourth man on board that raft, Captain Jean. He is a Canaque — still alive. What shall we do with him?”

“A Canaque?” snapped Captain Jean. “A Canaque! I have no word in my contrac’ about any Canaque… Leave him zere… He is only a dam’ nigger. He’ll do well enough where he is.”

And Captain Jean was right, perfectly right, for while the Petite Susanne was taking aboard her grisly cargo the wind freshened from the west, and just about the time she was shaping away for Australia the “dam’ nigger” spread his own sail of pandanus leaves and twirled his own helm of niaouli wood and headed the catamaran eastward, back towards New Caledonia.

Feeling somewhat dry after his exertion, he plucked at random from the platform a hollow reed with a sharp end, and, stretching himself at full length in his accustomed place, at the stern, he thrust the reed down into one of the bladders underneath and drank his fill of sweet water…

He had a dozen such storage bladders remaining, built into the floats at intervals above the water line — quite enough to last him safely home again.