The Fourth Man by John Russell (best free ebook reader .TXT) 📕

was so different. He had counted absolutely on meeting the ship — some small schooner, one of those flitting, half-piratical traders of the copra islands that can be hired like cabs in a dark street for any questionable enterprise. Now there was no ship, and here was no cross-roads where one might sit and wait. Such a craft as the catamaran could not be made to lie to.

The doctor foresaw ugly complications for which he had not prepared and whereof he must bear the burden. The escape had been his own conception, directed by him from the start. He had picked his companions deliberately from the whole forced labour squad, Perroquet for his great strength, Fenayrou as a ready echo. He had made it plain since their first dash from the mine, during their skirmish with the military guards, their subsequent wanderings in the brush with bloodhounds and trackers on their trail — through every crisis — that he alone should be the leader.

For the others, they had understood well enough which of their number was the chief beneficiary. Those mysterious friends on the outside that were reaching half around the world to further their release had never heard of such individuals as Fenayrou and The Parrot. Dubosc was the man who had pulled the wires: that brilliant physician whose conviction for murder had followed so sensationally, so scandalously, upon his sweep of academic and social honours. There would be clacking tongues in many a Parisian salon, and white faces in some, when news should come of his escape. Ah, yes, for example, they knew the high-flyer of the band, and they submitted — so long as he led them to victory. They submitted, while reserving a depth of jealousy, the inevitable remnant of caste persisting still in this democracy of stripes and shame.

By the middle of the afternoon the doctor had taken certain necessary measures.

“Ho!” said Fenayrou sleepily. “Behold our colours at the masthead. What is that for, comrade?”

The sail had been lowered and in its place streamed the scrap of crimson scarf that had served Dubosc as a turban.

“To help them sight us when the ship comes.”

“What wisdom!” cried Fenayrou. “Always he thinks of everything, our doctor, everything –-”

He stopped with the phrase on his lips, and his hand outstretched towards the centre of the platform. Here, in a damp depression among the reeds, had lain the wicker-covered bottle of green glass in which they carried their water. It was gone.

“Where is that flask?” he demanded. “The sun has grilled me like a bone.”

“You will have to grill some more,” said Dubosc grimly. “This crew is put on rations.”

Fenayrou stared at him wide-eyed, and from the shadow of a folded mat The Parrot thrust his purpled face. “What do you sing me there? Where is that water?”

“I have it,” said Dubosc.

They saw, in fact, that he held the flask between his knees, along with their single packet of food in its wrapping of coconut husk.

“I want a drink,” challenged Perroquet.

“Reflect a little. We must guard our supplies like reasonable men. One does not know how long we may be floating here…”

Fell a silence among them, heavy and strained, in which they heard only the squeaking of frail basketwork as their raft laboured in the wash. Slow as was their progress, they were being pushed steadily outward and onward, and the last cliffs of New Caledonia were no longer even a smudge in the west, but only a hazy line. And still they had seen no moving thing upon the great round breast of the sea that gleamed in its corselet of brass plates under a brazen sun. “So that is the way you talk now?” began The Parrot, half-choking. “You do not know how long? But you were sure enough when we started.”

“I am still sure,” returned Dubosc. “The ship will come. Only she cannot stay for us in one spot. She will be cruising to and fro until she intercepts us. We must wait.”

“Ah, good! We must wait. And in the meantime, what? Fry here in the sacred heat with our tongues hanging out while you deal us drop by drop — hein?”

“Perhaps.”

“But no!” The garrotter clenched his hands. “Blood of God, there is no man big enough to feed me with a spoon!”

Fenayrou’s chuckle came pat, as it had more than once, and Dubosc shrugged.

“You laugh!” cried Perroquet, turning in fury. “But how about this lascar of a captain that lets us put to sea unprovided? What? He thinks of everything, does he? He thinks of everything!… Sacred farceur — let me hear you laugh again!”

Somehow Fenayrou was not so minded.

“And now he bids us be reasonable,” concluded the Parrot. “Tell that to the devils in hell. You and your cigarettes, too. Bah — comedian!”

“It is true,” muttered Fenayrou, frowning. “A bad piece of work for a captain of runaways.”

But the doctor faced mutiny with his thin smile.

“All this alters nothing. Unless we would die very speedily, we must guard our water.”

“By whose fault?”

“Mine,” acknowledged the doctor. “I admit it. What then? We can’t turn back. Here we are. Here we must stay. We can only do our best with what we have.”

“I want a drink,” repeated The Parrot, whose throat was afire since he had been denied.

“You can claim your share, of course. But take warning of one thing. After it is gone do not think to sponge on us — on Fenayrou and me.”

“He would be capable of it, the pig!” exclaimed Fenayrou, to whom this thrust had been directed. “I know him. See here, my old, the doctor is right. Fair for one, fair for all.”

“I want a drink.”

Dubosc removed the wooden plug from the flask.

“Very well,” he said quietly.

With the delicacy that lent something of legerdemain to all his gestures, he took out a small canvas wallet, the crude equivalent of the professional black bag, from which he drew a thimble. Meticulously he poured a brimming measure, and Fenayrou gave a shout at the grumbler’s fallen jaw as he accepted that tiny cup between his big fingers. Dubosc served Fenayrou and himself with the same amount before he recorked the bottle.

“In this manner we should have enough to last us three days — maybe more — with equal shares among the three of us…”

Such was his summing of the demonstration, and it passed without comment, as a matter of course in the premises, that he should count as he did — ignoring that other who sat alone at the stern of the raft, the black Canaque, the fourth man.

Perroquet had been out-manoeuvred, but he listened sullenly while for the hundredth time Dubosc recited his easy and definite plan for their rescue, as arranged with his secret correspondents.

“That sounds very well,” observed The Parrot, at last. “But what if these jokers only mock themselves of you? What if they have counted it good riddance to let you rot here? And us? Sacred name, that would be a famous jest! To let us wait for a ship and they have no ship!”

“Perhaps the doctor knows better than we how sure a source he counts upon,” suggested Fenayrou slyly.

“That is so,” said Dubosc, with great good humour. “My faith, it would not be well for them to fail me. Figure to yourselves that there is a safety vault in Paris full of papers to be opened at my death. Certain friends of mine could hardly afford to have some little confessions published that would be found there… Such a tale as this, for instance –-”

And to amuse them he told an indecent anecdote of high life, true or fictitious, it mattered nothing, so he could make Fenayrou’s eyes glitter and The Parrot growl in wonder. Therein lay his means of ascendancy over such men, the knack of eloquence and vision. Harried, worn, oppressed by fears that he could sense so much more sharply than ever, he must expend himself now in vulgar marvels to distract these ruder minds. He succeeded so far that when the wind fell at sunset they were almost cheerful, ready to believe that the morning would bring relief. They dined on dry biscuit and another thimbleful of water apiece and took watch by amiable agreement. And through that long, clear night of stars whenever the one of the three who kept awake between his comrades chanced to look aft, he could see the vague blot of another figure — the naked Canaque, who slumbered there apart…

It was an evil dawning. Fenayrou, on the morning trick, was aroused by a foot as hard as a hoof, and started up at Perroquet’s wrathful face, with the doctor’s graver glance behind.

“Idler! Good-for-nothing! Will you wake at least before I smash your ribs? Name of God, here is a way to stand watch!”

“Keep off!” cried Fenayrou wildly. “Keep off. Don’t touch me.”

“Eh, and why not, fool? Do you know that the ship could have missed us? A ship could have passed us a dozen times while you slept?”

“Bourrique!”

“Vache!”

They spat the insults of the prison while Perroquet knotted his great fist over the other, who crouched away cat-like, his mobile mouth twisted to a snarl. Dubosc stood aside in watchful calculation until against the angry red sunrise in which they floated there flashed the naked red gleam of steel. Then he stepped between.

“Enough. Fenayrou, put up that knife.”

“The dog kicked me!”

“You were at fault,” said Dubosc sternly. “Perroquet!”

“Are we all to die that he may sleep?” stormed The Parrot.

“The harm is done. Listen now, both of you. Things are bad enough already. We may need all our energies. Look about.”

Â

They looked and saw the far, round horizon and the empty desert of the sea and their own long shadows that slipped slowly before them over its smooth, slow heaving, and nothing else. The land had sunk away from them in the night — some one of the chance currents that sweep among the islands had drawn them none could say where or how far. The trap had been sprung. “Good God, how lonely it is!” breathed Fenayrou in a hush.

No more was said. They dropped their quarrel. Silently they shared their rations as before, made shift to eat something with their few drops of water, and sat down to pit themselves one against another in the vital struggle that each could feel was coming — a sort of tacit test of endurance.

A calm had fallen, as it does between trades in this flawed belt, an absolute calm. The air hung weighted. The sea showed no faintest crinkle, only the maddening, unresting heave and fall in polished undulations on which the lances of the sun broke and drove in under their eyelids as white, hot splinters; a savage sun that kindled upon them with the power of a burning glass, that sucked the moisture from poor human bits of jelly and sent them crawling to the shelter of their mats and brought them out again, gasping, to shrivel anew. The water, the world of water, seemed sleek and thick as oil. They came to loathe it and the rotting smell of it, and when the doctor made them dip themselves overside they found little comfort. It was warm, sluggish, slimed. But a curious thing resulted…

While they clung along the edge of the raft they all faced inboard, and there sat the black Canaque. He did not join them. He did not glance at them. He sat hunkered on his heels in the way of the native, with arms hugging his knees. He stayed in his place at the stern, motionless under that shattering sun, gazing out into