VANDERDECKEN

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 533, 10 December 1928, Page 5

VANDERDECKEN

By

H. DE VERE STACPOOLE.

CHAPTER XXII.—THE FREIGHTER The threatened difference between Hank and George had died out. The reason of this release was not far to seek. Tommie, at that moment of her life, was as destitute of all the infernal sex wiles of womanhood as a melon. She had no idea of men as anything else than companions; that was why the pocket Artemis failed a bit in love scenes. A year ago she had signed a contract with the Wallack and •Jackson Company by which she re ceived forty thousand dollars a year for five years, and 'Wallack had reason sometimes to grumble. Tommie had no idea of how to fling herself into the arms of movie heroes, or to do the face-work in a close-up when the heroine is exhibiting to the audience the grin and glad eye, or the 'Abandon,” or the “Passionate Appeal" so dear to the movie fan. “Good God, that ain’t the way to make love,” would cry Scudder, her frst producer. “Nuzzle him—stop. Now then, make ready and get abandon into it. He’s not the plumber tome to mend the bath, nor your long-lost brother you wished had remained in ’Urope and you’re hugging lor the sake of appearance. He’s the K’ty you're in love with. Now th’en. Pot some heart-punch and pep into it — now then! Camera!” No good. "Oh, Lord! oh, Lord!” the perspiring Scudder would cry. “looks a's if you 'ere nursing a teddy bear. Strain him to your heart. Stop flapping I’our hands on his back. Now, look U P in his face—so—astonished yet almost fearful. Can't you understand the wonder of love just born in the human heart, the soul’s awakening? Lord! you’re not lookin' at an eclipse the sun! That’s better, hang on s °, count ten and then nuzzle him.” But despite all directions Tommie somewhat a failure in passion. 'Vallack summed the position up 'hen he declared that it would be "orth paying ten thousand dollars a

vear to some man that would do the soul’s awakening business witli Tommie. She could laugh, weep, flv into a temper, ride a mustang barebacked. drive a motor-car over a precipice, be as funny in her diminutive way as Charlie Chaplin, but she couldn’t make love worth a cent. That was what Hank Fisher and Co. sensed when the girl illusion vanished, disclosing a jolly companion and nothing more: sensed, without in the least sensing the fact that owing maybe to her small size, she had a power almost as strong as the power that wakens the wonder of love in the human heart. Life was different on board, owing to this new importation; busier too. This was an entirely new stunt, to Tommie, and just as she knew everything about a motor-car, and airplane, and a horse, she seemed determined to know everything about the Wear Jack. Her capacity for assimilating detail was phenomenal; the use of everything from the main sheet buffer to the mast winch had to be explained, she had to learn how to steer, and, having learned, she insisted on taking her trick at the wheel. When she was not sitting with her nose in a book, she was helping or hindering in the running 6f the ship. Then there was the question of her clothes to keep them busy Drawing on to the tropics, it was more a question of shedding clothes, especially when it came to the matter of tweed coats and skirts. Bud, In his millionaire way, had come well provided; boxes.and boxes had arrived from Hewson and Loder’s and had been received-by Hank and stowed as “more of Bud’s truck.” White silk shirts, suits of white drill, they all rose up like a white cloud in George's mind one blue and burning morning as he contemplated Tommie in her stuffy tweeds. “Look here, T.C.,” said George, “you can’t get along in that toggery. I’ve half a dozen suits of white down below and I’ll get one of the Chinks to tailor a couple of them for you. Hank, roust out those boxes, will you?” They tried a white drill coat on her. They had never really recognised her size till they saw her in that coat, which would almost have done her for an overcoat. Then they recognised that perfect proportion had given her stature and that, if the gods had made her head an inch or so more in circumference, she would have been a dwarf. Then Hank started forward to find a tailor amongst the Chinks and returned with a slit-eyed individual who contemplated his strong customer, standing like Mr. Hyde in the garment of Dr. Jekyll, took eye measurements of the length of her limbs and the circumference of her waist and retired j to the foc-sie with two pairs of white ,

drill trousers and two coats to work Jiis works, also some white silk —yjamas and shirts, producing by the next morning an outfit which fitted, more or less. She solved the question of shoes and stockings by discarding them on deck. That was on the morning when, across the sea to port, Cape San Lazaro showed itself and the heathazy opening to Magdalena Bay. The steady nor-westerly breeze that had held all night began to flicker out at dawn; when they came up from breakfast the world had gone to sleep. From the hazy coast to the hazy horizon nothing moved but the vast marching glassy swell coming up from a thousand miles away and unruffled by the faintest breeze. Tommie, having come on deck and taken a sniff at the glacial condition of things, curled herself in one of the deck chairs with a book. The Wear Jack was well provided with deck chairs and Hank, having inspected the weather, dived below and brought one up; George followed suit. Then, having placed the chairs about under the awning ■which had been rigged, they sat and smoked and talked, Tommie, up to her eyes in her confounded book, taking no part in the conversation. T.C. was one of those readers who become absolutely dead to surroundings. Curled there with her nose in “Traffics and Discoveries,” she looked as if you might have kicked her without waking her, and this fact somehowcast a pall over the conversation of Hank and Bud, who, after a few minutes, found their conversation beginning to dry up. “Lord,” said Hank, “I wonder liow long this beastly calm’s going to hold.” “Don’t know,” said George. Then Shan came on deck. He had no chair. He stood with his back to the port rail cutting up some tobacco and filling a pipe. “I w-onder how long this beastly calm is going to hold,” said George. “Lord knows,” said Shan. Tommie chuckled. Something in the book had tickled her, she turned over a page rapidly and plunged deeper into oblivion like a puffin after smelts. “What’s the current taking us?” asked George. “Maybe three knots,” said Hank. “There’s no saying.” He yawned, then, as though the idea had just struck him, “Say —what’s wrong with trying the engine?” “It’s too beastly hot for tinkering over engines,” yawned George, “and S.K. says he can’t get the thing to SO.” “Go’n' have another try, 5.K.,” said Hank. “There’s no use in us sitting here wagging our tails and waiting for the wind. Tell you what, I’ll drawlots with you—give's a piece of paper, Bud.” George produced an old letter and | Hank tore off three slips, one long and i two short. , Shan, with little interest in the

business, drew a short slip, George the one. “It’s me,” said George, rising. “Well now, I’ll just tell you, if I don’t get the thing to revolute I’ll stick there till I do. I’m not going to be beat by a bit of machinery.” He moved towards the hatch. “I’ll go with you,” said Tommie, suddenly dog’s-earing a page and closing her book, as though she had been listening to the whole conversation, which, in a way, she had. Hank and Shan were left alone and Shan took his seat in the chair vacated by George. Neither seemed in good humour; perhaps it was the heat. Prom down below, through the open hatch leading to the little engineroom they could hear voices! George’s voice and the voice of T.C. Then, as they sat yawning, another sound came, faint and far away, rhythmical, ghostly. Hank raised himself and looked. Aw r ay to the s’uth’ard, across the glassy sea, a freighter was coming up. She was a great distance off, but iu the absolute stillness and across that glacial calm the thud of her propellers could be felt by the ear.

Both men left their chairs and leaned on the rail watching her. Said Shan, after a moment’s silence, “D’y’ know what I’ve been thinking? I’ve been thinking we’ve played it pretty low down on T.C.” “How?” “Well, it’s this wav. McGinnis will be after us, sure, as soon as he can get his hoofs under him. He’ll know we’re making for the Bay of Whales and he’ll be after us. Question is, can he get the Heart tinkered up in time, or would he take another boat. If he does and catches us, there’s sure to be a tight. We should have told T. that. I thought of it this morning at breakfast.” “Well, why didn’t you tell her?” “Well, I didn’t, somehow. There’s another thing, we’ve never told her who I am. That’s worried me.” “Well, it’s easy enough to tell her.” “No, sir, it isn’t, not by a long chalk. I almost came to it yesterday. It was when you two were down below and I had her here on deck showing her how to make a fisherman’s bend. It came to me to tell her and I opened out about Vanderdecken, saying he wasn’t maybe as bad as some folk painted him, then she closed me up and put the lid on.” “What did she say?” “Sand stealing was stealing and taking women's jewellery was a dirty trick.” “Why didn’t you explain?” “Because she was right. Right or wrong, how r ’s a fellow to explain? Well, there it is. You’d better go down to her and say, That blighter Shan’s Vanderdecken and Pat McGinnis is after him and there’ll maybe a dust-up w r hen we get down to the Bay, and there’s a freighter coming along that’ll take you back north and you’d better get aboard her.’ ” "Me!” “Yes, you—it’s clean beyond me.” Hank watched the freighter. She was away up now out of the water and showing the white of her bridge screen. At her present speed she would soon be level with them. “She looks to be in ballast, don’t she?” said Han. “Yep.” “Where’s she going, do you think.” “ ’Frisco, sure.” “That’s a long way from Los Angeles.” ‘‘Maybe, but it’s nearer than the Bay o’ Whales.” The freighter grew; she ifcas making anything from ten to twelve knots; she would pass the Wear Jack, and a signal would stop her as sure as a bullet through the eye will stop a man. Then, suddenly, something that had risen to Hank’s surface intelligence like a bubble, burst angrily. “You can go down and tell her yourself/’ said he, “it’s no affair of mine. If she wasn’t fooling there with Bud, she’d have seen the ship. How’n the nation do you think I’m going to go down and give you away like that?” Shan hung silent, as if offended with the other. He wasn’t in the least. His eyes were fixed on the water over

the side. Right below, in the bit of shadow cast by the ship against the morning sun, the water lay, pure emerald, and showing fathom-deep glimpses of life, scraps of fuci, hints of jelly fish and once, far down, like a moving jewel in a world of crystal, an albacore passing swift as a sword thrust. Ahead of them on the lifting swell a turtle was sunning itself, awash in the blue of the lazy silent sea, one polished plate of its carapace showing like a spot of burnished steel. Shan found himself wondering why one plate should shine like that. . It looked, now like a little window in a roof, then it seemed to him that out of that window came an idea, or rather a vision. A horrible vision of the freighter going off with Tommie and vanishing beyond the northern skyline with her. Not till that .moment had he recognised that T.C. was at once the lynch-pin of their coach and the thing that bad suddenly come to lend reason to his own life. His whole existence had led logically up to the Vanderdeckeu business and the Vanderdecken business had led to her capture, had given him something to cave

for, not as a man cares for a girl, but more as a lonely man cares for a child or a dog. It was hei small size, maybe, that clinched the thing with him and made him feel that he d sooner do a dive overside than lose touch with her. Hank was feeling at that moment pretty much the same. The microscopic Tommie had captured the leathery Hank as a chum. The freighter drew on and they could see now' the touch of white where the spume rose in a feather at her forefoot. It was a huge brute of a Coleman liner up from Callao or | Valparaiso, a five thousand tonner with a rust-red funnel. If they stopped her it would be necessary to get T.C. on deck right aw-ay and the Chinks ready to man the boat. There would be scarcely time to say good-bye—besides, it was ten to one T.C. wouldn't want to go—besides she was in those togs. The freighter was abreast of them now They watched her without a word. Suddefily a stream of bunting fluttered up and blew out on the wind of her passage. Shan shaded his eyes and looked.

“Wishing us a pleasant voyage,” said Shan. They watched the flags flutter dow n and the great turtle-backed stern with the sunlight on it and the plumes of foam from the propellers. Then, as the wash reached them, making the. Wear Jack groan and clatter her block, came a new sound, a thurd-thurd-thurd right under their feet, followed by the voice of George yelling, “Hi, you chaps, get the helm on her, engine’s going.” Shan sprang to the wheel and Hank came and stood beside him. Hank said, “That freighter must have thought us awful swine not acknowledging their signal.” "Maybe they thought right,” said S.K. iTo be continued.!