href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@39066@[email protected]#CHAPTER_XXVI" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">A Matter of Life and Death

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The White Blackbird

CHAPTER I

A TROPICAL DISCUSSION

"I'd far rather beg in the gutter than marry you, Jasper!" flashed the girl, at last goaded past all patience. Her clouded, indignant eyes expressed both contempt and aversion for the young man leaning over the deck-rail beside her.

He was still a young man as years go and in spite of the grey streaks in his dark hair, the crow's-feet above his cheek-bones; more than passably good-looking, too, with his regular profile and straight, spare, athletic figure, though his sleepy eyes were a trifle close-set and more than a trifle untrustworthy, though the black moustache he was twirling with a long, thin, almost womanish hand hid a cruel, selfish mouth.

In his smart white yachting-suit and panama, lounging over the sun-dried teak taffrail with his knees crossed, he seemed to be neither oppressed by the tropical heat nor impressed at all by anything that his companion could say.

"I'd far rather beg in the gutter," she repeated, as if to settle the matter. And the emphasis with which she spoke showed that she meant what she said.

"But—that doesn't make any difference, my dear Sallie," he once more answered, displaying his white, even teeth in a slight, amused smile. "You're going to marry me just the same. And you may as well make up your mind right away—that it will pay you best to be pleasant about it.

"Captain Dove has come to the point at last," he went on to explain condescendingly, in the same cool, careless, conversational tone, a tone which, however, could not quite hide the ugly determination behind it. "You've upset him for good and all this time. He's aching to get rid of you now. In fact, he's cursing himself that he didn't—when he might have made more out of the deal. And, anyhow, he's promised you to me."

The girl's slim, shapely body had suddenly stiffened. She started up and away from him with a gesture of blind repulsion. Her pure, proud, sensitive face showed the struggle that was going on in her mind—between fear and hope; quick fear that what he had just said might be true, slow hope that he had been lying to her again.

He had turned on one elbow with a lazy air of inexhaustible tolerance, that he might the more conveniently follow her with his greedy glance. He was apparently quite sure of himself—and her. At any rate, he was openly gloating over her beauty in her distress while she stood gazing in dire dismay about the shabby, unkempt little steamer which was all the home she had in the world, all the home she had ever had except for a few forgotten years of her childhood.

Its name, on a life-buoy triced to the rusty netting between the rails, was the Olive Branch, but its port of registry had been painted out. It rode deep although it was decked after the old-fashioned switchback design and had no cargo on board. Its squat, inconspicuous smokestack helped to give it a somewhat nefarious air.

About its ill-kept, untidy decks there were very few signs of life and none at all of luxury. Under a tattered canvas sun-screen on the fo'c'sle-head a ragged deck hand was on the look-out, his scorched face expressive of anything but contentment with his circumstances. He shifted frequently from one bare, blistered foot to the other; it was impossible to stand still for long, with the deck-plates as hot as any frying-pan on a brisk fire.

On the bridge, the officer of the watch was pacing to and fro. Every time he turned on his beat beneath the dirty, weather-worn awning he paused to dart a suspicious, expectant glance at the double hatchway which led to the crew's quarters, forward. The open wheel-house behind him was occupied only by the quartermaster on duty. The remainder of the watch on deck were nowhere visible.

Through the heat-haze to starboard the blurred outline of the low-lying African coast was dimly discernible. Seaward, ahead, and astern, the long, oily swell that the North-east Trades never reach blazed like molten metal under the almost vertical afternoon sun. Except for the lonely little grey steamer wallowing sluggishly northward through it, the world of water was empty to the horizon.

A poignant sense of her own no less forlorn plight there stirred the girl to glance round at her companion, as if in helpless appeal.

"You don't really mean—what you said, do you, Jasper?" she asked, with a very pitiful inflection in her low, musical voice.

"Every word," he answered her promptly. "If you don't believe me, go down and ask Captain Dove."

She turned away from him again, to hide the effect of his curt reply. But her drooping shoulders no doubt betrayed that to him. He pulled out a cigar-case and, having lighted a rank cheroot with languid deliberation, puffed that contemplatively.

"I will go down and ask Captain Dove," she said to herself at length, with tremulous courage, and was moving toward the companion-hatch when she heard from the other end of the ship a sudden ominous discord, a