Salvage (Stock)

by Ralph Stock

For works with similar titles, see Salvage.

SALVAGE

By RALPH STOCK

IT'S like that down there. One minute you can be in blue water, with never a hint of trouble, and the next piled high and dry on the fangs of a coral reef.

Simultaneously with the impact, Strode crawled out of the cockpit and along the sloping deck. The cutter had slithered on to the reef, listed to port, and now lay on her bilge in half a fathom of water. The tide was on the ebb, but there was no surf, which about adjusted the balance of fortune. It remained to sit tight and pray for eight feet on the flood.

Strode contrived to douse sail, and was clambering overboard to discover just what he had done to himself, when a canoe full of paddling Kanakas, with a white man at the steering oar, shot out from the island that lay invitingly green not a mile distant.

The canoe made fast on the lagoon side of the reef, and the white man came splashing and lurching over the treacherous coral. Even at that distance he cut an extraordinary figure. He was tall, and so thin that in his sagging ducks he looked like a length of tape fluttering in the breeze. He stopped a few yards distant, propped himself more securely on his spindle shanks, and raised a gaunt and bearded face to the stranded cutter.

"What's all this?" he demanded, as though haranguing a trespasser in his back yard.

"I'm not sure yet," said Strode.

"But what made you do it? There's a pass half a mile further north."

"Charts," said Strode. "There's nothing on them about reefs in these parts, let alone a pass."

"Charts!" The living skeleton snorted his scorn. "What's the good of charts? Where's your look-out?"

"Haven't got one," said Strode.

"Where's your crew?"

"Haven't that, either."

"Well, what are you going to do about it?"

"Wait for the tide," said Strode, "Won't you come aboard?"

The cutter was listed at an angle that made it necessary to crawl most of the way, but in time the two men reached the saloon settee. Here it transpired, over a carefully-manipulated glass, that the skeleton's name was Tatham, and that he was growing vanilla on the neighbouring island.

"You must come ashore for a spell and let my tame carpenter put you to rights," he suggested pleasantly enough. "It doesn't look to me as if you've done much more than frayed your keel and stove in a plank or two. We have a dry-dock of sorts."

Strode was vaguely suspicious. Tatham's manner, as well as his appearance, was dead against him. His eyes seemed never still, his mouth twitched, and his short, clipped utterance gave the impression that he was eternally afraid of saying too much. However, one meets all sorts in this entertaining old world of ours, and Strode had learnt to await developments before coming to definite conclusions.

Certainly Tatham knew what to do in an emergency, and was not long about doing it. The tide had no sooner turned than he unfurled himself from the settee, fluttered up through the fo'castle hatch, and summoned his crew. It came, splashing and yelling across the reef like a marine cavalry charge, and stood at attention waist-deep while Tatham addressed it in fluent bêche-de-mer. Then, as though "by numbers," blocks and tackle were rigged across the reef, and when the cutter began to lift, twelve hefty Kanakas dug their toes into the coral and pulled as one. The cutter moved, and continued to move. To the accompaniment of a demoniac chorus and sundry bumpings, she traversed the reef and slid into deep water on the other side.

"There!" said Tatham.

"Thanks," said Strode, and they went up to the house.

It was a neat little place, run with extraordinary efficiency by an army of Solomon "boys."

"Catch 'em young, treat 'em firm but square, and you can't better them," Tatham observed over a refresher on the verandah. "I want you," he added in a curiously eager way he had, "to notice things."

"I am," said Strode, "and it seems to me you do yourself uncommonly well."

Tatham's glance traversed his legs, outstretched before him like railway lines, and came to rest on the immense buffers of his feet.

"I hope so," he said. "But I don't want to influence you one way or another. Just form your own opinion, and let me have it plump and plain when I ask for it, that's all."

"Opinion of what?" Strode asked.

"Me, mostly," said Tatham. "I won't say any more now, if you don't mind. It's your first impressions I'm after, and they're too valuable to spoil." His mouth twitched into a smile. "It's all right," he added reassuringly, "I'm not daft."

"I never said you were," Strode defended.

"No, you're too polite for that. Haven't been in these parts long enough. But I could see it occurred to you, all the same."

"You've got imaginitis," protested Strode, "that's your trouble."

"Perhaps. I'm not denying it. There's precious little I'll deny after three years in the Malitas."

"I seem to have heard of them," mused Strode, recalling a chance description of the group as a "pestilential paradise."

"Have you?" Tatham struggled out of his chair and draped himself on the verandah rail. "Well, add a hundred per cent. to anything you've heard, and you'll still be short of what they can do with you. Take a look at me, and try to believe it when I tell you that I'm twice the man here and now that I was when I left those cursed islands a year ago. Yes," he added, as Strode's expression remained credulous, "you've got quite a good poker face."

A gong somewhere inside the house relieved the situation. "That's dinner," said Tatham, "but there's no hurry. Have a shower."

Strode had one, and found it good. But everything on Tatham's island was like that. Nothing was lacking to make that verdure-clad chip of volcanic rock a place of comfort and content, yet its owner had apparently found neither. Strode's initial suspicion of him gave place to pity. The man was a scourge unto himself. And why should it be? If it was his personal appearance that troubled him, and Strode felt convinced that it was, why should he care what he looked like, marooned out there in the Pacific?

The problem remained a mystery for nearly a week, during which time the Kanaka carpenter did wonders with Strode's cutter. The dry-dock consisted of a natural channel in the rock built up with chocks of wood, and it held her as snugly as one could wish. … But to return to Tatham. One evening, while changing for dinner, he left his bedroom door ajar, and Strode caught a glimpse of him studying his reflection in a full-length mirror that no man ought to have owned. What was more, he no sooner realised that he had been seen than he skipped out of Strode's line of vision as though shot, and after an awkward pause appeared in the doorway, flushing to the ears.

"I shall have to explain," he jerked out.

"Explain what?" said Strode, looking up from the magazine he had been pretending to read.

"Your poker face won't help you this time," blurted Tatham. "You saw."

Strode put down the magazine. "Is there anything against one man seeing another change for dinner?" he asked.

"No, not as a rule." Tatham drew up a chair with an air of deliberation. "But when you see a figure of fun examining himself in a looking-glass—trying to persuade himself that he's fit to be seen—it's apt to make you think, isn't it?"

"To tell you the truth, I haven't thought very much about you," Strode lied.

"You can't put me off that way," objected Tatham. "If you remember, you were to give me your opinion plump and plain when I asked for it, and I'm asking now." His eyes became fixed in a penetrating stare. "How did I strike you that first day, for instance?"

Strode studied the ceiling in a state of acute discomfort. "As a perfect god-send," he began, but Tatham cut him short.

"In appearance," he barked.

"Appearance?" Strode pondered the matter, with Tatham's eyes boring for his soul. "Well, as a bit thin, if you want to know."

"Ah, a bit thin!" Tatham's head was at a speculative angle. "I didn't, by any chance, make you want to laugh, or perpetrate jokes about having to look twice for my shadow?"

"No," said Strode, "I can't say you did."

"But then you're a gentleman, and that makes the deuce of a difference." Tatham relapsed into his chair. "If you saw a toad being tortured by school-boys, or a comic-looking man hating the sight of himself—and there's not so much difference between the two as you might think—I doubt if you'd laugh at all. No," he ended on a note of disappointment, "I'm afraid I shall never get at your real impressions. You're too considerate."

"Considerate be hanged!" Strode exploded. "I stand by my original contention that you've got imaginitis. Throw it off, man! Forget yourself!"

"I wish I could," muttered Tatham. "And if I belonged to myself, it wouldn't be difficult, either."

"Well, who else do you belong to?"

"A girl—in Sydney." Tatham swallowed hard. "I'd like to tell you, if you don't mind."

"Mind?" Strode resumed his study of the ceiling. "Get it off your chest."

"Thanks," said Tatham. "We're engaged. We've been engaged four years. The first three I spent in the Malitas, trying to make money, and made it. What was more, I got out alive, and the Malitas don't like that. Anyway, I carried my bones to Sydney, and on the way learnt what those islands have done to me. You see, I was pretty well used to myself by that time, but others weren't, apparently. Girls giggled, and men made cheap jokes about me in the smoking-room. That gem about having to look twice for my shadow was one of them."

A minah bird strutted in from the verandah, pecked at Tatham's ducks, presumably to see if there was anything inside, and flew off into the bush.

"I didn't mind at first," he went or absently. "Who were they, anyway? I was on my way to someone who'd understand—appreciate what I'd been through, But it made me think, all the same, and when kids barracked me on Circular Quay, I thought some more. In fact, by the time the ferry boat had carried me to the harbour suburb where that someone lived, I was thinking so hard that I went clean past it. What if she didn't know me? And why should she know me? In appearance I'd changed beyond recognition. And in character, personality, or whatever it is that makes a woman choose one man before another, I might have changed, too. Three years is a long time—in the Malitas."

Tatham sat silent a moment, staring out at the bush.

"The rest ought to make you laugh," he said. "If you can believe it, I went three times round Sydney Harbour on that ferry, and each time I came to the pier where I ought to have landed, I couldn't bring myself to do it. Why don't you laugh?"

"I don't want to," said Strode. "I've felt much the same myself before now."

"You have?" Tatham leant forward. "Then perhaps you'll understand when I tell you that in the end I came away, without landing at all, and buried myself here."

"And now you're turning in your grave," Strode prompted, "wondering if you're enough like your old self to have another try."

For answer, Tatham handed him a photograph, and Strode sat looking at it with the approval one is forced to employ under such circumstances. It was of a woman, and told as much about her as a photograph ever can.

"It isn't a matter of having another try," Tatham went on, "although that's what I've been summoning the pluck to do ever since I left Sydney. She arrives in Papeete to-morrow week. She's written me that she's tired of waiting—and I don't blame her—that if we put it off much longer we shall be strangers, and she's right; that she'll take me as she finds me." Tatham laughed raucously. "'As she finds me,' if you please!" He pushed a second photograph across the table. "That's how she remembers me. Wonderful likeness, isn't it?"

Strode could see none. He found himself gazing alternately at a handsome, sturdy-looking man in the prime of life, and—Tatham.

"Well?" his host was saying. "Do you see anything else for it but to drown myself?"

Strode thrust the photograph from him with a gesture of impatience. He had to do something.

"You make me tired," he complained.

"Sorry," said Tatham "but I seem to be getting at your real opinion of me, and that's what I was after."

"My opinion of you," returned Strode, "is that until you can forget yourself you'll be insufferable. You're self-conscious to a pitch bordering on mania."

"Go on," Tatham encouraged gently, and Strode went on, principally because he had no notion how to stop.

"Just because you've lost a bit of weight, working like a horse for the girl you want, you seem to think she won't want you. Women aren't like that—at least, any woman worth working for." He could see Tatham bridle at that. "Drown yourself if you like, of course, but what I suggest is that you hack off that beard of yours, come into Papeete with me, and meet her as though you'd only parted the day before yesterday."

Tatham remained silent and still for some time. "I wonder," he muttered presently, "I wonder if you're right."

As a matter of fact. Strode rather wondered himself. He had been forced to say something, and had said it, but—— The potentialities of that "but" sent cold shivers down his spine. These were in no way alleviated when Tatham took him at his word and accompanied him to Papeete a few days later.

It was a dreadful undertaking, but apart from his sympathy for the man, which had grown into actual liking, Strode felt that he owed as much to a kindly and generous host.

They took rooms at an obscure boarding-house, and one of the first things Tatham did was to go to a barber. The effect was indescribable. Instead of making him more like his photograph, the removal of his beard seemed to heighten the dissimilarity. Strode felt that he ought to be treating the whole affair as a joke, but never for an instant could he bring himself to do so. As the fatal day approached, he found himself becoming as nervous as his charge, and when it actually dawned Tatham was the calmer of the two. A sort of dumb resignation seemed to have settled upon him. He dressed with extreme care, and sat in a cane chair on the verandah most of the morning. Then, when the incoming steamer hove into view, he rose with extraordinary calm.

"I must be getting along," he said.

"Would you like me to come with you?" Strode suggested, at the same time hoping that his offer would be refused.

"Not on any account," said Tatham. "The rest's up to me. I've changed the plan of action a bit, but, I think, for the better."

"What are you going to do?" Strode could not help asking.

Tatham smiled his twisted smile. "As you seem to take such a kindly interest, I'll tell you. I find your idea of meeting as though we had only just parted impossible. I should be forcing myself on her, and that's the last thing I want to do." He squared his lean shoulders. "No, I'm going to put myself to the test. If she recognises me, well and good; if not——" He turned abruptly and strode down the avenue.

So that was the idea. Strode paced the verandah, trying to persuade himself that he was done with the whole affair. If a man chose to deliberately sacrifice his one chance of happiness on the altar of some crazy notion of ethics, let him do it. He deserved all he would get. Of course the girl wouldn't recognise him. Who would? And what then Strode asked himself several questions during the next five minutes, and answered them first by claiming that they were none of his business, then by snatching up a pair of binoculars and hurrying down to the "beach."

From a balcony overlooking the quay he witnessed the entire comedy at close range. He saw the usual "steamer day" crowd of variegated humanity, with Tatham sprouting from it like an ungainly growth taken root at the foot of the gangway. He saw passengers filing down to the quay, and the girl amongst them. There was no mistaking her. Through the glasses he could even se4 the set expression of her face as she walked clean past her statuesque fiancé, glanced about her, and hailed the nearest cab.

He saw no more at the moment because all his energies were centred on overtaking the decrepit vehicle, and when he did, perspiration rather clouded his vision. But the girl was there. He discerned her dimly, as through tears, staring at him in dumb amaze.

"Excuse me," he panted, "but weren't you to have been met by Mr. Tatham?"

It seemed to him that she nodded.

"He's ill," Strode plunged on; "nothing serious, but I came instead, and——"

Heaven knows what he said, but when he had said it the girl's voice came to him calm and distinct.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because Tatham's a friend of mine. Because——"

"But do you have to lie for him?" The voice was even calmer and more distinct. "If he was too ill to come, how is it that I saw him on the quay?"

"You saw him?"

"Certainly, standing at the foot of the gangway."

"You knew him?"

"Of course I knew him."

"Then why didn't you speak?"

The girl did not answer at once. Her lips were compressed as he glanced about her at the dusty road the overhanging flamboyants.

"Because," she said at last, "he didn't know me."

Under the stress of this amazing—yet, when he came to think of it, perfectly natural—conclusion on her part, Strode was stricken to silence.

"It's very kind of you to have done what you have," she went on, "and, as a friend of Jim's, I'm sure you'll see that it's best for both of us not to let him know that I came at all. I shall go back by the next boat."

"I don't think so," said Strode, "not when you've heard what I have to say."

"Please don't trouble," urged the girl. "Nothing anyone could say would alter things now. Can't you see what an impossible position I'm in? It was a terrible mistake. I should never have come." She gave a hard little laugh. "Four years is too long. A woman changes, and men's memories are short. I began to think of these things some time ago, and on the boat——"

"On the boat," Strode continued glibly, "the idea took such a hold that you decided to prove it one way or the other by letting Tatham recognise you first. If he did, well and good. If not——"

"You seem to know a great deal," murmured the girl.

"You see, I've been with Tatham nearly a month," said Strode, "and that was his idea, too."

He told her all.

••••••

The cab had some difficulty in turning on the narrow road, but finally accomplished the feat, and proceeded at a broken-kneed trot in the direction of an obscure boarding-house on the outskirts of Papeete.

Here it interrupted the packing operations of one of the guests by coming to a full stop under his window. He looked out, dropped a shirt as though it had been a red-hot coal, and a moment later was clattering down the verandah steps.

It was a most amazing cab.