The Joss: A Reversion/Chapter 31
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE TERMINATION OF THE VOYAGE OF "THE FLYING SCUD"
We had been completely done. So completely that it was some time before I was able to realise that I had been diddled quite to that extent. Not a detail had been overlooked. Mr. Batters and Mr. Luke had gone conscientiously to work. They had been thorough. They had left us the ship. That was about all. They would probably have taken that if they had had any use for it. It seemed they hadn’t. If I could only have laid hands on that latest thing in freaks, there would have been one Joss less. I would willingly have made a Joss of Luke if I had only had a chance. To have boiled, burned, and skinned him would have been a pleasure. He should not only have been legless, he should have been armless too. As for that girl, who didn’t want to go to a place where there were any wives, she should have become acquainted with a climate where there was something less agreeable.
That was how I felt towards her at first. But after a while I came to the conclusion that she had been under the domination of her father. Hadn’t dared to call her soul her own. So anger turned to pity. I would just simply take her to a place where there were wives. I’d let her know what it felt like to be one. That would be punishment enough for her.
As for Luke and Batters! What wouldn’t I have given for a quiet half hour with the pair, with boiling oil, branding irons, and everything just handy.
Mr. Luke must have stowed pretty well all our eatable stores inside that cutter. As first mate, under peculiar circumstances, I had let him do, in some respects, a good deal as he pleased. He had had the run of the stores. He had not gone far from collaring the lot. It seemed that certain of the hands had noticed him fiddling a good deal with the cutter of late. Especially when he had been in charge of either of the night watches. But, of course, they had said nothing to me till it was too late, which was a pity.
Mr. Batters had taken with him all the treasures of the temple. Those offerings of the faithful, half of which were to have been mine. No wonder he had not been of opinion that they would have been safer in my cabin. And he pledged his word that he would make it his especial business to see that not one of them left the ship until he did. That elegant monster which he valued at £50,000 had gone. Even the palanquin. Oh, it was pretty!
Mr. Luke had made everything snug by generously treating the members of the morning watch to a little drink directly they came on duty. That drink was no doubt one of Mr. Batters’ concoctions. They remembered no more so soon as they swallowed it. So for four hours Mr. Luke had the deck to himself. No watch was kept. The wheel was lashed. The cutter was filled with the treasures of the temple, then lowered. Goodness and Mr. Luke alone know how. And it must be remembered that Mr. Batters was an ingenious man.
It was reported from the engine room that the order was received to “Go slow.” Probably while The Flying Scud went slow the cutter was cast loose, with Mr. Batters and the girl inside it. Shortly afterwards the order was changed to “Full steam ahead.” The inference seems to be that immediately after giving that order the ingenious Mr. Luke went overboard to join the cutter. And The Flying Scud went full steam ahead, with no one on the look-out. Under the circumstances, it was, perhaps, just as well that the engines did break down.
It’s an elegant story for the commander of a ship to have to write. Especially one with a clean certificate, and of sober habits. There we were, without engines, without coal, without stores, without enough cargo to act as ballast, about half-way between Aden and Colombo. We were a mad ship’s company. For my own part I felt like cutting any man’s throat, including my own. All that day we hung about, doing nothing, except cursing.
Towards night, the engines proving hopeless, we rigged a sail. There was just about enough wind to laugh at us. So we let it laugh us along. There was no Canal for us. The man who was to have paid our shot had gone—the shot with him. So we headed for the Cape. The long way round was the only way for us. Engineless, the prospect was inviting.
There is no need to speak in detail of the remainder of that voyage, no need at all. In one sense it was over—quite. In another it was only just beginning. I won’t say how long it took us to reach home or what we suffered before we got there. And will only hint that by the time we sighted English waters, I felt as if I was a twin brother of Methuselah’s. We hadn’t walked the entire distance, but we might almost just as well have done.
It was evening when I landed. There was a mist in the river. A drizzling rain was falling. Appropriate weather with which to bid us welcome home. The lights of London gleamed dimly through the fog and wet. So soon as I had set foot on land I saw, coming at me through the uncertain light, the individual who, as he stood with his friends upon that moonlit shore, had cursed us for bearing the Great Joss to the ship across the motionless waters of the Gulf of Tongking.
Since that night we had ourselves anathematised someone else for serving us as we had served him.
I had only seen him once, and then from some little distance in the moonshine, but there was no possibility of mistaken identity. This was the man. He was dressed in the same fantastic garb, and came at me like a ghost out of shadowland. He took me by the shoulders, and he cried—as he had done upon that moon-kissed shore:—
“The Great Joss! The Great Joss! Give us back the Great Joss!”
Exactly what took place I cannot say. I was so taken aback by the unexpectedness of the encounter—having never dreamed that I should set eyes upon the man again—that, for some moments, sheer surprise robbed me of my faculties. Before I was myself again, the man had gone. Others had thrust him from me. Although I rushed here and there among the people who stood about I could not find him. He had vanished.
I had swallowed a good many bitter pills since last I left that wharf—the bitterest was still to come. I had to pay my visit to the owners. On the night of my arrival it was too late to see them. The pleasure was postponed to the morning. It was a pleasure!
I came out from their presence a disgraced man. Which was no more than I had expected, though it was no easier to bear on that account. The blame was wholly mine. So they would have it. For some of the language which they used to me I found it hard to keep my hands from off them. My tale of the Great Joss, and of all that I had hoped to gain for them by that adventure, they received with something more than incredulity. If the thing had resulted as I had hoped, that they would have pocketed their share of the spoils, and betrayed no scruples, I knew them too well to doubt. But because, as I held, through no fault of mine, the affair had miscarried, there was no epithet too opprobrious for them to bestow on me. By their showing I had been guilty of all sorts of crimes of which I had never heard. I had betrayed their trust; smirched their good name—as if in the eyes of those who knew them it could be smirched; been guilty of piracy; acted like a common thief; offended against the law of nations; brought shame on England’s mercantile marine.
Oh, it was grand to hear them talking! They might have been saints from whose brows I had plucked the halos. They were good enough to explain that it was only because they disbelieved my entire story, and placed no credence in any part of it whatever, that they refrained from handing me over to the properly constituted authorities, to be by them passed on to the Chinese Government, to be dealt with as my offences merited. They took me for a jay. And were so kind as to add that they looked upon the tale as a clumsy, dishonest, and disingenuous attempt to draw a red herring across their track—the phrase was theirs!—and so prevented them from taking proper and adequate notice of the scandalous neglect of duty, and of their interests, of which, to my lasting shame, I had been guilty.
It was a rare wigging that I had. And, to the best of their ability, they included in it everyone who had been with me on board The Flying Scud. There were four of us, at least, who swore that we’d be even for it with someone somehow. Isaac Rudd, Sam Holley, his chum, Bill Cox, and I; we were the four.
And all we had to go upon, to help us towards getting even, was a scrap of paper. Half a sheet of common note.
It was the only thing Mr. Batters had left behind him. I had found it in a corner of his cabin, crumpled up into a sort of ball, as though he had thrown it there and forgotten all about it. On it this was written:
“To my niece, Miss Mary Blyth, care of Messrs. Martin and Branxon, Drapers, Shoreditch.”
We would look the lady up. Where the niece was the uncle might not be far away. At least she might have some knowledge of his whereabouts. If she had we would have it too, or know the reason why. I still had the written undertaking, which he had signed, by which he was to divide with me equally, as a consideration for services rendered, the treasures of the temple. I had handed this to the owners as proof of the truth of my statements. They had thrown it back to me with a sneer. And something worse than a sneer.
That act amounted to a renunciation of all interest in any property which the document conveyed, or so it seemed to me. Good! They might smart for their scepticism yet. Let us find the niece; then the uncle. If Miss Blyth could only give us a hint as to where he might be found, though it was on the other side of the world, we’d find him. He had valued his belongings at a million. We might be snatched out of the gutter yet.
The search began badly. They knew nothing of a Miss Blyth at Messrs. Martin and Branxon’s, or so I was informed by an official individual in the counting-house. That was a facer. It looked as if Mr. Batters, at his tricks again, had purposely placed in our way what seemed like a clue to his lair for the sake of having still another game with us. But a night or two afterwards I tackled a young fellow as he was coming out of the shop after closing hours, and put my question to him. He turned it over in his mind before he answered.
“There’s no Miss Blyth here now, but there was. I believe her name was Mary. I could soon find out. She’s left some time; directly after I came. I can’t think where she went. I’ve heard the name, but I can’t remember. I might inquire if you like, and let you know to-morrow night.”
I agreed. He did inquire. The next night he let me know. Miss Blyth had gone to a big shop, which he named, at Clapham. The next day, being engaged, I let Rudd go over to Clapham to see what he could do.
He made a mess of things. The lady was pointed out to him by one of her fellow assistants. Before he could get within hail of her, she slipped round a corner and was out of sight. Came across her again in a restaurant where she couldn’t pay her bill. Paid it for her. Then, as he was about to follow her, with a view of pursuing his inquiries, he saw, standing on the pavement in front of the place, the individual who had cursed us on that moonlit shore.
The sight of him struck Rudd all of a heap. By the time he recovered his presence of mind, the lady had vanished, and the gentleman too.
The juxtaposition of Miss Blyth and that cursing gentleman seemed to suggest that we were on the track of the retiring Mr. Batters. What is more, that the scent was getting hot.
The evening after I called at that Clapham establishment, just as the premises were being closed, and asked to see Miss Blyth. Some jackanapes informed me that the young woman had been dismissed that very day. He didn’t know what her address was, but had heard that she had gone off with a party who called himself Frank Paine, and who said he was a lawyer.
At that it was my turn to be struck all of a heap. A short time previously I had called upon Mr. Frank Paine, intending to ask his opinion as to the validity of the document which had Mr. Batters’ name attached. But, somehow, the conversation got into other channels. I came away without it. Not by so much as a word had he hinted that he knew anything about Mr. Batters or his niece.
As I walked along, pondering these things, Rudd, at my side, suddenly exclaimed:
“Captain, there she is! that’s Miss Blyth! the young lady for whom I paid the bill!”
He was pointing towards two young women who were advancing in our direction, on the opposite side of the road. Having got it clear to which of the pair he referred, I sailed across to meet them. She was Miss Blyth. She admitted as much. But that was all the satisfaction I received. She staggered me with the information that her uncle, Mr. Benjamin Batters, was dead. As I was trying to understand how he had come to his death, and when, and where, she took umbrage at my curiosity, or manner, or something. She and her friend jumped into a hansom cab, which dashed off at the rate of about twenty miles, leaving Rudd and I on the kerbstone, staring after it like moonstruck gabies.