The Adventure Megapack: 25 Classic Adventure Stories Page 9

  But what drew the sailor’s attention, what wiped the grin from his face and the warmth from his eyes, was the sight of a neat, bright nickel-steel revolver placed in a far corner of the shelf, half hidden behind a monstrosity of a devil-devil mask from Fiji.

  Slowly the sailor removed his pipe. He did not feel the hot bowl burn his hand. Nor did he hear the swish of skirts as Melita came softly behind him and started as she caught sight of the reflection of his savage face in the glass. His free hand went out and picked up the revolver, and he turned it over and over in his palm. Finally he held it muzzle down and looked at the initials carved on the bottom of the butt. He started violently as Melita touched his arm and swung round.

  “What is it?” she asked curiously.

  “Who gave you this?” he demanded savagely, his lips drawn back from his teeth. He rammed his pipe in his pocket and caught the woman’s shoulder. “Tell me!”

  Melita looked at the bright weapon, and then wonderingly at the sailor. “That was given me by Steinberger,” she said steadily. “He told me it had a history. I never found out what.”

  The sailor let go her shoulder with a bitter laugh, and slipped the revolver in his pocket. “History? Yes, it has a history.… Where does Steinberger live? Where can I find him? Who is he in the islands?”

  “Steinberger is a big trader and pearl buyer. He owns and commands the brig Atlantis.”

  “With a Medusa figurehead and scroll work all down the forefoot?” Melita nodded, her eyes wide with dread. “All right, go on.”

  “… and has a trading station at Funafuti Lagoon in the Ellice Islands.”

  “That’s enough for me,” said the sailor with an oath, and he strode toward the veranda, his face flushed with passion. Melita ran after him and caught at his sleeve.

  “Sit down for a moment. There’s something I want to say.” Her voice was cold and commanding. She, too, had a temper.

  The sailor halted, looked down at her, hesitated, and then slowly returned to the cushioned dais where the empty tea cups still stood. He dropped moodily down on crossed legs and picked up his cap. He had forgotten it before. Melita sank beside him.

  “I presume this Brietmann you spoke of is Steinberger,” commenced Melita abruptly, her fan resting on the sailor’s arm as though to hold him still. “I don’t know what lies between the two of you, but I can guess that Steinberger’s been up to some more of his deviltry.… Will you do something for me for the information you’ve got, in place of this ruby?”

  She brought the red stone to light and slipped it into the angry sailor’s palm. He looked at it stupidly for a moment, and then back at the woman. He commenced to say something, but changed his mind. He waited.

  “Will you?” the woman persisted.

  “Depends what it is,” the sailor muttered. “What is it? Yes, I’ll do it. Do anything out of gratitude for the information.”

  “Then listen!” And Melita told the other how Steinberger had abducted her sister. Melita could use language that cut like a knife, and the story she told was not pretty hearing the way she put it. The man almost forgot his own trouble. He saw the point at once.

  “You want your sister?” Melita nodded, and leaning back she opened her fan and slowly waved it to and fro. Her own cold passion had exhausted her. The sailor looked at her and then held out his hand.

  “That’s a bargain,” he said curtly. “Steinberger will have no use for women after I’ve seen him. If your sister is alive, you shall have her back. Expect me any time. Good bye!”

  He rose to his feet, jammed on his cap, and with a brief handshake was gone, leaping from the veranda in his haste and running down the pathway to where the boat lay waiting to take him aboard his ship. The clank of the anchor cable came up to the hotel through the breeze, and one by one the barque’s sails were hoisted. In two hours she was hull down and sailing fast.

  Melita dropped to the cushions when the sailor had gone, and she cried—she who had not cried in years. In her heart strange forces were stirring—forces that had lain dormant since her first lover had kissed her over the mission wall in Apia. Then, after a while, she rose and went out on the veranda to watch the barque running from the coast and from sight. Then she cried again and wished she were clean. Who was she to dream of love?

  It was not till nightfall, when the lamps were lit and the schooners from all the Pacific began to drop anchor off the Point, that Melita found the ruby Travers had left among the cushions. She wrapped it tight in its washleather bed and snuggled it close to her heart, torn with fears for the safety of the man she had only known for a brief hour.

  Not one of the captains guessed what was passing in the mind of the woman who laughed a little too freely, and who seemed to be in such a cynical mood when they jested with her that night.

  CHAPTER V

  OUTWARD BOUND

  Captain James Travers sat in his saloon beneath the poop deck of the Wanderer, and smoked in thoughtful silence. Occasionally he would unclasp his hands from behind his head and, removing his pipe, blow a cloud of smoke up at the lamp that swung uneasily in its gimbals directly above his head.

  Now that the first hot rage and exultation of his discovery had died, the sailor was very much at his ease, in spite of the uneasy pitch and chop of the deck as the barque lifted herself over the somewhat short swell and snorted into the trough and into the teeth of a brisk wind, for she was now close-hauled.

  His coat was flung over the bunk that stood against the after bulkhead, his cap was perched on a large inkwell that stood on the table, and near it his feet rested and were crossed. He was tilted back in a swivel chair, and his eyes were dreamily fixed on a point that certainly was not in the saloon. He had been sitting thus, reflectively, since the soft-footed Jap steward had removed the supper things and retired to the pantry, half hidden by the butt of the mizzen-mast that ran down through the forward portion of the poop deck.

  Travers was worried. He could not forget Melita. It was preposterous he should so persistently remember a woman he had seen for scarce an hour. He had sailed to Samoa expressly to meet a half-caste adventuress, whom, so men had told him, had knowledge of every sailor in the Pacific at her finger tips.

  Travers was usually distrustful of such women, on his guard against them when with them, and he had disliked the idea of enlisting the half-caste’s services. But the chance of picking up Brietmann’s trail, three years old from Fu Chow, had been very alluring, and the debt he had to pay for the death of the one-time mate of the Wanderer was long overdue.

  And because of these things Travers had run across the sea to Melita. And he had found not the coarse-lipped woman he had expected, but a passionate, cultured woman, albeit a bitter one. Toward him she had softened somewhat.

  He could think of that without conceit. For he had not tried to make love to her, to name conditions for his gifts. He was feeling strangely softened toward her himself. She must have had a hard life, and the world was, after all, a rotten place for a beautiful woman. They rubbed against more of the dirt than their plain sisters. They drew men, and the worst kind.

  Melita was beautiful; there was no doubt of that. And her skin was as fair as any white woman’s, for all her native blood. Not a trace of the kanaka in her, except for the big, dark eyes. It was her face Travers had been seeing for so many years, since he had been old enough to dream of romance. Such a face had disturbed his sleep time and again. The ideal woman! Every man has his ideal woman, and the face of Travers’ ideal was the face of Melita. Known her for an hour? He had known her for years! He sighed.

  He supposed he was in love. And he thought of the daisy-encircled cottage that every sailor thinks of when he thinks of marriage and love. The sea had been a hard mistress, but if she had led him to his woman the service had been fully repaid. He remembered, too, that men had said she had been no man’s woman since her return to the islands. Why should not the two of them start again, together? He smiled whimsically, and with sudden decision
swung his feet off the table. He was a creature of impulse to a very large extent.

  * * * *

  “Toby!” he called lazily. The soft-footed Jap steward appeared after a while, and stood before his captain. “Send the mate down here.”

  Without a word the steward padded away to the poop deck above, and presently the clatter of shoes on the companion that led from the saloon announced the mate’s arrival. He was a gray-haired man, very much tattooed about the hands, with a wrinkled parchment-like skin that gave the impression of great age, or a long time spent in the tropics. He was tall and very thin, and the corners of his big mouth drooped in a melancholy fashion under his fringe of moustache.

  He had once been the commander of a famous liner, but drink and recklessness had brought him down to take any job that offered among the trading ships of the seven seas. Travers had picked him up in Sydney when he had been broke, and had given him a chance to get on his feet again. He was a wonderful navigator, and knew most seas like a book, wherefore he was a useful man to have aboard.

  “Ever heard of Steinberger, Everett?”

  The mate thought for a moment, and, removing his cap, scratched his somewhat bald head. He frowned.

  “Seems I have. He’s a trader or something in these parts, sir.”

  “Yes, that’s so. We’re going to visit him. Mark off the course to the Ellice group, Everett; and then make Funafuti Lagoon.”

  “Yes, sir.” The mate turned to go, replacing his cap.

  “Oh, Everett!”

  “Sir.” The mate hesitated with one foot on the companion and turned half around.

  “I’m thinking of getting married!”

  “Married?”

  “Yes. Just thinking, you know.”

  “Oh, yes, sir.… Is that all, sir?”

  “That’s all.… Say, Everett, see if there’s any book in the chart room with the marriage service in it, will you?”

  “Very well, sir.” The mate whistled to himself as he went upon the poop and faced the battering wind. He wondered. Travers grinned to himself, swung his feet on to the table again, and went on dreaming.

  CHAPTER VI

  CAPTURED

  Steinberger was at home at Funafuti. The Wanderer swept into the great lagoon, and came to anchor about a quarter of a mile from the shore. The Atlantis lay beached some half a mile away, and a crowd of natives were busily engaged in scraping from her hull the foot-long grasses and the clotted barnacles from her scanty keel. Travers looked at the brig through his glasses and swore harshly.

  “Medusa figurehead and scroll work all down the forefoot,” he muttered. “Breitmann changed her name, but he couldn’t change her markings. Swine!”

  The mate came from for’ard after letting go the anchor, and crossed the poop to his captain. “Going ashore, sir?”

  Travers nodded as he dropped the glasses back into the rack. He felt in his pocket to make sure he was armed. “Lower away the port boat. And, Everett … if anything happens to me, you’ll find a letter in my room that’ll tell you what to do.”

  The gray-haired, wise mate looked at his superior sharply. “Perhaps you’d like to take some of the men with you, sir,” he suggested. “They like you well enough to stand by you.”

  Travers shook his head. “This is a private quarrel, Everett. I’d rather not have witnesses.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” And the mate touched his cap and turned obediently away to see that the boat was lowered.

  The beach was a thing to wonder at, a magnificent sweeping curve, nine miles from tip to tip. Among the groves of coco-palms that fringed the sand could be seen the huts of the principal village. A few frigate birds were lazily sailing above the lagoon. Other life, except for those careening the brig, there was none. Funafuti brooded drowsily beneath the hot breath of noon.

  Leaving the boat waiting in the shallows, with orders to push on if he did not return within an hour, Travers walked along the path that led to the trader’s house set in a grove of jack-fruit trees, that themselves nestled among a denser grove of palms. His face was set and ugly to look upon, and his right hand rested inside his pocket gripping something hard and cold.

  He was still dressed in the light blue serge he affected, disliking the white duck most ship’s officers wore, and his peaked cap was still set back on his head, exposing the wavy hair.

  Clear to the door of the trader’s house Travers went, and with a thrust of his foot swung it open and entered, to find himself in a high-ceilinged room, large and square, with native mats on the floor, an iron bed with the usual mosquito drape in one corner, large square holes in the walls in place of windows, and other doors leading to rooms here and there.

  A tall, slender girl was busily engaged in cleaning a large bore sporting rifle to one side of a plain deal table, on which lay cloths and various bottles of oil and jars of grease. She looked up startled as Travers entered and placed her finger to her lips.

  One of Steinberger’s numerous wives, Travers thought, a trifle grimly. She was a beauty in her way, olive-skinned, big-eyed and black-haired, like most of the island women. Travers politely lifted his cap, though the action was not usual with natives. Sympathetically, he noted the black bruises on the slender wrists, and the angry red weal across the bare breast. It was too plain that Steinberger still remembered some things about his Fatherland.

  With a murmured greeting the girl rose from her knees, and again placing her finger to her lips glanced across the room, part of which was hidden from Travers by reason of the open door.

  Travers closed the door and looked around. Steinberger was hunched up in a long cane chair, dressed only in his pyjamas and snoring gently. A two-days’ growth of beard colored his pink, big-pored face, and an empty “square-face” bottle on the table near the oil bottles showed how he spent his time.

  His hands were clasped across his swelling stomach, and his double chin rested on his chest. Travers looked at him long and intently, for he had never seen the face before, and he could not tell after all the years whether the heavy shoulders were the same that he had seen in the saloon of the Wanderer that night of fever, death and of anger in Lorenço Marques, Delagoa Bay.

  Travers savagely kicked the sleeping man’s shins, while the native girl moaned with terror. She expected the stranger to be annihilated for his presumption.

  With a tremendous start the sleeping man awoke. He sucked in his breath sharply, brushed a fat hand across his eyes, and scrambled to his feet. Travers was an inch shorter than the German, and he seemed completely dwarfed. Steinberger glared.

  “Who the blazes are you? Did you kick me?” he demanded wrathfully, half raising his hand. Travers gritted his teeth, and jammed the muzzle of the revolver he had been nursing into the German’s paunch.

  “Keep your confounded mouth shut and sit down,” he grated harshly. “I want to talk with you. My name’s Travers—Captain James Travers, brother to William Travers.”

  Steinberger collapsed back in his chair as though he had been shot. In his agitation he swore in German, and started suddenly to tremble.

  “Gott in himmel! I … you … why, are you … What do you want?”

  Travers lowered his revolver and stepped back a little. He drew up a chair and sat down, his eyes never leaving the German’s face. After a moment, during which nothing could be heard save the quick breathing of the men and the low moaning of the native girl, Travers laid down the revolver on the table at his side. Steinberger snarled and turned his head.

  “Stop that whining! Gott! Get out of here!” The native girl shrank back against the wall, but did not speak. Steinberger turned to Travers again. His thick lips were working frightfully, and his fat hands gripped and let loose of the chair arms alternately, the cane squeaking as it was so kneaded. Travers laughed—not a pleasant sound to hear.

  “I need not ask if you are Steinberger,” he commenced. “But the time I want to talk to you about is a time when you went by the name of Brietmann. Remember it?”


  The other man controlled himself with an effort, and a crafty gleam appeared in his eyes. The chair arms squeaked under their kneading.

  “What are you talking about? Are you mad? Brietmann? Who is he? I am Steinberger, and anyone in the islands will vouch for me.”

  “So you deny you were once known as Brietmann—Brietmann who had a half share in and sailed the big Hamburg, the ship you now call the Atlantis?”

  “Of course I am not Brietmann! I’m Steinberger, as you’ll find out when I have you arrested for pulling a gun on me in my own house.”

  “Then perhaps you will explain this,” said, Travers softly, his eyes narrowing to slits. He motioned towards the nickel-steel revolver on the table. “You’ll find the initials ‘W. T.’ on the butt.… No, you needn’t try and look. You’re not getting your hands on that gun.… ‘W. T.,’ you understand? You gave that gun to Melita, boasting it had a history. It has. It’s going to have a further history. It’s going to kill you!”

  “Donner und blitzen! You are mad!” In his excitement the man forgot his carefully cultivated English. “Vat for you want to kill me? Vat do I know of your brother?—did you not say he was your brother? I mean—Himmel! … Why you look so? Dis is a plot—vat you call a trap, eh? Melita send you to get her sister, an’ you make up this excuse. Vat do I know of Travers?”

  “Sound like an innocent man, don’t you, Brietmann? That night you came aboard the Wanderer, thinking all hands were ashore except my brother, I was lying sick with fever in the next cabin. You didn’t know that, did you? If you had you’d have come and killed me.… You stole my brother’s wife, you swine, and then you had to come and try to get the little money Bill was saving for her. You have nerve all right, Brietmann; I’ll say that. To come and tell Bill you had ruined his wife and wanted her legacy from her father. You banked on Bill being a cripple, didn’t you? … Lucky for you I wasn’t on my feet that night—and you knew you were the stronger man.