LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER 6

       THE EVIL-LOOKING BOATMEN

       Table of Contents

      But the islanders, seeing I was really adrift, took pity on me. I drifted very slowly to the eastward, approaching the island slantingly, and presently I saw with hysterical relief the launch come round and return towards me. She was heavily laden, and as she drew near I could make out Montgomery’s white-haired broad-shouldered companion sitting cramped up with the dogs and several packing-cases in the stern sheets. This individual stared fixedly at me without moving or speaking. The blackfaced cripple was glaring at me as fixedly in the bows near the puma. There were three other men besides, strange brutish-looking fellows, at whom the staghounds were snarling savagely. Montgomery, who was steering, brought the boat by me and, rising, caught and fastened my painter to the tiller to tow me — for there was no room aboard.

      I had recovered from my hysterical phase by this time, and answered his hail as he approached bravely enough. I told him the dinghy was near swamped, and he reached me a piggin. I was jerked back as the rope tightened between the boats. For some time I was busy baling.

      It was not until I had got the water under — for the water in the dinghy had been shipped, the boat was perfectly sound — that I had leisure to look at the people in the launch again.

      The white-haired man, I found, was still regarding me steadfastly, but with an expression, as I now fancied, of some perplexity. When my eyes met his he looked down at the staghounds that sat between his knees. He was a powerfully built man, as I have said, with a fine forehead and rather heavy features; but his eyes had that odd drooping of the skin above the lids that often comes with advancing years, and the fall of his heavy mouth at the corners gave him an expression of pugnacious resolution. He talked to Montgomery in a tone too low for me to hear. From him my eyes travelled to his three men, and a strange crew they were. I saw only their faces, yet there was something in their faces — I knew not what — that gave me a spasm of disgust. I looked steadily at them, and the impression did not pass, though I failed to see what had occasioned it. They seemed to me then to be brown men, but their limbs were oddly swathed in some thin dirty white stuff down even to the fingers and feet. I have never seen men so wrapped up before, and women so only in the East. They wore turbans, too, and thereunder peered out their elfin faces at me, faces with protruding lower jaws and bright eyes. They had lank black hair almost like horsehair, and seemed, as they sat, to exceed in stature any race of men I have seen. The white-haired man, who I knew was a good six feet in height, sat a head below any one of the three. I found afterwards that really none were taller than myself, but their bodies were abnormally long and the thigh-part of the leg short and curiously twisted. At any rate they were an amazingly ugly gang, and over the heads of them, under the forward lug, peered the black face of the man whose eyes were luminous in the dark.

      As I stared at them they met my gaze, and then first one and then the other turned away from my direct stare and looked at me in an odd furtive manner. It occurred to me that I was perhaps annoying them, and I turned my attention to the island we were approaching.

      It was low, and covered with thick vegetation, chiefly of the inevitable palm-trees. From one point a thin white thread of vapour rose slantingly to an immense height, and then frayed out like a down feather. We were now within the embrace of a broad bay flanked on either hand by a low promontory. The beach was of a dull grey sand, and sloped steeply up to a ridge, perhaps sixty or seventy feet above the sea-level, and irregularly set with trees and undergrowth. Halfway up was a square stone enclosure that I found subsequently was built partly of coral and partly of pumiceous lava. Two thatched roofs peeped from within this enclosure.

      A man stood awaiting us at the water’s edge. I fancied, while we were still far off, that I saw some other and very grotesque-looking creatures scuttle into the bushes upon the slope, but I saw nothing of these as we drew nearer. This man was of a moderate size, and with a black negroid face. He had a large, almost lipless mouth, extraordinary, lank arms, long thin feet and bow legs, and stood with his heavy face thrust forward staring at us. He was dressed like Montgomery and his white-haired companion, in jacket and trousers of blue serge.

      As we came still nearer, this individual began to run to and fro on the beach, making the most grotesque movements. At a word of command from Montgomery the four men in the launch sprang up with singular awkward gestures and struck the lugs. Montgomery steered us round and into a narrow little dock excavated in the beach. Then the man on the beach hastened towards us. This dock, as I call it, was really a mere ditch just long enough at this phase of the tide to take the long-boat.

      I heard the bows ground in the sand, staved the dinghy off the rudder of the big boat with my piggin, and, freeing the painter, landed. The three muffled men, with the clumsiest movements, scrambled out upon the sand, and forthwith set to landing the cargo, assisted by the man on the beach. I was struck especially with the curious movements of the legs of the three swathed and bandaged boatmen — not stiff they were, but distorted in some odd way, almost as if they were jointed in the wrong place. The dogs were still snarling, and strained at their chains after these men, as the white-haired man landed with them.

      The three big fellows spoke to one another in odd gutteral tones, and the man who had waited for us on the beach, began chattering to them excitedly — a foreign language, as I fancied — as they laid handss on some bales piled near the stern. Somewhere I had heard such a voice before, and I could not think where. The white-haired man stood holding in a tumult of six dogs and bawling orders over their din. Montgomery, having unshipped the rudder, landed likewise, and all set to work unloading. I was too faint, what with my long fast and the sun beating down on my bare head, to offer any assistance.

      Presently the white-haired man seemed to recollect my presence, and came up to me. `You look,’ said he, `as though you had not breakfasted.’

      His little eyes were a brilliant black under his heavy brows. `I must apologise for that. Now you are our guest, we must make you comfortable — though you are uninvited, you know.’

      He looked keenly into my face. `Montgomery says you are an educated man, Mr Prendick — says you know something of science. May I ask what that signifies?’

      I told him I had spent some years at the Royal College of Science, and had done some research in biology under Huxley. He raised his eyebrows slightly at that.

      `That alters the case a little, Mr Prendick,’ he said, with a trifle more respect in his manner. `As it happens, we are biologists here. This is a biological station — of a sort.’ His eye rested on the men in white, who were busily hauling the puma, on rollers, towards the walled yard. `I and Montgomery, at least,’ he added.

      Then, `When you will be able to get away, I can’t say. We’re off the track to anywhere. We see a ship once in a twelvemonth or so.’

      He left me abruptly and went up the beach past this group, and, I think, entered the enclosure. The other two men were with Montgomery erecting a pile of smaller packages on a low-wheeled truck. The llama was still on the launch with the rabbit-hutches; the staghounds still lashed to the thwarts. The pile of things completed, all three men laid hold of the truck, and began shoving the ton-weight or so upon it after the puma. Presently Montgomery left them, and, coming back to me, held out his hand.

      `I’m glad,’ said he, `for my own part. That captain was a silly ass. He’d have made things lively for you.’

      `It was you,’ said I, `that saved me again.’

      `That depends. You’ll find this island an infernally rum place, I promise you. I’d watch my goings carefully if I were you. He — ‘ He hesitated, and seemed to alter his mind about what was on his lips. `I wish you’d help me with these rabbits,’ he said.

      His procedure with the rabbits was singular. I waded in with him and helped him lug one of the hutches ashore. No sooner was that done than he opened the door of it, and tilting the thing on one end, turned its living contents out on the ground. They fell in

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