Chương Chương 7 · THE EVIL-LOOKING BOATMEN.

. THE EVIL-LOOKING BOATMEN.

But the islanders, seeing that 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 I could make out as she

drew nearer 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 black-faced cripple was glaring at me as fixedly in the

bows near the puma. There were three other men besides,—three 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 dingey was

nearly 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 dingey

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 staghound 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 which 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 queer 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 another 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 a kind of palm,

that was new to me. 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 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. Half way up

was a square enclosure of some greyish stone, which 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, and with singularly awkward gestures 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 longboat. I heard the bows ground in the sand, staved the

dingey 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 by 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

guttural 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 hands 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 at 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 scarcely 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 researches 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 twelve-month 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 were 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 a struggling heap one

on the top of the other. He clapped his hands, and forthwith they went

off with that hopping run of theirs, fifteen or twenty of them I should

think, up the beach.

“Increase and multiply, my friends,” said Montgomery. “Replenish the

island. Hitherto we’ve had a certain lack of meat here.”

As I watched them disappearing, the white-haired man returned with a

brandy-flask and some biscuits. “Something to go on with, Prendick,”

said he, in a far more familiar tone than before. I made no ado, but

set to work on the biscuits at once, while the white-haired man helped

Montgomery to release about a score more of the rabbits. Three big

hutches, however, went up to the house with the puma. The brandy I did

not touch, for I have been an abstainer from my birth.