Perhaps it was Jack Barry's own fault that he had spent three weeks loafing about Batavia without a job. Fat jobs were to be had, if a fellow persevered and could grin at rebuffs; but when he discovered that shore jobs for sailors were usually secured through the Consulate, and that his own country's Consulate Service was limited, as service, to cocktails and financial reports to Washington, he decided to avoid that combination and stick to his own profession. He had been mate of the Gregg, when that ancient ark foundered off Kebatu, and also held a clean master's ticket; but somehow he found that masters and mates were a drug on the Batavian market just then; hence his three barren weeks of idleness.
"An American has no business with the sea these days," he reflected moodily. "Confound this stodgy port and its stodgy Dutchmen!"
Legs wide apart, hands thrust deep into his pockets, he puffed fiercely at his pipe and surveyed the scene before him. He stood on the gigantic quay overlooking the seething activity of the inner Tandjong Priok harbor, and beyond this stretched the two monster jetties and the outer port. Eyeing the trading craft that lined the quays, Barry frowned and cursed his luck afresh.
He did not notice a man coming up behind him, who now stood scrutinizing him admiringly from top to toe.
"Hullo, my noble American sailorman!" The voice at his back brought Barry around with a jerk. He glimpsed a figure which might have stepped direct from Bond Street or Fifth Avenue—natty, trim, wide-shouldered. Under a soft panama hat a keen, shrewd face smiled so infectiously that the disgruntled seaman smiled back in spite of his grouch.
"Well, what of it?" he demanded. "Might as well be a wooden Indian in this one-hoss town."
The other advanced with extended hand. His eyes narrowed in appreciation of Barry's sturdy, powerful frame and clean-cut face.
"Spotted you right off the bat, hey? My name's Tom Little. Glad to know you," he greeted.
"Barry—Jack Barry," returned the sailor.
Their hands met, and in the grip each recognized in the other no mere wastrel of Eastern ports, but a man of energy, virility.
"Sailor from sailortown, I'll bet," smiled Little. "Hey? Splice th' mainbrace!—Heave-ho, me bullies!—all that stuff, hey? How about it?"
"You win," laughed Barry, amused at his new acquaintance's conversational powers. "But I'm a rat in a strange garret here. Nothing doing. Can't get a ship for love or lucre."
"I knew it," Little nodded. "Look as if you'd lost your last copper cash and wanted to join the Socialist Party. But tell me; is this straight? D' you really want a job?"
"Have another," parried Barry. "D' you need a skipper?"
"Who—me?" Little began to roll a smoke, chuckling happily. "I'm a typewriter salesman," he said, "or was, until last night. I quit the job." He watched Barry keenly while lighting his smoke, then suddenly asked: "Where d' you hail from, Barry?"
"Salem, where the sailors used to come from," growled Barry. He was disgusted again, sensing simply another waste of time in Little's manner. Little saw the change of expression, and puffed silently awhile.
"Look here," he remarked presently, "I've sold typewriters for two years, from the Ditch to Nagasaki, and from the land o' rubies clear to the land of apes, and I'm doggone sick of toting literary sausage grinders around. I see a chance to horn in on a prospect that's sure to pay exes and maybe pan out a pile, but I need a good man of your profession in with me. How about you?"
"I'd jump into anything clean," asserted Barry promptly. "But what's the golden hoodle?"
"A brigantine and sealed orders," grinned Little, with an air of mock mystery. "Are you a sure-enough skipper, though?"
Barry nodded, then turned. Along the wharves were junks, island schooners, cargo tramps, and riffraff of the Seven Seas, but only one brigantine. It was an uncommon rig in the port. The craft lay far down the quay, and even at that distance looked old and desolate.
"That?" he asked, pointing.
"Good eye," chuckled Little admiringly. "How d' ye guess?"
"She's the only brigantine in the port. … "
"Oh, glory! Real story-book salt, hey? Show you a hunk o' wood, and you'll tell me the family history of the skipper of the hooker it came out of, hey? Barry, you're all to the mustard!"
Little clapped him on the shoulder, and Barry gazed into his snapping black eyes for a moment.
"Mr. Little," he said quietly, "if you're always as easy in your choice of men you're not the wise owl I thought you at first sight."
"Me? Good guesser, that's all," returned Little, unrebuked. "Think I'm an easy mark, hey? Muggins from Muggsville? Come again, Barry. Beg pardon, Cap'n Barry, I should say. Haul th' bowline! Jack up th' fo'c'sle yard! See, I'm also a tarry shellback way down deep."
Barry laughed outright. It was impossible to maintain a frown or a doubt in the salesman's breezy presence. "Just what is your proposition?" he asked at length.
"Sh! Clap a stopper on your jaw-tackle!" Again that air of mock mystery came into Little's face. "Say, d' you know old Cornelius Houten?"
"Heard of a trader by that tally. Don't know him."
"Same man," Little nodded. "Only one like him. Known him a long time. Sold him a parcel of machines for his Government. He's a queer old duck. Made me a proposition last night. Millions in it. Chucked up my job by cable right away. Sorry this morning, though. Like a dream. I wanted to hunt up a fellow who could put me wise on binnacles and charts and things like that. Get me?"
"As far as you've gone," chuckled Barry.
"Well, Houten likes my style. Thinks I can do this job as well as I sold typewriters. I like you, too. See the drift? Come to his office with me and give the thing the once over. If you say O.K., you come in on it, and we'll sign up right away. I told Houten I was going to find a man."
Barry eyed the other quizzically. Liking Tom Little at first sight, he liked him more now.
"You're putting a lot of faith in a stranger," he warned.
Little cut him short. "Cut out the cackle and talk hoss," was the retort. "I size up men first pop. My bet's down now on your blue eye. Let's get a rig. I don't know a darn thing about this part of the world except the drummers' hotels. But Houten takes a chance on me. And if I'm his blue-eyed boy, you're mine. I'm taking a chance without a qualm, Barry."
Little passed an arm through his companion's, and they turned towards the railroad station. As they picked out a sadoe from among the waiting vehicles, Barry strove desperately to recover a grip on himself. He had been all but swept off his feet by Little's cheery optimism and breezy confidence. Jack Barry was also accustomed to sizing up men quickly. Despite the typewriter salesman's slangy, easy-going way, he saw underneath a man shrewd, efficient, utterly dependable. And as the sadoe rattled at the heels of the tiny Timor pony along the wide avenue, past the dirt-choked canals of the old port, he fell into rosy, perhaps premature, dreams of the future. Little awakened him with rapid-fire speech.
"Selling typewriters out here is easy. Like getting rid of pink lemonade at a kid's party," chattered the salesman. "Was doing a wildfire business. Chucked the job clean, on Houten's face. Imagine how he struck me to make me do that." Perhaps thirty seconds of silence—a long silence for Little—then, "How'd you get stranded, Barry?"
Barry told of the foundering of the Gregg, and though the recital was in the plainest of sailorese terms, Little's eyes popped in amazement.
"Holy smoke! You've been shipwrecked? Floating around in an open boat? Didn't believe it was done, except in Perilous Polly Feature Fillum Bunk! Ph-e-ew!" and Little relapsed into a real, awed silence.
They passed into old Batavia, amid its swamps and silted canals. Further along lay Welterreden, the new city, with its magnificent avenues and residences; but the business in hand lay in the older section. Here, among clustering mangroves, huge rooted and malarial, Chinese and native kampongs huddled in the shadow of decaying ruins. Here was a deserted city, with jungle creeping over Dutch waterways and red-brick houses, whose quaint gables and leaded windows spoke of eighteenth-century Holland rather than of twentieth-century Java. One involuntarily looked for windmills. A few of the old houses were still occupied as offices, and at one of these, where a native kampong nestled and stank beneath the rank shrubbery to one side, the sadoe drew up.
"Houten's," announced Little, recovering speech. Bidding the sadoe driver wait, he led Barry inside the office.
A Javanese boy bowed them into a room where nothing was in evidence save a punkah, a giant porcelain stove, a huge desk and chair, and a monster man. Cornelius was fleshy to enormity. He was very like a mammoth but benevolent spider. Wealthy as he was fat, while many men had cursed him, many more had blessed him. His business interests were wide and complex, reached into many fields, and usually came to a good end. Also, to be the accredited agent of Cornelius Houten was in itself a recommendation as to probity and worth greatly to be desired. Rarely did his judgment err; the men who had failed to measure up to his estimate of them were extremely few.
He acknowledged Barry with a grunt to Little's introduction, and motioned his visitors to two chairs silently produced by the Javanese boy. He sat in ponderous silence for a space, his piggy eyes dwelling on Barry with steel-point steadiness, his great hands resting idly on the desk before him. Then he spoke—in thick, heavy English.
"Good man. You will command my Barang, Captain Barry?"
"Not too swift, Mynheer," chimed in Little. "Run over the business again for Barry, hey? Give him a chance to kick."
Houten maintained his steady gaze. "You have master's papers, of course, Captain Barry?"
Barry produced his certificate and discharges and laid them on the desk. Houten glanced through them and pushed them back with a nod. Then his gaze switched to Little.
"You can tell him," he said, and Little leaped at the chance to talk again.
"This is it," the ex-salesman began eagerly. He watched Houten incessantly for hint or encouragement. "Houten made one of his rare miscues on a man, Barry. One time in a thousand. Englishman, name of Gordon. Manager of a trading post in Celebes. Gordon sends back small parcels of trade but sends a lot of gold dust to a fellow in Surabaya—old capital of Java, y' know.
"Evidently Gordon has located a gold-bearing river on the concession and is swiping the dust. Tells Mynheer a lot of lies to quiet him, Houten wants me to ferret out this Surabaya duck, get the hang o' things, then go out after Mister Gordon, chop-chop. You know—not the dust, but the principle of the thing, et cetera. Millions for justice but not a plugged Straits dollar for graft. Catch on?"
"Why not invoke the law? No lack of it here, I understand," put in Barry innocently. Houten's vast frame shook with a silent chuckle.
"Go on," he gurgled. "Captain Barry is no fool."
"Act two—curtain!" Little complied quickly. "Surabaya chap is called Leyden, half Dutch, half English. Trader of sorts, see? Well, Leyden is bound for Celebes right now; hunt up the source of supplies, y' know. Up the Sandang River, where the post is, there's a missionary outfit that Houten is interested in. One of the Mission lot is a girl, and Leyden has boasted openly he's going to make a hit with the little frock. Houten aims to empty Gordon out, euchre Leyden, and give the good Mission people an object lesson on bad men in general, with Leyden as the horrible example. Savvee? Sure you do."
Barry eyed Houten in some perplexity. Knowing little of the man, he was more than slightly suspicious of this tale.
"I gather your intention is to interfere between this girl and Leyden more than anything else," he remarked slowly. "Well, frankly, I'd like to know why. It doesn't sound any nicer than the usual man-and-woman affair out East. It's too altruistic."
Houten's steady eyes seemed to fire Little to further explanation.
"Not a bit, Barry," Little went on warmly. "This fellow Leyden isn't a clean sport, by a jugful. Puts on heaps of side; carries a swagger front. Put over some shady jobs in the island already, and Houten's sick of it. Don't imagine our friend here has any interest in this particular Mission lady beyond befriending her and her kind. He hasn't. I'll guarantee that.
"He wants to hand Leyden a swift kick, business and personal. Also save the little Mission toiler from contamination by personal contact with the bad man, or words to that effect. We take train to Surabaya—the Barang picks us up there—size up Leyden's outfit, and put a spoke in his wheel that'll give us a start of him.
"If we locate the gold river, we get half the loot, see? Forget the altruism of it—an old sea-dog has no business with a word like that, anyway. I know Houten, and I'll answer for his motives. How about it, Barry?"
Barry thought for a moment, scanning both of his companions keenly the while, then: "Suits me," he said quietly. "I suppose we descend upon Surabaya as a pair of pop-eyed tourists, eh?"
"Right, first shot!" cried Little jubilantly. "Then the Barang picks us up. Cap'n Barry takes command. And it's Yo-heave-ho! on the briny billows in a bouncing brigantine! Coming, ain't you?"
"Sure!" grinned Barry, and thrust his free brown fist into Houten's great paw. Little was pumping furiously at the other hand.
In mid-forenoon of the second day's train ride, Little and Barry were forced to cool their heels at Solo Junction while the train waited for the tardy Samarang connection.
The typewriter salesman was a keen man in his line of business, but he had never used his senses to much ulterior purpose while traveling about the East; he was much more concerned with a prospective customer's financial status than with the surroundings in which the customer lived.
Now while fuming over the delay, Little stepped out on the platform and abruptly awoke to the fact that sheer beauty was riot in Java, if one's eyes were but opened to it. Hedges of lantana were not new to him, they were common from end to end of the island; but not until now had he appreciated the warm magenta coloring of gorgeous poinsettias and bougainvillea, the glowing-hearted, waxy white flowers of frangipani; not until now did he realize the prodigality of Nature towards Java in the matter of weird and awesome fruits and vegetables.
He stood in wonder, gazing at the pendant fruit of a heavily laden sausage tree, for all the world like queerly colored, succulent sausages, garnished with brilliant green foliage; his wonder lasted until a coolie passed to windward of him munching on a great chunk of prickly durian, which fruit combines the flavor of ambrosia with the odor of a gasworks. He retreated incontinently, bursting in upon Barry who had remained in the train, and almost knocking over a lady who was hastily leaving. Apologizing confusedly, Little bore down on the sailor.
"Phe-e-ew!" he gasped. "You're one wise old fox, Barry. Seen all this stuff before, hey? Say, there's a coolie outside eating armor-plated limburger, ten years defunct! Enjoying it, too. And I've just seen a tree full o' hot-dogs! Honest, Barry—Hullo, old boy, why the blushes? Why all the figuring?"
Barry sat in the big soft seat of the first-class carriage, a scrap of paper on one knee, a pencil chewed to splinters between his teeth. His brow was puckered into deep lines above troubled eyes which stared absently at a Mesdag picture in blue and white tile set in the compartment wall. He smiled at his friend's exuberance and dropped pencil point to paper.
"How in thunder do you figure this confounded Dutch money, Little?" he asked. "What's the fare in real money? Fifty gulden sounds like conic sections to me."
"Why, fifty gulden is—But what for, son? Why the financial statement?"
"Want to start right, that's all. You've paid for everything so far, Little, and I'm busted clean. Keeping tally, that's all."
"Forget it," smiled Little. "I've got a note on Houten's bankers in Surabaya for the exes. Pitch that pencil out o' the window before it gives you indigestion. But there's something else," he accused, watching Barry closely. "Darned if I don't think you've started an affair! Who was the lady?"
Barry got up quickly, stepped to the window and drew Little after him. After a swift scrutiny, he pointed out a graceful figure in cool white and answered Little's query.
"See her? Yes, that woman just going into the crowd. Same one you nearly bowled over in the doorway. Came to me the minute you went out; greeted me as an old friend, though I never saw her in my life before. D' you know her?"
Little stared hard at the retreating figure, trying to glimpse her face. The woman turned, gazing up the track towards Samarang, and the vivid sunlight irradiated her face with startling clearness. It was a striking face, full of mature loveliness, yet holding something in the deep expressive eyes that hinted at more than a woman's share of hard contact with the world.
"No," Little said slowly, "never saw her, Barry. But I believe I'd like to meet her at that. Some queen, hey? What's she want?"
"Wanted a passage in my ship!" exploded Barry. "See here, Little, I thought this job was on the quiet. I haven't said a word to anybody," and he fixed an accusing eye on Little.
"Me too," retorted the ex-salesman, as warmly returning the other's quiz. "Maybe you're oversensitive, though. How much did she seem to know?"
"Can't tell," hesitated Barry. "Perhaps she startled me by simply talking ship. I suppose almost anybody can spot me for a sailor. But she seemed to be so darned certain that I was in command of a vessel leaving Surabaya, and she asked me for a passage, and be darned if I savvee why, since even Hawkeye himself couldn't tell where the ship is bound for, unless we blabbed it."
"What did you tell her?"
"That my ship was bound for Europe," grinned the sailor. "She came right back, too; said that's just where she wants to go. She was urging me to sell her a berth when you came in and saved me."
Little glanced out again then suddenly pulled Barry from the window.
"Come out and watch the crowd," he said. "Some of these people are worth watching. The Samarang train is due." With the announcement Little leaped from the train and impatiently awaited his companion.
"Easy to see the people worth watching," laughed Barry, joining him.
Little walked up the platform towards the knot of folks with whom the lady was last seen, and the sailor followed with an indulgent grin. Together they reached the locomotive of their train, and like a vision the strange lady emerged from nowhere and approached them, smiling brilliantly.
"How do you do, Mr. Little," she greeted, and Little's politeness was scarcely proof against his astonishment. He stared in amazement at her ready use of his name. And he was certain now that he had never set eyes on this radiant being before. The lady prattled on, with a note of reproof: "Captain Barry refuses to accommodate a lady in distress. Won't you persuade him to sell me a passage in his ship, Mr. Little?"
Little was sharp-witted. But even he was nonplussed to find their errand so obviously known in part. As for Barry, simple, straight sailor that he was, he was dumbfounded.
What the outcome might have been was left in doubt. The warning whistle of the incoming train jarred the warm air, and the crowd surged every way, creating a diversion that precluded reply. The train from the north drew in and disgorged its passengers, voluble or stolid, according to whether they were of the native subjects or the Dutch masters. Out of the scrambling chaos of chugging trains, first, second, and third-class passengers were directed or driven to their respective locations amid hoarse or shrill orders of guttural European or musical Javanese trainmen.
Until the last few passengers were mounting the train steps, Barry and Little lingered, watching the human kaleidoscope and awkwardly conscious that they made poor figures before the lady at their side. Then they were attracted by an altercation going on farther along the station platform, and when they turned again the mysterious lady had as mysteriously vanished.
"She's gone!" breathed Barry, with relief.
"Good egg!" echoed Little, then seized Barry's arm. "Come on, Barry, we must hustle too. Gosh! See that?"
A mild-mannered, soft-eyed Javanese porter had set down a heavy suitcase and was apparently trying to persuade its white owner to pay his small fee for carrying it. The white man, keen-faced, overbearing, immaculately dressed, cursed the porter in venomous Low Malay and picked up the suitcase himself. As he turned to board the train, leaving the fee unpaid, the porter trotted beside him with outstretched palm, asking civilly enough for his wage. The white man swung around, kicked him viciously, and sprang on the train, leaving his victim squirming in agony on the platform.
"Here, I'm going after that duck!" gritted Barry, buttoning his jacket and starting forward. "That's the sort of white man that makes me glad I'm sun-tanned brown!"
"Not here—not now," warned Little, seizing the sailor's sleeve. "We've got to hustle to keep our seats, son. Ain't that sort o' thing regular with white men in a black man's land? It is with these lordly Dutchmen, anyway."
"Regular? Huh! Not if I can stop it," snorted Barry. "Would you see a dog kicked like that? Not much you wouldn't. I don't like that white man."
"We'll sure agree not to like him, Barry, old scout; but for the love o' Mother Dooley don't start something that'll tie our hands this early in the game."
Little led his obstinate friend to his seat, and until their fellow travelers melted away in the crowd at the Surabaya station he kept a wary eye on him. Barry snorted like a pugilist stung hard on the nose when the white corrector of insistent coolies marched from the station as if he owned the town; and the ex-salesman was forced to use all his diplomacy to restrain Barry from an outbreak.
"Have a heart, Cap, have a heart," he pleaded, when Barry barely escaped collision with a speeding barouche while following with his eyes his unknown enemy. "We're a pair o' tourists, remember. You'll get all the scrapping you can handle when we get away from here. If you go after every white fellow you see slugging a coolie, we'll have no time to attend to our own business."
"You're boss of the job; I'm dumb," grunted Barry. "All the same, I'd pass up Houten's proposition for the pleasure of pushing that chap's jib three inches further inboard. Let's get something to drink. I'm on fire."
Little led the way to a quiet hotel whose veranda commanded a wide view of the harbor and the Island of Madura across the straits. He had stopped here many times in his capacity of salesman, had sold the landlord a typewriter, and was still a welcome guest in spite of it. Ordering two tall schooners of imported beer, the only kind drinkable even in that hotel, he took the proprietor aside and made some inquiries. Presently he sauntered back to Barry.
"Going up town, Jack," he announced. "Too late for the bank. I'll go to the banker's villa for our gulden. Unless the bottom drops out of the Barang, she'll be in before morning, and we can't lose any time.
"When you've lowered that bar'l o' beer into your hold—more nautical stuff, see?—you get busy too. Mynheer host tells me Leyden's schooner, the Padang, is hauled out for caulking. The job's done. They float her on this evening's tide. He says Leyden drops in about sundown whenever he's in town. He'll surely be here to-night, being busy about his ship.
"Now, old salt, that schooner can sail rings around any shovel-nosed old boat with those funny little crosspieces on her masts. Houten admitted that. We must hinder that schooner, long enough to beat her to the Sandang River. That's your job, sailor. But don't pull stuff raw enough to get us clapped into the calaboose. Report back here. I'll be back like a shot. Then we'll camp on Leyden's trail and size him up."
Barry set down his empty beer mug and stood up, glad of the chance of action. He hesitated, though, and said doubtfully:
"If she's hauled out still, it's easy to fix her. But I'd feel easier about it if I knew that Leyden is actually the dog you say he is. If it turned out that he's only a keen fellow who's got to windward of Houten by straight methods, I'd feel as if I'd knifed him in the dark by playing tricks on his schooner to get a start of him."
"Oh, splash!" ejaculated Little. He was hot and looked it. "I thought you were satisfied about that. Look here; go ahead, pull whatever stunt is up your sleeve. I give you my word that if you see Leyden and feel as you do about him then, we'll hold back our own vessel until he's under weigh, no matter what we lose by it. Does that soothe your blessed Quixotic scruples?"
"Good enough," agreed Barry heartily, throwing off the half-felt doubts that had obsessed him. "I shouldn't have said anything like that at all, after taking you up. That coolie business got me heated. I'll probably feel better with something to do."
They parted on the hotel steps, and Barry, after inquiring of the proprietor the whereabouts of the slipway where Leyden's schooner was, swung off in the given direction. Past wharves and warehouses he strode, throwing back his wide shoulders and inhaling great drafts of spicy ozone as he found himself once again among shipping, in the atmosphere that was meat and drink to him.
At the northern extremity of the water front the craft in port dwindled from steamers and deep-water square-riggers to "country" ships, schooners, junks, and other small fry; and among the forest of masts his experienced eye picked out two spars, straighter and more shipshape than the rest, which guided him unerringly to the Padang.
Blocked up on a tidewater slipway, every detail of the vessel was visible, even to the last fathom of oakum now being hammered into her port garboard seam. White painted and trim, she spelled speed and weatherliness in every line, and a note of admiration escaped Barry as he regarded her clean underbody from a safe distance. A trickle of water was already creeping up towards her stern; the rudder would be wet again within an hour.
From the vantage point of a huge pair of sheer-legs Barry reconnoitered. He saw the last muddy toiler crawl from beneath the keel and scramble ashore. It was getting rapidly dusk as the sun dipped, and a lone figure high up on deck went around placing lanterns in readiness for working the schooner off when the tide served. Besides the solitary watchman, not a soul was visible. Barry stepped out cautiously and hastened down to the floor of the slip.
One of Jack Barry's most cherished possessions was a weird Yankee contraption that cost him heavily in the shape of worn pockets. Its maker named it a knife; as a matter of fact, the knife part was worthless; but snugly and cunningly fitted into the stout buckhorn handle was a serviceable file, a hacksaw, and a marlinespike.
In the brief time before the slipway employees and the schooner's crew returned from their supper, Barry worked swiftly and silently. He ripped out fathom after fathom of fresh caulking in the garboards, making assurance doubly sure, by thrusting his knife-blade clear through the seam in a dozen places. The anchor, hanging at the cathead ready to let go when the schooner floated in the harbor, he loosely connected with one of the chain-plates by a length of small wire rope, so that, when let go, it would hang a few feet under water and the schooner must drift, possibly ashore, before another anchor could be cleared and put over.
In little over half an hour he climbed out of the slip again, dripping sweat, minus the skin of all his knuckles, and blistered as to palms and knees, but with a cheerful grin that spoke of a satisfied soul. He confidently depended upon the darkness, now absolute, and native unthoroughness, for his work to remain undetected until the sea came up and concealed it.
After a bath at the hotel he sought Little and reported his achievement.
"Good work!" chuckled his friend. Then Little whispered: "And who d 'ye suppose Leyden is, after all?"
"Search me," said Barry, his eyes on a group of men along the veranda. "Who?"
"Your coolie kicker of Solo!"
A flash of joy lighted Barry's bronzed face, to be shaded in a moment.
"That's the best news in months, Little. But Gosh! If I'd known, I could just as easily have ripped out another ten fathom of caulking!"
As he spoke, Barry leaned forward suddenly. The group of men along the veranda had drawn his attention by their noisy laughter and greetings, and now he saw his man of Solo appear in their midst. Leyden was flushed and in high good humor; that he was hail fellow well met was obvious. He flung himself into a long cane chair and plunged into a recital that induced a gale of merriment in his listeners. Barry's eyes glittered like points of flame and bored into Leyden's back as if to force notice.
"Go easy, Jack," warned Little, sensing trouble. "Don't start a fuss."
"Shut up!" growled Barry, holding his gaze. "I won't start anything. I'll make him start something though; then I'll sail into him like a rat up a pump!"
Leyden had finished his story, and the class of it was patent from the guffawed comments it excited. Another of the group capped it with another, grosser yet, and the party burst into an uproarious hilarity. Then a flabby-jowled, paunchy fellow urged in throaty gutturals:
"Come, Leyden, tell us about the new flame. It's too good to keep to yourself. She's a good girl, isn't she—as yet?"
No attempt was made to keep the conversation private. The whole party oozed a blatant superiority over any possible audience, easily traceable to the copious flow of schnapps at their table. Leyden alone, Barry noticed, drank nothing. A roar greeted the last speaker's shrewd hint at Leyden's reputation as a ladies' man, which he replied to by taking a fat wallet from his breast pocket. This he opened ostentatiously, and after a suitable pause, produced a cabinet photograph which he pressed to his lips with a theatrical flourish.
Barry crouched in his chair, feet drawn under him, hands gripping the chair arms and supporting most of his weight. Little watched the group curiously, for the moment forgetting his inflammable friend. The picture went around, to the accompaniment of coarse jests, the burden of which indicated that the Celebes Mission field was due to either gain a convert in Leyden or lose a valued worker in the person of the picture's original.
Leyden replied with a remark that would have procured him a beating in a sailor's dive, and Barry lurched to his feet with a lurid, rumbling oath. Little started up, too, but half-heartedly, then sat down to follow the action of his friend. He too had caught that last remark, and his fingers itched to feel Leyden's windpipe throb under them.
Barry staggered across the veranda, cleverly simulating drunkenness. Furious as he was, he was cool enough to play a definite and reasonably safe game. He lost his balance ten feet from Leyden's chair, recovered himself with a damp hiccough and maudlin apology, then darted forward and sprawled among the hilarious group with hands outstretched for the table to support himself.
Mumbling incoherently, he slowly raised himself and glared owlishly around, caught sight of the picture in Leyden's hand, and grabbed for it.
"Pretty, pretty," he gabbled, leering at Leyden and prodding that fuming gentleman in the ribs with a hard finger. "'Zat your sister?"
An awkward laugh burst from the party. Recalling the remarks they had been bandying about, they considered how little sport they would have caused Leyden had the original of that picture been in truth his sister. Leyden flushed to his hair roots, then paled with fury. He seized Barry by the shoulder, picked up a glass of schnapps, and flung the stinging liquor into the sailor's face.
Barry's pose dropped in a flash. He made an expertly short job of the coolie kicker now the opening had come. Ramming a right fist like a jib-sheet-block hard into Leyden's solar plexus, he brought the same hand up streaking to the jaw; his left shot out as his man staggered to fall, and crunched home with a smash into the now distorted features.
Uproar ensued. The landlord ran in, feigning distress. Little joined, and the supposedly drunken sailor was hauled away from his fallen adversary. A rapid exchange of crisp sentences passed between the host and Little, and the former nodded. He busied himself with Leyden and his vociferous friends, had the damaged man taken to a private room, and made the way clear for Little to hustle Barry out of the hotel and into a barouche.
"I can't blame you, Jack," grinned the salesman as the carriage rolled away. "It was what we wanted, after all; but it may cause trouble yet. Some hothead, old scout! I'll look out I keep off your corns myself. Now we'll get to the front and watch for the Barang. She's about due, and the town's too hot for us after this."
An hour later an anchor was let go somewhere out in the night. Little had secured a boatman, and the two friends put off to the brigantine full of self-congratulatory chuckles; for, whether Leyden had pulled strings to arrest his assailant or not, the mannikin at the end of the string had as yet shown no signs of jumping.
As they neared the dark shape of the vessel, two market boats left her shadow, and voices came across the water, signifying the correct tally of sundry stores. Then the Barang's anchor came up again immediately her new skipper set his foot on deck, the topsail yard, lowered to the cap on anchoring, was jerked aloft, and the brigantine stood silently out of the roadstead.
Cape Lapa, at the east end of Madura Island, was smoky and indistinct on the port quarter when Captain Barry came out of his stateroom after two brief hours of sleep. He had kept the deck through the night until the brigantine was well away; now, with a natural curiosity, he rose early to take a survey of his new command and her crew. Coming on board at black midnight he had sensed rather than seen his first officer. How far that first shadowy impression had satisfied him was evident when he permitted himself to sleep without verifying it by daylight. His crew he had only seen as noiseless shapes between dark bulwarks as they slid rather than ran in response to the officers' orders in getting to sea.
The Barang had a deckhouse companion—that is, a square house built over and around the head of the companionway stairs, forming a convenient chart room for the officers or a snug smoking lounge for possible passengers. By the open door of this house Barry stood for a few moments, gazing intently at the picture he had snatched from Leyden, and which had remained in his pocket after the encounter. Out from the oval of the mount a sweet girlish face smiled at him. It was the face of a woman grown, yet retaining the utter innocence and trust of a girl. The picture had been taken in a studio, the Sumarang photographer's name was stamped on the card, and Barry felt a wave of anger creeping over him at the thought that Leyden could get such a picture. Then he thought it possible that the picture had been bought; for native photographers are not beyond taking money for pictures they have no right to sell; and the thought pleased him. He turned the card over, and was again absurdly pleased to find no signature on the back.
"That's it!" he muttered. "She didn't give him this." He smiled back at the charming face and fancied it smiled up at him. Such a vision of fresh, wholesome loveliness had never crossed his horizon before. The level brows shaded eyes that looked straight out at him, fearless, unconcealing; the richly curved lips were parted in a dazzling expression of happiness. Barry gladdened at the sight, then frowned at the recollection of the discussion at Leyden's table. Such frank, unsophisticated loveliness was tender prey for the likes of Leyden.
"Not if I know it, he won't!" the skipper muttered under his breath. He slipped the picture into his pocket and stepped out on deck, taking in every detail of ship and crew that came into his line of sight.
In the strengthening sunlight of rising morning the brigantine would not have appealed very strongly to a landsman, or even to a yachtsman. As Barry discovered later, at breakfast, Little was sadly disappointed at the lack of polished brass-work, the bareness of the paint, the all-round creakiness of the ancient fabric. But to a seaman's eye the absence of brass meant a pleasing lack of irritating work on ornamentation; the worn paint showed sound timber beneath; there was just enough creakiness to indicate an amount of free play that made for pliability and strength.
From forward came the musical swish of brooms and water as the bare-legged watch scrubbed decks. A burly Hollander stood on the spare topmast lying in the port scuppers, one leg crooked over the bulwark rail, scooping water from the ocean with a draw-bucket and discharging it with consummate skill among the brown legs of the scrubbers.
Barry took notice of the big Dutchman, receiving an impression of quiet, ponderous efficiency that was yet strangely suggestive of a velvet-covered steel trap. This impression, however, was only a fleeting one as to the latter part; it struck Barry just once in that first early morning view of his ship, when the Hollander gave a softly spoken order to a brown Javanese, smiling ruddily as he spoke, and the sailor leaped to obey with fear so apparent in his face and movements that Barry was forced to grin at the ludicrousness of it.
But the outstanding figure in the scrubbing party was Little, and the skipper quickly forgot the seaman's fright in amusement at his friend's antics. Broom in hand, his trousers rolled above his knees, and his shirt flying open at the neck, his face glowing with the exercise, the late typewriter salesman darted in and out among the other scrubbers, leaving the spot he was working on to pounce upon any fresh space of planking sluiced by the water. Getting in everybody's way, tripping himself with his own broom, hopping like a cat in a puddle when his toes were jabbed by the bristles, he displayed three men's energy and accomplished the work of a one-armed boy.