Harold Bindloss - Kit Musgrave's Luck

The market was nearly deserted, for in the Canaries one buys food before the sun is high, but a few stalls were occupied and three or four small traps waited for hire. Kit waved to a driver and seized Considine. Then he tried to get his breath, and wiping his hot face, smeared his skin with muddy grit.

"Loser pays," said Considine. "What's good stopping in the sun? Let's get some wine!"

He tried to make off, but Kit shook him angrily and glanced about. A crowd had begun to gather and all the traps were coming. At the end of a neighbouring street, the girl he had noted at the mole talked to a man in English clothes. She was very handsome and looked cool and dignified. Kit was young and got hotter when he saw her eyes were fixed on his dishevelled companion. He felt humiliated and could have borne it better had she looked amused, but she did not. She watched him and Considine with grave curiosity, as if she studied people of another type than hers. Kit got very angry.

Four traps arrived, the drivers gesticulating and cracking whips, and Kit dragged Considine to the nearest. Considine struggled and tried to push him back.

"Not going yet," he shouted. "Beat you easy. Where's my wine? Don't you pay your debts?"

His jacket tore and he almost got away, but Kit got a better hold.

"You're going now! Get in!"

"Won't go with that fellow. Don't like his horse," Considine declared.

The crowd had got thicker and people jeered and laughed.

" Todos animales. Gente sin verguenza! " one remarked.

Kit frowned. He knew the Castilian taunt about people who have no shame, but he held on to Considine. The drivers did not help; they disputed noisily who should get the passenger. Then the man Kit had noted with the girl came up.

"Put him on board. I'll lift his legs," he said.

They did so with some effort, for Considine was heavy and kicked.

"To the mole; African steamer's boat," said Kit; Considine occupied the driver's seat.

"Show you how to drive!" he said, and shoving back the tartanero , used the whip.

The horse plunged, the wheels jarred the pavement, there was a crash as a stall overturned, and the tartana rolled across the square and vanished. Kit heard Considine's hoarse shout and all was quiet. He looked about. The girl who wore the yellow dress was gone, but the man stood close by and gave him a quiet smile. He had a thin, brown face and Kit saw a touch of white in his hair. A mark on his cheek looked like an old deep cut.

"You didn't go with your friend," he remarked.

"I did not; I've had enough," said Kit and added anxiously: "D'you think he'll get the African boat?"

The other looked at his watch. "If he runs over nothing before he makes the port, it's possible. A West-coast trader, I expect?"

"No," said Kit. "He's the governor of a jail. An old soldier, I understand."

His companion smiled. "The British Colonial office uses some curious tools, but if he sweated for you in India, their plan's perhaps as good as handing out a job to a political boss."

"Then, you're not English?"

"I'm an American. I don't know if it's important, but since you'd had enough of the fellow, why did you bother?"

"For one thing, I wanted to get rid of him," Kit said naïvely. "Then, of course, since he is English, I felt I had to see him out."

The other nodded. "A pretty good rule, but if you stick to it at Las Palmas, I reckon you'll be occupied! Which way do you go?"

"To the Fonda Malagueña ," said Kit.

His companion indicated a shady street and left him at the top, and when Kit loafed in the patio after his six o'clock dinner, he pondered. Las Palmas was not at all the romantic city he had thought, and the men he had met going south on board the steamer were a new type. They were business men, holding posts at African factories, but they were not the business men he knew at Liverpool. He could not picture them punctual, careful about small things, or remarkably sober. They had a touch of rashness he distrusted but rather liked. Yet he understood some occupied important posts. In fact, it looked as if the Liverpool small clerk's rules did not apply everywhere; in the south men used others. Although Kit was puzzled his horizon was widening.

Two weeks after Kit joined his ship, she returned to Las Palmas, and on the whole he was satisfied with his occupation. Campeador was fast and built on a steam yacht's model, except that her bow was straight. Although she rolled horribly across the combers the Trade-breeze piles up, she shipped no heavy water. Then Kit thought it strange, but she was kept as clear as a British mail-liner.

He had begun to like her crew; the grave bare-legged fishermen who rowed the cargo launches, and the careless officers. All were Spanish but Don Pedro Macallister, the chief engineer, for although the roll stated that his birthplace was Portobello, it was not in Spain. The rules require that Spanish mail-boats be manned by Spanish subjects, but government officials are generally poor and English merchant houses sometimes generous.

For two weeks Campeador steamed round the islands, stopping at surf-hammered beaches to pick up cattle, camels, sheep and mules. Now the livestock was landed and Kit, waiting for a boat to carry him ashore, mused about his first encounter with the captain. Campeador was steaming out from Las Palmas, rolling violently as she breasted the long, foam-crested seas, and Kit staggered in the dark across the lumbered deck where the crew were throwing cargo into the hold. She had, as usual, started late, for in Spain nobody bothers about punctuality.

He reached the captain's room under the bridge. Don Erminio had pulled off his uniform and now wore a ragged white shirt and shabby English clothes. His cap, ridiculously shrunk by spray, was like a schoolboy's. Kit inquired politely what he was to do about some goods not recorded in the ship's manifest, and the blood came to the captain's olive skin.

"Another animal! All sobrecargos are animals; people without honour or education!" he shouted. "I am a Spanish gentleman, not a smuggler!"

Kit was half daunted by the other's theatrical fury, but his job was to keep proper cargo lists, and what he undertook he did. It was not for nothing his ancestors were hard sheep-farmers in the bleak North.

"Nevertheless, I want to know about the chemical manure for Palma," he said.

Don Erminio seized the tin dispatch-box and threw it on the floor.

"Look for the documents! Do I count bags of manure? I am not a clerk. When the company doubts my honour I am an anarchist!" He kicked the tumbled papers. "If you find five pesetas short, I throw the manure in the sea. People without education! I go and tear my hair!"

He went, and when the door banged Kit sat down and laughed. He had borne some strain, but the thing was humorous. To begin with, Don Erminio's hair was very short. Then, although his grounds for anger were not plain, Kit thought it possible the cargo belonged to a relation of the captain's. Picking up the papers, he returned to his office, and when Campeador reached port the bags of manure were entered on the manifest. Don Erminio, however, bore him no grudge. In the morning he met Kit with a friendly smile and gave him a list of the passengers, for whom landing dues must be paid.

"Sometimes one disputes about the sum. It is human, but not important," he remarked. "You will write three lists for the robbers who collect the dues."

Kit said the list obviously did not give the names of all on board, and Don Erminio grinned.

"It is a custom of the country. If one pays all one ought, there is no use in having official friends. I put down the names of people the collectors know."