When Marston woke in the morning his headache and languidness had gone.
It looked as if the powder the mulatto had left had cured him, and
although he did not find the laudanum and packet of drugs, he resolved
he would not bother about their loss. In a day or two, small lots of
rather valuable cargo began to arrive and one afternoon Marston and
Wyndham lounged under the awning and watched the Krooboys transfer goods
from a big canoe to the yacht. Four or five negroes from up river put
the fiber packages in the hoisting slings.
The men worked slackly, for although the sun was hidden the heat was
extreme. A yellow haze covered the sky, but the oily surface of the
lagoon shimmered with subdued light. On the other side, the reflection
of the mangroves floated motionless, without a leaf quivering. Dark
shadow lurked in the caves under the high roots, and here and there the
massed foliage was touched by dirty white. Marston thought the trees
looked as if they were blighted by some foul disease. He hated the
mangroves and the smell of mud that hung about the vessel.
"The tides are beginning to get higher," he said. "It will be a relief
to leave this dismal spot and go to sea."
"Calling here has paid us," Wyndham rejoined. "We are getting stuff for
which dyers and chemists give high prices; stuff I wanted but hardly
expected to obtain. In fact, I'll own your mysterious visitor has earned
his dash. No doubt he'll turn up again and ask for it."
"D'you reckon he had much to do with our getting the goods?"
Wyndham shrugged. "I understand he promised you the articles you talked
about, and they have arrived. If he comes again, I'd like to see him.
Perhaps he could be persuaded to send us something else."
"He asked for you," said Marston, and wondered whether his remark was
rash when he saw Wyndham was pondering. Although Bob felt he was perhaps
illogical, he did not want Harry to persuade the fellow.
"I think you said his eyes were blue," Wyndham resumed presently. "Well,
one does meet a mulatto with blue eyes now and then, and it's perhaps
not important that the bottom of his feet was white----"
Wyndham stopped, for a splash of paddles broke the silence, and when a
canoe stole out of the shadow across the lagoon Marston said. "We may
learn something about him now. Here's your agent, Don Felix."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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