The Adventures of Miss Gregory. Gibbon Perceval

      The Adventure on a Portuguese Trader

      I.

       Table of Contents

      THE ADVENTURE ON A PORTUGUESE TRADER

      MISS GREGORY had at least one attribute of the born traveler: she was easily led aside into a by-path. "At fifty," she was wont to say, "one knows the uselessness of making plans; the thing is to keep one's eyes open." Her own eyes had been open to some purpose in several parts of the world. From Shanghai to Sierra Leone she had multiplied friends and enemies, and never, in all her travels, had she bound herself down to a route or destination. People who saw her off on a Union Castle boat for Cape Town heard of her next from Pernambuco; and her book, "The Saharan Solitudes," contains far too much information about the Sudan to be valuable as an authority on the Sahara.

      She was one of those disconcerting women who combine a mannish charm with an entirely feminine strength of personality. She was short and strongly made; her handsome gray hair was drawn away from a keen, enterprising face; and below her smooth brows her eyes were humorous and assured. She carried with her to the ends of the earth a certain manner of authority—just the least touch of the arrogance of the high-caste; it was not the least potent of her weapons. Composed, shrewd, and friendly, she had been present at the making of history in both hemispheres; and history was not the poorer for her presence.

      It was at Bandero, on the East Coast of Africa, that she embarked aboard the Henriqueta. How she came to be at Bandero matters nothing; she was probably on her way elsewhere and stepped aside. Her idea was to wait there, among the palms and the slaves, till the big German mail-boat arrived to carry her southward in state; but, within an hour of the time when the little Portuguese steamer laid her rust-scarred plates alongside the tremulous bamboo jetty, she was on board inquiring for a passage. It was a shabby little vessel, a mere scavenger of the coastwise trade; from the jetty, where she stood serene among the sweating black cargo hands, Miss Gregory could see her rail forward lined with brown and black deck passengers, sleek and splendid under the vehement sun. It was a picture that she could appreciate, and she was awake, too, to the picturesque aloofness of the one European among them, a gaunt, somber man, who looked at her once without curiosity, and then gazed away over her head at the clustering roofs of Bandero.

      "That's an Englishman," Miss Gregory told herself; "he knows how to administer the cut direct."

      On her way aboard, she passed through a group of saloon passengers going ashore to spend the hot afternoon. Two or three furtive men accompanied a woman, a tall, slender creature with a thin, vivid face, and weary eyes that grew acute as they fell on Miss Gregory. A less tolerant observer would have dismissed them with a shrug; they had a certain quality of disreputability, an appearance of social and moral flimsiness, that would have justified it. But Miss Gregory was a traveler. She knew that such ships as the Henriqueta carry the light tragedians and the heavy soubrettes of life, and it was a world that she desired to explore more than any other place. She returned the woman's stare calmly, noting her thin, dangerous quality and the hard courage of her face, and passed on about her business. Behind her back, the tall woman smiled slowly.

      The captain was a stout, swarthy Portuguese, who breathed noisily, as she stood before him, and scratched his unshaven jowl with a blunt forefinger.

      "We not gotta no stewardess." he warned her. "You come—you take-a de chance. You notta like—you stop ashore."

      He had the manner of resenting her; he spoke harshly, and stared without intermission. But Miss Gregory was quite clear that she required a passage to Beira. In face of his warnings and objections, her voice took on a certain peremptoriness, and he turned from her, with a snort, to make out her ticket. And when it was done he thrust it at her rudely, for the Portuguese of the Coast hate the English as an ugly woman hates an ugly man. But Miss Gregory was returning her purse to her pocket at that moment, and left him to hold it at arm's length till she was ready. Then she read it through carefully, and invited him to correct an error in addition. He snorted again, a snort of defiance; but this time he returned the ticket to her with a bow. He had learned already that it saved time to treat Miss Gregory with consideration.

      In this manner Miss Gregory was installed as the occupant of a cabin on board the Henriqueta. From the poop, that evening, she watched Bandero sink back against the sunset as the little steamer turned her humble nose south toward the Mozambique Channel, while her fellow passengers, in whispering groups, watched her as cattle watch a trespassing dog. She saw them all under the lamplight in the saloon at the meal that was described as dinner, and tried to take account of them. Only one of them, it seemed, was English—the tall woman she had encountered on the gangway. She sat at some distance from Miss Gregory, and at intervals talked in a slow, languid voice. The rest were Germans and Portuguese, and those nondescripts who make up the bulk of the population of the Coast. They talked little, and then in hushed tones; they seemed to have in common a quality of secrecy and caution. They looked about them with sidelong glances and quick gleams of white eyeballs, and observed toward one another that strict formality of politeness which goes with hidden weapons. In their midst, the stout captain, with his clumsiness of movement and harsh throaty voice, took on a grosser quality; Miss Gregory found herself comparing him to a bludgeon in an armory of stilettos.

      It was after dinner that she first had word with one of them. She was watching the wonder of moonlight which comes to redeem those latitudes, the soft radiance that touches the world to tender, ephemeral shades of color. A step sounded behind her, and the tall woman lounged against the rail at her side.

      "Good evening," said Miss Gregory.

      The other nodded impatiently. "Say," she said, "you're a fool to be here."

      The rich tones in her voice