Gold Out of Celebes. Aylward Edward Dingle
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.
CHAPTER THREE
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