The Marriage of Esther. Guy Boothby
"I have never tried, but I dare say I could soon learn."
"Ah, that's a horse of a different colour. I have no time to waste teaching you. It's a pity, but that's the only way I can help you. Stay, here's something that will enable you to get a breakfast."
He balanced a shilling on the ends of his fingers. The morning sunlight sparkled on its milled edge. For a moment Ellison looked longingly at it, then he turned on his heel.
"I asked you for work, not for charity. Good-morning!"
"You are foolish. Good-morning!"
Leaving the jetty Ellison went on up the beach. But before he had gone a hundred yards a thought struck him. He turned again and hurried back. The merchant was just entering the store.
"I have come back to beg your pardon," he said hastily; "I acted like a cad. It will go hard with me if I lose my manners as well as my birthright. You will forgive me, I hope?"
"Willingly, on one condition."
"What is that?"
"That you will let me make the amount half a crown."
"You are very generous, but I cannot accept alms, thank you."
With an apology for having so long detained him, Ellison continued his walk down the beach. Hong Kong Joe was in his boat-building yard, laying the keel of a new lugger. Approaching him he came to the point straight away:
"I am in search of work. Have you any to give me?"
The boat-builder straightened himself up, looked his questioner in the face, ran his eye round the tattered shirt, and arrived at the moleskin trousers. When he got higher up the bruised eye seemed to decide him.
"Not with that eye, thank you," he said. "When I want one, I can get my pick of fighting-men in the settlement without employing a stranger."
"Then you don't want me?"
"No, thank you."
"You can't put me in the way of finding any employment, I suppose? God knows I want it pretty badly."
"Try Mah Poo's store on the Front. I heard him say yesterday he wanted a steady, respectable chap, so you should just about qualify. No harm in trying, anyway."
Thanking him for his advice, and ignoring the sarcasm contained in it, Ellison walked on to the Chinaman's shop. The Celestial was even less complimentary than the boat-builder, for without waiting to answer the applicant's inquiries, he went into his house and slammed the door. At any time it hurts to have a door banged in one's face, but when it is done by a Chinaman the insult is double-edged. Ellison, however, meekly pocketed the affront and continued his walk. He tried two or three other places, with the same result—nobody wanted him. Those who might have given him work were dissuaded by the bruises; while those who had no intention of doing so, advised him to desist from his endeavours until they had passed away. He groaned at the poverty of his luck, and walked down the hill to the end of the new jetty, to stare into the green water whose colour contrasted so well with the saffron sands and the white wings of the wheeling gulls.
A British India mail-boat was steaming down the bay to her anchorage alongside the hulk, and innumerable small craft were passing to and fro between the islands. He looked at the water, the birds, the steamer, and the islands, without being really conscious that he saw them. Somehow he was filled with a great wonderment at his position, at the obstinate contrariness of his luck. Over and over again in days gone by he had been offered positions of trust, beside which packing pearl shell and assisting boat-builders would have been as nothing. He had refused them because he did not want to work. It was the revenge of Fate that now he had resolved to turn over a new leaf he could hear of nothing. As this thought entered his brain he looked down at the transparent green water rising and falling round the copper-sheathed piles of the pier, and a fit of desperation came over him. Was it any use living? Life had evidently nothing to offer him now in exchange for what his own folly had thrown away. Why should he not drop quietly over the side, disappear into that cool green water, and be done with it forever? The more he considered this way out of his troubles the more he liked it. But then the old doubt came back upon him,—the doubt that had been his undoing in so many previous struggles,—might not the future have something better in store for him? He resolved to test his luck for the last time. But how? After a moment's thought he decided on a plan.
There was not a soul within a couple of hundred yards of the jetty. He would arrange it thus: if anyone set foot on it before the mail-boat let go her anchor he would give life another chance; if not, well, then he would try and remember some sort of prayer and go quietly over the side, give in without a struggle, and be washed up by the next tide. From every appearance luck favoured the latter chance. So much the better omen, then, if the other came uppermost. He looked at the mail-boat and then at the shore. Not a soul was to be seen. Another five minutes would decide it all for him. Minute after minute went by; the boat steamed closer to the hulk. He could see the hands forrard on the fo'c'sle-head ready to let go the anchor, he could even make out the thin column of steam issuing from the escape-pipe in the cable range. Another minute, or at most two, would settle everything. And yet there was no sign of excitement in his tired face, only a certain grim and terrible earnestness in the lines about the mouth. The steamer was close enough now for him to hear the order from the bridge and the answer from the officer in charge of the cable. Another two or three seconds and he might reckon the question settled and the game played out. He turned for the last time to look along the jetty, but there was no hope there, not a living being was anywhere near it.
"Well, this settles it, once and forever," he said to himself, following his speech with a little sigh, for which he could not account. Then, as if to carry out his intention, he crossed to the steps leading down to the other side of the jetty. As he did so he almost shouted with surprise, for there, on the outer edge, hidden from his line of sight where he had stood before, lay a little Kanaka boy about ten years of age fast asleep. He had been there all the time. Ellison's luck had triumphed in a most unexpected manner! As he realised it he heard the cable on board the mail-boat go tearing through the hawsehole, and next moment the officer's cry, "Anchor gone, sir!" At the same instant the ship's bell struck eight (twelve o'clock).
With the change in his prospects, for he was resolved to consider it a change, he remembered that Murkard was on the hillside waiting for him. Instantly he wheeled about and started back on his tracks for the side of the island he had first come from. The sun was very warm, the path a rough one, and by the time he reached it his bare feet had had about enough of it. He found Murkard sitting in the same spot and almost in the same attitude as when he had left him nearly five hours before. The expression of amusement on the latter's face changed a little as he noticed that his friend carried nothing in his hand.
"And so, my dear fellow, you have come back. Well, do you know, I felt convinced you would. Nothing offered, I suppose?"
"Nothing. But stay, I'm wrong. I was offered a shilling to get myself a breakfast."
"Good for you? So you have eaten your fill."
"No; I refused it. I wanted work, not charity!"
"So it would appear. Well I must say I admire your fortitude. Perhaps in better days I might have done the same. Under present circumstances, however, I am inclined to fancy I should have taken the money."
"Possibly. I acted differently, you see."
"You're not angry with me for laughing at you this morning, are you, Ellison?"
"Angry? My dear old fellow, what on earth put that in your head? Why should I be angry? As it happens, you were quite right."
"That's the very reason I thought you might have been angry. We're never so easily put out of temper as when we're proved to be in the wrong. That's what is called the Refining Influence of Civilization."
"And what's to be done now? We can't live up here on this hillside forever. And, as far as I can see, we stand a very poor show of having anything given us down yonder."
"We