The Romantic Adventures of Mr. Darby and of Sarah His Wife (48 page)

‘Feeling better, sir?' asked Punnett.

‘Very much better, Punnett,' Mr. Darby replied in a voice that was almost his own, and for the first time he turned a speculative regard upon Punnett. Except for a certain disorder here and there, unavoidable in the trying circumstances, Punnett's appearance had all its old formal correctness. His hair, it is true, was plastered sleekly over his eyes, its customary parting shattered; his collar had collapsed disastrously about his neck, and his suit, sodden with seawater, was unbelievably crumpled; but despite these trifles, he was still unmistakably the gentleman's gentleman. Mr. Darby
in his pyjamas, on the other hand, appeared to Punnett at his most informal. Yet, except for his face, which bore heavy traces of his predicament, his appearance was perfectly usual. He looked simply as he looked every morning when he sat and blinked for a moment on the edge of his bed before putting his feet to the ground and beginning the day's adventures.

‘Yes, very much better!' Mr. Darby repeated.' But do explain, Punnett!'

‘Explain, sir?'

‘How you come to be … ah … here.'

‘Well, you see, sir,' said Punnett, ‘when you fell overboard, sir, it seemed to me, seeing there was a mist, that if I wasted time giving the alarm, you'd be gone before they could stop her and get a boat launched. So I heaved a lifebuoy after you, sir, heaved in another for myself, and dived after it. That's all, sir. Everything considered, it seemed the best thing to do, sir. Still, I thought for a moment I had done you in, if I may say so, sir, with that life-buoy.'

Mr. Darby nodded. ‘So did I, Punnett.'

‘Yes, sir. When I saw you go under I said to myself: “There's such a thing as being too accurate, Punnett,” I said.'

‘To be shaw!' said Mr. Darby. ‘But you saved my life, Punnett, as sure as I'm … ah … sitting here. You saved my life at the risk, the eminent risk, of your own. I shall never be able to thank you.'

Mr. Darby held out his hand and Punnett took it apologetically. ‘Not at all, sir. It was a mere nothing, sir. I'm accustomed to that sort of thing.'

‘To … ah …?'

‘To diving and swimming, sir. In my younger days, sir, I did a good deal of high diving. In point of fact, I was on the halls for some years, high-diving from the flies into a tank under the soubriquet of Astro the Falling Star, sir.'

‘Under the what did you say, Punnett?'

‘The … well, the
nom de guerre,
sir. Not a very safefprofession. I gave it up before it was too late and accepted the
post of instructor at the Wandsworth Baths. So you see, it came fairly natural to follow you overboard, sir. In fact, it quite took me back to the halls. Besides, I promised Mrs. Darby you should come to no harm.'

At the mention of Sarah and the rush of associations that the thought of her called up, Mr. Darby awoke again to their precarious position. He glanced at the water. It was clear and pale as an aquamarine, and it was still streaming slowly past him like a river. The mist had vanished. A small grey plume on the horizon showed a last trace of the lost
Utopia.
He glanced at the sky. Already it was a deep cloudless blue.

‘Then you think, Punnett,' he asked tentatively and a little shamefacedly, ‘that we shall not … ah … come to harm?'

‘With luck we shan't, sir, and we've been lucky so far. You couldn't have gone over at a better time, sir. The tide's going in, and judging by the strength of the current it'll be going in for another two hours at least.'

‘Ah!' said Mr. Darby. ‘So there's a current, Punnett?'

‘Yes, sir. Didn't you notice it? It's been taking us along at a good three miles an hour, sir.'

Mr. Darby shuddered. So far from reassuring him, the discovery that they were not stationary but travelling at three miles an hour alarmed him considerably.

‘But what's the good if it, Punnett, unless, of course, we … ah … encounter a ship?'

‘If I was to turn you about, sir,' said Punnett, ‘you'd get a better idea of the uses of the current. Allow me, sir!'

Up to this point they had been facing south-east and Mr. Darby had failed to observe that they were all the while slowly and steadily travelling backwards, but now, by a few adroit kicks Punnett swung his own and Mr. Darby's lifebuoys round to face north-west.

Having recovered from his apprehensions at this manœuvre, Mr. Darby looked ahead of him and instantly gasped with amazement; for there, separated from him by a belt of water which seemed at the first glance little wider than
stone's throw, a gorgeous and astounding scene presented itself.

Mr Darby gaped at it like a dying fish. ‘But … ah … but God bless my soul, Punnett, what's this?'

Punnett made a gesture of the right hand as of one effecting an introduction of mutual friends. ‘The Mandratic Peninsula, sir! The part we see is Mandras, of course. And isn't it fortunate, if you'll forgive my passing the remark, sir, that you haven't lost your spectacles?'

Mr. Darby stared at Punnett and then raised his hands to his eyes. Punnett was right: through thick and thin his spectacles had stuck to him. ‘If you'd been an experienced diver, sir,' said Punnett with exquisite tact, ‘you'd have lost them for certain.'

But the remark escaped Mr. Darby, for, strong in the assurance of unimpaired eyesight, he was gazing entranced at the land of his dreams. The water in which he sat was a clear crystalline blue, but it faded, as it receded from him, to a limpid green, and Mandras came to meet this green in a long stretch of silver sands that shimmered in the heat. And these sands jutted into little spits and promontories, swung back into curving bays, or shrank away to mere threads in deeply indented creeks. Out of the sand rose pink rocks, small as boulders near the sea, but large and more closely massed the further they lay up the shore until at last they huddled themselves into low and rugged cliffs, among which and above which screens of a vivid green vegetation hid the interior. Here and there among the green stood what seemed to be a tree which was not green, but pink or violet or scarlet; and towering in a vast dome above all these climbing rocks and trees, rose Umfo, the great ankle-bone of the Peninsula, its white marble crown weathered to the colour of old ivory.

Mr. Darby continued to gaze spell-bound at this enchanting scene which, as though it were the rim of a vast wheel, moved or seemed to move slowly past him, for the current was carrying Mr. Darby and Punnett parallel with the coast.

‘If only we could get closer in,' Mr. Darby murmured reflectively.

‘Leave that to the current, sir,' said Punnett. ‘If the tide holds for another half-hour it'll float us into the Sampoto. The Sampoto is tidal, sir, for ten miles. Once we're in it, we can easily paddle ourselves ashore, sir.'

‘You were right about the heat, Punnett,' said Mr. Darby, searching vainly in his pyjama pocket for a handkerchief to mop his brow. ‘My pyjama coat is bone-dry already. I wish I could say the same for my trousers.'

But the water's warm enough here, sir.'

‘Oh, it's
warm
enough, Punnett, but it's damp, and to sit in the damp, as we have been doing for the last … well, goodness knows how long, is said to induce a certain … ah … very distressing malady. I refer, of course, to aneroids.'

In the course of this brief conversation they had opened a wide bay shaped like a wine-strainer, for from the lowest point of its concavity a narrow channel curled away inland, and almost at once the current began to change its course and to carry them no longer parallel to the coast, but straight for the river's mouth. Mr. Darby expected Punnett to remark upon this reassuring event, but Punnett said nothing, and Mr. Darby saw that he was staring somewhat grimly at the Peninsula. Following the direction of his stare, Mr. Darby saw that behind the leafy screens that guarded the interior seven vast white pillars rose into the air, whose summits wavered slightly and dissolved. A more attentive scrutiny proved them to be pillars of smoke.

‘What's the meaning of it, Punnett?' Mr. Darby asked a little timorously.

Punnett shook his head. I don't know, sir. There must be something unusual on. If it was three bonfires, I should have said they were holding a funeral, the funeral of a chief. But seven's a novelty, sir. I don't understand it.'

‘And you … ah … you don't like the look of it, Punnett?' asked Mr. Darby, still more apprehensively.

‘You never like the looks of things you can't explain, sir. But I dare say it's nothing to worry about; in fact, if it's
something very unusual, it may keep them so occupied that they won't bother about
us,
and that'll be all to the good, sir. You see, sir, it'll be a much more ticklish job this time, a matter of diplomacy, sir, not just of what you might call artillery as it was last time when I had the camera with me.'

The camera, Punnett! You forgot the camera?'

‘Well, sir. It was the camera or you, sir, and I fixed on you.'

Mr. Darby gasped as he realized for the first time the gravity of their position. He recalled in a flash, hair-raising adventures, retailed by Punnett, in which the camera, that admirable weapon of offence, had proved the one salvation. ‘We'd have been hard put to it, sir, if it hadn't been for the camera.' ‘If we hadn't had the camera it'ud have been all up with us, sir.' How often had Punnett uttered those testimonials to his invaluable weapon. And now, here they were, between the devils of Mandratia and the deep sea, without the protection of so much as a vest-pocket kodak. Mr. Darby's mind, directed by the unhappy absence of the camera and those seven ominous columns of smoke soaring mysteriously and inexplicably into the still air, began now to regard the enchanting Mandras from a closely realistic angle. The thought that if they were extremely lucky they would soon be high and dry on the Peninsula with a tribe of savages as their neighbours, seemed to him, now that it was on the point of realization, extremely disquieting. And what if this not very enviable good luck deserted them? In that case, the tide would turn before they reached land and they would drift out to sea again and to almost certain death by starvation, sunstroke, or drowning. Mr. Darby disliked both alternatives extremely: he contemplated them in silence for twenty minutes and the more he contemplated them, the more he loathed them.

Emerging at last from this abstraction he raised his eyes and quite suddenly his courage gave way. For Mandras had now drawn very near and become immensely real. The tide in fact was already carrying them up the Sampoto. On either side of them her walls of dense and sinister foliage towered
into the sky, concealing behind their many-patterned surface Heaven knew what sinister and horrible surprises. Mr. Darby no longer liked the look of Mandratia. He felt none of that delight which he had so often anticipated in thought and dream at the prospect of stepping ashore: he was, in fact, quite frankly terrified.

‘I don't like it, Punnett!' he said, and his voice trembled as he spoke.

‘You don't like what, sir?'

‘Anything!' said Mr. Darby comprehensively.

At that moment Punnett, who had been glancing from time to time into the water, put his hands on either side of his lifebuoy and, giving himself a smart push, stood up. The water reached no further than half-way up his thighs. He stood there like a large black heron, looking down on Mr. Darby, and Mr. Darby, staring up at him, realized with a feeling that nearly approached panic, that they had arrived.

The loose silver sand of the little bay was deliciously hot to his feet as, with his pyjama trousers sagging wet about his hams, Mr. Darby left the shallows. After he had taken a few steps he stood still, swaying a little as he stood and glad of the support that Punnett immediately offered. Movement and instability had during the last three hours become so much of a habit that to stand still on a solid, motionless foundation made him giddy. And not only this: the terrible experience through which he had just passed had its share in his debilitation. He clung to Punnett's arm in silence for a few moments and then said:

‘Punnett, I want to sit down.'

‘Very good, sir!' replied Punnett. ‘But if you can manage to stand here for a minute I'll get some green stuff for you to sit on. It's not advisable to sit on the sand, sir: it causes a rash.'

Mr. Darby found himself able to stand unsupported and Punnett ran over the narrow belt of bare sand to where the rocks began to crop out and masses of trailing green creeper sprawled over them. Tearing up a great armful of it, he disposed it in a deep cushion at the foot of one of the rocks, and up the sloping face of it he made another cushion. It was a perfect spot in which to rest, for over the rock leaned a tree with great shady fan-shaped leaves, and from this green canopy festoons of scarlet orchids hung down like the side curtains of a four-poster bed. Having performed these duties with the same punctual efficiency as if he were in a London flat, Punnett returned to the small, plump pyjamaed figure which stood obediently where he had left it. He offered an arm.

‘Now, sir,' he said, ‘if you'll just step this way.'

Thereupon he conducted his master to the couch prepared for him, and Mr. Darby with a deep sigh of satisfaction sank down upon it.

‘All right, sir?' he enquired.

‘Marvellous, Punnett!' Mr. Darby replied dreamily. ‘What I should call the … ah … lap of luxury.'

‘And now I'll be seeing about breakfast, sir,' said Punnett; ‘but first, if you'll excuse me, I'll just strip off your trousers and hang them out to dry. You'll take no harm, sir. The mosquitoes and piums don't come out till sunset.'

‘Warrever you thing bes, Punt,' murmured Mr. Darby, drowsily incoherent, and a moment later Punnett left him already asleep in his shrine, a pink, round-bellied heathen god with sightless glass eyes.