style="font-size:15px;"> "You like power," Marston remarked.
Wyndham smiled and looked about while he felt for another cigarette. Columbine, swaying rhythmically to the heave of the swell, drove through the sparkling water with a shower of spray blowing across her weather bow. Her tall canvas gleamed against the blue sky. A Krooboy lounged at the wheel, the most part of his muscular body naked and a broad blue stripe running down his forehead. Two or three more squatted in the shade of a sail. At the galley door the cook sang a monotonous African song. The wire shrouds hummed like harpstrings, striking notes that changed with the tension as the vessel rolled. There was nothing to do but lounge and talk and Wyndham's mood was confidential.
"I have not known much power," he said. "In England, power must be bought. My father was poor but careless; my mother was sternly conventional. When he died she tried to turn my feet into the regular, beaten path. I know now she was afraid I would follow my ancestors' wandering steps. Well, at school, I had the smallest allowance among the boys, and learned to plot for things my comrades enjoyed. As a rule, I got the things. I don't know if the effort was good or not, but I was ambitious and wanted a leading place. Folks like you don't know what it costs to hold one's ground."
"I expect I got things easily," Marston agreed. "Perhaps this was lucky, because I've no particular talent."
"You have one talent that is worth all mine," Wyndham rejoined with some feeling. "People trust you, Bob."
Marston colored, but Wyndham went on: "When I left school and went to Wyndhams' there was not much change. For the most part, my friends were rich, and I had a clerk's pay, with a vague understanding that at some far off time I might be the head of the house. The house was obviously tottering; I did not think it would stand until I got control. My uncle, Rupert's brother, would not see. Wyndhams' had stood so long he felt it was self-supporting and would stand. Well, he was kind, and I'm glad he died without knowing how near we really were to a fall.
"However, I didn't mean to talk about the house, but rather about my life when I was a shipping clerk. I had ambition and thought I had talent; I hated to be left behind by my friends. It cost much planning to share their amusements, join a good yacht club, and race my boat. Sportsmen like you don't know the small tricks and shabbiness we others are forced to use. Well, at length my uncle died and I got control of the falling house, with its load of debt. I'd long been rash, but the rashest thing I did was when I fell in love with Flora. Yet she loved me, and Chisholm, with some reserves, has given his consent. I have got to satisfy him and with this in view, we're bound for the Caribbean on board a thirty-year-old yacht."
Marston thought Wyndham did not look daunted. In a sense, his venture was reckless, but Harry tried, and did, things others thought beyond their powers. On the whole Marston imagined his boldness was justified.
"If money can help, you know where it can be got," he said.
Wyndham's half-ironical glance softened.
"Thanks, Bob! So far, I haven't gone begging from my friends; but if I can use your money without much risk, I will borrow. I think you know this."
"What's mine is yours," Marston remarked and went to the cabin for a chart, with which he occupied himself.
He studied the chart and sailing directions when he had nothing to do and was rather surprised that Wyndham did not. It was a long run to the Caribbean and would be longer if they drifted into the equatorial calms. Marston had a yacht master's certificate, although he was rather a seaman than a navigator. He could find his way along the coast by compass and patent-log, but to steer an ocean course was another thing. One must be exact when one calculated one's position by the height of the sun and stars.
For some time they made good progress and then the light wind dropped and Columbine rolled about in a glassy calm. The swell ran in long undulations that shone with reflected light, and there was no shade, for they lowered all sail to save the canvas from burning and chafing. The sun pierced the awning, and it was intolerably hot. They had reached the dangerous part of the old slavers' track; the belt of stagnant ocean where the south wind stopped and the north-east had not begun. The belt had been marked long since by horrors worse than wreck, for while the crowded brigs and schooners drifted under the burning sun, fresh water ran out and white men got crazed with rum while negroes died from thirst.
Wyndham lounged one morning under the awning after his bath. He wore silk pyjamas, a red silk belt, and a wide hat of double felt. He looked cool and Marston thought he harmonized with his surroundings; the background of dazzling water, the slanted masts that caught the light as they swung, and the oily black figures of the naked crew. He wondered whether Harry had inherited something from ancestors who had known the tragedies of the middle passage. Marston himself was wet with sweat, his eyes ached, and his head felt full of blood.
"We may drift about for some time," he said, throwing down a book he had tried to read. "The sailing directions indicate that the Trades are variable near their southern limit."
"It's a matter of luck," Wyndham agreed, and Marston started because his comrade's next remark chimed with his thoughts. "When I studied some of the house's old records I found that two of our brigs vanished in the calm belt. One wondered how they went. Fire perhaps, or the slaves broke the hatch at night. Can't you picture their pouring out like ants and bearing down the drunken crew? The crews did drink; slaving was not a business for sober men. Hogsheads of rum figure in our old victualing bills."
He paused and resumed with a hard smile: "Well, it was a devilish trade. One might speculate whether the responsibility died with the men engaged in it and vanished with the money they earned. None of the Wyndhams seem to have kept money long; luck went hard against them. When they did not squander, misfortune dogged the house."
"Superstition!" Marston exclaimed.
Wyndham laughed. "It's possible, but superstition's common and all men are not fools. I expect their fantastic imaginings hold a seed of truth. Perhaps somebody here and there finds the seed and makes it grow."
"In Africa, they water the soil with blood. It's not a white man's gardening." Marston rejoined and went forward to the bows, but got no comfort there.
The sea shone like polished steel, heaving in long folds without a wrinkle on its oily surface. But for the sluggish rise and fall, one might have imagined no wind had blown since the world was young.
For a week Columbine rolled about, and then one morning faint blue lines ran across the sea to the north. Gasping and sweating with the effort, they hoisted sail and sent up the biggest topsail drenched with salt water. Sometimes it and the light balloon jib filled and although the lower canvas would not draw, Columbine began to move. One could not feel her progress, there was no strain on the helm, but silky ripples left her side and slowly trailed astern.
For all that, she went the wrong way, heading south into the calm, and they could not bring her round. Her rudder had no grip when they turned the wheel, and sometimes she stopped for an hour and then crawled on again. The Krooboys panted in the shade of the shaking sails, and Marston groaned and swore when he took his glasses and slackly climbed the rigging. The dark-blue lines were plainer, three or four miles off, and he thought they marked the edge of the Trade-breeze.
Wyndham alone looked unmoved; he lay in a canvas chair under the awning, and smoked and seemed to dream. Marston wondered what he dreamed about and hoped it was Flora. In the afternoon Marston felt he must find some relief.
"I want to launch a boat and tow her," he said. "There's wind enough not far off to keep her steering."
Wyndham nodded. "Very well. It's recorded that they towed the Providence for three days and used up a dozen negroes in the boats,
