awakened to the magnetic influence exercised by the vile visage he could not fail to note the girl’s consternation. He thought to reassure her by pointing out the marvelous craft displayed in its contriving.
“It is amazing in every sense,” he went on, bringing the gourd nearer for her inspection. “Although the calabash is of a variety unknown in West Africa, the face gives a perfect likeness of an Oku chief. There is a man in Oku now who might have sat to the sculptor, though he is far from possessing the power, the tremendous strength, of the original. Yet it seems to me to be very old. I cannot, for the life of me – ”
A loud crash interrupted him. Chris, removing the remains of the feast, had gazed for an instant at the astounding object in Warden’s hands. The boy backed away, and tripped over a coil of rope, with disastrous result to the crockery he was carrying.
Warden’s voice, no less than the laugh with which he greeted Chris’s discomfiture, restored the poise of the girl’s wits.
“You obtained that for me, did you not?” she cried with a curious agitation.
“Yes, of course,” said he.
“Then give it to me, please.”
He was certainly surprised, but passed the gourd to her without further comment. She half averted her eyes, took it unhesitatingly, and tried to pitch it into the water. For its size, it was astonishingly light. Were it as heavy as she imagined, it must have dropped into the Solent several yards from the vessel. As it was, it flew unexpectedly high, struck a rope, and fell back on deck, whence it bounded, with the irregular bounce of a Rugby football, right into Warden’s hands again.
“That was a mad trick,” he said almost angrily.
“Oh, please, throw it away,” she pleaded.
“Throw away a rare and valuable curio! Why?”
“Because it will bring you nothing but ruin and misery. Can you not see its awful meaning? Throw it away, I implore you!”
“But that would be a crime, the act of a Vandal. It may be the chiefest treasure of a connoisseur’s collection. Would you have me ape some fanatic Mussulman hammering to atoms a statue by Phidias?”
“There is no beauty in that monstrous thing. It is – bewitched.”
“Oh really, Miss Dane – we are in England, in the twentieth century.”
He laughed indulgently, with the air of an elder brother who had forgiven her for an exhibition of pettish temper. He held out the calabash at arm’s length and viewed it critically. He saw immediately that the crown inside the ring was misplaced.
“Hello!” he muttered, “you did some damage, then!”
Closer inspection revealed that the fall had loosened a tightly fitting lid hitherto concealed by the varnish used as a preservative. He removed it, and peered within.
“A document!” he announced elatedly. “Perhaps, after all, your unaccountable frenzy was a blessing in disguise. Now, Miss Dane, we may learn what you termed its ‘awful meaning.’ But, for pity’s sake, don’t yield to impulse and rend the manuscript. You have cracked his chiefship’s skull – I pray you spare his brains.”
CHAPTER III
WHEREIN A STRONG MAN YIELDS TO CIRCUMSTANCES
Curiosity, most potent of the primal instincts, conquered the girl’s fear. As it happened, Warden was still kneeling. He sat back on his heels, rested the calabash against his knees, and withdrew a strip of dried skin from its cunningly devised hiding–place. It was so curled and withered that it crackled beneath his fingers when he tried to unfold it. Quite without premeditation, he had placed the calabash in such wise that the negro’s features were hidden, and this fact alone seemed to give his companion confidence.
“What is it?” she asked, watching his efforts to persuade the twisted scroll to remain open.
“Parchment, and uncommonly tough and leathery at that.”
He did not look up. A queer notion was forming in his mind, and he was unwishful to meet her eyes just then.
“It looks very old,” she said.
“A really respectable antique, I fancy. Have you any pins – four, or more?”
She produced from a pocket a small hussif with its store of sewing accessories.
“A genie of the feminine order!” he cried. “I was merely hoping for a supply of those superfluous pins that used to lurk in my sister’s attire and only revealed their presence when I tried to reduce her to subjection.”
“Oh, you have a sister?”
“Yes – married – husband ranching in Montana.”
Meanwhile he was fastening the refractory document to the deck. With patience, helped by half a dozen pins, he managed to smooth it sufficiently to permit of detailed scrutiny. The girl, wholly interested now, knelt beside him. Any observer in a passing boat might have imagined that they were engaged in some profoundly devotional exercise. But the planks were hard. Miss Dane, seeing nothing but wrinkled parchment, yellow with age, and covered with strange scrawls that seemed to be more a part of the actual material than written on its surface, soon rose.
“Those hieroglyphics are beyond my ken,” she explained.
“They are Arabic,” said Warden – “Arabic characters, that is. The words are Latin – at least to some extent. Epistola Pauli Hebraicis has the ring of old Rome about it, even if it wears the garb of Mahomet.”
He straightened himself suddenly, and shouted for Chris with such energy that the girl was startled.
Chris popped his head out of the fore hatch, and was told to bring his father’s Bible, for Peter read two of its seven hundred odd pages each day in the year.
Warden compared book and scroll intently during many minutes. Miss Dane did not interrupt. She contented herself with a somewhat prolonged investigation of Warden’s face, or so much of it as was visible. Then she turned away and gazed at the Sans Souci. There was a wistful look in her eyes. Perhaps she wished that circumstances had contrived to exchange the yacht for the pilot–boat. At any rate, she was glad he had a sister. If only she had a brother! – just such a one!
At last the man’s deep, rather curt voice broke the silence.
“I have solved a part of the puzzle, Miss Dane,” he announced. “My Latinity was severely tried, but the chapter and verse gave me the English equivalent, and that supplied the key. Some one has that – some one has written here portions of the 37th and 38th verses of the eleventh chapter of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews. Our version runs: ‘They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword … they wandered in deserts and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.’ The remainder of the text is in yet another language – Portuguese, I imagine – but my small lore in that tongue is of no avail. In any case my vocabulary could not possibly consort with the stately utterances of St. Paul, as it consists mainly of remarks adapted to the intelligence of a certain type of freebooter peculiar to the West African hinterland.”
“What do you make of it all?” she asked.
“At present –
