Spice and the Devil's Cave (8 page)

The hum of voices in the workshop rose again.

“It's the same old knot,” Ferdinand was saying, “that we've still to cut: that reach between the Devil's Cave and Sofala.”

As he spoke the last words, Ruth saw the slender figure start, and stiffen into tense, listening stillness, her face stark and white. Her impulse was to run out-but already the Girl was stealing toward the workshop. A glance at Abel and Ferdinand, with their backs to the door, told Ruth they were quite unaware of the presence behind them.

Noiselessly the Girl sank on the threshold, face turned to the court, hands clenched on her knees. Ruth could see the straining knuckles and the rigid shoulders. What had made this ghastly change? Was it something the Girl had overheard Abel or Ferdinand say?

In vain Ruth tried to recall the conversation, and at last she went into the workroom and dropped into a seat where she could watch.

“What are you two talking about? “she asked as casually as she could.

“Oh, nothing new,” Ferdinand answered, without looking up. “I was saying that it was the same old knot that remained to be cut.”

As he spoke, Ruth saw the head in the doorway turn ever so little. Just as she had suspected! Something connected with the map – and again she cudgelled her memory. Presently, with a yawn, Abel moved back from the table to where he could look at the sunset. She tried to draw him out, but he was no more inclined to talk than Ferdinand. After another pause, the Girl on the doorstep rose and Ruth heard her go to her room.

In an agony of suspense she debated with herself: should she follow? Should she tell Abel what had happened? Yet, after all, what was there to tell? No, she would delay a little, at least till Ferdinand went.

When supper was ready, she cautiously approached the Girl. She found her flung on the bed, her face turned to the wall. No, she wasn't ill – nor hungry. She wanted just to be quiet. Her voice was so natural, that Ruth's anxiety almost vanished. She went back to Abel, telling herself that her imagination had run away with her. She was glad she had had the sense to say nothing to him. But that night she found herself dropping off to sleep still puzzling over the curious change that had come over the Girl.

Suddenly, she woke, with an instant consciousness that Abel, too, was awake.

“Ruth,” she heard him breathe, “someone's in the workshop.”

A stealthy sound came to her ears. She recognized it at once: the drawer of the big table sliding on its grooves. The drawer where the maps were kept!

“There!” Abel was sitting bolt upright. “Don't you hear?”

He seized his cloak, and stepped into the court. In another moment she was stealing after him to the workshop. Yet, even before they reached it, Ruth knew who would be there.

Through its open door a faint ray of light streamed into the dark court. Cautiously they avoided it, and then, from the shadow of a vine, they looked into the room, and saw-as the first sound of the sliding drawer had told Ruth she would see-the Girl.

Crazed fear in every line of her face, of her trembling body, she stood at the table staring down at something on it: a map! As if she searched for something on its surface, they saw her lean over it, and then reel back with a stifled moan.

Ruth grasped Abel's arm. “Shall I go to her? She's suffering so!”

He held her back. “Wait a moment.”

The Girl was now forcing herself to the table, as if to some ordeal. Shuddering, she bent over the map, and this time they saw a trembling finger creep to a definite spot. Slowly it began to trace along the surface. On and on it moved – faltered – stopped short. Suddenly her hands went to her eyes, as though to shut out some horror, and her shoulders were shaking with soundless sobs.

“Oh, Abel, what can be the matter?” Ruth breathed in his ear.

Then, in utter bewilderment they were staring at each other, while there smote on their ears a whispered wail: “
Sofala
–
Sofala
–”

In terrified suspense Ruth watched the slender figure within sway back and forth as if abandoned to despair, when, again, came that stifled voice: “Sofala – The Devil's Cave-”

“What, in heaven's name, does she mean?” Abel's startled face was close to Ruth's. “Is the child gone mad?”

The Girl was standing quite still now, gazing before her with wide, blank eyes. Suddenly and unexpectedly, she reached out and snuffed the candle. The next moment Ruth felt her brush past into the court. Breathlessly they watched her pause, and scan the starlit sky, and then – steal toward the gate.

In a flash Ruth had pushed Abel through the door of the workshop. “Quick – go back to bed!” she whispered, while from the threshold she called, “Trying to get some air, child? Too warm to sleep, is it?”

She saw the distant figure start – turn back. In a minute her arm was around the trembling form. She was saying, gently, that she couldn't sleep, either, that a turn around the court would make them drowsy.

From her manner no one would ever have suspected that Ruth wasn't in the habit of taking strolls at midnight. She rambled on about nothings; lingered, so they could both smell the dewy jessamine blossoms. Sometimes, in a dazed way, there were low murmured replies. At last Ruth declared she was sleepy, and that she'd spend the rest of the night on a couch near the door for the cooler air.

On the pretext of laying back the heavier coverings, she delayed m the Girls room, and when she came out, she left the door ajar.

It was just before dawn, when she had made sure of the Girl's sound sleep, that she slipped back to Abel. He was dressed, and softly pacing back and forth, his head sunk on his breast-his habit when he was thinking out some problem.

She came close to him, feeling like a guilty child. “Abel – I – I saw her listening yesterday, when you and Ferdinand were studying over that map! I saw her face change-”

“You did?” Abel asked, in a startled voice. Anyone else would have added, “Why didn't you say something about it? “But Abel only said, very gently, “It was wonderful, my dear, just wonderful, the way you managed her in the court. I don't believe she suspected!”

A hurt look came into her eyes. “She was running away from us-though we've never done anything but love her.”

“It wasn't from us,” he comforted, “but from the same fear that drove her when she came to us.”

“And I'd begun to think she'd forgotten!”

“That poor child must never know what we saw tonight.”

“No; and another thing, we mustn't leave her to herself. I'd better go now and see if she's awake.”

“Ruth,”– Abel came close to her, and she saw that his eyes had an awestruck look –“did you notice that she said those words,
Sofala, Devil's Cave
, as if-as if, Ruth, they were familiar to her?”

CHAPTER 7

The Caged Bird

N
ICOLO'S
mood, as he watched his shipwrights at work, late one afternoon, matched the sunless day. Strips of sombre sky between the partly placed ribs of his caravel gave her an aspect of desolation that made him shiver. Would he have done better, he wondered, to have taken the advice of the
Venezia's
captain, and gone back to Venice? Suppose Manoel should remain indifferent to the Way of the Spices, and Spain or England should find it!

He recalled that Abel Zakuto had admitted, in so many words, that something was needed to awake Manoel to the situation. As if, Nicolo gloomily mused, anything more splendidly convincing than what Diaz had done were needed! If that couldn't spur the King into action, what could?

At this point in his reflections, he saw the men put up their tools and prepare to leave. He nodded to one of them whom he remembered hiring a few weeks ago, a short, wiry chap with a deeply tanned face and small, black eyes that looked like burnt gimlet holes in brown parchment. A rolling gait and an air of cat-like agility made one immediately visualize him as thoroughly at home at all heights and angles. Nicolo had hired him because the fellow had looked so in need, and because there was a haunting familiarity about him.

“Is she going ahead to suit you, sir? “he inquired, as he stopped at Nicolo's side to survey the caravel.

“I'm satisfied,” Nicolo told him, “though I'm not as used to the Portuguese type of craft as I am to the Venetian.”

At once the other looked interested. “You've been to sea, have you, sir?”

“I know the Mediterranean pretty well,” Nicolo admitted. He scrutinized the tanned face. . . . Where had he seen it before? “You've had considerable experience at sea,

“All over!” grinned the other. “Up and down the Red Sea, and across to India, and over by Malacca.”

“So! Some sight-seeing! How do you come to be in a dockyard at this end of the world?”

“Oh – everybody likes a change,” the man evasively returned. “What trade are you reckoning on, sir?”

“Madeira lumber and sugar and wine till I can do better. Spices, eventually, I hope-if Portugal ever finds the sea route to them.”

“Humph!” There was frank defiance in the grunt.

“Why, there's more in spice than in anything else,” Nicolo remonstrated.

“You're right there is! You'd be surprised if you only knew how much of a ‘more' it is!”

Nicolo studied the sailor with curiosity. Almost he appeared to bear a grudge against spice. “How do you come to know so much about it, then?” he demanded.

“Oh-worked for years on ships that carried it. What between hauling on board and heaving over rail I reckon I've handled more pounds of the stuff than you're days old!”

“You haven't by any chance been where the spices grow?” Nicolo ventured.

“Over Ceylon way, you mean? And Penang, and Banda?

“Banda!” Nicolo seized on the name so familiar to him through the cherished Conti letters, “How'd you get over there?”

The brown parchment face wrinkled into a grin. “I took to the sea from pretty near the time I was born-and I suppose I just kept on!”

Nicolo laughed. “And where were you born?”

“Down river – at Belem.
¹
My father was a bar pilot and he taught me his calling. I cut my teeth, you might say, on the Cachopos!
²

Nicolo eyed him with fresh interest. “Belem and the Orient are some distance apart!” he suggested.

The other nodded. “After my father was lost at sea, and my mother died, I quit the land for good. I got to know every port in the Mediterranean. One day, in Alexandria, I saw a caravan starting but for the Red Sea, and I took a notion to go along. Everybody said there was plenty of work down that way, and they were right, too. The harbour at Aden's just chock-a-block with craft coming and going!”

Nicolo felt his pulses leap-the very East seemed to drip off this fellow's tongue! “Where does all that traffic come from?”

“Everywhere; mostly from India, Cathay, the mess of islands betwixt and beyond; in Arab bottoms of course. They do all the carrying, and I'll tell you they keep the ocean churning!”

Nicolo impetuously started on more questions, but suddenly checked himself: this first hand experience belonged to the workshop! “Would you be willing to talk to some of my friends about these places where you've seen the spices growing?”

The man silently eyed him, and Nicolo again sensed his hostility toward this subject over which Europe was seething.

“Where are your friends? “he at last demanded.

“Up the hill a way-I'll take you there myself,” Nicolo eagerly volunteered.

“Oh, I might go, some evening,” the other agreed, as he turned away. “Perhaps I can tell you a thing or two about this spice business,” he added over his shoulder, “seeing you're so keen on it.”

Bursting with his news, Nicolo strode up the hill. Already he could see Abel's shining eyes when he should hear it: someone who had handled spices and seen them growing to tell about them first hand! They must arrange, too, for Gama and Diaz and the others to be there. It would be tremendous, epoch-making – and Nicolo quickened his step.

He found Ruth in the court, splitting figs from a heaped basket, and spreading them to dry in the sun. Abel was out, she said, but he would be back any moment.

Nicolo went into the workshop, took the Marco Polo
Travels
from its shelf, and sat down to see what he could make of the translation. At last, as no Abel appeared, he decided to delay no longer. He laid down the book and had started toward the door, when a stealthy sound arrested him, a sound which he knew instantly was not meant to be heard.

He glanced at Ruth busily dipping in and out of the figs. She, certainly, had not made that sound. There! . . . There it was, again.

On impulse he tiptoed into the next room, and looked into the room beyond. Back to him, by an open window, stood a girl, holding a bird-cage. Its tiny door, he noticed, was swung back, and the bird inside was fluttering uneasily. She lifted the cage to the window, and gently shook it. Nicolo watched her in amazement. Did she want to get rid of the little creature? Again she shook the cage, and, this time, out flashed the bird-not through the window, but into the room.