# Joan of the Island/Chapter 24
### CHAPTER XXIV KEITH READS THE PAPER

THE hut was already a mass of flames which even the deluge of rain that followed did not extinguish for some time.
The first crash of thunder was only the forerunner of many. Several trees were struck not far from the bungalow. The din overhead became like one continuous roar of heavy artillery. And while the storm was at its height there came the thing which Keith feared most for his friends. A strong wind had been driving across Tao Tao, but it dropped, and a dead calm settled over the island. There was a curious yellowish flare in the western sky; an ominous foreboding hung about the still atmosphere.
First came the sound, the herald of an evil thing, not as a roar but in a high-pitched whine which rose higher as it neared them until it became a nerve-shattering scream as from the throats of a million souls in torment. Twice in his life Keith had heard the same thing in those latitudes, and though he knew what to expect he knew also that they were powerless. It was impossible for those in the ​bungalow to hear one another speak. The girl cast a piteous look of appeal toward Keith, and he put a protecting arm round her.
Then the great wind swept over them. The house literally bent before the blast, and rocked on its foundations. Keith fully expected to see it lifted up bodily and hurled, lightly as an empty eggshell, across the compound, but by some freakish chance the place was spared that fate. The inferno outside lasted several minutes, the rush of the hurricane being indistinguishable from the rattle of the thunder. At last it passed, leaving in its trail only the heavy electrical discharges and the torrential tropic rain.
"This just about settles things for me, I fancy," Chester declared between the crashes of thunder. Two years' work, pretty nearly, must have been wiped out by that wind. I'll bet there isn't a tree left standing in the one-year and two-year patches."
Keith nodded lugubriously. He knew that not only the young trees must have suffered in such a tearing, sweeping onslaught.
"I wonder what the dickens ever made me come to this hole—and stay here when I'd arrived!" said the planter savagely. "Swollen head and obstinacy, I suppose! D'you know, I actually fancied I knew more about plantation work than that old nigger whom Isa murdered. Time after time he warned me the place was no good, but I couldn't ​see it. However, we're evidently eternally busted now, Joan."
"You really think it would be no use staying on Tao Tao?" the girl asked with eyebrows raised.
"I'm sure of it," her brother replied. "It's been touch and go for some time, but there's no question about it now. In a way, I'm not sorry this has happened. I didn't seem to have the pluck to cut my losses and clear out so long as there was any reasonable chance of getting some of our money back. Now we're being pitchforked out of it, which relieves me of responsibility in trying to come to a decision."
"I think you're right—in fact I'm sure you are," Keith put in. "Practically you'd have to start all over again here, and as likely as not some time in the next two or three years the same thing would happen again. It seems to me your only problem is, what are you going to do? You've got the ketch. That's about your only real asset, but it's a home, of a kind, and travelling is cheap that way. Of course it isn't any of my business, but—"
"Don't be an ass, Keith," said Chester. "We're under no end of an obligation to you as it is, and I don't see how I'm ever to wipe that off. Suggestions are welcome. Fire ahead."
Keith puffed at his pipe in silence for a while, allowing a particularly vicious crash of thunder to spend itself and roll away into the distance.
​"Let's get down to brass tacks, then," he said. "First of all, have you any place to go to?"
"The poor house!" Chester suggested with a grimace. "But I'm afraid we're too able-bodied to be eligible. We sold up everything when the guv'nor died and we left England."
"The Kestrel seems to me a fairly good boat in dirty weather."
"None better for her size," said Chester. "I've ridden out some bad gales in her."
"Well, how would you care to try trading for a while?"
"Trading! Why, I'd try it, but I haven't got a darned thing to trade with, and you know I'm no professional navigator."
"I know something about it, though," said Keith, "and if we make for Sydney we might find people there with whom we could negotiate for stock. It doesn't promise anything very brilliant in the way of cold cash, but if you have nothing better in view it would do to go on with."
"You're a brick to offer to come with us," said Chester. "We could make ends meet that way for a time, perhaps. What do you say, Joan? I'm afraid the life would be a bit rough for you, but if you found it so I dare say we could fix you up in Sydney till I have time to look round."
The girl faced the prospect bravely. All her hopes were crashing to the ground one after another.
​"You mustn't let me enter into your plans," she said. "Do the best you can to straighten out the tangle. There are some cousins of ours living in Melbourne. If necessary I could go and stay with them temporarily."
"I'm sorry it's such a mess, Joan," her brother said. "I'll get on my financial feet again before long, though."
The devastating storm was at its worst during the first hour, but it continued intermittently throughout the day, and the rain fell almost in solid sheets during the following night, adding further ruin to the plantation. Next morning Keith left the bungalow to make a survey of the damage, and it did not take long to ascertain that their worst fears had been realized. The hurricane had torn a great path right across the island, levelling everything in its way, and the trees that had not actually been uprooted were so much damaged that nothing less than disaster had overtaken the planter of Tao Tao.
"My advice to you," Keith said to Chester on his return, "is to clear out of here, and forget you ever saw the place, the moment the storm subsides and you feel well enough to travel. The plantation is like the little boy's apple: there ain't going to be no core."
"Yes, I fancy I'm through; and I'm ready to travel as soon as we can get off. It'll take us a ​couple of days, though. Then we'll beat it for Australia."
The ketch had dragged her anchor for two or three hundred feet, and only the fact that she had been lying under the shelter of the island had prevented her from disappearing altogether. Keith put off to her and found she had sustained some damage, but not more than he could repair. He spent a busy afternoon and then returned to the island for supper, reporting her ready for the journey.
That evening they were sitting in the living-room, a rather subdued trio. Chester's head was bandaged, but he had refused point blank to remain in bed any longer. He was smoking and ruminating. Joan was engaged in the prosaic occupation of darning. Her thoughts were a medley. Keith was turning over the bundle of newspapers which had been brought to Tao Tao from the Petrel, and which he had not had an opportunity of dipping into. Now, with nothing better to do, he smoothed out the stiff folds and, as was natural, turned first of all to the news of ships and shipping.
Suddenly he emitted a low whistle and laid his pipe down carefully. A paragraph with a small headline stood out in letters of fire before him.
His lips had become strangely dry. He moistened them, and read the paragraph over a second time, permitting every word to sink in.
​Then he leaned back and laughed, in an odd fashion, for there was little of mirth in his laughter.
"What on earth—" exclaimed Chester.
"There's—there's been a—a kind of a misunderstanding," said the man from the Four Winds, rising to his feet and casting a keen glance in the direction of Joan. There was something in his face that filled her with vague joy. For the first time since he had kissed her as they landed in the whale-boat the mask seemed to have been lifted from his face.
"It's tickling you. Tell us," Chester urged.
"Listen," replied Keith. "'The steamer Four Winds, which arrived at Sydney to-day, reports that her first mate, a man named Earle, disappeared in a mysterious fashion on the voyage. During his watch below, as the ship was passing through the Sulu Sea, he vanished, and no trace of him has since been found. The weather was calm which makes the affair more singular, since there was no possibility of his being washed overboard. It is supposed that he stumbled on the deck and fell over the rail. The officer of the watch, however, declares that he heard no cry. Captain Murdock, of the Four Winds, met with a serious accident the same night, falling in his cabin and sustaining a severe injury to his head, from which however, he is rapidly recovering. In view of the odd coincidence of the mate, having disappeared at the same time that the skip​per received his injury, Captain Murdock placed the facts before the police on his arrival at Sydney, in order that any suspicion of his having been concerned in the fate of Earle might be removed. The police made a careful investigation, and after questioning the second mate, who was on the bridge at the time, and other members of the crew, they arrived at the conclusion that no blame whatever was attached to Captain Murdock.'"
Joan had listened eagerly, her lips parted, her face blanched.
"Well?" she said almost in a whisper. The name Murdock still rang in her ears sometimes, as she recalled the terrible unconscious utterances of the fever-stricken patient.
"Well?" repeated Chester, no less moved, for though he had always been strongly drawn to this man who had sprung out of the sea, he had wondered vaguely what dark secret lay behind the sailor's sudden departure from his vessel—a departure which he had ever been singularly reluctant to discuss.
"Nothing much," said Keith, picking up his pipe again and lighting it. "Only that lets me out. I'm Earle, you see, and—I thought I'd killed him."
"Murdered him, do you mean?" said Chester with a frown.
Keith shook his head.
"No, it wasn't as bad as that, though I'm afraid ​if he had died a court of law would have called it that. Murdock found himself in a queer hole, though, through my disappearing. Many a man has been hanged on less evidence than what there was against him. I don't wonder he was anxious to have his position cleared up."
There was a brief pause. Then:
"And so your name's Earle," said Chester.
"Yes—Keith Earle. But you'll see in a minute that I had good reason for not saying too much about it. Murdock was a brute—the worst kind of Yankee skipper. There wasn't a man on board who wouldn't have been delighted to hear he'd broken his neck. And for some reason he had his knife into me particularly, probably because I lost my temper the first day we were out of New York, and told him frankly what I thought of him. For many a month things grew worse and worse. He tried to bully me, and, as I dare say you know, if a skipper wants to make it awkward for his chief officer he has a good many opportunities.
"The night I left the ship he was down in the cabin with me, long after midnight, and a row started—just one of the endless series. This time it was something about the handling of the men, and I didn't agree with him. I'm willing to drive men to the limit of their endurance, if necessary for the safety of the ship, but he wasn't happy unless they were being plain bullied. He riled me for fair ​that night, and we had some pretty hard words. We both took the lid off our feelings, and right in the middle of the rumpus the skipper's steward happened to come into the cabin. The skipper heaved something at the man, who vanished, but not before he'd heard enough to know there was likely to be trouble between us.
"A minute or two afterwards Murdock made a bull rush at me. He wasn't much of a fighter, but he was nearly as strong as an elephant. He had his fist bunched up, and if he'd got it home I should have been laid out. It's a serious thing to scrap with a ship's captain afloat, and I had no idea he was going to start a rough house. But he was like a crazy man. There was no stopping him with words, so, in self-protection, I let him have it on the point of the chin.
"It wasn't much more than a tap, as blows go in fighting, but he lost his balance and toppled over, striking his head against a sharp corner.
The moment it happened I saw there was trouble for me, because I guessed Murdock would lay it on as thickly as possible to get even, and he had the steward as a witness that there had been a row between the pair of us. I had no fancy for going to prison for protecting myself against the beast. Then it struck me that he looked horribly still, and I made a hasty examination of him. His head was split open, and his heart must have been beating ​very feebly because I made sure it had stopped.
"That made me think hard. I reckoned I didn't stand a dog's chance of avoiding being strung up. It took me about sixty seconds to make up my mind, and then I slid over the stern. At least I knew I should stand a sporting chance in the water, because there were islands around there. You know what happened after that. I told you that my name was Keith, which was true, and said nothing of my other name for fear it would get about and they'd come after me. When that warship put in I made sure they'd got me."
Chester arose and walked across to Keith with outstretched hand.
"I wouldn't have blamed you in the circumstances if the other fellow had died," he said, "but just the same I'm jolly glad the thing's off your mind. I say, it must have been a bit of a load, eh? Sort of a nightmare, I fancy."
Keith nodded thoughtfully as he placed his hand in that of Chester.
"Yes," he replied gravely, "it was a nightmare." His eyes sought Joan's across the room, and: "It was all that," he added, with conviction.