The Woman Who Didn't by Victoria Cross
<< Return to Title Details & Download1
The Woman Who Didn't
by Victoria Cross
LONDON:
JOHN LANE, VIGO ST
BOSTON:
ROBERTS BROS.,
1895
CHAPTER I
'BUT why not pay them? We may just as well now as when we reach the ship.'
The words came in a clear, cultivated woman's voice through the foggy duskiness of an Egyptian night, from the farther end of the boat, which swayed slightly from side to side on the smoothly heaving water.
It was an Aden boat loaded with passengers impatient to return to their ship. At least presumably they were impatient, but it was simply their refusal to pay the clamouring African boatmen their legitimate fee that kept us all waiting there, rocking in the unsteady wooden shell, with the semicircle of lights on the shore rising and falling before us through the hot sulphurous mist. The boatmen deferentially but firmly refused to loose the boat from the stage till each passenger had paid the due eightpence for his fare. The passengers clamoured and yelled, and swore that damned swine as they were, they should be paid when they reached the ship, and not before.
This sort of thing had been going on for half an hour while I sat smoking in the stern, watching the Scorpion in the jewelled sky above sinking slowly to the pointed rocks, and listening idly to the storm of oaths that was showered on the impassive blacks for daring to ask for their pay. I had already given my fare when I first stepped into the boat, so that the controversy did not concern me beyond my feeling bound to interfere when the man sitting next me, the British missionary, sprang to