South Wind

SOUTH WIND
BY NORMAN DOUGLAS
AUTHOR OF 'OLD CALABRIA'
LONDON: MARTIN SECKER
First Published March 1917
CHAPTER I

The bishop was feeling rather sea-sick. Confoundedly sea-sick, in fact.
This annoyed him. For he disapproved of sickness in every shape or
form. His own state of body was far from satisfactory at that moment;
Africa--he was Bishop of Bampopo in the Equatorial Regions--had
played the devil with his lower gastric department and made him
almost an invalid; a circumstance of which he was nowise proud,
seeing that ill-health led to inefficiency in all walks of life. There was
nothing he despised more than inefficiency. Well or ill, he always
insisted on getting through his tasks in a businesslike fashion. That was
the way to live, he used to say. Get through with it. Be perfect of your
kind, whatever that kind may be. Hence his sneaking fondness for the
natives--they were such fine, healthy animals.
Fine, healthy animals; perfect of their kind! Africa liked them to "get
through with it" according to their own lights. But there was evidently a
little touch of spitefulness and malice about Africa; something almost
human. For when white people try to get through with it after their
particular fashion, she makes hay of their livers or something. That is
what had happened to Thomas Heard, D.D., Bishop of Bampopo. He
had been so perfect of his kind, such an exemplary pastor, that there
was small chance of a return to the scenes of his episcopal labours.

Anybody could have told him what would happen. He ought to have
allowed for a little human weakness, on the part of the Black Continent.
It could not be helped. For the rest, he was half inclined to give up the
Church and take to some educational work on his return to England.
Perhaps that was why he at present preferred to be known as "Mr.
Heard." It put people at their ease, and him too.
Whence now this novel and unpleasant sensation in the upper gastric
region? Most annoying! He had dined discreetly at his hotel the
evening before; had breakfasted with moderation. And had he not
voyaged in many parts of the world, in China Seas and round the Cape?
Was he not even then on his return journey from Zanzibar? No doubt.
But the big liner which deposited him yesterday at the thronged port
was a different concern from this wretched tub, reeking with
indescribable odours as it rolled in the oily swell of the past storm
through which the MOZAMBIQUE had ridden without a tremor. The
benches, too, were frightfully uncomfortable, and sticky with sirocco
moisture under the breathless awning. Above all, there was the
unavoidable spectacle of the suffering passengers, natives of the
country; it infected him with misery. In attitudes worthy of
Michelangelo they sprawled about the deck, groaning with anguish;
huddled up in corners with a lemon-prophylactic against sea-sickness,
apparently-pressed to faces which, by some subtle process of
colour-adaptation, had acquired the complexion of the fruit; tottering to
the taffrail. . . .
There was a peasant woman dressed in black, holding an infant to her
breast. Both child and parent suffered to a distressing degree. By some
kindly dispensation of Providence they contrived to be ill in turns, and
the situation might have verged on the comical but for the fact that
blank despair was written on the face of the mother. She evidently
thought her last day had come, and still, in the convulsions of her pain,
tried to soothe the child. An ungainly creature, with a big scar across
one cheek. She suffered dumbly, like some poor animal. The bishop's
heart went out to her.
He took out his watch. Two more hours of discomfort to be gone

through! Then he looked over the water. The goal was far distant.
Viewed from the clammy deck on this bright morning, the island of
Nepenthe resembled a cloud. It was a silvery speck upon that limitless
expanse of blue sea and sky. A south wind breathed over the
Mediterranean waters, drawing up their moisture which lay couched in
thick mists abut its flanks and uplands. The comely outlines were
barely suggested through a veil of fog. An air of irreality hung about
the place. Could this be an island? A veritable island of rocks and
vineyards and houses--this pallid apparition? It looked like some snowy
sea-bird resting upon the waves; a sea-bird or a cloud; one of those
lonely clouds that stray from their fellows and drift about in wayward
fashion at the bidding of every breeze.
All the better-class natives had disappeared below save an unusually fat
young priest with a face like a full moon, who pretended to be
immersed in his breviary but was looking out of the corner