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THE QUEEN VERSUS
BILLY AND
OTHER STORIES

by

LLOYD OSBOURNE


[Illustration]






Charles Scribner’s Sons
New York . . . . 1900

Copyright, 1900, by
Charles Scribner’S Sons

The Devinne Press.




Contents


                                   Page

  The Queen versus Billy              3

  The Beautiful Man of Pingalap      31

  The Dust of Defeat                 65

  The Happiest Day of his Life      109

  Father Zosimus                    127

  Frenchy’s Last Job                171

  The Devil’s White Man             213

  The Phantom City                  237

  Amatua’s Sailor                   287




THE QUEEN VERSUS BILLY




THE QUEEN VERSUS BILLY


It was the _Sandfly_, Captain Toombs, that brought the news to Sydney
and intercepted her Majesty’s third-class cruiser _Stingaree_, as she
lay in Man-of-War Cove, with her boats hoisted in and a deck-load
of coal as high as her bulwarks, on the eve of a long trip into the
western Pacific. It was the same old story--another white man sent to
his last account in the inhospitable Solomons, where if the climate
does not kill you the black man soon will: “Thomas Hysslop Biggar,
commonly known as ‘Captain Tom’; aged forty-six; British subject;
occupation, trader in coprah; place of residence, Sunflower Bay, island
of Guadalcanar; murdered by the natives in September, 1888, between
the 7th and the 24th, and his station looted and burned.” There was
trouble in store for Sunflower Bay; they had killed Collins in 1884,
and Casseroles the Frenchman in 1887, and had drawn upon themselves an
ominous attention by firing into the _Meg Merrilies_ in the course of
the same year. Murder was becoming too frequent in Sunflower Bay, and
Captain Casement, while policing those sweltering seas, was asked to
“conduct an inquiry into the alleged murder of T. H. Biggar, and take
what punitive measures he judged to be necessary.”

It was not everybody who would have liked such a task; in dealing with
savages the innocent are too often lumped with the guilty, and while
you are scattering death and canister among the evil-doers, you are
often mangling their wives and children in a way horrible to think of.
Captain Casement had seen such things in the course of his eventful
service, and though no stickler where his duty was concerned, he was
neither a brute nor a coward. He was a simple gentleman of character,
parts, and conscience, with refined tastes, and a horror of shedding
innocent blood. Under his command were five officers: Facey, acting
first lieutenant, Burder, acting second, Assistant Paymaster Pickthorn,
Engineer Sennett, Dr. Roche, ten marines, and a crew of eighty-eight
men.

After a roundabout cruise through the pleasant groups of Fiji,
Tongataboo, and Samoa, with little to occupy him save official dinners,
tennis parties, and an occasional dance ashore, Captain Casement
headed his ship for the wild western islands and pricked out a course
for Sunflower Bay. One hot morning, when the damp, moist air made
everything sticky to the touch, and the whole ship sweated like a
palm-house from stem to stern, the _Stingaree_ ran past the towering
cliffs and roaring breakers of Guadalcanar, and let go her anchor off
the blow-hole in Sunflower Bay. It was a melancholy spot to look at,
though beautiful in a gloomy and savage fashion, and the only signs of
man’s occupancy were the blackened ruin of the trader’s house, a small
mountain of coal half covered with creepers, and a flagstaff surmounted
by a skull. There was no visible beach, for the mangroves ran to the
water’s edge, save where it had been partially cleared away by the man
whose murder they had come to avenge; nor did the closest scrutiny with
the glass betray any tell-tale smoke or the least sign of habitation.
Captain Casement surveyed the place with his keen, practised eyes, and
the longer he looked the less he liked it. The desolation jarred upon
his nerves, and his heart fell a little as the blow-hole burst hoarsely
under the ship’s quarter, and the everlasting breakers on the outer
reef droned their note of menace and alarm.

“Goodness gracious!” he said, in his abrupt, impatient fashion, as he
stood beside Facey on the bridge and superintended the laying of the
kedge. “I don’t half like the look of it, Mr. Facey; it’s a damned
nasty-looking place.”

The first lieutenant nodded. He was a burly, inarticulate man, to whom
speech was always a serious matter.

“And see here, Facey,” went on the captain. “Guns don’t matter much;
none of the devils shoot fit to speak of; but their poisoned arrows are
the very deuce--you know that was the way Goodenough was killed--and
you must keep your weather eye lifting.”

“Am I to go, sir?” asked the lieutenant.

“Yes,” said Casement. “You must take Pickthorn and twenty-five men in
the first cutter. Send Burder in the second, with twenty more, to cover
your landing. And for God’s sake, Facey, keep cool, and neither get
flustered nor over-friendly! Don’t shoot unless you have to; and always
remember they are the most treacherous savages in the world. Be gentle
and firm, and do everything with as little fuss and as great a show of
confidence as you can.”

“All right, sir,” said Facey.

Half an hour later, Facey, with twenty-five well-armed men, had
vanished into the mangroves, while Burder and his crew lay forty yards
off the shore in the second cutter, the officer devouring “Under Two
Flags,” and the men smoking and yarning in the bottom of the boat.
On the _Stingaree_ two light guns were cast loose and made ready to
open fire at a moment’s notice, and a lookout man was stationed in the
maintop. The doctor busied himself in dismal preparation, while the
captain paced the bridge with quick and anxious steps, fretting for the
safety of his party ashore.

Hour after hour passed and brought never a sound from the melancholy
woods. The fierce sun mounted to the zenith and sank again into the
western sky. Casement was beside himself with suspense; a cup of tea
served him for lunch, and he smoked one cigar after another. A deep
foreboding brooded over the ship; the men sat or walked uneasily about
the waist; the maintop was clustered with anxious blue-jackets; and old
Quinn, the gunner, a half-crazy zealot whose religious convictions were
of the extremest order, pattered off prayers beside the shotted guns.
Towards five o’clock, when things were looking desperate and all began
to fear the very worst, a sudden shout roused the ship, and the shore
party, noisy and triumphant, were seen streaming down to the beach. A
few moments later the two boats pulled slowly off to the ship, Facey’s
company the richer by a black man, whose costume consisted of little
more than the ropes he was bound with. A thundering cheer hailed them
as they swept under the stern and drew up at the starboard gangway, and
Facey was soon reporting himself on the bridge.

“I can’t tell you what a relief it is to see you,” said the captain. “I
wouldn’t pass another such day for a thousand pounds!”

Facey was dog-tired, and his tattered clothes and scratched face gave
evidence of a toilsome march. But he was in a boisterous good humour.
He had acquitted himself with marked success, and was thankful to have
brought back his party and himself safe and sound.

“Well, how did you make out?” asked the captain.

“We landed at the trader’s house,” began Facey, “followed a path that
led inland, and reached some Kanaka huts. Not a soul in ’em; clean
gone, every man jack. Followed along a well beaten path which led us
into the next bay, bearing north-northeast half-east, keeping the
liveliest lookout all the time. Three miles along we ran into another
village, chock-a-block with niggers. It looked a nasty go; lots of
guns and spears, and everybody pretty skittish, kind of they would and
they wouldn’t! I recollected your orders and went slow; you know what
I mean, sir--worked off the presents, and smoked my pipe leisurely.
By and by they came round, tricky as the devil, on to make friends or
to eat us alive, whichever seemed the more promising. I let out what
I wanted, and bit by bit found out that all the Sunflower Bay crowd
were there, even to old Jibberik, the chief--him Toombs said was the
biggest scoundrel of the lot. He looked pretty sick and knew mighty
well what we were after. I talked broadsides to that old man, and put
it to him that he had better give up the chaps who had killed the
trader than waltz back to the ship and be shot instanter himself--for
somebody had to go, I said; and just as soon as I got the old codger
alongside of me I gave him to understand that he was my bird, and kept
my cocked pistol pointed at his belly. After no end of a fuss, and
lots of frothing and loud talk, with things looking precious ugly now
and again, we ended by coming out on top. Then they dragged along a
young nigger named Billy, a returned labour-boy from the Queensland
plantations, they said, and handed him over to me as the murderer. I
thought it was more than likely they’d give us some cheap nigger they
had no use for, or some worn-out old customer, as they did in Pentecost
to Dewar of the _Royalist_; but I think this Billy was all right. A lot
of niggers--Billy’s own push, I suppose--looked as black as fits and
wouldn’t come round for a long time. Then I lashed the prisoner’s hands
and tied him to one of our men, and talked pretty straight to Jib. I
made him promise he’d bring his people back at once, and be down on
the beach, himself and two others, to-morrow morning to give evidence
against Billy.”

“You’ve done well, Mr. Facey,” said Casement, as his lieutenant drew to
a close, “and I tell you the story sha’n’t lose when I report it to
the admiral. You had better go now and get your clothes off,” he added.

Facey jumped to his feet. “I am sure I am awfully obliged to you, sir,”
he said.

“Ugh, that’s all right,” said Casement, in his testy way. “What have
you done with the prisoner?”

“Turned him over to the sergeant for safe-keeping, sir,” returned the
officer.

“Leg-irons?” asked Casement.

“Leg-irons, handcuffs, and a dog-chain,” returned Facey, with a grin.
“He’s cost too much to take any chances of his getting off.”

The first thing next morning, old Jibberik was brought aboard with his
two companions. He was a disgusting old gorilla of a man, with a hairy
chest and a cold, leering eye--a mere scarecrow of humanity, of a type
incredibly cruel and debased. He had worked up enough courage overnight
to beg for everything within sight, and he fingered the clothes and
accoutrements of the seamen like a greedy child. His two friends were
not a whit behind him, either in manners or appearance. They clicked
and chattered like monkeys, and showed extraordinary fearlessness in
that armed ship amid the swarming whites; the only man they seemed to
dread was old Jibberik himself; and they wilted under his piercing
glance like flowers in the sun, whenever his baleful attention fell
their way.

Four bells was the time set for the court martial; at nine o’clock
Casement sent for Facey and told him he must prepare to defend the
prisoner.

“Burder will prosecute for the Queen,” he said. “Pickthorn will act as
clerk. Sennett, Roche, and I will compose the court.”

The first lieutenant was overcome. “I don’t think I can, sir,” he said
feebly. “I never did such a thing in my life; I wouldn’t know where to
begin, or to leave off, for that matter.”

“You can leave off when we hang your prisoner,” Casement returned, with
his bull-doggish air. “Of course, it’s all a damned farce,” he went on.
“Somebody’s got to act for the nigger; it’s printed that way in the
book.”

“I’ll move for an adjournment,” said Facey.

“I’ll be hanged if you will,” said the captain. “It’s a beastly
business, and we have got to put it through.”

Facey groaned.

“Well, do you think I like it?” said Casement.

The lieutenant saluted and walked away to find his prisoner.

Billy was clanking his chains in a canvas hutch alongside the sick-bay,
where a man lay dying. He looked up as Facey approached, and his face
brightened as he recognised his captor. He was a good-looking young
negro, and the symmetry of his limbs, and his air of intelligence and
capacity, stood out in pleasant contrast with the rest of his comrades
in Sunflower Bay.

“Billy,” said Facey, “they are going to make judge and jury for you by
and by; and I am to talky-talky for you.”

“All same Queensland,” returned Billy. “May the Lord have mercy on your
sinful soul!”

Facey was stupefied. “Where in thunder did you learn that?” he demanded.

“Oh, me savvy too much,” said Billy.

“Now, see here,” said the lieutenant. “You didn’t kill that trader?”

“Yes, I kill him,” said Billy, cheerfully.

“You did?” cried the other.

“White fellow no good; I kill him,” said the prisoner.

“If you tell that to the captain he’ll shoot you,” said Facey. If the
prisoner was to be defended he was going to give him all the help he
could.

The black boy looked distressed and nodded a forlorn assent.

“You’ll be a big fool to say that,” said Facey.

“White fellow no good; I kill him,” repeated Billy.

“You unmitigated idiot, you’ll do for yourself,” cried the lieutenant,
angrily. “What’s the good of my talking for you if you can’t stand up
for yourself?”

Billy began to whimper; the other’s loud voice and threatening
demeanour seemed to overwhelm him.

Facey was struck with contrition. “Now shut up that snivelling,” he
said, more kindly. “Tell me the truth, Bill. Isn’t this some humbuggery
of old Jib’s--a regular plant, to shield somebody else at the cost of
your hide?”

Billy rolled his eyes, and wiped away the tears with a grimy paw.

“White fellow no good; I kill--”

“You be damned!” cried his legal adviser.

At ten o’clock the court martial was assembled on the quarter-deck.
The captain, with his brawny shoulders thrown forward, and his hands
deep in his trouser pockets, had all the air of a man in the throes
of indigestion. On either side of him were Sennett and Roche; and
in front, beside a table covered with a flag, was Pickthorn, with a
clerkly outfit and a Bible. Billy stood in chains beside a couple of
marines, looking extremely depressed. The old gorillas, their filthy
kilts bulging with what they had begged or pilfered, were in charge of
the sergeant, who had all he could do to prevent their spitting on the
deck.

Facey was the first one sworn. He deposed as to the capture and
identity of the prisoner. Then Billy was led up to the table and told
to plead.

“Kiss the book and say whether you murdered the trader or not,” said
the captain.

“White fellow no good; I kill him,” quavered the prisoner.

“Pleads guilty,” said Casement to the clerk.

“What did you do it for?” demanded the court.

Billy reiterated his stock phrase.

“Take him away,” said the captain.

Jibberik was the next witness. He kissed the book as though it were
his long-lost brother, and looked almost unabashed enough to beg it
of Pickthorn. I shall not weary the reader with his laboured English,
that lingua Franca of the isles which in the Western Pacific is known
as Beach da Mar. He told a pretty plain story: Billy and the trader had
always been on bad terms. One night, crazy with palm-toddy, Billy had
sneaked down to Captain Tom’s house and shot him through the body as he
was reading a book at supper. As to the subsequent burning and looting
of the station the old savage was none so clear, sheltering himself
in the unintelligibility of which he was a master. His two companions
followed suit, and drew the noose a little tighter round Billy’s throat.

Then rose Burder for the Queen. He was a cheeky youngster, with pink
cheeks, a glib tongue, and no end of assurance.

“I don’t propose to waste the time of the honourable court,” he began;
“but if ever there was a flat-footed, self-confessed murderer, I would
say it is the dusky gentleman in the dock. The blood of Biggar cries
aloud for vengeance, and it would be a shame if it cried in vain,” he
said. He would point to that dreary ruin of which the defunct had been
the manly ornament, radiating civilisation round him like a candle in
the dark, and then to that black monster, who had felled him down.
This kind of thing had got to stop in the Solomon Islands; the natives
were losing all respect for whites, and he put it to the court whether
they would not jeopardise the life of the new trader if they acquitted
the murderer of the old. Now that they had got their hand in, he would
go even further, and hang up with Billy the three witnesses for the
prosecution, old Jib and the other brace of jossers, who had villain
and cutthroat stamped--

“Stick to the prisoner,” cried the court.

“I bow to correction, sir,” went on Burder. “I say again, this is no
time for half-measures; and I say that Sunflower Bay will be a better
place to live in without Mr. Billy. I leave it to the honourable
court, with every confidence, to vindicate justice in these islands by
condemning the prisoner to the extreme penalty of the law. The case for
the Queen is closed, gentlemen.”

“I believe you appear for the defence, Mr. Facey?” said Casement, as
the Queen’s prosecutor took his seat.

“I do, sir,” returned the first lieutenant, nervously.

“I should like to say, first of all,” he began, “that I will not
cross-examine these dirty old savages who have given evidence against
my client. I quite agree with everything my honourable friend has said
regarding them, and I cannot think that the court will attach undue
importance to any evidence they may have given. We’ve been told that
the Kanakas are losing all respect for whites, and that if we don’t
take some strong measures there will be the deuce to pay in these
islands. Perhaps there will be; but is that the British justice we’re
so proud of, or is it fair play, gentlemen, to the unfortunate wretch
who is trembling before you? From what I’ve seen of the whites in this
group, I can say emphatically that I’m in a line with the Kanakas. Now,
as to this Billy: What is there against him but his own confession? and
that, I beg leave to point out, ought not to be taken as conclusive.
As like as not he is the scapegoat for the whole bay, and has been
coached up to tell this story under the screw. Just look one moment at
old Jib there, and see how his friends wither when his eyes fall their
way. For all we know to the contrary, his gibberish and click-click may
be to the tune of ‘Billy, you son of a gun, I’ll cut you into forty
pieces, or flay you alive if you don’t stick to what I’ve told you.’
After all, what have we learned from Billy? Nothing more than this:
‘White fellow no good; I kill him.’ Is that what anybody would call a
full confession? Does it give any clew or any details as to the motive
or the carrying out of this murder? It may be, indeed, that Billy is
a monomaniac with a confirmed delusion that he has killed Biggar; the
court may smile, but I think I am right in stating that such things
have occurred and have even led to miscarriages of justice in the past.
I tell you, gentlemen, I believe it was the whole blooming bay that
killed Biggar, and that Billy was just as guilty or just as innocent
as the rest. And there is one thing I feel mortal sure about: that if
we take the prisoner outside the heads we will soon get the gag off
his mouth, and learn a good deal more about this ugly business. Under
old Jib’s search-light he’s got to keep a close lip; but take him out
to sea, and I answer for it he won’t be so reticent. In conclusion,
gentlemen, I say again that the evidence in this case is inconclusive;
that the honourable gentleman who has appeared for the Queen has
failed to make out a convincing case against my client; that Billy’s
confession in itself is not a sufficient proof that he committed the
crime charged against him; and that we cannot take the life of a human
being on such flimsy and unsupported evidence.”

A dead silence fell upon the court when Facey drew his case to a close
and resumed his seat. Nothing could be heard but the scratching of
Pickthorn’s pen and the reverberating growl of the blow-hole as it
fretted and fumed within for the screaming blast which was soon to
follow. Casement rammed his hands deeper into his pockets, gnawed his
tawny mustache, and protruded his chin. At last, with a start, he awoke
from his reverie, and barked out:

“Mr. Sennett, as the youngest member, it is for you to speak first.”

“I think he’s guilty, sir,” said Sennett.

Casement turned his quick glance on Roche.

“Same here,” said the doctor.

“The finding of the court,” said the captain after another pause, “is
that the prisoner Billy is guilty of the murder of T. H.--what’s his
name?--Biggar, at Sunflower Bay, on the blank day of September, 1888,
and is condemned to be shot as an example to the island. Sentence to be
deferred until I get the ship back from New Ireland, where I’ve to look
into that Carbutt business and the outrage at MacCarthy’s Inlet, on
the chance of the prisoner making a further confession and implicating
others in his crime. The court is dismissed.”

“Beg pardon, sir,” said Pickthorn, looking up from his writing as the
others rose to their feet. “What am I to call the case?--the Queen
_versus_ Billy what?”

“Billy nothing,” said the captain, savagely. “Call him William
Pickthorn if you think it sounds better.”

The verdict of the court was explained to Jibberik, and the old rogue
and his pair of friends were landed in the cove, the boat returning to
find the ship with anchor weighed and the loosened sails flapping on
the yards. In a few minutes she was steaming out to sea, and every one
grew confident that Billy’s tongue would soon wag as he saw Sunflower
Bay dwindle behind him. But the dogged savage stuck to his tale; he
had but one reply to all inquiries, to all probing and pumping for
further particulars of the murder. On his side the conversation began
and ended with: “White fellow no good; I kill him.” On other topics
he could be drawn out at will, and proved himself a most tractable,
sweet-tempered, and far from unintelligent fellow. The men got to like
him immensely, keeping him in perpetual tobacco and providing him
with more grog than was quite good for him. In the fo’castle it was
rank heresy to call him a murderer or to express any doubts regarding
his innocence. He became at once the pet and the mystery of the ship,
and his canvas cell the rallying-point for all the little gaieties on
board. He played cards well, was an apt pupil on the accordion, and at
checkers he was the master of the ship! And he not only beat you, but
he beat you handsomely, shaking hands before and after the event, like
a prizefighter in the ring.

Casement felt very uneasy about the boy; he grew more and more
uncomfortable at heart, and it was the talk of the ship that the
problem of Billy was weighing on the “old man” like a hundredweight of
bricks. The whole business preyed upon him unceasingly and he dreaded
each passing day that brought the execution ever nearer. Billy kept
him sleepless in the steaming nights; Billy faced him like a spectre
at his solitary board; Billy’s face blurred the pages of the books
and magazines he had laid up for these dreary days in the Solomons.
Casement visited his prisoner twice a day, against the better judgment
that bade him keep away and try to forget him. He never said much after
his first two ineffectual attempts to wrestle with Billy’s stereotyped
phrase and to extort further information; but, chewing a cigar, he
would stare the black creature out of countenance for ten minutes at a
time, with a look of the strongest annoyance and disfavor, as though
his patience could not much longer withstand the strain.

The officers were not a whit behind their captain. Billy’s artless ways
and boundless good humour had won the whole ward-room to his side; and
his grim determination to die, at once bewildered and exasperated every
soul on board. The strange spectacle offered of a hundred men at work
to persuade their prisoner to recall his damning confession, and on
pins and needles to save him from a fate he himself seemed not to fear.
The captain as good as told Facey that if the boy would assert his
innocence he would scarcely venture to shoot him; and this intelligence
Facey handed on to his client, and, incidentally, to the whole ship’s
company. Never was a criminal so beset. Every man on board tried in
his turn to shake Billy’s obstinacy, and to paint, in no uncertain
colours, the dreadful fate the future held in store for him. One and
all they retired discomfited, some with curses, others on the verge of
tears. They swore at him for a fool; they cajoled him as they would a
child; they acted out his last end with all fidelity to detail, even
to a firing platoon saying “Bang, bang!” in dreadful unison, while a
couple of seamen made Billy roll the deck in agony. The black boy would
shudder and wipe his frightened eyes; but his fortitude was unshaken.

“White fellow no good; I kill him.”

Then old Quinn got after him--wild-eyed, tangle-haired old Quinn, the
gunner, who was half cracked on religion. He prayed and blubbered
beside the wretched boy, overwhelming him with red-hot appeals and
perfervid oratory. Billy became an instant convert, and got to love
old Quinn as a dog his master. There was no more card-playing in
Billy’s cell, no more rum or tobacco; even checkers fell under the
iron ban of old Quinn, to whom every enjoyment was hateful. Billy
learned hymns instead, and would beguile the weary sentry on the watch
with his tuneful rendering of “Go Bury thy Sorrow,” or “Nearer, my
God, to Thee.” He was possessed, too, of a Bible that Quinn gave him,
from which the old gunner would read, in his strident, overbearing
voice, the sweet gospel of charity and good will. But if old Quinn
accomplished much, he ran, as they all ran at last, into that stone
wall of words which Billy raised against the world. Contrition for the
murder which had doomed him to die was what Billy would not show or
profess in any way to feel. Rant though old Quinn might, and beseech
on bended knees, with his eyes burning and his great frame shaking
with agitation, he could extort from his convert no other answer than
the one which all knew so well. Billy’s eyes would snap and his mouth
harden.

“White fellow no good; I kill him.”

As the days passed, and the ship made her way from bay to bay, from
island to island, in the course of her policing cruise among those
lawless whites and more than savage blacks, the captain grew desperate
with the problem of Billy. They all said that Casement looked ten years
older, and that something would soon happen to the “old man” if Billy
did not soon skip out; and the “old man” showed all the desire in the
world to bring about so desirable a consummation. Billy was accorded
every liberty; his chains had long been things of the past, and no
sentinel now guarded him in his cell or watched him periodically in his
sleep. Billy was free to go where he would; and it was the fervent hope
of all that he would lose no time in making his way ashore. But though
Casement stopped at half a hundred villages, and laid the ship as close
ashore as he dared risk her, still, for the life of him, Billy would
not budge. Then they thought him afraid of sharks, which are plentiful
in those seas, and kept the dinghy at the gangway, in defiance of every
regulation, in the hope that the prisoner would deign to use it. But
Billy showed no more desire to quit the ship than Casement himself, or
old Quinn. He did the honours of the man-of-war to visiting chiefs,
and seemed to be proud of his assured position on board. Go ashore?
Escape? Not for worlds!

Then the captain determined upon new measures. He passed a hint
to Facey, and Facey passed it to the mess, and the mess to the
blue-jackets, that they were making things too comfortable for their
prisoner. For a while Billy’s easy life came to an abrupt conclusion.
His best friends began to kick and cuff him without mercy. He was
rope’s-ended by the bo’sun’s mate, and the cook threw boiling water
over his naked skin. The boy’s heart almost broke at this, and he went
about dejected and unhappy for the first time since he had come aboard.
But no harsh usage, no foul words, could drive him to desert the ship.
He stuck to it like a barnacle, for all the captain spun out the cruise
to an unconscionable length and stopped at all sorts of places that
offered a favorable landing for the prisoner. But if Billy grew sad and
moody under the stress of whippings and bad words, it was as nothing
to the change in Casement himself, who turned daily greyer and more
haggard as he pricked a course back to Sunflower Bay. Of course, he
maintained a decent reserve all along, and betrayed, in words at least,
not a sign of his consuming anxiety to rid himself of Billy. But at
last even his iron front broke down. It was on the bridge, to Facey,
when the ship had just dropped anchor in Port McGuire, not forty miles
from Sunflower Bay.

“Mr. Facey,” he said, “send Mr. Burder ashore with an armed party;
tell him just to show himself a bit and come off again.”

“Yes, sir,” said Facey.

“I am thinking they might take that fellow Billy to translate for
them,” he went on, shamefacedly.

The first lieutenant turned to go.

“Hold on,” said the captain, suddenly lowering his voice and drawing
his subordinate close to him. “Just you pass it on to Burder that I
wouldn’t skin him alive--you know what I mean--if--well, suppose that
black fellow cut his lucky altogether--”

Facey smiled.

“Of course,” rasped out the captain, “I can’t tolerate any dereliction
of duty; but if the young devil made a break for it--”

“Ay, ay, sir,” returned the first lieutenant, and darted down the brass
steps three at a time. He called Burder aside and gave his instructions
to that discreet youngster, who was sharp to see the point without
the need for awkward explanations. A broad grin ran round the boat
when Billy was made to descend and take his place beside Burder in the
stern; and so palpable and open was the whole business that some aboard
even shook the negro by the hand and bade him God-speed.

A couple of hours later Burder embarked again and headed for the ship
in a tearing hurry. A chuckle ran along the decks as not a sign of
Billy could be made out, and the nearing boat soon put the last doubt
at rest. There was no black boy among the blue-jackets.

Burder skipped up the steps and saluted the captain on the bridge.

“I have to report the escape of Billy, sir,” he said, with inimitable
gravity and assurance. “I scarcely know how it came to happen, sir, but
he managed to bolt as he was walking between Miller and Cracroft.”

“This is a very serious matter,” said the captain, with ill-concealed
cheerfulness. “I don’t know but what it is my duty to reprimand you
very severely for your carelessness. However, if he’s gone, he’s gone,
I suppose. I hope you took measures to recapture him?”

“Yes, sir,” returned Burder. “Looked for him high and low, sir.”

“Poor Billy!” said the captain, with a smile that spoke volumes. “We’ll
say no more about it, Mr. Burder; it may be all for the best; but
remember, sir, it mustn’t happen again.”

“No, sir,” said Burder.

“How did you manage it, old man?” was the eager question that met the
youngster as he took shelter in the ward-room and ordered “a beer.” All
his messmates were round him, save Facey, who was officer of the deck
and could not do more than hang in the doorway.

“I tell you it wasn’t easy,” said the boy. “We promenaded all round
the place, and I tried like fun to shake him off. I sent him errands
and hid behind trees, and talked of how we were going to shoot him
to-morrow--but it was all no blooming good! I was at my wits’ end at
last, and had almost made up my mind to tie him to a tree and run for
it, when I got a bright idea. I pretended I had dropped my canteen
under a banyan a mile behind the town, a kind of cemetery banyan, full
of dead men’s bones--a rummy place, I can tell you. And when we got
down near the boat, I took the nigger on one side and bade him go and
fetch it. ‘And don’t you come back without it, Billy,’ said I. ‘I’ll
be dismissed the service if I can’t account for that canteen!’ Then he
asked how long I was going to stay, and I said a week; and he went off
like a lamb, while we squared away for the ship. Didn’t you see the
jossers pull!”

It had been the merest pretence that had taken the war-ship into Port
McGuire, and now that her merciful errand had been so successfully
accomplished, and Billy reluctantly torn at last from those who had to
kill him, Captain Casement lost no time in ordering the ship to sea.
But as the winch tugged at the anchor, and the great hull crept up inch
by inch to the tautened chain, a sudden yell roused the captain on the
bridge and struck him as cruelly as one of those poisoned arrows he
feared so much.

“Billy, on the starboard bow!”

Sure enough, a black poll protruded above the rippling bosom of the
bay, and two frantic arms were seen driving a familiar dark countenance
on a course towards the vessel. It was Billy indeed, his honest face
marked with anguish and despair as he fought his way to regain his
prison.

Casement groaned. And for this he had been holding the cruiser two long
weeks in those God-forsaken islands, and had invented one excuse upon
another to delay his return to Sunflower Bay! Billy had been given
a hundred chances to escape, and now, like a bad penny, here he was
again, ready to precipitate the catastrophe which could no longer be
postponed.

A great laugh went up when Billy presented himself on deck, exhausted,
dripping like a spaniel, and sorely hurt in spirit. He began at once to
blurt out the story of the canteen, and made a bee-line for Burder; but
that intrepid youngster could afford to listen to no explanations, and
in self-defence had to order Billy into the hands of the marines, who
led him away protesting.

Casement’s patience was now quite at an end. He headed the ship for
Sunflower Bay, and spared no coal to bring her there in short order.
Three hours after they had passed out of the heads of Port McGuire the
_Stingaree_ was at anchor off the blow-hole.

Facey was drinking a whisky-and-soda, and preparing himself, as best
he could, for the ordeal he knew to be before him, when the captain’s
servant entered the ward-room and requested his presence in the cabin.

“Mr. Facey,” said the captain, “take the doctor and the pay and forty
men well armed from the ship, and when you’ve assembled the village
take that Billy and shoot him.”

“Yes, sir,” said the lieutenant, turning very pale.

“Faugh,” rasped Casement, “it makes me sick. Damn the boy, why couldn’t
he cut? Well, be off with you, and kill him as decently as you know
how.”

Billy did not at first realize how seriously he was involved in the
plans of the shore party that was making ready. He dropped into one of
the boats light-heartedly enough, and took his place cheerfully between
two marines with loaded rifles. But the mournful hush of all about him,
the eyes that turned and would not meet his own, the tenderness and
sorrow which was expressed in every movement, in every furtive look,
of his whilom comrades, all stirred and shook him with consternation.
No one laughed at his little antics. He tickled the man next him, and
nudged him, his friend Tommy, who could whistle like a blackbird and do
amazing tricks with cards; but instead of an answering grin, Tommy’s
eyes filled with tears and he stared straight in front of him. Billy
was whimpering before they were half ashore, and some understanding of
the fate in store for him began to struggle through his thick head.

There was no need to assemble the village. It was there to meet them,
old Jibberik and all, silent, funereal, and expectant. The men were
marched up to the charred remains of the trader’s house and formed up
on three sides of a square, leaving the fourth open to the sea. To
this space Billy was led by Facey and old Quinn, the gunner. The negro
looked about him like a frightened child and clung to the old man.

“Will you give the prisoner a minute to make his peace with God?” asked
old Quinn.

Facey nodded.

Quinn plunged down on his knees, Billy beside him. For a brief space
the gunner pattered prayers thick and fast, like a man with no time to
lose.

“Billy,” he said at last, “as you stand on the brink of that river we
all must cross, as the few seconds run out that you have still to live
and breathe and make your final and everlasting peace with the God you
have so grievously offended, let me implore you to show some sorrow,
some contrition, for the awful act that has brought you to this! Billy,
tell God you are sorry that you killed Biggar.”

For a moment Billy made no answer. At last, in a husky voice, he said:

“You mean Cap’n Tom, who live here before?”

“Him you hurled into eternity with all his sins hot on him. Yes,
Captain Tom, the trader.”

“No!” cried Billy, with a strangled cry. “Me no sorry. White fellow no
good; I kill him.”

“Quinn,” cried Facey, “your time’s up.” The first lieutenant’s face
was livid, and his hands trembled as he bound Billy’s eyes with a silk
handkerchief.

“Stand right there, Billy,” said the officer, turning the prisoner
round to face the firing party, that was already drawn up.

“Good-bye, Missy Facey and gennelmen all,” whimpered the boy.

“Good-bye, Billy,” returned the other. “Now, men,” he added, as he ran
his eye along the faltering faces, “no damned squeamishness; if you
want to help the nigger, you’ll shoot straight. For God’s sake don’t
mangle him.

“Fire!”




THE BEAUTIFUL MAN OF PINGALAP




THE BEAUTIFUL MAN OF PINGALAP


He stood five feet nothing in his naked feet, a muscular, sandy little
fellow, with a shock of red hair, a pair of watery blue eyes, and a
tawny, sun-burned beard, the colour of fried carrots. I could not see
myself that he was beautiful, and might have lived a year with him and
never found it out; though he assured me, with a giggle of something
like embarrassment, that he was no less a person than the Beautiful Man
of Pingalap. Such at least was his name amongst the natives, who had
admired him so persistently, and talked of him so much, that even the
whites had come to call him by that familiar appellation.

“You see,” he said, in that whining accent which no combination of
letters can adequately render, “it tykes a man of a ruddy complexion
to please them there Kanakas; and if he gains their respeck and ’as a
w’y with him sort of jolly and careless-like, there’s nothing on their
blooming island he carn’t have for the arsking.”

I gathered, however, as I talked with him in the shadow of the old
boat-house in which we lived together at Ruk like a pair of tramps,
that he, Henery Hinton, had not presumed to ask for much in those
isles from which he had so recently emerged. Indeed, except for a
camphor-wood chest, a nondescript valise of decayed leather, a monkey,
a parrot, and a young native lady named Bo, my friend owned no more in
the world than the window-curtain pyjamas in which he stood.

“It ain’t much, is it,” he said, with a sigh, “to show for eight long
years on the Line? Sixty dollars and w’at you see before you! Though
the monkey may be worth a trifle, and a w’aler captain once offered me
a mee-lodian for the bird.”

“And the girl?” I asked.

“Who’d tyke her?” he replied, with a drop of his lip. “Did you ever see
an uglier piece in all your life?”

“What do you mean to do with her?” I asked, knowing that the firm had
promised him a passage to Sydney in the _Ransom_, and wondering what
would become of the unfortunate Bo, whom he was little likely to drag
with him to the colonies.

“You don’t think I’m going to desert that girl,” he said truculently,
giving me a look of deep suspicion. “My word!” he went on, “after
having taught her to byke bread and sew, and regularly broke her in
to all kinds of work, it ain’t likely I am going to leave her to be
snapped up by the first feller that comes along. The man as gets her
will find himself in clover, and might lie in bed all day and never
turn his hand to nothink, as I’ve done myself time and time again at
Pingalap, while she’d make breakfast and tend the store. It would tyke
several years to bring a new girl up to her mark, and then maybe she
mightn’t have it in her, after all,--not all of them has,--and so your
pains and lickings would be wasted.”

“Lickings!” I said. “Is that the way you taught Bo?”

“I’d like to know any other w’y,” he said. “My word! a man has to
master a woman, and there’s no getting around it. With some you can do
it with love and kindness, but the most need just the whip and plenty
of it. That little Bo, w’y, I’ve held her down and lashed her till my
arm was sore, and there ain’t a part of me she hasn’t bit one time
and another! Do you see that purple streak on my ear? I thought I was
booked for hydrophobiar that morning, for it swelled up awful, and I
was that weak with loss of blood that when I laid her head open with
a fancy trade lamp I just keeled over in a dead faint. But there was
never no nasty malice in Bo, and if we had a turn up now and then, she
always played to the rules, and never bit a feller when he was down;
and she never hurt me but what she’d cry her eyes out afterwards and
sometimes even arsk me to whip her for her wickedness. My word! I’d lay
it on to her then, for I could use both hands and had nothing to be
afryde of. Of course that was long ago, when she was raw and only half
trained like. I don’t recollect having laid my hand to her since the
_Belle Brandon_ went ashore on Fourteen Island Group.”

Having gone so deeply into the history of her subjugation, the
Beautiful Man could not resist showing me a proof of Bo’s dearly bought
docility, and whistled to her to come to him. This she did readily
enough, her ugly face wrinkling into smiles at sight of him. She was
a wizened little creature, with an expression midway between that of
a monkey and a Japanese image. Of all things in the world, Bo’s chief
pleasure was in clothes, of which she possessed an inordinate quantity,
and it was her custom to make at least three toilets a day. She wore
tight-fitting jackets plastered with beadwork like an Indian’s, with
embroidered skirts of bright cotton, and she incessantly occupied
herself in adding to her stock. Half the day her little claws were busy
with needle and beads, covering fresh bodices with barbarous patterns,
while the monkey played about her and pilfered her things, and the
parrot screamed whole sentences in the Pingalap language.

My own business in the Islands was of a purely scientific description,
a learned society having equipped me for two years, with instructions
to study the anthropological character of the natives, dip into the
botany of Micronesia, and do what I could in its little-known zoölogy.
I had meant to go directly to Yap, but in the uncertainties of South
Sea travelling I had been landed for a spell on the island of Ruk,
from which place I had hope of picking up another vessel before the
month was out. Here I had run across the Beautiful Man, himself a
bird of passage, waiting for the barque _Ransom_; and when I learned
that Johnson, the firm’s manager, had meant to charge me two dollars
and a half a day for the privilege of messing at his table and seeing
him get drunk every night, I was glad to chum in with Hinton and
share the tumble-down boat-house in which he camped. Here we lived
together, the Beautiful Man, Bo, and myself, in a simplicity that
would have shamed the Garden of Eden. We slept at night on the musty
sails of some forgotten ship, and in the daytime Bo prepared our meals
over a driftwood fire. She baked the most excellent bread, and made
her own yeast from fermented rice and sugar, which used to blow up
periodically, with an explosion like that of a cannon. She also made
admirable coffee, and a sort of sugar candy in the frying-pan, as well
as griddle-cakes and waffles with the gulls’ eggs we used to gather for
ourselves. More than this she did not know, except how to open the can
of beef or salmon which was the inevitable accompaniment of all our
meals.

We rose at no stated hour in the morning, the sun being our only
clock, and, as we read it, a very uncertain one. Hinton and I bathed
in the lagoon, where he taught me daily how to dive with the greatest
good humour and zeal, roaring with laughter at my failures, and
applauding my successes to the skies. He often spoke to me in Pingalap,
forgetting for the moment his own mother-tongue, and would wear a
hang-dog expression for an hour afterwards, as though in some way
he had disgraced himself. On our return to the boat-house we would
find breakfast awaiting us, Bo guarding it with a switch from the
depredations of the monkey and the parrot. After breakfast, when the
Beautiful Man and I would lie against the wall and smoke our pipes,
the little savage would wash her dishes, and putting them away in an
empty gin-case, would next turn her attention to the pets, cleaning
and brushing them with scrupulous care. Then, for another hour, we
would see no more of her, while she retired behind a sail to effect
fresh combinations of costume, reappearing at last with her hair
nicely combed, and her breast dazzling like a robin’s. There was to
me something touching in the sight of this little person doing the
round of a treadmill she had invented for herself, and spending the
bright days in stringing her unending beads. It seemed a shame that
she should be abandoned, so forlorn, solitary, and friendless, on the
alien shore of Ruk; and the matter weighed on me so much that it often
disturbed my dreams and gave rise to an anxiety that I was half ashamed
to feel. Several times I spoke to the Beautiful Man on the subject,
drawing a little on my imagination in depicting the wretchedness and
degradation to which he was meaning to leave poor Bo, who could not
fail, circumstanced as she was, to come to a miserable end. He always
took my lecture in good part; for, in fairness to the Beautiful Man,
I must confess he was the most good-natured creature alive, and used
invariably to reply that he would not think of doing such a thing were
it not for the pressing needs of his health, which, he assured me with
solemnity, was in a bad way. I never could learn the exact nature of
his malady, nor persuade him into any recital of his symptoms beyond a
vague reference to what he called constitutional decay. Of course, I
knew well enough that this was a mere cloak to excuse his conduct to
Bo, whom I could see he meant to desert in the most heartless fashion,
if in the meantime he failed to sell her to some passing trader. This
he was always trying to do, on the sly, for he had enough decency left
to screen the business from my view and carry on the negotiations
with as much secrecy as he could manage. But the prospective buyer
invariably cried off when he was shown the article for sale, however
much it was bedizened with beads and shined up with oil, and the matter
usually ended in a big drunk at the station, from which the Beautiful
Man was more than once dragged insensible by his helpmeet. He even
hinted to me that, owing to our long and intimate relations, I might
myself become Bo’s proprietor for a merely nominal sum; and when I told
him straight out that I had come to the Islands to study, and not to
entangle myself in any disreputable connection with a native woman, he
begged my pardon very earnestly, and said that he wished to Gord he had
been as well guided. But he always had a bargaining look in his eye
when I praised Bo’s bread, which indeed was our greatest luxury, or
happened to pass my plate for another of her waffles.

“You’re going to miss them things up there,” he would say. “My word,
ain’t you going to miss them!”

This remark, incessantly repeated, made such an impression on me that
I persuaded Bo to give me some lessons in bread-making, and even
extorted from her, for a pound of beads paid in advance, the secret
of her dynamitic yeast; so that I, too, started a bomb-shell of my
own, and was half-way through a sack of flour before it finally dawned
upon me that here was an art that I was incapable of learning. Bread I
could certainly make, of a peculiarly stony character, but the trouble
(as Hinton said) was the digesting of it afterwards. Nor was I more
successful with my waffles, which glued themselves with obstinacy to
the iron, like oysters on a rocky bottom, requiring to be detached
in shreds by the aid of a knife. My efforts convulsed the Beautiful
Man, and were the means of leading him, through his own vainglory and
boastfulness, to perpetrate a basaltic lump of his own, the sight of
which doubled Bo up with laughter, and caused her to burst out in
giggles for a day afterwards. These attempts, of course, only enhanced
her own prowess as a cook, and Hinton was never tired of expatiating on
the lightness of her loaves and the melting quality of her cakes and
waffles, with a glitter in his eye that I knew well how to interpret.

One day my long-overdue ship appeared in sight, and, beating her
tedious way up the lagoon, dropped her anchor off the settlement.
Captain Mins gave me six hours to get aboard, and promised me, over an
introductory glass of square-face in the cabin, a speedy and prosperous
run to the westward. My packing was a matter of no difficulty, for I
had lived from day to day in the expectancy of a sudden call to start;
besides, in a country where pyjamas are the rule and even socks are
regarded as something of a superfluity, life reduces itself to first
principles and baggage disappears. In half an hour I was ready to shift
my things to the ship, only dallying a little longer to say farewell
to my friends and take one final glance at the old boat-house. My heart
misgave me when I looked, as I thought for the last time, at poor Bo in
the midst of her pets, threading beads with the same tireless industry;
while the Beautiful Man, at the farther end of the shed, was trying to
sell her to a new-comer off the barque, an evil-looking customer they
called Billy Jones’s Cousin.

Prompted (I have since supposed) by the devil, I called the little man
to where I stood and asked him peremptorily to name his lowest price
for Bo. He replied in a brisk, businesslike manner that he couldn’t
dream of letting her go for less than a hundred dollars.

“A hundred fiddlesticks!” I exclaimed. “Rather than see her abandoned
here to starve, I will take her for my servant and pay her ten dollars
a month.”

“Oh, she don’t need no money,” he said. “Just you hug and kiss her a
bit, and keep her going with beads and such-like, and she’ll work her
hands off to serve you. It’s a mug’s game to give a Kanaka money. W’y,
they ain’t no more fit for money than that monkey to navigate a ship.”

“See here, Hinton,” I said, “I have told you before that I did not come
up here to start a native establishment--least of all with a woman who
looks like Bo. But I’m ready to take her off your hands and pay her
good wages, and I don’t think you can be so contemptible as to stand in
her light.”

“Oh, I shan’t stand in her blooming light,” he said. “I’d sleep easier
to think I had left her in a comfortable home with a perfeck gentleman
such as you to tyke care of her. My word, I would, and the thought of
it will be a comfort to me in the privations of my humble lot; and I
trust you will believe me that it was in no over-reaching spirit that
I ventured to nyme my figger for the girl. But I put it to you, as
between man and man, won’t you spare me a few dollars as a sort of
token of your good will?”

“I’ll give you twenty-five dollars for her,” I said, “and not one penny
more.”

“My word,” he said, “you’re getting her cruel cheap!”

“Well, that’s my price,” I said.

“Perhaps you wouldn’t care to give her a half a year’s wages in
advance?” he inquired. “A little money in her hand might hearten her up
for the parting.”

“Hearten you up, you mean,” I said.

“I never was no haggler,” he said. “She’s yours, Mr. Logan, at
twenty-five dollars.”

“You go and talk to her a bit,” I said, “and try to explain things to
her, for I tell you I won’t take her at all if she is unwilling.”

It cut me to the heart to watch the poor girl’s face as the Beautiful
Man unfolded the plans for her future, and to see the way she looked at
me with increasing distress and horror. When she began to cry, I could
stand the sight no longer, and hurriedly left the place, feeling myself
a thorough-paced scoundrel for my pains. It was only shame that took
me back at last, after spending one of the most uncomfortable hours
of my life on the beach outside the shed. I found her sitting on her
chest, which apparently had been packed in hot haste by the Beautiful
Man himself. With the parrot in her lap and the monkey shivering beside
her, Bo presented the most woebegone picture. I don’t know whether he
had used the strap to her, or whether he had trusted, with apparent
success, to the torrents of Pingalap idiom which was still pouring
from his lips; but whatever the means he had used, the desired result,
at least, had been achieved; for the little creature had been reduced
to a stony docility, and, except for an occasional snuffle and an
indescribable choking in her throat, she made no sign of rebellion
when the Beautiful Man proposed that we should lose no further time
in taking her aboard the ship. Between us we lifted the camphor-wood
chest and set out together for the pier, Bo bringing up the rear with
the monkey and the parrot and a roll of sleeping-mats. If ever I felt a
fool and a brute, it was on this melancholy march to the lagoon, and I
tingled to the soles of my feet with a sense of my humiliation. My only
comfort, besides the support of an agitated conscience, was the intense
plainness of my prisoner, whose face, I assured myself, betrayed the
singleness and honesty of my intentions.

We put the chest in the corner of the trade-room, and made a little
nest for Bo among the mats she had brought with her; and leaving her
to tidy up the monkey with my hair-brush, the Beautiful Man and I
retreated to the cabin to conclude the terms of our contract. To my
surprise, he handed me a sheet of paper, made out in all appearance
like any bill for merchandise, and asked me, with the most brazen
assurance, to kindly settle it at my convenience. This was what I read:

  W. J. Logan, Dr., to Henery Hinton:
    1 Young Woman, cut price              $25.00
    1 Superior Congo Monkey                 7.50
    1 Choice Imported Parrot                4.50
    1 Chest Fancy Female Wearing Apparel   40.00
    7 Extra-size Special Kingsmill Mats     5.00
    5 lbs. Best Assorted Beads              2.50
                                          ------
            Total                         $84.50

I burst out into a roar of laughter, and without any waste of words I
told the Beautiful Man that he might carry the lady ashore again and
peddle her to some bigger fool than I, for I was clean sick of him and
her and the whole business, and though I still felt bound to give the
twenty-five dollars I had originally promised, he might go and whistle
for one cent more. Then, boiling over at the thought of his greed and
heartlessness, I let out at him without restraint, he trying to stem
the tide with “Oh, I s’y!” and “My word, Mr. Logan, sir!” until at last
I had to pause for mere lack of breath and expletives. He took this
opportunity to enter into a prolonged explanation, quavering for my
pardon at every second word, while he expatiated on the value of that
monkey and the parrot’s really phenomenal knowledge of the Pingalap
language. He was willing, seeing that I took the matter in such a
w’y, to pass over the girl’s duds (about which there might be some
question) and even give w’y about the mats, w’ich, as Gord saw him, had
cost eight dollars, Chile money, as he could prove by Captain Coffin
of the _Cape Horn Pigeon_, now w’aling in the Arctic Seas; but as to
the parrot and the monkey, he appealed to me, as between man and man,
to settle for them out of hand, as they were truly and absolutely his
own, and could not be expected to be lumped in with the price of the
girl. I grew so sick of the fellow and his whining importunity that I
counted out thirty-seven dollars from my bag, and told him to take or
leave them and give me a clean receipt. This he did with the greatest
good humour, having the audacity to shake my hand at parting, and make
a little speech wishing me all manner of prosperity and success.

I noticed, however, that he did not return to the trade-room, but
sneaked off the ship without seeing Bo again, and kept well out of
sight on shore until the actual moment of our sailing. When I went in
to pay a sort of duty call on my prisoner, I found her huddled up on
the mats and to all appearance fast asleep; and I was not a little
disappointed to find that she had not escaped in the bustle of our
departure. Now that I was her master in good earnest and irrevocably
bound to her for better or worse, I became a prey to the most dismal
misgivings, and cursed the ill-judged benevolence that had led me into
such a mess. And as for bread, the very sight of it was enough to
plunge me into gloom, and when we sat down that day to lunch I asked
the steward, as a favour, to allow me seamen’s biscuit in its stead.

Every few hours I carried food to Bo and tried to make her sit up and
eat; but, except for a little water, she permitted nothing to pass her
lips, but lay limp and apathetic on the square of matting. The monkey
and parrot showed more appetite, and gobbled up whole platefuls of
soup and stew and preserved fruit, which at first I left on the floor
in the hope that their mistress might be the less shy when my back was
turned. Finally I decided to remove the pets altogether, for they were
intolerably dirty in their habits, and I could not but think that Bo
would be better off without a frowsy parrot roosting in her hair and
a monkey biting her in play, especially as she was in the throes of
a deathly seasickness and powerless to protect herself. Getting the
parrot on deck was a comparatively simple matter, though he squawked a
good deal and talked loudly in the Pingalap language. At last I stowed
him safely away in a chicken-coop, where I was glad to see him well
trounced by some enormous fowls with feathered trousers down their
legs. But the monkey was not so lightly ravished from his mistress.
He was as strong as a man and extraordinarily vicious; in ten steps
I got ten bites, and came on deck with my pyjamas in blood and rags,
he screeching like a thousand devils and clawing the air with fury.
For the promise of a dollar I managed to unload him on old Louey, one
of the sailors of the ship, who volunteered to make a muzzle for the
brute, and tie him up until it was ready. But as I was still panting
with my exertions, and cursing the foolishness that had ever led me
into such a scrape, I heard from behind me a kind of heartbroken wail,
and turned to see Bo emerging from the trade-room door. I am ashamed
to say I trembled at the sight of her, for I recalled in a flash
what the Beautiful Man had said of her temper when aroused, and I
thought I should die of mortification were she to attack me now. But,
fortunately, such was not her intention, though her face was overcast
with reproach and indignation as she unsteadily stepped past me to
the coop, where, with a cry, she threw open the door and clasped the
parrot in her arms. Even as she did so, the trousered fowls themselves
determined to make a break for liberty, and finding the barrier
removed, they tumbled out in short order; and the ship happening at
that moment to dip to leeward, two of them sailed unhesitatingly
overboard and dropped in the white water astern. Subsequently I had
the pleasure of paying Captain Mins five dollars for the pair. Bo next
started for the monkey, which she took from old Louey’s unresisting
hands, and almost cried over it as she unbound the line that held him.
Having thus rescued both her pets, she retreated dizzily to the shelter
of the trade-room, where I found her, half an hour later, lying in
agony on the floor.

We were three days running down to Yap, and arrived there late one
afternoon just at the fall of dusk. On going ashore, I had the good
fortune to secure a little house which happened to be lying vacant
through the death of its last tenant; who, on the principle, I
suppose, of letting the tree lie where it falls, had been buried within
six feet of my front verandah. The following morning I moved my things
into my new quarters, Bo following me obediently ashore in the ship’s
boat, seated on the top of her chest. I soon got the trade-room into
shape for my work, unpacking my note-books, my little library, my
collector guns, my photographic and other apparatus, as well as my big
compound microscope with which I meant to perform scientific wonders
in a part of the world so remote and so little known. Busy in these
preparations, I managed to forget my slave and enjoy a few hours’
unalloyed pleasure. I was brought back to earth, however, by the sound
of her sobbing in the next room, where I rushed in to find her weeping
on her mats, with her face turned to the wall. I made what shift I
could to comfort her, talking to her as I might to a frightened dog,
though she paid no more attention to me than she did to the parrot,
who had raised its voice in an unending scream. At last, in despair,
and at my wits’ end to know what else to do, I put ten dollars in her
little claw, and tried to tell her that it was her first month’s wages
in advance. This form of consolation, if altogether ineffective in the
case of Bo herself, came in capitally to cheer the monkey, whom I heard
slinging the money out of the window, a dollar at a time, to the great
gratification of a crowd of natives outside.

All that day and all the following night Bo lay supinely on the mats,
and hardly deigned to touch more than a few morsels of the food I
prepared and brought her. The next morning, finding her still of the
same mind, I unpacked my flour and other stores, and ordered her, in
a rough voice, to get up and make bread. This she did, in a benumbed
sort of fashion, dripping tears into the dough and snuffling every time
I looked her way. The bread was all right when it was done, though it
stuck in my throat when I reflected on the price I had paid to get it,
and wondered how I was going to endure two long years of Bo’s society.
After a few weeks of this sort of housekeeping I began almost to wish
that I were dead, and the sight of the creature became so intolerable
to me that I hated to spend an unnecessary hour within my own house.
Instead of improving in health, or spirits, or in any other way, Bo
grew daily thinner and more woebegone and started a hacking cough,
which, she communicated, in some mysterious manner, to the monkey, so
that when one was still the other was in paroxysms, giving me, between
them, scarce a moment of peace or sleep. Of course I doctored them
both from my medicine-chest, and got the thanks I might reasonably
have expected: bites and lacerations from the monkey, and from Bo that
expression of hers that seemed to say, “Good God! what are you going
to do to me now?” I found it too great a strain to persevere with
the bread-making, and soon gave up all thought of turning her to any
kind of practical account; for what with her tears, her cough, and
her passive resistance to doing anything at all, save to titivate the
monkey with my comb and brush and wash him with my sponge, I would
rather have lived on squid and cocoanuts than anything of her making.
Besides, she really seemed to be threatened with galloping consumption;
for in addition to her cough, which grew constantly worse, she had
other symptoms which alarmed me. Among my stores were a dozen tins of
some mushy invalid food,--“Imperial something,” it was called,--with
which I manufactured daily messes for my patient, of the consistency
(and flavour) of white paint. If she at least failed to thrive on this,
it was otherwise with the monkey and the parrot, who fought over her
prostrate body for the stuff, and the former would snatch the cup from
his mistress’s very mouth.

I think I could have borne up better under my misfortunes had I not
suffered so much from loneliness in that far-off place; for, with the
exception of half a dozen sottish traders, and a missionary and his
wife named Small, there was not another white on the island to keep me
company. The Smalls lived in snug missionary comfort at the other end
of the bay, with half a dozen converts to do their work and attend to
a nestful of young Smalls; and though they had parted, as it seemed
to me, with all the principles of Christianity, they still retained
enough religious prejudice to receive me (when I once ventured to
make a formal call on them) with the most undisguised rudeness and
hostility. Small gave me to understand that I was a sort of moral
monster who, with gold and for my own wicked purpose, had parted a
wife from her husband. It appeared, according to Mr. Small, that I
had blasted two fair young lives, as well as condemned my own soul to
everlasting perdition; and he promised the active interference of the
next man-of-war. On my attempting to make my position in the matter a
little clearer, the reverend gentleman began to take such an offensive
tone that it was all I could do to leave his house without giving freer
vent to my indignation than words alone sufficed. Indeed, I was angry
enough to have kicked him down his own missionary steps, and made him
in good earnest the ill-used martyr he pretended to be in his reports
home.

With the traders I fared even worse, for the discreditable reports
about me had become so well established that I was exposed by them to
constant jokes and innuendoes, as well as to a friendliness that was
more distasteful than the missionary’s pronounced ill will. It was
spread about the beach, and carried thence, I suppose, to every corner
of the group, that Bo was a half-white of exquisite beauty, for whose
possession I had paid her husband a sum to stagger the imagination, and
that, unable to repel my loathsome embraces, she was now taking refuge
in a premature death.

I doubt whether there was in the wide Pacific a man so depressed, so
absolutely crushed and miserable, as I was during the course of those
terrible days on Yap. Had it not been for the shame of the thing,
I believe I would have sailed away on the first ship that offered,
whatever the port to which she was bound, and would have quitted my
unhappy prisoner at any hazard. But, to do me justice, I was incapable
of treating any woman so badly, particularly such a sick and helpless
creature as Bo was fast becoming. I had now begun, besides, to suspect
another name for her complaint, and to see before me a situation more
ambiguous and mortifying than any of which I had dreamed. My household
was threatened with the advent of another member!

The idea of Bo and I both leaving together never struck my mind until
the opportune arrival of the _Fleur de Lys_, bound for Ruk, suddenly
turned my thoughts in a new direction. With feverish haste I calculated
the course of the _Ransom_, the barque in which the Beautiful Man
had been promised his passage to Sydney, and it seemed that with any
kind of luck I might manage to intercept her in the _Fleur de Lys_ by
a good three days. Of course I knew a sailing-ship was ill to count
upon, and that a favourable slant might bring her in a week before me
or delay her for an indefinite time beyond the date of my arrival; but
the chance seemed too good a one to be thrown away, and I lost no time
in making my arrangements with Captain Brice of the schooner. When I
explained the matter to Bo with signs that she could not misunderstand,
she became instantly galvanised into a new creature, and ate a
two-pound tin of beef on the strength of the good news.

I never grudged a penny of what it cost me to leave Yap, though I was
stuck for three months’ rent by the cormorant who said he owned my
house, besides having to pay an extortionate sum to Captain Brice
for our joint passage. But what was mere money in comparison to the
liberty I saw before me--that life of blissful independence in which
there should be no Bo, no dark shadow across my lonely hearth, no
sleepless nights and apprehensive days, no monkey, no parrot! I trod
the deck of the _Fleur de Lys_ with a light step, and I think Bo and I
began to understand each other for the first time. For once she even
smiled at me, and insisted on my accepting a beadwork necktie she had
embroidered for the monkey. If there was a worm in the bud, a perpetual
and benumbing sense of uneasiness that never left me, it was the
thought that the Beautiful Man might have slipped away before us; and I
never looked over our foaming bows but I wondered whether the _Ransom_
was not as briskly ploughing her way to Sydney, leaving me to face
an unspeakable disaster on the shores of Ruk. But it was impossible
to be long despondent in that pleasant air, with our little vessel
heeling over to the trades and the water gurgling musically beneath
our keel. Indeed, I felt my heart grow lighter with every stroke of
the bell, with every twist of the patent log; and each day, when our
position was pricked out on the chart, I felt a sense of fresh elation
as the crosses grew towards Ruk. Nor was Bo a whit behind me in her
cheerfulness, for she, too, livened up in the most wonderful manner,
playing checkers with the captain, exercising her pets on the open
deck, and romping for an hour at a stretch with the kanaka cabin-boy.

By the time we had raised the white beaches of our port, the whole
ship’s company, from the captain to the cook, were in the secret of our
race, and as eager as I was myself to forestall the _Ransom_ in the
lagoon. When we entered the passage and opened out the head-station
beyond, there was a regular cheer at the sight of our quest at anchor;
for it was by so narrow a margin that I had cut off the Beautiful
Man’s retreat, and intercepted the vessel that was to carry him away.
Coming up under the _Ransom_, we made a mooring off her quarter; and
among the faces that lined up to stare at us from her decks, I had the
satisfaction of recognising the frizzled red beard of our departing
friend. On perceiving us, he waved his hand in the jauntiest manner,
and replied to Bo’s screams of affection by some words in Pingalap
which effectually shut up that little person. She was still crying
when we bundled her into the boat, bag and baggage, monkey, parrot,
and camphor-wood chest; and pulling over to the barque, we deposited
her, with all her possessions, on the disordered quarter-deck of the
_Ransom_. The Beautiful Man sauntered up to us with an affectation of
airy indifference, and languidly taking the pipe from his mouth, he had
the effrontery to ask me if I, too, were bound for Sydney.

Resisting my first impulse to kick him, I controlled myself
sufficiently to say that I was _not_ going to Sydney--telling him
at the same time that I washed my hands of Bo, whom I had now the
satisfaction of returning to him.

“My word!” he said, “you don’t think I’m going to tyke her?”

“That’s your affair,” said I, moving off.

“Oh, I s’y!” he cried in consternation, attempting, as he spoke, to
lay a detaining hand on my sleeve. But I jerked it off, and stopping
suddenly in my walk towards the gangway, I gave him such a look that he
turned pale and shrank back from me.

“Oh, I s’y!” he faltered, and allowed me to descend in quiet to my boat.

Most of that afternoon I spent in the schooner’s cabin, covertly
watching Bo from a port-hole. For hours she remained where I had
left her on the quarter-deck, seated imperturbably on her chest, the
monkey and parrot on either hand. As for the Beautiful Man, he, like
myself, had also disappeared from view, and was doubtless watching the
situation from some secure hiding-hole of his own. Bo was again and
again accosted by the officers of the ship, who alternately cajoled and
threatened her in their fruitless attempts to get her off the vessel.
But nothing was achieved until five o’clock, when the captain came
off from the station, and, in an off-with-his-head style, commanded
the presence of the Beautiful Man. I was too far off, of course, to
hear one word that passed between them, but the pantomime needed no
explanation, as Hinton cringed and the captain fumed, while Bo looked
on like a graven image in a joss-house. In the end Bo was removed
bodily from the ship to the shore, and landed, with her things, on the
beach, where, until night fell and closed round her, I could see her
still roosting on her box. Seriously alarmed, I began to experience the
most disquieting fears for the result, especially as I could perceive
the Beautiful Man lounging serenely about the barque’s deck, smoking a
cigar and spitting light-heartedly over her side. It made me more than
uneasy to see him afloat and her ashore; and the barque’s loosened sail
lying ready to open to the breeze warned me there was little time to
lose. It was some relief to my mind to learn from Captain Brice that
the barque was not due to sail before the morrow noon; but even this
short respite served to quicken my apprehension when I reflected on my
utter powerlessness to interfere. I passed a restless night, revolving
a thousand plans to hinder the Beautiful Man’s departure, and rose at
dawn in a state of desperation.

The first thing I saw, on going to the galley for my morning cup of
coffee, was poor Bo planted on the beach, where, as far as I could see,
she must have passed the night, sitting with unshaken determination on
her camphor-wood chest. Taking the schooner’s dinghy, I pulled myself
over to the _Ransom_, bent on a fresh scheme to retrieve the situation.
The first person I ran across on board was the Beautiful Man himself,
who hailed me with the greatest good humour, and asked what the devil
had brought me there so early.

“To put you off this ship,” I replied. “When the captain has heard my
story, I don’t think you will ever see Sydney, Mr. Beautiful Man.”

“W’y, w’at’s this you have against me?” he asked, with a very
creditable show of astonishment.

I pointed to the melancholy spectre on the beach.

“W’at of it?” he said. “She ain’t mine: she’s yours.”

“You wait till I see the captain!” I retorted.

“A fat lot he’ll care,” said Hinton. “The fack is, as between man and
man, I don’t mind telling you he’d shake me if he dared, the old hunks;
but I’ve got an order for my passage from the owner, and it will be
worth his job for him to disregard it. My word! I thought he was going
to bounce me last night, for he was tearing up and down here like a
royal Bengal tiger in a cage of blue fire, giving me w’at he called a
piece of his mind. A dirty low mind it was, too, and I don’t mind who
hears me say it. But I stood on my order. I said, ‘Here it is,’ I said,
‘and I beg to inform you that I’m going to syle in this ship to Sydney.
Put me ashore if you dare,’ I said.”

At this moment the captain came on deck. He gave a stiff nod in reply
to my salutation, and marched past the Beautiful Man without so much as
a look.

“That’s a nice sight, sir,” I said, pointing in the direction of Bo.

He gave a snort and muttered something below his breath.

“Is his order good?” I asked.

“Yes, sir,” he replied; “his order is good.”

“See here, Hinton,” I said, “wouldn’t you care to sell it?”

“W’y, w’at are you driving at?” he returned.

“If you’ll take her back,” I said, indicating Bo in the distance,
“I’ll buy your passage for what it’s worth.”

“I don’t know as I’d care to sell,” he returned; “leastw’ys, at any
figger you’d care to nyme.”

“What would you care to nyme?” I repeated after him, in involuntary
mimicry of his whine.

“One hundred dollars,” he replied.

“And for one hundred dollars you will surrender your passage and go
back to the girl,” I demanded, “and swear never to leave her again,
unless it is on her own island and among her own relations?”

“Oh, come off!” he exclaimed. “Ain’t you blooming well deserting her
yourself?”

“If you are not careful I will punch your head,” I said.

“Don’t mind me, sir,” said the captain, significantly, turning an
enormous back upon us.

“Is it business you’re talking, or fight?” inquired the Beautiful Man.
“You sort of mix a feller up.”

“I tell you I’ll pay you one hundred dollars on those terms,” I said.

“Hand them along, then,” said Hinton. “I tyke you.”

Unbuckling the money-belt I wore round my waist, I called upon the
captain to witness the proceedings, and counted out one hundred dollars
in gold. Without a word the Beautiful Man resigned his order into my
hands and tied up the money in the corner of a dirty handkerchief,
looking at me the while with something almost like compunction.

“Would you mind accepting this red pearl?” he said, producing a
trumpery pill of a thing that was worth perhaps a dollar. “You might
value it for old syke’s syke.”

I was rather disarmed by this gift and took it with a smile, putting in
another good word for Bo.

“Might I ask what you are going to do now?” asked the captain,
addressing Hinton in a tone that bordered on ferocity.

“W’y, I was just thinking of st’ying to breakfast, sir,” quavered the
little man, “and then toddle ashore to my happy home.”

“Get off my ship!” roared the captain. “Get off my ship, you red-headed
beach-comber and pirate. Get off before you are kicked off!”

Hinton bolted like a rabbit for the rail, and almost before we could
realise what he was about, we saw him leap feet foremost into the
lagoon. Blowing and cursing, he rose to the surface, and informed the
captain he should hold him personally responsible for his bag, which,
it seems, had been left in one of the cabins below.

“Your bag!” cried the captain, going to the open skylight and
thundering out: “Steward, bring up that beach-comber’s bag!”

The boy came running up with the valise I remembered so well; it
looked even more dilapidated than before, for the thing was patched
with canvas in a dozen places, and was wound round and round with a
kind of cocoanut string. The captain lifted it in his brawny arms, and
aiming it at the Beautiful Man’s head, let it fly straight at him. It
just missed Hinton by an inch, and splashed water all over him as he
grasped it to his breast. Turning on his back and dragging the spongy
thing along with him, as one might the body of a drowning person, he
set off most unconcernedly for the shore. In this fashion we saw him
strike the beach, and rise up at last with the bag in his hand, not a
dozen paces from where Bo was still encamped. We were, unfortunately,
at too great a distance to watch their faces or to observe narrowly the
greeting that must have passed between them; but the meeting was to all
appearance not unfriendly, and I had the satisfaction of seeing them
move off together in the direction of the boat-house, lugging the chest
and bag between them, as though they were about to resume housekeeping
in the old place.

I spent the rest of the morning writing letters to go by the _Ransom_,
which sailed away at noon, homeward bound. I had no heart to go ashore
again that day, for the Bo affair stuck in my throat, and the loss of
so much money, not to speak of time, made me feel seriously crippled in
the plans I had laid out for my future work. I was undecided, besides,
whether to remain at Ruk and wait for another ship to the westward,
or to stand by the schooner in her cruise through the Kingsmills,
remaining over, perhaps, at Butaritari, or at one of the islands
towards the south. On talking over the matter with the captain, I
found his feelings so far changed towards me that he was eager now to
give me a passage at any price; for, as he told me, he had taken a
genuine liking to my company, and was desirous of having another face
at his lonely table. Accordingly we patched up the matter to our mutual
satisfaction, and arranged to sail the next day when the tide turned at
ten.

Shortly before this hour, I remembered some improvised tide-gauges
I had set on the weather side of the island, and I snatched an
opportunity to see them on the very eve, as it was, of the schooner’s
sailing. It seemed, however, that I had been too late in going, for not
one of them could I find, though I searched up and down the beach for
as long a time as I dared to stay.

I was returning leisurely back across the island, when a turn of the
path brought me face to face with the Beautiful Man himself, carrying
some kind of fish-trap in his hand. I would have walked silently past
him, for the very sight of the creature now turned my stomach, had he
not, in what proved an evil moment for himself, detained me as I was
passing.

“My word!” he said, “that girl is regularly gone on you, she is! W’y,
last night, when I told her of the hundred dollars, she was that put
out that I heard the teeth snap in her head like that, and I thought
she was going to do for me sure, while I lit out in the dark and looked
for a club. She’s put by a little present for you before you go,--one
of them pearl-shell bonito-hooks, and a string of the last monkey’s
teeth,--and she asked me to say she hoped you wouldn’t forget her.”

“I won’t forget her,” I answered pretty quietly. “Nor you either, you
little cur.”

“Cur!” he repeated, edging away from me.

I don’t know what possessed me, but the memory of my wrongs, wasted
money, lost time, the man’s egregious cynicism and selfishness,
suddenly set my long-tried temper flaming, and almost before I knew
what I was doing, I had the creature by the throat and was pounding him
with all my force against a tree. I was twice his size and twice his
strength, but I fought him regardless of all the decencies of personal
combat in a lawless and primeval manner, even as one of our hairy
ancestors might have revenged himself (after extraordinary provocation)
upon another. I shook and kicked him, and I pulled out whole handfuls
of frowsy red hair and whisker, and when at last he lay limp before me
in the dirt, whimpering aloud for mercy, I beat him for ten minutes
with a cocoanut branch that happened, by the best of fortunes, to be
at hand. When I at length desisted, it was from no sense of pity for
him, but rather in concern for myself and my interrupted voyage. I did
turn him over once or twice to assure myself that none of his bones
were broken, and that my punishment had not gone too far; and as I did
so, he executed some hollow groans, and went through with an admirable
stage-play of impending dissolution. I could plainly see that he was
shamming, and had an eye to damages and financial consolation, as well
as the obvious intention of wringing my bosom with remorse. I left
him sitting up in the path, rubbing his fiery curls and surveying the
cocoanut branch with which he had made such a painful acquaintance, a
figure so mournful, changed, and dejected that Pingalap would scarce
have known him for her Beautiful Man.

As I was hurrying down to the beach, I saw the schooner getting under
way, and heard the boat’s crew imperiously calling out to me to hasten.
I broke into a run, and was almost at the water’s edge when I turned to
find Bo panting at my side. I stopped to see what she wanted, and when
she forced a little parcel into my pocket I suddenly remembered the
present of which Hinton had spoken.

“Good-bye, Bo,” I cried, wringing her little fist in mine. “Many thanks
for the fish-hook, which I shall always keep in memory of our travels.”

All the way out to the schooner I seemed to feel the package growing
heavier and heavier in my pyjama pocket, and the suspicion more than
once crossed my mind that it was no fish-hook at all. Feeling loath
to determine the matter before the men, who must needs have seen and
wondered at the transaction from the boat, I kept down my curiosity
until I could satisfy it more privately on board. Then, as the captain
and I were watching the extraordinary antics of the Beautiful Man (who
had rushed down to the beach and thrown himself into a native canoe,
in the impossible hope of overtaking us, alternately paddling and
shaking his fist demoniacally in the air), I drew out the package and
cut it open with my knife. In a neat little beadwork bag (which still
conserved a lurking scent of monkey), and carefully done up in fibre,
like a jewel in cotton wool, I found a shining treasure of gold and
silver coin.

One hundred and thirty-seven dollars!

It was Bo’s restitution.




THE DUST OF DEFEAT




THE DUST OF DEFEAT


They took their accustomed path beside the strait, walking slowly
side by side, each conscious that they would never again be together.
The melancholy pines, rising from the water’s edge to the very summit
of the mountains, gave that look of desolation which is the salient
note of New Caledonian landscape. Across the narrow strait as calm
and clear as some sweet English river, the rocky shore rose steep and
precipitous, cloaked still in pines. A faint, thrilling roar broke at
times upon the ear, and told of Fitzroy’s mine far up on the hill, its
long chutes emptying chrome on the beach below. Except for this, there
was not a sound that bespoke man’s presence or any sign that betrayed
his habitation or handiwork.

“This is our last day,” he said. “Do you not once wish to see the
little cabin where I have eaten my heart out these dozen years? Do you
never mean to ask me what brought me here?”

“I would like to know,” she answered; “but I was afraid. I didn’t wish
to be--to be--”

“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for that unspoken word. You did not
wish to be disillusioned--to be told that the man you have treated with
such condescension was a mere vulgar criminal, a garroter perhaps, such
a one as you have read of in Gaboriau’s romances. Ah, mademoiselle,
when you have heard my unhappy story,--that story which no one has ever
listened to save the counsel that defended me,--you will perhaps think
better of poor Paul de Charruel.”

“You are innocent?” she cried, looking up at him with eyes full of
tenderness and curiosity. “You have shielded some one?”

M. de Charruel shook his head. “I am not innocent,” he said. “I am no
martyr, mademoiselle--not, at least, in the sense you are good enough
to imply. I was fortunate to get transportation for life, doubly
fortunate to obtain this modified liberty after only three years.
You may, however, congratulate yourself that your friend is a model
prisoner; his little farm has been well reported on by the Chef de
l’Administration Pénitentiaire; it compares favourably with Leclair’s,
the vitriol-thrower of Rue d’Enfer, and his early potatoes are said to
rival those of Palitzi the famous poisoner.”

His companion shuddered.

“Pardon me,” he continued. “God knows, I have no desire to be merry; my
heart is heavy enough, in all conscience.”

“You will tell me everything,” she said softly.

He walked along in silence for several minutes, moody and preoccupied,
staring on the ground before him.

“I suppose I ought to begin with my father and mother, in the
old-fashioned way,” he said at last, with a sudden smile. “There are
conventionalities even for convicts! My father (if we are to go so far
back) was the Comte de Charruel, one of the old noblesse; my mother
an American lady from whom I got the little English I possess, as well
as a disposition most rash, nervous, and impulsive. There were two
of us children--my sister Berthe and myself, she the younger by six
years. My father died when I reached twenty years, just as I entered
the Eighty-sixth Hussars as a sub-lieutenant. Had he survived I might
perhaps have been saved many miseries and unhappinesses; on the other
hand, he, the soul of honour, might have been standing here in my
place, condemned as I have been to a lifelong exile.

“I was a good officer. Titled, rich, and well born, there was accorded
me the friendship of the aristocratic side of the regiment; a good
comrade, and free from stupid pride, I stood well with those who had
risen from the ranks and the humbler spheres of society. Many a time
I was the only officer at home in either camp, and popular in both.
When I look back upon my army life, so gay, so animated, so filled with
small successes and commendations from my superiors, I wish that I
had been fated to die in what was the very zenith of my happiness and
prosperity.

“My mother, except for a short time each year at our hôtel in Paris,
lived in our old château in Nemours, entertaining, in an unobtrusive
fashion, many of the greatest people in France; for the entrée of few
houses was more eagerly sought than our own. Though we were not so well
born as some, nor so rich as many, my mother contrived to be always in
request, and to make her _salon_ the centre of all the gaiety and wit
of France.

“From her earliest infancy my sister Berthe was counted one of the
company at the château, and while I was at the _lycée_ and afterwards
at St. Cyr, she was leading the life of a great lady at Nemours.
Marshals of France were her cavaliers; famous poets and musicians
played with her dolls and shared her confidences; men and women
distinguished in a thousand ways paid court to her childish beauty.
Beauty, perhaps, I ought not to say, for her charm lay most in the
extraordinary liveliness and intrepidity of her character, which
captivated every beholder. Indeed, she ought to have been the man of
the family, I the girl--so diverse were our tastes and aspirations, our
whole outlook on life.

“You, of course, cannot recollect the amazing revolution that swept
over Europe when I was a young man--that upheaval of everything old,
accepted, and conventional, which was confined to no one country, but
raged equally throughout them all. Huxley, Darwin, Haeckel, Renan, and
Herbert Spencer were names that grew familiar by incessant repetition;
young ladies whom one remembered last in boxes at the opera, or
surrounded by admirers at balls and great assemblies, now threw
themselves passionately into this new Renaissance. One you would find
studying higher mathematics; another geology and chemistry; another
still, teaching the children of thieves and cut-throats how to read.
Girls you had seen at their father’s table, with downcast eyes and
blushes when one spoke to them, now demanded separate establishments
of their own; worked their way, if necessary, through foreign
universities; fought like little tigers for the privilege of studying
till two in the morning and starving with one another in the gloomiest
parts of the town. Nor were the young men behind their sisters: to
them also had come the new revelation, this self-denying and austere
standard of life, this religion of violent intellectual effort. To many
it was ennobling to a supreme degree; and while our girls boldly made
their way into avenues hitherto closed to women, there were everywhere
young men, no less ardent and disinterested, to support them in the
mêlée. In every house there was this revolt of the young against the
old, this perpetual argument of humanitarianism against apathy and
_laisser-faire_.

“To me it all seemed the most frightful madness. I was bewildered
to see bright eyes pursuing studies which I knew myself to be so
wearisome, taking joy where I had found only vexation and fatigue.
Like all my caste, I was old-fashioned and thought a woman’s place at
home. You must not go to the army for new ideas. It was no pleasure
to me to see delicately nurtured ladies rubbing shoulders with raw
medical students or tainting their pretty ears with the unrestrained
conversation of men. You must remember how things have changed in
eighteen years; you can scarcely conceive the position of those
forerunners of your sex in Europe, so much has public opinion altered
for the better. In my day we went to extremes on either side, for it
was then that the battle was fought. The elders would not give way an
inch; the children dashed into a thousand extravagances. To some it
looked as though the dissolution of society was at hand. Girls asked
men to marry them,--men they had seen perhaps but once,--in order
that they might gain the freedom accorded to married women and secure
themselves against the intolerable interference of their families. Some
of them never saw their husbands again, nor could even recollect their
names without an effort. Ah, it was frightful! It was a revolution!

“In spite of all her liberal opinions, her unconventional views, her
apparent allegiance to the new religion, my mother soon took her place
amid the reactionary ranks, while my sister, the _mondaine_, just
as surely joined the rebellion. As I said before, it was the battle
of the young against the old; age, rather than conviction, assigned
one’s position in the fight. Our house, hitherto so free from domestic
discord, became the theatre of furious quarrels between mother and
daughter--quarrels not about gowns, allowances, suitors, or unpaid
bills, but involving questions abstract and sublime: one’s liberty
of free development; one’s duty to one’s self, to mankind; one’s
obligation, in fact, to cast off all shackles and take one’s place in
the revolution so auspiciously beginning.

“The end of it was that Berthe left Nemours, coming to Paris without
my mother’s permission, to study medicine with a Russian friend of
hers, a girl as defiant and undaunted as herself. This was Sonia
Boremykin, with whose name you must be familiar. Needless to say, I
was interdicted from giving any assistance to my sister, my mother
imploring me not to supply the means by which Berthe’s ruin might be
accomplished. But I could not allow my sister to starve to death in
a garret, and if I disobeyed my poor mother, she had at least the
satisfaction of knowing that my sympathies were on her side of the
quarrel. My greatest distress, indeed, was that Berthe would accept so
little, for she was crazy to be a martyr, and was, besides, prompted by
a generous feeling not to take a sou more than the meagre earnings of
her companion. So they lived and starved together, these two remarkable
young women, turning their backs on every luxury and refinement.
Either, for the asking, could have received a thousand-franc note
within the hour; for each a château stood with open doors; for each
there was a dowry of more than respectable dimensions, and lovers who
would have been glad to take them for their _beaux yeux_ alone! And yet
they chose to live in a garret, to be constantly affronted as they went
unescorted through the wickedest parts of Paris, to subsist on food the
most unappetising and unwholesome. For what? To cut up dead paupers in
the Sorbonne!

“I was often there to see them with the self-imposed task of trying
to lighten the burden of their sacrifices. I introduced food in paper
bags, and surreptitiously dropped napoleons in dark corners--that is,
until I was once detected. Afterwards they watched me like hawks.
Sometimes they were so hungry that tears came into their eyes at the
sight of what I brought; at others they would appear insulted, and
throw it remorselessly out of the window. Though I had no sympathy
whatever with their aims, I was profoundly interested, profoundly
touched, as one might be at the sight of an heroic enemy. Their
convictions were not my convictions; their mode of life I thought
detestable: but who could withhold admiration for so much courage, so
much self-denial, in two beautiful young women? I used often to bring
with me my old colonel, a glorious veteran with whom I was always a
favourite, and the girls liked to hear our sabres clank as we mounted
the grimy stair, and to see our brilliant uniforms in their garret. It
reminded them of the _monde_ they had resigned; besides, they needed
an audience of their own caste who could appreciate, as none other,
their sacrifices and their fortitude. Mademoiselle Sonia used to look
very kindly at me on the occasion of my visits, never growing angry, as
my sister did, at my stupidity, or by my failure to understand their
high-flown notions of duty. Once, when I was accidentally hurt at the
salle d’armes by a button coming off my opponent’s foil, it was she who
dressed my wound with the greatest tenderness and skill, converting me
for all time as to the medical career for women. Poor Sonia, how her
eyes sparkled at her little triumph!

“On one of my visits I was thunderstruck to find before me the Marquis
de Gonse, a gentleman much older than myself, with whom I had not
actual acquaintance, though we had a host of friends in common. Upon
his departure I protested vehemently against this outrage of the
proprieties. I besought them to show a little more circumspection in
their choice of friends, admitting no man to their intimacy who counted
not his fifty years. But my protestations were received with laughter;
I was told that the marquis was a friend of Sonia’s father, and was
trying to effect a reconciliation highly to be desired. Berthe accused
me mockingly of wishing to keep the little Russian to myself. Indeed,
she said, what could be more demoralising to her companion than the
constant presence of a beautiful young hussar? With her saucy tongue
she put me completely to the blush; in vain I pleaded and argued; de
Gonse’s footing was assured. Yet, if they had searched all Paris, they
could not have found a man more undesirable, or more dangerous for two
young women to know. Ardent, generous, and himself full of aspirations
for the advancement of humanity, nothing was better calculated to
appeal to him than the struggle in which my sister was engaged. His
sympathy, his sincere desire to put his own shoulder to the wheel, were
more to be feared than the most strenuous protestations of regard. If
he had made love to my sister, she was enough a woman of the world to
have sent him to the right about; but he adopted, all unconsciously, I
am sure, a more subtle plan to win her good opinion: he was converted!

“If I shut my eyes I can see him sitting there in that low garret as
he appeared on one occasion which particularly imprinted itself on my
mind; such a high-bred, such a distinguished figure, with his silk hat
and gloves beside the box which had been given him for a chair, and his
face full of wonder and sadness! You have read of Marie Antoinette in
prison, of her sufferings so uncomplainingly borne, of her nobility and
steadfastness in the squalor of her cell! You have revolted, perhaps,
at the picture--clinched your little fists and felt a great bursting
of the heart? It was thus with M. de Gonse. Berthe he had often seen
at our château in Nemours; Sonia’s father he had known in Russia, a
general of reputation, standing high in the favour of the Czar. None
was better aware than he of what the young ladies had given up. I could
see that he was deeply moved. He asked many questions; at times he
exclaimed beneath his breath. He insisted on learning everything--the
amount of their income, the nature of their studies, all their
makeshifts and contrivances. The two beautiful, solitary girls, from
whom sympathy and appreciation had so long been withheld, unbared
their lives to us without reserve. Berthe told us, amid the passionate
interjections of Sonia Boremykin, the story of their struggles at the
medical school: the open hostility of the professors; the brutal sneers
and innuendoes; the indescribable affronts that had been put upon them.
During this terrible recital--for it was terrible to hear of outrages
so patiently borne, of insults which bring the blood to the cheek even
to remember after all these years--de Gonse rose more than once from
his seat, walking up and down like one possessed, uttering cries of
rage and pity. It was no feigned anger, no play-acting to win the
regard of these poor women. Let me do the man that justice.

“I don’t think my sister was prepared for the effect of her eloquence
on the marquis, or could have foreseen, even for a moment, the tempest
she had raised within his breast. He swore he would challenge every
professor in the school; that he would unloose spadassins on the
offending students, whose bones should be broken with clubs; that to
blight their careers in after life he would make his business, his
pleasure, his joy! It was with difficulty that he was recalled to the
realities of every-day existence, my sister telling him frankly that
such a course as he proposed might benefit woman in general, but could
not fail to destroy the future of herself and Sonia Boremykin. To be
everywhere talked about, to get their names into the newspapers, to
be pointed at on the street as the victims of frightful insults--what
could be more detestable, more ruinous to the careers they hoped to
make? De Gonse was reluctantly compelled to withdraw his plans of
extermination; for who could controvert the logic with which they
were demolished or fail to see the justice of my sister’s contention?
Confessing himself beaten on this point, he sought for some other
solution of the problem. Private tutors? Intolerably expensive, came
the answer; poor substitutes for one of the greatest schools in Europe;
unable, besides, to confer the longed-for degree. The University of
Geneva, famous for its generous treatment of women? Good, but its
diploma would not carry the desired prestige in France. I hazarded
boys’ clothes and false mustaches; but my remark was greeted with a
shout of laughter and a half-blushing confession from Mademoiselle
Sonia that one experiment in this direction had sufficed. It was to the
marquis that light finally came.

“‘Fool! Idiot!’ he thundered, striking himself on his handsome forehead
with his fist. ‘Why did I not think of it before? To-morrow I join the
medical school myself--the student de Gonse, cousin of the marquis,
a man tired of the hollowness and the trivialities of high life. I
do nothing to show I am acquainted with you, nothing to compromise
you in the faintest manner. But de Gonse, the medical student, is a
gentleman, a man of honour. A companion ventures on a remark derogatory
to the dignity of the young ladies; behold, his head cracks like an
egg against his desk! Another opens his mouth, only to discover that
_le boxe_ (you know I am quite an Anglais) is driving the teeth down
his throat, setting up medical complications of an extraordinary and
baffling nature. A professor so far forgets his manhood as to heap
insults on the undefended; the strange medical student tweaks his nose
in the tribune and challenges him to combat! How simple, how direct!’

“Imagine my surprise a few days later to learn that this had been no
idle gasconade on the marquis’s part. True to his word, he had appeared
at the school elaborately attired for the part he was to play, even to
a detestable cravat and a profusion of cheap jewellery! Unquestionably
there must have been others in the plot, for no formalities anywhere
tied his hands or opposed the least obstacle to his audacity. As one
would have expected from a man so eager and so full of resource, the
object for which he came was soon achieved. Mingling with the students
as one of themselves, he singled out those who went the farthest in
persecuting the women, and insensibly cajoled them into a better way of
conduct. The minority, too, those that still kept alive the chivalry
of young France, were strengthened and encouraged by the force of his
example, so that the crusade, once authoritatively begun, went on
magnificently of itself. Not a blow was struck, not a wry word said,
and behold, de Gonse had accomplished a miracle! From that time the
position of women was assured; protectors arose on every side as though
by magic; in a word, gallantry became the fashion. When professors
ventured on impertinences, hisses now greeted them in place of cheers;
they changed colour, and were at pains to explain away their words. The
battle, indeed, was won.

“Had de Gonse contented himself with this victory, which saved my
sister and Mademoiselle Sonia from countless mortifications, how
much human misery would have been averted, how great a tragedy would
have remained unplayed! But evil and good are inexplicably blended
in this world, a commonplace of whose truth, mademoiselle, you will
have many opportunities of verifying. Having acted so manly a part,
one so calculated to earn the gratitude and esteem of these poor
girls, he turned from one to the other, wondering with which he should
reward himself. I have reason to think his choice first fell on Sonia
Boremykin, who had the whitest skin and the prettiest blue eyes in
the world. How can I doubt, to judge from her wild, tragic after life,
but that he could have persuaded her to her ruin? But he must have
paused half-way, struck by the incomparable superiority of my sister.
In beauty she was not perhaps the equal of her companion, though to
compare _blonde_ and _brune_ is a matter of supererogation. In other
ways, at least, there never lived a woman more desirable than Berthe
de Charruel. She possessed to a supreme degree the charm that springs
from intelligence,--I might say from genius,--which, when found in
the person of a young and beautiful woman, is almost irresistible to
any man that gains her favour. Jeanne d’Arc was such another as my
poor sister, and must have been impelled on her career by something of
the same fire, something of the same passionate earnestness. To break
a heart like hers seemed to de Gonse the crown to a hundred vulgar
intrigues and _bonnes fortunes_.

“Of course, I knew nothing of this gradual undoing of my sister, though
during the course of my visits to the little garret I often found the
marquis in the society of Berthe and her friend. I disliked to see
him there, but I was powerless to interfere. I was often puzzled,
indeed, by the ambiguous conduct of Mademoiselle Sonia, who had the
queerest way of looking at me, and whose eyes were always meeting mine
in singular glances, whether of warning or appeal I was at a loss to
tell. Her words, too, often left me uneasy, recurring to me constantly
when I was in the saddle at the head of my troop or as I lay awake
in bed awaiting the reveille. I wondered if the little Russian were
making love to me, for, like all hussars, I was something of a coxcomb,
though, to do me justice, neither a lady-killer nor a pursuer of
adventures. It was in my profession that I found my only distraction,
my only mistress. I am almost ashamed to tell you how good I was, how
innocent--how in me the Puritan stock of my mother seemed to find a
fresh recrudescence. Some thought me a hypocrite, others a coward; but
I was neither.

“I learned the truth late one afternoon from Sonia Boremykin, who came
to my quarters closely veiled, in a condition of agitation the most
frightful. I could not believe her; I seemed to see only another of
her devices to win my regard. My sister! My Berthe! It was impossible!
I said to her the crudest things; I was beside myself. She went on
her knees; she hid nothing; it was all true. My anger flamed like a
blazing fire; I rushed out of the barracks regardless of my duties--of
everything except revenge. A lucky _rencontre_ on the street put me
on de Gonse’s track, and I ran him down in the _salle_ of the Jockey
Club. He was standing under one of the windows, reading a letter by the
fading light, a note, as like as not, he had just received from Berthe.
I think he changed colour when he saw me; at least, he drew back with a
start.

“I lifted my glove and struck him square across his handsome face.

“‘You will understand what that is for, M. le Marquis de Gonse!’ I
cried.

“He turned deadly white, and with a quick movement caught my wrists in
both his hands.

“‘_Mon enfant!_’ he exclaimed in a loud voice, which he tried to invest
with a tone of jocularity, ‘you carry your high spirits beyond all
reason; I am too old to enjoy being hit upon the nose.’ Then in a lower
key he whispered: ‘Paul, calm thyself; for the love of God, do not
force a quarrel. Come outside and let us talk with calmness.’

“But I was in no humour to be cajoled. I fiercely shook off his
restraining hands. ‘Messieurs,’ I cried, as the others, detecting a
scene, began to close round us, ‘Messieurs, behold how I buffet the
face of the Marquis de Gonse!’ And with that I again flicked my glove
across his face.

“De Gonse slunk back with a sort of sob.

“‘Captain de Charruel and I have had an unfortunate difference of
opinion,’ he cried, recovering his aplomb on the instant. ‘It seems we
cannot agree upon the Spanish Succession. M. le Comte, my seconds will
await on you this evening.’

“I turned and left the club, my head in a whirl, my face so distraught
and haggard that I carried consternation through the jostling street,
the people making way for me as though I were a madman. To obtain
seconds was my immediate preoccupation, a task of no difficulty for
a young hussar. My colonel kindly condescended to act, and with him
my friend Nicholas van Greef, the military attaché of the Netherlands
government. To both I told the same story of the Spanish Succession and
the quarrel of which it had been the occasion. But my colonel smiled
and laid a meaning finger against his nose; the Dutchman said drily it
was well to keep ladies’ names out of such affairs. I am convinced,
however, that neither of them had the faintest glimmering of the
truth. Having thus arranged matters with my seconds, I attempted next
to find my poor sister, hastening up her interminable stairs with an
impatience I leave you to imagine. Needless to say, she was not in the
garret, which was inhabited by Mademoiselle Sonia alone, her pretty
face swollen with weeping, her humour one of extraordinary caprices and
contradictions. She blamed me altogether for the catastrophe: I ought
not to have given Berthe a sou; I ought to have starved her back into
servitude. Women were intended for slaves; to make them free was to
give them the rope to hang themselves. For her part, said mademoiselle,
she thought a convent the right place for girls, and crochet work the
best occupation! At any other time I might have stared to hear such
sentiments from my sister’s friend, but for the moment I could think of
nothing but Berthe. To find her was my one desire. In this, however,
Sonia would afford me no assistance, frankly asking what would be the
good.

“‘The harm is done, my poor Paul,’ she said, looking at me sorrowfully.
‘Why should I expose you or her to an interview so unpleasant? How
could it profit any one?’

“I could not altogether see the force of this acquiescence in evil. I
said that the honour of one of the oldest families in France was at
stake; that if my sister did not leave the marquis I should kill her
with my own hands and fly the country. I implored Mademoiselle Sonia,
with every argument I thought might move her, to betray my sister’s
hiding-place. But she kept putting me off, mocked at my impatience, and
tried to learn, on her side, whether or not I meant to fight de Gonse.

“‘If you really wish to find out where she is,’ she cried at last,
‘why don’t you make me tell you? Why don’t you take me by the throat
and pound my head against the wall, as they do down-stairs with such
admirable success? Those women positively adore their men.’ As she
spoke she threw back her head and exposed her charming neck with a
gesture half defiant, half submissive! Upon my soul, I felt like
carrying her suggestion into effect and choking her in good earnest,
for I had become furious at her contrariety. But, restraining the
impulse, I saw there was nothing left for me save to retire.

“‘Mademoiselle Boremykin,’ I said, ‘you are heartless and wicked beyond
anything I could have imagined possible. You have helped to bring a
noble name to dishonour, and in place of remorse your only feelings
seem those of levity. I have the honour of wishing you good day.’

“De Gonse and I met the following morning in the Bois de Boulogne. His
had been the choice of arms, and he selected rapiers, knowing, like
all men of the world, that a pistol has the knack of killing. I ground
my teeth at his decision, for he had the reputation of being a fine
fencer, while I could boast no more than the average proficiency. He
appeared to great advantage on the field; so cool, so handsome, such
a _grand seigneur_--in every way so marked a contrast to myself. It
was not unnatural, however: he was there to prick me in the shoulder,
I to kill him if I could. Small wonder that my face was livid, that
my eyes burned like coals in my head, that I was petulant with my own
seconds, insulting towards my adversary’s. I looked at these with
scorn, the supporters of a scoundrel, themselves, no doubt, seducers
and libertines like him they served. My dear old colonel chid me for my
discourtesy--bade me be a _galant homme_ for his sake, if not for mine.
I kissed his wrinkled hand before them all; I said I respected men only
who were honourable like himself. Every one laughed at my extravagance,
at the poor old man’s embarrassment. It was plain they considered me a
coward. They said things I could not help overhearing. But I cared for
nothing. My God, no! I was there to kill de Gonse, not to pick quarrels
with his friends.

“We were placed in position. Everything was _en règle_. The doctors, of
whom there were a couple, lit cigarettes and did not even trouble to
open their wallets. They knew it to be an affair of scratches.

“The handkerchief fell. We set to, warily, cautiously, looking into
each other’s eyes like wild beasts. More than once he could have killed
me, so openly did I expose myself to his attack, so unconscionably did
I force him back, hoping to give lunge for lunge, my life for his. But
in his adventurous past de Gonse must often have crossed swords with
men no less desperate than myself; it was no new thing to him to face
a determined foe, or to guard himself against thrusts that were meant
to kill. His temper was under admirable control; he handled his weapon
like a master in the school of arms, and allowed me to tire myself out
against what seemed a wall of steel. Suddenly he forced my guard with a
stroke like a lightning-flash; I felt my left arm burn as though melted
wax had been dropped upon it. Some one seized my sword; some one caught
me in his arms!

“My dizziness, my bewilderment, were the sensations of a moment,
and in a trice I was myself again. The wound was nothing--a nicely
calculated stroke through the fleshy part of the arm. I laughed when
they talked of honour satisfied and of our return to the barracks. I
said I never felt better in my life. It was true, for I was possessed
with a berserker rage, as they call it in the old Norse sagas; a bullet
through my heart could not have hurt me then. The seconds demurred;
they told me that I was in their hands; that I was overruled; repeated,
like parrots, that honour was satisfied. This only made me laugh the
more. I went up to the marquis and asked him was it necessary for me to
strike him again? I called him a coward, and swore I would post him in
every salon and club in Paris. I slapped him in the face with my bare
hand--my right, for my left felt numb and strange. There was another
scene. De Gonse appeared discomposed for the first time; the seconds
were pale and more than perturbed. One had a sense of death being in
the air. There were consultations apart; appeals to which I would not
listen; expostulations as idle as the wind. De Gonse, trembling with
wrath, left himself unreservedly to his seconds, walking up and down
at a little distance like a sentinel on duty. I also strolled about
to show how strong and fit I was--the angriest, the bitterest man in
France.

“At length it was decided that we might continue the combat. De Gonse
solemnly protested, bidding us all take notice that he had been allowed
no alternative. My colonel was almost in tears. Repeatedly, as a favour
to himself, he besought me to apologise for that second blow and retire
from the field. But I was adamant. ‘_Mon colonel_,’ I said to him, in a
whisper, ‘this is a quarrel in which one of us must fall. Let me assure
you it is not about a trifle.’

“Again we ranged ourselves; again we grasped our rapiers, saluted, and
stood ready for the game to begin. The marquis’s coolness had somewhat
forsaken him. The finest equanimity is ruffled by a buffet in the face;
one cannot command calm at will. His friends said afterwards that he
showed extraordinary self-control, but I should rather have described
it as extraordinary uneasiness. No duellist cares for a berserker
foe. De Gonse was, moreover, of a superstitious fancy. There are such
things, besides, as presentiments; I think he must have had one then.
God knows, perhaps he was struggling with remorse. The handkerchief
fell; we crossed swords, and the combat was resumed with the utmost
vivacity. The air rang with the shivering steel. The doctors smoked
no longer, but looked on with open mouths. A duel in grim earnest is
seldom seen in France, though I venture to say there was one that
morning. It lasted only a minute; we had scarcely well begun before
I felt a stinging in my side, and saw, as in a dream, my enemy’s
triumphant face, red with his exertions. The exasperation of that
moment passes the power of words to describe. This was my revenge,
this a villain’s punishment on the field of honour! He would leave it
without a scratch, to be lionised in salons, to relate in boudoirs the
true inwardness of the quarrel! Remember, I felt all this within the
confines of a single second, as a drowning man in no more brief a space
passes his entire life in review. Imagine, if you can, my rage, my
uncontrollable indignation, my unbounded fury. What I did then I would
do now,--by God, I would,--if need be, a dozen times! I caught his
rapier in my left hand and held it in the aching wound, while with my
unimpeded right I stabbed him through the body, again and again, with
amazing swiftness--so that he fell pierced in six places. There was a
terrible outcry; shouts of ‘Murder!’ ‘Coward!’ ‘Assassin!’ on every
side looks of horror and detestation. One of the marquis’s seconds
beset me like a maniac with his cane, and I believe I should have
killed him too had not the old colonel run between us.

“The other second was supporting de Gonse’s head and assisting the
surgeons to staunch the pouring blood. But it was labour lost; any one
could see that he was doomed. From a little distance I watched them
crowding about him where he lay on the grass; for I had drawn apart,
sick and dizzy with my own wounds, conscious that I was now an outcast
among men. At last one came towards me; it was Clut, the doctor. He
said nothing, but drew me gently towards the group he had just quitted.
They opened for me to pass as though I were a leper. A second later I
stood beside the dying man, gazing down at his face.

“‘He wishes to shake hands with you,’ said the other doctor, solemnly,
guiding the marquis’s hand upward in his own. ‘Let his death atone, he
says; he wishes to part in amity.’

“I folded my arms.

“‘No, monsieur,’ I said. ‘What you ask is impossible.’ With that
I walked away, not daring to look back lest I might falter in my
resolution. I can say honestly that de Gonse’s death weighs on me very
little; yet I would give ten years of my life to unsay those final
words--to recall that last brutality. In my dreams I often see him so,
holding out the hand, which I try to grasp. I hear the doctor saying,
‘He wishes to part in amity.’

“I fainted soon after leaving my opponent’s side. I lay on the
ground where I fell, no one caring to come to my assistance. When
consciousness returned I saw them lifting the marquis’s body into a
carriage, and I needed no telling to learn that he was dead. My colonel
and Van Greef assisted me into another cab, neither of them saying a
word nor showing me the least compassion. I suppose I should have been
thankful they did so much. Was not I accursed? Were they not involved
in my dishonour? They abandoned me, wounded, faint, and parching with
thirst, to find my own way to Paris. Alone? No, not altogether. On the
seat beside me my colonel laid a flask of brandy and a loaded pistol.
The first I drank; the revolver I pitched out of window. I never
thought to kill myself. For cheating at cards, for several varieties of
dishonour, yes. But not for what I had done--never in all the world.
My conscience was as undisturbed as that of a little child; excepting
always that--why had I not taken his hand!

“I was arrested, of course, and tried--tried for murder. You see, there
were too many in the secret for it to be long kept. It was a _cause
célèbre_, attracting universal attention. The quarrel concerned the
Spanish Succession; as to that they could not shake me. There were
many surmises, many suspicions, but no one stumbled on the truth.
To a single man only was it told--Maître Le Roux, my counsel. Him I
had to tell, for at first he would not take up my case at all. There
was a great popular outcry against me, the army furious and ashamed,
the bourgeoisie in hysterics. I was condemned; sentenced to death;
reprieved at the particular intercession of the Marquise de Gonse, the
dead man’s mother, who threw herself on her knees before the Chief
Executive--reprieved to transportation for life!

“You will be surprised I mention not my mother. Ah, mademoiselle, there
are some things which will not permit themselves to be told--even to
you. She went mad. She died. My military degradation is another of
those things unspeakable. The epaulets were torn from my shoulders, the
_galons_ from my sleeves, my sword broken in two; all this in public
before my regiment in hollow square. Picture for yourself, on every
side, those walls of faces, scarcely one not familiar; my colonel,
choking on his charger, the agitated master of ceremonies; my former
friends and comrades trying not to meet my eye; in the ranks many of
my own troopers crying, and the officers swearing at them below their
breath. My God, it was another Calvary!

“At Havre they kept me long in prison, waiting for the transport to
carry me to New Caledonia. It was there I heard of my sister’s death,
the news being brought to me by a young French lady, a friend of
Berthe’s. My sister had poisoned herself, appalled at what she had
done. There was no scandal, however, no sensational inquiry. She was
too clever for that, too scientific; it was by no vulgar means that she
sought her end. Assembling her friends, she bade them good-bye in turn,
and divided among them her little property, her money, jewels, and
clothes. She died in the typhus hospital to which she had volunteered
her services--a victim to her own imprudence, said the doctors; a
martyr to duty, proclaimed the world. She was accorded the honour of
a municipal funeral (though her actual body was thrown into a pit of
lime): the _maire_ and council in carriages, the charity children on
foot, the _pompiers_ with their engine, a battalion of the National
Guard, and the band of the Ninth Marine Infantry! What mockery! What
horror!

“Here in New Caledonia I looked forward to endure frightful sufferings,
to be herded with the dregs of mankind in a squalor unspeakable. But,
on the contrary, I was received everywhere with kindness. The rigours
of imprisonment were relieved by countless exemptions. I found, as
I had read before in books, that the sight of a great gentleman
in misfortune is one very moving to common minds; and if he bears
his sorrows with manly fortitude and dignity, he need not fear for
friends. To my jailers I was invariably ‘Monsieur’; they apologised for
intruding on my privacy, for setting me the daily task; they would have
looked the other way had I been backward or disinclined. I was neither,
for I was not only ready to conform to the regulations, but something
within me revolted at being unduly favoured.

“At the earliest moment permissible by law I left the prison to become
a serf, the initial stage of freedom, hired out at twelve francs a
month to any one who required my services. I fell into the hands of
Fitzroy, here, the mine-owner, who treated me with a consideration so
distinguished, so entirely generous, that when I earned my right to
a little farm of my own I begged and received permission to settle
near him. The government gave me these few acres on the hill, rations
for a year, and a modest complement of tools and appliances, exacting
only one condition: my _parole d’honneur_. It is only Frenchmen who
could ask such a thing of a convict, but, as I told you before, I was
regarded as an exception, a man whose word might safely be taken.

“Never was one less inclined to escape than myself; my estates, which
are extensive and valuable, would have instantly paid the forfeit;
and though I am prohibited from receiving a sou of their revenues,
I am not disallowed to direct how my money shall be used. You will
wonder why I weigh possessions so intangible against a benefit which
would be so real. But the traditions of an old family become almost
a religion. To jeopardise our lands would be a sacrilege of which I
am incapable; we phantoms come and go, but the race must continue on
its ancestral acres; the noble line must be maintained unbroken. So
peremptory is this feeling that you will see it at work in families
that boast no more than three generations. The father’s château is
dear; the grandfather’s precious; the great-grandfather’s a thing to
die for! Think what it is among those, like ourselves, whose lineage
and lands go back to Charlemagne! Though I can never return to France
myself, though I shall die on my little hillside farm and be buried by
strangers, still, it is much to me that the estates will pass to those
of my blood. I have cousins, children of my uncle, who will succeed
me--manly, handsome boys, whose careers are my especial care. Their
children will often ask,--their children’s children, perhaps,--of that
portrait of a man in chains, in the stripes of a convict, that hangs
in our great picture-gallery at Nemours, beneath it this legend: ‘Paul
de Charruel, painted in prison at his own request.’ At the prompting
of vanity, of humility,--I scarcely know which to call it,--I had this
done before I quitted France for ever, the artist coming daily to study
me through the bars; and ordered it hung amid the effigies of my race.
I suppose it hangs there now, slowly darkening in that empty house. It
shall be my only plea to posterity, my only cry.

       *       *       *       *       *

“It is nearly sixteen years ago since these events took place. For
more than twelve I have lived like a peasant on my little farm, the
busiest of the busy; up at dawn, to bed by nine o’clock. Blossoming
under a care so sedulous and undivided, it has yielded me a rich return
for my labour. My heart it has kept from breaking; my hands it has
never left empty of a task to fill. There is a charm in freedom and
solitude, a solace to be found in the society of plants, beyond the
power of words to adequately express. Our government is right when it
gives the convict a piece of land and a spade, leaving him to work out
his own salvation. I took their spade; I found their salvation. On
that hillside there I have passed from youth to middle age; my hair
has turned to grey; my talents, my strength, all that I have inherited
or acquired in mind or body, have been expended in hoeing cabbages,
in weeding garden-beds, in felling the forest-trees which encumbered
my little estate. Yet I have not been unhappy, if you except one day
each year, a day I should gladly see expunged from my calendar. Once
a year I receive from the Marquise de Gonse a letter in terms the
most touching and devout, written in mingled vitriol and tears. This
annual letter is to her, I know, a supreme sacrifice; every line of it
breathes anguish and revolt. To forgive me has become the touchstone
of her religion, a test to which she submits herself with agony. I
cannot--I do not--blame her for hating me; I would not have her learn
the truth for anything on earth: but is it a pleasure for me to be
turned the other cheek? Is it any consolation to be forgiven in terms
so scathing? It is terrible, that piety which deceives itself, which
attempts to achieve what is impossible. And she not only forgives
me: she sends me little religious books, texts to put upon my walls,
special tracts addressed to those in prison. She asks about my soul,
and tells me she wearies the President with intercessions for my
release. Poor, lonely old woman, bereft of her only son! In the bottom
of her heart, does she not wish me torn limb from limb? Would she not
love to see me in the fires of hell?

“This, mademoiselle, concludes my story. To-morrow, in your father’s
beautiful yacht, you leave our waters, never to return. You will pursue
your adventurous voyage, encircling the world, to reach at last that
far American home, receiving on the way countless new impressions that
will each obliterate the old. Somewhere there awaits you a husband, a
man of untarnished name and honour. In his love you will forget still
more; your memories will fade into dreams. Will you ever recall this
land of desolation? Will you ever recall de Charruel the convict?”

He had not looked at the girl once during the course of his long
narrative. He felt that she had been affected--how much or how little,
he did not know, a certain delicacy, a certain fear, withholding him.
When at last he sought her face he saw that she had been crying.

“I shall never forget,” she said.

They walked in silence until, at a parting of the paths, he said: “This
one leads to my little cabin. Come; it will interest you, perhaps--the
roof that has sheltered me for twelve irrevocable years. You are not
afraid?” he asked.

She made a motion of dissent, drawing closer to him as though to
express her confidence.

A few hundred yards brought them to a grassy paddock fenced with limes,
through which they passed to reach a grove of breadfruit and orange
trees beyond. On the farther side the house itself could be seen, a
wooden hut embowered in a bougainvillea of enormous size. It looked
damp, dark, and uninviting. Not a breath stirred the tree-tops above
nor penetrated into the deep shade below; except for the drone of
bees and a sound of falling water in the distance, the intense quiet
was untroubled by a sound. De Charruel led the way in silence, with
the preoccupation of a man who had too often trod that path before to
need his wits to guide him. Reaching the hut, he threw open the door
and stood back to allow his companion to enter before him. The little
room was bare and clean; a table, a book-shelf, a couple of chairs,
the only furniture; the only ornaments a shining lamp and a vase of
roses. Miss Amy Coulstoun took a seat in the long canvas chair which
the convict drew out for her. The air seemed hot and suffocating, the
perfume of the orange-blossoms almost insupportable. She was possessed,
besides, with a thought, a fancy, that bewildered her; that made her
feel half ashamed, half triumphant; that brought the tears to her eyes
repeatedly. De Charruel did not speak. He was standing in the doorway,
looking down at her with a sort of awe, as though at something sacred,
something he wished to imprint for ever in his mind.

“I wish to remember you as you are now!” he exclaimed--“lying back
in my chair, your face a little in profile, your eyes sad and
compassionate. When you are gone I shall keep this memory in my heart;
I shall cherish it; it shall live with me here in my solitude.”

“I must go,” she said, with a little thrill of anger or agitation in
her voice. “I have stayed too long already.”

He came towards her.

“I want first to show you this,” he said, drawing from his pocket a
jewel-case, which he almost forced into her hands. “You will not refuse
me a last favour--you who have accorded me so many?”

She avoided his glance, and opened the box, giving, as she did so, an
exclamation of astonishment.

It was full of rings.

“They were my poor mother’s,” he explained. “By special permission I
was allowed to receive them here; I feared they might go astray.”

There were, perhaps, ten rings in all, every one the choice of a woman
of refinement and great wealth--diamonds, rubies, pearls, and opals,
sparkling and burning in the hollow of the girl’s hand. No wonder she
cried out at the sight of them, and turned them over and over and over
with fascinated curiosity.

“Each one has its history,” said de Charruel. “This and this are
heirlooms. This was a peace-offering from my father after a terrible
quarrel, the particulars of which I never learned. This he gave her
after my birth--are the diamonds not superb? This ruby was my mother’s
favourite, for it was her engagement ring, and endeared to her by
innumerable recollections. She used to tell me that at her death she
wished my wife to wear it always, saying it was so charged with love
that she counted it a talisman.”

Miss Coulstoun held it up to the light, turning it from side to side.

“It is like a pool of fire,” she said.

“Won’t you try it on?” he asked.

She did so, and held out her hand for him to see. The ring might have
been made to the measure of her finger.

“You will never take it off again,” he said. “You will keep it for a
souvenir--for a remembrance.”

She shook her head. “Indeed, I will not,” she returned, with a smile.
“Besides, is it not to be preserved for your fiancée? You cannot
disregard your mother’s wish.”

“Why should we pretend to one another?” he broke out. “You know why I
offer it to you, mademoiselle. It would be an insult for me to say I
love you--I, a convict, a man disgraced and ruined past redemption. But
I can ask you to keep my poor ring. Wear it as you might that of some
one dead, some one of whom you once thought with kindness, some one who
had greatly suffered.”

The girl looked away.

“What you ask is impossible,” she said at length, in a voice so low and
sweet that it was like a caress. “I don’t think you understand.”

“It is your pride that prevents!” he cried. “I understand very well.
If I left it you in a testament you would not scruple to take it; you
would see a difference! Yet, am I not dead? Is this not my grave you
see around me? Am I not the corpse of the man I once was? Trample on
your pride for once, for the sake of one that loves the very ground you
tread upon. Take my ring, although it is worth much money, although the
_convenances_ forbid. If questions are asked, say that it belonged to a
man long ago passed away, whose last wish it was that you should wear
it.”

“I shall say it was given me by the bravest and most eloquent of men,
the Comte de Charruel!” she exclaimed, with a deep blush. “You have
convinced me against my will.”

He cried out in protest, but even as he did so he heard the sounds
of footsteps on the porch, and turned in time to see the door flung
open by Fitzroy. Behind the Irishman strode the tall figure of General
Coulstoun, his face overcast with anxiety.

“Thank God!” he cried when he saw his daughter. “You’ve been gone an
age, my dear, and I’ve been uneasy in spite of Fitzroy, here. It’s very
well to say ‘It’s all right, it’s all right’; but in an island full of
con--”

“I felt quite safe under M. de Charruel’s protection,” interrupted Amy,
striking that dreadful word full in the middle. “I thought you knew I
was with this gentleman.”

“I don’t know that that made me feel any more--” began the general,
recollecting himself in the nick of time. “Why, Amy, child, what are
you doing with that ring?”

“M. de Charruel has just presented it to me, papa,” she returned. “Is
it not beautiful?”

“Good God!” cried the general, “it is a ruby! I could swear it is a
ruby! It must be worth a fortune!” Between each of these remarks he
stared de Charruel in the face with mingled suspicion, anger, and
surprise.

“I am told that it is worth about twelve thousand francs,” said the
Frenchman.

The general started. Fitzroy hurriedly whispered something into his
ear. “You don’t say so!” the former was overheard to say. “In a duel,
was it? I didn’t know anybody was ever killed in a French--Oh, I
see--yes--lost his head--”

This little aside finished, the general came back again to the attack,
more civil, however, and more conciliatory in his tone.

“You must be aware,” he said, addressing de Charruel, “that no young
lady can accept such a present as this from any one save a member of
her family or the man to whom she is engaged. I can only think that my
daughter has taken your ring in ignorance of its real value, forgetful
for the moment that the conventionalities are the same whether in
New Caledonia or New York. You will pardon me, therefore, if I feel
constrained to ask you to take back your gift.”

“It rests entirely with Miss Coulstoun,” returned de Charruel.

“In that case, there can certainly be no question,” said the general.

“I shall not give it back, papa,” said Amy.

Her father stared at her in amazement, and from her distrustfully to de
Charruel.

“Is he not a--convict?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And you are going to accept a present from a convict?”

“Yes.”

“A present said to be worth twelve thousand francs?”

“Yes.”

“My God!” he cried, “I could not have believed it possible.”

At this she burst out crying.

The general put his arm round her. “Come away, my daughter,” he said.
“For once in my life I am ashamed of you.”

“I must first say good-bye to M. de Charruel,” she said through her
tears, holding out her hand--the left hand, on which the ruby glowed
like a drop of blood.

The convict raised it slowly to his lips. Their eyes met for the last
time.

“Good-bye,” he said.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next day, from a rocky cliff above his house, de Charruel saw
the yacht hoist her white sails and steal out to sea. He watched her
as long as she remained in sight, and when at last she sank over the
horizon, he threw himself on the ground in a paroxysm of despair.
For an hour he lay in a sort of stupor, rising only at the insistent
whistle from the mine. This told him that it was twelve o’clock, and
brought him back to the realities and obligations of life. Descending
to the farm, he once more took up the threads of his existence, for
the habits of twelve years are not to be lightly disregarded. But
it was with difficulty that he brought himself to perform his usual
tasks. His heart seemed dead within his breast. He wondered miserably
at his former patience and industry as he saw on every side the
exemplification of both. How could he ever have found contentment in
such drudgery, in such pitiful digging and toiling in the dirt! What
a way for a man to pass his days--an earth-stained peasant, ignobly
sweating among his cabbages! Oh, the intolerable loneliness of those
years! How grim they seemed as he looked back at them, those tragic,
wasted years!

Tortured by the stillness and emptiness of his hut, he spent the
night at Fitzroy’s, lying on the bare verandah boards till daylight.
But he returned home before the household was astir, lest he should
be invited to breakfast and be expected to talk. He shrank from the
thought of meeting any one, and for days afterwards kept close within
the limits of his little farm, shunning every human being near him.
Every convict has such phases, such mutinies of the soul. The malady
runs its course like a fever, and if it does not kill or impair the
victim’s reason, it leaves him at last too often a hopeless sot. But,
fortunately for himself, it was work, not cognac, that cured Paul de
Charruel. He came to himself one day in his garden, as he was digging
potatoes. He stood up, drew his hand across his face, and realised that
the brain-sickness had left him. He went into the house and looked at
himself in the glass, shuddering at the scarecrow he saw reflected
there. He examined his clothes, his rooms, his calloused hands, with a
strange, new curiosity, studying them all with the same speculation,
the same surprise. He stood off, as it were, and looked at himself from
a distance. He walked about his tangled, weedy farm, and wondered what
had come over him these past weeks. He had been starving, he said to
himself many times over--starving for companionship.

He sought out Fitzroy at the mine. It was good again to hear the
Irishman’s honest laugh, to clasp his honest hand, to think there was
one person, at least, that cared for him. He hung about Fitzroy all
that day, as though it would be death to lose sight of him--Fitzroy,
his friend. He repeated that last word a dozen times. His friend! He
talked wildly and extravagantly for the mere pleasure of hearing
himself speak. He was convulsed with laughter when an accident happened
to a truck, and could scarcely contain himself when Fitzroy had a mock
altercation with the engineer. No one could be more humourous than
Fitzroy, and the engineer was a man of admirable wit! What a fool he
had been to sulk these weeks on his farm. His farm! It made him tremble
to think of it, so unendurably lonely and silent it had become. It was
horrible that he must return to it,--his green prison,--with its ghosts
and memories.

He went back late, but not to sleep. He sat on the dark porch of his
hut and thought of the woman he had lost. Like a shadow she seemed
to pass beside him, and if he shut his eyes he could feel her breath
against his cheek and almost hear the beating of her heart. He closed
his arms on the empty air and called her name aloud, half hoping
that she might come to him. But she was a thousand miles at sea, and
every minute was widening the distance between them. The folly and
uselessness of these repinings suddenly came over him. She was a most
charming girl, but would not any charming girl have captivated him
after the life he had been leading? Was he not hungry for affection?
Was he not in love with love? He rose and walked up and down the porch,
greatly stirred by the new current of his thoughts. Yes; he was dying
for something to love--something, were it only a dog. For twelve years
he had sufficed for himself, but he could do so no more.

By dawn he was at Fitzroy’s, begging the Irishman for a black boy
and a horse. A little later his messenger was galloping along the
Noumea road, charged with a letter to the Chef de l’Administration
Pénitentiaire to request that “le nommé de Charruel” be permitted to
leave his farm for seven days. The permission was accorded almost as
a matter of form, for it was not the custom to refuse anything to “le
nommé de Charruel.”

The count went straight to the convent and asked to see the Mother
Superior. She was a stately old lady, with silvery hair, an
aristocratic profile, and a voice like an ancient bell. She at once cut
short his explanations, closing her ears to his official number and
other particulars of his convict life.

“M. le Comte,” she said, “I knew your mother very well, and your father
also, whom you favour not a little. I have often thought of you out
there by the strait--ah, monsieur, believe me, often.”

De Charruel thanked her with ceremony.

“Your errand cannot be the same as that which brings the others,” she
went on, half smiling. “_Mon Dieu!_” she exclaimed, as she saw the
truth in his reddening face. “You, a noble! a _chef de famille_! It is
impossible.”

“I am only the convict de Charruel,” he answered.

The old woman looked at him with keen displeasure.

“You know the rules?” she said in an altered voice. “You know, I
suppose, that you can take your choice of three. If you are not
satisfied you can return in six months.”

“Oh, madame,” he said, “spare me such a trial. I stipulate for two
things only: give me not a poisoner nor a thief; but give me, if you
can, some poor girl whose very honesty and innocence has been her ruin.”

“I can very easily supply you with such a one,” said the Mother
Superior. “Your words apply to half the female criminals the government
sends me to marry to the convicts. When I weigh their relative demerits
I almost feel I am giving angels to devils, so heavy is the scale in
favour of my sex. I have several young women of unusual gentleness and
refinement, who could satisfy requirements the most exacting. If you
like,” she went on, “I shall introduce you first to a poor girl named
Suzanne. In the beginning it was like caging a bird to keep her here,
but insensibly she has given her heart to God and has ceased to beat
her wings against the bars.”

“Does she fulfil my conditions?” asked the count.

“Yes; a thousand times, yes!” exclaimed the Mother Superior. “Shall I
give orders for her to be brought?”

“If you would have the kindness,” said de Charruel.

There was a long waiting after the command had gone forth. All the
womanliness and latent coquetry of the nuns came out in this business
of making ready their charges for the ordeal; and when it was whispered
that the wooer was the Comte de Charruel himself, a personage with
whose romantic history there was not a soul unfamiliar, great indeed
was the excitement and preparation. At last, with a modest knock, the
door opened and let in a young girl clothed in conventual grey. She
had a very pretty face, a touch hardened by past misfortunes, a figure
short, well knit, and not ungraceful, and wild black eyes that shrank
to the ground at the sight of the count.

The Mother Superior motioned her to take a seat.

“This is Suzanne,” she said.

De Charruel rose to his feet and bowed.

There was a dead silence.

“Can you not say something?” said the old lady, turning to the count
with some asperity.

“Mademoiselle,” he said, with a sensation of extreme embarrassment, “I
have the honour to ask you to marry me.”

“You need not commit yourself,” interrupted the Mother Superior. “You
can have the choice of two more.”

“If I saw a hundred, madame,” he replied, “I could find no one I
preferred to this young lady.”

There was another prolonged silence.

“You must answer, Suzanne,” said the old lady. “Yes or no?”

The girl burst into tears.

“Yes or no?” reiterated the Mother.

“I weep at monsieur’s extraordinary goodness,” said the girl. “Yes,
madame, yes.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Ten days later de Charruel was resting in the taro-field where he had
been at work, when he felt Suzanne’s arm around his neck and her warm
lips against his forehead. He leaned back with a smile.

“Paul,” she said, with a little tremor in her voice, “you have hidden
nothing from me? You have done nothing wrong, Paul?”

“Wrong!” he exclaimed. “Have I not told thee repeatedly that I am
the model convict, the hero of a hundred official commendations, the
shining star of the penal administration? Wrong! What dost thou mean?”

“The authorities--” she answered. “There has been a messenger from the
mine with a blue official letter. Oh, Paul, it frightens me.”

“Thou needst not fear,” he said. “It is only some matter of routine.
I could paper my house (if it would not be misunderstood) with blue
official letters about nothing.”

“I am so happy, Paul,” she said,--“so happy that I tremble for my
happiness!”

He smiled at her again as he reached his hand for the letter.
Nonchalantly he tore it open, but turned deadly pale as he ran his eyes
down the sheet inside.

“You must go back to prison?” she cried in a voice of agony.

He could only shake his head.

“Speak!” she cried again. “Paul, Paul, I must know, if it kills me!”

He gave her a dreadful look.

“I am pardoned,” he said. “I am free!”




THE HAPPIEST DAY OF HIS LIFE




THE HAPPIEST DAY OF HIS LIFE


His thirtieth birthday! His first youth was behind him, with all its
heartburnings, its failures, its manifold humiliations. What had he
done these years past but drift, forlorn, penniless, and unattached,
over those shallows where others had stuck and prospered--a gentle
decline all the way from college in hope and fulfilment? The army and
civil service had alike refused him. In the colonies he had toiled
unremittingly in half a hundred characters,--groom, cook, boundary
rider, steamer roustabout,--always sinking, always failing. Then those
last four years in the Islands, and his tumble-down store in Vaiala!
Had life nothing more for him than an endless succession of hot, empty
days on the farthest beach of Upolu, with scarcely more to eat than
the commonest Kanaka, and no other outlet for his energies than the
bartering of salt beef for coprah and an occasional night’s fishing on
the reef? On the other hand, he was well in body, and had times of even
thinking himself happy in this fag-end of the world. The old store,
rotten and leaky though it was, gave him a dryer bed than he had often
found in his wandering life, and the food, if monotonous and poor, was
better than the empty belly with which he had often begun an arduous
day in Australia. And the place was extraordinarily beautiful. Yes,
he had always admitted that, even in his blackest days of depression,
though the beauty of it seemed almost to oppress him at times. But
beautiful or not, this was a strange place for his father’s son, a
strange thirtieth birthday for one who had begun the world with every
prospect of faring well and rising high in its esteem, and the sense of
his failure again seized him by the throat.

The noise of an incoming boat drew him to the door, and he looked out
to see the pastor’s old whaler heading through the reef. They had made
a night trip to avoid the heat, and all looked tired and weary with
their long pull from Apia, and the song with which they timed their
paddles sounded mournfully across the lagoon. A half-grown girl leaped
into the water and hastened up to the store with something fastened in
a banana-leaf.

It was a letter, which she shyly handed the trader. Walter Kinross
looked at it with surprise, for it was the first he had received in
four years, and the sight of its English stamp and familiar handwriting
filled him with something like awe.

“The white man said you would give us a tin of salmon and six _masi_,”
said the little girl, in native.

Kinross unlocked the dingy trade-room, still in a maze of wonder and
impatience, and gave the little girl a box of matches in excess of
postage. Then he opened the letter.

  MY DEAR NEPHEW [it ran]: Your letter asking me to send you a book or
  two or any old papers I might happen to have about me has just come
  to hand, and finds me at Long’s Hotel, pretty miserable and ill.
  Yours was a strange note, after a silence of eight years, telling me
  nothing on earth about yourself save that you are trading in some
  islands, and seldom see a white face from one year’s end to another.
  When a man is seventy years of age and is ill, and his nigh-spent
  life unrolls before him like the pages of a musty old book, and
  when he wonders a little how it will feel to be dead and done with
  altogether, I tell you, my boy, he begins to see the spectres of
  all sorts of old misdeeds rising before him. Past unkindnesses,
  past neglects, a cold word here, a ten-pound note saved there and
  an old friend turned empty away--well, well! Without actually going
  the length of saying that I was either unkind or negligent in your
  case, I feel sometimes I was rather hard on you as to that mess of
  yours in London, and that affair at Lowestoft the same year. I was
  disappointed, and I showed it.

  I know you’re pretty old to come back and start life afresh here, but
  if you have not had the unmitigated folly to get married out there
  and tied by the leg for ever, I’ll help you to make a new start. You
  sha’n’t starve if three hundred pounds a year will keep you, and if
  you will try and turn over a new leaf and make a man of yourself in
  good earnest, I am prepared to mark you down substantially in my
  will. But mind--no promises--payment strictly by results. You’re no
  longer a boy, and this is probably the last chance you’ll ever get of
  entering civilised life again and meeting respectable folk. I inclose
  you a draft at sight on Sydney, New South Wales, for two hundred and
  fifty pounds, for you will doubtless need clothes, etc., as well as
  your passage money, and if you decide not to return you can accept
  it as a present from your old uncle. I have told Jones (you would
  scarcely know the old fellow, Walter, he’s so changed) to send you a
  bundle of books and illustrated papers, which I hope will amuse you
  more than they seem to do me.

                                            Affectionately yours,

                                                         ALFRED BANNOCK.

The trader read the letter with extraordinary attention, though the
drift of it was at first almost beyond him--read it and re-read it,
dazed and overcome, scarcely realising his good fortune. He spread out
the bill on his knee and smoothed it as he might have patted the head
of a dog. It spelled freedom, friends, the life he had been trained and
fitted to lead, a future worth having and worth dividing. The elation
of it all tingled in his veins, and he felt like singing. London, the
far distant, the inaccessible, now hummed in his ears. He saw the
eddying, crowded streets, the emptying play-houses, the grey river
sparkling with lights. The smoke of a native oven thrilled him with
memories of the underground, and he had but to close his eyes and the
surf thundered with the noise of arriving trains.

The house could not contain him and his eager thoughts; he must needs
feel the sky overhead and the trades against his cheek, and take all
nature into his puny confidence. Besides, Vaiala had now a new charm
for him, one he had never counted on to find. Soon, now, it would
begin to melt into the irrevocable past; its mist-swept mountains, its
forests and roaring waterfalls would fade into nothingness and become
no more than an impalpable phantom of his mind, the stuff that dreams
are made of. He wandered along the path from one settlement to another,
round the great half-moon of the bay, absorbing every impression with a
new and tender interest.

There were a dozen little villages to be passed before he could attain
the rocky promontory that barred the western shore, pretty hamlets in
groves of cocoanuts and breadfruit, in each perhaps a dozen beehive
houses and as many sheds and boat-shelters. Between village and village
the path led him under rustling palms and beside the shallow waters of
the lagoon and across a river where he surprised some laughing girls at
their bath. In the deep shade old men were mending nets, and children
were playing tag and cricket with boisterous shouts, or marbles in
sandy places. From one house he heard the clapping hands that announced
the _’ava_; in another the song and stamp of practising dancers. Hard
and lonely though his life had been, this Samoan bay was endeared to
him by a thousand pleasant memories and even by the recollection of
his past unhappiness. Here he had found peace and love, freedom from
taskmasters, scenes more beautiful than any picture, and, not least,
a sufficiency to eat. A little money and his life might have been
tolerable, even happy--enough money for a good-sized boat, a cow or
two, and those six acres of the Pascoe estate he had so often longed
to buy. Only the month before, the American consul had offered them
for two hundred dollars Chile money, and here he was with two hundred
and fifty pounds in his pocket, seventeen hundred and fifty dollars
currency! Cruel fate, that had made him in one turn of her wrist
far too rich to care. He would buy them for Leata, he supposed; he
must leave the girl some land to live on. But where now were all the
day-dreams of the laying out of his little estate?--the damming of the
noisy stream, the fencing, terracing, and path-making he had had in
mind; the mangoes, oranges, and avocados he had meant to plant in that
teeming soil, with coffee enough for a modest reserve? What a snug,
cosy garden a man could make of it! What a satisfaction it might have
been! How often had he talked of it with Leata, who had been no less
eager than himself to harness their quarter-acre to the six and make of
them all a little paradise.

Poor Leata! whom he had taken so lightly from her father’s house and
paid for in gunpowder and kegs of beef--his smiling, soft-eyed Leata,
who would have died for him! What was to become of her in this new
arrangement of things? The six acres would provide for her, of course;
in breadfruit, cocoanuts, and bananas she would not be badly off: but
where was the solace for the ache in her heart, for her desolation and
abandonment? He sighed as he thought of her, the truest friend he had
found in all his wanderings. He would get her some jewellery from Apia,
and a chest of new dresses, and a big musical box, if she fancied it.
What would it matter if he did go home in the steerage? It would be no
hardship to a man like him. She would soon forget him, no doubt, and
take up with somebody else, and live happily ever afterwards in the six
acres. Ah, well! he mustn’t think too much about her, or it would take
the edge off his high spirits and spoil the happiest day of his life.

By this time he had worked quite round the bay, and almost without
knowing it he found himself in front of Paul Engelbert’s store.
Engelbert was the other trader in Vaiala--a passionate, middle-aged
Prussian, who had been a good friend of his before those seven
breadfruit-trees had come between them. In his new-found affluence and
consequent good humour the bitterness of that old feud suddenly passed
away. He recalled Engelbert’s rough, jovial kindness--remembered how
Paul had cared for him through the fever, and helped him afterwards
with money and trade. How could he have been so petty as to make a
quarrel of those breadfruit-trees? He recollected, with indescribable
wonder at himself, that he had once drawn a pistol on the old fellow,
and all this over six feet of boundary and seven gnawed breadfruits!
By Jove! he could afford to be generous and hold out the right hand of
friendship. Poor old Paul! it was a shame they had not spoken these two
years.

On the verandah, barefoot and in striped pyjamas, was Engelbert,
pretending not to see him. Kinross thought he looked old and sick and
not a little changed.

“How do you do, Engelbert?” he said.

The German looked at him with smouldering eyes. “Gan’t you see I’m
busy?” he said.

“You might offer a man a chair,” said Kinross, seating himself on the
tool-chest.

“Dere iss no jare for dem dat issn’t welgome,” said the German.

“I used to be welcome here,” said Kinross. “There was a time when you
were a precious good friend of mine, Paul Engelbert.”

“Dat wass long ago,” said the trader.

“I’ve been thinking,” said Kinross, “that I’ve acted like a damned fool
about those trees.”

“Dat wass what I wass dinking, too, dese two dree years,” responded the
other.

“Take them; they are yours,” said Kinross. “You can build your fence
there to-morrow.”

“So!” said Engelbert, with dawning intelligence. “The Yerman gonsul has
at last to my gomplaint listened.”

“Hang the German consul! No!” cried Kinross. “I do it myself, because I
was wrong--because you were good to me that time I was sick, and lent
me the hundred dollars and the trade.”

“And you want noding?” asked Engelbert, still incredulous.

“I want to shake your hand and be friends again, old man,” said
Kinross, “same as we used to be when we played dominoes every night,
and you’d tell me about the Austrian War, and how the Prince divided
his cigars with you when you were wounded.”

The German looked away. “Oh, Kinross,” he said, with a shining look
in his eyes, “you make me much ashamed.” He turned suddenly round and
wrung the Englishman’s hand in an iron grasp. “I, too, was dam fool.”

“A friend is worth more than seven breadfruits,” said Kinross.

“It wass not breadfruid: it wass brincible,” said the German. “Poof! de
drees dey are noding; here it wass I wass hurted,” and he laid a heavy
paw against his breast. “Ho, Malia, de beer!”

His strapping native wife appeared with bottles and mugs; at the sight
of their guest she could scarcely conceal her surprise.

“Prosit!” said Engelbert, touching glasses.

“You know dem six agers of de Pasgoe estate,” he said, looking very
hard at his companion. “Very nice leetle place, very sheap, yoost
behind your store?”

Kinross nodded, but his face fell in spite of himself.

“I from the American gonsul bought him,” went on the German, “very
sheap: two hundred dollars Chile money.”

Kinross looked black. Engelbert patted his hand and smiled ambiguously.

“Dey are yours,” he said. “Pay me back when you have de money. I buy
dem only to spite you. _My friend_, take dem.”

“Paul, Paul,” cried Kinross, “I don’t know what to say--how to thank
you. Only this morning I got money from home, and the first thing I
meant to do was to buy them.”

“All de better,” said Engelbert; “and, my boy, you blant goffee.
Cobrah, poof! Gotton, poof! It’s de goffee dat bays, and I will get you
blenty leetle drees from my friend, de gaptain in Utumabu Blantation.
You must go? So? Yoost one glass beer. Nein? I will be round lader.”

Kinross tore himself away with difficulty and started homeward, his
heart swelling with kindness for the old Prussian. He exulted in the
six acres he had so nearly lost, and they now seemed to him more
precious than ever. It was no empty promise, that of the coffee-trees
from Utumapu; these would save him all manner of preparatory labor and
put his little plantation six months ahead. Then he remembered he was
leaving Vaiala, and again he heard the hum of London in his ears. Well,
he would explain about the trees to Leata, and would beg old Engelbert
to help and advise her a bit. Poor Leata! she had lots of good sense
and was very quick to learn. He could trust Leata.

He was crossing the _malae_, or common, of Polapola, when the sight of
the chief’s house put a new thought into his head. It was Tangaloa’s
house, and he could see the chief himself bulking dimly in the shadow
of a _siapo_. Tangaloa! He hadn’t spoken with him in a year. The old
fellow had been good to him, and in the beginning had overwhelmed him
with kindnesses. But that was before he had shot the chief’s dog and
brought about the feud that had existed between them for so long. It
was annoying to have that everlasting dog on his verandah at night,
frightening Leata to death and spilling the improvised larder all about
the floor, not to speak of the chickens it had eaten and the eggs it
had sucked. No, he could not blame himself for having shot that beast
of a dog! But it had made bad blood between him and Tangaloa, and had
cost him, in one way or another, through the loss of the old chief’s
custom and influence, the value of a thousand chickens. But he would
make it up with Tangaloa, for he meant to leave no man’s ill will
behind him. So he walked deliberately towards the house, and slipped
under the eaves near the place where the old chief was sitting alone.

“_Talofa_, Tangaloa,” he cried out cordially, shaking hands.

The chief responded somewhat drily to the salutation and assumed a
vacant expression.

“That dog!” began the trader.

“That dog!” repeated the chief, with counterfeit surprise.

“Thy dog, the one I shot near my house,” said Kinross, firing up with
the memory of its misdeeds, “the dog that chased my chickens, and ate
my eggs, and plagued me all night like a forest devil--I want to take
counsel with your Highness about it.”

“But it is dead,” said Tangaloa.

“But thy high-chief anger is not dead,” said Kinross. “Behold, I used
to be like your son, and the day was no longer than thy love for me. I
am overcome with sorrow to remember the years that are gone, and now to
live together as we do in enmity. What is the value of thy dog, that I
may pay thee for it, and what present can I make besides that will turn
thy heart towards me again?”

“Cease,” said the chief; “there was no worth to the dog, and I have no
anger against thee, Kinilosi.”

“You mock at me, Tangaloa,” said Kinross. “There is anger in thine eyes
even as thou speakest to me.”

“Great was my love for that dog,” said the chief. “It licked my face
when I lay wounded on the battle-ground. If I whistled it came to me,
so wise was it and loving; and if I were sick it would not eat.”

“Weighty is my shame and pain,” said the trader. “Would that I had
never lifted my gun against it! But I will pay thee its worth and make
thee a present besides.”

“Impossible,” said Tangaloa. “When the cocoanut is split, who can make
it whole?”

“One can always get a new cocoanut,” said Kinross. “I will buy thee the
best dog in Apia, a high chief of a dog, clever like a consul, and with
a bark melodious as a musical box.”

At this Tangaloa laughed for the first time. “And what about thy
chickens?” he demanded, “and thy things to eat hung out at night?”

“It can eat all the chickens it likes,” returned Kinross, “and I will
feed it daily, also, with salt beef and sardines, if that will make us
friends again, your Highness.”

“Cease, Kinilosi; I am thy friend already,” said Tangaloa, extending
his hand. “It is forgotten about the dog, and lo, the anger is buried.”

“And the price?” inquired Kinross.

“One cannot buy friendship or barter loving-kindness,” said Tangaloa.
“Again I tell thee there is no price. But if thou wouldst care to give
me a bottle of kerosene, for the lack of which I am sore distressed
these nights--well, I should be very glad.”

“I shall be pleased indeed,” said the trader, who of a sudden assumed
an intent, listening attitude.

“What is the matter?” demanded Tangaloa.

“Sh-sh!” exclaimed the white man.

“There is nothing,” said the chief.

“Yes, yes,” said Kinross; “listen, your Highness! A faint, faint bark
like that of a spirit dog.”

“Oh,” said the chief, looking about uneasily.

“Dost thee not hear it?” cried Kinross, incredulously. “To me it is
clear like the mission bell, thus: ‘Bow-wow-wow-give-also-some-sugar-
and-some-tea-and-some-tobacco-to-his-Highness-Tangaloa-bow-wow-wow!’”

The old chief fairly beamed. “Blessed was my dog in life, and blessed
in death also!” he cried. “Behold, Kinilosi, he also barks about a few
fish-hooks in a bag, and for a small subscription to our new church.”

“I think he says fifty cents,” said Kinross.

“No, no,” cried the chief; “it was like this--quite plain:
‘One-dollar-one-dollar!’”

“That ends it,” said Kinross. “I must haste to obey the voice of the
spirit dog. Good-bye, your Highness.”

“Good-bye, Kinilosi,” returned the chief, warmly. “I laugh and talk
jestingly, but my heart--”

“Mine also,” added Kinross, quickly, again grasping the old man’s hand.

He strode off with a light step, in a glow of enthusiasm and high
spirits. It would be hard to leave the old village, after all. He might
travel far and not find hearts more generous or kindly, and he vowed
he would never forget his Samoans--no, if he lived a thousand years.
And if, after all, the new order of things should fail to please, and
he should find himself stifled by the civilisation to which he had
been so long a stranger, could he not always return to this little
paradise, and live out the number of his days in perennial content? He
would search for some savings-bank in London, and place there to his
credit a sum large enough to ship him back to the Islands. Whatever
the pinch, it should lie there untouched and sacred; and as he toiled
in the stern, grey land of his birth, the thought of that secret hoard
would always be a comfort to him. But what if the bank should break, as
banks do in those centres of the high civilisation, and he should find
himself stranded half the world away from the place he loved so dearly?
He shivered at the thought. There should be two hoards, in two banks,
or else he would feel continually uneasy. The line to the rear must be
kept open at any cost.

He found Leata sitting on the floor, spelling out “The Good News from
New Guinea” in the missionary magazine. She was fresh from her bath,
and her black, damp hair was outspread to the sunshine to dry. She
rippled with smiles at his approach, and it seemed to him she had
never looked more radiant and engaging. He sat down beside her, and
pressed her curly hair against his lips and kissed it. How was it that
such a little savage could appear to him more alluring than any white
woman he had ever seen? Was he bewitched? He looked at her critically,
dispassionately, and marvelled at the perfection of her wild young
beauty, marvelled, too, at her elegance and delicacy. And for heart
and tenderness, where was her match in all the seas? He threw his arm
round her and kissed her on the lips.

“Of all things in the world what wouldst thou like the most, Leata?” he
asked.

“To have thee always near me, Kinilosi,” she answered. “Before, I had
no understanding and was like the black people in the missionary book,
but now my heart is pained, so full it is with love.”

“But there are other things than love,” persisted Kinross. “Ear-rings,
musical boxes, print for dresses.”

“Yes, many things,” she said. “But I trouble not myself about them,
Kinilosi. But sometimes I think of the land behind our house and the
fine plantation we will make there some day.”

“But if I gave you a little bag of gold shillings,” he said, “and took
thee to Apia, my pigeon, what wouldst thou buy?”

“First I would give ten dollars to the new church,” she began. “Then
for my father I would buy an umbrella, and a shiny bag in which he
could carry his cartridges and tobacco when he goes to war. For
my mother, also, an umbrella and a picture-book like that of the
missionary’s, with photographs of Queen Victoria and captains of
men-of-war. For my sister a Bible and a hymn-book, and for my brother a
little pigeon gun.”

“O thou foolish Leata,” said Kinross, “and nothing for thyself?”

“There is still more in my bag,” she answered, “enough for a golden
locket and a golden chain. And in the locket there will be your picture
and a lock of your hair--like the one the naval officer gave Titi’s
sister; and when I die, lo, no one shall touch it, for it shall lie on
my breast in the grave!”

“To-morrow we shall go to Apia and buy them,” said Kinross. “This
morning the pastor brought me a letter from Britain with a present of
many dollars. The six acres I have already purchased, and in Apia I
shall get prickly wire for fencing, and many things we need for the
clearing and planting of the land.”

Leata clapped her hands for joy. “Oh, Kinilosi,” she cried, “it was
breaking my heart. I feared the letter would make thee return to the
White Country!”

Kinross looked at her with great gentleness. His resolution was taken,
be it for good or evil.

“I shall never go back,” he said.

Then in a rousing voice he cried, so loudly that the natives in the
neighbouring houses started at the sound: “In Vaiala shall I live, and
in Vaiala die!”




FATHER ZOSIMUS




FATHER ZOSIMUS


Many years ago, before the steamers came to Samoa, when the whites
depended on sailing-ships for their precarious supplies and their
meagre news of the outside world, the Rev. Wesley Cook reached the
Islands to take up the Lord’s work in that troubled field. He was a
good-looking young man with a weak chin, rather regular features,
and an abundance of yellow, fluffy hair, who had trod since earliest
infancy the narrow path that leads to a missionary career. An assiduous
church-member, a devout Sunday-school scholar, he had climbed, rung
by rung, the religious ladder, and his sanguine, sensitive nature
had flowered in an atmosphere which would have stifled a bolder boy.
At nineteen he was fed into a sectarian college like corn into a
mill, and at twenty-two the machine turned him out into the world, an
undistinguishable unit of the church to which he belonged. Then, after
a quiet month with his old mother, whose heart overflowed with the
measure of her son’s success, the Rev. Wesley was bidden to marry and
depart.

There were plenty to advise him at this juncture, and half a
dozen young ladies were entered, so to speak, for the matrimonial
steeplechase. But Wesley, contrary to all expectation and not a
little to the chagrin of the narrow set in which he moved, showed
some determination to have his own way in this important matter, and
after a brief courtship he carried Miss Minnie Chandler to the altar.
She was the proud and defiant beauty of the town, the self-willed,
high-spirited young woman whose name was in every mouth, and whose
rejected suitors numbered half the bachelors in the neighbourhood.
Many wondered at her choice, until it was whispered about that she
was heartsick over her affair with Harry Jardine, the manufacturer’s
son, and that she preferred the missionary wilds to life in the same
country with the man who had broken his troth. Be that as it may, she
was joined to Wesley Cook in the bonds of holy matrimony, and after a
quiet wedding, at which the breakfast was frugal and prayer abundant,
the young couple bade farewell to their relations and departed for the
uttermost isles of the sea.

Six months later the _Morning Star_ hove to off the iron-bound coast
of Savai’i, and her surf-boats landed the Rev. Wesley on the shores of
his new home, together with a ton of provisions, some cheap furniture,
a box of theological books, and a Samoan grammar. He found a concrete
house already prepared for him, a church with sand-bagged windows and
a plank door still studded with bullets,--an alarming reminder of the
unsettled state of his district,--and an obsequious band of church
elders, sticky with oil, and, to his notion of things, almost naked in
their kilts of paper cloth. Bewildered and unhappy, with his wife in
tears beside him, he gazed despairingly at the fast-dwindling ship,
which he could not hope to see again for the space of a year.

The natives hung about like flies, buzzing through the stuffy rooms
of the old mission-house so long closed to their little world, or
bestirred themselves with noisy good will to the task of bringing
up the freight and the pastor’s scanty boxes. He, poor fellow, with
haggard face and eyes smarting with sweat, checked off the tally on an
envelope, and strove to bear himself like the picture of the martyr
Williams in “The Heroes of the Cross.” Numberless old men shook him by
the hand, and talked to him loudly as though he were deaf, or drew him
off to a distance and, leaning on long sticks, barked orations at his
head. Bands of youths staggered in, singing, with loads of squealing
pigs, and unsavoury victuals in baskets, while shaven-headed children
tied chickens to the verandah-posts, and women and girls unfolded
offerings of prawns and snaky eels. There was a live turtle in the
sitting-room, a bull-calf in the kitchen, and at every turn veritable
mountains of half-roasted pork. It was a wild scene for a man new
come from quiet England, and the long, even days of life at sea; the
unceasing press and bustle of the multitude, the squawking of chickens,
and the screams of fettered pigs, all wore on his nerves until his head
was giddy and his pulse throbbing. It was late in the afternoon before
the mob scampered off with the suddenness and decision of a flock of
birds, leaving the missionary and his wife to the peace they so sorely
needed. The poor exiles, with sinking hearts, brewed their tea beside
a packing-case, and wondered (much in the spirit of convicts who have
left another world beyond the prison door) whether the captain had won
his philopena of Mrs. McDougall, or if Miss Mossby had made it up with
young Sturgis.

A year later the new missionary found himself somewhat at home in
Fangaloa. He had preached a halting sermon in the native tongue, which,
though no one could understand it, had evoked a respectful admiration.
The school was now on its feet, and the children came eagerly,
seemingly pleased with the rudiments of learning he managed to teach
them. His parishioners, too, began to give evidence of their finer and
nobler qualities, and warmed his heart by their kindness, generosity,
and intelligence. Their laborious talks, as they sat at night round the
fires, or on mats beneath the tropic moon, revealed to him a tenderness
and refinement he was little prepared to find; and, from a task, these
gatherings became an entertainment to be prepared for by anxious study
of the phrase-book, and bewildering consultations with an old man who
was supposed to understand English. Cook liked the admiration and
deference of these ragged chiefs; he loved to note the bustle that
heralded his own approach; the shaking out of the finest mats for his
special seat; the polite chorus of “_Maliu mai, susu mai Tutumanaia_”
(“You are high chief come, Cook the Handsome”); the closing up of
the ranks, and the row of expectant faces. He was the little god of
Fangaloa Bay, and in a hesitating, humble way he began to taste the
sweets of power and authority.

But with his wife it was very different. Her beautiful face grew pale
and sharp, as the days rolled on in a blank succession of household
tasks begun and ended. In the long night hours, when the heat made
sleep impossible, and her heart turned to England and those dear ones
she could not hope to see again for years, she would abandon herself
to despair. She never complained, but went about her duties with
sad-eyed patience, mixing very little with the many servants provided
for her--the young men who studied for the ministry in the intervals of
bread-making and waiting at table, and the girls of rank whose fathers
were eager for them to keep pace with the strange new times they lived
in. She never chid them, as most missionaries’ wives would have done,
for trifling faults or petty forgetfulnesses. She never realised the
enormity of breaking a plate, or the crime of tinting the pudding with
washing-blue to enrich the colour; she allowed things to take their
untroubled course in a way that amazed her household. When one’s heart
is slowly breaking, it is hard to count the sugar in the bowl or watch
the soap with housewifely care. In the hot afternoons she would take
her work and seek the shadow of a tall cocoanut-grove which stood on
a hill behind the town, and there remain for hours, gazing out at the
vast shining bosom of the ocean, or at the blue mountains of Upolu,
far across the strait. So regular was her visit to this little grove
that her boys built a bench of _tamanu_ wood for her to sit on, and
raised a roof overhead to protect her from passing showers or the
glancing rays of the sun; and the place was called “_o le Nofoali’i
o Misi Mini_,” or the Throne of Mrs. Minnie, which name it bears to
the present day, though all the actors in this story have long been
laid beneath the sod. Once, after a solitary vigil of more than usual
length, she returned and sought her room, now a little sanctuary of her
irrevocable life; for here were gathered the treasures of her past;
the photographs, mementoes, and keepsakes that she had clung to in her
exile. Here she breathed again the air of home; here she could caress
the fading photographs that were so dear to her, and indulge unstinted
in passionate rebellion against her fate. On the day of which we write
she found no comfort in her shrine. The faces of her friends looked
down mournfully at her from the walls, tormenting her with a thousand
recollections. Existence was unbearable enough without such added
bitterness. These things, inanimate though they were, devoured her
while they pretended to comfort; they broke her heart while she looked
to them for solace. For a moment she saw the truth and trembled for
herself. Madness lay on the road she had begun to follow.

One by one, she gathered them together; the picture of her father
and mother, the photographs of her relations and girl friends, old
Christmas cards, bits of ribbon, little odds and ends that had played
each a part in those bygone days. There were letters, too, precious
bundles of letters tied with ribbon, which she kissed and cried over
before consigning to destruction; and from one such packet dropped the
likeness of a man in uniform, which she pressed to her breast before
tearing it into a hundred pieces. When at last the room was stripped of
everything, she bore the heap of tender rubbish to the fire, and, with
a stony face, fed it to the flames.

The Rev. Wesley Cook and his wife were not the only whites in their
corner of Savai’i, as indeed they had first imagined themselves to
be. There was still another in Fangaloa, an old, white-haired Irish
priest called Father Zosimus. No one could remember how many years
had passed since Father Zosimus came to Fangaloa and built the tiny
house and chapel in the mango-grove; for he was an old, old man, and
had come to that sleepy hollow when his hair was as black and his feet
were as light as those of the nimblest warrior of the bay. He had no
followers to speak of, for Fangaloa was Protestant to the core, and
his congregation numbered no more than one family of eight, three
transient young men who had run away with as many girls from Upolu,
and Filipo, the aged catechist, who acted as his servant. But Father
Zosimus never faltered in the path he had set himself to follow. For
seven and forty years he had daily broken the stillness of the grove
with the tinkle of his little bell, and never failed to carry on the
service of his church. He scarcely heeded the new arrivals, and more
than once he had had to chide old Filipo for gossiping about the
_papalangi_ on the hill. He never gave them a second thought, in fact,
until one day he happened to see Tutumanaia passing on his way to
church. The sight of that fresh, clear-eyed youngster greatly moved
the old priest. He was troubled and uneasy as he walked home, and his
heart ached a little. The new missionary belonged to his own race; he
had the air of a scholar, and the frank, open face and quick eyes of a
man full of enthusiasms and generous impulses; yet, so mused Zosimus
on his homeward way, this charity, this noble purpose, were all for
the aborigines alone. There would be none to spare for an old man to
whom no music was so sweet as his mother-tongue, and whose loneliness
was intensified by the burden of advancing years. For nearly half a
century Father Zosimus had lived in exile, and his soul continually
thirsted for the companionship which had been denied him all his life.
The few whites who had come his way before had been scrubby traders,
a priest or two a year, or some nondescript beach-comber, rough and
foul-mouthed, begging brandy and food. True, he had spent eighteen
years within a furlong of the Rev. Josiah Fison, Cook’s predecessor
in Fangaloa; but that gentleman’s Christian charity stopped short at
what he called a “rank Jesuit,” and they had never exchanged even so
much as a word. In Father Zosimus there was a strain of Irish gaiety;
he loved talk, and laughter, and argument; and the humblest white man
who could speak English was welcomed to his table and treated to the
best that Fangaloa afforded. Indeed, among the “squires of Savai’i” he
was honoured and respected, from Falealupo to the strait. But these
men were, most of them, gross and common. In Wesley Cook he saw a
being of another world, a young man of refinement and spirituality,
a fellow-missionary, a fellow-countryman, with whom all intercourse
was inexorably barred, with whom he should live out the balance of his
days and know no more than if an ocean rolled between them. No longer
did he stem the tide of old Filipo’s gossip; on the contrary, he could
now never learn enough of the new arrivals, and little passed in the
mission-house that was not reported to him at once. He learned, with
a singular feeling of delight, of the young minister’s kindness and
ability; how he had mastered the language in less time than a foreigner
had been ever before known to take; how he had raised the dying, nay,
the breathless dead themselves, back to life with the costly medicines
he never stinted to the poorest. “Oh, he is a minister wise and good,”
said Filipo, “and his heart is not stony against us Catholics like
the last pig-face; only yesterday he said that thou, Zosimus, wert
honourable, and deserving of respect as a man who had trod the narrow
road his whole life long.”

The old priest hung upon his words as though Filipo were inspired.
The next day he went purposely out of his way to gain another look at
Tutumanaia, and came back more affected than he had been before.

“Had I not entered the priesthood, I might have had a son like that,”
he mused to himself, as he trudged homeward. “But that I gave to God,
scarce knowing the sacrifice.” Then he rebuked himself for his impiety.

More than once, as time passed, he turned over in his mind the
possibility of calling at the Protestant mission. But no young girl
could have shown more timidity than Father Zosimus. Many a time he
brought out his best cassock, and brushed his best hat, and took a
long look at himself in the cracked shaving-glass. But he would sigh
as he saw the image of that wrinkled, shaggy-haired old man. “You’re
nothing but a frowsy old frump, Zosimus,” he would say to himself,
“nothing but the husk of what was once a man. Sure, they would have
little use for you, that handsome boy and girl in their elegant home.”
For to Father Zosimus the whitewashed, coral-built mission-house, with
its shining windows and its trim garden laid out in plots, was a fairy
palace resplendent with luxury and filled with a thousand treasures.
In his simple heart, half prepared as it was to believe anything
that redounded to the honour of his hero, he had received with all
confidence the glowing tales the natives brought him; and the very
glamour with which his imagination endowed the spot helped to keep him
back. “If the boy cares to know me, he will come himself,” he said; and
the camphor-wood chest would close, perhaps for the twentieth time, on
the father’s Sunday best.

But the boy never came. He, too, was timid, and though he often noticed
the gaunt old priest, and longed also to speak his mother-tongue
with the only creature save his wife who could understand it in all
Fangaloa, the opportunity never came to break the ice. A whole year
passed, and the Rev. Wesley Cook and the Rev. Father Zosimus, S. J.,
were no nearer an acquaintance than before. Yet there was seldom a day
but they saw each other from afar, the one shy and kind, half hoping
to receive the first advances, the other no less eager and no less
restrained.

One day Filipo brought a rumour to his master which the latter listened
to with deep concern. For a whole afternoon he gave up his usual
digging in the garden and paced his little verandah to and fro. Once
he even washed and dressed himself in his best, and trimmed his ragged
beard; but he took off his clothes again and smoked another pipe
instead of paying the visit he had so nearly decided to make. He called
in Filipo from the taro-field, and bade him waylay Misi’s girls every
day and bring news of Mrs. Cook’s condition.

Day by day the two old men discussed the coming event, and Father
Zosimus grew by turns glad and fearful at the prospect. The news came
to him one morning in October, as he was kneeling to implore divine aid
in the hour of a woman’s agony. Dawn was breaking as Filipo rushed into
the chapel, coughing and panting. “It is all over,” he cried,--“the
mother well and happy, and the child a little chief, of a strength and
beauty the like of which has never been seen in Fangaloa.”

“God be thanked!” cried Father Zosimus, throwing himself once more on
his knees.

With the later hours there came less assuring news of the mother and
the little chief. There was a devil in Misi, said Filipo; a devil that
caused her to lie as dead, or to burst forth furiously into strange
tongues, so that all about her stood amazed and trembling. The little
chief lay helpless in old Sisimaile’s arms, and the flame of its
tiny life was that of a flickering torch. Yes, the _papatisonga_ had
not been neglected. Old Tuisunga and Leotele, the speaking-man, were
the godfathers at the font; and Tutumanaia read fast, with tears in
his voice, lest the babe should die before it had been joined to the
Tahitian religion. For Master Wesley Chandler Cook was not destined
long to be a member of Christ’s church on earth. As they bore him back
to the room where his mother lay, he closed his eyes for ever.

Father Zosimus was stunned when the news first reached him, and the
tears rolled down his cheeks as he listened to Filipo. Then he went
indoors and rummaged the old chests where he kept his treasures,
turning out some trashy velvet with which he had meant to decorate
the chapel, a bottle of varnish, some brass nails, and a bundle of
well-seasoned, well-polished _maalava_ boards that he had laid away
to build himself a desk. He spread them out on the rough table, and
studied them long and earnestly. In his youth he had been a joiner and
a worker in wood, and though his hand was palsied with age, and his
eye not so true as it once had been, he was still more than a fair
craftsman. He brought out his tools, clamps, and measures, and asked
Filipo what he judged to be the bigness of the chief-son of Tutumanaia.

“Not very long,” said the old retainer,--“scarcely more than the half
of your Highness’s arm.”

Father Zosimus put on his spectacles, measured off the velvet, scanned
his materials and tools with a workmanlike eye, and then, when all
lay ready to his hand, he went outside and began to pace up and down
his verandah. The devil of irresolution and doubt was again gnawing
at his heart. Unsought and unasked, what business was it of his to
make a coffin for the dead child? There was not a soul in Fangaloa but
knew that Father Zosimus was skilled in such matters, as his house and
chapel so abundantly testified. Were his help required, they would
come and seek it. Would it not look strange for him to make a coffin
unbidden? Would it not appear forward, grasping, perhaps as though
he expected payment for his work? For an hour he wrestled with the
problem. Finally he told Filipo to spread the news about the village
that the old priest looked to undertake this task for nothing, and
was waiting only to be asked. With that he shut himself up in the
chapel, and spent the forenoon in reciting prayers for the dead. But,
devout though he ordinarily was in everything touching the services of
his church, Father Zosimus found it hard, on this occasion, to dwell
on things heavenly when all the while his body was quivering with
suspense, and his soul hearkened for that footfall on the coral floor.
Again and again he seemed to hear the sound of voices, Filipo answering
with soft deliberation, the minister agitated and saying with mournful
earnestness, “Tell the _ali’i patele_ I must see him instantly.” But
no message came; no discreet cough or dog-like scratching against the
door warned him that his attention was desired; and the stillness of
the chapel remained untroubled save for the murmuring surf and the coo
of wild pigeons in the forest.

It was late in the afternoon, and the fierce heat of day was already
melting into the softness of night, when the minister’s little son was
borne to his rest. Under the equator burial follows swiftly on the
heels of death, and life no sooner leaves the body than the diggers
must sweat and the hammers fly. There can be no decorous pause to
soften the blow or strengthen the bereaved for that last farewell
beside the grave. Ashamed, he knew not why, with a desolate sense of
defeat, Father Zosimus was drawn to gaze on the burial from afar,
crouching on a knoll that overlooked the spot. He watched, with an
emotion not to be expressed in words, the affecting scene which played
itself out before him. Across the strait blue Upolu sparkled in the
setting sun; the foaming breakers outlined the coast like a fringe of
silver, and thrilled faintly on the ear; the evening star quivered in
the blackening sky, and the constellation of the Southern Cross gleamed
in the heavens, the bright solace of many a Christian heart.

The coffin lay on a rough bier of mingled boughs and flowers, borne
in procession by eight solemn little boys all of a size, who were
tricked out in a uniform of white cotton. Behind them, very pale and
handsome, walked Tutumanaia, in duck clothes and a pith helmet. On his
one hand was the smug-faced native pastor from the next bay; on the
other, Tuisunga, the towering old chief, imperious of eye, stately
in manner, as befitted the occasion and the man. Behind these again,
and at the head of the elders and speaking-men with their fly-flappers
and Bibles, strode the _taupou_ of Fangaloa, in a striped silk _apana_
and a skirt made of a fine mat. The village matrons made up the middle
of the procession, with their hands full of hibiscus, frangipani,
stephanotis, and _moso’oi_, followed by groups of young girls and young
men, decorously apart, as convention demands; the former in bright
_lavalavas_ and little shirts of flowers and leaves, or with their
brown bosoms glistening through entwined _laumaile_ and necklaces of
scarlet _singano_; the latter with lime-whitened heads and flaming
_aute_-blossoms behind their ears. Throughout swarmed the village
children, with shaven heads and eager faces, and ears all unmindful of
the click-click of their warning parents, romping, quarrelling, and
chasing one another through the crowd.

The pall-bearers laid down their burden beside the empty grave, and
knelt on the grass in a little semicircle. Tutumanaia and his two
companions threw themselves on a mat which a woman unrolled and spread
out for them. The _taupou_ took her position at the head of the coffin,
and raised her silken parasol, less to shade her eyes than to display
a cherished possession. At a respectful distance, the chiefs, elders,
and speaking-men formed the first rank of a great circle, their deeply
lined faces overcast and solemn. The silence was first broken by a
shrill hymn, and then Cook rose to his feet, drew a Testament from his
pocket, and began to address the village. What he said was commonplace
enough, and only the echo of what he had said a hundred times before,
but the stress of a deep emotion ennobled his ready phrases and
impassioned the narrow vocabulary of Samoan woe. It seemed to Father
Zosimus that he was listening to an angel, or to one of those inspired
beings on whom the church is founded; and, indeed, a painter would have
found a saint to his hand in the tall, shining white figure of the
young minister, with his aureole of golden hair, his hand uplifted to
the sky, and his pale, rapt face raised to God.

He faltered as he drew near the close of his address, and when at last
he looked down and pointed to the little coffin, the stream of his
eloquence suddenly ran dry. He tried to go on, hesitated, and covered
his face with his hands, leaving it for the pastor to continue. This
the Rev. Tavita Singua did without further loss of time. He expatiated
on the godlike virtues of Tutumanaia in a strain that would have made
an angel blush, and did not spare the poor clay that had lived but to
die. Another piercing hymn preceded the third address. Old Tuisunga
now stepped forward, his battle-scarred chest naked to the heavens,
the bunching tapa round his loins his only garment. Slowly, softly,
with the tenderest deliberation, he began to speak. He was a born
orator, and knew the way to men’s hearts, rugged old barbarian though
he was. His theme was the bond that this little grave would for ever
be between the missionary and themselves, and his voice thrilled as he
invited Wesley into the fellowship of the bereaved, and told of the
tragedy that underlies the life of man. He drew familiar instances from
the village history; here a cherished boy destined for a name renowned;
there a young maid struck down in all her bright promise. He called to
mind his own son Rafael, who had fallen beside him on the battle-field,
his Absalom, for whom he would have died a thousand deaths. He spoke,
he said, as one man of sorrow to another, one whose heart lay beneath a
fathom of Samoan earth. He drew to a close by declaring that no common
hand should touch the coffin of their beloved. He, the son of chiefs,
the father of famous warriors, would lay the little body to its last
repose, so that it should say when its spirit reached the angels,
“Behold, I am the son of Tutumanaia, and my servant Tuisunga laid me
to rest in the house of sandalwood.” He tenderly lifted the coffin in
his arms, pressed his lips against the unpainted boards, and lowered it
into the grave.

       *       *       *       *       *

An hour later, a gaunt, black-robed figure made its way through the
trampled grass and fell on its knees beside the grave. It was Father
Zosimus, bowed in supplication before the throne of grace.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was strange what a simple matter at last brought about the
acquaintance of the only two white men in Fangaloa. Each had timidly
waited for the other to make the first advances, and each had gone
his solitary way, sick at heart, and hungering for the companionship
which would have been so eagerly accorded. It befell that Cook’s well
went dry, and there being no other water in the village save the
brackish fluid the natives were content to drink, one of the mission
boys suggested that they apply to the old priest. So Tutumanaia sat
down and wrote a polite note, explaining his predicament, and begging
for a little water. The note was sent by a messenger with a bucket.
Father Zosimus was overwhelmed when he opened and read the letter; he
was dazed by the suddenness of his own good fortune; he bade Filipo
feed the boy with the best the house afforded, with sucking pig and
_palusami_ unstinted, while he hurriedly made ready for the visit that
he was at last to pay.

Oh, that first meeting! It exceeded his wildest expectations, his most
sanguine dream! Wesley Cook was so cordial, so frankly anxious to be
friends, so overflowing with pent-up confidences, that the priest
almost wept as he unbosomed himself of the scruples that had kept him
back. With innocent craft, he left nothing undone to establish his
footing, and his bland and beaming smile hid a thousand schemes for
entangling Cook in a web of obligation. Could he send some roses to
madam, his beautiful wife? It might distract her from the thought of
her terrible loss. He had so many roses--to give a few would be such a
pleasure, such an honour. Ah, madam would be pleased with them, were
she fond of flowers. She, too, must come and see his garden, his poor
garden, where he grudged not the labour, as it seemed to bring him
close to God. Could he not provide her with some special seeds sent him
all the way from Ceylon--acclimated seeds from the famous gardens of
the lay brothers at Point de Galle? Some guava jelly of his own making?
Some smoked pigeons that he ventured to say were delicious? Would Cook
accept some cherries in brandy that the captain of the _Wild Cat_ had
presented to him years ago--that headstrong naval captain who had come
to bombard Fangaloa, and ended by giving prizes to the school-children?

Father Zosimus did not overstay his welcome. On the contrary, he had
to tear himself away almost by force, so insistent was Cook to keep
him. But he knew how much depended on that first visit; he would
not jeopardise the precious friendship by remaining too long; and
he took early leave, exulting like a child in the rosy vistas that
opened before him. This proved to be the first of many visits, and the
beginning of an acquaintance that ripened into the closest intimacy.
In the day each had his duties to perform, his quiet routine of tasks
to fulfil. Father Zosimus sawed stone for the unfinished church he had
been ten years building with the perseverance of an ant, or dug in the
garden hard by the chapel whose tinkling bell called him periodically
to devotions. Tutumanaia had his school, his Young Men’s Institute,
his medical practice, and the thousand and one labours imposed upon
him by his position and the multitude of his flock. One hour daily he
devoted to the intricacies of the language, another to the translation
of the “Peep o’ Day” and “Glimpses of the Holy Land” into the Samoan
tongue. But at night, when all the village lay quiet on its mats, and
nothing broke the stillness save the drone of the surf and the rustle
of flying-foxes among the trees, then it was that Father Zosimus would
seek the mission verandah and the society of the friend that had become
so dear to him.

Side by side, with their canvas chairs touching, the strange pair would
talk far into the night. The world passed in review before them, that
great world of which they both knew so little; and from their village
on the shores of an uncharted sea they weighed and examined, criticised
and condemned it. Or perhaps from such lofty themes their talk would
drift into the homelier channel of local gossip, or stray into the
labyrinths of Samoan politics. Or Origen, Athanasius, George of
Cappadocia, would be drawn from their distant past to point an argument
or illustrate a deep dissertation on the primitive church. And from
these, again, perhaps to Steinberger’s new poll-tax and the fighting in
Pango Pango.

On one subject they never spoke--the great barrier reef of dogma that
lay between them. Once only was it in any way alluded to--once after
a memorable night when Wesley had opened his heart to the old priest.
In saying farewell the latter had raised his hands, and was deeply
chagrined when his companion leaped back with a look of consternation.

“Oh, my son,” said Zosimus, “the blessing of an old and not unworthy
man cannot harm thee. Do we not each serve God according to our lights?”

But if Father Zosimus had succeeded in winning the young minister’s
confidence and friendship, with Mrs. Cook he had not fared so well.
In the bottom of his heart he felt that the woman’s ill will was
the rock on which the precious friendship might founder, and he
accordingly left no stone unturned to ingratiate himself in her
favour. But the lonely, wilful, moody woman, with her health impaired
by her recent confinement, and her spirit warped by disappointment
and the consciousness of dimming beauty, was in no state of mind
to receive his advances. Unhappy herself, she was in the tigerish
humour when one must rend, if one can, the happiness of others. She
had nothing in common with the frowsy old priest who wore blue jeans
under his snuffy cassock and smelled of garden mould. Moreover, her
pride was wounded by her tacit exclusion from the nightly company on
the porch. Her presence brought constraint and what seemed to her
disordered nerves a scarcely veiled resentment. Though she yawned in
her husband’s face when they were alone together, and did nothing to
seek his confidence, she detested his intimacy with the old priest,
and the thought of it rankled perpetually within her. At first she
had ignored Father Zosimus’s very existence, repelling his overtures
with an indifference quite unaffected, and treating him with the frank
rudeness that springs from unconcern. But as time passed, and every
fibre of her being revolted at the narrowness and hopelessness of her
imprisoned life; as her spirit beat against the bars and her heart
seemed to burst within her breast; she began to perceive in the priest
the means of striking at her husband. Not that she did not love Wesley,
after a fashion; if things had so fallen out, she could have felt the
most poignant jealousy; but she resented the easy, contented nature
that blossomed in that hot hole where they lived, among those greasy,
fawning savages with whom their lot was so inexorably cast. His prattle
about the school, the progress of the “Peep o’ Day,” his zeal for
unearthing legends and old Samoan songs, his whole innocent enjoyment
in his daily tasks and duties, all fanned the flame of her revolt. If
he, too, had risen against the dreary confinement of their life; if
he, too, had faced each succeeding day with ineffable disgust, and had
lain weary and heartsick in her arms at night; she would have comforted
him, encouraged him, strengthened him for the task he had so rashly
undertaken. What she could not bear, what she could not forgive or
condone, was his mild acceptance of his fate; his zest in the pitiful
drudgery of his every-day existence; the petty nature that could thus
expand in the close air of a prison. With a malignity that was crazed
in its intensity, the outcome of hysteria and the first gnawings
of disease, she sought to shatter the placidity which had grown as
intolerable to her as the Samoan sun at noon. In Father Zosimus she
perceived the dagger with which she could stab her husband through
and through; and in the maturing of her plot she enjoyed the nearest
approach to happiness that had ever come her way in Fangaloa.

One evening, when Father Zosimus arrived as usual, he was met on the
verandah by Mrs. Cook, and informed that the minister had been detained
in the village by some trifling errand. He felt a tone of menace in
her voice, and foreboded no good from her high colour and quivering
lips. He would have excused himself had a lie come easily to his lips,
but he was not quick in such things, and took the offered seat with a
sinking heart. He searched nervously here and there for some topic of
conversation that might be interesting and yet free from the slightest
possibility of offence, his ear, meanwhile, alert for the sound of the
minister’s footsteps. But Mrs. Cook was too adroit for the old man,
and, to his inexpressible chagrin, he soon found himself stumbling into
an argument, and the target for humiliating and derisive questions.
He now thought only of escape, for his hands were trembling, and he
felt his cheeks flushing with indignation. Every word he said seemed
only to land him deeper in the mire. When, at last, Mrs. Cook began to
taunt him with a recent scandal in Upolu involving the good name of a
nun, Father Zosimus cried out inarticulately, and flung himself past
her into the darkness. Even as he did so, Wesley Cook came swinging
up the path, and instinctively stepped aside to allow the flying
figure to pass. He looked back at it irresolutely, and then continued
on his way with a premonition of evil to come. His wife received
him with vehement caresses, clinging to him in an hysterical frenzy.
Between her choking sobs she overflowed with foolish, disjointed, and
often incoherent accusations against the old priest. “That horrible
old Jesuit!” she cried; “that sly, slinking, wicked creature; never,
never must he be permitted to cross the threshold again.” Her cheeks
flamed as she continued her tirade; as she described the shame,
the humiliation she had secretly undergone; as she affected, with
passionated outbursts of indignation, to keep back things that were too
black even for utterance. All the time she searched Wesley’s eyes for
an answering fire, and could read nothing but incredulity and dismay.
Then her wrath turned full upon him, and with a hundred quotations from
his own lips she denounced his intimacy with a Jesuit, and bade him
choose between the priest and her.

She threatened to seek old Tuisunga’s protection were he to persist
in this unworthy friendship, and drew in no uncertain colours the
effect of the letter she would write to the missionary authorities at
Malua. Wesley was frightened to the core, and quaked under the lash
of her denunciation. He saw himself disgraced; dismissed from the
Society; turned out into the world, that most forlorn and helpless of
human beings, the discarded missionary. Abjectly he begged for mercy,
simulated an indignation against Father Zosimus he could in no wise
feel, and was in due course forgiven on promising to break for ever
with the old priest.

He passed a troubled night; he felt he had made a mean capitulation,
and, try as he would, he was unable to gloss the matter to his
conscience. He was stung by the conviction of his cowardice and
disloyalty, and yet his common sense told him that he was powerless in
his wife’s hands. He could never outlive the scandal of her desertion,
or explain away those letters which would write him down a pervert.
In the morning Wesley timidly expostulated with his wife, quoting all
the texts he could remember that bore on charity and forgiveness. This
was a course little calculated to allay Mrs. Cook’s wrath. She burst
out upon him with a fury that completely crushed his last effort at
intercession. She stood over him as he wrote the letter in which, with
smooth and nicely balanced sentences, interspersed with religious
commonplaces and trite expressions of regret, he raised a wall of words
between himself and the old man he had called his friend. He knew,
he said, that Father Zosimus could have had no intention to offend,
but Mrs. Cook had taken the matter of overnight in such a way that he
felt unable to resume an intimacy which had been very precious to him.
No apologies or explanations could avail, and he begged that none be
offered; but he trusted, he need not say how earnestly, that in some
future time (D. V.) the dark clouds would roll away, and with them all
memories of this unhappy misunderstanding.

The letter was brought to Father Zosimus in the garden, where he was
digging furiously to drive away the devils that beset him. He tore it
open with his grimy hands, and read it with a feeling of despair.
The few kindly allusions brought tears to his eyes, and his first
resentment against Tutumanaia passed away as he re-read them; but
against Mrs. Cook, the author of his humiliation, his whole nature
rose in arms. Disciplined though he was by seven and forty years of
abnegation, the old Adam in him lay still fiery and untamed. He was
consumed with bitterness towards the woman who had so cruelly wronged
him. What had he to hope “in some future time (D. V.),” old and broken
man that he was? In the fierceness of his indignation he called down
the vengeance of God upon her until contrition overpowered him, and he
threw himself on his knees.

“Oh, Zosimus,” he said, “so old and still so foolish!”

After such a blow it was hard to pick up the threads of life once more,
and interest himself in the recurring tasks which rounded out each day.
But in Father Zosimus there was the stuff of which martyrs are made.
Sore of heart though he was, and spent of body, his unremitting energy
and indomitable faith drove him to work and pray as he had never worked
or prayed before. His lacerated feelings found an outlet in dazzling
garden-beds, trellises of bamboo, and in the stone wall he had so
often planned and as often given up, which was to inclose the seaward
side of his little plantation. And in these tranquil and unexciting
occupations, which kept the hands busy while the mind was free to rove,
a certain scheme unfolded itself which found increasing favour in his
eyes; the means, in fact, by which he might score a triumph over Mrs.
Cook, and restore himself once again in her good graces. Not that he
had forgiven her for the part she had taken against him; his anger
still smouldered beneath the blanket of Christian charity with which he
had sought to smother it; but were he to gain again his footing in that
household on the hill; were he to renew the intimacy that was the very
salt of his life; he must needs pay toll to the woman who held the key
of his happiness. As he dug, or weeded, or carried stones to his wall,
or climbed the ladder beside the shining trellis-work, the old priest
was never far from a sheet of paper and a pencil. Sometimes it was a
hammer that kept these things in place, sometimes it was the well-worn
shovel-hat that guarded them from the puffs of the trade or chance
cat’s-paws from the mountains, while Zosimus, his head economically
wrapped in banana-leaves, seized many an occasion during the course of
his labours to scribble another word on the anchored sheet, or erase
something already written. It was a list of such delicacies as the
limited markets of Apia afforded, for which the old man was intending
to lay out the savings of a year.

It must not be supposed that the Rev. Wesley Cook was having a
particularly pleasant time of it during the days that followed the
breaking off with Father Zosimus. For half a week, indeed, his wife
exerted herself to supply the old man’s place, and had never before
shown herself so agreeable or so helpful. She interested herself in
Wesley’s legends, listened patiently to the story of Sopo’s misdoings,
of the brilliant possibilities that lay in Popo would he only apply
himself in earnest, or lamented with her husband the bad influences
which were undermining the character of a gentleman named O; she wrote
to his dictation a little essay on the “King-names of Samoa,” which
Cook intended sending to the Polynesian Society of New Zealand; and,
in fact, proved herself a zealous, clever, and indefatigable comrade.
All thought of Father Zosimus would soon have slipped from Wesley’s
memory had this new-found companionship been destined to endure; but
it was nothing more than a flash in the pan, due half to remorse, half
to policy, a means to gain time for the breach to widen irrevocably
between her husband and the priest.

The sour, capricious woman could not long brook the task she had
set herself to perform; her spirit soon flagged in the dull round
which made up her husband’s life, and her new part in it grew daily
more intolerable. She slowly lapsed again into the dark humour which
was fast becoming her second nature, and took no further trouble to
conciliate her husband. Cook was slow to realise the change, but
when at last it dawned upon him that she listened with unconcealed
indifference to the tale of the day’s doings, and made no further
pretence of caring either for his work in Fangaloa or for the literary
labours which were his only relaxation, he, too, grew gloomy and
dispirited. The essay languished; the “Peep o’ Day” stood still; and
he spent solitary hours in his study in a kind of stupor. A thousand
times his heart turned towards his old friend, and he longed to
throw himself at his feet and say, “Father, comfort me! I am weak of
spirit and sore distressed.” But loyalty to the overwrought and nigh
crazy woman he called his wife, as well as the timidity which was
constitutional in the man, forbade an open reconciliation, and he
shrank from the thoughts of a clandestine one. So he went his lonely
way, bearing his cross as best he might.

At last the time grew near for the execution of the plan which had cost
Father Zosimus so much trouble and calculation, not to speak of many
dollars from his scanty hoard.

On Christmas morn, as the cannon at Faleapuni pealed along the shore
and roused the villages with its joyful reverberations, Father Zosimus
hastened to transform his dwelling into a bower of ferns and flowers.
With Filipo to assist him, and _’afa_ enough to have built a chief’s
house, the pair worked unceasingly until there remained not an inch
without its flower nor a post unentwined with brilliant creepers and
fragrant _moso’oi_. He drew a breath of satisfaction when it was all
finished to his liking, and while Filipo swept out the litter he sat
down and wrote the following letter:

                                            FANGALOA, December 25, 186-.

  MY DEAR CHILDREN: On this blessed morning no Christian can harbour
  any unkindness in his heart, nor cast up another’s shortcomings
  against him. I am an old and a failing man; the day of my release is
  close at hand, and you both must be generous to me as one so soon to
  stand before his God. And if I have unwittingly offended you,--as I
  know I have done,--I pray you to forgive me for the sake of Him who
  was born to-day. I have ventured to prepare a little feast in your
  honour, with which I hope we may celebrate, in innocent gaiety, the
  renewal of our friendship. At twelve o’clock I shall expect you both.

  I remain, my dear children, with heartfelt wishes for your good
  health and continued prosperity,

                                        Your old friend,
                                                          ZOSIMUS, S. J.

He read the note several times to himself before putting it into an
envelope and addressing it to Mr. and Mrs. Cook. Filipo was at hand,
garlanded with red _singano_ and elegantly garbed in white, prepared
to make a good appearance before the young ladies of the mission. He
trotted off with the note carefully wrapped in a banana-leaf, that it
might be delivered in all its virgin purity. Father Zosimus lit a pipe
and impatiently set himself to await his messenger’s return.

“_Se’i ave le tusi lea ia Misi_,” said Filipo to the young lady that
met him at the door. “_Ou te fa’atali i’inei mo le tali._” (“Give this
letter to Misi. I will wait here for the answer.”) Now, in Samoa, the
word “Misi” is used to designate and address Protestant missionaries
of either sex, and the maid carried the letter, not to Wesley Cook
in his study, but to Mrs. Cook, who was listlessly lolling in the
sitting-room. She tore it open, read it with attention, and putting it
hastily in her pocket, bade the girl send Filipo away. “Tell him Misi
says there is no answer,” she said.

The old catechist skipped down the hill, and repeated to his master the
message that had been given him.

Father Zosimus was painfully overcome.

“Filipo,” he said, “did you see the minister with your very own eyes?”

“_Ioe_,” answered the catechist, cheerfully; “he was writing in his
room, and I saw him through the window, looking very sad, and eating
his pen like a cow at a breadfruit-tree.” Filipo mimicked the action on
his finger.

Father Zosimus sat for a long time in a kind of dream. A glass of wine
served to rouse and strengthen him, and the unaccustomed stimulant
put him in some sort of trim to carry on the duties of the day. But a
recurring dizziness and a sinking at the heart soon drove him to take
an enforced rest. He told Filipo he did not care to eat, bidding him
put away the wine, and call Iosefo and his family to the feast that had
been made ready for such different guests.

With the passing of Christmas Father Zosimus began to work harder
than ever in his garden; early and late he could be seen in the midst
of its blooming flower-beds, digging, weeding, or transplanting
with passionate intensity. A loutish fellow from the westward, a
heavy-featured son of Wallis Island, had been engaged to divide the
burden of these tasks, and for a wage infinitesimally small toiled and
sweated under the father’s eye. To guard this creature from the prattle
of the passers-by, and to check his tendency to gaze dreamily into the
sun; to stifle his inclination to drink, to smoke, to chatter, to
explain how much better they did things in Wallis Island; to keep his
fat face, in fact, on the weeds in front of him, became, indeed, Father
Zosimus’s constant study. Day by day, he stood sentinel over his Uvean,
applied the man’s clumsy force to profitable ends, and kept his own
unconquerable heart from breaking.

It was not every day he could pursue the occupation he loved best, and
watch his plans take shape with slow but appreciable success. January
falls in the depth of the wet season; furious rains and long stretches
of boisterous weather often interrupted the Uvean’s labours, driving
both him and his taskmaster to the enforced idleness of the house--the
former to sleep on the floor or to smoke interminable _suluis_ with
Filipo: the priest to read his breviary by dim lamplight as the deluge
pounded on the roof. It was during one of these black days, when all
the world was awash outside, and a wild westerly wind was tearing
through the trees, bombarding the village with crashing boughs and
cocoanuts, that the priest’s ancient barometer sank to 29°, and gave a
quivering promise of worse to follow. He was looking at the mercury,
and setting the gauge, when Filipo appeared in the passage, his face
bright with news.

“The partner of Tutumanaia is known to your Highness?” he began, with a
question that might well have appeared superfluous.

Father Zosimus turned instantly.

“God is high-chief angry with her rock-like heart,” went on Filipo,
with the calm intonation of one vindicated. “She was presumptuous and
beautiful like an angel; now she is pig-faced and torn of devils; and
her man, oh, he weeps like an _aitu_ in the wilderness.”

“Whence didst thou get this _tala_?” asked the priest, mindful of past
mare’s nests on his servant’s part.

“The _tala_ is a true one, Zosimus,” he said. “Even now the pastor
of Faleapuni is praying with a loud voice in the room of the sick,
tussling with the devil, while the family shrieks and is distracted.
The hand of God lies heavy upon her, and they say she will die; her
face scorches the touch like a hot lamp, and she talks constantly the
words of devils.”

Zosimus made a gesture of annoyance; at any other time he would have
reproved Filipo for retailing such heathenish fables, and reopened a
discussion that had continued between them for upward of thirty years;
but his solicitude for Wesley Cook monopolized every thought, and he
allowed his servant’s words to pass unchallenged.

“But her sickness?” he demanded. “How first did it come upon her?”

“It was thus,” returned Filipo: “thy grieving heart was known of God,
and when he looked down at that costly feast to which neither the
minister nor his wife would deign to come--”

“Stop!” cried the priest. “This is the talk of an untattooed boy. Have
I not told thee a thousand times that sickness has invariably a cause?”

“The maids say that last week she had a long talk with her husband,”
said Filipo, “and together they quarrelled until she talked loud and
fierce, like a German, and he cried and cried, and threw himself on
the mats. Then she went out of the house, and to her there was neither
umbrella nor coat, though it rained; and she walked, uselessly, all the
way to Faleapuni, so burned her heart with anger; and when she returned
she was trembling with the cold so that her teeth went thus. Then she
went to bed, and vomited terribly, and every time she breathed, it
hurt her chest so that she said, ‘Ugh! ugh!’ like a man sorely wounded
on the field. Then the minister came to her and tried to talk and
bedarling her; but she mocked at him, and said her heart was in the
White Country. After that she began to talk the devil-stuttering which
is not understandable of man.”

Father Zosimus’s jaw fell, and he looked about him like a man on the
brink of some great resolve.

“She was never the same after the day of the feast,” said Filipo.

The priest put on his yellow oilskin, and placing a bottle of brandy in
one pocket, he grasped the bunched umbrella that was his inseparable
companion. Thus prepared to face the elements and carry succour to the
sick, he made his way into the open and ascended the hill towards the
mission-house. His face tingled under the lash of the wind and rain as
he struggled on, dodging the nuts that occasionally shot across his
path like cannon-balls; and when at last he reached his goal in safety,
he was surprised to see the curtains pulled down within, and to find no
one to answer his repeated knocks.

He was emboldened to turn the knob and enter, which he did
hesitatingly, not knowing what reception awaited him. At the end of
the hall a half-open door let out a flood of lamplight, betraying one
room, at least, in which he might expect to find some member of the
household. On the bed beside the wall Mrs. Cook lay in disordered
bedclothes, her glassy eyes upturned in delirium, her face yellow
and pinched almost beyond recognition, one thin arm on the pillow
beneath her head, the other thrown limply across the sheet. Not far
from her, in shabby dressing-gown and slippers, Wesley himself was
asleep in a canvas chair, sunk in the deep oblivion that follows an
all-night watch. On the floor two native girls slumbered in boluses
of matting, their heads side by side on a bamboo pillow. The priest
stole softly to the bed and looked down on Mrs. Cook’s face; but there
was no understanding in the bright, troubled glance that met his own,
no coherence in the whispered words she repeated to herself. He was
angered to think of his own ignorance and helplessness as he stood the
brandy on the littered table beside the copy of “Simple Remedies for
the Home,” and studied the woman with renewed anxiety. In truth, she
looked grievously ill. Sixty miles of wild water and mountainous seas
separated them from Apia and the only doctor in the group; he shivered
as he caught the wail of the wind without, and saw in mind the breakers
that were thundering against their iron coast.

He fell on his knees and prayed, and then went out into the air again,
his mind made up to a desperate measure. He now took another path, one
that led him across the village to Tuisunga’s stately house. It was
nearly filled with chiefs and speaking-men, ranged round in a great
circle, and the high-pitched, measured periods of an orator could
be heard above the wind and the pelting rain. On his approach there
burst out a chorus of “_Maliu mai, susu mai, ali’i Zosimo_”; and he
bent under the eaves and made his way, half crouching, to a place by
Tuisunga’s side. The eyes of all the party turned on him with surprise,
and there was a little burst of expectation, broken only by the
embittered hawking of the interrupted orator.

“Your Majesty Tuisunga, chiefs, and speaking-men of Fangaloa,” began
Zosimus, “be not angry with me for disturbing this meeting. I have just
come from the house of mourning, where God’s hand lies heavy upon your
pastor’s wife, so that she is like to die. It is my thought that we
take a boat and go with all expedition for the German doctor in Apia.”

“Chief Zosimus,” answered Tuisunga, “the gentlemen you see before you
have been discussing this very matter. We are agreed that if the lady
is to live, we must seek help at once from the wise white man in Apia,
though the storm is heavy upon us, and the risk more than bullets in
the fighting line. But what boat can live in such a gale, save one that
is strong indeed, and well wrought? Our man-of-war that pulls forty
oars is with Forster to be mended; my own whaler is too old and rotten
for so bold a _malanga_; the others we possess are small and useless.”

“There is Ngau’s boat,” said the priest, with a flash of his eyes
towards a sullen-looking old chief. “It is new, and strong like a ship
of two masts.”

Ngau’s withered face hardened. A titter ran round the assembled chiefs.

“That is the knot,” said Tuisunga; “it is not the will of Ngau to give
his boat, lest it be cast away.”

“Not to save the life of a dying woman?” demanded Father Zosimus.

“Ngau is accustomed to the white man’s way,” said Tuisunga. “He is
mean, and his heart is like a stone.”

All eyes turned to Ngau, who stared back, defiant and unabashed.

“If he has a white man’s heart, we will treat him to the white man’s
law,” cried Zosimus. “We will take his boat by force.”

“But it is Ngau’s boat,” said Tuisunga.

“It is Ngau’s boat,” echoed the chiefs.

“And thou wilt let the woman die?” cried Father Zosimus.

“It is Ngau’s boat,” said Tuisunga.

“What dost thou want for the boat?” demanded the priest.

“Five dollars and a tin of biscuit,” replied Ngau, promptly; “and if it
be wrecked, one hundred and twelve dollars, a water-bottle, and a coil
of rope as thick as a man’s thumb.”

“I will take it on myself,” said Father Zosimus. “I am poor; I belong
to a faith that thou deridest; yet my heart is not weak and fearful
like thine. I will answer for thy boat, Chief Ngau, before all these
gentlemen as witnesses.”

“_O le tino tupe lava_ [hard money]” inquired Ngau, “to be put in my
hand before the young men touch my boat?”

“I have not so much,” cried the priest. “I have not money in my house
like drinking-nuts. It comes this month, and that a little at a time.
But I tell thee truly, I will pay thee every _seni_.”

The owner of the boat shook his head.

“I want one hundred and twelve dollars,” he said, “a water-bottle, and
a coil of rope as thick as my thumb.”

“Why dost thou call thyself chief of this village, Tuisunga?” demanded
the priest. “The only chief I see here is Ngau. He speaks: we obey. It
matters not what I want, or what thou wishest, or whether the pastor’s
wife lies dying. It is his Majesty Ngau who is King of Fangaloa. Thy
power is no stronger than that of an untattooed boy.”

“But it is Ngau’s boat,” said Tuisunga, looking very black.

“Zosimus,” said Ngau, “they tell me thou hast costly things in thy
church--cups of silver, two silver candlesticks, each heavy as a gun,
and a silver cross on which there is the image of Jesus. Bring these
to me, together with five dollars of hard money and the musical box
that sounds so sweetly of an evening, and I will hold them for the
price of my boat. If it be cast, thou shalt pay me, from time to time,
one hundred and twelve dollars, a water-bottle, and a coil of rope as
thick as a man’s thumb, and when the contract is finished I will give
thee back the precious things. But if no harm befall the boat, I shall
return them at once, and the price of it will be five dollars and a tin
of biscuit.”

“Thou shalt have them,” cried Father Zosimus; “and if thou hadst said,
‘Zosimus, take an axe and strike off thy right hand,’ that also would I
have done. A life is more to me than dollars in a bag, Chief Ngau. Of
thee, Tuisunga, one only is the question I desire to ask: When I bring
back my precious things according to the will of Ngau, how may I be
sure, indeed, that thou wilt not claim another price for the crew?”

The chief hung his head. “We are not all like Ngau,” he returned.

In half an hour the priest was back, with Filipo at his heels, the arms
of both filled with well-wrapped packages. Father Zosimus laid his
burden on the floor, and began to pluck away the _siapo_ that enfolded
it.

“Stop!” cried Tuisunga.

The priest desisted with a look of angry wonder, as though some fresh
imposition were to be laid upon him.

“Zosimus,” said Tuisunga, “since thou left us, these gentlemen and
myself have been looking down into our hearts. They are black and
pig-like, and we feel ashamed before thee. It would be a mock and an
everlasting disgrace to Fangaloa wert thou to sacrifice thy holy things
to the meanness of the pig-face Ngau. We have taken counsel together in
thine absence, and this is our decision: The boat shall be taken from
Ngau, and not one _seni_ shall be paid him, nor shall a water-bottle
be given, nor a coil of rope; and if his boat be cast away, well,
it is God’s will. Furthermore, Ngau’s house shall be burned and his
plantation destroyed for a punishment, and thou shalt have him (if thou
shouldst so high-chief will) to make of him a Catholic; for Ngau has
been expelled from the Protestant religion, and his communion ticket
has been taken from him as one unworthy.”

Father Zosimus said nothing, but his eyes gleamed like coals of fire as
he hurriedly put his treasures in order for their return; in a trice
Filipo was scudding away with them down the hill, to the mirth of all
the chiefs, some of whom shouted after him derisively to make haste.

“When are we to start?” asked the priest. “If it be thy high-chief
will, the sooner the better.”

“But thou canst not go,” said Tuisunga. “Thou art old and unfit.”

“No man is too old to serve God,” returned the priest.

There rose a murmur of dissent from the assembled chiefs. The old man
would be a dead weight in the boat; by carrying a priest they would
infallibly bring down the anger of God upon them all; even the whites
who cared for naught but money dreaded to sail with a _faifeau_.

“This is foolish talk,” said Tuisunga. “Do we not need Zosimus to talk
for us in Apia? Do we not know the ways of whites, and their disdain
and pride? Who will speak to the German doctor? Everywhere we shall be
disregarded and mocked at. We will say that the wife of Tutumanaia is
dying, and behold, they will answer with contumely. ‘There is no such
minister,’ for we know not his name in the foreign stutter.”

“Let us start,” cried Father Zosimus. “We have no time to waste.”

On the rocky beach they found the boat had already been drawn from the
shed and made ready by the young men. Ngau’s house, which stood close
by the landing, was packed with his relatives and family, who looked
out from beneath the eaves with lowering faces. The sea was white as
far as the eye could reach, and was bursting furiously against the
coast and into the half-moon of the bay, while overhead, and against
the obliterated sky-line, the wild clouds drove stormily to leeward.
The young men looked troubled, and old Tuisunga himself was lost in
gloom as he studied the breakers that seemed about to engulf them.
Father Zosimus alone was calm and unconcerned in the busy tumult of
their making ready; for was not God beside him, with the blessed
saints? Bidding Filipo tell the minister of their errand, he took his
seat without a tremor when the young men lined themselves beside the
gunwales, and began to drive the boat slowly into the water.

There was a yell as she floated off. The young men sprang to their
paddles, while Tuisunga seized the steering-oar in his sinewy
hands. They rode dry over the first wave, then dug into the next bow
foremost, and rose half swamped. The third was a huge comber, green as
bottle-glass, steep as a park wall, which shot up before them and raced
shoreward with a smoking crest. There was a convulsive scurry among the
crew; a roar from the crowded beach; as Tuisunga, standing full upright
in the stern, and swaying with every jerk of the paddles, headed the
boat into the boiling avalanche. The whaler rose like a cork, darted
her nose high in air, and for one awful moment seemed to stand on
end. When Father Zosimus opened his eyes, she was speeding seaward on
something like an even keel, sixteen eager paddles driving her past
the point where the breakers sprang. But working out of the bight,
they lost the shelter it gave them, and began to feel, for the first
time, the unrestrained fury of the gale. There was a frightful sea
running; the boat took in water at every turn; and though the wind was
favourable, they could not take advantage of it at once. A rag of sail
was raised at last, and a straight course laid for Apia, while half the
crew rested and the other half baled. But no boat could run before such
a sea as followed them. They had one narrow escape, then another by a
hair’s-breadth; and as they tried to turn, a great black wave suddenly
caught and smothered them beneath mountains of water. The crew rose
laughing and shouting to the surface, but one grey head was missing.
Father Zosimus had received his martyr’s crown.




FRENCHY’S LAST JOB




FRENCHY’S LAST JOB


My health at college having shown signs of giving way, Uncle George
had been kind enough to advance the means for my passage to Brisbane,
Australia, and back, in order to carry out the doctor’s recommendation
for a long sea-voyage. I scarcely think the good man intended me to
go steerage in a cargo-boat, which I did to make my money last; and
I imagine he would have been anything but pleased if he could have
seen me on the eve of starting from Brisbane itself for the South Sea
Islands with twelve tons of assorted merchandise. Indeed, I was not a
little surprised at myself, and at times in the long night watches I
blubbered like a baby at my own venturesomeness. But with me, though my
people at home did not know it, college had been a failure. I sometimes
wondered whether I was unusually dull, or my companions at that
inhospitable northern university were above the normal intelligence;
but whatever the cause, I know only that I was unable to keep the pace
that was set me to follow.

And here I was, with my heart in my mouth, starting on a career of
my own choosing, the lessee of a trading station on an island called
Tapatuea! More I knew not, beyond the fact that I was to receive a
moiety of any profits I might earn, and had bound myself to stay
where I was put for the space of three years. Considering my age and
inexperience, this was a most liberal arrangement, and I have never
ceased wondering since how my employers, Messrs. John Cæsar Bibo & Co.,
were ever dragooned into adding me to their forces. I say “dragooned”
advisedly, for it was due entirely to my good friend Henry Mears, the
shipping broker of Lonsdale Place, that I happened to be engaged, in
spite of the firm’s most strenuous protest. Mears had taken to me from
the day I first wandered into his office by an accident; and from that
time down to the sailing hour of the _Belle Mahone_ there was nothing
he would not do to serve me. I am not sure that he was financially
interested in the firm of John Cæsar Bibo & Co., but he always acted
as though his was the controlling voice in its affairs, and he was the
only man I ever knew who dared stand up to Old Bee, as we called him.
This last-named, the directing spirit of a business that spread its net
over half the islands of the Pacific, was a grim, taciturn individual
of an indeterminable age,--it was variously reckoned from seventy to a
hundred and ten,--who made periodical descents into Mears’s office, and
sat closeted there for hours. His presence always inspired constraint,
and the sight of his ancient, sallow cheek was enough to thin the ranks
of the broker’s clients--shipmasters and supercargoes for the most
part, not all of them sober, and none, apparently, able to look Old Bee
in the eye.

I shall never forget my introduction to the great man.

“This is a nice boy, Mr. Bibo, sir,” said Mears, indicating me with a
cast of his eye.

“Oh!” said Old Bee.

“I want him to have that Tapatuea store,” said Mears.

“You mean the easterly one, where Bob killed the Chinaman?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I’ll see him in hell first,” said Old Bee.

I thought this ended the matter for good, and said as much to Mears
when John Cæsar had departed. But my friend was far from being cast
down.

“Oh, that’s all right,” he said. “I count it as good as settled.”

This was more than I could say, and I had no cause to change my mind on
my next meeting with Old Bee.

“I’m putting twelve tons of stuff aboard for the Tapatuea store,” said
Mears, “and I’ve told Young Hopeful, here, that you’ll keep a berth for
him.”

“The devil!” said Old Bee, and went straight on with the business he
had in hand.

The next day the broker signed my contract by virtue of some power of
attorney he possessed for Bibo & Co.

“If he backs out now, you can sue him for damages,” he said cheerfully.

I was in a tremble when I next met my employer. It was near our sailing
time, and he was in a violent hurry. He threw down a paper on the desk
and told Mears it was the list of things he had put by for the last.

“Send some one along for them,” he said, “some one that knows how to
keep his mouth shut. I’ve clean forgot all that business of the King of
Pingalap’s: the breech-loading cannon I promised him from Hudson’s, and
those damned guinea-fowls, and that cylinder for his musical box!”

“Here’s one of your own men,” said Mears. “You know young Bence?”

“Good God, that child!” cried the old man. “Didn’t I tell you I
wouldn’t have him?”

“Pity you hadn’t spoken before,” said the broker, with surprise. “I
only signed his contract yesterday.”

Old Bee regarded me sourly.

“I don’t understand the joke,” he said.

“Oh, come, come. He’s twenty-two if he’s a day,” said Mears, adding
four years to my age; “and as to being young, I dare say he’ll get over
it.”

“What’s he done, that you’re so keen to get him off?” said Old Bee,
still eyeing me with strong disfavour. “However, as you have made it
your business to push him down my throat, I suppose I’ve got to bolt
him.”

“He’d sue you like a shot if you didn’t,” said Mears. “With that
contract in his pocket he’s regularly got you in his power.”

This view of the situation made even Old Bee smile, and caused Mears
to laugh outright. For me it was scarcely so entertaining; never in my
life had I felt so small or insignificant, though I plucked up courage
when the great man handed me his list and bade the broker count me out
sixty sovereigns. This showed that in some small measure I must have
won his good opinion, a conviction that was still further strengthened
by his departure, when, in the excitement and flurry of the moment, he
even shook me by the hand.

A few days after this conversation I found myself at sea, a regularly
enrolled trader of the firm’s, and one of the after-guard of the
bark _Belle Mahone_, Captain Mins. We were bound, according to the
timehonoured formula, “for the island of Guam or any other port the
master may so direct.” I presume there are ships that actually do
go to Guam,--if, indeed, there be such a place at all,--but it has
never been my fate to come across one. Our Guam was like the rest,
a polite fiction to cover up our track and leave a veil of mystery
over our voyage. Besides John Cæsar Bibo, with whom I have already
made you acquainted, there were three others in our little company
astern. Captain Mins was a short, bullnecked man of fifty, with abrupt
manners and a singularly deliberate way of speech, due perhaps to some
impediment of the tongue. This lent to his utterance a gravity almost
judicial, and gave an added force to the contradiction which was his
only conversational counter. Jean Bonnichon, or “Frenchy,” as we called
him, was one of the firm’s traders returning to the Islands after a
brief holiday. He, like Mins, was short and thick-set, but with this
ended all resemblance between them. Bonnichon’s story was that he had
come of a wealthy family in Normandy; and it was indubitable (from the
papers he had in his possession) that he had served as an officer of
horse-artillery in the French army. What he had done to leave it no
one precisely knew, nor was our curiosity satisfied by the conflicting
explanations he himself was at pains to give. As a soldier of fortune
in the Old World, with the Turks, the Bulgarians, and finally with the
Arabs of Sus, he had sunk lower and lower, until he had come at last to
Australia, there to sink lower still.

Six years of colonial life, followed by seven on the island of Apaiang,
had transformed Frenchy into one of those strange creatures without a
country. Under the heel of adversity the Frenchman had been completely
stamped out of him; only some fragments of the army officer remained;
the bulging chest, the loud, peremptory voice, the instant obedience
to any one he counted his superior. He annoyed Old Bee excessively by
leaping to his feet whenever our employer addressed him, a military
habit so ingrained that he was quite unable to break himself of it.
Intended for deference, its effect on John Cæsar (the most fidgety
and preoccupied of patriarchs) was to drive him into one of his
sudden tempers, when woe betide the man who dared to first address
him. Adam Babcock, a humble, silent creature, completed the number
of our mess. He was the mate of the ship, and took his meals alone
after we had quitted the table, a forlorn arrangement that is usual
in small vessels. He was so completely null in our life that I have
some difficulty in recollecting him at all. He had seen misfortunes, I
remember, and had certainly come down very much in the world, for he
was the only person aft who treated me with the least consideration.
On one occasion he even called me “sir,” and gave me a present of some
shells.

With Frenchy I was soon on terms of shipboard acquaintance, but for the
others I might have been invisible, for all they ever noticed me. Old
Bee, for the matter of that, seldom spoke to any one, and the sight of
his bilious cheek would have daunted, I believe, the most incorrigible
bore in London. We saw little of him save at meal-times, for he was
perpetually busy in his cabin, adding up figures, or stamping on his
copying-book like a dancing dervish. I am at a loss to say what his
labours were all about; they were, and always have been, to me the
cause of unceasing amazement. I was not sorry, however, that Old Bee
kept so much to himself, for I feared him like the plague, and never
felt comfortable within the range of his bloodshot eyes. It fell to
Frenchy and the captain to keep the ball of conversation rolling, which
they did by disputing with each other on every topic that came up. Were
the captain, with some warmth, to make a statement, it was just as
certain to be met by Frenchy’s great horse-laugh and shrill, jeering
contradiction. They could agree on nothing, whether it was the origin
of the Russo-Turkish war or the way the natives cook devil-fish. No
provocation was too unimportant to set them at each other’s throats, no
slight too trivial to be ignored.

Once, to my extreme embarrassment, they differed on the subject of
myself; the Frenchman saying that I was the type of young ne’er-do-well
under which the colony of Queensland was sinking; while the captain
just as vehemently persisted (for the time being only) that it was such
as I who had made the British Empire! The complimentary view of Captain
Mins’s made very little practical difference in his treatment of me,
which from the beginning had been marked by coldness and dislike. In
fact, I could not help perceiving, for all their wrangling and apparent
disagreement, that the pair were fast friends. It was I, not Frenchy,
who was the outsider on that ship. Indeed, I count some of those lonely
days on the _Belle Mahone_ as the very bitterest part of my life, and I
wished myself at home a thousand times.

My only friend on board was Lum, the Chinese cook, whose circumstances
were so akin to mine that we were drawn together by a common instinct.
He, too, was condemned to solitude, having little in common with
our crew of Rotumah Islanders, who shunned him like a leper; while
I, as the reader knows, held a scarcely better position among the
after-guard. When his work was done, Lum and I used to smoke cigarettes
together under the lee of a boat, or, if it rained, within the stuffy
confines of his cabin next the galley. He was a mine of worldly wisdom,
for there was nothing he had not done or had not tried to do, from
piracy to acting on the stage; and he would unfold the tale of his
experiences with such drollery and artlessness that his society was to
me an endless entertainment. Poor Lum! there was little of the seamy
side of life he had not seen, scarcely a treachery he had not endured,
in the years he had followed the sea.

Our first port was to be Lascom Island, an immense atoll which had
remained uninhabited until Bibo & Co. took possession of it in the
eighties. Their intention had been to extend its few cocoanut-palms
into one vast grove, and for this purpose they maintained a force
of half a dozen indentured labourers from Guadalcanar, who were
superintended by a white man named Stocker. It was for the purpose of
carrying this Stocker supplies and inspecting his year’s work that we
were here to make our first call.

We reached the island late at night, and lay off and on till dawn. The
daylight showed me a narrow, bush-grown strip of unending sand, which
stretched in a great curve until lost to view beneath the horizon. As
far as the eye could reach, the breakers were thundering against the
huge horseshoe with a fury that made one sick to hear them. Of all
forsaken and desolate places it has ever been my lot to see, I search
my memory in vain for the match of Lascom Island. Once, however, that
we had opened its channel and made our hesitating way into the lagoon
beyond, I found more to please me. Skimming over the lake-like surface,
with every stitch drawing, and the captain in the crosstrees conning
the ship through the gleaming dangers that beset us on every hand, it
was indeed an experience not to be recalled without a thrill. We had
need of a lynx eye aloft, for the lagoon was thick with coral rocks,
and the channel, besides, was so tortuous and so cramped that one false
turn of a spoke would have torn our bottom out.

I let myself down beside the dolphin-striker, and sat there above our
hissing bows, enjoying as I did so an extraordinary sense of danger
and exhilaration. At times it seemed to me as though we were sailing
through air, so transparent was the medium through which we moved,
so clear the tangled coral garden that lay below. From my perch I
contemplated the gradual unfolding of the little settlement towards
which we were tending: first of all a faint blur, which gradually
became transformed into a grove of cocoanuts; bits of white and brown
which resolved themselves into houses and sheds; a dark patch on the
lagoon shore that I made out to be a sort of pier; then, last of
all, the finished picture, in which there was nothing hid, or left
to the imagination to decipher. There was something most depressing
in the sight of this tiny village, with its faded whitewash, its
general appearance of lifelessness and decay, and above its roofs the
palm-tops bending like grass in the gusty breeze. Nothing stirred in
the profound shade; not a sound came forth to greet us; and, except for
a faint haze of smoke above one of the trees, we might have thought the
place abandoned. I remembered that Stocker was in likelihood planting
cocoanuts with his men, perhaps miles away on the wild sea-beach; in
my mind’s eye I could see him pursuing his monotonous vocation, a
miserable Crusoe toiling for a wage. My thoughts were still running in
some such channel when I was suddenly startled by the apparition of a
man who came running out of the shadow with a bundle in his arms. It
was a flag, which he fixed to the halyards of the staff and slowly ran
up. When it was half-mast high he twitched it loose, displaying the
British ensign upside down. Then, as I was still gazing at him, he made
fast the ropes and hurried down to the pier.

Realising that something must be wrong on shore, I climbed back to the
deck and hastened to where Old Bee and Frenchy were standing aft. I
think the former must have seen the question on my lips, for he gave
me such a swift, angry look that I dared not open my mouth, but slunk
behind Frenchy in silence. He, the trader, must have just endured some
such rebuff himself, for he was in a frightful ill humour, and swore at
me when I tried to whisper in his ear. To learn anything from Babcock
was impossible, for he was jumping about the topgallant forecastle,
clearing the anchors and getting in the head-sails. When the vessel had
been brought to a standstill near a rusty buoy, a boat was cleared and
lowered, and we all got into it with alacrity: Old Bee, Mins, Frenchy,
and I, and a couple of hands to pull.

We were met at the pier by some natives in singlets and dungaree
trousers, who gazed at us as solemnly as we gazed back at them. One
grizzled old fellow was spokesman for the rest,--Joe, they called
him,--and he told us, with a great deal of writhing (as though he
had pain in his inside), that Stocker was dead. He had died ten days
before, “of some kind of sickness,” as Joe called it; and lest we had
any doubt about it, we were pressed to walk up to Stocker’s house and
see for ourselves. For, fearing that they might subsequently be accused
of making away with him, they had left Stocker’s body untouched in the
bed where he had died. The fact was palpable enough before we had gone
a hundred yards in the direction of a little house, which from the
distance looked very quaint and pretty. But I forbore to follow the
others any further in the investigation they were obviously inclined to
make, and I struck off from them to examine the settlement alone.

I have good reasons for thinking that it had been planned originally
for other purposes than that of merely sheltering a gang of indentured
labourers. It was to have been the entrepôt or hub of a huge South Sea
system, and from its central warehouses a whole empire of surrounding
groups was to have been supplied. Indeed, the whole project had so far
taken shape that large sheds had even been erected for the commerce
that was destined never to come, and commodious houses raised for the
managers and clerks whose contracts were still unwritten. I wandered
at will through those crumbling rooms, some of which had never been
occupied, though they were now in decay; and along the grassy street
on which they had been made to face. I found a battery of four small
cannon covering the approach from the pier; a dozen ship’s tanks
filled with rain-water (the only kind obtainable on the island); and
in a shuttered room I stumbled over a hundred Snyder rifles shining
in the dark. But what riveted my attention most was the interior
of a long, low warehouse full of wreckage. Here, in mouldering,
unsorted confusion, had been thrown all that a dozen years had seen
salvaged from the sea: binnacles, hatches, yards and canvas, old
steering-wheels, blocks, and strange tangles of gear and junk that
seemed scarcely worth the saving. Here were life-belts in the last
stages of rottenness; odds and ends of perished cargoes; barrels of
tallow; twisted drums of what had once been paint or varnish; some
cuddy-chairs of the folding kind; and a quantity of boards, barnacled
and water-worn. I must have spent the better part of an hour turning
over all this stuff, and in reconstructing in my mind the bygone ships
from which they had been taken; musing on the fate of those who had
once sailed them so unwisely that Lascom Island had been their final
port and its bursting seas their grave.

When at last I emerged again into the open air, I perceived with relief
that our boat still lay beside the steps of the pier, for I had no
desire to be left alone on Lascom Island even for a single hour. I
counted for so little on board the ship that I had a panic fear that
they might go to sea again without me, and I accordingly returned to
the seamen who were smoking under the lee of a palm. We waited there a
long time before we were aroused by the sound of voices and the sight
of Old Bee and Frenchy walking slowly towards us. The old rogue looked
pale and agitated; he had his arm through Frenchy’s, and was speaking
to him with intense seriousness and a volubility quite unusual. He
seemed pleading with the trader, urging him apparently to something
distasteful, something that was perpetually negatived by Frenchy’s
bullet-head and his reiterated “No, sare; no, sare; it is eempossible.”

“I’ll make it seventy-five a month,” quavered Bibo, “and all found.”

Again the Frenchman shook his head.

“Ask anysing else, sare,” he said; “but this, oh, no. But why not the
boy?” he added.

“That young ass!” cried Old Bee.

“I won’t stay here alone, if that’s what you mean,” said Frenchy. “But
if you’ll run down to Treachery Island and let me get a girl there,
I tell you, sare, I will do it for the seventy-five. But alone? Good
Lord! I’d follow Stocker in ze mont’.”

Bibo groaned aloud. “It’ll take a day and a half to run down there, and
all of three to beat back,” he said; “and you might be a week getting a
girl.”

Frenchy shrugged his shoulders. “Old Tom Ryegate’s there,” he said.
“He’ll do ze thing quick enough if I make it worth his while. They say,
too, that he’s in with the Samoan pastor there, Jimmy Upolu. Brice of
the _Wandering Minstrel_ told me he was at Treachery three years ago,
and picked up ze prettiest woman in the island for sixteen pounds. Told
me he gave four pounds to Tom, four to ze pastor, and the rest to ze
woman’s folks in trade. He was in such a damned rush he couldn’t wait
to cheapen things--just paid his money and went. But she was a tearing
fine piece, he said.”

Old Bee hardly seemed to listen to him. “I suppose _you_ don’t care,”
he said bitterly, “but this business is going to put me two weeks
behind and maybe lose me the shell at Big Muggin. Of all cursed luck,
who ever had the match of it? First to last, this island has been
a millstone round my neck, one everlasting drain and bother. What
with the rats, and Charley Sansome’s D. T.’s, and the lawsuit with
Poppenheifer, and this business of Stocker’s, I tell you, Frenchy,
I’m clean sick of it. It’s just money, money, money all the time, and
I don’t believe I’ve ever made enough out of it to buy me a suit of
clothes!”

He stopped speaking when he caught sight of me, and stepped down into
the boat without another word. Frenchy, too, said nothing as we pulled
back to the ship, but chewed at his mustache in a moody, impatient
way. But once on board, the captain was called below, and an animated
discussion ensued in the main cabin. Through the open skylight I could
not forbear overhearing a little of what was said, and I gathered that
Mins was joining with his employer in trying to persuade Frenchy to
remain on the island in Stocker’s place. At least, I caught Frenchy’s
explosive remonstrances, and half-jeering, half-angry efforts to
extricate himself from their snares. Apparently he succeeded only too
well, for Old Bee, somewhat half-heartedly, at last proposed Babcock’s
name. At this the captain himself was up in arms. Wasn’t he doing with
one white mate when he ought by rights to have two? Nothing would
induce him, he said, to surrender Babcock; nor would he, in such a
case, answer for the safety of the ship, nor for the insurance were she
lost. Then he turned the tables completely by proposing that Old Bee
himself should stop on the island! This was received by Frenchy with
a roar of laughter and a blow of his fist that shook the cabin. Old
Bee did not take it with the same good humour, but broke out furiously
that he might as well throw up the cruise at once. Mine, of course,
was the next name to come up, and Frenchy was sent to bring me before
the meeting. I am ashamed to think what a fool they must have thought
me, for instead of offering me the seventy-five dollars a month--not
that I would have taken the job for a million--Old Bee held out the
inducement of ten a week. From the manner in which he spoke to me, and
the bullying tone of his voice, it was not easy to gather whether I was
asked or ordered to go ashore in Stocker’s shoes; and it is my belief
that if I had knuckled down in the slightest he would have dropped the
first formula altogether. But I had overheard too much to be taken at
a disadvantage. Besides, I shrank from the proposal with every fibre
in my body, and was determined not to be put ashore except by force.
My repulsion was so unconcealed; and it was so plain that I could be
neither threatened nor cajoled; that more than once Frenchy burst out
with his great laugh, and even Mins smiled sourly at my vehemence. Old
Bee did not long persist in the attempt to override my resolution; he
had always taken an unflattering view of my capabilities, and even as
a planter of cocoanuts I had perhaps excited his distrust. Besides, I
would not do it. There was no getting over that!

I was thankful at last to be dismissed, even at the price of a stinging
word or two. What were words in comparison with a year on Lascom
Island! I went and locked myself in my cabin, and blocked the door of
it with my trunk, so fearful was I that I might in some way be tricked
or dragged ashore. I dared not emerge until long after the anchor had
been weighed and the sails set, and even then I came out of my room
with the utmost caution. When I reached the deck, the settlement was
already far astern and the ship heading through the western passage for
the sea. Lum told me that we were running down to Treachery Island, and
gave me some hot bread and tea in the galley in place of the lunch I
had lost.

I had read of South Sea paradises, but at Treachery Island I was soon
to see one for myself. After the desolate immensity of Lascom, it was
delightful to reach this tiny isle, with its lagoon no bigger than the
Serpentine and its general appearance of fertility and life. As we
ran close along its wooded shores, and saw the beehive houses in the
shade, and the people running out to wave a greeting to our passing
ship; as we saw the drawn-up boats, the little coral churches, and the
shimmering lagoon beyond, on which there was many a white sail dancing,
I thought I had never in all my life imagined any place more beautiful.
Nor did I think to change my mind when we hove to off a glorious
beach, and dropped the ladder for a score of smiling islanders to swarm
aboard. I loved the sight of their kindly faces after the sullen looks
that had so long been my portion; and my heart warmed towards them as
it might to some old and half-forgotten friends.

When a boat was lowered, I kept close at the heels of Old Bee, Frenchy,
and the captain as they descended and took their places; and I followed
their example with so much assurance that it never occurred to any one
to say me nay. The captain swore at me for jumping on his foot, but
that was all the attention I received. Frenchy was the hero of the
hour, and his gay sash and tie and spotless ducks were the occasion
of many pleasantries at his expense. Even Old Bee condescended to
tease our beau on the subject of the future Mrs. Frenchy; and at the
home thrusts and innuendoes (not all of which I could understand) the
captain’s red face deepened into purple as he shook with laughter and
slapped his friend upon the back. Frenchy pretended not to like it,
and gave tit for tat in good earnest; but it was evident that he was
prodigiously pleased with himself and the others. With his chest thrown
out, his black brush of a mustache waxed to a point, and his military,
dandified air, Frenchy seemed more low, more indefinably offensive,
wicked, and dangerous than he had ever appeared to me before.

Every one was in a high good humour when we reached the beach, where
special precautions had to be taken in order to spare Frenchy’s finery
the least contamination; and we were soon walking up together through
a crowd of islanders to the trader’s house. Tom Ryegate was there to
meet us, a benignant-looking old man with a plenitude of grey hair,
a watery blue eye, and a tell-tale tremor of his hands. A closer
inspection revealed the fact that Tom Ryegate was soaked and pickled in
gin, a circumstance which perhaps accounted for the depressing views
he took of life and for his somewhat snarling mode of address. When
the news had been passed, and Stocker’s demise talked over, with some
very unedifying reminiscences of the deceased’s peculiarities, the
conversation was brought gently round to the business in hand.

But on the subject of girls Tom Ryegate was a broken reed. We might
be able to pick up a likely young woman, or we might not. “It all
depended,” he said, without adding on what. The fack was that things
wasn’t as they used to be on Treachery; the niggars had lost all
respeck for whites; it was money they cared for now, nothing but money.
It made old Tom Ryegate sick to think of it; it was all this missionary
coddling and putting ideas into their heads. Why, he remembered the
day when you could buy a ton of shell for a trade gun; when a white
man knew no law but what seemed good to him. But it was all changed
now; them days was passed for ever; the niggars had no more respeck for
whites: it was all money, all money.

This dreary and unsatisfactory monologue was the preface to a recital
of all his recent troubles. Mrs. Captain Saxe had been kind enough to
bring him back his daughter Elsie. Captain Mins would remember his
little Elsie? No? Well, it didn’t much matter; howsomever, as he was
saying, she had been educated in the convent at Port Darwin--for an
island girl there was no better place than a convent (here’s luck,
gentlemen). She was sixteen, and that pretty and nice-behaved that he
almost cried when he saw her! And white? Why, you couldn’t have told
she was a quarter-carste, she was that white. At first they had got
along together very nicely, for she was no slouch of a girl, and could
cook and sew, and play her little piece on the zither in the evening,
and sing! Sing? Why, you just orter hear that girl sing! And to see her
kneel down at night and pray in her little shimmy, it made him feel
what a bad old feller he was--by God, it did--and so far to leeward of
everything decent and right. Well, well, it went along so far nigh six
months (drink hearty, gentlemen; Mr. Bibo, sir, here’s my respecks),
and he had no more thought of what was a-coming than a babe unborn.

There was a half-carste here named Ned Forrest, who did a little
boat-building and traded a bit besides. Not a bad chap for a
half-carste, only he fancied himself overmuch, and thought because
he could read and drink square-face that he was as good as any white
man. It made him sick, the airs that feller put on at times. Imagine
his feelings, then, when this Forrest up and asked him one day for
permission to marry Elsie, and said a lot of rot about their being in
love with each other! Just animalism, that’s what he called it. His
Elsie, who had been bred up a lady in Port Darwin! Hadn’t he said that
the niggars were losing all respeck for whites? He booted the swine
off his verandah, that’s what he did, and he gave Elsie such a talking
to that she cried for three days afterwards. He thought she had had a
passing fancy for the swine, but he bade her remember her self-respeck
and just let out a few things about the feller to put her on her guard
like. But though she promised to give him up, she took it kind of hard.
He used often to find her crying and moping about the house, and, like
a fool, had thought little of it. He did think enough of it, however,
to go to Jimmy Upolu--that’s the Summoan native pastor here--to forbid
him to marry the pair if they had in mind any hanky-panky tricks.

By God, it was well he did so, for what was his surprise to find
that Forrest had been trying to get round the pastor for that very
purpose--mending his boat, stepping a new mast in it, and lending
a hand generally with the church repairs. The pastor was a crafty
customer and had a considerable eye for the main chance, but he was a
sight too far in Tom’s debt to go against him. Tom had only to raise
his hand and Jimmy was as good as bounced off the island, for Jimmy’s
no pay, and a complaint at headquarters would settle his hash. So he
didn’t mince matters with Jimmy, but told him flat out that there must
be no marrying Elsie on the sly.

That done, he gave the girl another dressing down. Pity he hadn’t
thrashed her, like he had often done her ma, but it wasn’t in flesh
and blood to lash your own daughter. So he let it go at that, and
arranged with Peter, the king, to run up some kind of a charge against
Ned Forrest, so that the next man-of-war might deport him. Luckily
Ned was a British subject, and it would have been strange if the navy
captain wouldn’t have taken the word of a responsible white merchant,
not to speak of the king’s and the missionary’s, against a dirty swine
of a half-carste. Howsomever, no man-of-war came,--they never do when
they’re wanted,--and things went on from bad to worse.

One morning he awoke to find that Elsie had skipped out. Yes, by God,
gone with the half-carste! At first he couldn’t believe it; but when he
went off in a tearing rage to see the pastor, he found a crowd gathered
round the church door, all chattering at once, like niggars do. They
made way for him, and what do you think he saw on that door, so help
him? A regular proclamation in English and native, saying as how Elsie
Ryegate and Edward George Forrest had taken each other for husband and
wife, for better or worse, for sickness or sorrow, until death should
them part, and a lot of stuff besides about the pastor and the king
both refusing to perform the marriage ceremony. It was well written,
that he would allow, though it made him wild to read it. He tore it
down and put it into his pocket for evidence, and went on to see Jimmy
Upolu. Jimmy was in fits too, for if people got to marrying one another
in that church doorway, what would become of Jimmy’s fees?

But though Jimmy could talk, he wasn’t much of a hand to do things.
What missionary niggar is? He wouldn’t hear of no trial, let alone a
little idea with a stick of dynamite. He could think of nothing better
than excommunication and talking _at_ him from the pulpit--a fat lot
he’d care for either, would Forrest! It seemed nothing could be done,
for without the pastor and the king where would be the use? A man had
to be keerful these days: the natives were losing all respeck for
whites, and them men-of-war fellers were as likely to take a niggar’s
word as his own. Wasn’t it sickening! Well, so it all ended in smoke,
and Elsie and Ned set up housekeeping together. He had never clapped
eyes on her but once, when she threw herself on her knees before him,
right there in the dirt, and said she’d die if he wouldn’t forgive her,
and please, wouldn’t he let the pastor marry her and Ned? It was a
tight place for a father--a father as doted on that girl. But a filthy
half-carste! Who could stomach such a swine for his daughter? He told
her he’d rather see her stretched dead at his feet; that’s what he
said, just like that, and walked on. It was hard, but a man must do
his dooty. That was the last he had seen of her--the last he wished to
see of her till she’d quit that feller. If she’d do that, his poor,
dishonoured girl, she’d never find her father’s door closed against
her; no, by God, it stood open for her night and day.

I had become pretty tired of the old man and his daughter long before
he had reached the conclusion of his tale; but the others listened
readily enough, and seemed genuinely to commiserate him. Captain
Mins remarked in his slow, deliberate tones, that wherever you went,
half-castes were the same--all swine. And Old Bee said that he’d see
that the matter was properly represented to the next man-of-war that
came down that way. Frenchy went further and asked a whole raft of
questions; about the girl; about Forrest; about the island generally.
What sort of man might the king be? Oh, Peter was all right, was
he? Was this Forrest a stranger, or had he been born on the island?
A stranger. Well, he couldn’t have much of a poosh then--not many
_kowtubs_ to back him up in case of a row? And the missionary niggar
was square, was he? Old Tom hadn’t any picture of that there girl, had
he? So this didn’t do her justice, eh? Why, she was a perfect leetle
beauty. Frenchy held the photograph a long time in his hand, studying
it with close attention as he puffed at his cigarette. Finally tossing
it to one side, he looked earnestly at the floor, and drummed in an
undecided way with one foot. Then he stretched out his arms and gave a
great yawn.

“Let’s me and you go for a promenade, sonny,” he said, addressing me.
“We don’t want to sit here all ze day, do we?”

Once in the open air, however, his desire to walk seemed to vanish, for
he began to ask for Ned Forrest’s store, and offered a stick of tobacco
to any one that could guide us there. Pretty well the whole village did
that, and we were conducted in state to a wooden house near the lagoon,
about a mile distant from the spot where we had first landed. Frenchy
stood on no ceremony on going in, and I followed close behind him, much
less at my ease than my companion. It was dark within the house, and
the hum of a sewing-machine covered our approach; it was a minute or
two before we were discovered by the young girl we dimly saw at work,
who sprang up at last, with a little cry, and came towards us.

Frenchy became suavity itself: begged Mrs. Forrest’s pardon for our
intrusion, but it was eempossible to reseest the pleasure of calling
upon a white lady. Might he have ze honour of acquainting her with hees
friend, Mr. Bence?

The young lady, though somewhat fluttered by our unexpected visit,
betrayed no more than natural embarrassment. She begged us to be
seated, inquired the name of our vessel, and acquitted herself with
an ease and self-possession that few young white women could have
rivalled. It was we, indeed, Frenchy and I, who completely lost our
heads; for Tom Ryegate’s daughter was of such a captivating prettiness,
and her manners were at once so gentle, arch, and engaging, that we
could hardly forbear staring her out of countenance, or restrain our
admiration within the bounds of ordinary politeness. She was no darker
than a Spaniard, with sparkling eyes, and the most glorious black hair
in the world. Her girlish figure was not too well concealed by the
flimsy cotton dress in which we had surprised her, and it failed to
hide altogether her rich young beauty. From the top of her curly head
to the little naked feet she kept so anxiously beneath her gown, there
was not one feature to mar the rest, not a curve nor a dimple that one
would have wished to change. I cannot recall much of what we talked
about, though the picture of her there in that dark room is as vivid a
memory as any I have. We drank fresh cocoanuts, I remember; listened
to a cheap music-box; and looked at the photographs in an album. With
the practical gallantry of the Islands, Frenchy begged her to ask for
any favour that we had it in our power to grant. The whole ship, he
said, was at her deesposal. Was she sure that she needed nozing? Some
ear-rings? A bolt of silk? A really nice beet of lace he had intended
for the queen of Big Muggin?

But she would accept nothing. You see, her husband did not like her to
take presents from white gentlemen. The supercargo of the _Lancashire
Lass_ had given her two pairs of shoes, and some goldfish in a bottle,
but Ned was much displeased. Ned said that people would talk and take
away her character; besides, it wasn’t for poor folks to have shoes and
goldfish. Ned was a very proud man and did not pretend to be what he
was not. She was still speaking when Ned himself unexpectedly appeared
at another door. Amid laughing explanations, we were made acquainted
with the head of the house, a big, shy half-caste, who welcomed us with
a tremendous hand-shake apiece. He was a powerful young man, and his
muscular throat and arms were still grimy with the blacksmithing at
which he had been engaged. I liked his unshrinking, honest look, and as
he turned his eyes on his beautiful wife there was in them something
of the tenderness and devotion of a dog’s. Elsie ordered the great
fellow about with a pretty imperiousness that only lovers use, and with
a peculiar softness of intonation that did not escape me. It made me
a little envious and heartsick to see this happiness in which I could
have no share, and I was almost glad at last when Frenchy rose to go.
Lifting her little hand to his lips, he begged her to please count him
her friend and serviteur to command, and regretted that the preessure
of affairs would preclude him from calling again before the ship
sailed. He had been so assiduous in his attentions to the young beauty
that I was at a loss to understand this sudden renunciation; but I put
it down to his common sense, which must have told him that in this
quarter his gallantry could only be wasted. Any one could see that our
pretty quarter-caste was head over heels in love with her own husband;
and however much she might laugh and talk with strangers, and enjoy
the impression her starry eyes indubitably produced, her heart, at
least, was in no uncertain keeping. It was just as much Ned Forrest’s
as the clothes upon her back or the house in which she lived. How I
envied him his prize as Frenchy and I walked back silently towards old
Tom’s, and saw the bark’s sails shining through the trees. I tried
to say something about the charming girl we had left, but Frenchy
hardly seemed to listen. For a long time he continued in a deep study,
puffing hard at his cigarette, and looking, as it appeared to me, more
than usually reckless and devil-may-care. We found the others exactly
where we had left them,--though not perhaps so sober,--and they haled
Frenchy in and bade him report himself, the square-face meanwhile
making another round.

“What news of thy quest, O illustrious horse-soldier?” demanded the
captain, in his usual thick, loud voice--a little louder and a little
thicker for the gin. “Hast thou found a damsel to thy taste on this thy
servant’s isle?”

“_Hein?_” said Frenchy, with a queer glance at me.

“You must do something,” said Old Bee, “and do that something soon,
Frenchy my Bo, for I can’t stay here for ever at seven pound a day!”

“Here’s luck!” said the gentleman thus addressed, raising his eyebrows
significantly over his glass. There must have been further interchange
of signals, for Bibo turned to me and in a very kind and flattering
way requested me to go back to the ship. The fact was, he said, that
it was not right to leave her altogether to Babcock, and it would
go far to lessen his own anxiety if there were another white man on
board. I ought to know pretty well by this time what Kanakas were
like, he continued, and how little the crew would care if they laid
the bark ashore or drowned her in a squall. He put it to me, he
said, as a personal favour to himself. To such a request I could, of
course, make but one answer, though it went sorely against the grain
for me to return again on board; the more especially when I found the
reliable Babcock snoring on a hatch. I had only to look from him to the
boatswain’s leathery, watchful face to realise how completely I had
been tricked. The ship was as safe under Johnny’s care as she would
have been in Brisbane harbour, and I could see that he was handling her
with the most admirable skill. My only complaint was that he acquitted
himself far too well, for in the humour that then possessed me I would
gladly have seen him pile her on the reef.

It was hot on board, and the day seemed endless, so slowly did the
hours drag on. Three or four times the boat came off from shore and
returned again. At one time it brought out old Tom Ryegate, together
with our whole party, who at once went below. Afterwards they sent the
steward up for Johnny and two or three of the hands to come down. I
felt too sulky and ill used to pay much attention to all this coming
and going, though in the bottom of my heart I could not resist a
certain pang of curiosity. I doubted not that my companions were up to
some mischief, the nature of which I was at a loss to understand; but
the way they put their heads together was enough to inspire me with
alarm; and I did not like at all this calling in of the crew. I tried
to sound Johnny after they had pulled back to the settlement, but he
turned a deaf ear to me and pretended not to understand my questions.
I tried Lum with like ill success, finding him also (though from a
different reason) cross and uncommunicative.

“White man all same devil,” he said, and went on kneading his dough.

Supper-time came, and Babcock and I had the table to ourselves; he
was very garrulous and tiresome, and I suspect he had been nipping
on the sly, for he giggled a lot, and sometimes talked foolishly to
himself. Altogether I was sick of the ship and of Babcock and of my own
company; and when I came on deck after supper, and saw the shore lights
twinkling through the palms, and the torches of the fishers on the
roof, I felt I could no longer control my impatience.

Slipping down the gangway, I signalled to one of the canoes that
hung about the ship, and a few minutes later I was landed for the
second time near old Tom Ryegate’s store. Needless to say, I gave it
a wide berth, for the last thing I wished was to run across any of my
shipmates. I was spied out by some little children playing tag in the
dark, who took me by the hands and led me about the settlement. I was
conducted into half a dozen houses, and given green nuts to drink, with
here and there a present of a hat or a mat or some pearl-shells. I do
not know how long I had been wandering about in this fashion--but it
must have been nearer two hours than one--when I was suddenly startled
by a roar of voices and a sound of scurrying feet. In an instant we
were all rushing in the direction of the noise, falling and stumbling
over one another in our excitement. At the church I found a crowd
assembled, buzzing like bees, and crushing frantically against the
unglazed windows for a sight of what was taking place within. I jostled
my way round to the door, where I was surprised to find our brawny
boatswain Johnny, together with several of our men, keeping the other
natives at bay. They would have kept me out, too, if they had dared,
but I pushed boldly past them and entered the building.

It was all but empty. At the farther end, by the light of a tawdry
hanging lamp, I perceived that some sort of service or ceremony was
in progress, and I was thunderstruck to recognise in the little
congregation there assembled every member of the shore party. Old Bee
and the captain were standing on one side, the latter smoking a cigar
and spitting from time to time on the coral floor; next them, his
benignant hair all awry, was Tom Ryegate, leaning unsteadily against
the wall, and wiping his eyes on a trade handkerchief. A burly Kanaka
whom I had no difficulty in recognising as Jimmy Upolu, the native
pastor, was reciting something out of a book over the heads of Frenchy
and a woman, who both knelt before him. Frenchy’s costume had suffered
not a little since the morning; it was dirty and stained, and the
collar of his coat was torn half-way down his back, as though some one
had seized him there with a smutty hand. In an instant I seemed to see
the whole thing. I ran forward with my heart in my mouth, and even as I
did so there rose from the outside the strangled cry of a man, followed
by a scuffle and the noise of blows.

The woman beside Frenchy sprang to her feet, and as she turned towards
me I recognised the ashen face of Elsie Ryegate. Frenchy caught her in
his arms, and swearing beneath his breath, forced her down again beside
him; while the pastor, not a whit abashed, rattled on briskly with the
service.

He soon came to an end, closing his book with a flourish, as much as
to say the ceremony was over. Frenchy rose to his feet, still with one
arm round Elsie’s waist.

“How much?” he asked.

Then old Tom Ryegate came staggering up, boo-hooing like a great
baby. He wrung Frenchy’s hand; gave his daughter a slobbering kiss;
and broke out into a whole rigmarole of how pleased he was to see her
made an honest woman, by God, and married to a gentleman she could
respeck and look up to. The girl herself might have been dead, for all
the attention she paid to him or any one; but for Frenchy’s enfolding
arm, I believe she would have fallen to the ground, for she was stony
white, and shaking in a kind of chill. I could hear her teeth chatter,
while Frenchy haggled with the pastor, and the trader went on with his
endless gabble.

We all moved out of the church together, old Tom Ryegate stumbling
along in the rear, making very poor weather of it in the dark. All at
once he went sprawling over something, and we could hear him cursing to
himself as he tried to get on his legs again.

“Now’s our chance, gentlemen all,” cried the captain, and off we set
running for the beach, old Tom’s voice growing fainter and fainter
in our rear. We tumbled pell-mell into the boat that was waiting for
us, and shoved off into deep water amid a hullabaloo of laughter and
cheers. Far behind us we could still hear the old fellow calling and
swearing, and even when we drew up under the bark, I thought I could
yet detect the faint echo of his voice. All this time Elsie herself
had made no sound, and had submitted like a terror-stricken child to
be led where Frenchy wished. But when she felt her feet on the gangway
ladder, and saw above her head the tangled yards and rigging of the
ship, she must have realised all at once what fate had in store for
her, for she uttered a shuddering cry and began to sob. I stood up in
the boat; I tried to say something of what I felt; I remember I called
Frenchy a damned villain, and us no better for helping him.

“Stop that row!” cried the captain, giving me a punch in the ribs that
made me gasp and turn sick. “I won’t have a word spoken against Mr. or
Mrs. Bonnichon, and if I catch you at it again, you young whelp, I’ll
lick you within an inch of your life. I won’t allow a mischief-maker
on my ship, nor a dirty scandal-monger. Just you remember that, young
gentleman.”

I went up the gangway in silence, humiliated and rebellious, to spend
a sleepless night in plans of revenge. My heart seemed to burst with
a sense of my powerlessness, and I turned and turned on my pillow in
a fever. The morning found us beating up against a stiff trade-wind
and a heavy sea, and at breakfast the captain had more than once to
leave the table in order to see us through a squall. He and Old Bee
were the only persons at that meal except myself, but neither commented
on Frenchy’s absence or said a word about the events of yesterday.
Indeed, I don’t think they exchanged three remarks in all, and these
were about the weather. I could not help gazing from time to time at
the door of Frenchy’s state-room; and once, in so doing, I encountered
the captain’s baleful eye. I looked away hastily, and, I am ashamed
to add, I trembled. Frenchy made no appearance at lunch, but towards
three o’clock of the afternoon I saw him steal stealthily out and get
a bottle of whisky and some biscuits, and then close his door again on
our little world. I was struck afresh with his gross, evil look, and
shrank, as one might from a wild beast, at the very sight of him.

The second day passed much as the first, though it found us lying
better up to windward. Frenchy still kept away from the table, and I
used to stare at his closed state-room door with an awful curiosity.
My two companions were, if anything, more glum and uncommunicative
than ever; and when I tried to draw out Babcock I found that his mouth
also had been sealed. He would give me only snapping answers, and was
painfully ill at ease in my presence. Lum had scalded himself twice
in the galley, and was in no conversational mood; and when I tried to
unbosom myself to him he cut me short with the remark that “white men
were all same devil.”

We ran into Lascom in the morning of the third day, and by ten o’clock
were at anchor off the settlement. Babcock at once hoisted out eight or
nine tons of Frenchy’s stuff, most of it food for his year’s sojourn
on the island, together with a lot of mess pork and biscuits for
the Kanakas; and all hands were busy getting it into the whale-boat
alongside. The captain and Old Bee were sitting side by side on the top
of the house, the latter with a pocket full of papers and a portfolio
desk across his knee. They were laughing together, and Mins was holding
the ink-bottle in one hand. Lum was standing at the break of the poop,
peeling potatoes and watching his bread, which was spread out on the
hatch to rise. I could not stay still, but kept moving about in a state
of frightful agitation, for I knew that Elsie and the Frenchman must
soon appear.

Suddenly I heard a half-smothered oath, the shattering of glass, the
rapid patter of naked feet. I turned, and there was Elsie Ryegate
poised on the ship’s rail, her black hair flying to the wind, her bare
arms outspread. She was over like a flash, and her feet had barely
touched the water when Frenchy leaped after her. We all shouted and ran
aft, the crew whooping like a pack of boys. The girl headed as straight
as an arrow for the shore, but she had not swum twenty strokes before
Frenchy was panting and blowing close behind her. Seeing, apparently,
that she could not hope to escape, she turned and seemed to resign
herself to capture. But as Frenchy tried to seize her by the hair, she
swiftly threw both her arms round his neck, and with a tragic look of
exultation she sank with him below.

Down, down they went, the puddled green water showing them vaguely
beneath the surface, sometimes with a ghastly distinctness, sometimes
with strange distortions of feature and limb. They rose at last, still
struggling, still drowning each other, the girl’s arms clinched round
the man’s neck, he spluttering horribly and trying to strike at her
with his fist. Spellbound, we saw them sink again, their convulsed
faces almost touching, their bodies writhing in agony. Mins let out
a great roar and darted for the life-belt; there was a rush forward
to cast off the whaler in which Frenchy’s stuff was being lightered;
Old Bee screamed out, “Jump! jump!” to our boatswain, who was looking
on transfixed, pointing madly at the bubbles that kept rising to
the surface. Johnny made one step aft, and was just on the point of
vaulting over the rail when Lum caught him squarely round the waist
and held him like a vise. There was a short, violent struggle between
them, and the Chinaman went down with a crash under the Kanaka. But by
the time the latter was on his feet again the moment for his services
had passed, for Frenchy’s body, still locked in Elsie Ryegate’s arms,
drifted lifeless under our quarter. The captain pointed at it with an
awe-stricken finger, and signalled the whale-boat where to pull.

The girl’s corpse was thrown on an old sail in the waist, and left
there, naked and dripping, for the crew to gape at; while Frenchy was
borne off by the captain, who, with streaming tears, worked over him
for an hour in the trade-room. When Lum and I had recovered our wits,
we drew the poor drowned creature into the galley, put hot bottles to
her feet, rubbed her icy body with our hands, and held her up between
us to the blazing fire. Lum blew into her mouth, worked her arms up
and down, and exhausted a thousand ingenuities to call her back to
life; but the little looking-glass he held so persistently to her
lips remained to the end untarnished by a breath. We were compelled at
last--though God knows how reluctantly--to give up all hope; and laying
her gently in the Chinaman’s berth, we covered her beautiful face. Then
I took occasion to ask Lum why he had prevented Johnny from diving
overboard--Johnny who was a powerful swimmer and certain to have saved
them.

“More better she die,” he said; and then, with a dramatic gesture, he
pointed to the shore, and asked me in his broken English whether she
could have endured a year of it with that man.

“More better she die,” he repeated, and regarded me with a deep
solemnity.

There was not much dinner eaten that day, though one must needs be
cooked and served. I looked fearfully into the trade-room, and saw
Frenchy’s body stretched out on the counter, a towel drawn over his
swarthy face. Lum and I closed the galley doors, and smoked countless
cigarettes together in the semi-darkness, finding consolation in
one another’s company. The tragedy hung heavy upon us both; and the
knowledge that one of its victims lay but a yard away seemed to bring
death close to us all; so that we trembled for ourselves and sat near
together in a sort of horror. Towards three o’clock some one pounded
violently at the door, and on Lum’s unlocking it, we found ourselves
confronted by Johnny the boatswain.

He told us bluntly he wanted the girl’s body, to bury it ashore.

“Captain’s orders,” he said, with a nasty look at the Chinaman.

“You make two hole?” queried Lum--“two grave?”

“One, that’s all,” said Johnny, with a grin. “We bury them together,
you China fool.”

“No, that you will not!” cried Lum, with a sudden flame in his almond
eyes. “You can bury Frenchy, but me and Bence make hole for the girl.”

“No, you won’t,” cried Johnny, making a movement to force his way in;
but Lum caught up the cleaver, and stood there, looking so incensed and
defiant that the Kanaka was glad to move away. He went off, swearing
all kinds of things, and we saw him afterwards complaining angrily to
Old Bee.

But the Chinaman was in a fighting humour. It would have taken more
than mere words to cow his spirit. He called me out on deck, and there,
between us, we got the dinghy off the beds and launched her alongside
the ship--without asking by your leave or anything--and pulled her
round to the gangway ladder. Then, as I held her fast with the
boat-hook, Lum went back, and reappeared a minute later with Elsie’s
corpse in his arms. Settling it carefully in the bottom of the boat,
her comely head resting on a bundle tied in yellow silk, the Chinaman
took one of the oars and bade me pull with the other. Even as I did so
I noticed the meat-cleaver bulging out his jumper and a six-shooter in
the hind pocket of his jeans.

We headed for the shore about a mile above the settlement, and made a
landing in a shallow cove. My companion lifted out the girl’s body and
waded with it ashore, carrying the yellow bundle by his teeth like a
dog. I followed him in silence as he passed into the scrub and tramped
heavily towards the weather side of the island. We emerged on a wide
and glaring beach, on which, as far as the eye could reach, a furious
surf was thundering. Lum laid his burden down beneath the shade of a
palm, and set himself to dig a grave with the cleaver. As he toiled the
sweat rolled off him in great beads and his saturated clothes stuck to
him as though he had been soaked in water. Once or twice he rested,
wiping his hands and face on my handkerchief, and smoking the cigarette
I rolled for him. It must have been a couple of hours before the grave
was finished to his liking, for he was particular to have it deep and
well squared. Then he opened the little bundle that had served so long
for Elsie’s pillow, and took from it a roll of magenta-coloured silk,
some artificial flowers, a packet of sweet-smelling leaves, and a
number of red tissue-paper sheets printed with gilt Chinese characters.
The silk he used to partly cover the bottom of the grave; the flowers
and fragrant leaves were placed at the end where her head would lie;
and all being thus ready for her last bed, the two of us lowered her
sorrowfully into it. This done, Lum shrouded her in the remnant of the
silk, and we filled up the grave together, shovelling the sand in with
our hands.

Lum took the pieces of red tissue-paper, and laid some on the ground
to mark the place, pinning a dozen more to the neighbouring shrubs
and trees, where they fluttered in the boisterous trade. Some got
away altogether and went scudding along the beach or out to sea, and
one blew high in the air like a kite. Lum watched them for a while in
silence, and then, with a sigh, turned about to recross the island.

“A week ago she little thought this would be her end,” I said, half to
myself.

I shall never forget the look Lum gave me. The self-reproach and shame
of it was too poignant for words.

“I think you and me all same coward,” he said.




THE DEVIL’S WHITE MAN




THE DEVIL’S WHITE MAN


We were all lying on the floor of Letonu’s big house, Tautala and I
side by side, our heads both pillowed on the same bamboo. About us on
the mats the whole family lay outstretched in slumber, save little
Titi, who was droning on a jews’-harp, and my coxswain, George Leapai,
who was playing a game of draughts with the chief. The air was hot and
drowsy, and the lowered eaves let through streaks of burning sunshine,
outlining a sort of pattern on an old fellow who moaned occasionally in
his sleep.

“In the White Country,” said Tautala, “didst thou ever happen to meet a
chief named Patsy?--a beautiful young man with sea-blue eyes and golden
hair?”

“What was his other name?” I asked.

Tautala could not recall it, the foreign stutter being so
unrememberable. Indeed, she doubted almost if she had ever heard
it. “We called him Patsy,” she said, “and he used to tell us he was
descended from a line of kings.”

“Wasn’t it O’ something?” I inquired.

No, she couldn’t remember. It was long ago, when she was a little child
and knew nothing; but she had loved Patsy, and it was a sad day to her
when the devil took him.

“Tell me about it,” I said. “I have never heard that _tala_.”

“Oh, it is a true story,” she said; “for was not my own sister Java
married to Patsy, and did I not see it all with my own eyes, from the
beginning even to the end? But thou must strengthen thyself to hear it,
for it is a tale of sadness.”

“I will strive to bear it,” I replied.

“Well, it was this way,” she began. “Many years ago a steamer reached
our bay, and it was neither a man-of-war, nor a trading-vessel, nor
a ship of pleasuring; and the hold of it was filled with nothing but
rope, miles and miles of rope, all of a single piece like a ball of
great string; nor was the least piece of it for sale; no, not even
though a ton of coprah were offered for a single fathom. The officers
of the ship were most agreeable people, and so polite that, except
for the colour of their skins, you would never think them white men
at all; and the captain gave my father his photograph, and made for
us a feast on board his ship, of sardines and tea, so that we were
soon very friendly together and almost like members of one family.
Then the captain begged my father’s permission to build a little house
on the edge of the bay, which was no sooner asked than done; for
behold, it was in measured pieces for the building. Farther inland,
near the old _vi_-tree, another house was raised, this also of boards
previously cut and prepared. Then the end of the big rope was carried
to the beach-house in a boat, and made fast to all manner of strange
_tongafiti_ within, some that ticked like clocks, and others that went
‘whir, whir,’ like a bird with a broken wing. Here, in the middle of it
all, a shining chair was prepared for Patsy to sit in and a big desk
for Patsy to write at. But to the inland house was brought his bed,
and countless cases of sardines and pea-soup, and all the many things
needed for the comfort and well-being of a white man.

“When all was thus ready to the captain’s liking, he blew his whistle
and sailed out of the bay, leaving Patsy singly to take care of the end
of the big rope. This Patsy did with assiduity, so that there was never
a morning but found him sitting beside it, and seldom an afternoon or
evening he did not visit it at intervals. Sometimes the rope would
hold him there the whole night, saying without end, ‘click, click,
whir, whir,’ as its manner was, so that I would fall asleep with the
light of Patsy’s lamp in my eyes, and wake again at dawn to find it
still burning; and if we went down to the shore, as we often did at
first in our curiosity, we would see the white man lying asleep in his
chair, his cold pipe on the table beside him. People asked one another
the meaning of a rope so singular, and wondered ceaselessly as to the
nature of Patsy’s concern with it. From all the villages expeditions
came in crowded boats to behold the marvel with their own eyes, so that
they, too, might hear it say ‘click, click, whir, whir,’ as its manner
was, and stare the while at Patsy through the window. Songs were made
about the rope, some of them gay, others grave and beautiful, with
parables; it became a proverb hereabouts to say ‘as long as Patsy’s
rope,’ meaning a thing without end, as the perpetual crying of a
child, or the love of a maid for a man.

“Thou must not think, Siosi, that Patsy was not often asked the reason
of his strange employment, and a thousand questions besides about the
wonderful rope; but at first he knew nothing of our language, and
when people would point at it and say, ‘click, click, whir, whir,’ in
mockery of what it uttered continually, Patsy would only smile and
repeat back to them, ‘click, click, whir, whir,’ so that nothing was
accomplished. But he was so gentle and well-mannered, and so generous
with his property, that one could hardly count him a white man at all;
and those who had at first mistrusted his presence in our village began
soon to love him like a relation. No music-box was sweeter than his
voice, and often on a moonlight night the whole village would gather
round his house to hear him sing, or to see him dance hornpipes on his
verandah.

“One day, in a boat from Safotulafai, there arrived a native of this
island who had long been absent, sailing in the white men’s ships. This
man being, of course, familiar with the white stutter, it occurred to
Nehemiah the pastor (who had long been troubled by the matter of the
rope) that here, at last, was the means of learning the truth from
Patsy. Whereupon a meeting of the village chiefs was summoned in the
house of Nehemiah; and after a great deal of speech-making it was
determined to wait on Patsy in a body, Tomasi, the seaman, going with
them to interpret.

“Patsy was at his usual place beside the big rope, smoking his pipe
and hearkening to the voice as it said ‘click, click, whir, whir,’
as its manner was. My father, Letonu, was the first to speak; then
Nehemiah the pastor; Tomasi translating every word, as had been
previously agreed. They both asked for an explanation of the great
rope, and why it had been made fast to our island, and where it went to
underneath the sea, and the reason of its continually saying ‘click,
click, whir, whir.’

“Patsy took some thought to answer, and when at last he spoke, his
words overwhelmed every one with astonishment and fear. It seemed that
the devil was afraid that our village was becoming too good; for being
himself so busy in Tonga and Fiji and the White Country, he could not
give our place the proper oversight; and was mortified to see that
every Aunu’u dead person went straight to heaven. Thereupon he had run
this cable from hell, and had hired Patsy for a hundred dollars a month
to warn him when anything bad was happening. Patsy explained that the
great rope was like a dog: one pinched his tail here and he barked
there; thus signals were exchanged, as had been earlier agreed upon,
so that two barks meant A, and three meant B, and so on through the
_alafapeta_.

“Then Nehemiah asked him in a trembling voice (for horror of the devil
was upon them all) how dared he serve the Evil One for the sake of a
few dollars this month and that, thus imperilling his own immortal
soul for ever. But Patsy answered that the White Country was cold and
barren, and fuller of men than our beach of grains of sand. He said
that the lands, such as they were, belonged only to a few, and those
who possessed none must needs seek a living where they could, or die of
hunger in the road. All this was borne out by Tomasi, who himself had
seen old white chieftainesses begging for food in the White Country,
and little children perishing unrelieved. Patsy said that when a man
was wanted to do a thing for hire, a hundred offered themselves only
to be turned away, so great was the misery of the White Country, so
mean the hearts of those who were rich. Whereupon, said Patsy, he had
been glad to take the devil’s money and do the devil’s work, for other
choice there was none.

“Then said Letonu, my father, ‘Patsy, thou must leave the devil and
cease to do his bidding; and though we have no hundred dollars, we can
give thee, here in Aunu’u, everything else the heart of man desires:
_taro_, breadfruit, yams, pigs, _valo_, squid, and chickens, wild doves
in their season, and good fish for every day of the year; and I will
take thee to be my son, to live with me in my fine house and share with
me everything I possess.’

“But Patsy only shook his head, and the rope, seemingly terrified lest
it were about to lose him, began to click convulsively and without
ceasing. Patsy kept hearkening to it while he listened also to my
father, which he did with a divided face, like one hearing two voices
at once. He said he thanked my father very much for his kindness, but
the fact was, he liked the devil, who was now to him almost a member
of his own family, and unfailing with the money, one hundred dollars
this month and that. Then Nehemiah made another speech, full of piety
and warning, and thereupon finding that nothing could turn Patsy’s
rock-like heart, he rose slowly to his feet and led the party out of
doors. There a new discussion took place, the pastor proposing to kill
Patsy that night and burn down his house; my father resisting him and
saying that he would permit no harm to come to his friend the white
man, whether he belonged to the devil or not.

“I don’t know how it was, but from the day of that meeting Patsy began
greatly to love my father, and half his time he spent in our house and
near him, so that the neighbours marvelled about it and were crazed
with envy. He gave my father a black coat to wear on Sundays, and
cartridges for his gun, and nightly they took lessons together in our
language, Letonu teaching him to say our words, while Patsy wrote them
down on a sheet of paper. Nehemiah preached against us in the church,
and would have stopped my father’s communion ticket, but Letonu said he
would shoot him, if he did, with both barrels of his gun.

“One day my sister Java returned from Savalalo, where she had been
living in the family of my uncle. She was a girl beautiful to look at,
and so tall and graceful that there was not a young man in the village
but whose heart burned at the sight of her. Of them all Patsy alone
seemed not to care; and in the evenings, when his devil work was done
and he would romp with us on the mats or talk with my father about
foreign countries, he never had as much as a glance for my sister;
while she, on her side, treated him always with disdain, and often kept
away from the house when she knew him to be there. I think Patsy must
somehow have found this out, for one night he told us that he would
never come back again, as Java hated him; and he kissed us all, and
departed sorrowfully into the darkness. After that, when he was not
busy in the devil-house, he took long walks into the bush with his gun,
or sat solitary on his verandah, reading a book; at night he sang no
more, nor danced hornpipes, but read and read with a sad face, like a
person who mourned a relation.

“We were angry with Java for having driven Patsy away, and told her
to go back to Savalalo and let us have our darling; but she seemed
not to care for what we said, and only answered that she hoped never
to see the devil’s white man again. My father, who loved Patsy, was
greatly vexed with her, though he said little at first, thinking that
our friend would soon return and that Java would grow ashamed. But when
day after day passed and he stayed away continually, my father talked
to Java with severity, and bade her go down to the devil-house and ask
Patsy’s pardon for her wickedness. She was very loath to obey, and only
went at last when Letonu threatened to send her lashed like a pig to a
pole, and pretended to call his young men together for that purpose. I
was told to go with her, for thou knowest our custom forbidding a young
girl to go anywhere alone, lest people should talk and take away her
reputation. But I felt sorry for Patsy as I walked behind my sister
down the path to his house, for she carried herself defiantly, and
there were tears of anger in her beautiful eyes.

“We found Patsy sitting, as usual, in the devil-house, the great
rope tail clicking at his elbow with messages from hell; and though
he sprang up smiling when Java opened the door, I thought his face
looked sad and changed. She bade me stay outside, and as she seated
herself in Patsy’s chair and began to explain the errand on which she
had come, I could see that her lips were trembling. For a long time I
heard them talking in low voices, and then, growing weary of waiting, I
fell asleep on the warm door-step. I do not know how long I slept, but
when I at last awoke I could still hear the unceasing murmur of their
voices inside the room, sweet and soft, as of pigeons cooing in the
mountains. I turned the knob of the door and went in; and there, to my
astonishment, I beheld my sister in Patsy’s arms, her head buried in
his breast, her hands clasped thus about his neck, while he was talking
foolishly like a mother to her nursing child. At the sight of me they
sprang apart, laughing loudly like children at play; and when I asked
Java if she had given her message, they both laughed more than ever and
caught each other’s hands.

“On our return, Java asked me to say nothing of what I had seen; and
told me, in answer to my questions, that Patsy had been secretly
breaking his heart for her, though she had never known it; and that
she, no less, had been delirious for the love of him. She said, too,
that he was the most beautiful man in the world, and wise and good
above all others, and that her love for him was so great that it almost
choked her. When I spoke doubtfully of the devil, she said that was
all a _pepelo_, a joke of Patsy’s; that the rope was what she called
a _telenafo_, which ran under the sea from one country to another,
telling the news of each. She said that Patsy had explained everything
to her, and had even shown her the little pots of thunder and lightning
with which the _telenafo_ was controlled.

“It was not long after this that Patsy and Java were married by the
pastor Nehemiah, my father giving them a wedding feast the like of
which had never before been seen in Aunu’u, so innumerable were the
pigs, so gorgeous the fine mats and offerings. Java went to live in the
inland house, and wore a gold ring on her finger and new dresses every
day. Patsy gave her another sewing-machine in the place of the old one,
and a present of two chests for her clothes; and every day she ate
sardines and salt beef like a white person. At first she was pleased
with everything, and her face was always smiling with her happiness;
but as days grew on she began to tire of the white way,--which, as
thou knowest, Siosi, is relentless and unchanging,--and of the work,
which is continual. A daughter of a chief lives easily in Rakahanga,
and little is expected of her, for there are girls to wait on her and
men to do the heavy labour. Java grew sad in her elegant house, and
cared less and less to paint the stove with blacking and wash greasy
dishes all day, while the village maids were sporting in the lagoon or
fishing by torch-light on the reef. She opened her distressed heart to
Patsy, and old Ta’a was called in, at a monthly wage of three dollars,
to carry the burden of these unending tasks. But old Ta’a was a
busybody and a thief, and the lies she said with her tongue were worse
to be endured than even the loss of kerosene and rice which took place
continually. Every day something was taken, and when Patsy wondered and
complained, the old one said the fault was Java’s for giving to her
family like a delirious person. Were I to get a biscuit, the old one
changed it into six; and were Letonu to beg a little tea and sugar for
his cough, it became transformed in the telling into many basket-loads.
On the other side, Ta’a slowly embittered Java’s mind against her
husband, telling her that the marriage was no true marriage, and that
when Patsy saw a prettier face he would not scruple to cast her off. So
the old woman stayed on and thrived, like a fat maggot in a breadfruit,
while Java cried in secret and Patsy grew daily more downcast and
silent.

“At last the storm burst which had so long been gathering, and the
little house that had been so joyful now shook with the sound of
quarrelling voices. Java took her golden ring and threw it on the
floor, and with it her golden comb, her much-prized ear-rings, and the
brooch which in years gone by had belonged to Patsy’s mother in the
White Country; she stripped off her dress, her shoes and stockings,
even the ribbon from her long black hair; and then, half naked, she
returned to our father’s house.

“Letonu was, of course, much concerned, and went down immediately to
see Patsy in order to make things smooth again. But the white man was
sullen and proud, and would talk of nothing, except that Java could
do as she pleased, and that it was the same to him whether she stayed
or went. My father, who had been a handsome man in his youth and knew
the ways of women, urged Patsy a thousand times to make it up quickly
with his wife, telling him to put his arms round her and kiss her and
all would be well. ‘Thou mayest know much about the _telenafo_, and
how to keep thunder and lightning in pots,’ said my wise father, ‘but
assuredly, Patsy, thou art ignorant of the hearts of women.’ He told
him that Java was already repentant and ashamed, and, like a person on
the top of a high wall, a push would send her either way. But Patsy,
like a little sulky child, sat in his chair and refused to speak, while
Ta’a rattled the dishes and laughed sideways to herself. It was sad,
when my father returned, to see the look that Java gave him. Her hot
fit was already past, and her face was full of longing and sorrow;
and on his saying that nothing could be accomplished, she lay down on
a mat, and remained there all day like a sick person. She lay thus
for nearly a week; and if we asked her anything, she would only groan
and turn away her head. She was waiting for her man to come to her;
but to him there was no such intention; for he stayed shut up in the
devil-house, or wandered uselessly in the bush by himself.

“At last she got up, more dead than living, so thin she was and
changed; and calling for food, she ate with the voracity of a starving
person; and then she bathed, and did her hair with flowers, and put
on the poor clothes she had worn as a maid. ‘Behold,’ she said, ‘I am
now one of the _aualuma_ and no longer married.’ And from that day
she who had been the most circumspect girl in the village, and the
best behaved, became swiftly a run-wild-in-the-bush, going everywhere
unattended, and sitting up with the young men at night, so that people
called her a _paumotu_, and her communion ticket was withdrawn.

“Patsy never lacked for news of her down-going, for old Ta’a still
kept house for him; and no tale was ever told of Java but the old one
brought it to him, and more also, conceived by her lying heart. Patsy
never tried to see his wife or to do anything to bring about peace
between them; and if he passed her in the path he would turn away his
head, even if it were night, and she alone with another man. Once,
only, he showed that he still remembered her at all, at a time when she
was possessed of a devil and like to die; then he came to our house,
and felt her hands, and gave her medicines from a little box, and told
my father to do this and that. And when she grew better and able to sit
up, he sent us salt beef and sardines for her well-being.

“Now it happened there belonged to Ta’a’s family a girl named Sina, a
thin, hungry piece with a canoe-nose like a white man’s, and a face
so unsightly that it resembled a pig’s; and if she went anywhere the
children would cry after her, ‘Pig-face, Pig-face!’ like that, so
that her name of Sina was forgotten, and even members of her family
called her unmindfully by the other. Compared to Java, who was tall
and beautiful like a daughter of chiefs, this little Sina was no more
than a half-grown child; and when she was stripped for bathing, behold,
you could count the ribs of her body. But Ta’a brought her every day
to Patsy’s house, so that by degrees he became accustomed to the
sight of her; and all the time the old one kept telling him that the
little Pig-face loved him--which, perhaps, indeed was true, for none
of our young men ever looked twice her way, except to laugh, and she
might have stayed out all night and no one would have thought to speak
against her character. Patsy was kind and gentle to her, as he was to
every one save poor Java; and the little Pig-face followed him like a
dog, and lay at his feet at night, while he read and read on his front
verandah. So slavish was her soul that she would have kissed his feet
if he had kicked her, and nothing pleased her so much as to sit beside
him when he slept and keep the flies from off his face. In the end, of
course, there happened that which Ta’a had long been planning: Patsy
took the little Pig-face to live with him, and pacified her father with
two kegs of beef and fifteen silver dollars.

“When the news reached Java she was consumed with a frightful anger,
and spoke wildly and murderously, like a drunken white man, clinching
her fists and kicking with her legs. She set to sharpening a knife upon
a stone, and we saw that she meant to cut off the little Pig-face’s
nose; for, as thou knowest, Siosi, such is our custom here when one
woman wrongs another. She called together all the old ladies of the
family, and they took counsel with one another in a secret place,
arranging between them a scheme for Sina’s capture. But the little
Pig-face was cowardly beyond anything ever before known; she bathed
not, neither did she wash nor walk about, but lay all day, trembling
and noisome, at Patsy’s feet. Once, indeed, she was nearly caught,
when upward of a month had passed and she had grown careless in her
watching. In the middle of the night the house was set on fire, and as
the two rushed out in confusion, Sina was seized in the arms of a dozen
women. Had it not been for the darkness, which made seeing difficult,
her canoe-nose would have been swiftly lost to her; but for light they
had need to drag her to the burning house, she screaming the while like
a hundred pigs. Patsy knew instantly what was happening, and began to
fire his pistol in the air as he ran to his partner’s help, giving
no thought at all to his perishing house. It was well for the little
Pig-face that he did so, for the knife had already sunk below the skin,
and a twist would have left her noseless.

“As for the house, it burned and burned until nothing was left of it,
though the most of what it held was carried out in safety. The next
morning Patsy moved everything down to the devil-house, making of it a
fort, with a high fence of wire all round, full of barbs and points for
the lacerating of flesh. And the little Pig-face, with her nose tied up
in cloths, ran this way and that, helping him with nails, while Java
and I lay in a hiding-place and counted her ribs.

“Thou wouldst have thought that Java might now have rested in her
anger, for Patsy’s house was consumed and her rival had felt the sharp
edge of her knife. But there was no appeasing Java’s heart; and wicked
though she was herself, and misconducted, she still could not endure to
be supplanted by another. My father spoke to her with severity, saying
that she had done all that our custom demanded, and that there must
now be peace and forgetting. But the blood came hotly into her face,
and she answered not a word, nor made the least sign to obey Letonu’s
words. Then I saw with a certainty that the war with Sina, far from
being finished, was only just beginning; and my body quivered all over
with the fear of what was to come.

“For a long time, however, Java did nothing, and went about as usual,
seeming to take no further thought. The old women of the family
returned to their ordinary occupations, and no longer lay banded in
places where Sina might pass. It would have mattered nothing if they
had, for the little Pig-face stuck to her house like a barnacle to a
rock; and except on Sundays, when she went to church between Patsy and
Ta’a, we never saw the least hair of her head. But Java knew of means
more potent than knives for the undoing of a worthless person, and
she sought out Malesa, the old wizard of Aleipata, to whom one went
ordinarily for love-philters and medicines. For a dollar he gave Java
a curse on a sheet of paper, and told her to nail it to the church
door on the following Sunday. This she did, to the great indignation
of Nehemiah and the elders, though to no purpose so far as concerned
the little Pig-face, who happened that day and all the Sundays after to
keep away from church, like a heathen in the Black Islands. For what
worth is a curse if thy enemy reads it not, nor goest even near the
door on which it is placed? Is it not like firing a bullet in the air,
hurting nothing?

“So Java returned again to Malesa the wizard, and, for lack of better
gifts, she carried with her the sewing-machine she had possessed before
her marriage. But the old man said he must have more, and spoke like
one delirious, of a hundred dollars and a boat; and when she cried out,
he laid his skinny hand on her shoulder and looked a long time into
her eyes, and then turned the wheel of the sewing-machine to show that
it was broken. But Java’s heart was stronger than a man’s and full of
hatred; so instead of shrinking back, as most women would have done,
she told him boldly to name some other price, thinking, perhaps, to
give a finger, as Fetuao had done when her husband was perishing with
the measles.

“‘Thy long, curly hair,’ said Tingelau, slowly, ‘and I will make of it
a head-dress for my son.’

“‘I will give thee that and more, also,’ said Java, with the tears in
her eyes, for there was to her nothing so beautiful as her hair.

“Then, behold, a strange thing happened, for as she knelt before the
wizard and undid the knot of her hair, letting it tumble over her bosom
like a cascade, the old man touched it not with the scissors in his
hand, no, not even cutting so much as a single hair.

“‘Java,’ he said, ‘thou art too beautiful to mar. Some other girl must
provide a head-dress for my son, and thou shalt return perfect as thou
camest; though I shall retain the sewing-machine for my pains, and
from time to time, without fail, thou shalt give me a silver dollar
until five be reached. And for this small, insignificant reward I shall
prepare thee a curse the like of which no wizard ever made before--a
curse which beside the other shall be as a man to a child, so that the
whole world shall tremble and the dead turn in their graves.’

“Accordingly, in three days my sister returned to Aleipata, where old
Malesa, faithful to his word, handed her the curse he had been so
assiduously preparing. Ah, Siosi, the reading of it was enough to make
one’s blood run cold, and palsy the hand that held the written sheet.
The little Pig-face was cursed outside and inside, in this world and
the next world, part by part, so that nothing was forgotten, even to
the lobes of her ears and the joints of her toes. There was nothing
of her but what was to be scorched with fire, torn away with pincers,
scratched, pierced, and destroyed with pointed sticks; lo, she would
scream for death while the sharks fought for her dismembering flesh and
squid sucked out her eyes, no one being at hand to give her the least
assistance. Java smiled as she read the curse aloud, and took counsel
with Tu, the brave and handsome, who had agreed to nail it to Patsy’s
door.

“It was black night when Tu made the attempt, holding the paper in his
mouth like a dog as he climbed the scratching wall of wire. At every
moment Java and I expected to hear the explosion of a gun or some
sudden sound of awakening from within the devil-house; yet nothing
reached our ears but the beating of our own anxious hearts. After a
long while we heard Tu whispering in the darkness beside us, and our
first thought was that he had failed. But we were wrong, for Tu had
succeeded in every way, and that with the utmost secrecy and skill.
Then we went and lay behind a big bush about a hundred fathoms inland
of the house, so that we might see with advantage what was to happen in
the morning; and Java and I petted Tu, and talked to him sweetly, for
he had a brave heart, and his handsome body was everywhere torn with
the points of wire.

“_Panga!_ Siosi, never was a dawn so slow to come as the one we then
waited for, nor any so bitter and chill. Our teeth clicked in our
heads, and though we lay closer together than a babe to its nursing
mother, or soldiers to one another in the bush, we nearly died with
the cold, like people in the White Country. When at last the sun rose
in a haze like that of blood and smoke commingled, we felt, indeed,
that the curse was already at work; for the air turned sultry beyond
all believing, so that we breathed suffocatingly, and endured the
taste of matches in our throats and mouths. Tu said prayers--very
good prayers and long, which he had learned in the missionary college
before he had been expelled; all of them about the beauty of holiness
and well-doing. But Java attended to none of these things, nor seemed
to care whether we ourselves lived or died, for her eyes were ever on
Patsy’s house.

“Patsy himself was the first to come out, leaving the door open behind
him, so that the curse was unluckily hidden from his view. He had clubs
in his hands, which he twirled in the air as his manner was every
morning for the strengthening of his arms. After a few movements he
called out to the little Pig-face, saying, ‘Sina, Sina,’ like that.
‘Come out to thy work, thou idle one.’ Thereupon she too appeared,
rubbing her eyes, and in her hands were two clubs like those of
Patsy’s. But instead of leaving open the door, as her partner had done,
she closed it with a push of her hand, and lo, the curse shone white
upon it like a splash of lime on a dark cloth. At the sight of it she
shrieked to Patsy, and together, side by side, they read what was there
written, clinging to each other with fainting hearts.

“When Patsy had read it to an end, he uttered a great, mocking laugh,
and struck the paper with his club, so that the whole house shook, and
old Ta’a came tumbling out like a scared rat. Then he laughed again
until the whole bay reëchoed round, and every time he laughed his
voice grew more shrill and screaming, like that of a woman in a fit.
But there was no laughter at all in the little Pig-face, who went and
lay down in the sand, hiding her eyes with her hands. And old Ta’a,
the thief, the evil-hearted, the out-islander, she tore down the curse
with derisive shoutings, and danced on it a shameful dance which is
prohibited by the church. But for all that, we could see that she and
Patsy were greatly discountenanced, as well they might have been; for
who could read such a curse without trembling, or regard with calm
the smoky air now thick with the smell of matches? As for the little
Pig-face, she was helped inside the house like a drowning person from
the sea, for her legs would no longer carry her, and she could not
breathe for very terror. The clubs were left untouched where they had
fallen; and when Patsy and Ta’a had carried Sina into the devil-house
they shut the door and locked themselves within.

“I don’t know how long it was after this that we lay still spying from
our _ti’a_, but it seemed to me like the space of many hours. For my
part, I should have gladly returned home, for I was gnawed with hunger,
and stiff with the cold night watching; so also was Tu, who spoke
piteously of his love for Java, and how it might be the means, through
this lawless dabbling with the unseen world, of cutting him off in his
prime. But so rock-like was Java’s heart, so fierce the flame of her
revenge, that she had no compassion for this beautiful young man, nor a
single word for the comfort of his spirit. With her burning eyes fixed
on Patsy’s house, she lay motionless on the ground like a dead person,
her only thought to see the curse accomplished.

“Suddenly we were startled by a peal of thunder; low at first, and then
tumultuously rising, which, with repeated explosions like those of
cannon, seemed to shake the island to its bottommost roots. We jumped
to our feet, clinging wildly to one another, while the earth shook
under us like the sea, and the skies above were rent with a thousand
burstings. Even as we stood there, swaying and horror-stricken, I felt
Java’s fingers tighten on my arm and heard her voice in my ear, crying,
‘Look, look!’ And behold! what did I see but Patsy’s house rising in
the air and darting seaward at the tail of the great rope, which,
hand over fist, the devil was now pulling in from hell. The rope was
covered with long, green sea-grass, and all manner of curious shells,
which sparkled and twisted in the sun; and it went thus in jumps, like
the crackling of a mighty whip; and with every jerk the house skimmed
forward like a boatswain-bird, showing us at a broken window the faces
of the accursed, who with frenzied movements climbed the one above the
other, striving to escape like a tangle of worms in a pot, each one
pushing away the other, until at last the water closed over them all.
And from that day to this, Siosi, nothing has ever been seen of Ta’a,
nor of Sina, nor of the devil’s white man.”




THE PHANTOM CITY




THE PHANTOM CITY


“God has sent you to the right place here,” said Father Studby,
solemnly, to the lay brother. “Life in Lauli’i flows in the same
channel, day by day, year by year, so that we wonder to grow old and
are surprised to see our changing faces in the glass. When we think,
it is of the goodness of God; when we fear, it is for the sick or for
the machinations of the Evil One. Our little bay is a monastery, remote
from all the passions and fevers of mankind; and the people we live
among are pleasant children, naïve, gay, and pious.”

“You must not consider me a sick man,” said Brother Michael, with
his dark smile. “I am worn out with teaching, and the hot bustle of
Nukualofa. The doctor said I needed rest, that I needed peace and fresh
air, and the bishop has sent me here to get them.”

“In Nukualofa,” said the old priest, who entertained a partisan’s
contempt for the neighbouring island, “in Nukualofa they do not know
the meaning of those words. They exist in a frenzy of excitement,
amid the intrigues of three conflicting nationalities; one’s ear is
dinned with rumours; and one wearies with the very names of consuls and
captains. One cannot take a walk without beholding a fresh proclamation
on a cocoanut-tree, or turn round without offending some preposterous
regulation. The natives wear trousers and drink whisky; they model
themselves on the dissolute whites set over them, and degenerate as
rapidly as their masters.”

“I never could see what people found to like in the natives,” said the
lay brother. “I dare say they are good enough in their way, and fill a
necessary place in the world, but to me they are greasy and offensive.”

“Ah, but you have never seen the true Samoan,” exclaimed the priest.
“Here it is so different from Nukualofa. Here our people are better
born; here they are self-respecting, honest, and kind; here you will
see at once an astonishing contrast to those you have left.”

Once launched on his favourite topic, the superiority of Lauli’i to
all the villages of the group, the old missionary knew not when to
stop, and his interminable tongue ran on in an unceasing harangue. The
new-comer listened with a sort of detachment, as he might have done
to some strange parrot screaming in a zoo, assenting by perfunctory
nods to that long tale of Samoan virtue, religion, and generosity. His
black eyes ranged about the room and through the open window at its
back, where, within a distance of a dozen yards, a little church half
barred the vista of peaks and forest. Still talking, Father Studby led
him away to see it, this scene of his professional life which had been
raised, stone upon stone, by his own assiduous hands. The lay brother
was shown the altar, with its artless decoration of tissue-paper
flowers; the pulpit inlaid with pearl-shell; the sacramental vessels
in their wrappings of tapa-cloth. The father seated himself at a crazy
harmonium, which was planted on the sandy floor like some derelict cast
up by the sea, and ran his fingers over the yellow keys. He played,
after a manner, with considerable skill and vivacity, his preference
being for the sentimental ballads of his youth, and the dance-music
which had then been in fashion. It was strange to hear these old
waltzes, so long dead and forgotten, coming to life again in that
darkened chapel and from the hands of such a player. The lay brother
leaned against an open window, from which there was a wonderful view
of wooded mountains half screened in mist, and sighed moodily as he
gazed about him. Under the spell of those swaying measures, his heart
returned to the Australian plains where he had been born, and he felt
himself, indeed, an exile.

On leaving the church, the father took him on a little tour of the
garden: showed him the cemented oven where the bread was baked, the
roofed-in spring, the hives, the cow, the imported cock, everything, in
fact, down to the grindstone and the rusty scythe.

Michael followed as in duty bound; asked the proper questions; showed
everywhere a becoming interest; endured it all with propriety. He
asked his host many questions, some of them the inspiration of mere
politeness, such as the best food for chickens, and the precautions to
be taken in handling bees; others, in which he seemed more genuinely
concerned, as to the nature of the inland country and its resources.
He was surprised to hear that the island had only once been crossed
by whites; he was impatient of the priest’s statement that it did not
greatly matter, as the natives suffered in social consideration by
living too far from the sea, and were, besides, better off for the fish
it afforded and the easy means of communication.

“There are other things in Samoa besides Samoans,” exclaimed Brother
Michael, with a disdain that he could but ill conceal. “Here is an
island scarcely forty miles wide, which apparently has only once
been crossed in the memory of living man. Why, the thing stirs the
imagination; it makes the blood tingle in one’s veins; it makes one
speculate on a thousand possibilities. In those secluded depths there
may be the ruins of ancient cities; mouldering tombs covered with
hieroglyphs; perhaps even another race still surviving in those inner
valleys! There may be whole forests of sandalwood, beds of fine coal,
deposits of rich ores. Who knows, but there may be gold!”

Father Studby crossed himself.

“God forbid,” he said.

“You must remember,” he went on, “that every village has some
knowledge of the land behind it, and if you could combine what they
know you would find that the interior is not such a mystery as you
imagine; though, of course, there may be tracts which have never yet
been penetrated by a white man. At one time and another I have been
many miles inland of Lauli’i, but I never got so far but what every
gully had a name, every acre an owner. Why our people should dispute
among themselves for such blocks of worthless forest and rock is a
thing beyond my comprehension; but as a matter of fact they do attach
an inordinate value to them, and it would astound you to find how
exactly the boundaries are remembered.”

“You interest me immensely,” said the lay brother. “I see that you can
tell me everything I want to know, and I congratulate myself again that
my lucky star has brought me to your door. In Nukualofa they could not
answer half my questions.”

“In Nukualofa,” said Father Studby, bitterly, “they know nothing,--less
than nothing,--for they mislead you and tell you lies. The natives
there, besides, are of a low stock, interbred with out-islanders and
without an ancestry among them. You will look in vain for such a man
as our Maunga, who goes back seventeen generations to the legendary
Fasito’o, or a family such as the Sā; Satupaialā;, who have what you
might almost call a special language of their own. They die, they spit,
they moor a boat, they steal breadfruit, they commit adultery, all in
different words from those commonly employed. It has been my pleasure,
you might almost call it my folly, to absorb myself in such studies. I
am afraid you will find me nothing more than an old Kanaka pundit, with
my cracked head full of legends and ancient songs.”

The priest saw very little of his guest, who followed the doctor’s
prescription of fresh air with a literalness that made him almost
a stranger in the house. Every morning, after participating in the
service in the little church, Brother Michael would take his gun
and disappear for the day, returning at sundown with what pigeons he
had shot, and an appetite that played havoc with his host’s frugal
housekeeping. He would eat a pound of meat at a sitting, make way
with an entire loaf of bread, and thought nothing of helping himself
four times to marmalade, in spite of the father’s disapproving looks,
and the calculated contrast of his bare plate. In the light of that
frightful inroad on his provisions, Father Studby’s good opinion of the
stranger began to change into a sentiment approaching aversion, and it
seemed to him an added injury that the young man would no longer eat
his own pigeons, insisting, with gross self-indulgence, on an unending
succession of chicken, ham, and costly preserves. He said that _taro_
gave him heartburn, evoked the physician’s ban on all native food,
and demanded, on the same shadowy authority, a daily ration of brandy
from the father’s slender stock. It was hard on the old missionary,
who was abstemious to a degree and seldom allowed himself the comfort
of a dram, to pour his liquor down that insatiable throat, and be
condemned to hold the bottle, while the other smacked his lips like a
beach-comber in a bar, in no wise ashamed to drink alone. The bottle,
too, until it was placed under lock and key, showed a tendency to
decline unduly, and even biscuit and sardines were not exempt from a
similar and no less exasperating shrinkage. And then, in his religious
exercises the lay brother betrayed a disheartening coldness, and what
spiritual fire had ever been in him seemed smothered over with torpor
and indifference. His vocation meant no more to him than a means to
live. He yawned at mass, nodded intermittently through the priest’s
interminable sermons, and when it was proposed that he should take
temporary charge of the school he did not hesitate for a moment to
refuse.

Of course, a word to Nukualofa would have speedily rid Father Studby
of his guest; he had only to write, to expostulate, and the thing
was done. More than once, under the influence of some particular
indignation, he had set himself to the task. But he had never got
beyond the first few lines before his natural generosity reasserted
itself. Who was he, that he should make himself the young man’s judge;
that he should help, perhaps, to mar prospects none too bright, and
throw the last stone at one already tottering to his fall? Besides,
were the grounds of his objection as sincere as he imagined? Was he
not meanly condemning the lay brother for his appetite, for the hole
that he was making in that dwindling larder, rather than for his lack
of religious conviction which at times seemed so shocking? After
all, was it not natural for a young man to eat well, to help himself
unchecked to marmalade, to devour expensive tinned meats like a wolf?
It was the result of those immense walks, ordered by the doctor, to
which Michael so assiduously applied himself. Was there not something
even admirable in so strict an obedience to hygiene, especially in one
constitutionally slothful and self-indulgent?

One afternoon Michael returned from his walk in a state of high
excitement. His black eyes were burning, and for once, contrary to
his usual habit, he was extraordinarily noisy and talkative. He kept
breaking out into wild laughter, even when not a word was said, and
seemed to possess, buried somewhere within him, the secret of an
unextinguishable entertainment. Instead of dozing after supper in his
chair, he grew, if anything, wider awake than ever, and his hilarity
continued with a kind of violence. Father Studby was carried off his
feet by that wave of gaiety; he felt the contagion of that singular
fever which had so transformed his companion; he, too, laughed at
nothing, and found himself talking with an animation that he could
not remember to have displayed for years. But with it all he had
an unaccountable sense of suspicion, of being on his guard against
something, he knew not what, of some pitfall yawning for his unwary
feet. He felt that he was watched; that those strange, mocking eyes
of his companion were mutely tempting him to evil; at times he almost
wondered whether the dark lay brother were not the devil himself.

The young man’s talk was rambling and inconsequent, a mere rattle of
autobiography, punctuated with laughter. He had much to say of his
college days; his penury; his struggles; his shabby makeshifts; the
pranks he and his companions had played on the professors. He roared
as he recalled them, and hammered the table with his fist. He spoke of
his mother and her hard life; the ne’er-do-well father; the brother
that drank; the sister with the hip disease. And from that again to
the price of native land, the way to secure good titles, the need, as
he had been told, to buy the same property from a dozen conflicting
owners. Then he broke out about the power of money, the unlimited power
of money, the lawlessness of money in unprincipled hands; the way it
could buy everything the world had to offer, social position, beautiful
women, the entrée to great houses. With money, what could a man ask
for in vain! In this world, he meant, of course--in this world. In the
next, thank God, it would be different; the rich would pay through
the nose then for their pleasures. But some of them perhaps would not
repent it; the most would be as bad again, if only the chance were
offered; the dogs would return to their vomit.

Father Studby listened to these confidences with amazement; they
depressed and angered him unspeakably; they seemed to disclose in his
companion a cynicism and a moral deficiency that he had not previously
suspected. He felt, too, as he had never felt before, the full
horror of that brutal civilisation, so merciless, so inexorable, its
obliterating march whitened with the bones of thousands; everything
with its price, even to the honour of shrinking women and the corpses
of the dead. If you had no money the wheels rolled over you; if you
had no money you sank and died. There was no one to help, no one to
pity; all were scrambling horribly to save themselves on the shoulders
of those below. What a contrast to the calm of that Samoan life,
primitive, kindly, and religious, in which accursed money was unknown!
He was led to declaim hotly on the high breeding and chivalry of
these misjudged people, and protested that they had more to teach than
to learn. Where, he demanded of the lay brother, could one find such
hearts as these? where such brave men and compassionate women? where
else a land with neither rich nor poor? Here, if one starved, all
starved; here, if need be, the last banana was divided into a hundred
pieces; here they would all take shame if a single child went hungry.

The old priest went on and on with his tale of Samoan virtue, of Samoan
superiority. God had never made such a people; there was in them the
seed that would regenerate the world. There was nothing in which they
did not excel. He carried his reluctant hearer into the mazes of native
poetry; he repeated hundreds of lines in his resounding voice, blowing
out clouds of tobacco smoke between each stanza. Where, he asked, were
the whites who could match such things as these; who could bring the
tears to your eyes or convulse you with laughter at will? He would
repeat that last verse, if his companion did not mind; it described how
To, wandering on the sea-shore at dawn, met Tingalau returning from his
fishing, and led on to twenty stanzas more of what To said to Tingalau,
and Tingalau to To!

Michael lay back in his chair, scarce heeding the soft gibberish
that to him meant nothing. He was living in a tumult of his own
thoughts--thoughts in which Kanaka poetry had no part, though the
priest himself was sometimes present, but whether as a friend or foe
he could not yet determine; and while he wondered and conjectured the
old man himself seemed to disappear in his own smoke, until nothing
remained of him but a faint, passionate buzzing, like that of a
bumblebee in a field.

The next day Michael was up and gone before daybreak, and the little
service in the church proceeded for once without him. The father was
vexed at such remissness, and tolled the bell with pious indignation.
Was the young man no better than a heathen, thus to scamp God’s morning
hour--to attend so grossly to the fleshly needs and let the soul go
wanting? Depend upon it, he had not left without something to stay his
stomach, though God’s claim on him might wait. The priest turned a cold
face to his guest when the latter returned at dusk with the invariable
pigeons in his hand. But Michael was too tired to notice these altered
looks, nor did he seem concerned when at last his delinquency was
pointed out to him in no uncertain words. His church, he answered,
with mocking defiance, his church was in the woods, at the foot of a
towering banyan, or in some dim recess beside a stream; he knelt when
the impulse came to him, like some primitive monk wandering with God in
the wilds. The priest received this explanation with a dubious silence;
he was not at all satisfied with its truth, and yet scarcely knew what
to reply, feeling himself helpless and outwitted. He was almost glad
that the pigeons, still lying on the floor, gave him an obvious excuse
to leave the room.

“The chief has done well to-day,” he said to Ngalo, his servant.

The boy laughed.

“Excellency,” he said, “the Helper does not shoot these pigeons. He
buys them for sixpences from our people.”

“Impossible!” cried the old man. “Thou talkest like a delirious person.”

“Excellency,” said the boy, “saving thy presence, the Helper lies.
Behold in this pigeon the truth of what I say. Does the chief use
gravel in his gun, like a Samoan, to whom there is no lead?”

“Perhaps he does,” said the priest. “Such a thing had not occurred to
me.”

“Perhaps he does _not_,” exclaimed Ngalo, meaningly. “On Tuesday he
bought eight birds of my mother’s brother’s son; one was scented and
had to be thrown away.”

“Ngalo,” cried the priest, with a sudden change of tone, “is there a
woman in this hidden business? Is there gossip in the village?”

Ngalo shook his head.

“He is blameless of such an evil,” he said. “But the village talks
continually, and the people ask, ‘What does the Helper in the bush?’”

Father Studby breathed a great sigh of relief.

“He walks about,” he explained, “this way and that, according to the
command of the wise doctor in Nukualofa. The peace refreshes him and
makes him well. I, too, in my youth, used to wander in the mountains
and find consolation.”

Ngalo’s face showed that he had more to tell.

“The Helper does strange things,” he said. “He goes along, even as you
say, through the village and the outlying plantations like an uncaring
child, with no purpose in what it does. But when he reaches a certain
_ifi_-tree on the land we call Lefoa, behold, all is changed. He stops,
he looks about, he listens assiduously like a warrior on the outpost.
Then he puts his gun in a hidden place, and with it his shot-bottle and
his powder-bottle; then he girds up his dress to the knee, and runs
into the bush with the swiftness of a dog. When he returns, late in the
afternoon, it is with the same quickness until the tree is reached.
There he takes breath, composes himself, and with slow steps returns
seaward buying what pigeons he can on the road.”

“Well, and what else, Mr. Make-the-News?” demanded the father, as Ngalo
hesitated.

“There are those in the village who know nothing,” he went on, “mere
worthless heathen of no family, without consideration or land of
their own, living meanly like slaves on the bounty of others, who say
strenuously, with the persistency of barking dogs, that the Helper is
under the spell of Saumaiafe!”

The priest stamped his foot with anger. Was that superstition never
to die? Saumaiafe, the fabled witch, who, in the guise of a beautiful
woman, lured men to ruin in the bush! Saumaiafe, that intolerable
myth with which he had been combating for more than eighteen years!
Saumaiafe!

“Thou art a fool!” he cried. “You are all fools. Sometimes I feel as
though I had spent my life in vain. I, too, was a fool to ever think
you teachable.”

“Your Excellency is right,” said Ngalo. “It is an unendurable village
altogether, and ignorant beyond anything before conceived. Indeed, so
weak are men’s hearts in this matter of Saumaiafe and the Helper that
none now go into the bush, even those who are distressed for bamboo, or
for red clay with which to beautify their hair.”

The priest turned away without a word. He was almost inclined to laugh
as he went back to the other room, and to tell the lay brother the
commotion his actions had excited. But the sight of Michael’s face
somehow daunted him; those suspicious, bloodshot eyes suggested dangers
that he was at a loss to name. He remembered the hiding of the gun;
the strange deceit about the pigeons; he seemed to see the young man
kilting up his cassock and plunging furtively into the dark forest.
What did it all mean? he asked himself again and again. Mercy of God,
what did it mean?

That night he slept but little. He tossed on his hot bed, and whether
he lay on this side or on that, the same question dinned in his ears
without cessation. He was tortured by thoughts of hidden wickedness in
the bush; mysteries of evil in rocky defiles, in caves beside great
waterfalls. He rose and went out into the starlight, reproaching
himself for his foolishness; and even as he did so, Brother Michael’s
even breathing thrilled on his ears like a vindication. When all was
said, what was it that he feared for the young man? What could an
old priest fear but the one thing--a woman? And what woman, he asked
himself, however dissolute or abandoned, would venture alone into those
haunted woods? He could trust superstition to keep the wickedest from
such a course. Had he indeed become such an old Kanaka, that even he,
Father Studby, was to credit the existence of the witch, roving in her
naked beauty, a peril to white lay brothers? Perish the thought, so
degrading and childish! Assuredly it was not Saumaiafe he had to fear.

He got to bed again, and waited with open eyes for the approach of day.
As the cocks began to crow, he heard, with a sudden sinking of the
heart, the sound of the lay brother stirring in the next room; heard
him dress and go stealthily out, shaking the verandah under his heavy
tread.

Mercy of God, what did it all mean?

Morning after morning he asked himself the same question, as the
mysterious routine continued with unabated regularity; and the thought
of it haunted him persistently throughout the day as he tried to fix
his mind on other things. Evening after evening he saw the young man
return with his tired face, the pigeons so ambiguously obtained,
the gun that had never been fired. They would eat their silent meal
together, and then Michael would doze in his chair till bedtime. On
Sunday, the only day he remained at home, the lay brother resigned
himself to the unavoidable services of religion, going with the father
to mass, and assisting, by his presence at least, the cause to which
they had both pledged their lives. The few hours of his leisure were
spent at a little lock-fast desk; and the nature of this correspondence
became the second mystery of his singular and baffling life. Once,
looking up from his half-written page, he asked the priest how
many feet went to a mile. On another occasion he inquired as to the
soundings of the bay, and the most likely point for a steamship pier.
Steamship piers, and feet in miles! Miles of what? Whose steamships,
and what was there to bring them? Mercy of God, what did it all mean?

In the beginning, when Father Studby had first begun to suspect he knew
not what, to worry, to ask himself importunate questions, a way had
occurred to him--a way not altogether honourable nor dignified--which
could not fail to lead to some elucidation of the mystery. He had
put it behind him with decision, as unworthy of himself and his
reputation. What! act the spy and follow the young man? See with his
own eyes, from the vantage of some thick fern or bush, the nature of
that strange tryst? No; let him keep his honour, even if curiosity
went unsatisfied--even if that same curiosity were not wholly bad,
but inspired by a genuine regard for the young brother’s welfare, for
which, as the elder of the two, he was in some degree responsible. It
was only right to hold out your hand to a sinking man. But could the
lay brother be called a sinking man? Ah, if one could be sure of that,
how much might be pardoned!

One morning Father Studby could bear it no longer. As the boards
creaked in the next room, he, too, rose and dressed himself, trembling
as he did so with a sense of guilt. When the front door at length
closed on the lay brother, and his quick step was heard on the path
outside, Father Studby found himself on the verandah, looking after
him in the dawn. He would have followed; he even took a few steps down
the hill. But the folly of such a course was at once apparent. To
act the detective, one must one’s self remain undiscovered. Yet how
could he hope to elude observation and keep on Brother Michael’s heels
all through the open village and the wide _malae_? It was manifestly
impossible. In the forest it might be different; yes, in the forest,
crouching in the thick undergrowth, it would not be so hard to track a
man down.

The next night, which happened to be one of a moon almost full, the
father lay down ready dressed for a new adventure. A little after one
o’clock, he rose, crossed himself, and cautiously quitted the house,
making his way through the sleeping village to the path across the
swamp. This he followed, slipping on the sodden tree-trunks that served
as bridges, until he attained the farther region of cocoanut, banana,
and breadfruit plantations. These were in a choking tangle of weeds
and lianas; trees thirty feet in height bent under their weight of
parasites; others, still higher, were altogether overwhelmed and lost
to view in a wall of green; and in the forks of the giant breadfruits
orchids were sprouting like the scabs of some foul disease. Keeping
with difficulty on the half-obliterated track, the priest toiled slowly
and painfully through this belt of so-called cultivation, from which,
indeed, the village drew no considerable portion of its sustenance,
until at last he reached the welcome shelter of the forest. In contrast
to the zone through which he had just emerged, opened by man to the
furious energy of the sun, the forest floor itself, densely shaded from
this fecundating fire, was comparatively open and easy to penetrate.
It was dark, of course, dark as the inside of a well; and the father
stopped and lighted the lantern he carried in his hand. He peered about
him, blinded by the glare, and uncertain for the first time as to his
road. Yes, he had not been misguided; he could trust the instinct of
eighteen years to steer him through these labyrinths. Here, indeed, was
the _ifi_-tree of which Ngalo had told him, with its low, spreading
foliage that had so often concealed Michael’s gun. At the thought
of the lay brother his heart began to beat, and he crossed himself
repeatedly.

He paced off seven, eight, nine, ten yards from the trunk of the _ifi_;
and his feet at that distance carried him into a thicket of fern and
wild bananas. He blew out the lantern, and settled himself in the damp
ambush so providentially at hand, drawing the big leaves over his head
until he could no longer see the stars. From two o’clock--for such he
judged the hour when he first took up his station in the ferns--from
two o’clock till five he remained huddled in his green lair, praying
at intervals, and counting the interminable minutes to dawn. With the
first peep of day his impatience turned no less swiftly into dread.
What had tempted him to such madness, such dishonour? What if he should
be discovered in this shameful nest, and incontinently revealed to the
jeers and laughter of the man he thought to track down? What if the
lay brother, turning a little aside, should stumble over his cramped
and aching body? Explain? How could he explain? Mercy of God, what a
position for an old religious! He underwent spasms of panic; he was of
two minds whether or not to rise and run. But the sound of a footstep,
of a man’s hoarse breathing, of rustling branches and snapping twigs,
suddenly brought the heart to his mouth. The wild animal in him was
instantly on the defensive, and he flattened himself to the ground.

He lay like a log, not moving so much as an eyelash. He heard the
ring of metal as Michael apparently fumbled with his gun in the lower
branches of the _ifi_-tree. The shot-flask fell with a crash, and
the brother swore--yes, said “damn” audibly, and picked it up. Then
there was a silence; an eternity of suspense; then a faint crackling
as of parting boughs. The father peeped out, and saw a black figure
disappearing inland; an unmistakable black figure, bent and furtive,
speeding mysteriously through the gloom. He was up and following in
a second, half doubled together, like the man he pursued, eager as a
bloodhound with his nose to the spoor. The way, with few intermissions,
ran steadily uphill, up and up, faster and faster, until one’s side
seemed to crack and one’s heart to burst. Up and up, with a swing to
the right to avoid the splashing waterfalls of the Vaita’i; through
groves of _moso’oi_ that stifled the air with sweetness; under towering
_maalava_-trees that seemed to pierce the very sky.

Would he never stop?

But the lay brother, without once turning, without once stopping
either to rest or to look back, plunged forward with the certainty of
a man who knew his way blindfold. They were, now, pursued and pursuer,
on the high ridge between two river valleys; on the one hand was the
Vailoloa, a tributary of the Vaita’i, on the other the roaring Fuasou,
both racing tumultuously to the sea. The father wondered how Michael
meant to extricate himself from such a cul-de-sac, unless (and the
thought dashed his hopes to the ground) he intended to assail the
cloudy slopes of Mount Loamu itself and make a circuit of a dozen miles.

But his question no sooner suggested itself than it was answered. Of a
sudden the brother stopped on the edge of the Fuasou ravine, dropped
one leg over, then the other, and began to disappear hand over hand by
means of a hidden ladder. The priest stood where he was, transfixed
with astonishment. To hurry now seemed unwise. If he had come to
ladders he was not improbably near the goal itself. Patience! A breath
or two, a moment to cast one’s self full length on the ground and wipe
the acrid sweat from one’s eyes, and then, having given the lay brother
a minute’s start, to descend the precipice in his wake.

Father Studby approached the brink and looked over. Below him,
dropping, perhaps, sixteen feet, was a roughly made ladder of bamboo
which rested at the bottom on a rocky buttress of the cliff. On the
edge of that, again, with its splintered ends appearing through the
trampled undergrowth, was a continuing ladder, the second of a
series that dropped, one after another, into the deep defile. With
guarded steps, and after a prolonged deliberation, the priest let
himself slowly down ladder number one; down number two; down number
three, which ran so long and straight on the open face of the rock
that he faltered, turned dizzy, and had to close his eyes to recover
himself; down number four; down number five, at the base of which there
descended a zigzag path to the river. Following this unhesitatingly,
with the noise of rushing water in his ears, he emerged at last on a
basaltic shelf not six feet above the bed of the Fuasou. From this
coign of vantage he gazed about in vain for any sight of Michael,
until, on creeping to the very edge of the rock, he ventured to look
below. There, immediately beneath him, so close, indeed, that he might
have touched him with his hand, was the lay brother himself, busy
shovelling a bucket full of sand.

“Mercy of God!” exclaimed the priest below his breath; and even as he
did so, by that singular telepathy which so often confounds us, Michael
lifted his head and looked his pursuer squarely in the face. For an
appreciable instant the pair challenged each other’s eyes in silence;
the lay brother’s were kindling and fierce, the priest’s all abashed,
like those of a girl.

“Come down here,” said Michael, peremptorily. “I have something to tell
you.”

The priest obeyed, with the mien of a man descending to his execution.

“You old interloper,” cried Michael, with a mirthless laugh. “So you
are here at last, are you? I have seen it working in your silly old
head for weeks. I never looked up but I thought to see your bloody
boots!”

This unexpected address only served to add to the old man’s confusion.
He looked about him helplessly. Such unrestrained language seemed to
call for a sharp rebuke. He was shocked and frightened; as much so as
a woman insulted on the street; and yet the consciousness of his own
position--that of the detected spy--froze the words of correction on
his lips.

“Of course, you want to know what I have been doing here,” continued
Michael, in his mocking tone. “If you’ll look into that cradle you will
see quick enough. Why, man alive, don’t you know what it is?”

Amazed and ashamed, Father Studby touched the dirty sediment with his
finger.

“That’s gold!” cried the lay brother.

The priest hastily withdrew his hand and stared at his companion in
consternation.

Gold!

The priest’s head went round; his heart thumped in his breast,
with that word everything was forgotten--his shame, his anger, his
humiliation.

“Oh, Michael!” he broke out incoherently. “Oh, Michael!”

“I am taking out about twenty ounces a day,” said the lay brother.
“Some days I have touched forty.”

“Mercy of God!” cried the old man, hoarsely. “Mercy of God, show me how
you do it!”

Michael had another cradle ready to hand. It was the first he had made
he said, and nothing like so good as the other; but it would do for a
day or two until they made a new one--yes, it would do, though a lot
of the finer stuff was lost. You did it this way--so--just rocking it
like a baby’s cradle; the squares of blanket screened the gold, and you
washed them out afterwards in a pan. A place? Oh, anywhere along the
stream. It was all rotten with gold.

The priest hurried off, and was soon shaking frantically a hundred
yards below. He had not been gone an hour when he came hurrying back to
where his companion was still at work.

“Look at that!” he cried, holding out a trembling hand. “Oh, Michael,
what is it worth?”

“Three or four pounds, perhaps,” said the lay brother, indulgently.

“Mercy of God!” cried the priest, and he was off again at a run.

A little later he came back again. They were watched, he said; he was
certain they were watched. He could hardly speak for agitation. He had
heard noises behind him, again, and again, like the laughter of girls
in the bush.

But Michael only derided his fears. The bush was a creepy place, he
said, when you were all alone in it. He had felt the same way himself
when he first came, and was eternally peeping over his shoulder and
stopping his work to listen. One got used to it after a while; he
supposed it must be some kind of a bird.

All day long they worked together in the stream, stopping only at noon
for a bite of bread and a pipe. So engrossing was the occupation that
one seemed never to grow tired; the glittering reward was always a
fresh incentive to try one’s luck again. Five pounds, four pounds,
six pounds, three pounds! One lost all count, and the level of the
tobacco-tin in which the golden sand was poured rose and rose in
half-inch tides. Father Studby was almost angry when his companion
declared it was time to go. He was hurt at such a suggestion; he was
disappointed; he almost cried. Michael showed him his watch. Mercy of
God, it was past five o’clock! Then he remembered, for the first time,
his neglected duties: the morning service, the school, the woman who
lay dying in Nofo’s house; the hundred calls, great and small, that
kept his day so busy. He wondered at his own unconcern, at his own
apathy and selfishness. He felt that his contrition lacked the proper
sting; he asked himself whether, indeed, he cared. He was dizzy with
the thought of gold, of cradles and rich pockets, of those bright
specks that still stuck to his hands. He followed his companion in a
sort of dream, silent and triumphant, trying to fasten on himself a
remorse that would not come.

“I’ll never forget the first time I got into that valley,” said
Michael, on the long road home. “It was the hardest job of my life to
follow up that river. I climbed into places that would have scared a
sea-faring man; and I was no sooner up one than I would have to risk
my life shinning up another, hanging on to lianas and kicking for my
life. Tired? Why, I would regularly lie down and gasp--when there was
anything big enough to lie on; and the noise of those falls, those that
I was on top of, and those that were still to come--my word! it made me
sick to hear them. And when I at last got into the place, and sat down
by a big pool, and saw the black sand with the shrimps wriggling in it,
I simply said to myself, as quiet as that: ‘Here’s gold.’”

When they reached home Michael called loudly for brandy. The priest
himself was glad of a little after that day of days; placer-mining
was a new experience, even to that veteran of labour, and he felt
extraordinarily stiff and tired. He remembered with contrition how
often in the past he had grudged his companion the stimulant, and he
now blushed for those trivial economies with a hot sense of impatience.
Could he not take out in a day what they represented in a twelvemonth?
With a new-found sense of freedom, he helped himself again to the
bottle, and, for once in his frugal life, did not measure the allowance
with his thumb. Then Michael, with an elaborate pantomime of secrecy,
beckoned him into the other room, and, after shutting and bolting the
door, threw open the top of his trunk. Beneath the rumpled heap of
clothes there were a dozen tin cans of all shapes, some with their own
original covers, others capped with packing-paper like pots of jam.
The lay brother opened them one by one, lovingly, exultingly, his face
shining with satisfaction. Each was filled to the brim with coarse
gold-dust; each weighed down the hand like an ingot.

“Take one, father,” said Michael. “It is a little enough return for
all your kindness.”

The priest trembled and drew back.

“No, no!” he cried.

“As you like,” said Michael, with a tone of affected indifference. “You
will be doing as well yourself in a few days.”

“God help me!” exclaimed the priest, and buried his face in his hands.

The lay brother looked down at him strangely and said nothing. He knew
something of the hidden conflict at that moment raging in the old man’s
breast, and he had too much at stake himself to venture an incautious
word. Everything depended now upon the priest, for good or evil; it
lay with him to keep the secret inviolate, or to spread it to all the
world; to accept the partnership thus tacitly offered, and allow them
both to reap a colossal harvest; or, standing coldly on the letter of
his vows, to open the door to a rush of thousands. The brother held his
breath and waited for that supreme decision on which so much depended;
he was afraid to speak, afraid even to move, as he looked down at his
companion in a fever of suspense. The intolerable silence weighed upon
him like a nightmare. He felt that it was the enemy of all his hopes;
that every minute of it increased the hazard of his fortunes; that he
was being tried, that he was being condemned.

“Father,” he broke out, “your name need not appear in this; you need
do nothing but hold your tongue; you can be my partner without a soul
to know it. As God sees me, I will divide with you to the last penny.”

The old man lifted his head.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said.

“It’s just this,” said Michael, regaining a little confidence. “If you
spread the news broadcast--and the merest whisper will do that--you
will get nothing at all and I will get no more than a beggarly claim.
Keep it to ourselves and we shall share tens of thousands of pounds.”

“I am a Marist priest,” said Father Studby. “I am a missionary. I am an
old man nearing the end of my days. My vows prevent me from withholding
any property from my Order. I should be acting dishonourably in
entering into such an enterprise. I have no right to gain money for
myself.”

“Who is asking you to keep it for yourself?” demanded Michael. “What
prevents you giving your Order every ounce that falls to your share?
Do you really think Monseigneur would find fault if you brought him a
check for a hundred thousand pounds? And I don’t even ask you to keep
silence for ever. In six months, or a year, or whatever it is,--when
the proper time comes,--you can make a clean breast of it. Of course,
if you choose the other thing, your Order will get nothing, and somehow
I don’t think they will be as pleased as you seem to think. Why, man,
think what the money would do for the cathedral! They could build the
new mission-house to-morrow. And remember for one moment what you could
do here!”

“No,” said the father, “you have put the matter in a new light. I
should fail in my duty if I let this money go from us. They would be
right to reproach me if I let the chance slip. I fear I was thinking
more of myself than of them.”

After supper they drew out their chairs on the moonlit verandah, and
sat for a while in silence. The priest was conscious, amid the uneasy
preoccupation that settled on him like a cloud, that in some manner
their relative positions had changed. The masterful young man, by
reason of his great discovery, on the strength, perhaps, of his more
vigorous and determined will, seemed now to arrogate to himself the
right to lead. It appeared natural to Father Studby to acquiesce in
this; to subordinate himself to his companion and wait timidly for him
first to speak; even to feel a kind of gratitude for the partnership
that caused him such qualms. Self-effacing and humble, it came easy to
him to sink to a second place and accept unquestioningly the orders of
a superior. Besides, what did he know of gold?

“The first thing we must consider,” began Michael, “the first, because
it is the most important, is the land. It must all be ours, from the
sea to the mountain-tops, from one end of the bay to the other. In
a small way I have been already moving in the matter. I have taken
options from Maunga, Leapai, and George Tuimaleali’ifano, the three
principal chiefs here, for what seems to cover more than the area of
the group. I paid them out of hand about twenty dollars each; but the
options, to make them good, will call for twenty-eight thousand dollars
in Chile money. Oh, it’s all perfectly right and legal,” he broke out,
forestalling an objection he saw on his companion’s lips. “I had
the forms drawn up in Nukualofa by a lawyer; it cost me three pounds
to do it. The only point is how much of the land really belongs to
these chiefs, for there are bound to be half a hundred other claimants
whose consent will be needed to make the title good; and it will be
your part to ferret them out. What you must bear in mind most is
that we must nail every inch of the beach. There will be a city here
in a month after the news is out; in a year there will be tramways,
and newspapers, and brick banks and churches, and wharves with ships
discharging. Don’t you see, we must have our fist in all that; we must
have the lion’s share; every pound the others bring must pay us toll.”

“The others!” cried the priest. “Mercy of God, let us keep the thing to
ourselves!”

“We couldn’t, if we would,” cried the lay brother. “You might as well
try and hide the island as to keep them out. When I was a boy I was in
the Kattabelong gold rush with my father, and I know what I am talking
about. They rose up like waves in the sea--waves and waves of men,
bursting in with yells like an invading army. Why, it won’t be any time
before we are holding our valley with a line of rifles; you will see
all hell loose and a thousand devils landing at a time; you will see
the horizon black with steamer smoke, bringing in thousands more; you
will see men killed and their bodies rotting in the sun. That’s the
first stage of a gold rush--the pioneer stage, the stage of murder and
crime, of might for right. That will be the time for us to live through
as best we can. Bit by bit there comes a subsidence into a kind of
order. There is a rally of the better sort; the inevitable leader rises
to the top. You walk out one morning, and you run across Billy This,
the terror of the camp, swaying peacefully at the end of a rope. At
another turn it is Tommy That, with his toes turned up and a ticket on
his breast. The third period is the arrival of an official with a tin
office and blank forms. Who owns the land here? Why, we do. Who claims
that? Why, we claim it. Who owns the beach from a point beginning at
such and such a place, to a point marked B on the new official map? We
again! Who owns the mountain lakes they talk already of tapping for
the water-supply? We do. Who owns everything in sight? The same old
firm, if you please, sir. But I am not saying we can hold the fort
single-handed. God never made the two men that could. But this is what
we do. We grant titles, concessions, half and quarter interests to men
of the right stamp, and make them our partners against the mob. We take
the money they bring, and reserve a substantial profit in their future
undertakings. As I said before, we must have our fist in every pocket.”

Michael paused and slowly filled a second pipe. The father remained
silent, his head resting on his trembling hand. He was staring into
vacancy, seeing through his half-shut eyes a myriad of changing
pictures.

“Michael,” he said, “have you ever thought how it will be with our
people?”

“Oh, the Kanakas!” said the lay brother.

“Yes, the Samoans,” said Father Studby. “What is to become of them,
Michael?”

“They will go,” said the young man, coolly, “where the inferior race
always goes in a gold rush. They will go to the devil.”

“Oh, Michael,” exclaimed the priest, “I cannot bear to think of them!”

“I am sure I am sorry, too,” said the lay brother. “But there is no
use blinking our eyes to facts, or feeling miserable about what can’t
be helped. The men must learn to work like other people, and I look to
you, with your influence here, to line them up on the right side. Fifty
or sixty of them would be worth everything to us at the start. As for
the nigger women, if they are young and pretty, I dare say a use can
be found for them, too. I am sorry, but what can you do? You can’t put
back the clock, old fellow.”

The priest groaned.

“I wish you had never found the gold!” he cried out passionately.

“Well, it is too late now,” said Michael.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next day the old man was up at the first peep of dawn. He had not
slept all night, but had lain with open eyes, in a fever of horror
and remorse. He walked down to the village and along the sandy beach,
and sat miserably for an hour on the bottom of an upturned canoe. One
by one, he saw the beehive houses awaken; he saw the _polas_ rise,
disclosing dark interiors and smoking lamps; he heard the _pāté_,
that most primitive of human signals, rousing the sluggards to
another day, its insistent tapping the prelude to the morning prayer
which rose here and there as each household assembled its members.
Grave old chiefs appeared at the eaves, yawned, gazed at the sun, and
exchanged ceremonious greetings; children trooped out sleepily to play;
half-grown girls tripped away for water, or sat on logs or strips of
matting, in twos and threes, staring out to sea. An imperious old
chief began to blow a conch-shell bigger than his head. Bu, bu, bu! it
sounded, rich and mellow, with faint reëchoings on the woody hills. The
young men assembled about him, laughing and shouting, and taking up
the note of the conch in a lusty chorus as they called out the names
of those still to come. The father remembered that they were to launch
the new _alia_, the huge double canoe, which belonged in common to all
Lauli’i.

He looked about him mournfully; he felt himself a traitor through and
through; he dropped his eyes as every one saluted him and the little
children ran up to kiss his hands. He was about to sweep this all away,
this life of simplicity, peace, and beauty; he was going to enslave
these stalwart men; he was going to give these women to degradation.
Under the scorching breath of what was called civilisation they would
wither and die. God help them! On the ground where those houses now
stood there would rise the brick banks and churches of which Michael
had spoken; offices, stock exchanges, theatres, and roaring bars;
dance-halls full of shameless women, and dens where men would be
drugged and robbed. And what was he to gain for it all? What was the
price for so much sin and misery? Wealth for his Order! The biggest
account in that brick bank, blocks of bonds and shares, sheafs of
mortgages! Good God, how had he dared set his hand to such an infamy!
And if, by way of penance, he were to build a church, the great
church of which he had dreamed, with lofty windows of stained glass,
and an organ that would shake the very ground, and bells tempered
with hundredweights of silver, who, indeed, would there be left to
worship in it? What had gold-seekers to do with Christ, with God, with
the Blessed Virgin? There might appear, perhaps, a few brown faces,
changed and heartbroken, a few shrinking figures in the rags of the
disinherited, who would appeal to him for comfort in their extremity.
Ah, how could he look at them, these that he had wronged?

Mercy of God, let the accursed gold lie undug!

In an agony of self-denunciation, he walked hither and thither, without
looking, without caring where he went, treading the phantom streets of
that city of his dreams. He talked aloud and gesticulated to himself;
he knelt at the foot of a palm and prayed; he was overwhelmed by his
own powerlessness in the face of that impending calamity. He could see
no help, he could find no solace. And yet, all the while he felt, with
an intense conviction that belied the supplicating words on his lips,
that it lay with him, and him alone, to save his people. Thus writhing
in the coil of his perplexities, despairing and half mad at the
unavertible ruin he knew no way to avoid, he suddenly found himself at
his own door, confronting the man who had brought them all to such a
pass.

“My word, father!” cried Michael, “you don’t look fit for another day
up there. Why, if you could see your face in the glass it would give
you the shakes; you ought to be in bed.”

He would have passed on, but the priest caught him by the arm.

“Michael,” he broke out, “Michael, stop and listen to me. I have
something important to tell you--something that must be said, however
little you may like to hear it. I--I find I cannot permit this to go
any further.”

The lay brother stopped short.

“You cannot permit what?” he demanded.

“This digging of gold,” cried the priest; “this crime we have in mind
against these people, this crime against ourselves. Do you count our
vows for nothing, our holy vocation, the fact that God has set us
apart to guard the flocks he has confided to us? Fall on your knees,
miserable boy, and beg His pardon for your impiety--here, even as I
have done; down, down with you!” The old priest’s voice rose to a
scream; he wound his skinny arms round his companion, and calling on
the saints for help, tried to force him to the earth.

The lay brother grew suddenly pale, and, with a violent movement, shook
himself free.

“You old fool!” he exclaimed. “Keep your dirty hands off me, I tell
you. Leave me alone.”

“I forbid you to take another step,” cried the priest. “In the name of
God I forbid you.”

“See here,” said Michael, somewhat recovering himself, “I don’t want
to quarrel with you. I would rather cut off my right hand than quarrel
with you. I need you; and if you only had the sense to see it, you
would know that you need me. It would be a rotten business if we ruined
each other.”

“Why can’t you take the gold you have, and go?” exclaimed the father.
“Leave the island and content yourself that you have got a competence.
It is more already than you could have gained by a lifetime of honest
work.”

“I mean to stay just where I am,” returned the lay brother, “regardless
of whether you like it or don’t like it; I mean to stand by all my
rights, with you if I can, without you if I must. You can do me lots of
harm, and skim no end of cream off my milk; though I don’t think you
have much to gain by doing it, or that the niggers you are so fond of
will be greatly benefited. You have every reason to stand in with me,
both for your sake and theirs; and if the money cuts no figure with
you, you can surely see the sense of having some say in the subsequent
developments. That’s all I have time for now, though if you are more in
your right mind by evening I won’t mind talking it over with you again.”

With that last word Michael passed on, with an air of assurance
implying that all would come right. The old priest remained standing
in the path, sullenly looking after him; and he remained long in
that attitude, even after the brother’s black figure had dwindled
and disappeared into the distance. He felt utterly baffled, utterly
conquered; he wondered whether he had any more resistance in him; he
asked himself if God had forsaken him.

What was there now left for him to do, helpless and despairing as
he was, but to wait with what patience he might for the concluding
tragedy? After all, his own soul was clean; except for the one day,
when, in the exultation of the discovery, in the madness that had
temporarily possessed him, he had soiled his hands with the accursed
thing. He remembered, with self-disdain, how he had accepted the
partnership held out to him; how he had been dazzled, cajoled, swept
altogether off his feet by the importunity of the devil. But that was
all done with now. He would have none of the blood-money; if the knell
had sounded for his people, he at least would not profit by their ruin,
he at least would not transmute their agony into gold. The others could
do that; Michael and his white savages; the hosts that were to come.
Had the young man no conscience, no compassion? Was he simply a wall of
selfishness, against which one might beat in vain? Oh, the hypocrite,
the months he had lived a lie! Oh, the remorseless devil and his gold!
How could God endure such things? A man like that ought to be struck
down by thunderbolts; people ought to kill him like a mad dog.

The thought made him tremble. If Michael were dead, who would ever know
about the gold? Had it not lain there all these years, latently evil
in the earth, no one dreaming of its existence? Why should it not
continue to lie for ever, powerless for all mischief, or until such a
time, perhaps, when men would no longer count it a thing of price; when
it would be relegated to museums for the curious to stare at, side by
side with the wampum of Indians, cowry-shells, and the white beards
that pass for money in the Marquesas. Ah, were it not for Michael!

His hands shook and he began to pant for breath. Were it not better
that one should suffer than the many? one rather than a thousand? one
rather than a whole race, with countless generations yet unborn? He
looked down on the roofs of the village, a sight endeared to him by the
recollections of so many years; he saw, in the brilliant sunshine, amid
the houses that had sheltered them in life, the mossy tombs he knew
so well. There, under the shadow, lay Soalu, his first friend; there,
the black-browed Puluaoao, the heathen, the libertine, who had first
thwarted and then had loved him; there, the earth that covered Lala’ai,
in whose bright eyes he had looked once and never dared to look again,
whose memory was still as sweet to him as on the day she died; there
lay To, the silver-tongued; Silei, the poet; Lapongi, the _muaau_,
with a dozen bullets through his headless corpse; Faamuina, Tupua,
Sisimaile--how many there were! He had loved those honest hearts now
mouldering in the grave; to some he had given messages to carry beyond
the unknown river to those dark comrades who had already gone. He loved
their children, now men and women, who had been held out to him by
dying arms, and whom he had led crying from the house of bereavement
to comfort as best he could. For nigh twenty years he had been the
ruler and lawgiver of the bay, the trusted adviser of great chiefs, the
faithful priest, the ever-welcome friend. Should he desert his people
now?

He went into the cook-house, where Ngalo was sitting on the steps
playing hymns on his mouth-organ.

“Ngalo,” he said, “I want your rifle and some cartridges.”

The boy looked up at his master’s face with astonishment,--the ways of
whites were past all understanding,--and it was not until he was asked
a second time that he rose and sought his gun.

The priest tried to say something by way of explanation, but the words
would not come. He could do nothing but take the gun in silence, and
charge the magazine with an unsteady hand, while the boy’s eyes grew
bigger and bigger.

“Doubtless your Excellency has seen a wild cow in the bush?” Ngalo at
length inquired.

The father nodded and turned to go.

“Blessed be the hunting!” cried the boy after him from the door, before
resuming the strains of “There’s a land that is fairer than day.”

“Blessed be the home-stayers,” returned the priest, with conventional
politeness.

       *       *       *       *       *

At last he was at the place--at the foot of the second ladder, on the
narrow ledge that overlooked the third. He scarcely knew why he had
been led to choose this spot, for the top would surely have done as
well. But the ladder there was shorter, and a desperate man might let
himself drop below, or rush up like lightning before one could pull a
second trigger. The third ladder was immensely long; Michael himself
had once said that it was sixty feet or more; in the middle of it a man
was helpless. If he fell it would be to smash to pieces on the rocks
beneath; if he elected to climb, it would be in the face of a dozen
bullets.

He threw himself on the ground, and sat cross-legged, with the rifle
resting in his lap. He was haunted by a dread that the lay brother
might still outwit him; that he might burst on him from behind with a
mocking laugh; or dart up unexpectedly from the very edge of the cliff.
He wondered how Michael would look with a bullet through his face. He
remembered such a wound in the Talavao war, when he had helped to bury
the killed; and the thought of it made him shudder. He tried to pray,
but the words froze on his lips. What had a murderer to do with prayer?
But he was not yet a murderer--not yet. There was still time to draw
back; there was still time to save his soul from everlasting hell. How
dared he hesitate when all eternity was at stake? He was shocked at
himself, at his own resolution, at his own courage and steadfastness.
He meant to kill the lay brother, even if the skies were to fall. He
was there to make a sublime sacrifice for the sake of those he loved.
Let hell do its worst. He would say between the torments: “I saved
them! I saved them!” His only dread was that his hand might tremble on
the trigger; that at the supreme moment he might flinch and fail; that
he might throw his weapon from him in uncontrollable horror.

Hark! what was that? Mercy of God, what was that?

He peeped stealthily over the edge.

Michael was standing at the foot of the ladder.

The priest felt a sudden sinking in the region of the stomach.
Something seemed to say to him: “But that’s flesh and blood; that’s a
_man_!” He would have given worlds to have dispossessed himself of the
rifle; lies and explanations crowded to his lips; his teeth chattered
in his head. Then, as he cowered impotently to the ground, the ladder
shook with the weight of Michael’s feet on the lowest rung.

He tried to pull himself together; but under the stress of that
overwhelming agitation the mechanical part of him seemed to stop. He
had to tell himself to breathe; his heart suffocated within his breast.
He gasped like a drowning man, drawing in the air with great, tremulous
sighs as his choking throat relaxed. Suddenly he ceased altogether to
be himself; he became a phantom in a dream; a twitching, crazy creature
whom he saw through a sort of mist, dizzily centred in a whirl of
forest and sky.

He looked over and saw that Michael was more than half-way up. The lay
brother’s whole body spoke of dejection and fatigue, of a long day’s
work not yet ended, and it was evident that the heavy can slung from
his neck was for once more of a burden than a satisfaction. He raised
his weary eyes, and with a kind of a shock encountered those of Father
Studby peering down at him from above. He cried out inarticulately, and
began to redouble his exertions, smiling and panting as he did so.

Still as in a dream, the priest leaned boldly over the precipice, and
dropped the point of his rifle until its farther sight was dancing
across the lay brother’s face, which, in swift gradations, underwent
the whole gamut of dismay, astonishment, and utter stupefaction. For
an instant Michael faltered and hung back; he even slunk down a step,
speechless and as white as death. Then, of a sudden, he broke out into
shrill peals of laughter, followed by a torrent of gabble, brisk,
friendly, and tremblingly insincere, such as one might address to a
madman from whom it is dangerous to run. He had struck a new place,
he cried. My word! there was no end to it--pockets upon pockets only
waiting to be washed out. It was at the fifth waterfall, not far from
the dam by the banyan-tree, and he had worked there all day with
extraordinary success. The other place was good enough, to be sure,
with its average of three pounds and more, but this at the fifth
waterfall was the real McKay. The father must positively come down and
see it at once; positively you could see the nuggets shining in every
spadeful; no matter if it were late, the father must come. He had
better leave his gun on the top, for who was there to touch it?

Father Studby never turned from his position, nor made the least
pretence of answering the breathless patter with which the brother
tried to shield himself. Like a rock he waited, while the miserable man
below him, sweating with fear, moved slowly into point-blank range.
Talk as he might, with a volubility that grew increasingly anxious
and incoherent, Michael realised at last that his time had come. He
stopped; he raised his hand convulsively; he cried out in a broken
voice: “Oh, for God’s sake, don’t kill me!”

Even as he did so, the father pulled the trigger.

Then he turned, reclimbed the ladders, and went home.

       *       *       *       *       *

That night the priest went outside the reef in his canoe, and emptied
Michael’s store of gold-dust into the sea, scattering it like seed on
the ocean floor at a point where the tide ran swiftest. On his return,
with a cunning that seemed to him the inspiration of the devil, he got
out the lay brother’s spare hat and some of the clothes that were in
his chest, and left them, to tell their own tale, on the sandy beach.
At dawn he made his way back to the valley, still sustained, in spite
of all his fatigue, by a consuming fire of activity. He felt that the
sands of his own life were running out; that at any moment he might be
struck down himself by an unseen hand; that those strange, benumbing
premonitions in his brain bade him imperiously to close the chapter of
his crime. The horror of dying with his purpose unfulfilled spurred him
on to desperate exertions. He stumbled again and again on the path;
he had recurring fits of giddiness, when the sun seemed darkened to
his eyes, when for a space he half forgot his dreadful errand, and
wondered to find himself in the bush. He expected, when he reached the
brink of the cliff and began to descend the long, shaky ladders, to
feel some recrudescence of the emotions of the day before. But, to his
own surprise, he discovered in himself a callousness that set all such
qualms at defiance; he had exhausted, in the course of those last forty
hours, all his capacity for such paralysing susceptibilities; like some
soldier after the battle, he was sated with the horrors through which
he had passed, and had become altogether deadened to those about him.
Even when he stood on the very place from which Michael had made his
last appeal, and, looking in the air above, more than half expected
to see the protruding muzzle of another rifle, he felt, indeed, no
answering thrill or perturbation. The burden of his own fatigue seemed
of greater moment than this reliving of a tragedy; and the thought of
how much there was for him still to do moved him infinitely more.

At the foot of the ladder, shrunken and disordered, the corpse of
the dead brother lay tumbled in the grass like a sack. With his face
upturned to the sky, his sightless eyes, filming with corruption, his
tangled hair in a slime of blood and dirt, he opposed a ghastly barrier
to the old priest’s further progress; and seemed, even in death itself,
to continue to resist and defy him. But the father had passed the stage
when such a sight could turn him back, though he faltered for a moment
in the throes of an unconquerable disgust before daring at last to set
his foot across the body. Even when he did so, driving off the swarming
flies with both his hands, it was with an agony of precaution against
the least contact with that dead flesh.

Descending into the valley, he drew together all the tell-tale
evidences of their work below, the cradles, picks, and shovels, the
tins and boxes and ends of boards and scantlings, which had been
carried, at one time and another, into that secluded place, and buried
them in one of the deepest holes along the stream. He broke down the
dams that Michael had spent days in building, the stones that had
been piled aside to uncover the ground of some new pocket, the rough
shelters he had raised here and there against the sun; he obliterated
with his knife the marks that had been blazed upon the trees, and
searched everywhere, with a feverish pertinacity that took him again
and again over the same ground, for the least detail that he might have
overlooked.

Then, in a drip of sweat, and exhausted to such a pitch that he
wondered whether he should ever leave the valley alive, he took the
spade he had kept by him to the last, and mounted the bottom ladder.
As he went he cut away the lashings that bound it to the rock, and
from the top sent it headlong behind him. In the same manner, resting
painfully at each stopping-place, he detached the second ladder and
the third, arriving once more at the wide shelf where he had meant to
dig the grave. But his little strength suddenly forsook him; he was
overcome by a deadly nausea; he could hardly stand, much less dig. He
cast the spade into a thicket, and with unflinching resolution detached
the can of gold-dust from the dead man’s neck. That, at least, should
not remain to tell its tale, and he let the stuff dribble through his
fingers over the cliff.

To do more was impossible. His only thought now was to escape; to climb
up into the fresher air above; to save himself while there was yet
time. That unmoving, silent thing in the grass, obscurely dissolving
into decay, must perforce be left as it was, to bear its horrible
witness against him. The declining margin of his strength filled him
with a frenzy of fear that if he waited overlong he might wait for
ever. Between the two risks, the one of a possible detection, the other
of a doom unspeakable, he did not venture to pause. He felt, indeed,
an extraordinary sense of relief as he began, rung by rung, to rise
above the narrow ledge; and with relief a strange fatalism, in which it
seemed to him that everything had been predestined from the beginning
of the world. As he clung to the ladder, overcome at times by spells of
faintness which he knew might bring him to the point of letting go his
hold, he was always sustained by the thought that the issue lay with
destiny. He would live, or he would fall, as it had been written.

In this singular humour, in which all human responsibility for good or
evil seemed to count for nothing, the priest continued to mount the
steep face of the cliff. He rested at every second step; he struggled
against the recurring fits of giddiness that threatened to dash him
from his perch; he fought his way up inch by inch, wondering all the
time with a grim composure whether or not he was ever destined to reach
the top. When at last he drew himself into a coign of safety and sent
the great ladder crashing in his wake, when at last he put his foot
on the final goal and lay down beneath the trees, then it was that he
began to realise the perils to which he had so nearly succumbed, and to
quake with a thousand belated apprehensions.

For an hour he remained huddled in the grass, starting at every sound,
and altogether daunted by the thought of returning to the village. How
would he dare encounter those familiar faces, take up the threads of
the old familiar life, endure those awful days to come when the mystery
of Michael’s disappearance would be in every mouth? Could he trust
himself to simulate the concern he was bound to show, the surprise,
the alarm, the increasing astonishment and horror as the days passed
and there would be still no news of the missing man? Ah, could he
trust himself? Had he in him the power to live such a lie, to go as
usual about his duties, to hear the confessions of others when his own
tortured heart was so dark with guilt?

       *       *       *       *       *

When, with faltering steps, he at length reached the village, it was
to find the whole place in a tumult. Every canoe was afloat; a couple
of whale-boats were scouring the outer bay; and the _malae_, usually
so deserted on a hot afternoon, was overrun by an excited throng. Had
he not, then, heard the news? It was thought that the Helper had been
drowned that morning, and the boats were now searching for his body!
Behold, here were the unfortunate’s clothes, found even as they were,
and by order of the chief left untouched for the priest himself to see;
here, too, was old Lefao, the shrill mother of Pa’a, who had seen the
young man go in to his death, and had heard his sinking cry. “Lefao,
make for his Excellency a repetition of that mournful sound, and show
how he cast up his arms as thou watchedst him from the beach.” The old
impostor was enjoying all the importance of having such a tale to tell,
and the father winced under a pang of shame as he listened to this
unexpected confederate.

It was afterwards thought that the sad affair must have unhinged Father
Studby’s mind, for he subsequently began to show symptoms of serious
mental disturbance, which culminated a few months later in his tragic
suicide. A marble pillar, the outcome of a public subscription in
Sydney, was raised to the memory of these two martyrs of the cross. In
faded letters, beneath their crumbling names, one can still spell out
the lies:

    IN LIFE THEY WERE TOGETHER;
  IN DEATH THEY WERE NOT DIVIDED.




AMATUA’S SAILOR




AMATUA’S SAILOR


Amatua was running down a beautifully shaded road as fast as his
little legs would carry him, and close in chase, like a hawk after a
sparrow, was a grizzled man-of-war’s-man with a switch. The road was
long and straight; on both sides it was bordered by prickly hedges
bright with limes, and as impenetrable as a tangle of barbed wire. At
every step the white man gained on the boy, until the latter could
hear the hoarse, angry breath of his pursuer. Amatua stopped short,
and before he could even so much as turn he found himself in a grip
of iron. Whish, whish, whish! dashed the switch on his bare back and
legs, keen and stinging like the bite of fire-ants. It took all the
little fellow’s manliness to keep him from bellowing aloud. The tears
sprang to his eyes,--even the son of a chief is human like the rest of
us,--but he would not cry.

“What’s all this?” rang out a voice, as a white man reined in his
horse beside them--a tall man in spectacles, who spoke with an air of
authority.

The sailor touched his hat. “Why, sir, you’d scarcely believe it,” he
said, “the fuss I’ve had with this young savage! First he tried to
lose me in the woods. I didn’t think nothing of that; but when he got
me into a river for a swim, and then made off with my clothes, and hid
’em under a tree--I might have been looking for ’em yet, me that must
be aboard my ship at twelve o’clock. Why, it might have cost me my
stripe! I tell you, I never dreamed of such a thing, for me and Am have
been friends ever since the first day I came ashore. He’s no better
than a treacherous little what-d’ye-call-’em!”

“The chief says thou hidst his clothes,” said the stranger, in the
native language. “He says thou triedst to lose him in the woods.”

“Ask him if I haven’t always been a good friend to him,” said the
sailor. “Ask him who gave him the knife with the lanyard, and who made
him the little spear to jug fish on the reef. Just you ask him that,
sir.”

“Your Highness,” said Amatua, in his own tongue, “Bill doesn’t
understand. I love Bill, and I don’t want him to drown. I want to save
Bill’s high-chief life.”

“And so thou hidst Bill’s clothes,” said the stranger. “That was a fine
way to help him!”

“Be not angry,” said Amatua. “Great is the wisdom of white chiefs in
innumerable things, but there are some little, common, worthless things
that they don’t understand at all.”

“Tell him I’m a leading seaman, sir,” went on Bill, who of course
understood not a word of what Amatua was saying, and whose red, tired
face still showed his indignation.

“The old women say that a great evil is about to befall us,” said
Amatua, gravely, entirely disregarding Bill. “Everybody is talking of
it, your Highness, even the wise minister from Malua College, Toalua,
whose wisdom is like that of Solomon. There’s to be a storm from the
north--a storm that will break the ships into ten thousand pieces, and
line the beach with dead. Last night I could not sleep for thinking
of Bill. Then I said to myself, ‘I will lose Bill for two days in the
woods, and then he won’t be drowned at all.’ But Bill is wise, and made
the sun guide him back to the right road. Then I made Bill bathe, and
tried to steal his clothes. But Bill looked and looked and looked, and
when he found them he thought I was a very bad boy.”

The stranger laughed, and translated all this long explanation to Bill.

“Goodness gracious!” said Bill. “Do you mean that the kid believes this
fool superstition, and was trying to save me from the wreck?”

“That’s it,” said the stranger. “I’ve known Amatua for a long time, and
I think he’s a pretty square boy.”

“Why, bless his little heart,” said the sailor, catching up the boy
in his arms, “I might have known he couldn’t mean no harm! I tell
you, we’ve been like father and son, me and Am has, up to this little
picnic. But just you say to him, sir, that, storm or no storm, Bill’s
place is the post of duty, and that he’d rather die there than live to
be disgraced.”

But the white man had other work to do than translating for Bill and
Amatua. He rode off and left them to trudge along on foot. Half an hour
later they reached the beach, and saw the ships-of-war tugging heavily
at their anchors. The weather looked dark and threatening, and a leaden
surf was pounding the outer reefs. It appeared no easy matter to get
Bill into the boat that was awaiting him, for she was full of men bound
for the ship, and difficult to manage in the ebb and sweep of the seas.
Bill’s face grew stern as he stared before him. He walked to the end of
the wharf, and took a long, hawk-like look to seaward, never heeding
the shaking woodwork nor the breakers that wet him to the knees. There
was something ominous to Amatua in the sight of those deep-rolling
ships and the piercing brightness of their ensigns and signal-flags.
He was troubled, too, to see Bill so reckless in wetting his beautiful
blue trousers and reducing his sliding feet, as the natives call shoes,
his lovely patent-leather, silk-laced _se’evae_, to a state of pulp.
He tried to draw him back, and pointed to the shoes as a receding
wave left them once more to view. But Bill only laughed,--not one of
his big hearty laughs, but the ghost of a laugh,--and a queer look
came into his blue eyes. He walked slowly back to the boat, which was
still rising and falling beside the wharf with its load of silent men.
Suddenly he ran his hand into his pocket, and almost before Amatua
could realise what it all meant, he felt Bill’s watch in his hand,
and a round heavy thing that was unmistakably a dollar, and something
soft and silken that could be nothing else than the sailor’s precious
handkerchief. A second later Bill was in the boat, the tiller under his
arm, while a dozen backs bent to drive him seaward. Amatua stood on
the wharf and cried. He forgot the watch and the dollar and the silk
handkerchief; he thought only of Bill,--his friend Bill,--the proud
chief who would rather die at his post than find a coward’s place on
shore. “Come back, Bill,” he cried, as he ran out to the end of the
wharf, never caring for the waves that were dashing higher and higher.
But the boat held on her course, dipping into the seas or rising like
a storm-bird on some cresting comber until she vanished at last behind
the towering _Trenton_.

Amatua did not sob for long. He was a practical boy, and knew that it
could not help Bill,--poor Bill!--who already had all the salt water
he cared about. So Amatua made his way back to land, and sought out a
quiet spot where he could look at his new treasure and calculate on the
most profitable way of spending his dollar. You could not say that the
dollar burned a hole in his pocket, for Amatua did not use pockets, and
his only clothes consisted of a little strip of very dingy cotton; but
he was just as anxious to spend it as an American boy with ten pockets.
First he looked at the watch. It was a lovely watch. It was none of
your puny watches such as white ladies wear, but a thumping big chief
of a watch, thick and heavy, with a tick like a missionary clock. It
was of shining silver, and the back of it was all engraved and carved
with ships and dolphins. Bill had shown it to him a hundred times when
they had strolled about the town, or had gone, hand in hand, in search
of many a pleasant adventure. It brought the tears to Amatua’s eyes
to recall it all, and he pushed the watch aside to have a look at the
handkerchief. This was another old friend. It was of the softest,
thickest silk, such as girls delight in, all red and green and blue and
yellow, like the colours of a rainbow.

There was nothing small about Bill. Even the dollar seemed bigger and
fatter than any Amatua had seen; but then it must be remembered that
dollars had seldom come his way. Oh, that dollar! How was he to spend
it so that it would reach as far as two dollars?--a financial problem
every one has had to grapple with at some time or another.

He was well up in the price of hardtack. The price fluctuated in
Apia--all the way from twelve for a quarter up to eighteen for a
quarter. Quality did not count; at any rate, Amatua was not one of
those boys who mind a little mustiness in their hardtack, or that
slight suspicion of rancid whale-oil which is a characteristic of the
cheaper article. Hardtack was hardtack, and eighteen were better than
twelve. Here was one quarter gone, and hardtack made way for soap.
Yes, he must have soap. Even yesterday old Lu’au had said: “War is a
terrible thing. It makes one’s heart shake like a little mouse in one’s
body. But lack of soap is worse than war. You can get used to war; but
who ever got used to going without soap?” Yes, there must be soap to
gladden old Lu’au. This meant another quarter.

As to the third purchase there could be no manner of doubt; some
_’ava_, the white, dry root which, pounded in water and strained by the
dexterous use of a wisp of fibre, supplies the Samoan for the lack of
every comfort. Oh, how the _’ava_ would rejoice his father in those
dismal woods, where he lay with the famishing army, bearing hunger,
cold, and misery with uncomplaining fortitude. And it should be none
of that dusty, spotted stuff that so many traders sell to unknowing
whites, or natives in a hurry, but the white _’ava_ from Vaea, which
grows the very finest in the South Seas. And the last quarter? How
was that to go? Was it to be a new _lava lava_, or a white singlet,
or two rusty cans of salmon, or some barrel beef? Amatua would have
dearly loved some marbles; but in the depressed state of the family’s
finances these were not to be thought of. The beef was the thing; the
strong, rank beef that comes in barrels; you could get a slab of it
for a quarter, and Latapie, the French trader, would give you a box of
matches besides, or a few fish-hooks, for every quarter you spent at
his store.

Having finished his calculations, Amatua started off to do his
shopping. Even in the short time he had spent in the corner of the
ruined church the sea had noticeably risen and was now thundering
along the beach, while on the reefs a gleaming spray hung above the
breakers like a mist. The stormy sky was splashed with ragged clouds
and streaked with flying scud. At their moorings the seven ships rolled
under until they seemed to drown the very muzzles of their guns; and
the inky vapour that oozed from their funnels, and the incessant shrill
shrieking of the boatswains’ whistles, all told a tale of brisk and
anxious preparation. “Oh, poor Bill!” thought Amatua, and looked away.
The wharf from which he had seen the last of his friend was already a
wreck, nothing showing of it but the jagged stumps as the seas rolled
back.

Two boys told him that a boat of Misi Moa’s had been smashed to pieces,
and that a big whaler from Lufilufi that pulled fifty oars had shared
the same fate. Knots of white traders stood gazing solemnly out to sea;
the provost guards from the ships were ransacking the town for the few
men they still missed, and they were told to hurry or their boats would
never live to carry them back. There was a general air of apprehension
and excitement; people were nailing up their windows and drawing in
their boats before the encroaching ocean; and the impressiveness
of the situation was not a little heightened by the heavy guard of
blue-jackets lined up before the German consulate, and the throngs of
Tamasese’s warriors that swarmed everywhere about, fierce of mien in
that unfriendly town, with their faces blackened for war, and their
hands encumbered with rifles and head-knives. But Amatua had no time
to think of such things; the signs of war were familiar to him, and
the armed and overbearing adversaries of his tribe and people were no
longer so terrible as they once had been.

The increasing roar of the sea and the wild sky that spoke of the
impending gale kept the thought of Bill close to his heart, and he went
about his business with none of the pleasure that the spending of
money once involved. Not that he forgot his prudence or his skill at
bargaining in the anxiety for Bill that tore his little heart. By dint
of walking and chaffering, he came off with twenty hardtack for his
first quarter; with the soap he extorted a package of starch; and after
he had sniffed beef all the way from Sogi to Vaiala,--a distance of two
miles,--he became the proprietor of a hunk at least six ounces heavier
than the ruling price allowed. The _’ava_ was of a superb quality, fit
for a king to drink.

It was late when Amatua got home and crept into the great beehive
of a house that had been the pride of his father’s heart. The girls
shouted as they saw him, and old Lu’au clapped her hands as her quick
eyes perceived the soap. His mother alone looked sad--his poor mother,
who used to be so gay and full of fun in that happy time before the
war. She had never been the same since her cousin, the divinity
student, had brought back her brother’s head from the battle-field of
Luatuanuu--that terrible battle-field where the best blood of Samoa was
poured out like water.

She looked anxiously at Amatua’s parcels, and motioned him to her side,
asking him in a low voice how and where he had got them.

“It was this way,” said Amatua. “Bill and I are brothers. What is
mine is Bill’s; what is Bill’s is mine. We are two, but in heart we
are one. That’s how I understand Bill, though he talks only the white
man’s stutter. ‘Amatua,’ he said, just before he got into the boat,--I
mean what he said in his heart, for there was not time for words,--‘we
are all of us in God’s high-chief hands this day; a storm is coming,
and my place is on my ship, where I shall live or be cast away, as God
wills. Take you this dollar and spend it with care for the comfort of
all our family; take my very valuable watch, that ticks louder than a
missionary clock, and my handkerchief of silk, the like of which there
is not in Samoa, and keep them for me. My life is God’s alone, but
these things belong to all of our family. Stand firm in the love of
God, and strengthen your heart to obey his high-chief will.’”

       *       *       *       *       *

It was late when Amatua awoke. The house was empty save for old Lu’au,
who was kindling a fire on the hearth. A strange uproar filled the
air, the like of which Amatua had never heard before--the tramp of
multitudes as they rushed and shouted, deafening explosions, and the
shrill, high scream of the long-expected gale. Amatua leaped from his
mats, girded up his loin-cloth, and ran headlong into the night. It
was piercing cold, and he shivered like a leaf, but he took thought
of nothing. He ran for the beach, which lay at no great distance from
his father’s house, and was soon panting down the lane beside Mr.
Eldridge’s store. It was flaming with lights and filled with a buzzing
crowd of whites and natives; and on the front verandah there lay the
dripping body of a sailor with a towel over his upturned face. The
beach was jammed with people, and above the fury of the gale and the
roaring breakers which threatened to engulf the very town there rang
out the penetrating voices of the old war chiefs as they vociferated
their orders and formed up their men. Even as Amatua stood dazed and
almost crushed in the mob, there was a sudden roar, a rush of feet, and
a narrow lane opened to a dozen powerful men springing through with the
bodies of two sailors.

Amatua turned and fought his way seaward, boring through the crowd to
where the seas swept up to his ankles, and he could make out the lights
of the men-of-war. There was a ship on the reef; he could see the
stupendous tangle of her yards and rigging; every wave swept in some
of her perishing crew. The undertow ran out like a mill-race; living
men were tossed up the beach like corks, only to be sucked back again
to destruction. The Samoans were working with desperation to save the
seamen’s lives, and more than one daring rescuer was himself swept into
the breakers.

Amatua found himself beside a man who had just been relieved, and was
thunderstruck to find that it was no other than Oa, an old friend of
his, who had been in the forest with Mataafa.

“How do you happen here, Chief Oa?” shouted Amatua.

“The Tamaseses have retired on Mulinuu,” said Oa. “It is Mataafa’s
order that we come and save what lives we can.”

“Germans, too?” asked Amatua, doubtfully, never forgetful of his
father’s wound, or of his uncle who fell at Luatuanuu.

“We are not at war with God,” said the chief, sternly. “To-night there
is peace in every man’s heart.”

Amatua stood long beside his friend, peering into that great void in
which so many men were giving up their lives. Sometimes he could make
out the dim hulls of ships when they loomed against the sky-line or as
the heavens brightened for an instant. Bodies kept constantly washing
in, nearly all of them Germans, as Amatua could tell by their uniforms,
or, if these were torn from them in the merciless waters, by the
prevalence of yellow hair and fair skins. Amatua shrank from the sight
of these limp figures, and it was only his love for Bill that kept him
on the watch. Poor Bill! How had he fared this night? Was he even now
tumbling in the mighty rollers, his last duty done on this sorrowful
earth, his brave heart still for ever? Or did he lie, as so many lay
that night here and there about the town, wrapped in blankets in some
white man’s house or native chief’s, safe and sound, beside a blazing
fire?

Amatua at last grew tired of waiting there beside Oa. The cold ate
into his very bones, and the crowd pressed and trampled on him without
ceasing. He cared for nothing so long as he thought he might find Bill;
but he now despaired of that and began to think of his tired little
self. He forced his way back, and moved aimlessly along from house to
house, looking in at the lighted windows in the vain hope of seeing
Bill. Of dead men there were plenty, but he could not bear to look
at them too closely. He was worn out by the horror and excitement he
had undergone, and when his eyes closed, as they sometimes would, he
seemed to see Bill’s face dancing before him. He was a very tired boy
by the time he made his way home and threw himself once again on the
mats in that empty house.

It was a strange sight that met Amatua’s gaze the next day on the
Apia beach. The wind had fallen, and the mountainous waves of the
previous night had given way to a heavy ground-swell. But the ships,
the wreckage of ships, the ten thousand and one things--the million
and one things--which lined the beach for a distance of two miles! One
German man-of-war had gone down with every soul on board; another--the
_Adler_--lay broken-backed and sideways on the reef; the _Olga_ had
been run ashore, and looked none the worse for her adventure. The
United States ship _Vandalia_ was a total wreck, and half under water;
close to her lay the _Trenton_, with her gun-deck awash; and within a
pistol-shot of both was the old _Nipsic_, her nose high on land. The
British ship, the _Calliope_, was nowhere to be seen, having forced her
way to sea in the teeth of the hurricane.

Amatua went almost crazy at the sight of what lay strewn on the beach
that morning. He ran hither and thither, picking up one thing and
then throwing it away for another he liked better: here an officer’s
full-dress coat gleaming with gold lace, there a photograph-album
in a woful state, some twisted rifles, and a broom; everywhere an
extraordinary hotchpotch of things diverse and innumerable. Amatua
found an elegant sword not a bit the worse for its trip ashore, an
officer’s gold-laced cap, and a ditty-box, full of pins and needles and
sewing-gear and old letters. He would also have carried off a tempting
little cannon had it weighed anything under a quarter of a ton; as it
was, he covered it with sand, and stood up the broom to mark the place,
which, strange to say, he has never been able to find since. He got
a cracked bell next, a tin of pork and beans, a bottle of varnish, a
one-pound Hotchkiss shell, a big platter, and a German flag! This he
thought enough for one load, and made his triumphant way home, where he
tried pork and beans for the first time in his life--and did not like
them.

It would have fared badly with him, for there was nothing in the house
for him to eat save a few green bananas, had it not been for the Samoan
pastor next door. The pastor had hauled a hundred-pound barrel of
prime mess pork out of the surf, and in the fulness of his heart he
was dividing slabs of it among his parishioners. Another neighbour had
salvaged eleven cans of biscuit-pulp, which, though a trifle salt, was
yet good enough to eat.

In fact, Amatua ate a rather hearty breakfast, and lingered longer
over it than perhaps was well for the best interests of his family. By
the time he returned to the beach the cream had been skimmed from the
milk. True, there was no lack of machinery and old iron, and mountains
of tangled rope and other ship’s gear; but there was no longer the
gorgeous profusion of smaller articles, for ten thousand busy hands
had been at work since dawn. Amatua searched for an hour, and got
nothing but a squashy stamp-album and a musical box in the last stages
of dissolution.

He realised regretfully that he could hope for nothing more, and
after trading his album to a half-caste boy for a piece of lead, and
exchanging the musical box for six marbles, he again bent his energies
to the finding of Bill.

For fear of a conflict, the naval commanders had divided their forces.
The Germans were encamped at one end of the town, the Americans at
the other, and armed sentries paced between. Amatua had never seen so
many white men in his life, and he knew scarcely which way to turn
first. He was bewildered by the jostling host that encompassed him on
every side, by the busy files that were marshalled away to work, the
march and countermarch of disciplined feet, the shrill pipe of the
boatswains’ calls, and the almost ceaseless bugling. He looked long and
vainly for Bill in every nook and cranny of the town. He watched beside
the _Nipsic_ for an hour; he forced the guard-house, and even made his
way into the improvised hospital, dodging the doctors and the tired
orderlies. But all in vain. He trudged into Savalalo and Songi, where
the Germans were gathered, fearing lest Bill might have been thrown
into chains by those haughty foemen; but he found nothing but rows of
dead, and weary men digging graves. He stopped officers on the street,
and kind-faced seamen and marines, and asked them earnestly if they had
seen Bill. Some paid no attention to him; others laughed and passed
on; one man slapped him in the face.

When he came back from the German quarter he found a band playing in
front of Mr. Moors’s store, and noticed sentries about the place,
and important-looking officers, with swords and pistols. He was told
that the admiral was up-stairs, and that Mr. Moors’s house was now
the headquarters of the American forces. A great resolution welled up
in Amatua’s heart. If there was one man on earth that ought to know
about Bill, it was the admiral. Amatua dodged a sentry, and running
up the steps, he crept along the verandah, and peeped into the room
which Kimberly had exchanged for his sea-swept cabin. The admiral sat
at a big table strewn inches high with papers, reports, and charts.
He was writing in his shirt-sleeves, and on the chair beside him lay
his uniform coat and gold-laced cap. At another table two men were
also writing; at another a single man was nibbling a pen as he stared
at the paper before him. It reminded Amatua of the pastor’s school.
Half a dozen officers stood grouped in one corner, whispering to one
another, their hands resting on their swords. It was all as quiet as
church, and nothing could be heard but the scratch of pens as they
raced across the paper. Suddenly a frowning officer noticed Amatua at
the door. “Orderly,” he cried, “drive away that boy”; and Amatua was
ignominiously seized, led down-stairs, and thrown roughly into the
street.

Amatua cried as though his little heart would break. He sat on the
front porch of the house, careless of the swarming folk about him, and
took a melancholy pleasure in being jostled and trampled on. Oh, it was
a miserable world! Bill was gone, and any one could cuff a little boy.
More than one sailor patted his curly head and lifted him in the air
and kissed him; but Amatua was too sore to care for such attentions.
It was cruel to think that the one man alone in Samoa who knew where
to find Bill, the great chief-captain up-stairs, was absolutely beyond
his power to reach. This thought was unbearable; he nerved himself to
try again; he recalled the admiral’s face, which was not unkindly,
though sad and stern. After all, nothing worse could befall him than
a beating. Again he dodged the lower sentry, and sprang up the stairs
like a cat. Again he gazed into that quiet room and listened to the
everlasting pens. This time he was discovered in an instant; the
orderly pounced at him, but Amatua, with his heart in his mouth, rushed
towards the admiral, and threw himself on his knees beside him. The old
man put a protecting arm round his neck, and the orderly, foiled in the
chase, could do nothing else than salute.

“Anderson,” said the admiral to an officer, “it is the second time the
boy has been here. I tell you he is after something, and we are not in
a position to disregard anything in this extraordinary country. He may
have a message from King Mataafa. Send for Moors.”

In a few moments that gentleman appeared, and was bidden to ask Amatua
what he wanted. The officers gathered close behind their chief, and
even the assiduous writers looked up.

“What does he want?” demanded the admiral, who had no time to spare.

“He wants to find a sailor named Bill,” said Moors. “He’s afraid Bill
is drowned, and thought he would ask you.”

Every one smiled save the admiral. “Are you sure that is all?” he said.

“He says he loved Bill very much,” said Moors, “and has searched the
beach and the hospital and even the lock-up without finding him. Says
he even waited alongside the _Nipsic_ for an hour.”

“Half my men are named Bill,” said Kimberly; “but I fear his Bill is
numbered with the rest of our brave fellows who went down last night.
Moors,” he went on, “take the lad below, and give him any little thing
he fancies in the store.”

Amatua did not know what might happen next, but he bravely tramped
beside Mr. Moors, prepared to face the worst. He felt dizzy and faint
when they got below, and Mr. Moors popped him up on the counter, and
asked him whether he would prefer candy or some marbles. “The great
chief-captain said thou wert a brave boy, and should have a present,”
said Mr. Moors.

Amatua shook his head. Somehow he had lost interest in such trifles.
“Thank his Majesty the admiral,” he said, “but an aching heart takes
no pleasure in such things. With thy permission I will go out and look
again for Bill. Perhaps, if I change my mind, I will come back and
choose marbles,” he added cautiously; and with that he scrambled off
the counter and made for the door.

“Oh, Bostock,” cried Moors to a naval officer lounging on the front
verandah, “if you have nothing better to do, just take this kid along
with you. He’s crazy to find a sailor named Bill, and he isn’t sure but
that he was drowned last night. He must be pretty well cut up if he
won’t take any marbles.”

Bostock stopped Amatua, and took his hand in his own. “We’ll go find
Bill,” he said.

Again was the search begun for Bill, along the main street; in the
alleys, and through the scattered native settlements behind the town as
far as the Uvea huts, at Vaimoso, and the slums of the Nieué Islanders.
Bostock let no seaman pass unnoticed; a heavy fatigue-party coming back
from work on the wrecks--sixty men and four officers--were lined up at
his request, and Amatua was led through the disciplined ranks in search
of Bill. Even the _Nipsic_ was boarded by the indefatigable Bostock
and the weary little boy; and although repairs were being rushed at a
tremendous pace, and every one looked overdriven and out of temper, the
huge ship was overhauled from top to bottom. From the grimy stoke-hole,
where everything dripped oil and the heat was insupportable, to the
great maintop where men were busy at the rigging; from the crowded
quarters of the seamen to the sodden and salt-smelling mess-room, in
which the red came off the cushions like blood, the pair made their way
in search of Bill.

Bostock led the boy back to land, and said good-bye to him at the
corner of the Apia Hotel. He tried to raise his spirits, and atone
for their failure to find Bill, by the present of a shilling. Amatua
accepted it with quiet gratitude, although the gift had not the
cheering effect that Bostock desired. The little fellow was sick at
heart, and all the shillings in the world could not have consoled him
for the loss of Bill. The naval officer followed him with his eyes as
he trudged sorrowfully home. He, too, had lost a lifelong friend in
that awful night.

Amatua gave up all hope of ever seeing Bill again, as time slipped
away and one day melted into another. He made friends with Bostock,
and spent many a pleasant hour in the company of that jovial officer,
following him about everywhere like a dog; but for all that he did not
love him as he had loved Bill. Those were exciting times in Apia, and
there was much to amuse and distract a little boy. In the day Bill
often passed from his thoughts, for the incessant panorama life had now
become almost precluded any other thought; but at night, when he awoke
in the early hours and heard the cocks calling, then it was that his
heart turned to Bill and overflowed with grief for his lost friend.

Two days after the storm--two as men count, but centuries in Amatua’s
calendar--the British ship _Calliope_ returned to port, strained and
battered by that terrible hour when she had pitted her engines against
the gale and taken her desperate dash for freedom.

But Amatua’s little head was far too full of something else for him to
bother about another man-of-war. Bostock had promised to take him to
the raft where men were diving for the _Trenton’s_ treasure-chest. He
knew all about men-of-war by this time, for he had the freedom of the
_Nipsic’s_ ward-room, and he took breakfast regularly with his friends,
the officers. They had given him a gold-laced cap and a tin sword,
and the tailor had made him a blue jacket with shoulder-straps and
brass buttons and the stripes of a second lieutenant. He had his own
appointed station when the ship beat to quarters; for the _Nipsic_ had
been got safely off the reef and once more divided the waters of the
bay.

It was a beautiful morning when they pulled out in a shore boat to the
raft where the work was in progress. As the Americans possessed no
diving apparatus, Kane, the British captain, had lent them the one he
carried, with six good men who had some experience in such matters.
Amatua was disappointed to find so little to interest him. He examined
the pump with which two men were keeping life in the diver below; but
he could not understand the sense of it, and the continuous noise soon
grew monotonous. Except a tin pail containing the men’s lunch, the
brass-bound breaker of drinking water, and some old clothes, there
was nothing in the world to attract a small boy. Amatua stood beside
Bostock and yawned; the little second lieutenant longed to be on shore
playing marbles with his friends in civil life. He was half asleep
when Bostock plucked his arm and pointed into the depths beneath. A
glittering shell-fish of ponderous weight and monstrous size was
slowly rising to the surface. Every one rushed to the side of the raft,
save only the two men at the pumps, who went on unmoved. Amatua clung
to Bostock. Higher and higher came the hideous shell-fish, until its
great, goggling-eyed head appeared horribly above the water. Amatua
turned faint. The crew behaved with incredible daring, and seized the
huge, bulging thing with the utmost fearlessness. It was frightful to
see it step on the raft and toil painfully to the centre, as though it
had been wounded in some mortal part. One of the men lifted a hammer as
though to kill it, and began to tap, tap, tap on some weak spot in the
neck. Then he threw down the hammer, detached the long suckers which
reached from the beast’s snout, and started to unscrew its very head
from its body. Amatua looked on confounded; he was shaking with horror,
yet the fascination of that brassy monster drew him close.

Suddenly the creature sank on its knees, and the man gripped the head
in both his hands and lifted it up. And underneath, wonder of wonders!
there was the face of a man--a white man.

And the white man was Bill!

With a cry Amatua threw himself into his friend’s arms, dripping though
he was. What did he care for the fine uniform, now that Bill was found
again!

“And where have you been all this time?” asked Bostock.

“Oh, I’m the boatswain’s mate of the _Calliope_,” said Bill; “and
what with the knocking about we got, I’ve been kept hard at it on the
rigging.”

“You have been badly missed,” said Bostock.

“Bless his old heart!” said the sailor, “I think a lot of my little Am.”




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Transcriber’s note:

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 62875 ***