South Sea tales

102

OP THE
UNIVERSITY

SOUTH SEA TALES

"WHENEVER i THINK OF MYSELF i SHALL THINK OF YOU,
"WHENEVER MEN CALL ME BY NAME i SHALL THINK OF YOU.

IS IT WELL, MASTER?"

THE WORKS OF

JACK LONDON

SOUTH SEA TALES

THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANY
NEW YORK

HAW UBftMT

COPYRIGHT, 1909,

BY THE S. S. McCLURE CO., BY THE CENTURY Co., AW Vt

THE COLUMBIAN-STERLING PUBLISHING Co.

COPYRIGHT, 1910,

Br JAS. HORSBURG, JR., BY THE COLUMBIAN-STERLING PUBLISHER; Co.,

BY THE SHORTSTORY PUBLISHING Co., BY THE COLUMBIAN

PUBLISHING Co., AND BY THE RIDGEWAY COMPANY.

COPYRIGHT, 1911,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1911. Reprinted
November, 1911.

CONTENTS

PAGE

THB HOUSE OF MAPUHI

THE WHALE TOOTH <• 57

MAUK* .

«<YAH! YAH .! YAH ! " . - '*9

THE HEATHEN • ^49

THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS ... • J97

THE INEVITABLE WHITE MAN . . • 233

THE SEED OF McCor 257

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

DESPITE the heavy clumsiness of her
lines, the Aorai handled easily in
the light breeze, and her captain
ran her well in before he hove to just outside
the suck of the surf. The atoll of Hikueru
lay low on the water, a circle of pounded
coral sand a hundred yards wide, twenty
miles in circumference, and from three to
five feet above high-water mark. On the
bottom of the huge and glassy lagoon was
much pearl shell, and from the deck of the
schooner, across the slender ring of the atoll,
the divers could be seen at work. But
the lagoon had no entrance for even a trad
ing schooner. With a favoring breeze cut
ters could win in through the tortuous and
shallow channel, but the schooners lay off
and on outside and sent in their small
boats.

3

4 THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

The Aorai swung out a boat smartly,
into which sprang half a dozen brown-
skinned sailors clad only in scarlet loin
cloths. They took the oars, while in the
stern-sheets, at the steering sweep, stood
a young man garbed in the tropic white
that marks the European. But he was
not all European. The golden strain of
Polynesia betrayed itself in the sun-gilt of
his fair skin and cast up golden sheens and
lights through the glimmering blue of his
eyes. Raoul he was, Alexandre Raoul,
youngest son of Marie Raoul, the wealthy
quarter-caste, who owned and managed
half a dozen trading schooners similar to
the Aorai. Across an eddy just outside the
entrance, and in and through and over a
boiling tide-rip, the boat fought its way to
the mirrored calm of the lagoon. Young
Raoul leaped out upon the white sand and
shook hands with a tall native. The man's
chest and shoulders were magnificent, but
the stump of a right arm, beyond the flesh
©f which the age- whitened bone projected

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI 5

several inches, attested the encounter with
a shark that had put an end to his diving
days and made him a fawner and an in
triguer for small favors.

"Have you heard, Alec?" were his first
words. "Mapuhi has found a pearl —
such a pearl. Never was there one like it
ever fished up in Hikueru, nor in all the
Paumotus, nor in all the world. Buy it
from him. He has it now. And remem
ber that I told you first. He is a fool and
you can get it cheap. Have you any
tobacco ?"

Straight up the beach to a shack under
a pandanus-tree Raoul headed. He was his
mother's supercargo, and his business was
to comb all the Paumotus for the wealth of
copra, shell, and pearls that they yielded up.

He was a young supercargo, it was his
second voyage in such capacity, and he
suffered much secret worry from his lack
of experience in pricing pearls. But when
Mapuhi exposed the pearl to his sight he
managed to suppress the startle it gave

6 THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

him, and to maintain a careless, commercial
expression on his face. For the pearl had
struck him a blow. It was large as a
pigeon egg, a perfect sphere, of a white
ness that reflected opalescent lights from
all colors about it. It was alive. Never
had he seen anything like it. When Ma-
puhi dropped it into his hand he was sur
prised by the weight of it. That showed
that it was a good pearl. He examined
it closely, through a pocket magnifying-
glass. It was without flaw or blemish.
The purity of it seemed almost to melt
into the atmosphere out of his hand. In
the shade it was softly luminous, gleaming
like a tender moon. So translucently white
was it, that when he dropped it into a glass
of water he had difficulty in finding it.
So straight and swiftly had it sunk to the
bottom that he knew its weight was excel
lent.

"Well, what do you want for it?" he
asked, with a fine assumption of noncha
lance.

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI 7

"I want — " Mapuhi began, and be
hind him, framing his own dark face, the
dark faces of two women and a girl nodded
concurrence in what he wanted. Their
heads were bent forward, they were ani
mated by a suppressed eagerness, their
eyes flashed avariciously.

"I want a house," Mapuhi went on.
"It must have a roof of galvanized iron
and an octagon-drop-clock. It must be
six fathoms long with a porch all around.
A big room must be in the centre, with
a round table in the middle of it and the
octagon-drop-clock on the wall. There
must be four bedrooms, two on each side
of the big room, and in each bedroom must
be an iron bed, two chairs, and a wash-
stand. And back of the house must be
a kitchen, a good kitchen, with pots and
pans and a stove. And you must build the
house on my island, which is Fakarava."

"Is that all ?" Raoul asked incredulously.

"There must be a sewing-machine,"
spoke up Tefara, Mapuhi's wife.

8 THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

"Not forgetting the octagon-drop-clock/'
added Nauri, Mapuhi's mother.

"Yes, that is all," said Mapuhi.

Young Raoul laughed. He laughed long
and heartily. But while he laughed he
secretly performed problems in mental
arithmetic. He had never built a house
in his life, and his notions concerning house
building were hazy. While he laughed,
he calculated the cost of the voyage to
Tahiti for materials, of the materials them
selves, of the voyage back again to Faka-
rava, and the cost of landing the materials
and of building the house. It would come
to four thousand French dollars, allowing
a margin for safety — four thousand French
dollars were equivalent to twenty thousand
francs. It was impossible. How was he
to know the value of such a pearl ? Twenty
thousand francs was a lot of money --and
of his mother's money at that.

"Mapuhi," he said, "you are a big fool.
Set a money price."

But Mapuhi shook his head, and the
three heads behind him shook with his.

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI 9

"I want the house," he said. "It must
be six fathoms long with a porch all
around — "

"Yes, yes," Raoul interrupted. "I know
all about your house, but it won't do. I'll
give you a thousand Chili dollars."

The four heads chorused a silent neg
ative.

"And a hundred Chili dollars in trade."

"I want the house," Mapuhi began.

"What good will the house do you?"
Raoul demanded. "The first hurricane
that comes along will wash it away. You
ought to know. Captain Raffy says it
looks like a hurricane right now."

"Not on Fakarava," said Mapuhi. "The
land is much higher there. On this island,
yes. Any hurricane can sweep Hikueru.
I will have the house on Fakarava. It
must be six fathoms long with a porch all
around — '

And Raoul listened again to the tale of the
house. Several hours he spent in the en
deavor to hammer the house-obsession out

io THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

of Mapuhi's mind ; but Mapuhi's mother
and wife, and Ngakura, Mapuhi's daughter,
bolstered him in his resolve for the house.
Through the open doorway, while he lis
tened for the twentieth time to the detailed
description of the house that was wanted,
Raoul saw his schooner's second boat draw
up on the beach. The sailors rested on the
oars, advertising haste to be gone. The
first mate of the Aorai sprang ashore, ex
changed a word with the one-armed native,
then hurried toward Raoul. The day grew
suddenly dark, as a squall obscured the
face of the sun. Across the lagoon Raoul
could see approaching the ominous line of
the puff of wind.

"Captain Raffy says you've got to get
to hell outa here," was the mate's greeting.
"If there's any shell, we've got to run the
risk of picking it up later on — so he says.
The barometer's dropped to twenty-nine-
seventy."

The gust of wind struck the pandanus-
tree overhead and tore through the palms

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI 11

beyond, flinging half a dozen ripe cocoanuts
with heavy thuds to the ground. Then
came the rain out of the distance, advanc
ing with the roar of a gale of wind and
causing the water of the lagoon to smoke in
driven windrows. The sharp rattle of the
first drops was on the leaves when Raoul
sprang to his feet.

"A thousand Chili dollars, cash down,
Mapuhi," he said. "And two hundred
Chili dollars in trade."

"I want a house — " the other began.

"Mapuhi!" Raoul yelled, in order to
make himself heard. "You are a fool !"

He flung out of the house, and, side by
side with the mate, fought his way down
the beach toward the boat. They could
not see the boat. The tropic rain sheeted
about them so that they could see only
the beach under their feet and the spiteful
little waves from the lagoon that snapped
and bit at the sand. A figure appeared
through the deluge. It was Huru-Huru,
the man with the one arm.

12 THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

"Did you get the pearl?" he yelled in
Raoul's ear.

"Mapuhi is a fool !" was the answering
yell, and the next moment they were lost
to each other in the descending water.

Half an hour later, Huru-Huru, watching
from the seaward side of the atoll, saw the
two boats hoisted in and the Aorai point
ing her nose out to sea. And near her,
just come in from the sea on the wings of
the squall, he saw another schooner hove
to and dropping a boat into the water. He
knew her. It was the Orohena, owned by
Toriki, the half-caste trader, who served
as his own supercargo and who doubt
lessly was even then in the stern-sheets of
the boat. Huru-Huru chuckled. He knew
that Mapuhi owed Toriki for trade-goods
advanced the year before.

The squall had passed. The hot sun was
blazing down, and the lagoon was once more
a mirror. But the air was sticky like mucil
age, and the weight of it seemed to burden
the lungs and make breathing difficult.

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI 13

"Have you heard the news, Toriki ?"
Huru-Huru asked. "Mapuhi has found
a pearl. Never was there a pearl like it
ever fished up in Hikueru, nor anywhere
in the Paumotus, nor anywhere in all the
world. Mapuhi is a fool. Besides, he
owes you money. Remember that I told
you first. Ha\o you any tobacco ?"

And to the grass-shack of Mapuhi went
Toriki. He was a masterful man, withal a
fairly stupid one. Carelessly he glanced
at the wonderful pearl -- glanced for a
moment only ; and carelessly he dropped
it into his pocket.

"You are lucky," he said. "It is a nice
pearl. I will give you credit on the books."

"I want a house," Mapuhi began, in

consternation. "It must be six fathoms
)?

"Six fathoms your grandmother!" was
the trader's retort. "You want to pay
up your debts, that's what you want. You
owed me twelve hundred dollars Chili.
Very well ; you owe them no longer. The

14 THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

amount is squared. Besides, I will give
you credit for two hundred Chili. If, when
I get to Tahiti, the pearl sells well, I will
give you credit for another hundred -
that will make three hundred. But mind,
only if the pearl sells well. I may even
lose money on it."

Mapuhi folded his arms ^n sorrow and
sat with bowed head. He had been robbed
of his pearl. In place of the house, he had
paid a debt. There was nothing to show
for the pearl.

"You are a fool," said Tefara.

"You are a fool," said Nauri, his mother.
"Why did you let the pearl into his hand ?"

"What was I to do ?" Mapuhi protested.
"I owed him the money. He knew I had
the pearl. You heard him yourself ask
to see it. I had not told him. He knew.
Somebody else told him. And I owed him
the money."

"Mapuhi is a fool," mimicked Ngakura.

She was twelve years old and did not
know any better. Mapuhi relieved his

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI 15

feelings by sending her reeling from a box
on the ear; while Tefara and Nauri burst
into tears and continued to upbraid him
after the manner of women.

Huru-Huru, watching on the beach, saw
a third schooner that he knew heave to
outside the entrance and drop a boat.
It was the Hira, well named, for she was
owned by Levy, the German Jew, the great
est pearl-buyer of them all, and, as was well
known, Hira was the Tahitian god of fish
ermen and thieves.

"Have you heard the news ?" Huru-
Huru asked, as Levy, a fat man with massive
asymmetrical features, stepped out upon
the beach. "Mapuhi has found a pearl.
There was never a pearl like it in Hikueru,
in all the Paumotus, in all the world.
Mapuhi is a fool. He has sold it to Toriki
for fourteen hundred Chili--! listened
outside and heard. Toriki is likewise a
fool. You can buy it from him cheap.
Remember that I told you first. Have
you any tobacco ?"

1 6 THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

"Where is Toriki ?"

"In the house of Captain Lynch, drinking
absinthe. He has been there an hour."

And while Levy and Toriki drank ab
sinthe and chaffered over the pearl, Huru-
Huru listened and heard the stupendous
price of twenty-five thousand francs agreed
upon.

It was at this time that both the Orohena
and the Hira, running in close to the shore,
began firing guns and signalling frantically.
The three men stepped outside in time to
see the two schooners go hastily about and
head off shore, dropping mainsails and
flying-jibs on the run in the teeth of the
squall that heeled them far over on the
whitened water. Then the rain blotted
them out.

"They'll be back after it's over," said
Toriki. "We'd better be getting out of
here."

" I reckon the glass has fallen some more,"
said Captain Lynch.

He was a white-bearded sea-captain, too

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI 17

j

old for service, who had learned that the
only way to live on comfortable terms with
his asthma was on Hikueru. He went inside
to look at the barometer.

"Great God !" they heard him exclaim,
and rushed in to join him at staring at a
dial, which marked twenty-nine-twenty.

Again they came out, this time anxiously
to consult sea and sky. The squall had
cleared away, but the sky remained over
cast. The two schooners, under all sail
and joined by a third, could be seen making
back. A veer in the wind induced them
to slack off sheets, and five minutes after
ward a sudden veer from the opposite
quarter caught all three schooners aback,
and those on shore could see the boom-
tackles being slacked away or cast off on
the jump. The sound of the surf was
loud, hollow, and menacing, and a heavy
swell was setting in. A terrible sheet of
lightning burst before their eyes, illuminat
ing the dark day, and the thunder rolled
wildly about them.

1 8 THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

Toriki and Levy broke into a run for
their boats, the latter ambling along like
a panic-stricken hippopotamus. As their
two boats swept out the entrance, they
passed the boat of the Aorai coming in. In
the stern-sheets, encouraging the rowers,
was Raoul. Unable to shake the vision
of the pearl from his mind, he was returning
to accept Mapuhi's price of a house.

He landed on the beach in the midst of a
driving thunder squall that was so dense
that he collided with Huru-Huru before
he saw him.

"Too late," yelled Huru-Huru. "Mapuhi
sold it to Toriki for fourteen hundred Chili,
and Toriki sold it to Levy for twenty-five
thousand francs. And Levy will sell it
in France for a hundred thousand francs.
Have you any tobacco ? "

Raoul felt relieved. His troubles about
the pearl were over. He need not worry
any more, even if he had not got the
pearl. But he did not believe Huru-Huru.
Mapuhi might well have sold it for fourteen

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI 19

hundred Chili, but that Levy, who knew
pearls, should have paid twenty-five thou
sand fiancs was too wide a stretch. Raoul
decided to interview Captain Lynch on
the subject, but when he arrived at that
ancient mariner's house, he found him look
ing wide-eyed at the barometer.

"What do you read it ?" Captain Lynch
asked anxiously, rubbing his spectacles
and staring again at the instrument.

"Twenty-nine-ten," said Raoul. "I
have never seen it so low before."

"I should say not !" snorted the captain.
"Fifty years boy and man on all the seas,
and I've never seen it go down to that.
Listen!"

They stood for a moment, while the surf
rumbled and shook the house. Then they
went outside. The squall had passed.
They could see the Aorai lying becalmed
a mile away and pitching and tossing madly
in the tremendous seas that rolled in stately
procession down out of the northeast and
flung themselves furiously upon the coral

20 THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

shore. One of the sailors from the boat
pointed at the mouth of the passage and
shook his head. Raoul looked and saw
a white anarchy of foam and surge.

"I guess I'll stay with you to-night,
Captain," he said ; then turned to the
sailor and told him to haul the boat out
and to iind shelter for himself and fellows.

" Twenty-nine flat," Captain Lynch re
ported, coming out from another look at
the barometer, a chair in his hand.

He sat down and stared at the spectacle
of the sea. The sun came out, increasing
the sultriness of the day, while the dead
calm still held. The seas continued to
increase in magnitude.

"What makes that sea is what gets me,"
Raoul muttered petulantly. "There is no
wind, yet look at it, look at that fellow
there!"

Miles in length, carrying tens of thou
sands of tons in weight, its impact shook
the frail atoll like an earthquake. Captain
Lynch was startled.

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI 21

"Gracious!" he exclaimed, half-rising
from his chair, then sinking back.

"But there is no wind," Raoul persisted.
"I could understand it if there was wind
along with it."

'You'll get the wind soon enough with
out worryin' for it," was the grim reply.

The two men sat on in silence. The
sweat stood out on their skin in myriads
of tiny drops that ran together, forming
blotches of moisture, which, in turn, coa
lesced into rivulets that dripped to the
ground. They panted for breath, the old
man's efforts being especially painful. A
sea swept up the beach, licking around the
trunks of the cocoanuts and subsiding
almost at their feet.

"Way past high-water mark," Captain
Lynch remarked; "and I've been here
eleven years." He looked at his watch.
"It is three o'clock."

A man and woman, at their heels a motley
following of brats and curs, trailed dis
consolately by. They came to a halt

22 THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

beyond the house, and, after much irreso
lution, sat down in the sand. A few min
utes later another family trailed in from
the opposite direction, the men and women
carrying a heterogeneous assortment of
possessions. And soon several hundred per
sons of all ages and sexes were congregated
about the captain's dwelling. He called
to one new arrival, a woman with a nursing
babe in her arms, and in answer received
the information that her house had just
been swept into the lagoon.

This was the highest spot of land in
miles, and already, in many places on either
hand, the great seas were making a clean
breach of the slender ring of the atoll and
surging into the lagoon. Twenty miles
around stretched the ring of the atoll,
and in no place was it more than fifty
fathoms wide. It was the height of the
diving season, and from all the islands
around, even as far as Tahiti, the natives
had gathered.

"There are twelve hundred men, women,

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI 23

and children here," said Captain Lynch.
"I wonder how many will be here to-mor
row morning."

"But why don't it blow ?-- that's what
I want to know," Raoul demanded.

"Don't worry, young man, don't worry;
you'll get your troubles fast enough."

Even as Captain Lynch spoke, a great
watery mass smote the atoll. The sea-
water churned about them three inches
deep under their chairs. A low wail of
fear went up from the many women. The
children, with clasped hands, stared at
the immense rollers and cried piteously.
Chickens and cats, wading perturbedly in
the water, as by common consent, with
flight and scramble took refuge on the roof
of the captain's house. A Paumotan, with
a litter of new-born puppies in a basket,
climbed into a cocoanut tree and twenty
feet above the ground made the basket
fast. The mother floundered about in the
water beneath, whining and yelping.

And still the sun shone brightly and the

24 THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

dead calm continued. They sat and
watched the seas and the insane pitching
of the Aorai. Captain Lynch gazed at
the huge mountains of water sweeping in
until he could gaze no more. He covered
his face with his hands to shut out the
sight; then went into the house.

"Twenty-eight-sixty," he said quietly
when he returned.

In his arm was a coil of small rope. He
cut it into two-fathom lengths, giving one
to Raoul and, retaining one for himself, dis
tributed the remainder among the women
with the advice to pick out. a tree and climb.

A light air began to blow out of the north
east, and the fan of it on his cheek seemed
to cheer Raoul up. He could see the Aorai
trimming her sheets and heading off shore,
and he regretted that he was not on her.
She would get away at any rate, but as for
the atoll - A sea breached across, almost
sweeping him off his feet, and he selected
a tree. Then he remembered the barom
eter and ran back to the house. He en-

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI 25

countered Captain Lynch on the same
errand and together they went in.

"Twenty-eight-twenty," said the' old
mariner. "It's going to be fair hell around
here — what was that ?"

The air seemed filled with the rush of
something. The house quivered and vi
brated, and they heard the thrumming
of a mighty note of sound. The windows
rattled. Two panes crashed; a draught
of wind tore in, striking them and making
them stagger. The door opposite banged
shut, shattering the latch. The white door
knob crumbled in fragments to the floor.
The room's walls bulged like a gas balloon
in the process of sudden inflation. Then
came a new sound like the rattle of mus
ketry, as the spray from a sea struck the
wall of the house. Captain Lynch looked
at his watch. It was four o'clock. He
put on a coat of pilot cloth, unhooked the
barometer, and stowed it away in a capa
cious pocket. Again a sea struck the house,
with a heavy thud, and the light building

26 THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

tilted, twisted quarter-around on its foun
dation, and sank down, its floor at an angle
of ten degrees.

Raoul went out first. The wind caught
him and whirled him away. He noted
that it had hauled around to the east.
With a great effort he threw himself on the
sand, crouching and holding his own.
Captain Lynch, driven like a wisp of straw,
sprawled over him. Two of the Aorai^s
sailors, leaving a cocoanut tree to which
they had been clinging, came to their aid,
leaning against the wind at impossible
angles and fighting and clawing every inch
of the way.

The old man's joints were stiff and he
could not climb, so the sailors, by means
of short ends of rope tied together, hoisted
him up the trunk, a few feet at a time, till
they could make him fast, at the top of the
tree, fifty feet from the ground. Raoul
passed his length of rope around the base
of an adjacent tree and stood looking on.
The wind was frightful. He had never

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI 27

dreamed it could blow so hard. A sea
breached across the atoll, wetting him to
the knees ere it subsided into the lagoon.
The sun had disappeared, and a lead-
colored twilight settled down. A few
drops of rain, driving horizontally, struck
him. The impact was like that of leaden
pellets. A splash of salt spray struck his
face. It was like the slap of a man's hand.
His cheeks stung, and involuntary tears of
pain were in his smarting eyes. Several
hundred natives had taken to the trees,
and he could have laughed at the bunches
of human fruit clustering in the tops.
Then, being Tahitian-born, he doubled
his body at the waist, clasped the trunk
of his tree with his hands, pressed the soles
of his feet against the near surface of the
trunk, and began to walk up the tree. At
the top he found two women, two children,
and a man. One little girl clasped a house-
cat in her arms.

From his eyrie he waved his hand to
Captain Lynch, and that doughty patri-

28 THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

arch waved back. Raoul was appalled
at the sky. It had approached much
nearer — in fact, it seemed just over his
head; and it had turned from lead to
black. Many people were still on the
ground grouped about the bases of the trees
and holding on. Several such clusters were
praying, and in one the Mormon mission
ary was exhorting. A weird sound, rhyth
mical, faint as the faintest chirp of a
far cricket, enduring but for a moment,
but in that moment suggesting to him
vaguely the thought of heaven and celes
tial music, came to his ear. He glanced
about him and saw, at the base of another
tree, a large cluster of people holding on
by ropes and by one another. He could
see their faces working and their lips mov
ing in unison. No sound came to him,
but he knew that they were singing hymns.
Still the wind continued to blow harder.
By no conscious process could he measure
it, for it had long since passed beyond all
his experience of wind ; but he knew some-

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI 29

how, nevertheless, that it was blowing
harder. Not far away a tree was uprooted,
flinging its load of human beings to the
ground. A sea washed across the strip
of sand, and they were gone. Things were
happening quickly. He saw a brown
shoulder and a black head silhouetted
against the churning white of the lagoon.
The next instant that, too, had vanished.
Other trees were going, falling and criss
crossing like matches. He was amazed
at the power of the wind. His own tree
was swaying perilously, one woman was
wailing and clutching the little girl, who
in turn still hung on to the cat.

The man, holding the other child, touched
Raoul's arm and pointed. He looked and
saw the Mormon church careering drunk-
enly a hundred feet away. It had been
torn from its foundations, and wind and
sea were heaving and shoving it toward
the lagoon. A frightful wall of water caught
it, tilted it, and flung it against half a dozen
cocoanut trees. The bunches of human

30 THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

fruit fell like ripe cocoanuts. The sub
siding wave showed them on the ground,
some lying motionless, others squirming
and writhing. They reminded him
strangely of ants. He was not shocked.
He had risen above horror. Quite as a
matter of course he noted the succeeding
wave sweep the sand clean of the human
wreckage. A third wave, more colossal
than any he had yet seen, hurled the church
into the lagoon, where it floated off into the
obscurity to leeward, half-submerged, re
minding him for all the world of a Noah's
ark.

He looked for Captain Lynch's house, and
was surprised to find it gone. Things
certainly were happening quickly. He
noticed that many of the people in the trees
that still held had descended to the ground.
The wind had yet again increased. His
own tree showed that. It no longer swayed
or bent over and back. Instead, it remained
practically stationary, curved in a rigid
angle from the wind and merely vibrating.

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI 31

But the vibration was sickening. It was
like that of a tuning-fork or the tongue of
a jew's-harp. It was the rapidity of the
vibration that made it so bad. Even
though its roots held, it could not stand
the strain for long Something would have
to break.

Ah, there was one that had gone. He had
not seen it go, but there it stood, the rem
nant, broken off half-way up the trunk.
One did not know what happened unless
he saw it. The mere crashing of trees
and wails of human despair occupied no
place in that mighty volume of sound.
He chanced to be looking in Captain
Lynch's direction when it happened. He
saw the trunk of the tree, half-way up,
splinter and part without noise. The head
of the tree, with three sailors of the Aorai
and the old captain, sailed off over the
lagoon. It did not fall to the ground, but
drove through the air like a piece of chaff.
For a hundred yards he followed its flight,
when it struck the water. He strained his

32 THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

eyes, and was sure that he saw Captain
Lynch wave farewell.

Raoul did not wait for anything more.
He touched the native and made signs to
descend to the ground. The man was
willing, but his women were paralyzed
from terror, and he elected to remain with
them. Raoul passed his rope around the
tree and slid down. A rush of salt water
went over his head. He held his breath
and clung desperately to the rope. The
water subsided, and in the shelter of the
trunk he breathed once more. He fastened
the rope more securely, and then was put
under by another sea. One of the women
slid down and joined him, the native remain
ing by the other woman, the two children,
and the cat.

The supercargo had noticed how the
groups clinging at the bases of the other
trees continually diminished. Now he saw
the process work out alongside him. It
required all his strength to hold on, and the
woman who had joined him was growing

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI 33

weaker. Each time he emerged from a
sea he was surprised to find himself still
there, and next, surprised to find the woman
still there. At last he emerged to find
himself alone. He looked up. The top
of the tree had gone as well. At half its
original height, a splintered end vibrated.
He was safe. The roots still held, while
the tree had been shorn of its windage.
He began to climb up. He was so weak
that he went slowly, and sea after sea
caught him before he was above them.
Then he tied himself to the trunk and
stiffened his soul to face the night and he
knew not what.

He felt very lonely in the darkness. At
times it seemed to him that it was the end
of the world and that he was the last one
left alive. Still the wind increased. Hour
after hour it increased. By what he cal
culated was eleven o'clock, the wind had
become unbelievable. It was a horrible,
monstrous thing, a screaming fury, a wall
that smote and passed on but that con-

34 THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

tinued to smite and pass on — a wall with
out end. It seemed to him that he had
become light and ethereal ; that it was he
that was in motion ; that he was being
driven with inconceivable velocity through
unending solidness. The wind was no
longer air in motion. It had become sub
stantial as water or quicksilver. He had
a feeling that he could reach into it and tear
it out in chunks as one might do with the
meat in the carcass of a steer; that he
could seize hold of the wind and hang on
to it as a man might hang on to the face
of a cliff.

The wind strangled him. He could not
face it and breathe, for it rushed in through
his mouth and nostrils, distending his lungs
like bladders. At such moments it seemed
to him that his body was being packed and
swollen with solid earth. Only by pressing
his lips to the trunk of the tree could he
breathe. Also, the ceaseless impact of the
wind exhausted him. Body and brain be
came wearied. He no longer observed,

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI 35

no longer thought, and was but semicon
scious. One idea constituted his conscious
ness : So this was a hurricane. That one
idea persisted irregularly. It was like a
feeble flame that flickered occasionally.
From a state of stupor he would return to
it — So this was a hurricane. Then he
would go off into another stupor.

The height of the hurricane endured from
eleven at night till three in the morning,
and it was at eleven that the tree in which
clung Mapuhi and his women snapped off.
Mapuhi rose to the surface of the lagoon,
still clutching his daughter Ngakura. Only
a South Sea islander could have lived in
such a driving smother. The pandanus-
tree, to which he attached himself, turned
over and over in the froth and churn ; and
it was only by holding on at times and wait
ing, and at other times shifting his grips
rapidly, that he was able to get his head
and Ngakura's to the surface at intervals
sufficiently near together to keep the breath
in them. But the air was mostly water,

36 THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

what with flying spray and sheeted rain
that poured along at right angles to the
perpendicular.

It was ten miles across the lagoon to
the farther ring of sand. Here, tossing
tree-trunks, timbers, wrecks of cutters,
and wreckage of houses, killed nine out of
ten of the miserable beings who survived
the passage of the lagoon. Half-drowned,
exhausted, they were hurled into this mad
mortar of the elements and battered into
formless flesh. But Mapuhi was fortunate.
His chance was the one in ten; it fell to
him by the freakage of fate. He emerged
upon the sand, bleeding from a score of
wounds. Ngakura's left arm was broken ;
the fingers of her right hand were crushed ;
and cheek and forehead were laid open
to the bone. He clutched a tree that yet
stood, and clung on, holding the girl and
sobbing for air, while the waters of the
lagoon washed by knee-high and at times
waist-high.

At three in the morning the backbone

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI 37

of the hurricane broke. By five no more
than a stiff breeze was blowing. And by
six it was dead calm and the sun was shin
ing. The sea had gone down. On the
yet restless edge of the lagoon, Mapuhi
saw the broken bodies of those that had
failed in the landing. Undoubtedly Tefara
and Nauri were among them. He went
along the beach examining them, and came
upon his wife, lying half in and half out
of the water. He sat down and wept,
making harsh animal-noises after the manner
of primitive grief. Then she stirred un
easily, and groaned. He looked more
closely. Not only was she alive, but she
was uninjured. She was merely sleeping.
Hers also had been the one chance in ten.

Of the twelve hundred alive the night
before but three hundred remained. The
Mormon missionary and a gendarme made
the census. The lagoon was cluttered with
corpses. Not a house nor a hut was stand
ing. In the whole atoll not two stones
remained one upon another. One in fifty

38 THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

of the cocoanut palms still stood, and they
were wrecks, while on not one of them re
mained a single nut. There was no fresh
water. The shallow wells that caught the
surface seepage of the rain were filled with
salt. Out of the lagoon a few soaked bags
of flour were recovered. The survivors
cut the hearts out of the fallen cocoanut
trees and ate them. Here and there they
crawled into tiny hutches, made by hollow
ing out the sand and covering over with
fragments of metal roofing. The mission
ary made a crude still, but he could not
distill water for three hundred persons. By
the end of the second day, Raoul, taking
a bath in the lagoon, discovered that his
thirst was somewhat relieved. He cried
out the news, and thereupon three hundred
men, women, and children could have been
seen, standing up to their necks in the lagoon
and trying to drink water in through their
skins. Their dead floated about them, or
were stepped upon where they still lay upon
the bottom. On the third day the people

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI 39

buried their dead and sat down to wait
for the rescue steamers.

In the meantime, Nauri, torn from her
family by the hurricane, had been swept
away on an adventure of her own. Cling
ing to a rough plank that wounded and
bruised her and that filled her body with
splinters, she was thrown clear over the
atoll and carried away to sea. Here, under
the amazing buffets of mountains of water,
she lost her plank. She was an old woman
nearly sixty ; but she was Paumotan-
born, and she had never been out of sight
of the sea in her life. Swimming in the
darkness, strangling, suffocating, fighting
for air, she was struck a heavy blow on the
shoulder by a cocoanut. On the instant
her plan was formed, and she seized the
nut. In the next hour she captured seven
more. Tied together, they formed a life
buoy that preserved her life while at the
same time it threatened to pound her to a
jelly. She was a fat woman, and she
bruised easily; but she had had experience

40 THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

of hurricanes, and, while she prayed to her
shark god for protection from sharks, she
waited for the wind to break. But at three
o'clock she was in such a stupor that she
did not know. Nor did she know at six
o'clock when the dead calm settled down.
She was shocked into consciousness when
she was thrown upon the sand. She dug
in with raw and bleeding hands and feet
and clawed against the backwash until
she was beyond the reach of the waves.

She knew where she was. This land
could be no other than the tiny islet of
Takokota. It had no lagoon. No one
lived upon it. Hikueru was fifteen miles
away. She could not see Hikueru, but
she knew that it lay to the south. The
days went by, and she lived on the cocoa-
nuts that had kept her afloat. They sup
plied her with drinking water and with
food. But she did not drink all she wanted,
nor eat all she wanted. Rescue was prob
lematical. She saw the smoke of the rescue
steamers on the horizon, but what steamer

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI 41

could be expected to come to lonely, unin
habited Takokota ?

From the first she was tormented by
corpses. The sea persisted in flinging them
upon her bit of sand, and she persisted,
until her strength failed, in thrusting them
back into the sea where the sharks tore
at them and devoured them. When her
strength failed, the bodies festooned her
beach with ghastly horror, and she with
drew from them as far as she could, which
was not far.

By the tenth day her last cocoanut was
gone, and she was shrivelling from thirst.
She dragged herself along the sand, looking
for cocoanuts. It was strange that so
many bodies floated up, and no nuts.
Surely, there were more cocoanuts afloat
than dead men ! She gave up at last, and
lay exhausted. The end had come. Noth
ing remained but to wait for death.

Coming out of a stupor, she became slowly
aware that she was gazing at a patch of
sandy-red hair on the head of a corpse.

42 THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

The sea flung the body toward her, then
drew it back. It turned over, and she saw
that it had no face. Yet there was some
thing familiar about that patch of sandy-
red hair. An hour passed. She did not
exert herself to make the identification.
She was waiting to die, and it mattered
little to her what man that thing of horror
once might have been.

But at the end of the hour she sat up
slowly and stared at the corpse. An un
usually large wave had thrown it beyond
the reach of the lesser waves. Yes, she
was right ; that patch of red hair could
belong to but one man in the Paumotus.
It was Levy, the German Jew, the man who
had bought the pearl and carried it away
on the Hira. Well, one thing was evident :
the Hira had been lost. The pearl-buyer's
god of fishermen and thieves had gone
back on him.

She crawled down to the dead man. His
shirt had been torn away, and she could
see the leather money-belt about his waist.

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI 43

She held her breath and tugged at. the
buckles. They gave easier than she had
expected, and she crawled hurriedly away
across the sand, dragging the belt after her.
Pocket after pocket she unbuckled in the
belt and found empty. Where could he
have put it ? In the last pocket of all she
found it, the first and only pearl he had
bought on the voyage. She crawled a few
feet farther, to escape the pestilence of the
belt, and examined the pearl. It was the
one Mapuhi had found and been robbed of
by Toriki. She weighed it in her hand and
rolled it back and forth caressingly. But
in it she saw no intrinsic beauty. What
she did see was the house Mapuhi and
Tefara and she had builded so carefully
in their minds. Each time she looked at
the pearl she saw the house in all its details,
including the octagon-drop-clock on the
wall. That was something to live for.

She tore a strip from her ahu and tied
the pearl securely about her neck. Then
she went on along the beach, panting and

44 THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

groaning, but resolutely seeking for cocoa-
nuts. Quickly she found one, and, as she
glanced around, a second. She broke one,
drinking its water, which was mildewy,
and eating the last particle of the meat.
A little later she found a shattered dug
out. Its outrigger was gone, but she wTas
hopeful, and, before the day was out, she
found the outrigger. Every find was an
augury. The pearl was a talisman. Late
in the afternoon she saw a wooden box
floating low in the water. When she
dragged it out on the beach its contents
rattled, and inside she found ten tins of
salmon. She opened one by hammering
it on the canoe. When a leak was started,
she drained the tin. After that she spent
several hours in extracting the salmon,
hammering and squeezing it out a morsel
at a time.

Eight days longer she waited for rescue.
In the meantime she fastened the outrigger
back on the canoe, using for lashings all
the cocoanut-fibre she could find, and also

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI 45

what remained of her ahu. The canoe
was badly cracked, and she could not make
it water-tight ; but a calabash made from
a cocoanut she stored on board for a bailer.
She was hard put for a paddle. With a piece
of tin she sawed off all her hair close to the
scalp. Out of the hair she braided a cord ;
and by means of the cord she lashed a three-
foot piece of broom-handle to a board from
the salmon case. She gnawed wedges with
her teeth and with them wedged the lashing.
On the eighteenth day, at midnight, she
launched the canoe through the surf and
started back for Hikueru. She was an old
woman. Hardship had stripped her fat
from her till scarcely more than bones and
skin and a few stringy muscles remained.
The canoe was large and should have been
paddled by three strong men. But she
did it alone, with a make-shift paddle.
Also, the canoe leaked badly, and one-third
of her time was devoted to bailing. By
clear daylight she looked vainly for Hi
kueru. Astern, Takokota had sunk be-

46 THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

neath the sea-rim. The sun blazed down
on her nakedness, compelling her body
to surrender its moisture. Two tins of
salmon were left, and in the course of the
day she battered holes in them and drained
the liquid. She had no time to waste in
extracting the meat. A current was setting
to the westward, she made westing whether
she made southing or not.

In the early afternoon, standing upright
in the canoe, she sighted Hikueru. Its
wealth of cocoanut palms was gone. Only
here and there, at wide intervals, could
she see the ragged remnants of trees. The
sight cheered her. She was nearer than she
had thought. The current was setting
her to the westward. She bore up against
it and paddled on. The wedges in the
paddle-lashing worked loose, and she lost
much time, at frequent intervals, in driving
them tight. Then there was the bailing.
One hour in three she had to cease paddling
in order to bail. And all the time she
drifted to the westward.

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI 47

By sunset Hikueru bore southeast from
her, three miles away. There was a full
moon, and by eight o'clock the land was
due east and two miles away. She struggled
on for another hour, but the land was as
far away as ever. She was in the main
grip of the current ; the canoe was too
large ; the paddle was too inadequate ;
and too much of her time and strength
was wasted in bailing. Besides, she was
very weak and growing weaker. Despite
her efforts, the canoe was drifting off to
the westward.

She breathed a prayer to her shark god,
slipped over the side, and began to swim.
She was actually refreshed by the water,
and quickly left the canoe astern. At
the end of an hour the land was perceptibly
nearer. Then came her fright. Right
before her eyes, not twenty feet away, a
large fin cut the water. She swam steadily
toward it, and slowly it glided away, curv
ing off toward the right and circling around
her. She kept her eyes on the fin and swam

48 THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

on. When the fin disappeared, she lay
face downward on the water and watched.
When the fin reappeared she resumed her
swimming. The monster was lazy — she
could see that. Without doubt he had been
well fed since the hurricane. Had he been
very hungry, she knew he would not have
hesitated from making a dash for her. He
was fifteen feet long, and one bite, she
knew, could cut her in half.

But she did not have any time to waste
on him. Whether she swam or not, the
current drew away from the land just the
same. A half-hour went by, and the shark
began to grow bolder. Seeing no harm in
her he drew closer, in narrowing circles,
cocking his eyes at her impudently as he
slid past. Sooner or later, she knew well
enough, he would get up sufficient courage
to dash at her. She resolved to play
first. It was a desperate act she medi
tated. She was an old woman, alone in
the sea and weak from starvation and hard
ship ; and yet she, in the face of this sea-

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI 49

tiger, must anticipate his dash by herself
dashing at him, She swam on, waiting
her chance. At last he passed languidly
by, barely eight feet away. She rushed at
him suddenly, feigning that she was attack
ing him. He gave a wild flirt of his tail
as he fled away, and his sandpaper hide,
striking her, took off her skin from elbow
to shoulder. He swam rapidly, in a widen
ing circle, and at last disappeared.

In the hole in the sand, covered over by
fragments of metal roofing, Mapuhi and
Tefara lay disputing.

"If you had done as I said," charged
Tefara, for the thousandth time, "and hid
den the pearl and told no one, you would
have it now."

"But Huru-Huru was with me when I
opened the shell — have I not told you
so times and times and times without
end?"

"And now we shall have no house.
Raoul told me to-day that if you had not
sold the pearl to Toriki — "

50 THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

"I did not sell it. Toriki robbed me."

" — that if you had not sold the pearl,
he would give you five thousand French
dollars, which is ten thousand Chili."

"He has been talking to his mother,"
Mapuhi explained. "She has an eye for
a pearl. ^

"And now the pearl is lost," Tefara com
plained.

"It paid my debt with Toriki. That is
twelve hundred I have made, anyway."

"Toriki is dead," she cried. "They have
heard no word of his schooner. She was
lost along with the Aorai and the Hira.
Will Toriki pay you the three hundred
credit he promised ? No, because Toriki
is dead. And had you found no pearl,
would you to-day owe Toriki the twelve
hundred ? No, because Toriki is dead,
and you cannot pay dead men."

"But Levy did not pay Toriki," Mapuhi
said. "He gave him a piece of paper that
was good for the money in Papeete ; and
now Levy is dead and cannot pay ; and

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI 51

Toriki is dead and the paper lost with him,
and the pearl is lost with Levy. You are
right, Tefara. I have lost the pearl, and
got nothing for it. Now let us sleep."

He held up his hand suddenly and lis
tened. From without came a noise, as of
one who breathed heavily and with pain.
A hand fumbled against the mat that served
for a door.

"Who is there ?" Mapuhi cried.

"Nauri," came the answer. "Can you
tell me where is my son, Mapuhi ?"

Tefara screamed and gripped her hus
band's arm.

"A ghost !" she chattered. "A ghost !"

Mapuhi's face was a ghastly yellow.
He clung weakly to his wife.

"Good woman," he said in faltering
tones, striving to disguise his voice, "I
know your son well. He is living on the
east side of the lagoon."

From without came the sound of a sigh.
Mapuhi began to feel elated. He had fooled
the ghost.

52 THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

"But where do you come from, old
woman ?" he asked.

"From the sea," was the dejected answer.

"I knew it! I knew it!" screamed
Tefara, rocking to and fro.

"Since when has Tefara bedded in a
strange house ?" came Nauri's voice through
the matting.

Mapuhi looked fear and reproach at his
wife. It was her voice that had betrayed
them.

"And since when has Mapuhi, my son,
denied his old mother?" the voice went
on.

"No, no, I have not — Mapuhi has not
denied you," he cried. "I am not Mapuhi.
He is on the east end of the lagoon, I tell
you."

Ngakura sat up in bed and began to
cry. The matting started to shake.

"What are you doing?" Mapuhi de
manded.

"I am coming in," said the voice of
Nauri.

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI 53

One end of the matting lifted. Tefara
tried to dive under the blankets, but
Mapuhi held on to her. He had to hold
on to something. Together, struggling with
each other, with shivering bodies and chat
tering teeth, they gazed with protruding
eyes at the lifting mat. They saw Nauri,
dripping with sea-water, without her ahu,
creep in. They rolled over backward from
her and fought for Ngakura's blanket with
which to cover their heads.

'You might give your old mother a
drink of water," the ghost said plaintively.

"Give her a drink of water," Tefara
commanded in a shaking voice.

"Give her a drink of water," Mapuhi
passed on the command to Ngakura.

And together they kicked out Ngakura
from under the blanket. A minute later,
peeping, Mapuhi saw the ghost drinking.
When it reached out a shaking hand and
laid it on his, he felt the weight of it and was
convinced that it was no ghost. Then he
emerged, dragging Tefara after him, and

54 THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

in a few minutes all were listening to Nauri's
tale. And when she told of Levy, and
dropped the pearl into Tefara's hand, even
she was reconciled to the reality of her
mother-in-law.

"In the morning," said Tefara, "you
will sell the pearl to Raoul for five thousand
French."

"The house ?" objected Nauri.

"He will build the house," Tefara an
swered. "He says it will cost four thousand
French. Also will he give one thousand
French in credit, which is two thousand
Chili."

"And it will be six fathoms long?"
Nauri queried.

"Ay," answered Mapuhi, "six fathoms."

"And in the middle room will be the
octagon-drop-clock ??>

"Ay, and the round table as well."

"Then give me something to eat, for I
am hungry," said Nauri, complacently.
"And after that we will sleep, for I am
weary. And to-morrow we will have more

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI 55

talk about the house before we sell the pearl.
It will be better if we take the thousand
French in cash. Money is ever better
than credit in buying goods from the
traders."

THE WHALE TOOTH

THE WHALE TOOTH

IT was in the early days in Fiji, when
John Starhurst arose in the mission-
house at Rewa Village and announced
his intention of carrying the Gospel through
out all Viti Levu. Now Viti Levu means
the "Great Land," it being the largest
island in a group composed of many large
islands, to say nothing of hundreds of small
ones. Here and there on the coasts, living
by most precarious tenure, was a sprink
ling of missionaries, traders, beche-de-mer
fishers, and whaleship deserters. The
smoke of the hot ovens arose under their
windows, and the bodies of the slain were
dragged by their doors on the way to the
feasting.

The Lotu, or the Worship, was progress
ing slowly, and, often, in crablike fash
ion. Chiefs, who announced themselves

59

60 THE WHALE TOOTH

Christians and were welcomed into the
body of the chapel, had a distressing habit
of backsliding in order to partake of the
flesh of some favorite enemy. Eat or
be eaten had been the law of the land ;
and eat or be eaten promised to remain
the law of the land for a long time to come.
There were chiefs, such as Tanoa, Tuivei-
koso, and Tuikilakila, who had literally
eaten hundreds of their fellow-men. But
among these gluttons Ra Undreundre
ranked highest. Ra Undreundre lived at
Takiraki. He kept a register of his gusta
tory exploits. A row of stones outside
his house marked the bodies he had eaten.
This row was two hundred and thirty
paces long, and the stones in it numbered
eight hundred and seventy-two. Each
stone represented a body. The row of
stones might have been longer, had not
Ra Undreundre unfortunately received a
spear in the small of his back in a bush
skirmish on Somo Somo and been served
up on the table of Naungavuli, whose me-

THE WHALE TOOTH 61

diocre string of stones numbered only forty-
eight.

The hard-worked, fever-stricken mission
aries stuck doggedly to their task, at times
despairing, and looking forward for some
special manifestation, some outburst of
Pentecostal fire that would bring a glorious
harvest of souls. But cannibal Fiji had
remained obdurate. The frizzle-headed
man-eaters were loath to leave their flesh-
pots so long as the harvest of human car
cases was plentiful. Sometimes, when the
harvest was too plentiful, they imposed
on the missionaries by letting the word
slip out that on such a day there would be
a killing and a barbecue. Promptly the
missionaries would buy the lives of the
victims with stick tobacco, fathoms of
calico, and quarts of trade-beads. Nathe-
less the chiefs drove a handsome trade in
thus disposing of their surplus live meat.
Also, they could always go out and catch
more.

It was at this juncture that John Star-

62 THE WHALE TOOTH

hurst proclaimed that he would carry the
Gospel from coast to coast of the Great
Land, and that he would begin by pene
trating the mountain fastnesses of the head
waters of the Rewa River. His words were
received with consternation.

The native teachers wept softly. His
two fellow-missionaries strove to dissuade
him. The King of Rewa warned him that
the mountain dwellers would surely kai-
kai him -- kai-kai meaning "to eat" —
and that he, the King of Rewa, having
become Lotu, would be put to the necessity
of going to war with the mountain dwellers.
That he could not conquer them he was
perfectly aware. That they might come
down the river and sack Rewa Village he
was likewise perfectly aware. But what
was he to do ? If John Starhurst persisted
in going out and being eaten, there would
be a war that would cost hundreds of
lives.

Later in the day a deputation of Rewa
chiefs waited upon John Starhurst. He

THE WHALE TOOTH 63

heard them patiently, and argued patiently
with them, though he abated not a whit
from his purpose. To his fellow-mission
aries he explained that he was not bent
upon martyrdom; that the call had come
for him to carry the Gospel into Viti Levu,
and that he was merely obeying the Lord's
wish.

To the traders, who came and objected
most strenuously of all, he said: 'Your
objections are valueless. They consist
merely of the damage that may be done
your businesses. You are interested in
making money, but I am interested in
saving souls. The heathen of this dark
land must be saved."

John Starhurst was not a fanatic. He
would have been the first man to deny the
imputation. He was eminently sane and
practical. He was sure that his mission
would result in good, and he had private
visions of igniting the Pentecostal spark
in the souls of the mountaineers and of
inaugurating a revival that would sweep

64 THE WHALE TOOTH

down out of the mountains and across the
length and breadth of the Great Land from
sea to sea and to the isles in the midst of
the sea. There were no wild lights in his
mild gray eyes, but only calm resolution
and an unfaltering trust in the Higher
Power that was guiding him.

One man only he found who approved
of his project, and that was Ra Vatu, who
secretly encouraged him and offered to
lend him guides to the first foothills. John
Starhurst, in turn, was greatly pleased by
Ra Vatu's conduct. From an incorrigible
heathen, with a heart as black as his prac
tices, Ra Vatu was beginning to emanate
light. He even spoke of becoming Lotu.
True, three years before he had expressed
a similar intention, and would have entered
the church had not John Starhurst entered
objection to his bringing his four wives
along with him. Ra Vatu had had eco
nomic and ethical objections to monogamy.
Besides, the missionary's hair-splitting ob
jection had offended him; and, to prove

THE WHALE TOOTH 65

that he was a free agent and a man of
honor, he had swung his huge war-club over
Starhurst's head. Starhurst had escaped
by rushing in under the club and holding
on to him until help arrived. But all that
was now forgiven and forgotten. Ra Vatu
was coming into the church, not merely
as a converted heathen, but as a converted
polygamist as well. He was only waiting,
he assured Starhurst, until his oldest wife,
who was very sick, should die.

John Starhurst journeyed up the slug
gish Rewa in one of Ra Vatu's canoes.
This canoe was to carry him for two days,
when, the head of navigation reached, it
would return. Far in the distance, lifted
into the sky, could be seen the great smoky
mountains that marked the backbone of
the Great Land. All day John Starhurst
gazed at them with eager yearning.

Sometimes he prayed silently. At other
times he was joined in prayer by Narau,
a native teacher, who for seven years had
been Lotu, ever since the day he had been

66 THE WHALE TOOTH

saved from the hot oven by Dr. James
Ellery Brown at the trifling expense of one
hundred sticks of tobacco, two cotton
blankets, and a large bottle of painkiller.
At the last moment, after twenty hours of
solitary supplication and prayer, Narau's
ears had heard the call to go forth with
John Starhurst on the mission to the moun
tains.

"Master, I will surely go with thee," he
had announced.

John Starhurst had hailed him with
sober delight. Truly, the Lord was with
him thus to spur on so broken-spirited a
creature as Narau.

"I am indeed without spirit, the weakest
of the Lord's vessels," Narau explained,
the first day in the canoe.

:£You should have faith, stronger faith,"
the missionary chided him.

Another canoe journeyed up the Rewa
that day. But it journeyed an hour astern,
and it took care not to be seen. This
canoe was also the property of Ra Vatu.

THE WHALE TOOTH 67

In it was Erirola, Ra Vatu's first cousin
and trusted henchman ; and in the small
basket that never left his hand was a whale
tooth. It was a magnificent tooth, fully
six inches long, beautifully proportioned,
the ivory turned yellow and purple with
age. This tooth was likewise the property
of Ra Vatu ; and in Fiji, when such a tooth
goes forth, things usually happen. For this
is the virtue of the whale tooth : Whoever
accepts it cannot refuse the request that
may accompany it or follow it. The re
quest may be anything from a human life
to a tribal alliance, and no Fijian is so
dead to honor as to deny the request
when once the tooth has been accepted.
Sometimes the request hangs fire, or the
fulfilment is delayed, with untoward con
sequences.

High up the Rewa, at the village of a
chief, Mongondro by name, John Star-
hurst rested at the end of the second day
of the journey. In the morning, attended
by Narau, he expected to start on foot for

68 THE WHALE TOOTH

the smoky mountains that were now green
and velvety with nearness. Mongondro
was a sweet-tempered, mild-mannered little
old chief, short-sighted and afflicted with
elephantiasis, and no longer inclined toward
the turbulence of war. He received the
missionary with warm hospitality, gave
him food from his own table, and even
discussed religious matters with him. Mon
gondro was of an inquiring bent of mind,
and pleased John Starhurst greatly by
asking him to account for the existence
and beginning of things. When the mis
sionary had finished his summary of the
Creation according to Genesis, he saw that
Mongondro was deeply affected. The little
old chief smoked silently for some time.
Then he took the pipe from his mouth
and shook his head sadly.

"It cannot be," he said. "I, Mon
gondro, in my youth, was a good workman
with the adze. Yet three months did it
take me to make a canoe — a small canoe,
a very small canoe. And you say that all

THE WHALE TOOTH *9

this land and water was made by one

man — "

"Nay, was made by one God, the only
true God," the missionary interrupted.

"It is the same thing," Mongondro went
on, "that all the land and all the water,
the trees, the fish, and bush and mountains,
the sun, the moon, and the stars, were
made in six days ! No, no. I tell you
that in my youth I was an able man, yet
did it require me three months for one
small canoe. It is a story to frighten
children with ; but no man can believe it."

"I am a man," the missionary said.

"True, you are a man. But it is not
given to my dark understanding to know
what you believe."

"I tell you, I do believe that everything
was made in six days."

"So you say, so you say," the old can
nibal murmured soothingly.

It was not until after John Starhurst
and Narau had gone off to bed that Erirola
crept into the chief's house, and, after

70 THE WHALE TOOTH

diplomatic speech, handed the whale tooth
to Mongondro.

The old chief held the tooth in his hands
for a long time. It was a beautiful tooth,
and he yearned for it. Also, he divined
the request that must accompany it. "No,
no; whale teeth were beautiful," and his
mouth watered for it, but he passed it
back to Erirola with many apologies.

In the early dawn John Starhurst was
afoot, striding along the bush trail in his
big leather boots, at his heels the faithful
Narau, himself at the heels of a naked
guide lent him by Mongondro to show the
way to the next village, which was reached
by midday. Here a new guide showed the
way. A mile in the rear plodded Erirola,
the whale tooth in the basket slung on his
shoulder. For two days more he brought
up the missionary's rear, offering the tooth
to the village chiefs. But village after
village refused the tooth. It followed so
quickly the missionary's advent that they

THE WHALE TOOTH 71

divined the request that would be made,
and would have none of it.

They were getting deep into the moun
tains, and Erirola took a secret trail, cut
in ahead of the missionary, and reached
the stronghold of the Buli of Gatoka. Now
the Buli was unaware of John Starhurst's
imminent arrival. Also, the tooth was
beautiful — an extraordinary specimen,
while the coloring of it was of the rarest
order. The tooth was presented publicly.
The Buli of Gatoka, seated on his best mat,
surrounded by his chief men, three busy
fly-brushers at his back, deigned to receive
from the hand of his herald the whale
tooth presented by Ra Vatu and carried
into the mountains by his cousin, Erirola.
A clapping of hands went up at the accepta
tion of the present, the assembled headmen,
heralds, and fly-brushers crying aloud in
chorus :

"A ! woi ! woi ! woi ! A ! woi ! woi ! woi !
A tabua levu ! woi ! woi ! A mudua, mudua,
mudua !"

72 THE WHALE TOOTH

"Soon will come a man, a white man,'*
Erirola began, after the proper pause.
"He is a missionary man, and he will come
to-day. Ra Vatu is pleased to desire his
boots. He wishes to present them to his
good friend, Mongondro, and it is in his
mind to send them with the feet along in
them, for Mongondro is an old man and his
teeth are not good. Be sure, O Buli, that
the feet go along in the boots. As for the
rest of him, it may stop here."

The delight in the whale tooth faded out
of the Buli's eyes, and he glanced about
him dubiously. Yet had he already ac
cepted the tooth.

"A little thing like a missionary does
not matter," Erirola prompted.

"No, a little thing like a missionary does
not matter," the Buli answered, himself
again. "Mongondro shall have the boots.
Go, you young men, some three or four
of you, and meet the missionary on the
trail. Be sure you bring back the boots
as well."

THE WHALE TOOTH 73

"It is too late," said Erirola. "Listen!
He comes now."

Breaking through the thicket of brush,
John Starhurst, with Narau close on his
heels, strode upon the scene. The famous
boots, having filled in wading the stream,
squirted fine jets of water at every step.
Starhurst looked about him with flashing
eyes. Upborne by an unwavering trust,
untouched by doubt or fear, he exulted in
all he saw. He knew that since the begin
ning of time he was the first white man ever
to tread the mountain stronghold of Gatoka.

The grass houses clung to the steep
mountain side or overhung the rushing
Rewa. On either side towered a mighty
precipice. At the best, three hours of
sunlight penetrated that narrow gorge.
No cocoanuts nor bananas were to be seen,
though dense, tropic vegetation overran
everything, dripping in airy festoons from
the sheer lips of the precipices and running
riot in all the crannied ledges. At the far
end of the gorge the Rewa leaped eight

74 THE WHALE TOOTH

hundred feet in a single span, while the
atmosphere of the rock fortress pulsed to
the rhythmic thunder of the fall.

From the Buli's house John Starhurst
saw emerging the Buli and his followers.

"I bring you good tidings," was the mis
sionary's greeting.

"Who has sent you ?" the Buli rejoined
quietly.

"God."

"It is a new name in Viti Levu," the Buli
grinned. "Of what islands, villages, or
passes may he be chief?"

"He is the chief over all islands, all
villages, all passes," John Starhurst an
swered solemnly. "He is the Lord over
heaven and earth, and I am come to
bring His word to you."

"Has he sent whale teeth?" was the
insolent query.

"No, but more precious than whale
teeth is the -

"It is the custom, between chiefs, to
send whale teeth," the Buli interrupted.

THE WHALE TOOTH 75

"Your chief is either a niggard, or you
are a fool, to come empty-handed into the
mountains. Behold, a more generous than
you is before you."

So saying, he showed the whale tooth he
had received from Erirola.

Narau groaned.

"It is the whale tooth of Ra Vatu," he
whispered to Starhurst. "I know it well.
Now are we undone."

"A gracious thing," the missionary an
swered, passing his hand through his long
beard and adjusting his glasses. "Ra Vatu
has arranged that we should be well re
ceived."

But Narau groaned again, and backed
away from the heels he had dogged so
faithfully.

"Ra Vatu is soon to become Lotu,"
Starhurst explained, " and I have come
bringing the Lotu to you."

"I want none of your Lotu," said the
Buli, proudly. "And it is in my mind that
you will be clubbed this day."

76 THE WHALE TOOTH

The Buli nodded to one of his big moun
taineers, who stepped forward, swinging a
club. Narau bolted into the nearest house,
seeking to hide among the women and mats ;
but John Starhurst sprang in under the
club and threw his arms around his execu
tioner's neck. From this point of vantage
he proceeded to argue. He was arguing
for his life, and he knew it ; but he was
neither excited nor afraid.

"It would be an evil thing for you to kill
me," he told the man. "I have done you
no wrong, nor have I done the Buli wrong."

So well did he cling to the neck of the
one man that they dared not strike with
their clubs. And he continued to cling and
to dispute for his life with those who clam
ored for his death.

"I am John Starhurst," he went on
calmly. "I have labored in Fiji for three
years, and I have done it for no profit. I
am here among you for good. Why should
any man kill me ? To kill me will not profit
any man."

THE WHALE TOOTH 77

The Bull stole a look at the whale tooth.
He was well paid for the deed.

The missionary was surrounded by a
mass of naked savages, all struggling to
get at him. The death song, which is the
song of the oven, was raised, and his expos
tulations could no longer be heard. But
so cunningly did he twine and wreathe his
body about his captor's that the death
blow could not be struck. Erirola smiled,
and the Buli grew angry.

"Away with you !" he cried. "A nice
story to go back to the coast — a dozen
of you and one missionary, without weapons,
weak as a woman, overcoming all of you."

"Wait, O Buli," John Starhurst called
out from the thick of the scuffle, "and I
will overcome even you. For my weapons
are Truth and Right, and no man can with
stand them."

"Come to me, then," the Buli answered,
" for my weapon is only a poor miserable
club, and, as you say, it cannot withstand
you."

78 THE WHALE TOOTH

The group separated from him, and John
Starhurst stood alone, facing the Buli, who
was leaning on an enormous, knotted war-
club.

"Come to me, missionary man, and over
come me," the Buli challenged.

"Even so will I come to you and over
come you," John Starhurst made answer,
first wiping his spectacles and settling them
properly, then beginning his advance.

The Buli raised the club and waited.

"In the first place, my death will profit
you nothing," began the argument.

"I leave the answer to my club," was
the Buli's reply.

And to every point he made the same
reply, at the same time watching the
missionary closely in order to forestall that
cunning run-in under the lifted club. Then,
and for the first time, John Starhurst knew
that his death was at hand. He made no
attempt to run in. Bareheaded, he stood
in the sun and prayed aloud — the myste
rious figure of the inevitable white man,

THE WHALE TOOTH 79

who, with Bible, bullet, or rum bottle, has
confronted the amazed savage in his every
stronghold. Even so stood John Starhurst
in the rock fortress of the Buli of Gatoka.

"Forgive them, for they know not what
they do," he prayed. "O Lord ! have
mercy upon Fiji. Have compassion for
Fiji. O Jehovah, hear us for His sake,
Thy Son, whom Thou didst give that
through Him all men might also become
Thy children. From Thee we came, and
our mind is that to Thee we may return.
The land is dark, O Lord, the land is dark.
But Thou art mighty to save. Reach
out Thy hand, O Lord, and save Fiji, poor
cannibal Fiji."

The Buli grew impatient.

"Now will I answer thee," he muttered,
at the same time swinging his club with
both hands.

Narau, hiding among the women and
the mats, heard the impact of the blow and
shuddered. Then the death song arose,
and he knew his beloved missionary's body

8o THE WHALE TOOTH

was being dragged to the oven as he heard
the words :

^ me gently. Drag me gently."

'' For I am the champion of my land."
"Give thanks! Give thanks! Give
thanks!"

Next, a single voice arose out of the din,
asking :

"Where is the brave man ?"
A hundred voices bellowed the answer :
"Gone to be dragged into the oven and
cooked."

"Where is the coward ?" the single voice
demanded.

"Gone to report!" the hundred voices
bellowed back. "Gone to report! Gone
to report ! "

Narau groaned in anguish of spirit. The
words of the old song were true. He was
the coward, and nothing remained to him
but to go and report.

MAUKI

MAUKI

HE weighed one hundred and ten
pounds. His hair was kinky and
negroid, and he was black. He was
peculiarly black. He was neither blue-
black nor purple-black, but plum-black.
His name was Mauki, and he was the son
of a chief. He had three tambos. Tambo
is Melanesian for taboo, and is first cousin
to that Polynesian word. Mauki's three
tambos were as follows : first, he must
never shake hands with a woman, nor
have a woman's hand touch him or any
of his personal belongings ; secondly, he
must never eat clams nor any food from
a fire in which clams had been cooked ;
thirdly, he must never touch a crocodile,
nor travel in a canoe that carried any
part of a crocodile even if as large as a
tooth.

83

84 MAUKI

Of a different black were his teeth, which
were deep black, or, perhaps better, lamp-
black. They had been made so in a single
night, by his mother, who had compressed
about them a powdered mineral which was
dug from the landslide back of Port Adams.
Port Adams is a salt-water village on
Malaita, and Malaita is the most savage
island in the Solomons — so savage that
no traders nor planters have yet gained a
foothold on it ; while, from the time of
the earliest beche-de-mer fishers and sandal-
wood traders down to the latest labor
recruiters equipped with automatic rifles
and gasolene engines, scores of white ad
venturers have been passed out by toma
hawks and soft-nosed Snider bullets. So
Malaita remains to-day, in the twentieth
century, the stamping ground of the labor
recruiters, who farm its coasts for laborers
who engage and contract themselves to
toil on the plantations of the neighboring
and more civilized islands for a wage of
thirty dollars a year. The natives of those

MAUKI 8$

neighboring and more civilized islands have
themselves become too civilized to work
on plantations.

Mauki's ears were pierced, not in one
place, nor two places, but in a couple of
dozen places. In one of the smaller holes
he carried a clay pipe. The larger holes
were too large for such use. The bowl
of the pipe would have fallen through. In
fact, in the largest hole in each ear he ha
bitually wore round wooden plugs that were
an even four inches in diameter. Roughly
speaking, the circumference of said holes
was twelve and one-half inches. Mauki
was catholic in his tastes. In the various
smaller holes he carried such things as
empty rifle cartridges, horseshoe nails,
copper screws, pieces of string, braids of
sennit, strips of green leaf, and, in the cool
of the day, scarlet hibiscus flowers. From
which it will be seen that pockets were
not necessary to his well-being. Besides,
pockets were impossible, for his only wearing
apparel consisted of a piece of calico sev-

86 MAUKI

eral inches wide. A pocket knife he wore
in his hair, the blade snapped down on a
kinky lock. His most prized possession
was the handle of a china cup, which he
suspended from a ring of turtle-shell, w^hich,
in turn, was passed through the partition-
cartilage of his nose.

But in spite of embellishments, Mauki
had a nice face. It was really a pretty face,
viewed by any standard, and for a Melane-
sian it was a remarkably good-looking
face. Its one fault was its lack of strength.
It was softly effeminate, almost girlish.
The features were small, regular, and deli
cate. The chin was weak, and the mouth
was weak. There was no strength nor
character in the jaws, forehead, and nose.
In the eyes only could be caught any hint
of the unknown quantities that were so
large a part of his make-up and that other
persons could not understand. These un
known quantities were pluck, pertinacity,
fearlessness, imagination, and cunning;
and when they found expression in some

MAUKI 87

consistent and striking action, those about
him were astounded.

Mauki's father was chief over the village
at Port Adams, and thus, by birth a salt
water man, Mauki was half amphibian.
He knew the way of the fishes and oysters,
and the reef was an open book to him.
Canoes, also, he knew. He learned to
swim when he was a year old. At seven
years he could hold his breath a full minute
and swim straight down to bottom through
thirty feet of water. And at seven years
he was stolen by the bushmen, who cannot
even swim and who are afraid of salt water.
Thereafter Mauki saw the sea only from
a distance, through rifts in the jungle and
from open spaces on the high mountain
sides. He became the slave of old Fanfoa,
head chief over a score of scattered bush-
villages on the range-lips of Malaita, the
smoke of which, on calm mornings, is about
the only evidence the seafaring white men
have of the teeming interior population.
For the whites do not penetrate Malaita.

88 MAUKI

They tried it once, in the days when the
search was on for gold, but they always
left their heads behind to grin from the
smoky rafters of the bushmen's huts.

When Mauki was a young man of seven
teen, Fanfoa got out of tobacco. He got
dreadfully out of tobacco. It was hard
times in all his villages. He had been
guilty of a mistake. Suo was a harbor
so small that a large schooner could not
swing at anchor in it. It was surrounded
by mangroves that overhung the deep water.
It was a trap, and into the trap sailed two
white men in a small ketch. They were
after recruits, and they possessed much
tobacco and trade-goods, to sa}^ nothing
of three rifles and plenty of ammunition.
Now there were no salt-water men living
at Suo, and it was there that the bushmen
could come down to the sea. The ketch
did a splendid traffic. It signed on twenty
recruits the first day. Even old Fanfoa
signed on. And that same day the score of
new recruits chopped off the two white

MAUKI 89

men's heads, killed the boat's crew, and
burned the ketch. Thereafter, and for three
months, there was tobacco and trade-goods
in plenty and to spare in all the bush-
villages. Then came the man-of-war that
threw shells for miles into the hills, frighten
ing the people out of their villages and into
the deeper bush. Next the man-of-war
sent landing parties ashore. The villages
were all burned, along with the tobacco and
trade-stuff. The cocoanuts and bananas
were chopped down, the taro gardens up
rooted, and the pigs and chickens killed.

It taught Fanfoa a lesson, but in the
meantime he was out of tobacco. Also,
his young men were too frightened to sign
on with the recruiting vessels. That was
why Fanfoa ordered his slave, Mauki,
to be carried down and signed on for half
a case of tobacco advance, along with
knives, axes, calico, and beads, which he
would pay for with his toil on the planta
tions. Mauki was sorely frightened when
they brought him on board the schooner.

90 MAUKI

He was a lamb led to the slaughter. White
men were ferocious creatures. They had
to be, or else they would not make a practice
of venturing along the Malaita coast and
into all harbors, two on a schooner, when
each schooner carried from fifteen to twenty
blacks as boat's crew, and often as high
as sixty or seventy black recruits. In
addition to this, there was always the danger
of the shore population, the sudden attack
and the cutting off of the schooner and all
hands. Truly, white men must be terrible.
Besides, they were possessed of such devil-
devils — rifles that shot very rapidly many
times, things of iron and brass that made
the schooners go when there was no wind,
and boxes that talked and laughed just as
men talked and laughed. Ay, and he
had heard of one white man whose partic
ular devil-devil was so powerful that he
could take out all his teeth and put them
back at will.

Down into the cabin they took Mauki.
On deck, the one white man kept guard

MAUKI 91

with two revolvers in his belt. In the
cabin the other white man sat with a
book before him, in which he inscribed
strange marks and lines. He looked at
Mauki as though he had been a pig or a
fowl, glanced under the hollows of his arms,
and wrote in the book. Then he held out
the writing stick and Mauki just barely
touched it with his hand, in so doing pledging
himself to toil for three years on the planta
tions of the Moongleam Soap Company.
It was not explained to him that the will
of the ferocious white men would be used
to enforce the pledge, and that, behind all,
for the same use, was all the power and all
the warships of Great Britain.

Other blacks there were on board, from
unheard-of far places, and when the white
man spoke to them, they tore the long
feather from Mauki's hair, cut that same
hair short, and wrapped about his waist
a lava-lava of bright yellow calico.

After many days on the schooner, and
after beholding more land and islands than

92 MAUKI

he had ever dreamed of, he was landed on
New Georgia, and put to work in the field
clearing jungle and cutting cane grass.
For the first time he knew what work was.
Even as a slave to Fanfoa he had not
worked like this. And he did not like work.
It was up at dawn and in at dark, on two
meals a day. And the food was tiresome.
For weeks at a time they were given noth
ing but sweet potatoes to eat, and for weeks
at a time it would be nothing but rice. He
cut out the cocoanut from the shells day
after day ; and for long days and weeks he
fed the fires that smoked the copra, till
his eyes got sore and he was set to felling
trees. He was a good axe-man, and later
he was put in the bridge-building gang.
Once, he was punished by being put in
the road-building gang. At times he served
as boat's crew in the whale-boats, when
they brought in copra from distant beaches
or when the white men went out to dynamite
fish.

Among other things he learned beche-

MAUKI 93

de-mer English, with which he could talk
with all white men, and with all recruits
who otherwise would have talked in a thou
sand different dialects. Also, he learned
certain things about the white men, princi
pally that they kept their word. If they
told a boy he was going to receive a stick of
tobacco, he got it. If they told a boy they
would knock seven bells out of him if he
did a certain thing, when he did that thing
seven bells invariably were knocked out
of him. Mauki did not know what seven
bells were, but they occurred in beche-de-
mer, and he imagined them to be the blood
and teeth that sometimes accompanied
the process of knocking out seven bells.
One other thing he learned : no boy was
struck or punished unless he did wrong.
Even when the white men were drunk, as
they were frequently, they never struck
unless a rule had been broken.

Mauki did not like the plantation. He
hated work, and he was the son of a chief
Furthermore, it was ten years since he had

94 MAUKI

been stolen from Port Adams by Fanfoa,
and he was homesick. He was even home
sick for the slavery under Fanfoa. So he
ran away. He struck back into the bush,
with the idea of working southward to the
beach and stealing a canoe in which to
go home to Port Adams. But the fever
got him, and he was captured and brought
back more dead than alive.

A second time he ran away, in the com
pany of two Malaita boys. They got down
the coast twenty miles, and were hidden in
the hut of a Malaita freeman, who dwelt
in that village. But in the dead of night
two white men came, who were not afraid
of all the village people and who knocked
seven bells out of the three runaways, tied
them like pigs, and tossed them into the
whale-boat. But the man in whose house
they had hidden — seven times seven bells
must have been knocked out of him from the
way the hair, skin, and teeth flew, and he was
discouraged for the rest of his natural life
from harboring runaway laborers.

MAUKI 95

For a year Mauki toiled on. Then he
was made a house-boy, and had good food
and easy times, with light work in keeping
the house clean and serving the white men
with whiskey and beer at all hours of the
day and most hours of the night. He
liked it, but he liked Port Adams more.
He had two years longer to serve, but two
years were too long for him in the throes
of homesickness. He had grown wiser with
his year of service, and, being now a house-
boy, he had opportunity. He had the clean
ing of the rifles, and he knew where the key
to the store-room was hung. He planned
the escape, and one night ten Malaita boys
and one boy from San Cristoval sneaked from
the barracks and dragged one of the whale-
boats down to the beach. It was Mauki
who supplied the key that opened the pad
lock on the boat, and it was Mauki who
equipped the boat with a dozen Winches
ters, an immense amount of ammunition,
a case of dynamite with detonators and
fuse, and ten cases of tobacco.

96 MAUKI

The northwest monsoon was blowing,
and they fled south in the night-time,
hiding by day on detached and uninhabited
islets, or dragging their whale-boat into
the bush on the large islands. Thus they
gained Guadalcanar, skirted halfway along
it, and crossed the Indispensable Straits
to Florida Island. It was here that they
killed the San Cristoval boy, saving his
head and cooking and eating the rest of
him. The Malaita coast was only twenty
miles away, but the last night a strong
current and baffling winds prevented them
from gaining across. Daylight found them
still several miles from their goal. But
daylight brought a cutter, in which were
two white men, who were not afraid of
eleven Malaita men armed with twelve
rifles. Mauki and his companions were
carried back to Tulagi, where lived the
great white master of all the white men.
And the great white master held a court,
after which, one by one, the runaways
were tied up and given twenty lashes each,

MAUKI 97

and sentenced to a fine of fifteen dollars.
Then they were sent back to New Georgia,
where the white men knocked seven bells
out of them all around and put them to
work. But Mauki was no longer house-
boy. He was put in the road-making gang.
The fine of fifteen dollars had been paid
by the white men from whom he had run
away, and he was told that he would have
to work it out, which meant six months'
additional toil. Further, his share of the
stolen tobacco earned him another year
of toil.

Port Adams was now three years and a
half away, so he stole a canoe one night,
hid on the islets in Manning Straits, passed
through the Straits, and began working
along the eastern coast of Ysabel, only to
be captured, two-thirds of the way along,
by the white men on Meringe Lagoon.
After a week, he escaped from them and
took to the bush. There were no bush
natives on Ysabel, only salt-water men?
who were all Christians. The white men

98 MAUKI

put up a reward of five hundred sticks of
tobacco, and every time Mauki ventured
down to the sea to steal a canoe he was
chased by the salt-water men. Four
months of this passed, when, the reward
having been raised to a thousand sticks,
he was caught and sent back to New
Georgia and the road-building gang. Now
a thousand sticks are worth fifty dollars,
and Mauki had to pay the reward himself,
which required a year and eight months'
labor. So Port Adams was now five years
away.

His homesickness was greater than ever,
and it did not appeal to him to settle down
and be good, work out his four years, and
go home. The next time, he was caught
in the very act of running away. His
case was brought before Mr. Haveby, the
island manager of the Moongleam Soap
Company, who adjudged him an incorri
gible. The Company had plantations on
the Santa Cruz Islands, hundreds of miles
across the sea, and there it sent its Solomon

MAUKI 99

Islands' incorrigibles. And there Mauki
was sent, though he never arrived. The
schooner stopped at Santa Anna, and in the
night Mauki swam ashore, where he stole
two rifles and a case of tobacco from the
trader and got away in a canoe to Cristoval.
Malaita was now to the north, fifty or
sixty miles away. But when he attempted
the passage, he was caught by a light gale
and driven back to Santa Anna, where
the trader clapped him in irons and held
him against the return of the schooner
from Santa Cruz. The two rifles the
trader recovered, but the case of tobacco
was charged up to Mauki at the rate of
another year. The sum of years he now
owed the Company was six.

On the way back to New Georgia, the
schooner dropped anchor in Marau Sound,
which lies at the southeastern extremity
of Guadalcanar. Mauki swam ashore with
handcuffs on his wrists and got away to
the bush. The schooner went on, but the
Moongleam trader ashore offered a thou-

ioo MAUKI

sand sticks, and to him Mauki was brought
by the bushmen with a year and eight
months tacked on to his account. Again,
and before the schooner called in, he got
away, this time in a whale-boat accom
panied by a case of the trader's tobacco.
But a northwest gale wrecked him upon
Ugi, where the Christian natives stole his
tobacco and turned him over to the Moon-
gleam trader who resided there. The
tobacco the natives stole meant another
year for him, and the tale was now eight
years and a half.

"We'll send him to Lord Howe," said
Mr. Haveby. "Bunster is there, and we'll
let them settle it between them. It will
be a case, I imagine, of Mauki getting
Bunster, or Bunster getting Mauki, and
good riddance in either event."

If one leaves Meringe Lagoon, on Ysa-
bel, and steers a course due north, mag
netic, at the end of one hundred and fifty
miles he will lift the pounded coral beaches
of Lord Howe above the sea. Lord Howe

MAUKI ioi

is a ring of land some one hundred and
fifty miles in circumference, several hun
dred yards wide at its widest, and towering
in places to a height of ten feet above sea-
level. Inside this ring of sand is a mighty
lagoon studded with coral patches. Lord
Howe belongs to the Solomons neither
geographically nor ethnologically. It is an
atoll, while the Solomons are high is
lands; and its people and language are
Polynesian, while the inhabitants of the
Solomons are Melanesian. Lord Howe has
been populated by the westward Polynesian
drift which continues to this day, big out
rigger canoes being washed upon its beaches
by the southeast trade. That there has
been a slight Melanesian drift in the period
of the northwest monsoon, is also evident.
Nobody ever comes to Lord Howe, or
Ontong-Java as it is sometimes called.
Thomas Cook & Son do not sell tickets
to it, and tourists do not dream of its exist
ence. Not even a white missionary has
landed on its shore. Its five thousand

102 MAUKI

natives are as peaceable as they are primi
tive. Yet they were not always peaceable.
The Sailing Directions speak of them as
hostile and treacherous. But the men who
compile the Sailing Directions have never
heard of the change that was worked in the
hearts of the inhabitants, who, not many
years ago, cut off a big bark and killed all
hands with the exception of the second
mate. This survivor carried the news
to his brothers. The captains of three
trading schooners returned with him to
Lord Howe. They sailed their vessels
right into the lagoon and proceeded to
preach the white man's gospel that only
white men shall kill white men and that the
lesser breeds must keep hands off. The
schooners sailed up and down the lagoon,
harrying and destroying. There was no
escape from the narrow sand-circle, no
bush to which to flee. The men were shot
down at sight, and there was no avoiding
being sighted. The villages were burned,
the canoes smashed, the chickens and pigs

MAUKI 103

killed, and the precious cocoa nut-trees
chopped down. For a month this con
tinued, when the schooners sailed away;
but the fear of the white man had been
seared into the souls of the islanders and
never again were they rash enough to harm
one.

Max Bunster was the one white man on
Lord Howe, trading in the pay of the ubiq
uitous Moongleam Soap Company. And
the Company billeted him on Lord Howe,
because, next to getting rid of him, it was
the most out-of-the-way place to be found.
That the Company did not get rid of him
was due to the difficulty of finding another
man to take his place. He was a strapping
big German, with something wrong in his
brain. Semi-madness would be a chari
table statement of his condition. He was
a bully and a coward, and a thrice-bigger
savage than any savage on the island.
Being a coward, his brutality was of the
cowardly order. When he first went into
the Company's employ, he was stationed

104 MAUKI

on Savo. When a consumptive colonial
was sent to take his place, he beat him up
with his fists and sent him off a wreck in
the schooner that brought him.

Mr. Haveby next selected a young York
shire giant to relieve Bunster. The York
shire man had a reputation as a bruiser
and preferred fighting to eating. But
Bunster wouldn't fight. He was a regular
little lamb — for ten days, at the end of
which time the Yorkshire man was pros
trated by a combined attack of dysentery
and fever. Then Bunster went for him,
among other things getting him down and
jumping on him a score or so of times.
Afraid of what would happen when his
victim recovered, Bunster fled away in a
cutter to Guvutu, where he signalized him
self by beating up a young Englishman
already crippled by a Boer bullet through
both hips.

Then it was that Mr. Haveby sent Bun
ster to Lord Howe, the falling-off place.
He celebrated his landing by mopping

MAUKI 105

up half a case of gin and by thrashing the
elderly and wheezy mate of the schooner
which had brought him. When the
schooner departed, he called the kanakas
down to the beach and challenged them to
throw him in a wrestling bout, promising
a case of tobacco to the one who succeeded.
Three kanakas he threw, but was promptly
thrown by a fourth, who, instead of receiv
ing the tobacco, got a bullet through his
lungs.

And so began Bunster's reign on Lord
Howe. Three thousand people lived in
the principal village; but it was deserted,
even in broad day, when he passed through.
Men, women, and children fled before him.
Even the dogs and pigs got out of the way,
while the king was not above hiding under
a mat. The two prime ministers lived in
terror of Bunster, who never discussed any
moot subject, but struck out with his
fists instead.

And to Lord Howe came Mauki, to toil
for Bunster for eight long years and a

io6 MAUKI

half. There was no escaping from Lord
Howe. For better or worse, Bunster and
he were tied together. Bunster weighed
two hundred pounds. Mauki weighed one
hundred and ten. Bunster was a de
generate brute. But Mauki was a primi
tive savage. While both had wills and
ways of their own.

Mauki had no idea of the sort of master
he was to work for. He had had no warn
ings, and he had concluded as a matter
of course that Bunster would be like other
white men, a drinker of much whiskey, a
ruler and a lawgiver who always kept his
word and who never struck a boy un
deserved. Bunster had the advantage.
He knew all about Mauki, and gloated over
the coming into possession of him. The
last cook was suffering from a broken arm
and a dislocated shoulder, so Bunster made
Mauki cook and general house-boy.

And Mauki soon learned that there were
white men and white men. On the very
day the schooner departed he was ordered

MAUKI 107

to buy a chicken from Samisee, the native
Tongan missionary. But Samisee had
sailed across the lagoon and would not be
back for three days. Mauki returned with
the information. He climbed the steep
stairway (the house stood on piles twelve
feet above the sand), and entered the liv
ing-room to report. The trader demanded
the chicken. Mauki opened his mouth to
explain the missionary's absence. But
Bunster did not care for explanations. He
struck out with his fist. The blow caught
Mauki on the mouth and lifted him into
the air. Clear through the doorway he
flew, across the narrow veranda, breaking
the top railing, and down to the ground.
His lips were a contused, shapeless mass,
and his mouth was full of blood and broken
teeth.

" That'll teach you that back talk don't
go with me," the trader shouted, purple
with rage, peering down at him over the
broken railing.

Mauki had never met a white man like

io8 MAUKI

this, and he resolved to walk small and
never offend. He saw the boat-boys
knocked about, and one of them put in
irons for three days with nothing to eat
for the crime of breaking a rowlock while
pulling. Then, too, he heard the gossip
of the village and learned why Bunster
had taken a third wife — by force, as was
well known. The first and second wives
lay in the graveyard, under the white
coral sand, with slabs of coral rock at head
and feet. They had died, it was said,
from beatings he had given them. The
third wife was certainly ill-used, as Mauki
could see for himself.

But there wras no way by which to
avoid offending the wrhite man, who seemed
offended with life. When Mauki kept
silent, he was struck and called a sullen
brute. When he spoke, he was struck for
giving back talk. Wlien he was grave,
Bunster accused him of plotting and gave
him a thrashing in advance ; and when he
strove to be cheerful and to smile, he was

MAUKI 109

charged with sneering at his lord and master
and given a taste of stick. Bunster was a
devil. The village would have done for
him, had it not remembered the lesson of
the three schooners. It might have done
for him anyway, if there had been a bush
to which to flee. As it was, the murder of
the white men, of any white man, would
bring a man-of-war that would kill the
offenders and chop down the precious
cocoanut-trees. Then there were the boat-
boys, with minds fully made up to drown
him by accident at the first opportunity
to capsize the cutter. Only Bunster saw
to it that the boat did not capsize.

Mauki was of a different breed, and,
escape being impossible while Bunster
lived, he was resolved to get the white
man. The trouble was that he could never
find a chance. Bunster was always on
guard. Day and night his revolvers were
ready to hand. He permitted nobody to
pass behind his back, as Mauki learned
after having been knocked down several

i io MAUKI

times. Bunster knew that he had more
to fear from the good-natured, even sweet-
faced, Malaita boy than from the entire
population of Lord Howe ; and it gave
added zest to the programme of torment
he was carrying out. And Mauki walked
small, accepted his punishments, and
waited.

All other white men had respected his
tambos, but not so Bunster. Mauki's
weekly allowance of tobacco was two sticks.
Bunster passed them to his woman and
ordered Mauki to receive them from her
hand. But this could not be, and Mauki
went without his tobacco. In the same
way he was made to miss many a meal,
and to go hungry many a day. He was
ordered to make chowder out of the big
clams that grew in the lagoon. This he
could not do, for clams were tambo. Six
times in succession he refused to touch
the clams, and six times he was knocked
senseless. Bunster knew that the boy
would die first, but called his refusal mutiny,

MAUKI in

and would have killed him had there been
another cook to take his place.

One of the trader's favorite tricks was
to catch Mauki's kinky locks and bat his
head against the wall. Another trick was
to catch Mauki unawares and thrust the
live end of a cigar against his flesh. This
Bunster called vaccination, and Mauki
was vaccinated a number of times a week.
Once, in a rage, Bunster ripped the cup
handle from Mauki's nose, tearing the hole
clear out of the cartilage.

"Oh, what a mug!" was his comment,
when he surveyed the damage he had
wrought.

The skin of a shark is like sandpaper,
but the skin of a ray fish is like a rasp.
In the South Seas the natives use it as a
wood file in smoothing down canoes and
paddles. Bunster had a mitten made of
ray fish skin. The first time he tried it
on Mauki, with one sweep of the hand it
fetched the skin off his back from neck to
armpit. Bunster was delighted. He gave

MAUKI

his wife a taste of the mitten, and tried
it out thoroughly on the boat-boys. The
prime ministers came in for a stroke each,
and they had to grin and take it for a joke.

"Laugh, damn you, laugh!" was the
cue he gave.

Mauki came in for the largest share of
the mitten. Never a day passed without
a caress from it. There were times when
the loss of so much cuticle kept him awake
at night, and often the half-healed surface
was raked raw afresh by the facetious Mr.
Bunster. Mauki continued his patient
wait, secure in the knowledge that sooner
or later his time would come. And he
knew just what he was going to do, down
to the smallest detail, when the time did
come.

One morning Bunster got up in a mood
for knocking seven bells out of the uni
verse. He began on Mauki, and wound
up on Mauki, in the interval knocking
down his wife and hammering all the boat-
boys. At breakfast he called the coffee

MAUKI 113

slops and threw the scalding contents of
the cup into Mauki's face. By ten o'clock
Bunster was shivering with ague, and half
an hour later he was burning with fever.
It was no ordinary attack. It quickly
became pernicious, and developed into
black-water fever. The days passed, and
he grew weaker and weaker, never leaving
his bed. Mauki waited and watched, the
while his skin grew intact once more. He
ordered the boys to beach the cutter, scrub
her bottom, and give her a general over
hauling. They thought the order eman
ated from Bunster, and they obeyed. But
Bunster at the time was lying unconscious
and giving no orders. This was Mauki's
chance, but still he waited.

When the worst was past, and Bunster
lay convalescent and conscious, but weak
as a baby, Mauki packed his few trinkets,
including the china cup handle, into his
trade box. Then he went over to the vil
lage and interviewed the king and his two
prime ministers.
i

ii4 MAUKI

"This fella Bunster, him good fella you
like too much ?" he asked.

They explained in one voice that they
liked the trader not at all. The ministers
poured forth a recital of all the indignities
and wrongs that had been heaped upon
them. The king broke down and wept.
Mauki interrupted rudely.

;£You savve me — me big fella marster
my country. You no like 'm this fella
white marster. Me no like 'm. Plenty
good you put hundred cocoanut, two hun
dred cocoanut, three hundred cocoanut along
cutter. Him finish, you go sleep 'm good
fella. Altogether kanaka sleep 'm good fella.
Bime by big fella noise along house, you no
savve hear 'm that fella noise. You alto
gether sleep strong fella too much."

In like manner Mauki interviewed the
boat-boys. Then he ordered Bunster's
wife to return to her family house. Had
she refused, he would have been in a quan
dary, for his tambo would not have permitted
him to lay hands on her.

MAUKI 115

The house deserted, he entered the sleep
ing-room, where the trader lay in a doze.
Mauki first removed the revolvers, then
placed the ray fish mitten on his hand.
Bimster's first warning was a stroke of
the mitten that removed the skin the full
length of his nose.

"Good fella, eh?" Mauki grinned, be
tween two strokes, one of which swept the
forehead bare and the other of which
cleaned off one side of his face. "Laugh,
damn you, laugh."

Mauki did his work thoroughly, and the
kanakas, hiding in their houses, heard the
"big fella noise" that Bunster made and
continued to make for an hour or more.

When Mauki was done, he carried the
boat compass and all the rifles and ammuni
tion down to the cutter, which he pro
ceeded to ballast with cases of tobacco.
It was while engaged in this that a hideous,
skinless thing came out of the house and
ran screaming down the beach till it fell
in the sand and mowed and gibbered under

MAUKI

the scorching sun. Mauki looked toward it
and hesitated. Then he went over and
removed the head, which he wrapped in
a mat and stowed in the stern-locker of
the cutter.

So soundly did the kanakas sleep through
that long hot day that they did not see the
cutter run out through the passage and head
south, close-hauled on the southeast trade.
Nor was the cutter ever sighted on that
long tack to the shores of Ysabel, and dur
ing the tedious head-beat from there to
Malaita. He landed at Port Adams with
a wealth of rifles and tobacco such as no
one man had ever possessed before. But
he did not stop there. He had taken a
white man's head, and only the bush could
shelter him. So back he went to the bush-
villages, where he shot old Fanfoa and half
a dozen of the chief men, and made himself
the chief over all the villages. When his
father died, Mauki's brother ruled in Port
Adams, and, joined together, salt-water
men and bushmen, the resulting combina-

MAUKI 117

tion was the strongest of the ten score
righting tribes of Malaita.

More than his fear of the British govern
ment was MaukFs fear of the all-powerful
Moongleam Soap Company; and one day
a message came up to him in the bush,
reminding him that he owed the Company
eight and one-half years of labor. He sent
back a favorable answer, and then appeared
the inevitable white man, the captain of
the schooner, the only white man during
Mauki's reign who ventured the bush and
came out alive. This man not only came
out, but he brought with him seven hundred
and fifty dollars in gold sovereigns — the
money price of eight years and a half of
labor plus the cost price of certain rifles
and cases of tobacco.

Mauki no longer weighs one hundred
and ten pounds. His stomach is three
times its former girth, and he has four
wives. He has many other things — rifles
and revolvers, the handle of a china cup,
and an excellent collection of bushmen's

n8 MAUKI

heads. But more precious than the entire
collection is another head, perfectly dried
and cured, with sandy hair and a yellowish
beard, which is kept wrapped in the finest
of fibre lava-lavas. When Mauki goes to
war with villages beyond his realm, he inva
riably gets out this head, and, alone in his
grass palace, contemplates it long and sol
emnly. At such times the hush of death
falls on the village, and not even a pick
aninny dares make a noise. The head is
esteemed the most powerful devil-devil
on Malaita, and to the possession of it is
ascribed all of Mauki's greatness.

"YAH! YAH! YAH!"

:<YAH! YAH! YAH!"

HE was a whiskey-guzzling Scotch
man, and he downed his whiskey
neat, beginning with his first tot
punctually at six in the morning, and
thereafter repeating it at regular intervals
throughout the day till bed-time, which
was usually midnight. He slept but five
hours out of twenty-four, and for the re
maining nineteen hours he was quietly and
decently drunk. During the eight weeks I
spent with him on Oolong Atoll, I never saw
him draw a sober breath. In fact, his sleep
was so short that he never had time to
sober up. It was the most beautiful and
orderly perennial drunk I have ever ob
served.

McAllister was his name. He was an
old man, and very shaky on his pins. His
hand trembled as with a palsy, especially

121

122 "YAH! YAH! YAH!"

noticeable when he poured his whiskey^
though I never knew him to spill a drop.
He had been twenty-eight years in Mela
nesia, ranging from German New Guinea
to the German Solomons, and so thoroughly
had he become identified with that portion
of the world, that he habitually spoke in
that bastard lingo called "beche-de-mer."
Thus, in conversation with me, sun he
come up meant sunrise ; kai-kai he stop
meant that dinner was served ; and belly
belong me walk about meant that he was sick
at his stomach. He was a small man,
and a withered one, burned inside and out
side by ardent spirits and ardent sun. He
was a cinder, a bit of a clinker of a man,
a little animated clinker, not yet quite
cold, that moved stiffly and by starts and
jerks like an automaton. A gust of wind
would have blown him away. He weighed
ninety pounds.

But the immense thing about him was
the power with which he ruled. Oolong
Atoll was one hundred and forty miles

"YAH! YAH! YAH!" 123

in circumference. One steered by compass
course in its lagoon. It was populated by
five thousand Polynesians, all strapping
men and women, many of them standing
six feet in height and weighing a couple of
hundred pounds. Oolong was two hun
dred and fifty miles from the nearest land.
Twice a year a little schooner called to
collect copra. The one white man on
Oolong was McAllister, petty trader and
unintermittent guzzler; and he ruled
Oolong and its six thousand savages with
an iron hand. He said come, and they
came, go, and they went. They never
questioned his will nor judgment. He was
cantankerous as only an aged Scotchman
can be, and interfered continually in their
personal affairs. When Nugu, the king's
daughter, wanted to marry Haunau from
the other end of the atoll, her father said
yes ; but McAllister said no, and the mar
riage never came off. When the king
wanted to buy a certain islet in the lagoon
from the chief priest, McAllister said no,

124 "YAH! YAH! YAH!"

The king was in debt to the Company to
the tune of 180,000 cocoanuts, and until
that was paid he was not to spend a single
cocoanut on anything else.

And yet the king and his people did not
love McAllister. In truth, they hated him
horribly, and, to my knowledge, the whole
population, with the priests at the head,
tried vainly for three months to pray him
to death. The devil-devils they sent after
him were awe-inspiring, but since McAl
lister did not believe in devil-devils, they
were without power over him. With
drunken Scotchmen all signs fail. They
gathered up scraps of food which had
touched his lips, an empty whiskey bottle,
a cocoanut from which he had drunk, and
even his spittle, and performed all kinds
of deviltries over them. But McAllister
lived on. His health was superb. He
never caught fever ; nor coughs nor colds ;
dysentery passed him by; and the malig
nant ulcers and vile skin diseases that
attack blacks and whites alike in that cli-

"YAH! YAH! YAH!" 125

mate never fastened upon him. He must
have been so saturated with alcohol as to
defy the lodgment of germs. I used to
imagine them falling to the ground in
showers of microscopic cinders as fast as
they entered his whiskey-sodden aura. No
one loved him, not even germs, while he
loved only whiskey, and still he lived.

I was puzzled. I could not understand
six thousand natives putting up with that
withered shrimp of a tyrant. It was a
miracle that he had not died suddenly long
since. Unlike the cowardly Melanesians,
the people were high-stomached and warlike.
In the big graveyard, at head and feet of
the graves, were relics of past sanguinary
history -- blubber-spades, rusty old bay
onets arid cutlasses, copper bolts, rudder-
irons, harpoons, bomb guns, bricks that
could have come from nowhere but a
whaler's trying-out furnace, and old brass
pieces of the sixteenth century that verified
the traditions of the early Spanish naviga
tors. Ship after ship had come to grief

126 "YAH! YAH! YAH!"

on Oolong. Not thirty years before, the
whaler Blennerdale, running into the lagoon
for repairs, had been cut off with all hands.
In similar fashion had the crew of the
Gasket, a sandalwood trader, perished.
There was a big French bark, the Toulon,
becalmed off the atoll, which the islanders
boarded after a sharp tussle and wrecked
in the Lipau Passage, the captain and a
handful of sailors escaping in the long
boat. Then there were the Spanish pieces,
which told of the loss of one of the early
explorers. All this, of the vessels named,
is a matter of history, and is to be found
in the South Pacific Sailing Directory. But
that there was other history, unwritten,
I was yet to learn. In the meantime I
puzzled why six thousand primitive savages
let one degenerate Scotch despot live.

One hot afternoon McAllister and I sat
on the veranda looking out over the lagoon,
with all its wonder of jewelled colors. At
our backs, across the hundred yards of
palm-studded sand, the outer surf roared

"YAH! YAH! YAH!" 127

on the reef. It was dreadfully warm. We
were in 4° south latitude and the sun was
directly overhead, having crossed the Line
a fewT days before on its journey south.
There was no wind — not even a catspaw.
The season of the southeast trade was
drawing to an early close, and the north
west monsoon had not yet begun to blow.

"They can't dance worth a damn," said
McAllister.

I had happened to mention that the
Polynesian dances were superior to the
Papuan, and this McAllister had denied,
for no other reason than his cantankerous-
ness. But it was too hot to argue, and I
said nothing. Besides, I had never seen
the Oolong people dance.

"I'll prove it to you," he announced,
beckoning to the black New Hanover boy,
a labor recruit, who served as cook and
general house servant. "Hey, you, boy,
you tell 'm one fella king come along me."

The boy departed, and back came the
prime minister, perturbed, ill at ease, and

128 "YAH! YAH! YAH!"

garrulous with apologetic explanation. In
short, the king slept, and was not to be
disturbed.

"King he plenty strong fella sleep,''
was his final sentence.

McAllister was in such a rage that the
prime minister incontinently fled, to return
with the king himself. They were a mag
nificent pair, the king especially, who must
have been all of six feet three inches in
height. His features had the eagle-like
quality that is so frequently found in those
of the North American Indian. He had
been both moulded and born to rule. His
eyes flashed as he listened, but right meekly
he obeyed McAllister's command to fetch
a couple of hundred of the best dancers,
male and female, in the village. And dance
they did, for two mortal hours, under that
broiling sun. They did not love him for
it, and little he cared, in the end dismissing
them with abuse and sneers.

The abject servility of those magnificent
savages was terrifying. How could it be ?

"YAH! YAH! YAH!" 129

What was the secret of his rule ? More
and more I puzzled as the days went by,
and though I observed perpetual examples
of his undisputed sovereignty, never a
clew was there as to how it was.

One day I happened to speak of my dis
appointment in failing to trade for a beauti
ful pair of orange cowries. The pair was
worth five pounds in Sydney if it was worth
a cent. I had offered twro hundred sticks
of tobacco to the owner, who had held out
for three hundred. When I casually men
tioned the situation, McAllister imme
diately sent for the man, took the shells
from him, and turned them over to me.
Fifty sticks were all he permitted me to
pay for them. The man accepted the
tobacco and seemed overjoyed at getting
off so easily. As for me, I resolved to keep
a bridle on my tongue in the future. And
still I mulled over the secret of McAllister's
power. I even went to the extent of asking
him directly, but all he did was to cock one
eye, look wise, and take another drink.

130 "YAH! YAH! YAH!"

One night I was out fishing in the lagoon
with Oti, the man who had been mulcted
of the cowries. Privily, I had made up to
him an additional hundred and fifty sticks,
and he had come to regard me with a re
spect that was almost veneration, which
was curious, seeing that he was an old
man, twice my age at least.

"What name you fella kanaka all the
same pickaninny ?" I began on him. "This
fella trader he one fella. You fella kanaka
plenty fella too much. You fella kanaka
just like 'm dog — plenty fright along that
fella trader. He no eat you fella. He
no get 'm teeth along him. What name
you too much fright ?"

"S'pose plenty fella kanaka kill 'm ?"
he asked.

"He die," I retorted. "You fella kanaka
kill 'm plenty fella white man long time
before. What name you fright this fella
white man ?"

"Yes, we kill 'm plenty," was his answer.
"My word ! Any amount ! Long time

"YAH! YAH! YAH!" 131

before. One time, me young fella too
much, one big fella ship he stop outside.
Wind he no blow. Plenty fella kanaka we
get 'm canoe, plenty fella canoe, we go
catch 'm that fella ship. My word — we
catch 'm big fella fight. Two, three white
men shoot like hell. We no fright. We
come alongside, we go up side, plenty fella,
maybe I think fifty-ten (five hundred).
One fella white Mary (woman) belong that
fella ship. Never before I see 'm white
Mary. Bime by plenty white man finish.
One fella skipper he no die. Five fella,
six fella white man no die. Skipper he
sing out. Some fella white man he fight.
Some fella white man he lower away boat.
After that, all together over the side they
go. Skipper he sling white Mary down.
After that they washee (row) strong fella
plenty too much. Father belong me, that
time he strong fella. He throw 'm one fella
spear. That fella spear he go in one side
that white Mary. He no stop. My word,
he go out other side that fella Mary. She

132 "YAH! YAH! YAH!"

finish. Me no fright. Plenty kanaka too
much no fright."

Old Oti's pride had been touched, for he
suddenly stripped down his lava-lava and
showed me the unmistakable scar of a bullet.
Before I could speak, his line ran out sud
denly. He checked it and attempted to
haul in, but found that the fish had run
around a coral branch. Casting a look of
reproach at me for having beguiled him from
his watchfulness, he went over the side, feet
first, turning over after he got under and
following his line down to bottom. The
water was ten fathoms. I leaned over and
watched the play of his feet, growing dim
and dimmer, as they stirred the wan phos
phorescence into ghostly fires. Ten fathoms
— sixty feet — it was nothing to him, an old
man, compared with the value of a hook and
line. After what seemed five minutes,
though it could not have been more than
a minute, I saw him flaming whitely up
ward. He broke surface and dropped a ten-
pound rock cod into the canoe, the line and

"YAH! YAH! YAH!" 133

hook intact, the latter still fast in the fish's
mouth.

"It may be," I said remorselessly.
"You no fright long ago. You plenty fright
now along that fella trader."

"Yes, plenty fright," he confessed, with
an air of dismissing the subject. For half
an hour we pulled up our lines and flung
them out in silence. Then small fish-sharks
began to bite, and after losing a hook apiece,
we hauled in and waited for the sharks to go
their way.

"I speak you true," Oti broke into speech,
" then you savve we fright now."

I lighted up my pipe and waited, and the
story that Oti told me in atrocious beche-de-
mer I here turn into proper English. Other
wise, in spirit and order of narrative, the
tale is as it fell from Oti's lips.

" It was after that that we were very proud.
We had fought many times with the strange
white men who live upon the sea, and always
we had beaten them. A few of us were
killed, but what was that compared with

134 "YAH! YAH! YAH!"

the stores of wealth of a thousand thousand
kinds that we found on the ships ? And
then one day, maybe twenty years ago, or
twenty-five, there came a schooner right
through the passage and into the lagoon.
It was a large schooner with three masts.
She had five white men and maybe forty
boat's crew, black fellows from New Guinea
and New Britain ; and she had come to fish
beche-de-mer. She lay at anchor across the
lagoon from here, at Pauloo, and her boats
scattered out everywhere, making camps
on the beaches where they cured the beche-
de-mer. This made them weak by dividing
them, for those who fished here and those
on the schooner at Pauloo were fifty miles
apart, and there were others farther away
still.

"Our king and headmen held council,
and I was one in the canoe that paddled
all afternoon and all night across the lagoon,
bringing word to the people of Pauloo that
in the morning we would attack the fishing
camps at the one time and that it was

"YAH! YAH! YAH!" 135

for them to take the schooner. We who
brought the word were tired with the pad
dling, but we took part in the attack. On
the schooner were two white men, the skip
per and the second mate, with half a dozen
black boys. The skipper with three boys
we caught on shore and killed, but first
eight of us the skipper killed with his two
revolvers. We fought close together, you
see, at hand grapples.

"The noise of our fighting told the mate
what was happening, and he put food and
water and a sail in the small dingy, which
was so small that it was no more than
twelve feet long. We came down upon the
schooner, a thousand men, covering the
lagoon with our canoes. Also, we were
blowing conch-shells, singing war-songs, and
striking the sides of the canoes with our
paddles. What chance had one white man
and three black boys against us ? No chance
at all, and the mate knew it.

" White men are hell. I have watched
them much, and I am an old man now, and

136 "YAH! YAH! YAH!"

I understand at last why the white men have
taken to themselves all the islands in the sea.
It is because they are hell. Here are you
in the canoe with me. You are hardly more
than a boy. You are not wise, for each day
I tell you many things you do not know.
When I was a little pickaninny, I knew more
about fish and the ways of fish than you
know now. I am an old man, but I swim
down to the bottom of the lagoon, and you
cannot follow me. What are you good for,
anyway ? I do not know, except to fight.
I have never seen you fight, yet I know that
you are like your brothers and that you will
fight like hell. Also, you are a fool, like
your brothers. You do not know when you
are beaten. You will fight until you die,
and then it will be too late to know that you
are beaten.

"Now behold what this mate did. As
we came down upon him, covering the sea
and blowing our conches, he put off from
the schooner in the small boat, along with
the three black boys, and rowed for the

"YAH! YAH! YAH!" 137

passage. There again he was a fool, for
no wise man would put out to sea in so small
a boat. The sides of it were not four inches
above the water. Twenty canoes went
after him, filled with two hundred young
men. We paddled five fathoms while his
black boys were rowing one fathom. He
had no chance, but he was a fool. He stood
up in the boat with a rifle, and he shot many
times. He was not a good shot, but as we
drew close many of us were wounded and
killed. But still he had no chance.

"I remember that all the time he was
smoking a cigar. When we were forty feet
away and coming fast, he dropped the rifle,
lighted a stick of dynamite with the cigar,
and threw it at us. He lighted another
and another, and threw them at us very
rapidly, many of them. I know now that
he must have split the ends of the fuses and
stuck in match-heads, because they lighted
so quickly. Also, the fuses were very short.
Sometimes the dynamite sticks went off in
the air, but most of them went off in the

138 "YAH! YAH! YAH!"

canoes. And each time they went off in
a canoe, that canoe was finished. Of the
twenty canoes, the half were smashed to
pieces. The canoe I was in was so smashed,
and likewise the two men who sat next
to me. The dynamite fell between them.
The other canoes turned and ran away.
Then that mate yelled, 'Yah ! Yah ! Yah I9
at us. Also he went at us again with his
rifle, so that many were killed through the
back as they fled away. And all the time
the black boys in the boat went on rowing.
You see, I told you true, that mate was hell.
"Nor was that all. Before he left the
schooner, he set her on fire, and fixed up all
the powder and dynamite so that it would
go off at one time. There were hundreds
of us on board, trying to put out the fire,
heaving up water from overside, when the
schooner blew up. So that all we had
fought for was lost to us, besides many more
of us being killed. Sometimes, even now,
in my old age, I have bad dreams in which
I hear that mate yell, 'Yah ! Yah ! Yah !'

"YAH! YAH! YAH!" 139

In a voice of thunder he yells, 'Yah ! Yah !
Yah !' But all those in the fishing camps
were killed.

"The mate went out of the passage in his
little boat, and that was the end of him we
made sure, for how could so small a boat,
with four men in it, live on the ocean ?
A month went by, and then, one morning,
between two rain squalls, a schooner sailed
in through our passage and dropped anchor
before the village. The king and the head
men made big talk, and it was agreed that
we would take the schooner in two or three
days. In the meantime, as it was our
custom always to appear friendly, we went
off to her in canoes, bringing strings of
cocoanuts, fowls, and pigs, to trade. But
when we were alongside, many canoes of us,
the men on board began to shoot us with
rifles, and as we paddled away I saw the
mate who had gone to sea in the little boat
spring upon the rail and dance and yell,
'Yah! Yah! Yah!'

"That afternoon they landed from the

HO "YAH! YAH! YAH!"

schooner in three small boats filled with
white men. They went right through the
village, shooting every man they saw. Also
they shot the fowls and pigs. We who
were not killed got away in canoes and pad
dled out into the lagoon. Looking back,
we could see all the houses on fire. Late in
the afternoon we saw many canoes coming
from Nihi, which is the village near the Nihi
Passage in the northeast. They were all
that were left, and like us their village had
been burned by a second schooner that had
come through Nihi Passage.

"We stood on in the darkness to the west
ward for Pauloo, but in the middle of the
night we heard women wailing and then we
ran into a big fleet of canoes. They were
all that were left of Pauloo, which likewise
was in ashes, for a third schooner had come
in through the Pauloo Passage. You see,
that mate, with his black boys, had not been
drowned. He had made the Solomon Is
lands, and there told his brothers of what
we had done in Oolong. And all his

"YAH! YAH! YAH!" 141

brothers had said they would come and
punish us, and there they were in the three
schooners, and our three villages were wiped
out.

"And what was there for us to do ? In
the morning the two schooners from wind
ward sailed down upon us in the middle of
the lagoon. The trade-wind was blowing
fresh, and by scores of canoes they ran us
down. And the rifles never ceased talking.
We scattered like flying-fish before the
bonita, and there were so many of us that
we escaped by thousands, this way and that,
to the islands on the rim of the atoll.

"And thereafter the schooners hunted
us up and down the lagoon. In the night
time we slipped past them. But the next
day, or in two days or three days, the
schooners would be coming back, hunting us
toward the other end of the lagoon. And so
it went. We no longer counted nor remem
bered our dead. True, we were many and
they were few. But what could we do ? I
was in one of the twenty canoes filled with

142 "YAH! YAH! YAH!"

men who were not afraid to die. We
attacked the smallest schooner. They shot
us down in heaps. They threw dynamite
into the canoes, and when the dynamite
gave out, they threw hot water down upon
us. And the rifles never ceased talking.
And those whose canoes were smashed were
shot as they swam away. And the mate
danced up and down upon the cabin-top and
yelled, ' Yah! Yah ! Yah ! '

"Every house on every smallest island
was burned. Not a pig nor a fowl was left
alive. Our wells were defiled with the
bodies of the slain, or else heaped high with
coral rock. We were twenty-five thousand
on Oolong before the three schooners came.
To-day we are five thousand. After the
schooners left, we were but three thousand,
as you shall see.

"At last the three schooners grew tired
of chasing us back and forth. So they went,
the three of them, to Nihi, in the northeast.
And then they drove us steadily to the west.
Their nine boats were in the water as well.

"YAH! YAH! YAH!" 143

They beat up every island as they moved
along. They drove us, drove us, drove us
day by day. And every night the three
schooners and the nine boats made a chain
of watchfulness that stretched across the
lagoon from rim to rim, so that we could not
escape back.

"They could not drive us forever that
way, for the lagoon was only so large, and at
last all of us that yet lived were driven upon
the last sand-bank to the west. Beyond
lay the open sea. There were ten thousand
of us, and we covered the sand-bank from
the lagoon edge to the pounding surf on
the other side. No one could lie down.
There was no room. We stood hip to hip
and shoulder to shoulder. Two days they
kept us there, and the mate would climb
up in the rigging to mock us and yell, 'Yah !
Yah 1 Yah ! ' till we were well sorry that we
had ever harmed him or his schooner a
month before. We had no food, and we
stood on our feet two days and nights. The
little babies died, and the old and weak

144 "YAH! YAH! YAH!"

died, and the wounded died. And worst
of all, we had no water to quench our thirst,
and for two days the sun beat down on us,
and there was no shade. Many men and
women waded out into the ocean and were
drowned, the surf casting their bodies back
on the beach. And there came a pest of flies.
Some men swam to the sides of the schooners,
but they were shot to the last one. And we
that lived were very sorry that in our pride
we tried to take the schooner with the three
masts that came to fish for beche-de-mer.

"On the morning of the third day came
the skippers of the three schooners and that
mate in a small boat. They carried rifles,
all of them, and revolvers, and they made
talk. It was only that they were weary
of killing us that they had stopped, they
told us. And we told them that we were
sorry, that never again would we harm a
white man, and in token of our submission
we poured sand upon our heads. And all
the women and children set up a great wail
ing for water, so that for some time no man

"YAH! YAH! YAH!" 145

could make himself heard. Then we were
told our punishment. We must fill the
three schooners with copra and beche-de-mer.
And \ve agreed, for we wanted water, and
our hearts were broken, and we knew that
we were children at fighting when we fought
with white men who fight like hell. And
when all the talk was finished, the mate
stood up and mocked us, and yelled, 'Yah !
Yah ! Yah ! ' After that we paddled away in
our canoes and sought water.

"And for weeks we toiled at catching
beche-de-mer and curing it, in gathering the
cocoanuts and turning them into copra.
By day and night the smoke rose in clouds
from all the beaches of all the islands of
Oolong as we paid the penalty of our wrong
doing. For in those days of death it was
burned clearly on all our brains that it was
very wrong to harm a white man.

"By and by, the schooners full of copra
and beche-de-mer and our trees empty of
cocoanuts, the three skippers and that mate
called us all together for a big talk. And

146 "YAH! YAH! YAH!"

they said they were very glad that we had
learned our lesson, and we said for the ten-
thousandth time that we were sorry and that
we would not do it again. Also, we poured
sand upon our heads. Then the skippers
said that it was all very well, but just to
show us that they did not forget us, they
would send a devil-devil that we would
never forget and that we would always re
member any time we might feel like harming
a white man. After that the mate mocked
us one more time and yelled, 'Yah ! Yah !
Yah !' Then six of our men, whom we
thought long dead, were put ashore from
one of the schooners, and the schooners
hoisted their sails and ran out through the
passage for the Solomons.

uThe six men who were put ashore were
the first to catch the devil-devil the skippers
sent back after us."

"A great sickness came," I interrupted,
for I recognized the trick. The schooner
had had measles on board, and the six pris
oners had been deliberately exposed to it.

"YAH! YAH! YAH!" 147

"Yes, a great sickness," Oti went on.
"It was a powerful devil-devil. The oldest
man had never heard of the like. Those of
our priests that yet lived we killed because
they could not overcome the devil-devil.
The sickness spread. I have said that there
were ten thousand of us that stood hip to
hip and shoulder to shoulder on the sand
bank. When the sickness left us, there were
three thousand yet alive. Also, having
made all our cocoanuts into copra, there
was a famine.

"That fella trader," Oti concluded, "he
like 'm that much dirt. He like 'm clam
he die kai-kai (meat) he stop, stink 'm any
amount. He like Jm one fella dog, one sick
fella dog plenty fleas stop along him. We
no fright along that fella trader. We fright
because he white man. We savve plenty
too much no good kill white man. That
one fella sick dog trader he plenty brother
stop along him, white men like 'm you fight
like hell. We no fright that damn trader.
Some time he made kanaka plenty cross

148 "YAH! YAH! YAH!"

along him and kanaka want 'm kill 'm,
kanaka he think devil-devil and kanaka
he hear that fella mate sing out, 'Yah I
Yah ! Yah !' and kanaka no kill 'm."

Oti baited his hook with a piece of squid,
which he tore with his teeth from the live
and squirming monster, and hook and bait
sank in white flames to the bottom.

" Shark walk about he finish," he said.
" I think we catch 'm plenty fella fish."

His line jerked savagely. He pulled it in
rapidly, hand under hand, and landed a
big gasping rock cod in the bottom of the
canoe.

"Sun he come up, I make 'm that dam
fella trader one present big fella fish," said
Oti.

THE HEATHEN

THE HEATHEN

I MET him first in a hurricane ; and
though we had gone through the hurri
cane on the same schooner, it was not
until the schooner had gone to pieces under
us that I first laid eyes on him. Without
doubt I had seen him with the rest of the
kanaka crew on board, but I had not con
sciously been aware of his existence, for the
Petite Jeanne was rather overcrowded. In
addition to her eight or ten kanaka sea
men, her white captain, mate, and super
cargo, and her six cabin passengers, she
sailed from Rangiroa with something like
eighty-five deck passengers — Paumotans
and Tahitians, men, women, and children
each with a trade box, to say nothing of
sleeping-mats, blankets, and clothes-bundles.
The pearling season in the Paumotus was
over, and all hands were returning to Tahiti.

152 THE HEATHEN

The six of us cabin passengers were pearl-
buyers. Two were Americans, one was
Ah Choon (the whitest Chinese I have ever
known), one was a German, one was a Polish
Jew, and I completed the half dozen.

It had been a prosperous season. Not one
of us had cause for complaint, nor one of the
eighty-five deck passengers either. All had
done well, and all were looking forward to
a rest-off and a good time in Papeete,

Of course, the Petite Jeanne was over
loaded. She was only seventy tons, and
she had no right to carry a tithe of the mob
she had on board. Beneath her hatches she
was crammed and jammed with pearl-shell
and copra. Even the trade room was packed
full with shell. It was a miracle that the
sailors could work her. There was no
moving about the decks. They simply
climbed back and forth along the rails.

In the night-time they walked upon
the sleepers, who carpeted the deck, I'll
swear, two deep. Oh ! and there were pigs
and chickens on deck, and sacks of yams,

THE HEATHEN 153

while every conceivable place was festooned
with strings of drinking cocoanuts and
bunches of bananas. On both sides, be
tween the fore and main shrouds, guys had
been stretched, just low enough for the fore-
boom to swing clear ; and from each of these
guys at least fifty bunches of bananas were
suspended.

It promised to be a messy passage, even
if we did make it in the two or three days
that would have been required if the south
east trades had been blowing fresh. But
they weren't blowing fresh. After the first
five hours the trade died away in a dozen
or so gasping fans. The calm continued all
that night and the next day — one of those
glaring, glassy, calms, when the very thought
of opening one's eyes to look at it is sufficient
to cause a headache.

The second day a man died — an Easter
Islander, one of the best divers that season
in the lagoon. Smallpox — that is what it
was ; though how smallpox could come on
board, when there had been no known cases

154 THE HEATHEN

ashore when we left Rangiroa, is beyond me
There it was, though — smallpox, a man
dead, and three others down on their backs.

There was nothing to be done. We could
not segregate the sick, nor could we care
for them. We were packed like sardines.
There was nothing to do but rot and die —
that is, there was nothing to do after the
night that followed the first death. On that
night, the mate, the supercargo, the Polish
Jew, and four native divers sneaked away
in the large whale-boat. They were never
heard of again. In the morning the captain
promptly scuttled the remaining boats, and
there we were.

That day there were two deaths ; the
following day three; then it jumped to
eight. It was curious to see how we took it.
The natives, for instance, fell into a condition
of dumb, stolid fear. The captain — Ou-
douse, his name was, a Frenchman — be
came very nervous and voluble. He actually
got the twitches. He was a large, fleshy
man, weighing at least two hundred pounds,

THE HEATHEN 155

and he quickly became a faithful representa
tion of a quivering jelly-mountain of fat.

The German, the two Americans, and
myself bought up all the Scotch whiskey, and
proceeded to stay drunk. The theory was
beautiful — namely, if we kept ourselves
soaked in alcohol, every smallpox germ that
came into contact with us would immedi
ately be scorched to a cinder. And the
theory worked, though I must confess that
neither Captain Oudouse nor Ah Choon were
attacked by the disease either. The French
man did not drink at all, while Ah Choon
restricted himself to one drink daily.

It was a pretty time. The sun, going
into northern declination, was straight over
head. There was no wind, except for fre
quent squalls, which blew fiercely for from
five minutes to half an hour, and wound up
by deluging us with rain. After each squall,
the awful sun would come out, drawing
clouds of steam from the soaked decks.

The steam was not nice. It was the vapor
of death, freighted with millions and millions

i $6 THE HEATHEN

of germs. We always took another drink
when we saw it going up from the dead and
dying, and usually we took two or three
more drinks, mixing them exceptionally stiff.
Also, we made it a rule to take an addi
tional several each time they hove the dead
over to the sharks that swarmed about us.

We had a week of it, and then the whiskey
gave out. It is just as well, or I shouldn't
be alive now. It took a sober man to pull
through wrhat followed, as you will agree
when I mention the little fact that only two
men did pull through. The other man was
the heathen — at least, that was what I
heard Captain Oudouse call him at the mo
ment I first became aware of the heathen's
existence. But to come back.

It was at the end of the week, with the
whiskey gone, and the pearl-buyers sober,
that I happened to glance at the barometer
that hung in the cabin companionway. Its
normal register in the Paumotus was 29.90,
and it was quite customary to see it vacillate
between 29.85 and 30.00, or even 30.05 ;

THE HEATHEN 157

but to see it as I saw it, down to 29.62, was
sufficient to sober the most drunken pearl-
buyer that ever incinerated smallpox mi
crobes in Scotch whiskey.

I called Captain Oudouse's attention to it,
only to be informed that he had watched it
going down for several hours. There was
little to do, but that little he did very well,
considering the circumstances. He took off
the light sails, shortened right down to storm
canvas, spread life-lines, and waited for the
wind. His mistake lay in what he did after
the wind came. He hove to on the port
tack, which was the right thing to do south
of the Equator, if-- and there was the rub
— // one were not in the direct path of the
hurricane.

We were in the direct path. I could see
that by the steady increase of the wind and
the equally steady fall of the barometer.
I wanted him to turn and run with the wind
on the port quarter until the barometer
ceased falling, and then to heave to. We
argued till he was reduced to hysteria, but

158 THE HEATHEN

budge he would not. The worst of it was
that I could not get the rest of the pearl-
buyers to back me up. Who was I, anyway,
to know more about the sea and its ways
than a properly qualified captain ? was what
was in their minds, I knew.

Of course the sea rose with the wind
frightfully ; and I shall never forget the
first three seas the Petite Jeanne shipped.
She had fallen off, as vessels do at times when
hove to, and the first sea made a clean breach.
The life-lines were only for the strong and
well, and little good were they even for
them when the women and children, the
bananas and cocoanuts, the pigs and trade
boxes, the sick and the dying, were swept
along in a solid, screeching, groaning mass.

The second sea filled the Petite Jeanne's
decks flush with the rails ; and, as her stern
sank down and her bow tossed skyward, all
the miserable dunnage of life and luggage
poured aft. It was a human torrent. They
came head-first, feet-first, sidewise, rolling
over and over, twisting, squirming, writhing,

THE HEATHEN 159

and crumpling up. Now and again one
caught a grip on a stanchion or a rope ; but
the weight of the bodies behind tore such
grips loose.

One man I noticed fetch up, head on
and square on, with the starboard-bitt.
His head cracked like an egg. I saw w^hat
was coming, sprang on top of the cabin, and
from there into the mainsail itself. Ah
Choon and one of the Americans tried to
follow me, but I was one jump ahead of them.
The American was swept away and over the
stern like a piece of chaff. Ah Choon caught
a spoke of the wheel, and swung in behind it.
But a strapping Raratonga vahine (woman)
— she must have weighed two hundred and
fifty — brought up against him, and got an
arm around his neck. He clutched the
kanaka steersman with his other hand ;
and just at that moment the schooner flung
down to starboard.

The rush of bodies and sea that was
coming along the port runway between
the cabin and the rail turned abruptly and

160 THE HEATHEN

poured to starboard. Away they went —
vahine, Ah Choon, and steersman ; and I
swear I saw Ah Choon grin at me w^ith
philosophic resignation as he cleared the
rail and went under.

The third sea - - the biggest of the three
— did not do so much damage. By the
time it arrived nearly everybody was in
the rigging. On deck perhaps a dozen
gasping, half-drowned, and half-stunned
wretches were rolling about or attempting
to crawl into safety. They went by the
board, as did the wreckage of the two
remaining boats. The other pearl-buyers
and myself, between seas, managed to get
about fifteen women and children into the
cabin, and battened down. Little good
it did the poor creatures in the end.

Wind ? Out of all my experience I
could not have believed it possible for the
wind to blow as it did. There is no de
scribing it. How can one describe a night
mare ? It was the same way with that
wind. It tore the clothes off our bodies.

THE HEATHEN 161

I say tore them off, and I mean it. I am
not asking you to believe it. I am merely
telling something that I saw and felt.
There are times when I do not believe it
myself. I went through it, and that is
enough. One could not face that wind
and live. It was a monstrous thing, and
the most monstrous thing about it was that
it increased and continued to increase.

Imagine countless millions and billions
of tons of sand. Imagine this sand tearing
along at ninety, a hundred, a hundred and
twenty, or any other number of miles per
hour. Imagine, further, this sand to be
invisible, impalpable, yet to retain all the
weight and density of sand. Do all this,
and you may get a vague inkling of what
that wind was like.

Perhaps sand is not the right comparison.
Consider it mud, invisible, impalpable, but
heavy as mud. Nay, it goes beyond that.
Consider every molecule of air to be a mud-
bank in itself. Then try to imagine the
multitudinous impact of mud-banks. No ;

162 THE HEATHEN

it is beyond me. Language may be ade
quate to express the ordinary conditions
of life, but it cannot possibly express any
of the conditions of so enormous a blast of
wind. It would have been better had I
stuck by my original intention of not
attempting a description.

I will say this much : The sea, which
had risen at first, was beaten down by that
wind. More : it seemed as if the whole
ocean had been sucked up in the maw of
the hurricane, and hurled on through that
portion of space which previously had been
occupied by the air.

Of course, our canvas had gone long
before. But Captain Oudouse had on the
Petite Jeanne something I had never before
seen on a South Sea schooner — a sea-
anchor. It was a conical canvas bag,
the mouth of which was kept open by a
huge hoop of iron. The sea-anchor was
bridled something like a kite, so that it
bit into the water as a kite bites into the
air, but with a difference. The sea-anchor

THE HEATHEN 163

remained just under the surface of the
ocean in a perpendicular position. A long
line, in turn, connected it with the
schooner. As a result, the Petite Jeanne
rode bow on to the wind and to what sea
there was.

The situation really would have been
favorable had we not been in the path
of the storm. True, the wind itself tore
our canvas out of the gaskets, jerked out
our topmasts, and made a raffle of our
running-gear, but still we would have come
through nicely had we not been square in
front of the advancing storm-centre. That
was what fixed us. I was in a state of
stunned, numbed, paralysed collapse from
enduring the impact of the wind, and I
think I was just about ready to give up
and die when the centre smote us. The
blow we received was an absolute lull.
There was not a breath of air. The effect
on one was sickening.

Remember that for hours we had been
at terrific muscular tension, withstanding

1 64 THE HEATHEN

the awful pressure of that wird. And then,
suddenly, the pressure was removed. I
know that I felt as though I was about to
expand, to fly apart in all directions. It
seemed as if every atom composing my body
was repelling every other atom and was on
the verge of rushing off irresistibly into
space. But that lasted only for a moment.
Destruction was upon us.

In the absence of the wind and pressure
the sea rose. It jumped, it leaped, it
soared straight toward the clouds. Re
member, from every point of the compass
that inconceivable wind was blowing in
toward the centre of calm. The result
was that the seas sprang up from every
point of the compass. There was no wind
to check them. They popped up like
corks released from the bottom of a pail
of water. There was no system to them,
no stability. They were hollow, maniacal
seas. They were eighty feet high at the
least. They were not seas at all. They
resembled no sea a man had ever seen.

THE HEATHEN 165

They were splashes, monstrous splashes
— that is all. Splashes that were eighty
feet high. Eighty ! They were more than
eighty. They went over our mastheads.
They were spouts, explosions. They were
drunken. They fell anywhere, anyhow.
They jostled one another; they collided.
They rushed together and collapsed upon
one another, or fell apart like a thousand
waterfalls all at once. It was no ocean any
man had ever dreamed of, that hurricane
centre. It was confusion thrice confounded.
It was anarchy. It was a hell-pit of sea-
water gone mad.

The Petite Jeanne? I don't know. The
heathen told me afterwards that he did
not know. She was literally torn apart,
ripped wide open, beaten into a pulp,
smashed into kindling wood, annihilated.
When I came to I was in the water, swim
ming automatically, though I was about
two-thirds drowned. How I got there I
had no recollection. I remembered seeing
the Petite Jeanne fly to pieces at what must

166 THE HEATHEN

have been the instant that my own con
sciousness was buffeted out of me. But
there I was, with nothing to do but make
the best of it, and in that best there was
little promise. The wind was blowing
again, the sea was much smaller and more
regular, and I knew that I had passed
through the centre. Fortunately, there
were no sharks about. The hurricane had
dissipated the ravenous horde that had
surrounded the death ship and fed off the
dead.

It was about midday when the Petite
Jeanne went to pieces, and it must have
been two hours afterwards when I picked
up with one of her hatch-covers. Thick
rain was driving at the time ; and it was
the merest chance that flung me and the
hatch-cover together. A short length of
line was trailing from the rope handle;
and I knew that I was good for a day, at
least, if the sharks did not return. Three
hours later, possibly a little longer, stick
ing close to the cover, and, with closed eyes,

THE HEATHEN 167

concentrating my whole soul upon the
task of breathing in enough air to keep me
going and at the same time of avoiding
breathing in enough water to drown me, it
seemed to me that I heard voices. The
rain had ceased, and wind and sea were
easing marvellously. Not twenty feet
away from me, on another hatch-cover,
were Captain Oudouse and the heathen.
They were fighting over the possession of
the cover — at least, the Frenchman was.

"Pai'en noir!" I heard him scream, and
at the same time I saw him kick the ka
naka.

Now, Captain Oudouse had lost all his
clothes, except his shoes, and they were
heavy brogans. It was a cruel blow, for
it caught the heathen on the mouth and
the point of the chin, half stunning him.
I looked for him to retaliate, but he con
tented himself with swimming about for
lornly a safe ten feet away. Whenever
a fling of the sea threw him closer, the
Frenchman, hanging on with his hands,

168 THE HEATHEN

kicked out at him with both feet. Also,
at the moment of delivering each kick,
he called the kanaka a black heathen.

"For two centimes Pd come over there
and drown you, you white beast !" I yelled.

The only reason I did not go was that I
felt too tired. The very thought of the
effort to swim over was nauseating. So I
called to the kanaka to come to me, and
proceeded to share the hatch-cover with
him. Otoo, he told me his name was (pro
nounced 6-to-6) ; also, he told me that
he was a native of Bora Bora, the most
westerly of the Society Group. As I
learned afterward, he had got the hatch-
cover first, and, after some time, encounter
ing Captain Oudouse, had offered to share
it with him, and had been kicked off for
his pains.

And that was how Otoo and I first came
together. He was no fighter. He was all
sweetness and gentleness, a love-creature,
though he stood nearly six feet tall and was
muscled like a gladiator. He was no

THE HEATHEN 169

fighter, but he was also no coward. He
had the heart of a lion ; and in the years
that followed I have seen him run risks
that I would never dream of taking. What
I mean is that while he was no fighter, and
while he always avoided precipitating a
row, he never ran away from trouble when
it started. And it was "'Ware shoal!"
when once Otoo went into action. I shall
never forget what he did to Bill King. It
occurred in German Samoa. Bill King
was hailed the champion heavyweight of
the American Navy. He was a big brute
of a man, a veritable gorilla, one of those
hard-hitting, rough-housing chaps, and
clever with his fists as well. He picked
the quarrel, and he kicked Otoo twice and
struck him once before Otoo felt it to be
necessary to fight. I don't think it lasted
four minutes, at the end of which time Bill
King was the unhappy possessor of four
broken ribs, a broken forearm, and a dis
located shoulder-blade. Otoo knew noth
ing of scientific boxing. He was merely a

170 THE HEATHEN

manhandler ; and Bill King was something
like three months in recovering from the
bit of manhandling he received that after
noon on Apia beach.

But I am running ahead of my yarn.
We shared the hatch-cover between us.
We took turn and turn about, one lying
flat on the cover and resting, while the
other, submerged to the neck, merely held
on with his hands. For two days and
nights, spell and spell, on the cover and
in the water, we drifted over the ocean.
Towards the last I was delirious most of
the time; and there were times, too, when
I heard Otoo babbling and raving in his
native tongue. Our continuous immersion
prevented us from dying of thirst, though
the sea-water and the sunshine gave us the
prettiest imaginable combination of salt
pickle and sunburn.

In the end, Otoo saved my life ; for I
came to lying on the beach twenty feet
from the water, sheltered from the sun by
a couple of cocoanut leaves. No one but

THE HEATHEN 171

Otoo could have dragged me there and
stuck up the leaves for shade. He was
lying beside me. I went off again ; and
the next time I came round, it was cool
and starry night, and Otoo was pressing
a drinking cocoanut to my lips.

We were the sole survivors of the Petite
Jeanne. Captain Oudouse must have suc
cumbed to exhaustion, for several days
later his hatch-cover drifted ashore with
out him. Otoo and I lived with the natives
of the atoll for a week, when we were
rescued by the French cruiser and taken
to Tahiti. In the meantime, however,
we had performed the ceremony of ex
changing names. In the South Seas such
a ceremony binds two men closer together
than blood-brothership. The initiative
had been mine ; and Otoo was rapturously
delighted when I suggested it.

"It is well," he said, in Tahitian. "For
we have been mates together for two days
on the lips of Death.

"But Death stuttered," I smiled.

172 THE HEATHEN

"It was a brave deed you did, master,"
he replied, "and Death was not vile enough
to speak."

"Why do you 'master' me?" I de
manded, with a show of hurt feelings.
"We have exchanged names. To you I
am Otoo. To me you are Charley. And
between you and me, forever and forever,
you shall be Charley, and I shall be Otoo.
It is the way of the custom. And when
we die, if it does happen that we live again
somewhere beyond the stars and the sky,
still shall you be Charley to me, and I
Otoo to you."

"Yes, master," he answered, his eyes
luminous and soft with joy.

"There you go !" I cried indignantly.

"What does it matter what my lips
utter?" he argued. "They are only my
lips. But I shall think Otoo always.
Whenever I think of myself, I shall think
of you. Whenever men call me by name,
I shall think of you. And beyond the sky
and beyond the stars, always and forever,

THE HEATHEN 173

you shall be Otoo to me. Is it well,
master ?"

I hid my smile, and answered that it
was well.

We parted at Papeete. I remained
ashore to recuperate ; and he went on in
a cutter to his own island, Bora Bora.
Six weeks later he was back. I was sur
prised, for he had told me of his wife, and
said that he was returning to her, and
would give over sailing on far voyages.

"Where do you go, master?" he asked,
after our first greetings.

I shrugged my shoulders. It was a hard
question.

"All the world," was my answer —
"all the world, all the sea, and all the
islands that are in the sea."

"I will go with you," he said simply.
"My wife is dead."

I never had a brother; but from what I
have seen of other men's brothers, I doubt
if any man ever had a brother that was to
kim what Otoo was to me. He was

174 THE HEATHEN

brother and father and mother as welL
And this I know : I lived a straighter and
better man because of Otoo. I cared little
for other men, but I had to live straight
in Otoo's eyes. Because of him I dared
not tarnish myself. He made me his ideal,
compounding me, I fear, chiefly out of
his own love and worship ; and there were
times when I stood close to the steep pitch
of hell, and would have taken the plunge
had not the thought of Otoo restrained
me. His pride in me entered into me,
until it became one of the major rules in
my personal code to do nothing that would
diminish that pride of his.

Naturally, I did not learn right away
what his feelings were toward me. He
never criticised, never censured ; and slowly
the exalted place I held in his eyes dawned
upon me, and slowly I grew to compre
hend the hurt I could inflict upon him by
being anything less than my best.

For seventeen years we were together;
for seventeen years he was at my shoulder,

THE HEATHEN 175

watching while I slept, nursing me
through fever and wounds — ay, and re
ceiving wounds in fighting for me. He
signed on the same ships with me ; and
together we ranged the Pacific from Hawaii
to Sydney Head, and from Torres Straits
to the Galapagos. We blackbirded from
the New Hebrides and the Line Islands
over to the westward clear through the
Louisades, New Britain, New Ireland, and
New Hanover. We were wrecked three
times — in the Gilberts, in the Santa Cruz
group, and in the Fijis. And we traded
and salved wherever a dollar promised in
the way of pearl and pearl-shell, copra,
beche-de-mer, hawkbill turtle-shell, and
stranded wrecks.

It began in Papeete, immediately after
his announcement that he was going with
me over all the sea, and the islands in the
midst thereof. There was a club in those
days in Papeete, where the pearlers,
traders, captains, and riffraff of South Sea
adventurers forgathered. The play ran

iy6 THE HEATHEN

high, and the drink ran high; and I am
very much afraid that I kept later hours
than were becoming or proper. No matter
what the hour was wrhen I left the club,
there was Otoo waiting to see me safely
home.

At first I smiled; next I chided him.
Then I told him flatly that I stood in need
of no wet-nursing. After that I did not
see him when I came out of the club.
Quite by accident, a week or so later, I
discovered that he still saw me home,
lurking across the street among the shad
ows of the mango-trees. What could I
do ? I know what I did do.

Insensibly I began to keep better hours.
On wet and stormy nights, in the thick of
the folly and the fun, the thought would
persist in coming to me of Otoo keeping
his dreary vigil under the dripping
mangoes. Truly, he made a better man
of me. Yet he was not strait-laced. And
he knew nothing of common Christian
morality. All the people on Bora Bora

THE HEATHEN 177

were Christians ; but he was a heathen,
the only unbeliever on the island, a gross
materialist, who believed that when he
died he was dead. He believed merely
in fair play and square dealing. Petty
meanness, in his code, was almost as seri
ous as wanton homicide ; and I do believe
that he respected a murderer more than a
man given to small practices.

Concerning me, personally, he objected
to my doing anything that was hurtful to
me. Gambling was all right. He was an
ardent gambler hi nself. But late hours,
he explained, were bad for one's health.
He had seen men who did not take care
of themselves die of fever. He was no
teetotaller, and welcomed a stiff nip any
time when it was wet work in the boats.
On the other hand, he believed in liquor
in moderation. He had seen many men
killed or disgraced by square-face or Scotch.

Otoo had my welfare always at heart.
He thought ahead for me, weighed my
plans, and took a greater interest in them

178 THE HEATHEN

than I did myself. At first, when I was
unaware of this interest of his in my affairs,
he had to divine my intentions, as, for
instance, at Papeete, when I contemplated
going partners with a knavish fellow-coun
tryman on a guano venture. I did not
know he was a knave. Nor did any white
man in Papeete. Neither did Otoo know,
but he saw how thick we were getting,
and found out for me, and without my ask
ing him. Native sailors from the ends of
the seas knock about on the beach in
Tahiti ; and Otoo, suspicious merely, went
among them till he had gathered sufficient
data to justify his suspicions. Oh, it was
a nice history, that of Randolph Waters.
I couldn't believe it when Otoo first nar
rated it; but when I sheeted it home to
Waters he gave in without a murmur, and
got away on the first steamer to Aukland.

At first, I am free to confess, I couldn't
help resenting Otoo's poking his nose into
my business. But I knew that he was
wholly unselfish ; and soon I had to ac-

THE HEATHEN 179

knowledge his wisdom and discretion. He
had his eyes open always to my main
chance, and he was both keen-sighted and
far-sighted. In time he became my coun
sellor, until he knew more of my business
than I did myself. He really had my
interest at heart more than I did. Mine
was the magnificent carelessness of youth,
for I preferred romance to dollars, and
adventure to a comfortable billet with all
night in. So it was well that I had some one
to look out for me. I know that if it had
not been for Otoo, I should not be here
to-day.

Of numerous instances, let me give one.
I had had some experience in blackbirding
before I went pearling in the Paumotus.
Otoo and I were on the beach in Samoa -
we really were on the beach and hard
aground — when my chance came to go
as recruiter on a blackbird brig. Otoo
signed on before the mast ; and for the
next half-dozen years, in as many ships,
we knocked about the wildest portions of

i So THE HEATHEN

Melanesia. Otoo saw to it that he always
pulled stroke-oar in my boat. Our cus
tom in recruiting labor was to land the
recruiter on the beach. The covering boat
always lay on its oars several hundred
feet off shore, while the recruiter's boat,
also lying on its oars, kept afloat on the
edge of the beach. When I landed with
my trade-goods, leaving my steering sweep
apeak, Otoo left his stroke position and
came into the stern-sheets, where a Win
chester lay ready to hand under a flap of
canvas. The boat's crew was also armed,
the Sniders concealed under canvas flaps
that ran the length of the gunwales. While
I was busy arguing and persuading the
woolly-headed cannibals to come and la
bor on the Queensland plantations Otoo
kept watch. And often and often his low
voice warned me of suspicious actions and
impending treachery. Sometimes it was
the quick shot from his rifle, knocking a
nigger over, that was the first warning
I received. And in my rush to the boat

THE HEATHEN 181

his hand was always there to jerk me flying
aboard. Once, I remember, on Santa
Anna, the boat grounded just as the trouble
began. The covering boat was dashing
to our assistance, but the several score of
savages would have wiped us out before
it arrived. Otoo took a flying leap ashore,
dug both hands into the trade-goods, and
scattered tobacco, beads, tomahawks,
knives, and calicoes in all directions.

This was too much for the woolly-heads.
While they scrambled for the treasures,
the boat was shoved clear, and we were
aboard and forty feet away. And I got
thirty recruits off that very beach in the
next four hours.

The particular instance I have in mind
was on Malaita, the most savage island in
the easterly Solomons. The natives had
been remarkably friendly ; and how were
we to know that the whole village had been
taking up a collection for over two years
with which to buy a white man's head ?
The beggars are all head-hunters, and they

1 82 THE HEATHEN

especially esteem a white man's head.
The fellow who captured the head would
receive the whole collection. As I say,
they appeared very friendly ; and on this
day I was fully a hundred yards down the
beach from the boat. Otoo had cautioned
me ; and, as usual when I did not heed
him, I came to grief.

The first I knew, a cloud of spears sailed
out of the mangrove swamp at me. At
least a dozen were sticking into me. I
started to run, but tripped over one that
was fast in my calf, and went down. The
woolly-heads made a run for me, each with
a long-handled, fantail tomahawk with
which to hack off my head. They were so
eager for the prize that they got in one
another's way. In the confusion, I avoided
several hacks by throwing myself right and
left on the sand.

Then Otoo arrived — Otoo the man-
handler. In some way he had got hold
of a heavy war club, and at close quarters
it was a far more efficient weapon than a

THE HEATHEN 183

rifle. He was right in the thick of them,
so that they could not spear him, while
their tomahawks seemed worse than use
less. He was fighting for me, and he was
in a true Berserker rage. The way he
handled that club was amazing. Their
skulls squashed like overripe oranges. It
was not until he had driven them back,
picked me up in his arms, and started to
run, that he received his first wounds. He
arrived in the boat with four spear thrusts,
got his Winchester, and with it got a man
for every shot. Then we pulled aboard
the schooner, and doctored up.

Seventeen years we were together. He
made me. I should to-day be a super
cargo, a recruiter, or a memory, if it had
not been for him.

"You spend your money, and you go
out and get more," he said one day. "It
is easy to get money now. But when you
get old, your money will be spent, and you
will not be able to go out and get more. I
know, master. I have studied the way of

1 84 THE HEATHEN

white men. On the beaches are many old
men who were young once, and who could
get money just like you. Now they are
old, and they have nothing, and they wait
about for the young men like you to come
ashore and buy drinks for them.

"The black boy is a slave on the planta
tions. He gets twenty dollars a year. He
works hard. The overseer does not work
hard. He rides a horse and watches the
black boy work. He gets twelve hundred
dollars a year. I am a sailor on the
schooner. I get fifteen dollars a month.
That is because I am a good sailor. I work
hard. The captain has a double awning,
and drinks beer out of long bottles. I
have never seen him haul a rope or pull an
oar. He gets one hundred and fifty dol
lars a month. I am a sailor. He is a
navigator. Master, I think it would be
very good for you to know navigation."

Otoo spurred me on to it. He sailed
with me as second mate on my first
schooner, and he was far prouder of my

THE HEATHEN 185

command than I was myself. Later on
it was :

"The captain is well paid, master; but
the ship is in his keeping, and he is never
free from the burden. It is the owner
who is better paid --the owner who sits
ashore with many servants and turns his
money over."

"True, but a schooner costs five thou
sand dollars — an old schooner at that,"
I objected. "I should be an old man
before I saved five thousand dollars."

"There be short ways for white men to
make money," he went on, pointing ashore
at the cocoantit-fringed beach.

We were in the Solomons at the time,
picking up a cargo of ivory-nuts along the
east coast of Guadalcanar.

"Between this river mouth and the next
it is two miles," he said. "The flat land
runs far back. It is worth nothing now.
Next year — who knows? — or the year
after, men will pay much money for that
land. The anchorage is good. Big

1 86 THE HEATHEN

steamers can lie close up. You can buy
the land four miles deep from the old chief
for ten thousand sticks of tobacco, ten
bottles of square-face, and a Snider, which
will cost you, maybe, one hundred dollars.
Then you place the deed with the commis
sioner ; and the next year, or the year after,
you sell and become the owner of a ship."
I followed his lead, and his words came
true, though in three years, instead of two.
Next came the grasslands deal on Guadal-
canar — twenty thousand acres, on a gov
ernmental nine hundred and ninety-nine
years' lease at a nominal sum. I owned
the lease for precisely ninety days, when I
sold it to a company for half a fortune.
Always it was Otoo who looked ahead
and saw the opportunity. He was respon
sible for the salving of the Doncaster —
bought in at auction for a hundred pounds,
and clearing three thousand after every
expense was paid. He led me into the
Savaii plantation and the cocoa venture
on Upolu.

THE HEATHEN 187

We did not go seafaring so much as in
the old days. I was too well off. I
married, and my standard of living rose ;
but Otoo remained the same old-time Otoo,
moving about the house or trailing through
the office, his wooden pipe in his mouth,
a shilling undershirt on his back, and a
four-shilling lava-lava about his loins. I
could not get him to spend money. There
was no way of repaying him except with
love, and God knows he got that in full
measure from all of us. The children wor
shipped him ; and if he had been spoilable,
my wife would surely have been his un
doing.

The children ! He really was the one
who showed them the way of their feet
in the world practical. He began by teach
ing them to walk. He sat up with them
when they were sick. One by one, when
they were scarcely toddlers, he took them
down to the lagoon, and made them into
amphibians. He taught them more than
I ever knew of the habits of fish and the

1 88 THE HEATHEN

ways of catching them. In the bush it
was the same thing. At seven, Tom knew
more woodcraft than I ever dreamed ex
isted. At six, Mary went over the Sliding
Rock without a quiver, and I have seen
strong men balk at that feat. And when
Frank had just turned six he could bring
up shillings from the bottom in three
fathoms.

"My people in Bora Bora do not like
heathen -- they are all Christians; and I
do not like Bora Bora Christians," he said
one day, when I, with the idea of getting
him to spend some of the money that was
rightfully his, had been trying to persuade
him to make a visit to his own island in one
of our schooners — a special voyage which
I had hoped to make a record breaker in
the matter of prodigal expense.

I say one of our schooners, though legally at
the time they belonged to me. I struggled
long with him to enter into partnership.

"We have been partners from the day
the Petite Jeanne went down," he said at

THE HEATHEN 189

last. "But if your heart so wishes, then
shall we become partners by the law. I
have no work to do, yet are my expenses
large. I drink and eat and smoke in
plenty — it costs much, I know. I do not
pay for the playing of billiards, for I play
on your table ; but still the money goes.
Fishing on the reef is only a rich man's
pleasure. It is shocking, the cost of hooks
and cotton line. Yes ; it is necessary that
we be partners by the law. I need the
money. I shall get it from the head clerk
in the office."

So the papers were made out and re
corded. A year later I was compelled to
complain.

"Charley," said I, "you are a wicked
old fraud, a miserly skinflint, a miserable
land-crab. Behold, your share for the year
in all our partnership has been thousands
of dollars. The head clerk has given me
this paper. It says that in the year you
have drawn just eighty-seven dollars and
twenty cents."

190 THE HEATHEN

"Is there any owing me?" he asked
anxiously.

"I tell you thousands and thousands," I
answered.

His face brightened, as with an immense
relief.

"It is well," he said. "See that the head
clerk keeps good account of it. When I
want it, I shall want it, and there must
not be a cent missing.

"If there is," he added fiercely, after a
pause, "it must come out of the clerk's
wages."

And all the time, as I afterwards learned,
his will, drawn up by Carruthers, and
making me sole beneficiary, lay in the
American consul's safe.

But the end came, as the end must
come to all human associations. It oc
curred in the Solomons, wrhere our wildest
work had been done in the wild young
days, and where we were once more —
principally on a holiday, incidentally to
look after our holdings on Florida Island

THE HEATHEN 191

and to look over the pearling possibilities
of the Mboli Pass. We were lying at Savo,
having run in to trade for curios.

Now, Savo is alive with sharks. The
custom of the woolly-heads of burying
their dead in the sea did not tend to dis
courage the sharks from making the adja
cent waters a hang-out. It was my luck
to be coming aboard in a tiny, overloaded,
native canoe, when the thing capsized.
There were four woolly-heads and myself
in it, or, rather, hanging to it. The
schooner was a hundred yards away. I
was just hailing for a boat when one of the
woolly-heads began to scream. Holding
on to the end of the canoe, both he and
that portion of the canoe were dragged
under several times. Then he loosed his
clutch and disappeared. A shark had got
him.

The three remaining niggers tried to
climb out of the water upon the bottom
of the canoe. I yelled and cursed and
struck at the nearest with my fist, but

192 THE HEATHEN

it was no use. They were in a blind
funk. iTie canoe could barely have sup
ported one of them. Under the three it
upended and rolled sidewise, throwing
them back into the water.

I abandoned the canoe and started to
swim toward the schooner, expecting to
be picked up by the boat before I got there.
One of the niggers elected to come with
me, and we swam along silently, side by
side, now and again putting our faces into
the water and peering about for sharks.
The screams of the man who stayed by
the canoe informed us that he was taken.
I was peering into the water when I saw
a big shark pass directly beneath me. He
was fully sixteen feet in length. I saw
the whole thing. He got the woolly-head
by the middle, and away he went, the poor
devil, head, shoulders, and arms out of
water all the time, screeching in a heart
rending way. He was carried along in
this fashion for several hundred feet, when
he was dragged beneath the surface.

THE HEATHEN 193

I swam doggedly on, hoping that that
was the last unattached shark. But there
was another. Whether it was one that
had attacked the natives earlier, or whether
it was one that had made a good meal
elsewhere, I do not know. At any rate,
he was not in such haste as the others. I
could not swim so rapidly now, for a large
part of my effort was devoted to keeping
track of him. I was watching him when
he made his first attack. By good luck
I got both hands on his nose, and, though
his momentum nearly shoved me under, I
managed to keep him off. He veered
clear, and began circling about again. A
second time I escaped him by the same
manoeuvre. The third rush was a miss
on both sides. He sheered at the moment
my hands should have landed on his nose,
but his sandpaper hide (I had on a sleeve
less undershirt) scraped the skin off one
arm from elbow to shoulder.

By this time I was played out, and gave
up hope. The schooner was still two hun-

194 THE HEATHEN

dred feet away. My face was in the water,
and I was watching him manoeuvre for
another attempt, when I saw a brown body
pass between us. It was Otoo.

"Swim for the schooner, master!" he
said. And he spoke gayly, as though the
affair was a mere lark. "I know sharks.
The shark is my brother."

I obeyed, swimming slowly on, while
Otoo swam about me, keeping always
between me and the shark, foiling his
rushes and encouraging me.

"The davit tackle carried away, and
they are rigging the falls," he explained, a
minute or so later, and then went under
to head off another attack.

By the time the schooner was thirty feet
away I was about done for. I could
scarcely move. They were heaving lines
at us from on board, but they continually
fell short. The shark, finding that it was
receiving no hurt, had become bolder.
Several times it nearly got me, but each
time Otoo was there just the moment be-

THE HEATHEN 195

fore it was too late. Of course, Otoo could
have saved himself any time. But he
stuck by me.

"Good-by, Charley! I'm finished!" I
just managed to gasp.

I knew that the end had come, and that
the next moment I should throw up my
hands and go down.

But Otoo laughed in my face, saying :

"I will show you a new trick. I will
make that shark feel sick !"

He dropped in behind me, where the
shark was preparing to come at me.

"A little more to the left!" he next
called out. "There is a line there on the
water. To the left, master — to the left !"

I changed my course and struck out
blindly. I was by that time barely con
scious. As my hand closed on the line I
heard an exclamation from on board. I
turned and looked. There was no sign
of Otoo. The next instant he broke sur
face. Both hands were off at the wrist,
the stumps spouting blood.

196 THE HEATHEN

"Otoo!" he called softly. And I could
see in his gaze the love that thrilled in his
voice.

Then, and then only, at the very last
of all our years, he called me by that
name.

"Good-by, Otoo!" he called.

Then he was dragged under, and I was
hauled aboard, where I fainted in the
captain's arms.

And so passed Otoo, who saved me and
made me a man, and who saved me in the
end. We met in the maw of a hurricane,
and parted in the maw of a shark, with
seventeen intervening years of comrade
ship, the like of which I dare to assert
has never befallen two men, the one brown
and the other white. If Jehovah be from
His high place watching every sparrow
fall, not least in His kingdom shall be Otoo,
the one heathen of Bora Bora.

THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS

THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS

THERE is no gainsaying that the
Solomons are a hard-bitten bunch
of islands. On the other hand,
there are worse places in the world. But
to the new chum who has no constitutional
understanding of men and life in the rough,
the Solomons may indeed prove terrible.

It is true that fever and dysentery are
perpetually on the walk-about, that loath
some skin diseases abound, that the air
is saturated with a poison that bites into
every pore, cut, or abrasion and plants
malignant ulcers, and that many strong
men who escape dying there return as
wrecks to their own countries. It is also
true that the natives of the Solomons are
a wild lot, writh a hearty appetite for human
flesh and a fad for collecting human heads.
Their highest instinct of sportsmanship

199

200 THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS

is to catch a man with his back turned
and to smite him a cunning blow with a
tomahawk that severs the spinal column
at the base of the brain. It is equally
true that on some islands, such as Malaita,
the profit and loss account of social inter
course is calculated in homocides. Heads
are a medium of exchange, and white heads
are extremely valuable. Very often a
dozen villages make a jack-pot, which they
fatten moon by moon, against the time
when some brave warrior presents a white
man's head, fresh and gory, and claims
the pot.

All the foregoing is quite true, and yet
there are white men who have lived in the
Solomons a score of years and who feel
homesick when they go away from them.
A man needs only to be careful — and
lucky — to live a long time in the Solomons ;
but he must also be of the right sort. He
must have the hall-mark of the inevitable
white man stamped upon his soul. He
must be inevitable. He must have a cer-

THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS 201

tain grand carelessness of odds, a certain
colossal self-satisfaction, and a racial ego
tism that convinces him that one white
is better than a thousand niggers every
day in the week, and that on Sunday he
is able to clean out two thousand nig
gers. For such are the things that have made
the white man inevitable. Oh, and one
other thing — the white man who wishes
to be inevitable, must not merely despise
the lesser breeds and think a lot of himself ;
he must also fail to be too long on imagina
tion. He must not understand too well
the instincts, customs, and mental processes
of the blacks, the yellows, and the browns ;
for it is not in such fashion that the white
race has tramped its royal road around the
world.

Bertie Arkwright was not inevitable.
He was too sensitive, too finely strung, and
he possessed too much imagination. The
world was too much with him. He pro
jected himself too quiveringly into his
environment. Therefore, the last place in

202 THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS

the world for him to come was the Sol
omons. He did not come, expecting to
stay. A five weeks' stop-over between
steamers, he decided, would satisfy the
call of the primitive he felt thrumming the
strings of his being. At least, so he told
the lady tourists on the Makembo, though
in different terms ; and they worshipped
him as a hero, for they were lady tourists
and they would know only the safety of
the steamer's deck as she threaded her way
through the Solomons.

There was another man on board, of
whom the ladies took no notice. He was a
little shrivelled wisp of a man, with a
withered skin the color of mahogany. His
name on the passenger list does not matter,
but his other name, Captain Malu, was a
name for niggers to conjure with, and to
scare naughty pickaninnies to righteous
ness, from New Hanover to the New
Hebrides. He had farmed savages and
savagery, and from fever and hardship,
the crack of Sniders and the lash of the

THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS 203

overseers, had wrested five millions of
money in the form of beche-de-mer, sandal-
wood, pearl-shell and turtle-shell, ivory-
nuts and copra, grasslands, trading sta
tions, and plantations. Captain Malu's
little finger, which was broken, had more
inevitableness in it than Bertie Arkwright's
whole carcass. But then, the lady tour
ists had nothing by which to judge save
appearances, and Bertie certainly was a
fine-looking man.

Bertie talked with Captain Malu in the
smoking-room, confiding to him his inten
tion of seeing life red and bleeding in the
Solomons. Captain Malu agreed that the
intention was ambitious and honorable. It
was not until several days later that he
became interested in Bertie, when that
young adventurer insisted on showing him
an automatic 44-calibre pistol. Bertie ex
plained the mechanism and demonstrated
by slipping a loaded magazine up the
hollow butt.

"It is so simple," he said. He shot

204 THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS

the outer barrel back along the inner one.
"That loads it and cocks it, you see. And
then all I have to do is pull the trigger,
eight times, as fast as I can quiver my
finger. See that safety clutch. That's
what I like about it. It is safe. It is
positively fool-proof." He slipped out the
magazine. "You see how safe it is."

As he held it in his hand, the muzzle
came in line with Captain Malu's stomach.
Captain Malu's blue eyes looked at it
unswervingly.

"Would you mind pointing it in some
other direction ?" he asked.

"It's perfectly safe," Bertie assured him.
" I withdrew the magazine. It's not loaded
now, you know."

"A gun is always loaded."

"But this one isn't."

"Turn it away just the same."

Captain Malu's voice was flat and me
tallic and low, but his eyes never left the
muzzle until the line of it was drawn past
him and away from him.

THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS 205

"I'll bet a fiver it isn't loaded," Bertie
proposed warmly.

The other shook his head.

"Then I'll show you."

Bertie started to put the muzzle to his
own temple with the evident intention of
pulling the trigger.

"Just a second," Captain Malu said
quietly, reaching out his hand. "Let me
look at it."

He pointed it seaward and pulled the
trigger. A heavy explosion followed, in
stantaneous with the sharp click of the
mechanism that flipped a hot and smoking
cartridge sidewise along the deck. Bertie's
jaw dropped in amazement.

"I slipped the barrel back once, didn't
I ?" he explained. "It was silly of me, I
must say."

He giggled flabbily, and sat down in a
steamer chair. The blood had ebbed from
his face, exposing dark circles under his eyes.
His hands were trembling and unable to
guide the shaking cigarette to his lips. The

2o6 THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS

world was too much with him, and he saw
himself with dripping brains prone upon
the deck.

"Really," he said, "... really."
"It's a pretty weapon," said Captain
Malu, returning the automatic to him.

The Commissioner was on board the
Makembo, returning from Sydney, and by
his permission a stop was made at Ugl to
land a missionary. And at Ugi lay the
ketch Aria, Captain Hansen, skipper. Now
the Aria was one of many vessels owned by
Captain Malu, and it was at his suggestion
and by his invitation that Bertie went
aboard the Aria as guest for a four days'
recruiting cruise on the coast of Malaita.
Thereafter the Aria would drop him at
Reminge Plantation (also owned by Cap
tain Malu), where Bertie could remain for
a week, and then be sent over to Tulagi,
the seat of government, where he would
become the Commissioner's guest. Captain
Malu was responsible for two other sug
gestions, which given, he disappears from

THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS 207

this narrative. One was to Captain Han-
sen, the other to Mr. Harriwell, manager
of Reminge Plantation. Both suggestions
were similar in tenor, namely, to give Mr.
Bertram Arkwright an insight into the raw
ness and redness of life in the Solomons.
Also, it is whispered that Captain Malu
mentioned that a case of Scotch would be
coincidental with any particularly gorgeous
insight Mr. Arkwright might receive.

"Yes, Swartz always was too pig-headed.
You see, he took four of his boat's crew to
Tulagi to be flogged — officially, you know
— then started back with them in the whale-
boat. It was pretty squally, and the boat
capsized just outside. Swartz was the only
one drowned. Of course it wTas an accident."

"Was it? Really?" Bertie asked, only
half-interested, staring hard at the black
man at the wheel.

Ugi had dropped astern, and the Aria
was sliding along through a summer sea
toward the wooded ranges of Malaita. The

208 THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS

helmsman who so attracted Bertie's eyes
sported a ten penny nail, stuck skewer-
wise through his nose. About his neck
was a string of pants buttons. Thrust
through holes in his ears were a can-opener,
the broken handle of a tooth-brush, a clay
pipe, the brass wheel of an alarm clock, and
several Winchester rifle cartridges. On his
chest, suspended from around his neck
hung the half of a china plate. Some forty
similarly apparelled blacks lay about the
deck, fifteen of which were boat's crew, the
remainder being fresh labor recruits.

"Of course it was an accident," spoke up
the Aria's mate, Jacobs, a slender, dark-
eyed man who looked more a professor than
a sailor. "Johnny Bedip nearly had the
same kind of accident. He was bringing
back several from a flogging, when they
capsized him. But he knew how to swim as
well as they, and two of them were drowned.
He used a boat-stretcher and a revolver.
Of course it was an accident."

"Quite common, them accidents," re-

THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS 209

marked the skipper. " You see that man at
the wheel, Mr. Arkwright ? He's a man-
eater. Six months ago, he and the rest of
the boat's crew drowned the then captain of
the Aria. They did it on deck, sir, right
aft there by the mizzen-traveller."

"The deck was in a shocking state," said
the mate.

"Do I understand — ?" Bertie began.

"Yes, just that," said Captain Hansen.
"It was accidental drowning."

"But on deck—?"

"Just so. I don't mind telling you, in
confidence, of course, that they used an

axe."

"This present crew of yours ?"

Captain Hansen nodded.

"The other skipper always was too care
less," explained the mate. "He but just
turned his back, when they let him have it."

"We haven't any show down here," was
the skipper's complaint. "The government
protects a nigger against a white every time.
You can't shoot first. You've got to give

210 THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS

the nigger first shot, or else the government
calls it murder and you go to Fiji. That's
why there's so many drowning accidents."

Dinner was called, and Bertie and the
skipper went below, leaving the mate to
watch on deck.

"Keep an eye out for that black devil,
Auiki," was the skipper's parting caution.
"I haven't liked his looks for several days."

"Right O," said the mate.

Dinner was part way along, and the skip
per was in the middle of his story of the cut
ting out of the Scottish Chiefs.

"Yes," he was saying, "she was the finest
vessel on the coast. But when she missed
stays, and before ever she hit the reef, the
canoes started for her. There were five
w^hite men, a crew of twenty Santa Cruz
boys and Samoans, and only the super
cargo escaped. Besides, there were sixty
recruits. They were all kai-kafd. Kai-
kai? — oh, I beg your pardon. I mean
they were eaten. Then there was the James
Edwards, a dandy-rigged — "

THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS 211

But at that moment there was a sharp
oath from the mate on deck and a chorus
of savage cries. A revolver went off three
times, and then was heard a loud splash.
Captain Hansen had sprung up the com-
panionway on the instant, and Bertie's eyes
had bee^. fascinated by a glimpse of him
drawing his revolver as he sprang. Bertie
went up more circumspectly, hesitating
before he put his head above the com-
panionway slide. But nothing happened.
The mate was shaking with excitement, his
revolver in his hand. Once he startled,
and half-jumped around, as if danger
threatened his back.

"One of the natives fell overboard," he
was saying, in a queer tense voice. "He
couldn't swim."

"Who was it?" the skipper demanded.

"Auiki," was the answer.

"But I say, you know, I heard shots,"
Bertie said, in trembling eagerness, for he
scented adventure, and adventure that was
happily over with.

212 THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS

The mate whirled upon him, snarling :

"It's a damned lie. There ain't been
a shot fired. The nigger fell overboard."

Captain Hansen regarded Bertie with un
blinking, lack-lustre eyes.

"I — I thought — " Bertie was begin
ning.

" Shots ?" said Captain Hansen, dreamily.
" Shots ? Did you hear any shots, Mr.
Jacobs?"

"Not a shot," replied Mr. Jacobs.

The skipper looked at his guest trium
phantly, and said :

"Evidently an accident. Let us go down,
Mr. Arkwright, and finish dinner."

Bertie slept that night in the captain's
cabin, a tiny stateroom off the main-cabin.
The for'ard bulkhead was decorated writh
a stand of rifles. Over the bunk were three
more rifles. Under the bunk was a big
drawer, which, when he pulled it out, he
found filled with ammunition, dynamite, and
several boxes of detonators. He elected to
take the settee on the opposite side. Lying

THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS 213

conspicuously on the small table, was the
Aria's log. Bertie did not know that it
had been especially prepared for the occa
sion by Captain Malu, and he read therein
how on September 21, two boat's crew had
fallen overboard and been drowned. Bertie
read between the lines and knew better.
He read how the Aria's whale-boat had been
bushwhacked at Su'u and had lost three
men ; of how the skipper discovered the
cook stewing human flesh on the galley
fire — flesh purchased by the boat's crew
ashore in Fui ; of how an accidental dis
charge of dynamite, while signalling, had
killed another boat's crew ; of night attacks ;
ports fled from between the dawns ; attacks
by bushmen in mangrove swamps and by
fleets of salt-water men in the larger pas
sages. One item that occurred with monot
onous frequency was death by dysentery.
He noticed with alarm that two white men
had so died — guests, like himself, on the
Aria.

"I say> you know," Bertie said next day

214 THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS

to Captain Hansen. "I've been glancing
through your log."

The skipper displayed quick vexation that
the log had been left lying about.

"And all that dysentery, you know, that's
all rot, just like the accidental drownings,"
Bertie continued. "What does dysentery
really stand for ?"

The skipper openly admired his guest's
acumen, stiffened himself to make indignant
denial, then gracefully surrendered.

"You see, it's like this, Mr. Arkwright.
These islands have got a bad enough name
as it is. It's getting harder every day to
sign on white men. Suppose a man is
killed. The company has to pay through
the nose for another man to take the job.
But if the man merely dies of sickness, it's
all right. The new chums don't mind
disease. What they draw the line at is
being murdered. I thought the skipper of
the Aria had died of dysentery when I took
his billet. Then it was too late. I'd signed
the contract."

THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS 215

"Besides," said Mr. Jacobs, "there's
altogether too many accidental drownings
anyway. It don't look right. It's the
fault of the government. A white man
hasn't a chance to defend himself from the
niggers."

"Yes, look at the Princess and that
Yankee mate," the skipper took up the tale.
" She carried five white men besides a govern
ment agent. The captain, the agent, and
the supercargo were ashore in the two boats.
They were killed to the last man. The mate
and boson, with about fifteen of the crew -
Samoans and Tongans -- were on board.
A crowd of niggers came off from shore.
First thing the mate knew, the boson and
the crew were killed in the first rush. The
mate grabbed three cartridge-belts and two
Winchesters and skinned up to the cross-
trees. He was the sole survivor, and you
can't blame him for being mad. He pumped
one rifle till it got so hot he couldn't hold it,
then he pumped the other. The deck was
black with niggers. He cleaned them out.

216 THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS

He dropped them as they went over the rail,
and he dropped them as fast as they picked
up their paddles. Then they jumped into
the water and started to swim for it, and,
being mad, he got half a dozen more. And
what did he get for it ?"

"Seven years in Fiji," snapped the mate.

"The government said he wasn't justified
in shooting after they'd taken to the water,"
the skipper explained.

"And that's why they die of dysentery
nowadays," the mate added.

"Just fancy," said Bertie, as he felt a long
ing for the cruise to be over.

Later on in the day he interviewed the
black who had been pointed out to him as
a cannibal. This fellow's name was Sumasai.
He had spent three years on a Queensland
plantation. He had been to Samoa, and
Fiji, and Sydney; and as a boat's crew had
been on recruiting schooners through New
Britain, New Ireland, New Guinea, and the
Admiralties. Also, he was a wag, and he
had taken a line on his skipper's conduct.

THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS 217

Yes, he had eaten many men. How many ?
He could not remember the tally. Yes,
white men, too ; they were very good, unless
they were sick. He had once eaten a sick
one.

"My word !" he cried, at the recollection.
"Me sick plenty along him. My belly
walk about too much."

Bertie shuddered, and asked about heads.
Yes, Sumasai had several hidden ashore,
in good condition, sun-dried, and smoke-
cured. One was of the captain of a schooner.
It had long whiskers. He would sell it for
two quid. Black men's heads he would sell
for one quid. He had some pickaninny
heads, in poor condition, that he would let
go for ten bob.

Five minutes afterward, Bertie found
himself sitting on the companionway-slide
alongside a black with a horrible skin disease.
He sheered off, and on inquiry was told that
it was leprosy. He hurried below and
washed himself with antiseptic soap. He
took many antiseptic washes in the course

2i8 THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS

of the day, for every native on board was
afflicted with malignant ulcers of one sort
or another.

As the Aria drew in to an anchorage in the
midst of mangrove swamps, a double row of
barbed wire was stretched around above her
rail. That looked like business, and when
Bertie saw the shore canoes alongside, armed
with spears, bows and arrows, and Sniders,
he wished more earnestly than ever that the
cruise was over.

That evening the natives were slow in
leaving the ship at sundown. A number
of them checked the mate when he ordered
them ashore.

"Never mind, I'll fix them," said Captain
Hansen, diving below.

When he came back, he showed Bertie
a stick of dynamite attached to a fish-hook.
Now it happens that a paper-wrapped
bottle of chlorodyne with a piece of harmless
fuse projecting can fool anybody. It fooled
Bertie, and it fooled the natives. When
Captain Hansen lighted the fuse and hooked

THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS 219

the fish-hook into the tail-end of a native's
loin-cloth, that native was smitten with so
ardent a desire for the shore that he forgot
to shed the loin-cloth. He started for'ard,
the fuse sizzling and spluttering at his rear,
the natives in his path taking headers over
the barbed wire at every jump. Bertie was
horror-stricken. So was Captain Hansen.
He had forgotten his twenty-five recruits, on
each of which he had paid thirty shillings ad
vance. They went over the side along with
the shore-dwelling folk and followed by him
who trailed the sizzling chlorodyne bottle.

Bertie did not see the bottle go off ; but
the mate opportunely discharging a stick
of real dynamite aft where it would harm
nobody, Bertie would have sworn in any
admiralty court to a nigger blown to flinders.

The flight of the twenty-five recruits
had actually cost the Aria forty pounds,
and, since they had taken to the bush,
there was no hope of recovering them. The
skipper and his mate proceeded to drown
their sorrow in cold tea. The cold tea

220 THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS

was in whiskey bottles, so Bertie did not
know it was cold tea they were mopping
up. All he knew was that the two men got
very drunk and argued eloquently and
at length as to whether the exploded nigger
should be reported as a case of dysentery
or as an accidental drowning. When they
snored off to sleep, he was the only white
man left, and he kept a perilous watch
till dawn, in fear of an attack from shore
and an uprising of the crew.

Three more days the Aria spent on the
coast, and three more nights the skipper and
the mate drank overfondly of cold tea, leav
ing Bertie to keep the watch. They knew
he could be depended upon, while he was
equally certain that if he lived, he would re
port their drunken conduct to Captain Malu.
Then the Aria dropped anchor at Reminge
Plantation, on Guadalcanar, and Bertie
landed on the beach with a sigh of relief and
shook hands with the manager. Mr. Harri-
well was ready for him.

"Now you mustn't be alarmed if some

THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS 221

of our fellows seem downcast," Mr. Harri-
well said, having drawn him aside in con
fidence. "There's been talk of an out
break, and two or three suspicious signs
I'm willing to admit, but personally I
think it's all poppycock."

"How — how many blacks have you
on the plantation ?" Bertie asked, with a
sinking heart.

"We're working four hundred just now,"
replied Mr. Harriwell, cheerfully; "but
the three of us, with you, of course, and the
skipper and mate of the Aria, can handle
them all right."

Bertie turned to meet one McTavish,
the storekeeper, who scarcely acknowl
edged the introduction, such was his eager
ness to present his resignation.

"It being that I'm a married man, Mr.
Harriwell, I can't very well afford to re
main on longer. Trouble is working up,
as plain as the nose on your face. The
niggers are going to break out, and there'll
be another Hohono horror here."

222 THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS

"What's a Hohono horror?" Bertie
asked, after the storekeeper had been per
suaded to remain until the end of the
month."

"Oh, he means Hohono Plantation, on
Ysabel," said the manager. "The niggers
killed the five white men ashore, captured
the schooner, killed the captain and mate,
and escaped in a body to Malaita. But
I always said they were careless on Ho
hono. They won't catch us napping here.
Come along, Mr Arkwright, and see our
view from the veranda."

Bertie was too busy wondering how he
could get away to Tulagi to the Commis
sioner's house, to see much of the view.
He was still wondering, when a rifle ex
ploded very near to him, behind his back.
At the same moment his arm was nearly
dislocated, so eagerly did Mr. Harriwell
drag him indoors.

"I say, old man, that was a close shave,"
said the manager, pawing him over to see if
he had been hit. "I can't tell you how

THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS 223

sorry I am. But it was broad daylight,
and I never dreamed."

Bertie was beginning to turn pale.

"They got the other manager that way,"
McTavish vouchsafed. "And a dashed
fine chap he was. Blew his brains out all
over the veranda. You noticed that dark
stain there between the steps and the
door?"

Bertie was ripe for the cocktail which
Mr. Harriwell pitched in and compounded
for him; but before he could drink it, a
man in riding trousers and puttees entered.

"What's the matter now?" the man
ager asked, after one look at the new
comer's face. "Is the river up again ?"

"River be blowed — it's the niggers.
Stepped out of the cane-grass, not a dozen
feet away, and whopped at me. It was
a Snider, and he shot from the hip. Now
what I want to know is where'd he get
that Snider ? — Oh, I beg pardon. Glad
to know you, Mr. Arkwright."

"Mr. Brown is my assistant," explained

224 THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS

Mr. Harriwell. "And now let's have that
drink."

"But where'd he get that Snider?" Mr.
Brown insisted. "I always objected to
keeping those guns on the premises."

"They're still there," Mr. Harriwell said,
with a show of heat.

Mr. Brown smiled incredulously.

"Come along and see," said the man
ager.

Bertie joined the procession into the
office, where Mr. Harriwell pointed tri
umphantly at a big packing-case in a dusty
corner.

"Well, then, where did the beggar get
that Snider?" harped Mr. Brown.

But just then McTavish lifted the pack
ing-case. The manager started, then tore
off the lid. The case was empty. They
gazed at one another in horrified silence.
Harriwell drooped wearily.

Then McVeigh cursed.

"What I contended all along — the
house-boys are not to be trusted."

THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS 225

"It does look serious," Harriwell ad
mitted, "but we'll come through it all
right. What the sanguinary niggars need
is a shaking up. Will you gentlemen please
bring your rifles to dinner, and will you,
Mr. Brown, kindly prepare forty or fifty
sticks of dynamite. Make the fuses good
and short. We'll give them a lesson. And
now, gentlemen, dinner is served."

One thing that Bertie detested was rice
and curry, so it happened that he alone par
took of an inviting omelet. He had quite
finished his plate, when Harriwell helped
himself to the omelet. One mouthful he
tasted, then spat out vociferously.

"That's the second time," McTavish
announced ominously.

Harriwell was still hawking and spitting.

"Second time, what?" Bertie quavered.

"Poison," was the answer. "That cook
will be hanged yet."

"That's the way the bookkeeper went
out at Cape Marsh," Brown spoke up.
" Died horribly. They said on the Jessie
Q

226 THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS

that they heard him screaming three miles

away."

"I'll put the cook in irons," sputtered
Harriwell. "Fortunately we discovered it
in time."

Bertie sat paralysed. There was no
color in his face. He attempted to speak,
but only an inarticulate gurgle resulted.
All eyed him anxiously.

"Don't say it, don't say it," McTavish
cried in a tense voice.

'Yes, I ate it, plenty of it, a whole
plateful!" Bertie cried explosively, like a
diver suddenly regaining breath.

The awful silence continued half a minute
longer, and he read his fate in their eyes.

"Maybe it wasn't poison after all,"
said Harriwell, dismally.

"Call in the cook," said Brown.

In came the cook, a grinning black boy,
nose-spiked and ear-plugged.

"Here, you, Wi-wi, what name that?"
Harriwell bellowed, pointing accusingly at
the omelet.

THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS 227

Wi-wi was very naturally frightened and
embarrassed.

"Him good fella kai-kai" he murmured
apologetically.

"Make him eat it," suggested McTavish.
"That's a proper test."

Harriwell filled a spoon with the stuff
and jumped for the cook, who fled in panic.

"That settles it," was Brown's solemn
pronouncement. "He won't eat it."

"Mr. Brown, will you please go and put
the irons on him ? " Harriwell turned cheer
fully to Bertie. "It's all right, old man,
the Commissioner will deal with him, and
if you die, depend upon it, he will be
hanged."

"Don't think the government'll do it,"
objected McTavish.

"But gentlemen, gentlemen," Bertie
cried. "In the meantime think of me."

Harriwell shrugged his shoulders pity
ingly.

" Sorry, old man, but it's a native poison,
and there are no known antidotes for

228 THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS

native poisons. Try and compose yourself,
and if—"

Two sharp reports of a rifle from without,
interrupted the discourse, and Brown, en
tering, reloaded his rifle and sat down to
table.

"The cook's dead," he said. "Fever.
A rather sudden attack."

"I was just telling Mr. Arkwright that
there are no antidotes for native poi
sons — "

"Except gin," said Brown.

Harriwell called himself an absent-
minded idiot and rushed for the gin
bottle.

"Neat, man, neat," he warned Bertie,
who gulped down a tumbler two-thirds
full of the raw spirits, and coughed and
choked from the angry bite of it till the
tears ran down his cheeks.

Harriwell took his pulse and tempera
ture, made a show of looking out for him,
and doubted that the omelet had been
poisoned. Brown and McTavish also

THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS 229

doubted ; but Bertie discerned an insincere
ring in their voices. His appetite had
left him, and he took his own pulse stealth
ily under the table. There was no ques
tion but what it was increasing, but he
failed to ascribe it to the gin he had taken.
McTavish, rifle in hand, went out on
the veranda to reconnoitre.

"They're massing up at the cook-house,"
was his report. "And they've no end of
Sniders. My idea is to sneak around on
the other side and take them in flank.
Strike the first blow, you know. Will
you come along, Brown ?"

Harriwell ate on steadily, while Bertie
discovered that his pulse had leaped up
five beats. Nevertheless, he could not help
jumping when the rifles began to go off.
Above the scattering of Sniders could be
heard the pumping of Brown's and Mc-
Tavish's Winchesters — all against a back
ground of demoniacal screeching and yell
ing.

"They've got them on the run," Harri-

230 THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS

well remarked, as voices and gunshots
faded away in the distance.

Scarcely were Brown and McTavish
back at the table when the latter recon
noitred.

"They've got dynamite," he said.

"Then let's charge them with dynamite,"
Harriwell proposed.

Thrusting half a dozea sticks each into
their pockets and equipping themselves
with lighted cigars, they started for the
door. And just then it happened. They
blamed McTavish for it afterward, and he
admitted that the charge had been a trifle
excessive. But at any rate it went off
under the house, which lifted up corner-
wise and settled back on its foundations.
Half the china on the table was shattered,
while the eight-day clock stopped. Yell
ing for vengeance, the three men rushed
out into the night, and the bombardment
began.

When they returned, there was no Bertie.
He had dragged himself away to the office,

THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS 231

barricaded himself in, and sunk upon the
floor in a gin-soaked nightmare, wherein
he died a thousand deaths while the val
orous fight went on around him. In the
morning, sick and headachey from the
gin, he crawled out to find the sun still
in the sky and God presumably in heaven,
for his hosts were alive and uninjured.

Harriwell pressed him to stay on longer,
but Bertie insisted on sailing immediately
on the Aria for Tulagi, where, until the
following steamer day, he stuck close by
the Commissioner's house. There were
lady tourists on the outgoing steamer, and
Bertie was again a hero, while Captain
Malu, as usual, passed unnoticed. But
Captain Malu sent back from Sydney two
cases of the best Scotch whiskey on the
market, for he was not able to make up
his mind as to whether it was Captain
Hansen or Mr. Harriwell who had given
Bertie Arkwright the more gorgeous in
sight into life in the Solomons.

THE INEVITABLE WHITE MAN

THE INEVITABLE WHITE MAN

" f" | ^HE black will never understand the
white, nor the white the black, as
long as black is black and white is
white."

So said Captain Woodward. We sat in
the parlor of Charley Roberts' pub in Apia,
drinking long Abu Hameds compounded and
shared with us by the aforesaid Charley
Roberts, who claimed the recipe direct from
Stevens, famous for having invented the
Abu Hamed at a time when he was
spurred on by Nile thirst — the Stevens
who was responsible for "With Kitchener
to Kartoun," and who passed out at the
siege of Ladysmith.

Captain WToodward, short and squat,
elderly, burned by forty years of tropic sun,
and with the most beautiful liquid brown
eyes I ever saw in a man, spoke from a vast
experience. The crisscross of scars on his

235

236 THE INEVITABLE WHITE MAN

bald pate bespoke a tomahawk intimacy
with the black, and of equal intimacy was
the advertisement, front and rear, on the
right side of his neck, where an arrow had
at one time entered and been pulled clean
through. As he explained, he had been in
a hurry on that occasion — the arrow im
peded his running — and he felt that he
could not take the time to break off the
head and pull out the shaft the way it had
come in. At the present moment he was
commander of the Savaii, the big steamer
that recruited labor from the westward for
the German plantations on Samoa.

"Half the trouble is the stupidity of the
whites," said Roberts, pausing to take a
swig from his glass and to curse the Samoan
bar-boy in affectionate terms. "If the
white man would lay himself out a bit to
understand the workings of the black man's
mind, most of the messes would be avoided."

"I've seen a few who claimed they under
stood niggers," Captain Woodward retorted,
"and I always took notice that they were

THE INEVITABLE WHITE MAN 237

the first to be kai-kai^d (eaten). Look at
the missionaries in New Guinea and the
New Hebrides — the martyr isle of Erro-
manga and all the rest. Look at the Aus
trian expedition that was cut to pieces in the
Solomons, in the bush of Gaudalcanar.
And look at the traders themselves, with
a score of years' experience, making their
brag that no nigger would ever get them,
and whose heads to this day are ornament
ing the rafters of the canoe houses. There
was old Johnny Simons -- twenty-six years
on the raw edges of Melanesia, swore he
knew the niggers like a book and that they'd
never do for him, and he passed out at
Marovo Lagoon, New Georgia, had his
head sawed off by a black Mary (woman)
and an old nigger with only one leg, having
left the other leg in the mouth of a shark
while diving for dynamited fish. There
was Billy Watts, horrible reputation as a
nigger killer, a man to scare the devil. I
remember lying at Cape Little, New Ireland
you know, when the niggers stole half a case

238 THE INEVITABLE WHITE MAN

of trade-tobacco — cost him about three
dollars and a half. In retaliation he turned
out, shot six niggers, smashed up their war
canoes and burned two villages. And it was
at Cape Little, four years afterward, that he
was jumped along with fifty Buku boys he
had with him fishing beche-de-mer. In five
minutes they were all dead, with the excep
tion of three boys who got away in a canoe.
Don't talk to me about understanding the
nigger. The white man's mission is to farm
the world, and it's a big enough job cut out
for him. What time has he got left to under
stand niggers anyway ?"

"Just so," said Roberts. "And some
how it doesn't seem necessary, after all, to
understand the niggers. In direct pro
portion to the white man's stupidity is his
success in farming the world — "

"And putting the fear of God into the
nigger's heart," Captain Woodward blurted
out. "Perhaps you're right, Roberts.
Perhaps it's his stupidity that makes him
succeed, and surely one phase of his stupidity

THE INEVITABLE WHITE MAN 239

is his inability to understand the niggers.
But there's one thing sure, the white has to
run the niggers whether he understands
them or not. It's inevitable. It's fate.

"And of course the white man is inevi
table — it's the niggers' fate," Roberts broke
in. "Tell the white man there's pearl-
shell in some lagoon infested by ten thousand
howling cannibals, and he'll head there all
by his lonely, with half a dozen kanaka
divers and a tin alarm clock for chronom
eter, all packed like sardines on a com
modious, five-ton ketch. Whisper that
there's a gold strike at the North Pole, and
that same inevitable white-skinned creature
will set out at once, armed with pick and
shovel, a side of bacon, and the latest patent
rocker — and what's more, he'll get there.
Tip it off to him that there's diamonds on
the red-hot ramparts of hell, and Mr. White
Man will storm the ramparts and set old
Satan himself to pick-and-shovel work.
That's what comes of being stupid and in
evitable."

240 THE INEVITABLE WHITE MAN

"But I wonder what the black man
must think of the — the inevitableness,"
I said.

Captain Woodward broke into quiet
laughter. His eyes had a reminiscent
gleam.

"I'm just wondering what the niggers of
Malu thought and still must be thinking of
the one inevitable white man we had on
board when we visited them in the Duchess"
he explained.

Roberts mixed three more Abu Hameds.

"That was twenty years ago. Saxtorph
was his name. He was certainly the most
stupid man I ever saw, but he was as inev
itable as death. There was only one thing
that chap could do, and that was shoot. I
remember the first time I ran into him —
right here in Apia, twenty years ago. That
was before your time, Roberts. I was sleep
ing at Dutch Henry's hotel, down where the
market is now. Ever heard of him ? He
made a tidy stake smuggling arms in to the
rebels, sold out his hotel, and was killed in

THE INEVITABLE WHITE MAN 241

Sydney just six weeks afterward in a saloon
row.

"But Saxtorph. One night I'd just got
to sleep, when a couple of cats began to sing
in the courtyard. It was out of bed and
up window, water jug in hand. But just
then I heard the window of the next room
go up. Two shots were fired, and the win
dow was closed. I fail to impress you with
the celerity of the transaction. Ten seconds
at the outside. Up went the window, bang
bang went the revolver, and down went the
window. Whoever it was, he had never
stopped to see the effect of his shots. He
knew. Do you follow me ? — he knew.
There was no more cat-concert, and in the
morning there lay the two offenders, stone-
dead. It was marvellous to me. It still is
marvellous. First, it was starlight, and
Saxtorph shot without drawing a bead ;
next, he shot so rapidly that the two reports
were like a double report ; and finally, he
knew he had hit his marks without looking
to see.

242 THE INEVITABLE WHITE MAN

"Two days afterward he came on board
to see me. I was mate, then, on the Duchess,
a whacking big one-hundred-and-fifty-ton
schooner, a blackbirder. And let me tell
you that blackbirders were blackbirders in
those days. There weren't any govern
ment inspectors, and no government pro
tection for us, either. It was rough work,
give and take, if we were finished, and noth
ing said, and we ran niggers from every
south sea island they didn't kick us off from.
Well, Saxtorph came on board, John Sax-
torph was the name he gave. He was
a sandy little man, hair sandy, complexion
sandy, and eyes sandy, too. Nothing strik
ing about him. His soul was as neutral
as his color scheme. He said he was strapped
and wanted to ship on board. Would go
cabin-boy, cook, supercargo, or common
sailor. Didn't know anything about any
of the billets, but said that he was willing to
learn. I didn't want him, but his shooting
had so impressed me that I took him as com
mon sailor, wages three pounds per month.

THE INEVITABLE WHITE MAN 243

"He was willing to learn all right, I'll say
that much. But he was constitutionally
unable to learn anything. He could no
more box the compass than I could mix
drinks like Roberts here. And as for steer
ing, he gave me my first gray hairs. I
never dared risk him at the wheel when we
were running in a big sea, while full-and-by
and close-and-by were insoluble mysteries.
Couldn't ever tell the difference between a
sheet and a tackle, simply couldn't. The
fore-throat-jig and the jib-jig were all one
to him. Tell him to slack off the main-
sheet, and before you know it, he'd drop the
peak. He fell overboard three times, and
he couldn't swim. But he was always cheer
ful, never seasick, and he was the most
willing man I ever knew. He was an un
communicative soul. Never talked about
himself. His history, so far as we were
concerned, began the day he signed on the
Duchess. Where he learned to shoot, the
stars alone can tell. He was a Yankee —
that much we knew from the twang in

244 THE INEVITABLE WHITE MAN

his speech. And that was all we ever
did know.

"And now we begin to get to the point.
We had bad luck in the New Hebrides, only
fourteen boys for five weeks, and we ran
up before the southeast for the Solomons.
Malaita, then as now, was good recruiting
ground, and we ran into Malu, on the north
western corner. There's a shore reef and an
outer leef, and a mighty nervous anchorage;
but we made it all right and fired off our
dynamite as a signal to the niggers to come
down and be recruited. In three days we
got not a boy. The niggers came off to us
in their canoes by hundreds, but they only
laughed when we showed them beads and
calico and hatchets and talked of the delights
of plantation work in Samoa.

"On the fourth day there came a change.
Fifty-odd boys signed on and were billeted
in the main-hold, with the freedom of the
deck, of course. And of course, looking
back, this wholesale signing on was suspi
cious, but at the time we thought some pow-

THE INEVITABLE WHITE MAN 245

erful chief had removed the ban against re
cruiting. The morning of the fifth day our
two boats went ashore as usual — one to
cover the other, you know, in case of trouble.
And, as usual, the fifty niggers on board
were on deck, loafing, talking, smoking, and
sleeping. Saxtorph and myself, along with
four other sailors, were all that were left on
board. The two boats were manned with
Gilbert Islanders. In the one were the cap
tain, the supercargo, and the recruiter. In
the other, which was the covering boat
and which lay off shore a hundred yards,
was the second mate. Both boats were
well-armed, though trouble was little ex
pected.

"Four of the sailors, including Saxtorph,
were scraping the poop rail. The fifth
sailor, rifle in hand, was standing guard by
the water-tank just for'ard of the mainmast.
I was for'ard, putting in the finishing licks
on a new jaw for the fore-gaff. I was just
reaching for my pipe where I had laid it
down, when I heard a shot from shore. I

246 THE INEVITABLE WHITE MAN

straightened up to look. Something struck
me on the back of the head, partially stun
ning me and knocking me to the deck. My
first thought was that something had carried
away aloft ; but even as I went down, and
before I struck the deck, I heard the devil's
own tattoo of rifles from the boats, and,
twisting sidewise, I caught a glimpse of the
sailor who was standing guard. Two big
niggers were holding his arms, and a third
nigger, from behind, was braining him with
a tomahawk.

"I can see it now, the water-tank, the
mainmast, the gang hanging on to him, the
hatchet descending on the back of his head,
and all under the blazing sunlight. I was
fascinated by that growing vision of death.
The tomahawk seemed to take a horribly
long time to come down. I saw it land, and
the man's legs give under him as he crumpled.
The niggers held him up by sheer strength
while he was hacked a couple of times more.
Then I got two more hacks on the head and
decided that I was dead. So did the brute

THE INEVITABLE WHITE MAN 247

that was hacking me. I was too helpless to
move, and I lay there and watched them
removing the sentry's head. I must say
they did it slick enough. They were old
hands at the business.

"The riflefiring from the boats had
ceased, and I made no doubt that they were
finished off and that the end had come to
everything. It was only a matter of mo
ments when they would return for my head.
They were evidently taking the heads from
the sailors aft. Heads are valuable on
Malaita, especially white heads. They have
the place of honor in the canoe houses
of the salt-water natives. What particular
decorative effect the bushmen get out of
them I didn't know, but they prize them
just as much as the salt-water crowd.

"I had a dim notion of escaping, and I
crawled on hands and knees to the winch,
where I managed to drag myself to my feet,
From there I could look aft and see three
heads on top the cabin — the heads of three
sailors I had given orders to for months.

248 THE INEVITABLE WHITE MAN

The niggers saw me standing, and started
for me. I reached for my revolver, and
found they had taken it. I can't say that
I was scared. I've been near to death
several times, but it never seemed easier
than right then. I was half-stunned, and
nothing seemed to matter.

"The leading nigger had armed himself
with a cleaver from the galley, and he
grimmaced like an ape as he prepared to
slice me down. But the slice was never
made. He went down on the deck all of
a heap, and I saw the blood gush from his
mouth. In a dim way I heard a rifle go
off and continue to go off. Nigger after
nigger went down. My senses began to
clear, and I noted that there was never a
miss. Every time that rifle went off a nig
ger dropped. I sat down on deck beside
the winch and looked up. Perched in the
crosstrees was Saxtorph. How he had
managed it I can't imagine, for he had
carried up with him two Winchesters and
I don't know how many bandoliers of am-

THE INEVITABLE WHITE MAN 249

munition ; and he was now doing the one
only thing in this world that he was fitted
to do.

"I've seen shooting and slaughter, but I
never saw anything like that. I sat by the
winch and watched the show. I was weak
and faint, and it seemed to be all a dream.
Bang, bang, bang, bang, went his rifle, and
thud, thud, thud, thud, went the niggers
to the deck. It was amazing to see them
go down. After their first rush to get me,
when about a dozen had dropped, they
seemed paralysed ; but he never left off
pumping his gun. By this time canoes and
the two boats arrived from shore, armed
with Sniders, and with Winchesters which
they had captured in the boats. The
fusillade they let loose on Saxtorph was
tremendous. Luckily for him the niggers
are only good at close range. They are not
used to putting the guns to their shoulders.
They wait until they are right on top of
a man, and then they shoot from the hip.
When his rifle got too hot, Saxtorph changed

250 THE INEVITABLE WHITE MAN

off. That had been his idea when he carried
two rifles up with him.

"The astounding thing was the rapidity
of his fire. Also, he never made a miss,
If ever anything was inevitable, that man
was. It was the swiftness of it that made
the slaughter so appalling. The niggers
did not have time to think. When they did
manage to think, they went over the side in
a rush, capsizing the canoes of course.
Saxtorph never let up. The water was
covered with them, and plump, plump,
plump, he dropped his bullets into them.
Not a single miss, and I could hear distinctly
the thud of every bullet as it buried in
human flesh.

"The niggers spread out and headed for
the shore, swimming. The water was car
peted with bobbing heads, and I stood up,
as in a dream, and watched it all — the
bobbing heads and the heads that ceased to
bob. Some of the long shots were magnifi
cent. Only one man reached the beach,
but as he stood up to wade ashore, Saxtorph

THE INEVITABLE WHITE MAN 251

got him. It was beautiful. And when a
couple of niggers ran down to drag him out
of the water, Saxtorph got them, too.

"I thought everything was over then,
when I heard the rifle go off again. A nig
ger had come out of the cabin companion
on the run for the rail and gone down in
the middle of it. The cabin must have
been full of them. I counted twenty.
They came up one at a time and jumped
for the rail. But they never got there. It
reminded me of trapshooting. A black
body would pop out of the companion, bang
would go Saxtorph's rifle, and down would
go the black body. Of course, those below
did not know what was happening on deck,
so they continued to pop out until the last
one was finished off.

"Saxtorph waited a while to make sure,
and then came down on deck. He and I
were all that were left of the Duchess's
complement, and I was pretty well to the
bad, while he was helpless now that the
shooting was over. Under my direction

252 THE INEVITABLE WHITE MAN

he washed out my scalp-wounds and sewed
them up. A big drink of whiskey braced
me to make an effort to get out. There was
nothing else to do. All the rest were dead.
We tried to get up sail, Saxtorph hoisting
and I holding the turn. He was once more
the stupid lubber. He couldn't hoist worth
a cent, and when I fell in a faint, it looked all
up with us.

"When I came to, Saxtorph was sitting
helplessly on the rail, waiting to ask me what
he should do. I told him to overhaul the
wounded and see if there were any able to
crawl. He gathered together six. One, I
remember, had a broken leg; but Saxtorph
said his arms were all right. I lay in the
shade, brushing the flies off and directing
operations, while Saxtorph bossed his hos
pital gang. I'll be blessed if he didn't make
those poor niggers heave at every rope on
the pin-rails before he found the halyards.
One of them let go the rope in the midst of
the hoisting and slipped down to the deck
dead ; but Saxtorph hammered the others

THE INEVITABLE WHITE MAN 253

and made them stick by the job. When
the fore and main were up, I told him to
knock the shackle out of the anchor chain
and let her go. I had had myself helped aft
to the wheel, where I was going to make a
shift at steering. I can't guess how he did
it, but instead of knocking the shackle out,
down went the second anchor, and there
we were doubly moored.

"In the end he managed to knock both
shackles out and raise the staysail and jib,
and the Duchess filled away for the entrance.
Our decks were a spectacle. Dead and
dying niggers were everywhere. They were
wedged away some of them in the most incon
ceivable places. The cabin was full of them
where they had crawled off the deck and
cashed in. I put Saxtorph and his grave
yard gang to work heaving them overside,
and over they went, the living and the dead.
The sharks had fat pickings that day. Of
course our four murdered sailors went the
same way. Their heads, however, we put
in a sack with weights, so that by no chance

254 THE INEVITABLE WHITE MAN

should they drift on the beach and fall into
the hands of the niggers.

"Our five prisoners I decided to use as
crew, but they decided otherwise. They
watched their opportunity and went over
the side. Saxtorph got two in mid-air with
his revolver, and would have shot the other
three in the water if I hadn't stopped him.
I was sick of the slaughter, you see, and,
besides, they'd helped work the schooner
out. But it was mercy thrown away, for
the sharks got the three of them.

" I had brain fever or something after we
got clear of the land. Anyway, the Duchess
lay hove to for three weeks, when I pulled
myself together and we jogged on with her to
Sydney. Anyway those niggers of Malu
learned the everlasting lesson that it is not
good to monkey with a white man. In their
case, Saxtorph was certainly inevitable."

Charley Roberts emitted a long whistle
and said :

"Well I should say so. But whatever
became of Saxtorph?"

THE INEVITABLE WHITE MAN 255

"He drifted into seal hunting and became
a crackerjack. For six years he was high
line of both the Victoria and San Francisco
fleets. The seventh year his schooner was
seized in Bering Sea by a Russian cruiser, and
all hands, so the talk went, were slammed
into the Siberian salt mines. At least I've
never heard of him since."

"Farming the world/' Roberts muttered.
"Farming the world. Well here's to them.
Somebody's got to do it — farm the world,
I mean.'"

Captain Woodward rubbed the criss
crosses on his bald head.

"I've done my share of it," he said.
"Forty years now. This will be my last
trip. Then I'm going home to stay."

"I'll wager the wine you don't," Roberts
challenged. "You'll die in the harness, not
at home."

Captain Woodward promptly accepted
the bet, but personally I think Charley
Roberts has the best of it.

THE SEED OF McCOY

THE SEED OF McCOY

THE Pyrenees, her iron sides pressed
low in the water by her cargo of
wheat, rolled sluggishly, and made
it easy for the man who was climbing aboard
from out a tiny outrigger canoe. As his
eyes came level with the rail, so that he
could see inboard, it seemed to him that
he saw a dim, almost indiscernible haze.
It was more like an illusion, like a blurring
film that had spread abruptly over his eyes.
He felt an inclination to brush it away, and
the same instant he thought that he was
growing old and that it was time to send
to San Francisco for a pair of spectacles.

As he came over the rail he cast a glance
aloft at the tall masts, and, next, at the
pumps. They were not working. There
seemed nothing the matter with the big
ship, and he wondered why she had hoisted

259

i6o THE SEED OF McCOY

the signal of distress. He thought of his
happy islanders, and hoped it was not disease.
Perhaps the ship was short of water or pro
visions. He shook hands with the captain
whose gaunt face and care-worn eyes made
no secret of the trouble, whatever it was.
At the same moment the new-comer was
aware of a faint, indefinable smell. It
seemed like that of burnt bread, but dif
ferent.

He glanced curiously about him. Twenty
feet away a weary-faced sailor was calking
the deck. As his eye lingered on the man,
he saw suddenly arise from under his hands
a faint spiral of haze that curled and twisted
and was gone. By now he had reached the
deck. His bare feet were pervaded by a dull
warmth that quickly penetrated the thick
calluses. He knew now the nature of the
ship's distress. His eyes roved swiftly for
ward, where the full crew of weary-faced
sailors regarded him eagerly. The glance
from his liquid brown eyes swept over them
like a benediction, soothing them, wrapping

THE SEED OF McCOY 261

them about as in the mantle of a great peace.
"How long has she been afire, Captain ?"
he asked in a voice so gentle and unper
turbed that it was as the cooing of a dove.

At first the captain felt the peace and
content of it stealing in upon him ; then
the consciousness of all that he had gone
through and was going through smote him,
and he was resentful. By what right did
this ragged beach-comber, in dungaree
trousers and a cotton shirt, suggest such a
thing as peace and content to him and his
overwrought, exhausted soul ? The cap
tain did not reason this ; it was the uncon
scious process of emotion that caused his
resentment.

"Fifteen days," he answered shortly.
"Who are you?"

"My name is McCoy," came the answer
in tones that breathed tenderness and com
passion.

"I mean, are you the pilot ?"

McCoy passed the benediction of his gaze
over the tall, heavy-shouldered man with

262 THE SEED OF McCOY

the haggard, unshaven face who had joined
the captain.

"I am as much a pilot as anybody," was
McCoy's answer. "We are all pilots here,
Captain, and I know every inch of these

waters."

But the captain was impatient.

"What I want is some of the authorities.
I want to talk with them, and blame quick."

"Then I'll do just as well."

Again that insidious suggestion of peace,
and his ship a raging furnace beneath his
feet ! The captain's eyebrows lifted im
patiently and nervously, and his fist clenched
as if he were about to strike a blow with it.

"Who in hell are you ?" he demanded.

"I am the chief magistrate," was the
reply in a voice that was still the softest
and gentlest imaginable.

The tall, heavy-shouldered man broke out
in a harsh laugh that was partly amusement,
but mostly hysterical. Both he and the cap
tain regarded McCoy with incredulity and
amazement. That this barefooted beach-

THE SEED OF McCOY 263

comber should possess such high-sound
ing dignity was inconceivable. His cotton
shirt, unbuttoned, exposed a grizzled chest
and the fact that there was no undershirt
beneath. A worn straw hat failed to hide
the ragged gray hair. Halfway down his
chest descended an untrimmed patriarchal
beard. In any slop-shop, two shillings would
have outfitted him complete as he stood
before them.

"Any relation to the McCoy of the
Bounty?" the captain asked.

"He was my great-grandfather."

"Oh," the captain said, then bethought
himself. "My name is Davenport, and
this is my first mate, Mr. Konig."

They shook hands.

"And now to business." The captain
spoke quickly, the urgency of a great
haste pressing his speech. "We've been
on fire for over two weeks. She's ready
to break all hell loose any moment. That's
why I held for Pitcairn. I want to beach
her, or scuttle her, and save the hull."

264 THE SEED OF McCOY

"Then you made a mistake, Captain,
said McCoy. "You should have slacked
away for Mangareva. There's a beauti
ful beach there, in a lagoon where the
water is like a mill-pond."

"But we're here, ain't we?" the first
mate demanded. "That's the point.
We're here, and we've got to do some
thing."

McCoy shook his head kindly.

"You can do nothing here. There is
no beach. There isn't even anchorage."

"Gammon !" said the mate. "Gam
mon !" he repeated loudly, as the captain
signalled him to be more soft-spoken.
"You can't tell me that sort of stuff.
Where d'ye keep your own boats, hey —
your schooner, or cutter, or whatever you
have ? Hey ? Answer me that."

McCoy smiled as gently as he spoke.
His smile was a caress, an embrace that
surrounded the tired mate and sought to
draw him into the quietude and rest of
McCoy's tranquil soul.

THE SEED OF McCOY 265

"We have no schooner or cutter," he
replied. "And we carry our canoes to the
top of the cliff."

"You've got to show me," snorted the
mate. "How d'ye get around to the
other islands, heh ? Tell me that."

"We don't get around. As governor
of Pitcairn, I sometimes go. When I was
younger, I was away a great deal — some
times on the trading schooners, but mostly
on the missionary brig. But she's gone
now, and we depend on passing vessels.
Sometimes we have had as high as six calls
in one year. At other times, a year, and
even longer, has gone by without one pass
ing ship. Yours is the first in seven
months."

"And you mean to tell me - ' the mate
began.

But Captain Davenport interfered.

"Enough of this. We're losing time.
What is to be done, Mr. McCoy ?"

The old man turned his brown eyes,
sweet as a woman's, shoreward, and both

266 THE SEED OF McCOY

captain and mate followed his gaze around
from the lonely rock of Pitcairn to the
crew clustering forward and waiting anx
iously for the announcement of a decision.
McCoy did not hurry. He thought
smoothly and slowly, step by step, with the
certitude of a mind that was never vexed
or outraged by life.

"The wind is light now," he said finally.
'There is a heavy current setting to the
westward."

"That's what made us fetch to leeward,"
the captain interrupted, desiring to vin
dicate his seamanship.

:'Yes, that is what fetched you to lee
ward," McCoy went on. "Well, you can't
work up against this current to day. And
if you did, there is no beach. Your ship
will be a total loss."

He paused, and captain and mate looked
despair at each other.

"But I will tell you what you can do.
The breeze will freshen to-night around
midnight — see those tails of clouds and

THE SEED OF McCOY 267

that thickness to windward, beyond the
point there ? That's where she'll come
from, out of the southeast, hard. It is
three hundred miles to Mangareva.
Square away for it. There is a beautiful
bed for your ship there."

The mate shook his head.

"Come in to the cabin, and we'll look
at the chart," said the captain.

McCoy found a stifling, poisonous at
mosphere in the pent cabin. Stray waft-
ures of invisible gases bit his eyes and
made them sting. The deck was hotter,
almost unbearably hot to his bare feet.
The sweat poured out of his body. He
looked almost with apprehension about
him. This malignant, internal heat was
astounding. It was a marvel that the
cabin did not burst into flames. He had
a feeling as if of being in a huge bake-oven
where the heat might at any moment in
crease tremendously and shrivel him up
like a blade of grass.

As he lifted one foot and rubbed the

268 THE SEED OF McCOY

hot sole against the leg of his trousers, the
mate laughed in a savage, snarling fashion.

"The anteroom of hell," he said. "Hell
herself is right down there under your feet."

"It's hot!" McCoy cried involuntarily,
mopping his face with a bandana handker
chief.

"Here's Mangareva," the captain said,
bending over the table and pointing to a
black speck in the midst of the white
blankness of the chart. "And here, in
between, is another island. Why not run
for that?"

McCoy did not look at the chart.

"That's Crescent Island," he an
swered. "It is uninhabited, and it is only
two or three feet above water. Lagoon,
but no entrance. No, Mangareva is the
nearest place for your purpose."

"Mangareva it is, then," said Captain
Davenport, interrupting the mate's growl
ing objection. "Call the crew aft, Mr.
Konig."

The sailors obeyed, shuffling wearily

THE SEED OF McCOY 269

along the deck and painfully endeavoring
to make haste. Exhaustion was evident
in every movement. The cook came out
of his galley to hear, and the cabin-boy
hung about near him.

When Captain Davenport had explained
the situation and announced his intention
of running for Mangareva, an uproar broke
out. Against a background of throaty
rumbling arose inarticulate cries of rage,
with here and there a distinct curse, or
word, or phrase. A shrill Cockney voice
soared and dominated for a moment, cry
ing : "Gawd ! After bein' in 'ell for fifteen
days — an' now 'e wants us to sail this
floatin' 'ell to sea again !"

The captain could not control them,
but McCoy's gentle presence seemed to
rebuke and calm them, and the muttering
and cursing died away, until the full crew,
save here and there an anxious face directed
at the captain, yearned dumbly toward
the green-clad peaks and beetling coast
of Pitcairn.

270 THE SEED OF McCOY

Soft as a spring zephyr was the voice of
McCoy :

"Captain, I thought I heard some of
them say they were starving."

"Ay," was the answer, "and so we are.
I've had a sea-biscuit and a spoonful of
salmon in the last two days. We're on
whack. You see, when we die Covered the
fire, we battened down immediately to
suffocate the fire. And then we found
how little food there was in the pantry.
But it was too late. We didn't dare break
out the lazarette. Hungry ? I'm just as
hungry as they are."

He spoke to the men again, and again
the throat-rumbling and cursing arose,
their faces convulsed and animal-like with
rage. The second and third mates had
joined the captain, standing behind him
at the break of the poop. Their faces
were set and expressionless ; they seemed
bored, more than anything else, by this
mutiny of the crew. Captain Davenport
glanced questioningly at his first mate,

THE SEED OF McCOY 271

and that person merely shrugged his
shoulders in token of his helplessness.

"You see," the captain said to McCoy,
"you can't compel sailors to leave the safe
land and go to sea on a burning vessel.
She has been their floating coffin for over
two weeks now. They are worked out,
and starved out, and they've got enough
of her. We'll beat up for Pitcairn."

But the wind was light, the Pyrenees*
bottom was foul, and she could not beat
up against the strong westerly current.
At the end of two hours she had lost three
miles. The sailors worked eagerly, as if
by main strength they could compel the
Pyrenees against the adverse elements.
But steadily, port tack and starboard tack,
she sagged off to the westward. The cap
tain paced restlessly up and down, pausing
occasionally to survey the vagrant smoke-
wisps and to trace them back to the por
tions of the deck from which they sprang.
The carpenter was engaged constantly in
attempting to locate such places, and,

272 THE SEED OF McCOY

when he succeeded, in calking them tighter
and tighter.

"Well, what do you think?" the cap
tain finally asked McCoy, who was watch
ing the carpenter with all a child's interest
and curiosity in his eyes.

McCoy looked shoreward, where the land
was disappearing in the thickening haze.

"I think it would be better to square
away for Mangareva. With that breeze
that is coming, you'll be there to-morrow
evening."

"But what if the fire breaks out ? It is
liable to do it any moment."

"Have your boats ready in the falls.
The same breeze will carry your boats to
Mangareva if the ship burns out from
under."

Captain Davenport debated for a mo
ment, and then McCoy heard the ques
tion he had not wanted to hear, but which
he knew was surely coming.

"I have no chart of Mangareva. On
the general chart it is only a fly-speck. I

THE SEED OF McCOY 273

would not know where to look for the
entrance into the lagoon. Will you come
along and pilot her in for me ?"

McCoy's serenity was unbroken.

:'Yes, Captain," he said, with the same
quiet unconcern with which he would have
accepted an invitation to dinner; "I'll
go with you to Mangareva."

Again the crew was called aft, and the
captain spoke to them from the break of
the poop.

"We've tried to work her up, but you
see how we've lost ground. She's set
ting off in a two-knot current. This gen
tleman is the Honorable McCoy, Chief
Magistrate and Governor of Pitcairn Is
land. He will come along with us to
Mangareva. So you see the situation is
not so dangerous. He would not make
such an offer if he thought he was going
to lose his life. Besides, whatever risk
there is, if he of his own free will come
on board and take it, we can do no less.
What do you say for Mangareva ?"

±74 THE SEED OF McCOY

This time there was no uproar. Mc
Coy's presence, the surety and calm that
seemed to radiate from him, had had its
effect. They conferred with one another
in low voices. There was little urging.
They were virtually unanimous, and they
shoved the Cockney out as their spokes
man. That worthy was overwhelmed with
consciousness of the heroism of himself
and his mates, and with flashing eyes he
cried :

"By Gawd ! if 'e will, we will !"

The crew mumbled its assent and started
forward.

"One moment, Captain," McCoy said,
as the other was turning to give orders to
the mate. "I must go ashore first."

Mr. Konig was thunderstruck, staring
at McCoy as if he were a madman.

"Go ashore!" the captain cried.
"What for ? It will take you three hours
to get there in your canoe."

McCoy measured the distance of the
land away, and nodded.

THE SEED OF McCOY 275

"Yes, it is six now. I won't get ashore
till nine. The people cannot be assem
bled earlier then ten. As the breeze fresh
ens up to-night, you can begin to work up
against it, and pick me up at daylight to
morrow morning."

"In the name of reason and common-
sense," the captain burst forth, "what do
you want to assemble the people for ?
Don't you realize that my ship is burning
beneath me ?"

McCoy was as placid as a summer sea,
and the other's anger produced not the
slightest ripple upon it.

'Yes, Captain," he cooed in his dove-
like voice, "I do realize that your ship is
burning. That is why I am going with
you to Mangareva. But I must get per
mission to go with you. It is our custom.
It is an important matter when the gov
ernor leaves the island. The people's in
terests are at stake, and so they have the
right to vote their permission or refusal.
But they will give it, I know that."

276 THE SEED OF McCOY

"Are you sure ?"

"Quite sure."

"Then if you know they will give it,
why bother with getting it ? Think of
the delay-- a whole night."

"It is our custom," was the imperturb
able reply. "Also, I am the governor,
and I must make arrangements for the
conduct of the island during my absence."

"But it is only a twenty-four-hour run
to Mangareva," the captain objected.
"Suppose it took you six times that long
to return to windward ; that would bring
you back by the end of a week."

McCoy smiled his large, benevolent
smile.

"Very few vessels come to Pitcairn,
and when they do, they are usually from
San Francisco or from around the Horn.
I shall be fortunate if I get back in six
months. I may be away a year, and I
may have to go to San Francisco in order
to find a vessel that will bring me back.
My father once left Pitcairn to be gone

THE SEED OF McCOY 277

three months, and two years passed before
he could get back. Then, too, you are
short of food. If you have to take to the
boats, and the weather comes up bad,
you may be days in reaching land. I can
bring off two canoe loads of food in the
morning. Dried bananas will be best. As
the breeze freshens, you beat up against
it. The nearer you are, the bigger loads
I can bring off. Good-by."

He held out his hand. The captain
shook it, and was reluctant to let go. He
seemed to cling to it as a drowning sailor
clings to a life-buoy.

"How do I know you will come back
in the morning ?" he asked.

"Yes, that's it !" cried the mate. "How
do we know but what he's skinning out to
save his own hide ? "

McCoy did not speak. He looked at
them sweetly and benignantly, and it
seemed to them that they received a mes
sage from his tremendous certitude of
soul.

278 THE SEED OF McCOY

The captain released his hand, and,
with a last sweeping glance that embraced
the crew in its benediction, McCoy went
over the rail and descended into his canoe.

The wind freshened, and the Pyrenees,
despite the foulness of her bottom, won
half a dozen miles away from the westerly
current. At daylight, with Pitcairn three
miles to windward, Captain Davenport
made out two canoes coming off to him.
Again McCoy clambered up the side and
dropped over the rail to the hot deck. He
was followed by many packages of dried
bananas, each package wrapped in dry leaves.

"Now, Captain," he said, "swing the
yards and drive for dear life. You see,
I am no navigator," he explained a few
minutes later, as he stood by the captain
aft, the latter with gaze wandering from
aloft to overside as he estimated the Pyr
enees' speed. "You must fetch her to
Mangareva. When you have picked up
the land, then I will pilot her in. What
do you think she is making?"

THE SEED OF McCOY 279

"Eleven," Captain Davenport answered,
with a final glance at the water rushing past.

"Eleven. Let me see, if she keeps up
that gait, we'll sight Mangareva between
eight and nine o'clock to-morrow morn
ing. I'll have her on the beach by ten,
or by eleven at latest. And then your
troubles will be all over."

It almost seemed to the captain that the
blissful moment had already arrived, such
was the persuasive convincingness of Mc
Coy. Captain Davenport had been under
the fearful strain of navigating his burn
ing ship for over two weeks, and he was
beginning to feel that he had had enough.

A heavier flaw of wind struck the back
of his neck and whistled by his ears. He
measured the weight of it, and looked
quickly overside.

"The wind is making all the time," he
announced. "The old girl's doing nearer
twelve than eleven right now. If this
keeps up, we'll be shortening down to
night."

280 THE SEED OF McCOY

All day the Pyrenees, carrying her load
of living fire, tore across the foaming sea.
By nightfall, royals and topgallantsails
were in, and she flew on into the darkness,
with great, crested seas roaring after her.
The auspicious wind had had its effect,
and fore and aft a visible brightening was
apparent. In the second dog-watch some
careless soul started a song, and by eight
bells the whole crew was singing.

Captain Davenport had his blankets
brought up and spread on top the house.

"I've forgotten what sleep is," he ex
plained to McCoy. "I'm all in. But
give me a call at any time you think neces
sary."

At three in the morning he was aroused
by a gentle tugging at his arm. He sat up
quickly, bracing himself against the sky
light, stupid yet from his heavy sleep.
The wind was thrumming its war-song in
the rigging, and a wild sea was buffeting
the Pyrenees. Amidships she was wallow
ing first one rail under and then the other,

THE SEED OF McCOY 281

flooding the waist more often than not.
McCoy was shouting something he could
not hear. He reached out, clutched the
other by the shoulder, and drew him close
so that his own ear was close to the other's
lips.

"It's three o'clock," came McCoy's
voice, still retaining its dovelike quality,
but curiously muffled, as if from a long
way off. "We've run two hundred and
fifty. Crescent Island is only thirty miles
away, somewhere there dead ahead.
There's no lights on it. If we keep run
ning, we'll pile up, and lose ourselves as
well as the ship."

"What d' ye think — heave to?"

"Yes; heave to till daylight. It will
only put us back four hours."

So the Pyrenees, with her cargo of fire,
was hove to, bitting the teeth of the gale
and fighting and smashing the pounding
seas. She was a shell, filled with a con
flagration, and on the outside of the shell,
clinging precariously, the little motes of

282 THE SEED OF McCOY

men, by pull and haul, helped her in the
battle.

"It is most unusual, this gale," McCoy
told the captain, in the lee of the cabin.
"By rights there should be no gale at this
time of the year. But everything about
the weather has been unusual. There has
been a stoppage of the trades, and now
it's howling right out of the trade quar
ter." He waved his hand into the dark
ness, as if his vision could dimly penetrate
for hundreds of miles. "It is off to the
westward. There is something big mak
ing off there somewhere — a hurricane or
something. We're lucky to be so far to
the eastward. But this is only a little
blow," he added. "It can't last. I can
tell you that much."

By daylight the gale had eased down to
normal. But daylight revealed a new
danger. It had come on thick. The sea
was covered by a fog, or, rather, by a
pearly mist that was fog-like in density,
in so far as it obstructed vision, but that

THE SEED OF McCOY 283

was no more than a film on the sea, for the
sun shot it through and filled it with a
glowing radiance.

The deck of the Pyrenees was making
more smoke than on the preceding day,
and the cheerfulness of officers and crew
had vanished. In the lee of the galley the
cabin-boy could be heard whimpering. It
was his first voyage, and the fear of death
was at his heart. The captain wandered
about like a lost soul, nervously chewing
his mustache, scowling, unable to make
up his mind what to do.

"What do you think?" he asked, paus
ing by the side of McCoy, who was making
a breakfast off fried bananas and a mug of
water.

McCoy finished the last banana, drained
the mug, and looked slowly around. In
his eyes was a smile of tenderness as he
said :

"Well, Captain, we might as well drive
as burn. Your decks are not going to
hold out forever. They are hotter this

284 THE SEED OF McCOY

morning. You haven't a pair of shoes I
can wear ? It is getting uncomfortable
for my bare feet."

The Pyrenees shipped two heavy seas
as she was swung off and put once more
before it, and the first mate expressed a
desire to have all that water down in the
hold, if only it could be introduced with
out taking off the hatches. McCoy ducked
his head into the binnacle and watched the
course set.

"I'd hold her up some more, Captain,"
he said. "She's been making drift when
hove to."

"I've set it to a point higher already,"
was the answer. "Isn't that enough ?"

"I'd make it two points, Captain. This
bit of a blow kicked that westerly current
ahead faster than you imagine."

Captain Davenport compromised on a
point and a half, and then went aloft, ac
companied by McCoy and the first mate,
to keep a lookout for land. Sail had been
made, so that the Pyrenees was doing ten

THE SEED OF McCOY 285

knots. The following sea was dying down
rapidly. There was no break in the pearly
fog, and by ten o'clock Captain Daven
port was growing nervous. All hands were
at their stations, ready, at the first warning
of land ahead, to spring like fiends to the
task of bringing the Pyrenees up on the
wind. That land ahead, a surf-washed
outer reef, would be perilously close when
it revealed itself in such a fog.

Another hour passed. The three
watchers aloft stared intently into the
pearly radiance.

"What if we miss Mangareva ?" Cap
tain Davenport asked abruptly.

McCoy, without shifting his gaze, an
swered softly :

"Why, let her drive, Captain. That is
all we can do. All the Paumotus are be
fore us. We can drive for a thousand
miles through reefs and atolls. We are
bound to fetch up somewhere."

"Then drive it is." Captain Daven
port evidenced his intention of descending

286 THE SEED OF McCOY

to the deck. "We've missed Mangareva.
God knows where the next land is. I
wish I'd held her up that other half-point,"
he confessed a moment later. "This
cursed current plays the devil with a navi
gator."

"The old navigators called the Paumo-
tus the Dangerous Archipelago," McCoy
said, when they had regained the poop.
"This very current was partly responsible
for that name."

"I was talking with a sailor chap in
Sydney, once," said Mr. Konig. "He'd
been trading in the Paumotus. He told
me insurance was eighteen per cent. Is
that right ?"

McCoy smiled and nodded.

"Except that they don't insure," he
explained. "The owners write off twenty
per cent of the cost of their schooners each
year."

"My God !" Captain Davenport
groaned. "That makes the life of a
schooner only five years !" He shook his

THE SEED OF McCOY 287

head sadly, murmuring, "Bad waters ! bad
waters !"

Again they went into the cabin to con
sult the big general chart; but the poi
sonous vapors drove them coughing and
gasping on deck.

"Here is Moerenhout Island." Captain
Davenport pointed it out on the chart,
which he had spread on the house. " It can't
be more than a hundred miles to leeward."

"A hundred and ten." McCoy shook
his head doubtfully. "It might be done,
but it is very difficult. I might beach her,
and then again I might put her on the
reef. A bad place, a very bad place."

"We'll take the chance," was Captain
Davenport's decision, as he set about
working out the course.

Sail was shortened early in the after
noon, to avoid running past in the night;
and in the second dog-watch the crew
manifested its regained cheerfulness. Land
was so very near, and their troubles would
be over in the morning.

288 THE SEED OF McCOY

But morning broke clear, with a blaz
ing tropic sun. The southeast trade had
swung around to the eastward, and was
driving the Pyrenees through the water at
an eight-knot clip. Captain Davenport
worked up his dead reckoning, allowing
generously for drift, and announced
Moerenhout Island to be not more than
ten miles off. The Pyrenees sailed the
ten miles ; she sailed ten miles more ; and
the lookouts at the three mastheads saw
naught but the naked, sun-washed sea.

"But the land is there, I tell you," Captain
Davenport shouted to them from the poop.

McCoy smiled soothingly, but the cap
tain glared about him like a madman,
fetched his sextant, and took a chronom
eter sight.

"I knew I was right," he almost shouted,
when he had worked up the observation.
"Twenty-one, fifty-five, south; one-thirty-
six, two, west. There you are. We're
eight miles to windward yet. What did
you make it out, Mr. Konig ?"

THE bEED OF McCOY 289

The first mate glanced at his own fig
ures, and said in a low voice :

"Twenty-one, fifty-five all right; but
my longitude's one-thirty-six, forty-eight.
That puts us considerably to leeward — "

But Captain Davenport ignored his fig
ures with so contemptuous a silence as to
make Mr. Konig grit his teeth and curse
savagely under his breath.

"Keep her off," the captain ordered the
man at the wheel. "Three points — •
steady there, as she goes!"

Then he returned to his figures and
worked them over. The sweat poured
from his face. He chewed his mustache,
his lips, and his pencil, staring at the fig
ures as a man might at a ghost. Sud
denly, with a fierce, muscular outburst, he
crumpled the scribbled paper in his fist
and crushed it under foot. Mr. Konig
grinned vindictively and turned away,
while Captain Davenport leaned against
the cabin and for half an hour spoke no
word, contenting himself with gazing to

290 THE SEED OF McCOY

leeward with an expression of musing hope
lessness on his face.

"Mr. McCoy," he broke silence
abruptly. "The chart indicates a group
of islands, but not how many, off there to
the north'ard, or nor'-nor'westward, about
forty miles — the Acteon Islands. What
about them ?"

"There are four, all low," McCoy an
swered. "First to the southeast is Ma-
tuerui — no people, no entrance to the
lagoon. Then comes Tenarunga. There
used to be about a dozen people there, but
they may be all gone now. Anyway, there
5s no entrance for a ship — only a boat en
trance, with a fathom of water. Vehauga
and Teua-raro are the other two. No en
trances, no people, very low. There is no
bed for the Pyrenees in that group. She
would be a total wreck."

"Listen to that!" Captain Davenport
was frantic. "No people ! No entrances !
What in the devil are islands good for ?
"Well, then," he barked suddenly, like

THE SEED OF McCOY 291

an excited terrier, "the chart gives a whole
mess of islands off to the nor'west. What
about them ? What one has an entrance
where I can lay my ship ?"

McCoy calmly considered. He did not
refer to the chart. All these islands, reefs,
shoals, lagoons, entrances, and distances
were marked on the chart of his memory.
He knew them as the city dweller knows
his buildings, streets, and alleys.

"Papakena and Vanavana are off there
to the westward, or west-nor'westward a
hundred miles and a bit more," he said.
"One is uninhabited, and I heard that the
people on the other had gone off to Cad
mus Island. Anyway, neither lagoon has
an entrance. Ahunui is another hundred
miles on to the nor'west. No entrance, no
people."

"Well, forty miles beyond them are two
islands ?" Captain Davenport queried,
raising his head from the chart.

McCoy shook his head.

"Paros and Manuhungi — no entrances,

292 THE SEED OF McCOY

no people. Nengo-Nengo is forty miles
beyond them, in turn, and it has no people
and no entrance. But there is Hao Is
land. It is just the place. The lagoon is
thirty miles long and five miles wide.
There are plenty of people. You can usu
ally find water. And any ship in the
world can go through the entrance."

He ceased and gazed solicitously at
Captain Davenport, who, bending over
the chart with a pair of dividers in hand,
had just emitted a low groan.

" Is there any lagoon with an entrance any
where nearer than Hao Island ?" he asked.

"No, Captain; that is the nearest."

"Well, it's three hundred and forty
miles." Captain Davenport was speaking
very slowly, with decision. "I won't risk
the responsibility of all these lives. I'll
wreck her on the Acteons. And she's a
good ship, too," he added regretfully,
after altering the course, this time making
more allowance than ever for the westerly
current.

THE SEED OF McCOY 293

An hour later the sky was overcast.
The southeast trade still held, but the
ocean was a checker-board of squalls.

"We'll be there by one o'clock," Cap
tain Davenport announced confidently.
"By two o'clock at the outside. McCoy,
you put her ashore on the one where the
people are."

The sun did not appear again, nor, at
one o'clock, was any land to be seen.
Captain Davenport looked astern at the
Pyrenees' canting wake.

"Good Lord!" he cried. "An easterly
current ! Look at that !"

Mr. Konig was incredulous. McCoy
was noncommittal, though he said that in
the Paumotus there was no reason why
it should not be an easterly current. A
few minutes later a squall robbed the
Pyrenees temporarily of all her wind, and
she was left rolling heavily in the trough.

"Where's that deep lead ? Over with
it, you there!" Captain Davenport held
the lead-line and watched it sag off to the

294 THE SEED OF McCOY

northeast. "There, look at that ! Take
hold of it for yourself."

McCoy and the mate tried it, and
felt the line thrumming and vibrating sav
agely to the grip of the tidal stream.

"A four-knot current," said Mr. Konig.

"An easterly current instead of a west
erly," said Captain Davenport, glaring
accusingly at McCoy, as if to cast the
blame for it upon him.

"That is one of the reasons, Captain,
for insurance being eighteen per cent in
these waters," McCoy answered cheerfully.
;'You never can tell. The currents are
always changing. There was a man who
wrote books, I forget his name, in the
yacht Casco. He missed Takaroa by thirty
miles and fetched Tikei, all because of the
shifting currents. You are up to wind
ward now, and you'd better keep off a
few points."

"But how much has this current set me ?"
the captain demanded irately. "How am
I to know how much to keep off ? "

THE SEED OF McCOY 295

"I don't know, Captain," McCoy said
with great gentleness.

The wind returned, and the Pyrenees,
her deck smoking and shimmering in the
bright gray light, ran off dead to leeward.
Then she worked back, port tack and
starboard tack, crisscrossing her track,
combing the sea for the Acteon Islands,
which the masthead lookouts failed to
sight.

Captain Davenport was beside himself.
His rage took the form of sullen silence,
and he spent the afternoon in pacing the
poop or leaning against the weather-
shrouds. At nightfall, without even con
sulting McCoy, he squared away and
headed into the northwest. Mr. Konig,
surreptitiously consulting chart and bin
nacle, and McCoy, openly and innocently
consulting the binnacle, knew that they
were running for Hao Island. By mid
night the squalls ceased, and the stars
came out. Captain Davenport was cheered
by the promise of a clear day.

296 THE SEED OF McCOY

"I'll get an observation in the morn
ing," he told McCoy, "though what my
latitude is, is a puzzler. But I'll use the
Sumner method, and settle that. Do you
know the Sumner line?"

And thereupon he explained it in detail
to McCoy.

The day proved clear, the trade blew
steadily out of the east, and the Pyrenees
just as steadily logged her nine knots.
Both the captain and mate worked out the
position on a Sumner line, and agreed, and
at noon agreed again, and verified the
morning sights by the noon sights.

"Another twenty-four hours and we'll
be there," Captain Davenport assured
McCoy. "It's a miracle the way the old
girl's decks hold out. But they can't last.
They can't last. Look at them smoke,
more and more every day. Yet it was a
tight deck to begin with, fresh-calked in
'Frisco. I was surprised when the fire
first broke out and we battened down.
Look at that !"

THE SEED OF McCOY 297

He broke off to gaze with dropped jaw
at a spiral of smoke that coiled and
twisted in the lee of the mizzenmast
twenty feet above the deck.

"Now, how did that get there?" he
demanded indignantly.

Beneath it there was no smoke.
Crawling up from the deck, sheltered
from the wind by the mast, by some freak
it took form and visibility at that height.
It writhed away from the mast, and for a
moment overhung the captain like some
threatening portent. The next moment
the wind whisked it away, and the cap
tain's jaw returned to place.

"As I was saying, when we first bat
tened down, I was surprised. It was a
tight deck, yet it leaked smoke like a
sieve. And we've calked and calked ever
since. There must be tremendous pres
sure underneath to drive so much smoke
through."

That afternoon the sky became overcast
again, and squally, drizzly weather set in.

298 THE SEED OF McCOY

The wind shifted back and forth between
southeast and northeast, and at midnight
the Pyrenees was caught aback by a sharp
squall from the southwest, from which
point the wind continued to blow inter
mittently.

"We won't make Hao until ten or
eleven," Captain Davenport complained
at seven in the morning, when the fleet
ing promise of the sun had been erased by
hazy cloud masses in the eastern sky.
And the next moment he was plaintively
demanding, "And what are the currents
doing?"

Lookouts at the mastheads could report
no land, and the day passed in drizzling
calms and violent squalls. By nightfall
a heavy sea began to make from the west.
The barometer had fallen to 29.50.
There was no wind, and still the ominous
sea continued to increase. Soon the Pyr
enees was rolling madly in the huge waves
that marched in an unending procession
from out of the darkness of the west. Sail

THE SEED OF McCOY 299

was shortened as fast as both watches
could work, and, when the tired crew had
finished, its grumbling and complaining
voices, peculiarly animal-like and menac
ing, could be heard in the darkness. Once
the starboard watch was called aft to lash
down and make secure, and the men
openly advertised their sullenness and un
willingness. Every slow movement was a
protest and a threat. The atmosphere
was moist and sticky like mucilage, and in
the absence of wind all hands seemed to
pant and gasp for air. The sweat stood
out on faces and bare arms, and Captain
Davenport for one, his face more gaunt
and care-worn than ever, and his eyes
troubled and staring, was oppressed by a
feeling of impending calamity.

"It's off to the westward," McCoy said
encouragingly. "At worst, we'll be only
on the edge of it."

But Captain Davenport refused to be
comforted, and by the light of a lantern
read up the chapter in his Epitome that

300 THE SEED OF McCOY

related to the strategy of shipmasters in
cyclonic storms. From somewhere amid
ships the silence was broken by a low
whimpering from the cabin-boy.

"Oh, shut up!" Captain Davenport
yelled suddenly and with such force as
to startle every man on board and to
frighten the offender into a wild wail of terror.

"Mr. Konig," the captain said in a
voice that trembled with rage and nerves,
"will you kindly step for'ard and stop that
brat's mouth with a deck mop ?"

But it was McCoy who went forward,
and in a few minutes had the boy com
forted and asleep.

Shortly before daybreak the first breath
of air began to move from out the south
east, increasing swiftly to a stiff and stiffer
breeze. All hands were on deck waiting
for what might be behind it.

"We're all right now, Captain," said
McCoy, standing close to his shoulder.
"The hurricane is to the west'ard, and we
are south of it. This breeze is the in-suck.

THE SEED OF McCOY 301

It won't blow any harder. You can be
gin to put sail on her."

"But what's the good ? Where shall I
sail ? This is the second day without ob
servations, and we should have sighted
Hao Island yesterday morning. Which
way does it bear, north, south, east, or what ?
Tell me that, and I'll make sail in a jiffy."

"I am no navigator, Captain," McCoy
said in his mild way.

"I used to think I was one," was the re
tort, "before I got into these Paumotus."

At mid-day the cry of "Breakers ahead !"
was heard from the lookout. The Pyrenees
was kept off, and sail after sail was loosed
and sheeted home. The Pyrenees was slid
ing through the water and fighting a current
that threatened to set her down upon the
breakers. Officers and men were working
like mad, cook and cabin-boy, Captain
Davenport himself, and McCoy all lending
a hand. It was a close shave. It was a low
shoal, a bleak and perilous place over which
the seas broke unceasingly, where no man

302 THE SEED OF McCOY

could live, and on which not even sea-birds
could rest. The Pyrenees was swept within
a hundred yards of it before the wind carried
her clear, and at this moment the panting
crew, its work done, burst out in a torrent
of curses upon the head of McCoy — of
McCoy who had come on board, and pro
posed the run to Mangareva, and lured them
all away from the safety of Pitcairn Island
to certain destruction in this baffling and
terrible stretch of sea. But McCoy's tran
quil soul was undisturbed. He smiled at
them with simple and gracious benevolence,
and, somehow, the exalted goodness of him
seemed to penetrate to their dark and sombre
souls, shaming them, and from very shame
stilling the curses vibrating in their throats.
"Bad waters ! bad waters !" Captain
Davenport was murmuring as his ship forged
clear ; but he broke off abruptly to gaze at
the shoal which should have been dead
astern, but which was already on the
Pyrenees' weather-quarter and working up
rapidly to windward.

THE SEED OF McCOY 303

He sat down and buried his face in his
hands. And the first mate saw, and McCoy
saw, and the crew saw, what he had seen.
South of the shoal an easterly current had
set them down upon it ; north of the shoal
an equally swift westerly current had
clutched the ship and was sweeping her
away.

"I've heard of these Paumotus before,"
the captain groaned, lifting his blanched
face from his hands. "Captain Moyendale
told me about them after losing his ship on
them. And I laughed at him behind his
back. God forgive me, I laughed at him.
What shoal is that ?" he broke off, to ask
McCoy.

"I don't know, Captain."

"Why don't you know?"

"Because I never saw it before, and be
cause I have never heard of it. I do know
that it is not charted. These waters have
never been thoroughly surveyed."

"Then you don't know where we
are?"

304 THE SEED OF McCOY

"No more than you do," McCoy said
gently.

At four in the afternoon cocoanut-trees
were sighted, apparently growing out of
the water. A little later the' low land of
an atoll was raised above the sea.

"I know where we are now, Captain."
McCoy lowered the glasses from his eyes.
"That's Resolution Island. We are forty
miles beyond Hao Island, and the wind is
in our teeth."

"Get ready to beach her then. Where's
the entrance ?"

"There's only a canoe passage. But
now that we know where we are, we can
run for Barclay de Tolley. It is only one
hundred and twenty miles from here, due
nor'-nor'west. With this breeze we can be
there by nine o'clock to-morrow morning."

Captain Davenport consulted the chart
and debated with himself.

"If we wreck her here," McCoy added,
"we'd have to make the run to Barclay
de Tolley in the boats just the same."

THE SEED OF McCOY 305

The captain gave his orders, and once
more the Pyrenees swung off for another
run across the inhospitable sea.

And the middle of the next afternoon
saw despair and mutiny on her smoking
deck. The current had accelerated, the
wind had slackened, and the Pyrenees had
sagged off to the west. The lookout sighted
Barclay de Tolley to the eastward, barely
visible from the masthead, and vainly and
for hours the Pyrenees tried to beat up to it.
Ever, like a mirage, the cocoanut-trees
hovered on the horizon, visible only from
the masthead. From the deck they were
hidden by the bulge of the world.

Again Captain Davenport consulted
McCoy and the chart. Makemo lay
seventy-five miles to the southwest. Its
lagoon was thirty miles long, and its entrance
was excellent. When Captain Daven
port gave his orders, the crew refused duty.
They announced that they had had enough
of hell-fire under their feet. There was the
land. What if the ship could not make it ?

306 THE SEED OF McCOY

They could make it in the boats. Let her
burn, then. Their lives amounted to some
thing to them. They had served faith
fully the ship, now they were going to serve
themselves.

They sprang to the boats, brushing the
second and third mates out of the way, and
proceeded to swing the boats out and to
prepare to lower away. Captain Daven
port and the first mate, revolvers in hand,
were advancing to the break of the poop,
when McCoy, who had climbed on top of
the cabin, began to speak.

He spoke to the sailors, and at the first
sound of his dovelike, cooing voice they
paused to hear. He extended to them his
own ineffable serenity and peace. His soft
voice and simple thoughts flowed out to
them in a magic stream, soothing them
against their wills. Long forgotten things
came back to them, and some remembered
lullaby songs of childhood and the content
and rest of the mother's arm at the end of
the day. There was no more trouble, no

THE SEED OF McCOY 307

more danger, no more irk, in all the world.
Everything was as it should be, and it was
only a matter of course that they should
turn their backs upon the land and put to
sea once more with hell-fire hot beneath
their feet.

McCoy spoke simply ; but it was not
what he spoke. It was his personality that
spoke more eloquently than any word he
could utter. It was an alchemy of soul
occultly subtile and profoundly deep — a
mysterious emanation of the spirit, seduc
tive, sweetly humble, and terribly imperi
ous. It was illumination in the dark crypts
of their souls, a compulsion of purity and
gentleness vastly greater than that which
resided in the shining, death-spitting re
volvers of the officers.

The men wavered reluctantly where they
stood, and those who had loosed the turns
made them fast again. Then one, and then
another, and then all of them, began to
sidle awkwardly away.

McCoy's face was beaming with child-

308 THE SEED OF McCOY

like pleasure as he descended from the top
of the cabin. There was no trouble. For
that matter there had been no trouble
averted. There never had been any trouble,
for there was no place for such in the blissful
world in which he lived.

"You hypnotized 'em," Mr. Konig
grinned at him, speaking in a low voice.

"Those boys are good," was the answer.
"Their hearts are good. They have had
a hard time, and they have worked hard,
and they will work hard to the end."

Mr. Konig had no time to reply. His
voice was ringing out orders, the sailors
were springing to obey, and the Pyrenees
was paying slowly off from the wind until
her bow should point in the direction of
Makemo.

The wind was very light, and after sun
down almost ceased. It was insufferably
warm, and fore and aft men sought vainly
to sleep. The deck was too hot to lie upon,
and poisonous vapors, oozing through the
seams, crept like evil spirits over the ship,

THE SEED OF McCOY 309

stealing into the nostrils and windpipes of
the unwary and causing fits of sneezing and
coughing. The stars blinked lazily in the
dim vault overhead; and the full moon,
rising in the east, touched with its light
the myriads of wisps and threads and spidery
films of smoke that intertwined and writhed
and twisted along the deck, over the rails,
and up the masts and shrouds.

"Tell me," Captain Davenport said,
rubbing his smarting eyes, "what happened
with that Bounty crowd after they reached
Pitcairn ? The account I read said they
burnt the Bounty, and that they were not
discovered until many years later. But
what happened in the meantime ? I've
always been curious to know. They were
men with their necks in the rope. There
were some native men, too. And then
there were women. That made it look like
trouble right from the jump."

'There was trouble," McCoy answered.
"They were bad men. They quarrelled
about the women right away. One of the

310 THE SEED OF McCOY

mutineers, Williams, lost his wife. All the
women were Tahitian women. His wife fell
from the cliffs when hunting sea-birds.
Then he took the wife of one of the native
men away from him. All the native men
were made very angry by this, and they
killed off nearly all the mutineers. Then
the mutineers that escaped killed off all the
native men. The women helped. And the
natives killed each other. Everybody killed
everybody. They were terrible men.

"Timiti was killed by two other natives
while they were combing his hair in friend
ship. The white men had sent them to do
it. Then the white men killed them. The
wife of Tullaloo killed him in a cave because
she wanted a white man for husband.
They were very wicked. God had hidden
His face from them. At the end of two
years all the native men were murdered,
and all the white men except four. They
were Young, John Adams, McCoy, who was
my great-grandfather, and Quintal. He
was a very bad man, too. Once, just be-

THE SEED OF McCOY 311

cause his wife did not catch enough fish for
him, he bit off her ear."

"They were a bad lot!" Mr. Konig ex
claimed.

;' Yes, they were very bad," McCoy agreed
and went on serenely cooing of the blood and
lust of his iniquitous ancestry. "My great
grandfather escaped murder in order to die
by his own hand. He made a still and
manufactured alcohol from the roots of the
ti-plant. Quintal was his chum, and they
got drunk together all the time. At last
McCoy got delirium tremens, tied a rock
to his neck, and jumped into the sea.

"Quintal's wife, the one whose ear he
bit off, also got killed by falling from the
cliffs. Then Quintal went to Young and
demanded his wife, and went to Adams and
demanded his wife. Adams and Young
were afraid of Quintal. They knew he
would kill them. So they killed him, the
two of them together, with a hatchet. Then
Young died. And that was about all the
trouble they had."

3i2 THE SEED OF McCOY

"I should say so," Captain Davenport
snorted. "There was nobody left to kill."

"You see, God had hidden His face,"
McCoy said.

By morning no more than a faint air was
blowing from the eastward, and, unable to
make appreciable southing by it, Captain
Davenport hauled up full-and-by on the
port track. He was afraid of that terrible
westerly current which had cheated him out
of so many ports of refuge. All day the
calm continued, and all night, while the
sailors, on a short ration of dried banana,
were grumbling. Also, they were growing
weak and complaining of stomach pains
caused by the straight banana diet. All
day the current swept the Pyrenees to the
westward, while there was no wind to bear
her south. In the middle of the first dog
watch, cocoanut-trees were sighted due
south, their tufted heads rising above the
water and marking the low-lying atoll
beneath.

"That is Taenga Island," McCoy said.

THE SEED OF McCOY 313

"We need a breeze to-night, or else we'll
miss Makemo."

"What's become of the southeast trade? "
the captain demanded. "Why don't it
blow? What's the matter?"

"It is the evaporation from the big la
goons — there are so many of them,"
McCoy explained. "The evaporation up
sets the whole system of trades. It even
causes the wind to back up and blow gales
from the southwest. This is the Dangerous
Archipelago, Captain."

Captain Davenport faced the old man,
opened his mouth, and was about to curse,
but paused and refrained. McCoy's pres
ence was a rebuke to the blasphemies that
stirred in his brain and trembled in his
larynx. McCoy's influence had been grow
ing during the many days they had been
together. Captain Davenport was an au
tocrat of the sea, fearing no man, never
bridling his tongue, and now he found him
self unable to curse in the presence of this
old man with the feminine brown eyes and

314 THE SEED OF McCOY

the voice of a dove. When he realized this,
Captain Davenport experienced a distinct
shock. This old man was merely the seed of
McCoy, of McCoy of the Bounty, the muti
neer fleeing from the hemp that waited him
in England, the McCoy who was a power
for evil in the early days of blood and lust
and violent death on Pitcairn Island.

Captain Davenport was not religious,
yet in that moment he felt a mad impulse
to cast himself at the other's feet — and to
say he knew not what. It was an emotion
that so deeply stirred him, rather than a
coherent thought, and he was aware in
some vague way of his own unworthiness
and smallness in the presence of this other
man who possessed the simplicity of a child
and the gentleness of a woman.

Of course he could not so humble himself
before the eyes of his officers and men.
And yet the anger that had prompted the
blasphemy still raged in him. He sud
denly smote the cabin with his clenched
hand and cried :

THF SEED OF McCOY 315

"Look here, old man, I won't be beaten.
These Paumotus have cheated and tricked
me and made a fool of me. I refuse to be
beaten. I am going to drive this ship, and
drive and drive and drive clear through the
Paumotus to China but what I find a bed
for her. If every man deserts, I'll stay by
her. I'll show the Paumotus. They can't
fool me. She's a good girl, and I'll stick by
her as long as there's a plank to stand on.
You hear me ?"

"And I'll stay with you, Captain," McCoy
said.

During the night, light, baffling airs blew
out of the south, and the frantic captain,
with his cargo of fire, watched and measured
his westward drift and went off by himsell
at times to curse softly so that McCoy
should not hear.

Daylight showed more palms growing out
of the water to the south.

"That's the leeward point of Makemo,"
McCoy said. "Katiu is only a few miles
to the west. We may make that."

316 THE SEED OF McCOY

But the current, sucking between the
two islands, swept them to the northwest,
and at one in the afternoon they saw the
palms of Katiu rise above the sea and sink
back into the sea again.

A few minutes later, just as the captain
had discovered that a new current from the
northeast had gripped the Pyrenees, the
masthead lookouts raised cocoanut palms
in the northwest.

" It is Raraka," said McCoy. " We won't
make it without wind. The current is
drawing us down to the southwest. But
we must watch out. A few miles farther
on a current flows north and turns in a circle
to the northwest. This will sweep us away
from Fakarava, and Fakarava is the place
for the Pyrenees to find her bed."

"They can sweep all they da — all they
well please," Captain Davenport remarked
with heat. "We'll find a bed for her some
where just the same."

But the situation on the Pyrenees was
reaching a culmination. The deck was so

THE SEED OF McCOY 317

hot that it seemed an increase of a few
degrees would cause it to burst into flames.
In many places even the heavy-soled shoes
of the men were no protection, and they
were compelled to step lively to avoid
scorching their feet. The smoke had in
creased and grown more acrid. Every man
on board was suffering from inflamed eyes,
and they coughed and strangled like a crew
of tuberculosis patients. In the afternoon
the boats were swung out and equipped.
The last several packages of dried bananas
were stored in them, as well as the instru
ments of the officers. Captain Davenport
even put the chronometer into the long
boat, fearing the blowing up of the deck at
any moment.

All night this apprehension weighed
heavily on all, and in the first morning light,
with hollow eyes and ghastly faces, they
stared at one another as if in surprise that
the Pyrenees still held together and that they
still were alive.

Walking rapidly at times, and even oc-

318 THE SEED OF McCOY

casionally breaking into an undignified
hop-skip-and-run, Captain Davenport in
spected his ship's deck.

"It is a matter of hours now, if not of
minutes," he announced on his return to
the poop.

The cry of land came down from the
masthead. From the deck the land was
invisible, and McCoy went aloft, while the
captain took advantage of the opportunity
to curse some of the bitterness out of his
heart. But the cursing was suddenly
stopped by a dark line on the water which
he sighted to the northeast. It was not a
squall, but a regular breeze — the disrupted
trade-wind, eight points out of its direction
but resuming business once more.

"Hold her up, Captain," McCoy said
as soon as he reached the poop. "That's
the easterly point of Fakarava, and we'll
go in through the passage full-tilt, the wind
abeam, and every sail drawing."

At the end of an hour, the cocoanut-trees
and the low-lying land were visible from

THE SEED OF McCOY 319

the deck. The feeling that the end of the
Pyrenees' resistance was imminent weighed
heavily on everybody. Captain Davenport
had the three boats lowered and dropped
short astern, a man in each to keep them
apart. The Pyrenees closely skirted the
shore, the surf-whitened atoll a bare two
cable-lengths away.

"Get ready to wear her, Captain,"
McCoy warned.

And a minute later the land parted, ex
posing a narrow passage and the lagoon
beyond, a great mirror, thirty miles in
length and a third as broad.

"Now, Captain."

For the last time the yards of the Pyr
enees swung around as she obeyed the
wheel and headed into the passage. The
turns had scarcely been made, and noth
ing had been coiled down, when the men
and mates swept back to the poop in panic
terror. Nothing had happened, yet they
averred that something was going to hap
pen. They could not tell why. They

320 THE SEED OF McCOY

merely knew that it was about to happen,
McCoy started forward to take up his
position on the bow in order to con the
vessel in ; but the captain gripped his arm
and whirled him around.

"Do it from here," he said. "That deck's
not safe. What's the matter?" he de
manded the next instant. "We're stand
ing still."

McCoy smiled.

:cYou are bucking a seven-knot current,
Captain," he said. "That is the way the
full ebb runs out of this passage."

At the end of another hour the Pyrenees
had scarcely gained her length, but the wind
freshened and she began to forge ahead.

"Better get into the boats, some of you,"
Captain Davenport commanded.

His voice was still ringing, and the men
were just beginning to move in obedience,
when the amidship deck of the Pyrenees, in
a mass of flame and smoke, was flung up
ward into the sails and rigging, part of it
remaining there and the rest falling into the

THE SEED OF McCOY 321

sea. The wind being abeam, was what had
saved the men crowded aft. They made
a blind rush to gain the boats, but McCoy's
voice, carrying its convincing message of
vast calm and endless time, stopped them.

"Take it easy," he was saying. "Every
thing is all right. Pass that boy down some
body, please."

The man at the wheel had forsaken it
in a funk, and Captain Davenport had
leaped and caught the spokes in time to pre
vent the ship from yawing in the current
and going ashore.

"Better take charge of the boats," he
said to Mr. Konig. "Tow one of them
short, right under the quarter. . . . When
I go over, it'll be on the jump."

Mr. Konig hesitated, then went over the
rail and lowered himself into the boat.

"Keep her off half a point, Captain."

Captain Davenport gave a start. He
had thought he had the ship to himself.

"Ay, ay; half a point it is," he an
swered.

322 THE SEED OF McCOY

Amidships the Pyrenees was an open,
flaming furnace, out of which poured an
immense volume of smoke which rose high
above the masts and completely hid the
forward part of the ship. McCoy, in the
shelter of the mizzen-shrouds, continued his
difficult task of conning the ship through
the intricate channel. The fire was work
ing aft along the deck from the seat of ex
plosion, while the soaring tower of canvas
on the mainmast went up and vanished in
a sheet of flame. Forward, though they
could not see them, they knew that the
head-sails were still drawing.

"If only she don't burn all her canvas
off before she makes inside," the captain
groaned.

"She'll make it," McCoy assured him
with supreme confidence. "There is plenty
of time. She is bound to make it. And
once inside, we'll put her before it; that
will keep the smoke away from us and hold
back the fire from working aft."

A tongue of flame sprang up the mizzen,

THE SEED OF McCOY 323

reached hungrily for the lowest tier of can
vas, missed it, and vanished. From aloft
a burning shred of rope-stuff fell square
on the back of Captain Davenport's neck.
He acted with the celerity of one stung by
a bee as he reached up and brushed the
offending fire from his skin.

"How is she heading, Captain ?"

" Nor' west by west."

"Keep her west-nor'west."

Captain Davenport put the wheel up
and steadied her.

"West by north, Captain."

"West by north she is."

"And now west."

Slowly, point by point, as she entered
the lagoon, the Pyrenees described the circle
that put her before the wind ; and point by
point, with all the calm certitude of a thou
sand years of time to spare, McCoy chanted
the changing course.

"Another point, Captain."

"A point it is."

Captain Davenport whirled several

324 THE SEED OF McCOY

spokes over, suddenly reversing and com
ing back one to check her.
"Steady."

" Steady she is — right on it."
Despite the fact that the wind was now
astern, the heat was so intense that Cap
tain Davenport was compelled to steal
sidelong glances into the binnacle, letting
go the wheel, now with one hand, now
with the other, to rub or shield his blister
ing cheeks. McCoy's beard was crinkling
and shrivelling and the smell of it, strong
in the other's nostrils, compelled him to
look toward McCoy with sudden solici
tude. Captain Davenport was letting go
the spokes alternately with his hands in
order to rub their blistering backs against
his trousers. Every sail on the mizzen-
mast vanished in a rush of flame, compel
ling the two men to crouch and shield their
faces.

"Now," said McCoy, stealing a glance
ahead at the low shore, "four points up,
Captain, and let her drive."

THE SEED OF McCOY 325

Shreds and patches of burning rope and
canvas were falling about them and upon
them. The tarry smoke from a smoulder
ing piece of rope at the captain's feet set
him off into a violent coughing fit, during
which he still clung to the spokes.

The Pyrenees struck, her bow lifted,
and she ground ahead gently to a stop. A
shower of burning fragments, dislodged
by the shock, fell about them. The ship
moved ahead again and struck a second
time. She crushed the fragile coral under
her keel, drove on, and struck a third time.

"Hard over," said McCoy. "Hard
over?" he questioned gently, a minute
later.

"She won't answer," was the reply.

"All right. She is swinging around."
McCoy peered over the side. "Soft, white
sand. Couldn't ask better. A beautiful
bed."

As the Pyrenees swung around her stern
away from the wind, a fearful blast of smoke
and flame poured aft. Captain Davenport

326 THE SEED OF McCOY

deserted the wheel in blistering agony. He
reached the painter of the boat that lay
under the quarter, then looked for McCoy,
who was standing aside to let him go down.

"You first," the captain cried, gripping
him by the shoulder and almost throwing
him over the rail. But the flame and
smoke were too terrible, and he followed
hard after McCoy, both men wriggling
on the rope and sliding down into the boat
together. A sailor in the bow, without
waiting for orders, slashed the painter
through with his sheath-knife. The oars,
poised in readiness, bit into the water, and
the boat shot away.

"A beautiful bed, Captain," McCoy
murmured, looking back.

"Ay, a beautiful bed, and all thanks to
you," was the answer.

The three boats pulled away for the
white beach of pounded coral, beyond
which, on the edge of a cocoanut grove,
could be seen a half-dozen grass-houses,
and a score or more of exciced natives,

THE SEED OF McCOY 327

gazing wide-eyed at the conflagration that
had come to land.

The boats grounded and they stepped
out on the white beach.

"And now," said McCoy, "I must see
about getting back to Pitcair**."

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