On his way back along the Broom Road, under the lighted lamps that marked the entrance to the palace grounds, Grief encountered a short, rotund gentleman, in unstarched ducks, smooth-shaven and of florid complexion, who was just emerging. Something about his tentative, saturated gait was familiar. Grief knew it on the instant. On the beaches of a dozen South Sea ports had he seen it before.
“Of all men, Cornelius Deasy!” he cried.
“If it ain't Grief himself, the old devil,” was the return greeting, as they shook hands.
“If you'll come on board I've some choice smoky Irish,” Grief invited.
Cornelius threw back his shoulders and stiffened.
“Nothing doin', Mr. Grief. 'Tis Fulualea I am now. No blarneyin' of old times for me. Also, and by the leave of his gracious Majesty King Tulifau, 'tis Chancellor of the Exchequer I am, an' Chief Justice I am, save in moments of royal sport when the king himself chooses to toy with the wheels of justice.”
Grief whistled his amazement. “So you're Feathers of the Sun!”
“I prefer the native idiom,” was the correction. “Fulualea, an' it please you. Not forgettin' old times, Mr. Grief, it sorrows the heart of me to break you the news. You'll have to pay your legitimate import duties same as any other trader with mind intent on robbin' the gentle Polynesian savage on coral isles implanted. ——Where was I? Ah! I remember. You've violated the regulations. With malice intent have you entered the port of Fitu-Iva after sunset without sidelights burnin'. Don't interrupt. With my own eyes did I see you. For which offence are you fined the sum of five pounds. Have you any gin? 'Tis a serious offence. Not lightly are the lives of the mariners of our commodious port to be risked for the savin' of a penny'orth of oil. Did I ask: have you any gin? Tis the harbour master that asks.”
“You've taken a lot on your shoulders,” Grief grinned.
“'Tis the white man's burden. These rapscallion traders have been puttin' it all over poor Tui Tulif, the best-hearted old monarch that ever sat a South Sea throne an' mopped grog-root from the imperial calabash. 'Tis I, Cornelius—Fulualea, rather—that am here to see justice done. Much as I dislike the doin' of it, as harbour master 'tis my duty to find you guilty of breach of quarantine.”
“Quarantine?”
“'Tis the rulin' of the port doctor. No intercourse with the shore till the ship is passed. What dire calamity to the confidin' native if chicken pox or whoopin' cough was aboard of you! Who is there to protect the gentle, confidin' Polynesian? I, Fulualea, the Feathers of the Sun, on my high mission.”
“Who in hell is the port doctor?” Grief queried.
“'Tis me, Fulualea. Your offence is serious. Consider yourself fined five cases of first-quality Holland gin.”
Grief laughed heartily. “We'll compromise, Cornelius. Come aboard and have a drink.”
The Feathers of the Sun waved the proffer aside grandly. “'Tis bribery. I'll have none of it—me faithful to my salt. And wherefore did you not present your ship's papers? As chief of the custom house you are fined five pounds and two more cases of gin.”
“Look here, Cornelius. A joke's a joke, but this one has gone far enough. This is not Levuka. I've half a mind to pull your nose for you. You can't buck me.”
The Feathers of the Sun retreated unsteadily and in alarm.
“Lay no violence on me,” he threatened. “You're right. This is not Levuka. And by the same token, with Tui Tulifau and the royal army behind me, buck you is just the thing I can and will. You'll pay them fines promptly, or I'll confiscate your vessel. You're not the first. What does that Chink pearl-buyer, Peter Gee, do but slip into harbour, violatin' all regulations an' makin' rough house for the matter of a few paltry fines. No; he wouldn't pay 'em, and he's on the beach now thinkin' it over.”
“You don't mean to say——”
“Sure an' I do. In the high exercise of office I seized his schooner. A fifth of the loyal army is now in charge on board of her. She'll be sold this day week. Some ten tons of shell in the hold, and I'm wonderin' if I can trade it to you for gin. I can promise you a rare bargain. How much gin did you say you had?”
“Still more gin, eh?”
“An' why not? 'Tis a royal souse is Tui Tulifau. Sure it keeps my wits workin' overtime to supply him, he's that amazin' liberal with it. The whole gang of hanger-on chiefs is perpetually loaded to the guards. It's disgraceful. Are you goin' to pay them fines, Mr. Grief, or is it to harsher measures I'll be forced?”
Grief turned impatiently on his heel.
“Cornelius, you're drunk. Think it over and come to your senses. The old rollicking South Sea days are gone. You can't play tricks like that now.”
“If you think you're goin' on board, Mr. Grief, I'll save you the trouble. I know your kind, I foresaw your stiff-necked stubbornness. An' it's forestalled you are. 'Tis on the beach you'll find your crew. The vessel's seized.”
Grief turned back on him in the half-belief still that he was joking. Fulualea again retreated in alarm. The form of a large man loomed beside him in the darkness.
“Is it you, Uiliami?” Fulualea crooned. “Here is another sea pirate. Stand by me with the strength of thy arm, O Herculean brother.”
“Greeting, Uiliami,” Grief said. “Since when has Fitu-Iva come to be run by a Levuka beachcomber? He says my schooner has been seized. Is it true?”
“It is true,” Uiliami boomed from his deep chest. “Have you any more silk shirts like Willie Smee's? Tui Tulifau would like such a shirt. He has heard of it.”
“'Tis all the same,” Fulualea interrupted. “Shirts or schooners, the king shall have them.”
“Rather high-handed, Cornelius,” Grief murmured. “It's rank piracy. You seized my vessel without giving me a chance.”
“A chance is it? As we stood here, not five minutes gone, didn't you refuse to pay your fines?”
“But she was already seized.”
“Sure, an' why not? Didn't I know you'd refuse? 'Tis all fair, an' no injustice done—Justice, the bright, particular star at whose shining altar Cornelius Deasy—or Fulualea, 'tis the same thing—ever worships. Get thee gone, Mr. Trader, or I'll set the palace guards on you. Uiliami, 'tis a desperate character, this trader man. Call the guards.”
Uiliami blew the whistle suspended on his broad bare chest by a cord of cocoanut sennit. Grief reached out an angry hand for Cornelius, who titubated into safety behind Uiliami's massive bulk. A dozen strapping Polynesians, not one under six feet, ran down the palace walk and ranged behind their commander.
“Get thee gone, Mr. Trader,” Cornelius ordered. “The interview is terminated. We'll try your several cases in the mornin'. Appear promptly at the palace at ten o'clock to answer to the followin' charges, to wit: breach of the peace; seditious and treasonable utterance; violent assault on the chief magistrate with intent to cut, wound, maim, an' bruise; breach of quarantine; violation of harbour regulations; and gross breakage of custom house rules. In the mornin', fellow, in the mornin', justice shall be done while the breadfruit falls. And the Lord have mercy on your soul.”
Before the hour set for the trial Grief, accompanied by Peter Gee, won access to Tui Tulifau. The king, surrounded by half a dozen chiefs, lay on mats under the shade of the avocados in the palace compound. Early as was the hour, palace maids were industriously serving squarefaces of gin. The king was glad to see his old friend Davida, and regretful that he had run foul of the new regulations. Beyond that he steadfastly avoided discussion of the matter in hand. All protests of the expropriated traders were washed away in proffers of gin. “Have a drink,” was his invariable reply, though once he unbosomed himself enough to say that Feathers of the Sun was a wonderful man. Never had palace affairs been so prosperous. Never had there been so much money in the treasury, nor so much gin in circulation. “Well pleased am I with Fulualea,” he concluded. “Have a drink.”
“We've got to get out of thispronto,” Grief whispered to Peter Gee a few minutes later, “or we'll be a pair of boiled owls. Also, I am to be tried for arson, or heresy, or leprosy, or something, in a few minutes, and I must control my wits.”
As they withdrew from the royal presence, Grief caught a glimpse of Sepeli, the queen. She was peering out at her royal spouse and his fellow tipplers, and the frown on her face gave Grief his cue. Whatever was to be accomplished must be through her.
In another shady corner of the big compound Cornelius was holding court. He had been at it early, for when Grief arrived the case of Willie Smee was being settled. The entire royal army, save that portion in charge of the seized vessels, was in attendance.
“Let the defendant stand up,” said Cornelius, “and receive the just and merciful sentence of the Court for licentious and disgraceful conduct unbecomin' a supercargo. The defendant says he has no money. Very well. The Court regrets it has no calaboose. In lieu thereof, and in view of the impoverished condition of the defendant, the Court fines said defendant one white silk shirt of the same kind, make and quality at present worn by defendant.”
Cornelius nodded to several of the soldiers, who led the supercargo away behind an avocado tree. A minute later he emerged, minus the garment in question, and sat down beside Grief.
“What have you been up to?” Grief asked.
“Blessed if I know. What crimes have you committed?”
“Next case,” said Cornelius in his most extra-legal tones. “David Grief, defendant, stand up. The Court has considered the evidence in the case, or cases, and renders the following judgment, to wit:—Shut up!” he thundered at Grief, who had attempted to interrupt. “I tell you the evidence has been considered, deeply considered. It is no wish of the Court to lay additional hardship on the defendant, and the Court takes this opportunity to warn the defendant that he is liable for contempt. For open and wanton violation of harbour rules and regulations, breach of quarantine, and disregard of shipping laws, his schooner, theCantani, is hereby declared confiscated to the Government of Fitu-Iva, to be sold at public auction, ten days from date, with all appurtenances, fittings, and cargo thereunto pertaining. For the personal crimes of the defendant, consisting of violent and turbulent conduct and notorious disregard of the laws of the realm, he is fined in the sum of one hundred pounds sterling and fifteen cases of gin. I will not ask you if you have anything to say. But will you pay? That is the question.”
Grief shook his head.
“In the meantime,” Cornelius went on, “consider yourself a prisoner at large. There is no calaboose in which to confine you. And finally, it has come to the knowledge of the Court, that at an early hour of this morning, the defendant did wilfully and deliberately send Kanakas in his employ out on the reef to catch fish for breakfast. This is distinctly an infringement of the rights of the fisherfolk of Fitu-Iva. Home industries must be protected. This conduct of the defendant is severely reprehended by the Court, and on any repetition of the offence the offender and offenders, all and sundry, shall be immediately put to hard labour on the improvement of the Broom Road. The court is dismissed.”
As they left the compound, Peter Gee nudged Grief to look where Tui Tulifau reclined on the mats. The supercargo's shirt, stretched and bulged, already encased the royal fat.
“The thing is clear,” said Peter Gee, at a conference in Ieremia's house. “Deasy has about gathered in all the coin. In the meantime he keeps the king going on the gin he's captured, on our vessels. As soon as he can maneuver it he'll take the cash and skin out on your craft or mine.”
“He is a low fellow,” Ieremia declared, pausing in the polishing of his spectacles. “He is a scoundrel and a blackguard. He should be struck by a dead pig, by a particularly dead pig.”
“The very thing,” said Grief. “He shall be struck by a dead pig. Ieremia, I should not be surprised if you were the man to strike him with the dead pig. Be sure and select a particularly dead one. Tui Tulifau is down at the boat house broaching a case of my Scotch. I'm going up to the palace to work kitchen politics with the queen. In the meantime you get a few things on your shelves from the store-room. I'll lend you some, Hawkins. And you, Peter, see the German store. Start in all of you, selling for paper. Remember, I'll back the losses. If I'm not mistaken, in three days we'll have a national council or a revolution. You, Ieremia, start messengers around the island to the fishers and farmers, everywhere, even to the mountain goat-hunters. Tell them to assemble at the palace three days from now.”
“But the soldiers,” Ieremia objected.
“I'll take care of them. They haven't been paid for two months. Besides, Uiliami is the queen's brother. Don't have too much on your shelves at a time. As soon as the soldiers show up with paper, stop selling.”
“Then will they burn the stores,” said Ieremia.
“Let them. King Tulifau will pay for it if they do.”
“Will he pay for my shirt?” Willie Smee demanded.
“That is purely a personal and private matter between you and Tui Tulifau,” Grief answered.
“It's beginning to split up the back,” the supercargo lamented. “I noticed that much this morning when he hadn't had it on ten minutes. It cost me thirty shillings and I only wore it once.”
“Where shall I get a dead pig?” Ieremia asked.
“Kill one, of course,” said Grief. “Kill a small one.”
“A small one is worth ten shillings.”
“Then enter it in your ledger under operating expenses.” Grief paused a moment. “If you want it particularly dead, it would be well to kill it at once.”
“You have spoken well, Davida,” said Queen Sepeli. “This Fulualea has brought a madness with him, and Tui Tulifau is drowned in gin. If he does not grant the big council, I shall give him a beating. He is easy to beat when he is in drink.”
She doubled up her fist, and such were her Amazonian proportions and the determination in her face that Grief knew the council would be called. So akin was the Fitu-Ivan tongue to the Samoan that he spoke it like a native.
“And you, Uiliami,” he said, “have pointed out that the soldiers have demanded coin and refused the paper Fulualea has offered them. Tell them to take the paper and see that they be paid to-morrow.”
“Why trouble?” Uiliami objected. “The king remains happily drunk. There is much money in the treasury. And I am content. In my house are two cases of gin and much goods from Hawkins's store.”
“Excellent pig, O my brother!” Sepeli erupted. “Has not Davida spoken? Have you no ears? When the gin and the goods in your house are gone, and no more traders come with gin and goods, and Feathers of the Sun has run away to Levuka with all the cash money of Fitu-Iva, what then will you do? Cash money is silver and gold, but paper is only paper. I tell you the people are grumbling. There is no fish in the palace. Yams and sweet potatoes seem to have fled from the soil, for they come not. The mountain dwellers have sent no wild goat in a week. Though Feathers of the Sun compels the traders to buy copra at the old price, the people sell not, for they will have none of the paper money. Only to-day have I sent messengers to twenty houses. There are no eggs. Has Feathers of the Sun put a blight upon the hens? I do not know. All I know is that there are no eggs. Well it is that those who drink much eat little, else would there be a palace famine. Tell your soldiers to receive their pay. Let it be in his paper money.”
“And remember,” Grief warned, “though there be selling in the stores, when the soldiers come with their paper it will be refused. And in three days will be the council, and Feathers of the Sun will be as dead as a dead pig.”
The day of the council found the population of the island crowded into the capital. By canoe and whaleboat, on foot and donkey-back, the five thousand inhabitants of Fitu-Iva had trooped in. The three intervening days had had their share of excitement. At first there had been much selling from the sparse shelves of the traders. But when the soldiers appeared, their patronage was declined and they were told to go to Fulualea for coin. “Says it not so on the face of the paper,” the traders demanded, “that for the asking the coin will be given in exchange?”
Only the strong authority of Uiliami had prevented the burning of the traders' houses. As it was, one of Grief's copra-sheds went up in smoke and was duly charged by Ieremia to the king's account. Ieremia himself had been abused and mocked, and his spectacles broken. The skin was off Willie Smee's knuckles. This had been caused by three boisterous soldiers who violently struck their jaws thereon in quick succession. Captain Boig was similarly injured. Peter Gee had come off undamaged, because it chanced that it was bread-baskets and not jaws that struck him on the fists.
Tui Tulifau, with Sepeli at his side and surrounded by his convivial chiefs, sat at the head of the council in the big compound. His right eye and jaw were swollen as if he too had engaged in assaulting somebody's fist. It was palace gossip that morning that Sepeli had administered a conjugal beating. At any rate, her spouse was sober, and his fat bulged spiritlessly through the rips in Willie Smee's silk shirt. His thirst was prodigious, and he was continually served with young drinking nuts. Outside the compound, held back by the army, was the mass of the common people. Only the lesser chiefs, village maids, village beaux, and talking men with their staffs of office were permitted inside. Cornelius Deasy, as befitted a high and favoured official, sat near to the right hand of the king. On the left of the queen, opposite Cornelius and surrounded by the white traders he was to represent, sat Ieremia. Bereft of his spectacles, he peered short-sightedly across at the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
In turn, the talking man of the windward coast, the talking man of the leeward coast, and the talking man of the mountain villages, each backed by his group of lesser talking men and chiefs, arose and made oration. What they said was much the same. They grumbled about the paper money. Affairs were not prosperous. No more copra was being smoked. The people were suspicious. To such a pass had things come that all people wanted to pay their debts and no one wanted to be paid. Creditors made a practice of running away from debtors. The money was cheap. Prices were going up and commodities were getting scarce. It cost three times the ordinary price to buy a fowl, and then it was tough and like to die of old age if not immediately sold. The outlook was gloomy. There were signs and omens. There was a plague of rats in some districts. The crops were bad. The custard apples were small. The best-bearing avocado on the windward coast had mysteriously shed all its leaves. The taste had gone from the mangoes. The plantains were eaten by a worm. The fish had forsaken the ocean and vast numbers of tiger-sharks appeared. The wild goats had fled to inaccessible summits. The poi in the poi-pits had turned bitter. There were rumblings in the mountains, night-walking of spirits; a woman of Punta-Puna had been struck speechless, and a five-legged she-goat had been born in the village of Eiho. And that all was due to the strange money of Fulualea was the firm conviction of the elders in the village councils assembled.
Uiliami spoke for the army. His men were discontented and mutinous. Though by royal decree the traders were bidden accept the money, yet did they refuse it. He would not say, but it looked as if the strange money of Fulualea had something to do with it.
Ieremia, as talking man of the traders, next spoke. When he arose, it was noticeable that he stood with legs spraddled over a large grass basket. He dwelt upon the cloth of the traders, its variety and beauty and durability, which so exceeded the Fitu-Ivan wet-pounded tapa, fragile and coarse. No one wore tapa any more. Yet all had worn tapa, and nothing but tapa, before the traders came. There was the mosquito-netting, sold for a song, that the cleverest Fitu-Ivan net-weaver could not duplicate in a thousand years. He enlarged on the incomparable virtues of rifles, axes, and steel fishhooks, down through needles, thread and cotton fish-lines to white flour and kerosene oil.
He expounded at length, with firstlies and secondlies and all minor subdivisions of argument, on organization, and order, and civilization. He contended that the trader was the bearer of civilization, and that the trader must be protected in his trade else he would not come. Over to the westward were islands which would not protect the traders. What was the result? The traders would not come, and the people were like wild animals. They wore no clothes, no silk shirts (here he peered and blinked significantly at the king), and they ate one another.
The queer paper of the Feathers of the Sun was not money. The traders knew what money was, and they would not receive it. If Fitu-Iva persisted in trying to make them receive it they would go away and never come back. And then the Fitu-Ivans, who had forgotten how to make tapa, would run around naked and eat one another.
Much more he said, talking a solid hour, and always coming back to what their dire condition would be when the traders came no more. “And in that day,” he perorated, “how will the Fitu-Ivan be known in the great world?Kai-kanak* will men call him. 'Kiakanak! Kai-kanak!”
* Man-eater.
Tui Tulifau spoke briefly. The case had been presented, he said, for the people, the army, and the traders. It was now time for Feathers of the Sun to present his side. It could not be denied that he had wrought wonders with his financial system. “Many times has he explained to me the working of his system,” Tui Tulif au concluded. “It is very simple. And now he will explain it to you.”
It was a conspiracy of the white traders, Cornelius contended. Ieremia was right so far as concerned the manifold blessings of white flour and kerosene oil. Fitu-Iva did not want to becomekai-kanak. Fitu-Iva wanted civilization; it wanted more and more civilization. Now that was the very point, and they must follow him closely. Paper money was an earmark of higher civilization. That was why he, the Feathers of the Sun, had introduced it. And that was why the traders opposed it. They did not want to see Fitu-Iva civilized. Why did they come across the far ocean stretches with their goods to Fitu-Iva? He, the Feathers of the Sun, would tell them why, to their faces, in grand council assembled. In their own countries men were too civilized to let the traders make the immense profits that they made out of the Fitu-Ivans. If the Fitu-Ivans became properly civilized, the trade of the traders would be gone. In that day every Fitu-Ivan could become a trader if he pleased.
That was why the white traders fought the system of paper money, that he, the Feathers of the Sun, had brought. Why was he called the Feathers of the Sun? Because he was the Light-Bringer from the World Beyond the Sky. The paper money was the light. The robbing white traders could not flourish in the light. Therefore they fought the light.
He would prove it to the good people of Fitu-Iva, and he would prove it out of the mouths of his enemies. It was a well-known fact that all highly civilized countries had paper-money systems. He would ask Ieremia if this was not so.
Ieremia did not answer.
“You see,” Cornelius went on, “he makes no answer. He cannot deny what is true. England, France, Germany, America, all the greatPapalangicountries, have the paper-money system. It works. From century to century it works. I challenge you, Ieremia, as an honest man, as one who was once a zealous worker in the Lord's vineyard, I challenge you to deny that in the greatPapalangicountries the system works.”
Ieremia could not deny, and his fingers played nervously with the fastening of the basket on his knees.
“You see, it is as I have said,” Cornelius continued. “Ieremia agrees that it is so. Therefore, I ask you, all good people of Fitu-Iva, if a system is good for thePapalangicountries, why is it not good for Fitu-Iva?”
“It is not the same!” Ieremia cried. “The paper of the Feathers of the Sun is different from the paper of the great countries.”
That Cornelius had been prepared for this was evident. He held up a Fitu-Ivan note that was recognized by all.
“What is that?” he demanded.
“Paper, mere paper,” was Ieremia's reply.
“And that?”
This time Cornelius held up a Bank of England note.
“It is the paper money of the English,” he explained to the Council, at the same time extending it for Ieremia to examine. “Is it not true, Ieremia, that it is paper money of the English?”
Ieremia nodded reluctantly.
“You have said that the paper money of Fitu-Iva was paper, now how about this of the English? What is it?.... You must answer like a true man... All wait for your answer, Ieremia.”
“It is—it is——” the puzzled Ieremia began, then spluttered helplessly, the fallacy beyond his penetration.
“Paper, mere paper,” Cornelius concluded for him, imitating his halting utterance.
Conviction sat on the faces of all. The king clapped his hands admiringly and murmured, “It is most clear, very clear.”
“You see, he himself acknowledges it.” Assured triumph was in Deasy's voice and bearing. “He knows of no difference. There is no difference. 'Tis the very image of money. 'Tis money itself.”
In the meantime Grief was whispering in Ieremia's ear, who nodded and began to speak.
“But it is well known to all thePapalangithat the English Government will pay coin money for the paper.”
Deasy's victory was now absolute. He held aloft a Fitu-Ivan note.
“Is it not so written on this paper as well?”
Again Grief whispered.
“That Fitu-Iva will pay coin money?” asked Ieremia
“It is so written.”
A third time Grief prompted.
“On demand?” asked Ieremia.
“On demand,” Cornelius assured him.
“Then I demand coin money now,” said Ieremia, drawing a small package of notes from the pouch at his girdle.
Cornelius scanned the package with a quick, estimating eye.
“Very well,” he agreed. “I shall give you the coin money now. How much?”
“And we will see the system work,” the king proclaimed, partaking in his Chancellor's triumph.
“You have heard!—He will give coin money now!” Ieremia cried in a loud voice to the assemblage.
At the same time he plunged both hands in the basket and drew forth many packages of Fitu-Ivan notes. It was noticed that a peculiar odour was adrift about the council.
“I have here,” Ieremia announced, “one thousand and twenty-eight pounds twelve shillings and sixpence. Here is a sack to put the coin money in.”
Cornelius recoiled. He had not expected such a sum, and everywhere about the council his uneasy eyes showed him chiefs and talking men drawing out bundles of notes. The army, its two months' pay in its hands, pressed forward to the edge of the council, while behind it the populace, with more money, invaded the compound.
“'Tis a run on the bank you've precipitated,” he said reproachfully to Grief.
“Here is the sack to put the coin money in,” Ieremia urged.
“It must be postponed,” Cornelius said desperately, “'Tis not in banking hours.”
Ieremia flourished a package of money. “Nothing of banking hours is written here. It says on demand, and I now demand.”
“Let them come to-morrow, O Tui Tulifau,” Cornelius appealed to the king. “They shall be paid to-morrow.”
Tui Tulifau hesitated, but his spouse glared at him, her brawny arm tensing as the fist doubled into a redoubtable knot, Tui Tulifau tried to look away, but failed. He cleared his throat nervously.
“We will see the system work,” he decreed. “The people have come far.”
“'Tis good money you're asking me to pay out,” Deasy muttered in a low voice to the king.
Sepeli caught what he said, and grunted so savagely as to startle the king, who involuntarily shrank away from her.
“Forget not the pig,” Grief whispered to Ieremia, who immediately stood up.
With a sweeping gesture he stilled the babel of voices that was beginning to rise.
“It was an ancient and honourable custom of Fitu-Iva,” he said, “that when a man was proved a notorious evildoer his joints were broken with a club and he was staked out at low water to be fed upon alive by the sharks. Unfortunately, that day is past. Nevertheless another ancient and honourable custom remains with us. You all know what it is. When a man is a proven thief and liar he shall be struck with a dead pig.”
His right hand went into the basket, and, despite the lack of his spectacles, the dead pig that came into view landed accurately on Deasy's neck. With such force was it thrown that the Chancellor, in his sitting position, toppled over sidewise. Before he could recover, Sepeli, with an agility unexpected of a woman who weighed two hundred and sixty pounds, had sprung across to him. One hand clutched his shirt collar, the other hand brandished the pig, and amid the vast uproar of a delighted kingdom she royally swatted him.
There remained nothing for Tui Tulifau but to put a good face on his favourite's disgrace, and his mountainous fat lay back on the mats and shook in a gale of Gargantuan laughter.
When Sepeli dropped both pig and Chancellor, a talking man from the windward coast picked up the carcass. Cornelius was on his feet and running, when the pig caught him on the legs and tripped him. The people and the army, with shouts and laughter, joined in the sport.
Twist and dodge as he would, everywhere the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer was met or overtaken by the flying pig. He scuttled like a frightened rabbit in and out among the avocados and the palms. No hand was laid upon him, and his tormentors made way before him, but ever they pursued, and ever the pig flew as fast as hands could pick it up.
As the chase died away down the Broom Road, Grief led the traders to the royal treasury, and the day was well over ere the last Fitu-Ivan bank note had been redeemed with coin.
Through the mellow cool of twilight a man paddled out from a clump of jungle to theCantani. It was a leaky and abandoned dugout, and he paddled slowly, desisting from time to time in order to bale. The Kanaka sailors giggled gleefully as he came alongside and painfully drew himself over the rail. He was bedraggled and filthy, and seemed half-dazed.
“Could I speak a word with you, Mr. Grief?” he asked sadly and humbly.
“Sit to leeward and farther away,” Grief answered. “A little farther away. That's better.”
Cornelius sat down on the rail and held his head in both his hands.
“'Tis right,” he said. “I'm as fragrant as a recent battlefield. My head aches to burstin'. My neck is fair broken. The teeth are loose in my jaws. There's nests of hornets buzzin' in my ears. My medulla oblongata is dislocated. I've been through earthquake and pestilence, and the heavens have rained pigs.” He paused with a sigh that ended in a groan. “'Tis a vision of terrible death. One that the poets never dreamed. To be eaten by rats, or boiled in oil, or pulled apart by wild horses—that would be unpleasant. But to be beaten to death with a dead pig!” He shuddered at the awfulness of it. “Sure it transcends the human imagination.”
Captain Boig sniffed audibly, moved his canvas chair farther to windward, and sat down again.
“I hear you're runnin' over to Yap, Mr. Grief,” Cornelius went on. “An' two things I'm wantin' to beg of you: a passage an' the nip of the old smoky I refused the night you landed.”
Grief clapped his hands for the black steward and ordered soap and towels.
“Go for'ard, Cornelius, and take a scrub first,” he said. “The boy will bring you a pair of dungarees and a shirt. And by the way, before you go, how was it we found more coin in the treasury than paper you had issued?”
“'Twas the stake of my own I'd brought with me for the adventure.”
“We've decided to charge the demurrage and other expenses and loss to Tui Tulifau,” Grief said. “So the balance we found will be turned over to you. But ten shillings must be deducted.”
“For what?”
“Do you think dead pigs grow on trees? The sum of ten shillings for that pig is entered in the accounts.”
Cornelius bowed his assent with a shudder.
“Sure it's grateful I am it wasn't a fifteen-shilling pig or a twenty-shilling one.”
The Kanaka helmsman put the wheel down, and theMalahinislipped into the eye of the wind and righted to an even keel. Her head-sails emptied, there was a rat-tat of reef-points and quick shifting of boom-tackles, and she was heeled over and filled away on the other tack. Though it was early morning and the wind brisk, the five white men who lounged on the poop-deck were scantily clad. David Grief, and his guest, Gregory Mulhall, an Englishman, were still in pajamas, their naked feet thrust into Chinese slippers. The captain and mate were in thin undershirts and unstarched duck pants, while the supercargo still held in his hands the undershirt he was reluctant to put on. The sweat stood out on his forehead, and he seemed to thrust his bare chest thirstily into the wind that did not cool.
“Pretty muggy, for a breeze like this,” he complained.
“And what's it doing around in the west? That's what I want to know,” was Grief's contribution to the general plaint.
“It won't last, and it ain't been there long,” said Hermann, the Holland mate. “She is been chop around all night—five minutes here, ten minutes there, one hour somewhere other quarter.”
“Something makin ', something makin ',” Captain Warfield croaked, spreading his bushy beard with the fingers of both hands and shoving the thatch of his chin into the breeze in a vain search for coolness. “Weather's been crazy for a fortnight. Haven't had the proper trades in three weeks. Everything's mixed up. Barometer was pumping at sunset last night, and it's pumping now, though the weather sharps say it don't mean anything. All the same, I've got a prejudice against seeing it pump. Gets on my nerves, sort of, you know. She was pumping that way the time we lost theLancaster. I was only an apprentice, but I can remember that well enough. Brand new, four-masted steel ship; first voyage; broke the old man's heart. He'd been forty years in the company. Just faded way and died the next year.”
Despite the wind and the early hour, the heat was suffocating. The wind whispered coolness, but did not deliver coolness. It might have blown off the Sahara, save for the extreme humidity with which it was laden. There was no fog nor mist, nor hint of fog or mist, yet the dimness of distance produced the impression. There were no defined clouds, yet so thickly were the heavens covered by a messy cloud-pall that the sun failed to shine through.
“Ready about!” Captain Warfield ordered with slow sharpness.
The brown, breech-clouted Kanaka sailors moved languidly but quickly to head-sheets and boom-tackles.
“Hard a-lee!”
The helmsman ran the spokes over with no hint of gentling, and theMalahinidarted prettily into the wind and about.
“Jove! she's a witch!” was Mulhall's appreciation. “I didn't know you South Sea traders sailed yachts.”
“She was a Gloucester fisherman originally,” Grief explained, “and the Gloucester boats are all yachts when it comes to build, rig, and sailing.”
“But you're heading right in—why don't you make it?” came the Englishman's criticism.
“Try it, Captain Warfield,” Grief suggested. “Show him what a lagoon entrance is on a strong ebb.”
“Close-and-by!” the captain ordered.
“Close-and-by,” the Kanaka repeated, easing half a spoke.
TheMalahinilaid squarely into the narrow passage which was the lagoon entranceofa large, long, and narrow oval of an atoll. The atoll was shaped as if three atolls, in the course of building, had collided and coalesced and failed to rear the partition walls. Cocoanut palms grew in spots on the circle of sand, and there were many gaps where the sand was too low to the sea for cocoanuts, and through which could be seen the protected lagoon where the water lay flat like the ruffled surface of a mirror. Many square miles of water were in the irregular lagoon, all of which surged out on the ebb through the one narrow channel. So narrow was the channel, so large the outflow of water, that the passage was more like the rapids of a river than the mere tidal entrance to an atoll. The water boiled and whirled and swirled and drove outward in a white foam of stiff, serrated waves. Each heave and blow on her bows of the upstanding waves of the current swung the Malahini off the straight lead and wedged her as with wedges of steel toward the side of the passage. Part way in she was, when her closeness to the coral edge compelled her to go about. On the opposite tack, broadside to the current, she swept seaward with the current's speed.
“Now's the time for that new and expensive engine of yours,” Grief jeered good-naturedly.
That the engine was a sore point with Captain Warfield was patent. He had begged and badgered for it, until in the end Grief had given his consent.
“It will pay for itself yet,” the captain retorted, “You wait and see. It beats insurance and you know the underwriters won't stand for insurance in the Paumotus.”
Grief pointed to a small cutter beating up astern of them on the same course.
“I'll wager a five-franc piece the little Nuhiva beats us in.”
“Sure,” Captain Warfield agreed. “She's overpowered. We're like a liner alongside of her, and we've only got forty horsepower. She's got ten horse, and she's a little skimming dish. She could skate across the froth of hell, but just the same she can't buck this current. It's running ten knots right now.”
And at the rate of ten knots, buffeted and jerkily rolled, theMalahiniwent out to sea with the tide.
“She'll slacken in half an hour—then we'll make headway,” Captain Warfield said, with an irritation explained by his next words. “He has no right to call it Parlay. It's down on the admiralty charts, and the French charts, too, as Hikihoho. Bougainville discovered it and named it from the natives.”
“What's the name matter?” the supercargo demanded, taking advantage of speech to pause with arms shoved into the sleeves of the undershirt. “There it is, right under our nose, and old Parlay is there with the pearls.”
“Who see them pearl?” Hermann queried, looking from one to another.
“It's well known,” was the supercargo's reply. He turned to the steersman: “Tai-Hotauri, what about old Parlay's pearls?”
The Kanaka, pleased and self-conscious, took and gave a spoke.
“My brother dive for Parlay three, four month, and he make much talk about pearl. Hikihoho very good place for pearl.”
“And the pearl-buyers have never got him to part with a pearl,” the captain broke in.
“And they say he had a hatful for Armande when he sailed for Tahiti,” the supercargo carried on the tale. “That's fifteen years ago, and he's been adding to it ever since—stored the shell as well. Everybody's seen that—hundreds of tons of it. They say the lagoon's fished clean now. Maybe that's why he's announced the auction.”
“If he really sells, this will be the biggest year's output of pearls in the Paumotus,” Grief said.
“I say, now, look here!” Mulhall burst forth, harried by the humid heat as much as the rest of them. “What's it all about? Who's the old beachcomber anyway? What are all these pearls? Why so secretious about it?”
“Hikihoho belongs to old Parlay,” the supercargo answered. “He's got a fortune in pearls, saved up for years and years, and he sent the word out weeks ago that he'd auction them off to the buyers to-morrow. See those schooners' masts sticking up inside the lagoon?”
“Eight, so I see,” said Hermann.
“What are they doing in a dinky atoll like this?” the supercargo went on. “There isn't a schooner-load of copra a year in the place. They've come for the auction. That's why we're here. That's why the littleNuhiva'sbumping along astern there, though what she can buy is beyond me. Narii Herring—he's an English Jew half-caste—owns and runs her, and his only assets are his nerve, his debts, and his whiskey bills. He's a genius in such things. He owes so much that there isn't a merchant in Papeete who isn't interested in his welfare. They go out of their way to throw work in his way. They've got to, and a dandy stunt it is for Narii. Now I owe nobody. What's the result? If I fell down in a fit on the beach they'd let me lie there and die. They wouldn't lose anything. But Narii Herring?—what wouldn't they do if he fell in a fit? Their best wouldn't be too good for him. They've got too much money tied up in him to let him lie. They'd take him into their homes and hand-nurse him like a brother. Let me tell you, honesty in paying bills ain't what it's cracked up to be.”
“What's this Narii chap got to do with it?” was the Englishman's short-tempered demand. And, turning to Grief, he said, “What's all this pearl nonsense? Begin at the beginning.”
“You'll have to help me out,” Grief warned the others, as he began. “Old Parlay is a character. From what I've seen of him I believe he's partly and mildly insane. Anyway, here's the story: Parlay's a full-blooded Frenchman. He told me once that he came from Paris. His accent is the true Parisian. He arrived down here in the old days. Went to trading and all the rest. That's how he got in on Hikihoho. Came in trading when trading was the real thing. About a hundred miserable Paumotans lived on the island. He married the queen—native fashion. When she died, everything was his. Measles came through, and there weren't more than a dozen survivors. He fed them, and worked them, and was king. Now before the queen died she gave birth to a girl. That's Armande. When she was three he sent her to the convent at Papeete. When she was seven or eight he sent her to France. You begin to glimpse the situation. The best and most aristocratic convent in France was none too good for the only daughter of a Paumotan island king and capitalist, and you know the old country French draw no colour line. She was educated like a princess, and she accepted herself in much the same way. Also, she thought she was all-white, and never dreamed of a bar sinister.
“Now comes the tragedy. The old man had always been cranky and erratic, and he'd played the despot on Hikihoho so long that he'd got the idea in his head that there was nothing wrong with the king—or the princess either. When Armande was eighteen he sent for her. He had slews and slathers of money, as Yankee Bill would say. He'd built the big house on Hikihoho, and a whacking fine bungalow in Papeete. She was to arrive on the mail boat from New Zealand, and he sailed in his schooner to meet her at Papeete. And he might have carried the situation off, despite the hens and bull-beasts of Papeete, if it hadn't been for the hurricane. That was the year, wasn't it, when Manu-Huhi was swept and eleven hundred drowned?”
The others nodded, and Captain Warfield said: “I was in theMagpiethat blow, and we went ashore, all hands and the cook,Magpieand all, a quarter of a mile into the cocoanuts at the head of Taiohae Bay—and it a supposedly hurricane-proof harbour.”
“Well,” Grief continued, “old Parlay got caught in the same blow, and arrived in Papeete with his hatful of pearls three weeks too late. He'd had to jack up his schooner and build half a mile of ways before he could get her back into the sea.
“And in the meantime there was Armande at Papeete. Nobody called on her. She did, French fashion, make the initial calls on the Governor and the port doctor. They saw her, but neither of their hen-wives was at home to her nor returned the call. She was out of caste, without caste, though she had never dreamed it, and that was the gentle way they broke the information to her. There was a gay young lieutenant on the French cruiser. He lost his heart to her, but not his head. You can imagine the shock to this young woman, refined, beautiful, raised like an aristocrat, pampered with the best of old France that money could buy. And you can guess the end.” He shrugged his shoulders. “There was a Japanese servant in the bungalow. He saw it. Said she did it with the proper spirit of the Samurai. Took a stiletto—no thrust, no drive, no wild rush for annihilation—took the stiletto, placed the point carefully against her heart, and with both hands, slowly and steadily, pressed home.
“Old Parlay arrived after that with his pearls. There was one single one of them, they say, worth sixty thousand francs. Peter Gee saw it, and has told me he offered that much for it. The old man went clean off for a while. They had him strait-jacketed in the Colonial Club two days——”
“His wife's uncle, an old Paumotan, cut him out of the jacket and turned him loose,” the supercargo corroborated.
“And then old Parlay proceeded to eat things up,” Grief went on. “Pumped three bullets into the scalawag of a lieutenant——”
“Who lay in sick bay for three months,” Captain Warfield contributed.
“Flung a glass of wine in the Governor's face; fought a duel with the port doctor; beat up his native servants; wrecked the hospital; broke two ribs and the collarbone of a man nurse, and escaped; and went down to his schooner, a gun in each hand, daring the chief of police and all the gendarmes to arrest him, and sailed for Hikihoho. And they say he's never left the island since.”
The supercargo nodded. “That was fifteen years ago, and he's never budged.”
“And added to his pearls,” said the captain. “He's a blithering old lunatic. Makes my flesh creep. He's a regular Finn.”
“What's that?” Mulhall inquired.
“Bosses the weather—that's what the natives believe, at any rate. Ask Tai-Hotauri there. Hey, Tai-Hotauri! what you think old Parlay do along weather?”
“Just the same one big weather devil,” came the Kanaka's answer. “I know. He want big blow, he make big blow. He want no wind, no wind come.”
“A regular old Warlock,” said Mulhall.
“No good luck them pearl,” Tai-Hotauri blurted out, rolling his head ominously. “He say he sell. Plenty schooner come. Then he make big hurricane, everybody finish, you see. All native men say so.”
“It's hurricane season now,” Captain War-field laughed morosely. “They're not far wrong. It's making for something right now, and I'd feel better if theMalahiniwas a thousand miles away from here.”
“He is a bit mad,” Grief concluded. “I've tried to get his point of view. It's—well, it's mixed. For eighteen years he'd centred everything on Armande. Half the time he believes she's still alive, not yet come back from France. That's one of the reasons he held on to the pearls. And all the time he hates white men. He never forgets they killed her, though a great deal of the time he forgets she's dead. Hello! Where's your wind?”
The sails bellied emptily overhead, and Captain Warfield grunted his disgust. Intolerable as the heat had been, in the absence of wind it was almost overpowering. The sweat oozed out on all their faces, and now one, and again another, drew deep breaths, involuntarily questing for more air.
“Here she comes again—an eight point haul! Boom-tackles across! Jump!”
The Kanakas sprang to the captain's orders, and for five minutes the schooner laid directly into the passage and even gained on the current. Again the breeze fell flat, then puffed from the old quarter, compelling a shift back of sheets and tackles.
“Here comes theNuhiva” Grief said. “She's got her engine on. Look at her skim.”
“All ready?” the captain asked the engineer, a Portuguese half-caste, whose head and shoulders protruded from the small hatch just for'ard of the cabin, and who wiped the sweat from his face with a bunch of greasy waste.
“Sure,” he replied.
“Then let her go.”
The engineer disappeared into his den, and a moment later the exhaust muffler coughed and spluttered overside. But the schooner could not hold her lead. The little cutter made three feet to her two and was quickly alongside and forging ahead. Only natives were on her deck, and the man steering waved his hand in derisive greeting and farewell.
“That's Narii Herring,” Grief told Mulhall. “The big fellow at the wheel—the nerviest and most conscienceless scoundrel in the Paumotus.”
Five minutes later a cry of joy from their own Kanakas centred all eyes on theNuhiva. Her engine had broken down and they were overtaking her. TheMalahini'ssailors sprang into the rigging and jeered as they went by; the little cutter heeled over by the wind with a bone in her teeth, going backward on the tide.
“Some engine that of ours,” Grief approved, as the lagoon opened before them and the course was changed across it to the anchorage.
Captain Warfield was visibly cheered, though he merely grunted, “It'll pay for itself, never fear.”
TheMalahiniran well into the centre of the little fleet ere she found swinging room to anchor.
“There's Isaacs on theDolly,” Grief observed, with a hand wave of greeting. “And Peter Gee's on theRoberta. Couldn't keep him away from a pearl sale like this. And there's Francini on theCactus. They're all here, all the buyers. Old Parlay will surely get a price.”
“They haven't repaired the engine yet,” Captain Warfield grumbled gleefully.
He was looking across the lagoon to where theNuhiva'ssails showed through the sparse cocoa-nuts.