"Years and years. Before the war. I was so high when he died." Willatopy indicated the stature of a boy of about twelve. "But I remember him very well indeed. He and I used to sail together in the yawl, and I learned all the channels; every one. He always said to me, 'Be wise when you grow up, Willie. Stick to Tops Island. Never go to England. They are all ravening wolves in England where every man preys on his neighbour.' He meant, I think, that the English are cannibals. The Hula cut off the heads of their enemies—it is the custom—but they are not cannibals any longer. The English are cannibals. They devour one another."
Madame laughed, and thought of Roger Gatepath. This was a turning of the tables in rich earnest. "Your father meant that there are very many English crowded upon a small island, and that they try to get money from one another."
"They are just like that in Thursday Island," cried Willatopy eagerly, to show that he understood. "When I go there for my money, and carry it away in a bag, the English try to make me drink so that they may steal my money. But they never get it. I do not drink when I have my bag to guard."
"Good man," said Ewing, with approval. "Never mix up whisky and business."
"Never mix up whisky with anything," advised Madame sententiously.
"I never do," observed Ewing, grinning at her.
"Be quiet, Alexander. Willatopy has takenwarning by that horrible countryman of yours in Thursday Island, and means always to be a good boy. He won't drink even when he hasn't a bag to guard. And now, Willie, tell us. Do you remember what part of England your father sailed from?"
Willatopy puckered his forehead. He was not accustomed to search his memory. The personality of the father had made a deep ineradicable impression upon the boy, but he knew very little of his origin and sought not to enquire. The savage half of him took everything as it came without comment.
"It was by the sea, I am sure," said he at last, "for there was a big battle long ago which the English won. It was a battle at sea. It is all in the history books at Murray Island." He dismissed the subject, but Madame stuck to her questions.
"Whom did the English beat?" she asked.
"I don't know," indifferently. "Yes, I remember. Spaniards."
"Was it the Spanish Armada?"
"Yes, that was it. The Spanish Armada. My father's father fought the Spaniards." Willatopy's conception of time did not reach much beyond a single generation. Centuries and historical dates conveyed nothing to him.
"Yon place must have been Plymouth," observed Ewing. Madame, for one, blessed the gratuitously informative Scot.
"Thank you, Alexander. You are quick. So your father came from Devonshire?"
"Yes, Devonshire. He often spoke to me of that country. I had forgotten. The yawl was built there—at Tops Ham, the Home of the Toppys, my father's home. He sailed straight away from theHome of the Toppys to Baru. It is Baru in the native speech," explained Willatopy. "But we often call it Tops Island."
The murder was out now. Madame stared at Ewing, opening her eyes very wide, and Ewing stared at her.
"What is all this?" exclaimed the puzzled Chief. "The Home of Toppys—Tops Island. I don't clearly comprehend. What is your name, boy?"
"Willatopy."
"I know. But what is your real name, your English name?"
"Willie Toppys."
"And who the blue blazes was your father?" roared Ewing, rising up in excitement. Madame did her best to affect an equally excited interest.
"My father," said Willatopy with dignity, "was the Honourable William Toppys. He was a Great Chief in England."
Ewing fell into his chair so suddenly that its revolution nearly pitched him out again.
"Christ!" shouted he. "He is a by-blow of Mr. William."
The Chief Engineer jumped up, rushed to the chart-room, where Ching was sulking in solitude, and returned dragging his commanding officer by the coat collar.
"Ching," he roared, pointing at Willatopy. "D'ye ken the bairn's ee' noo?"
"I don't ken the Moor's blasted eye," growled Ching. "Why should I?"
"D'ye ever see an ee' like to yon oot of a Toppys heid?"
Ching grudgingly admitted that the eyes ofWillatopy were by some impertinent freak of Nature not unlike those which distinguished the Family.
Madame broke in. The scene was becoming ridiculous, and Willatopy was getting cross. He felt that Ewing was making a show of him.
"Alexander," commanded Madame. "Sit down and keep quiet. Captain," she went on, "we have just discovered that Willatopy our pilot is a son of Mr. William Toppys, who went to the South Seas twenty years ago and died there."
"I expect that our Mr. William has left a lot of brown brats scattered up and down the Islands," grunted Ching. "The boy is a good and useful pilot, but half blood don't make him a Toppys."
"He is a Toppys, and we can't treat him as a stranger in a Toppys ship. Willie," went on Madame in her sweetest, most silvery tones. "By a wonderful coincidence you have come to the help of your own people. This yacht, theHumming Top, is owned by Sir John Toppys, Baronet of Wigan. We are all employed by the Family of which you are a member. You have dropped quite by accident among your own people. Sir John Toppys must be a cousin of yours."
"Are you a cousin of mine, Madame?" asked Willatopy eagerly.
"No. I am a friend, that is all. But aren't you frightfully interested?"
Willatopy considered the situation. "It would have been very nice to have had you for a cousin, Madame. A sort of white sister. But I don't want the Skipper to be my cousin. I am a Hula, and I do not love the English. Also I am hungry, and I want my food."
As a subject for the exhibition of frightful excitement, Willatopy was a complete failure. He was bored. He had talked himself tired and hungry. He wanted food and afterwards sleep. He had no use, as the Americans say, for the cousinhood of Sir John Toppys, Baronet of Wigan.
Ching turned his rude back upon the discovered scion of Toppys, but the kind-hearted Chief led him away, presented him to the greatly interested Officers' Mess—Marie declared that she was ravished at the discovery—and left him in their care.
Later that evening, when Madame had gone to her stateroom, the Captain and Chief Engineer drew together in their own quarters.
"I have been reckoning," observed Ewing, "how mysterious are the ways of Providence. There yonder in England is the great House of Toppys without an heir, unless it be old Sir John; and here in the South Seas there drops in one son of Mr. William, and maybe, as you say, lots more of them are round about. To him that hath shall be given more than he wants—or intends to keep—and to him that hath not shall be taken away the heirs in whom his heart rejoices. When Lord Topsham's son and nephews were all killed in the war the old man just withered away. His House is desolate. I am thinking that if this nigger here, whom they call Willatopy, had not been born the wrong side of the blanket he would now have been the long-lost heir of the Barony of Topsham."
"That's nowt," grunted Ching. "He and all like him are just spawn. There may, for all we know, be a brown Topy on every island in the Straits."
"Maybe aye, maybe no. It is like enough. TheIdle Rich are bestially immoral in their habits. Still, if by some chance Mr. William had married this nigger's mother the boy would have been the Lord of Topsham. Ching, I am a grandly circumspectious man. I am uneasy, powerful uneasy. Why did Sir John Toppys send out theHumming Topto these waters with that foreign Madame on board of her? She's not his mistress, I am sure of that. She is a great French lady. Why did he do it? Did he know, think you, that there was a Willatopy here?"
"He wouldn't have bothered his head about a Moor, anyway. The yacht was idle, and Madame wanted a voyage. That's reason enough for the likes of us."
"All coloured men are not Moors, you old Elizabethan seadog. This is a brown heathen Melanesian, not a Musulman Turk. Ching, I tell you that I am uneasy. My brain is buzzing with queer thoughts. It sticks in my mind that when that Willatopy told us the name of his father, our pretty Madame wasn't nearly so surprised as she sought to make me think she was. She seemed to my mind to be expecting it."
"You've got too much mind, Ewing. That is what's the matter with you. You keep to your engine-room and I will keep to my bridge. The ways of the gentry have nowt to do with us."
At about the same time Marie was brushing out the red gold mane which flowed in splendid waves over Madame's broad back. There was nothing grudged when Madame was designed and built. Beauty and power went hand in hand at her fashioning. She could have crumpled up Marie, thesinuous French girl, in her strong hands, and stuffed her body through a port-hole. Their talk was carried on in vivid French; I will do my best to render its purport in pale English.
"Did you ever see such eyes?" sighed Marie. "They go through me like swords. And his feet and hands. Quite small, Madame. It is easy to see that his blood is of the brightest azure. Did you say his father was an English Lord?"
"Marie," said Madame, crossly. "You are disgustingly promiscuous. I have allowed you two deck officers and two engineers. All fine handsome white men. Yet you must now be googling at a coffee-coloured savage. I won't have it, Marie."
"He is not a savage; he is most intellectual. His English is perfect—much better than mine. And he knows a few words, they are certainly but a few, of our French tongue. He is aristocrat. Is he not a cousin of the rich Sir John Toppys?"
"It is a cousinship which the aristocracy do not usually recognise," observed Madame drily. "Willatopy is in my charge, and I won't have him played with. Especially by an old campaigner like you. Do what you please with the officers, I give them to you, but leave Willatopy alone. These half-castes are dangerous to meddle with. Remember, if I have any reason to suspect that you are up to your usual tricks, I will send you straight back to France."
Marie shuddered, and promised that she would be cold as an icicle. She shivered as if her blood had been physically chilled, for there were grave reasons, the very gravest of reasons, why Marie Lambert did not desire to be sent back to France.
Willatopy, standing in dignified solitude upon the Captain's bridge, conned theHumming Topthrough the deep water channels of bewildering intricacy which led from the Dungeness Reef to Thursday Island. Ching, too good a sailor not to recognise a master when he met one, had withdrawn to the chart-room, and left Willatopy to his unchallengeable eminence. The boy, quickly grasping the purpose and use of the steering telegraph, now transmitted his orders direct to the quartermaster beneath his feet in the wheel-house. He was a sailor by right of birth on both sides of the house. His ancestors of Devon had played a faithful, if not a very distinguished part, in the history of the Royal Navy; there has not often been a generation since Harry the Eighth without at least one Toppys in the books of the Navy Office. The Hulas of New Guinea, who to this day build their huts out to sea upon the butt ends of roughly driven piles—like our Neolithic ancestors of the Swiss Lake Dwellings—are a tribe of amphibians. Upon the maritime side of his being there was no collision between white and brown blood in the veins of Willatopy. He was salt all through; saturated with the sea lore which is the subconscious heritage from a naval ancestry; bitten to the bone by sea instincts derivedfrom countless generations of Hula fishers in the Coral waters.
"How in blazes do you remember like that?" asked Ching once as Willatopy drove at full speed with a five-knot tide under him into the hidden maze of coral.
"I don't remember," replied Willie easily, as he delicately manipulated the steering telegraph, and swung the big yacht this way and that, as surely as a racing motorist swings his car. "I don't remember; I know." He never looked at Ching's chart; he never appeared to take any bearings—although those bright, penetrative blue eyes, ranging out over the encircling islands, were all the while noting familiar land features and making their own quick unconscious calculations. He never hesitated for one instant. The Skipper down below, following Willatopy's course upon the chart, would sometimes tremble when he saw by how much the boy ignored the line a careful Admiralty had laid down. But he was too wise to interfere. If you take a pilot you must trust to him, and Willatopy, though he scorned the professional title, was a pilot beyond compare. He did not remember; he knew.
Madame Gilbert was on the boat deck when the yacht drew in towards Port Kennedy. She frowned viciously upon Thursday Island, that sorry western gate of the lovely tropic Straits. A treeless, desolate waste dotted with corrugated iron buildings. Cluster the iron buildings a little, drive wide dusty roads between clumps of them, and one has Port Kennedy, the seat of government. Impelled by greed of pearl and shell, and undeterred by thestark hideousness of the Island, the sweepings of most nations have poured down upon that uncomely spot, and have greatly contributed to make it what it is, and to keep from reaching up towards better things.
"Poor Willatopy," murmured Madame as she gazed upon the polluted scene. "So this is his point of contact with white civilisation. Better Tops Island, a hundred times."
A mile away from the port, Willatopy handed over his charge to her lawful skipper. "Take her in. I go in my yawl." He dropped down the bridge ladder, and ran pattering along the deck. At a sign from Madame he stopped.
"I go in my yawl," cried he, pointing to where that little craft of his bobbed up and down in the yacht's wash at the end of her towing line.
"But, Willatopy," protested Madame, "I am going to your island, and we can't possibly find our way unless you come as our pilot."
"I come, Madame, after two, three days. You wait for me. I go to see my banker, and to get my money, in a bag. Then I go to one of my brown girls. She loves my eyes which are like the sky before dawn."
Willatopy raced away aft. He pulled the yawl in by her line, vaulted over the yacht's rail, and plumped down in the middle of her swaying deck. Up went mainsail, foresail, jib; she had no topsail. The driver had remained set. Willie cast off the line and a moment later his little vessel was leaning over to the trade wind and flying up the harbour. The boy had not even troubled to stop the yacht's engines to make more easy histranshipment. And Ching did not love Willatopy enough to stop them for him. It was a flying transfer, but done so easily and surely that Madame hardly realised the simian skill of it. She stood by the rail watching the yawl pitch as the swell took her, and the white bare-headed figure which grew smaller and smaller every instant.
"So I have to wait at this horrible Thursday Island while Master Willie takes his pleasure with one of his brown girls. And it was only yesterday that he proposed himself to me as my husband! First it was Ching he put down; now it is Madame Gilbert. Presently it will be Alexander, and then it will be Marie. When you come to sit in the House of Lords, friend Willatopy, what a very, very masterful Baron of Topsham you will be."
* * * * * * *
TheHumming Toptied up at the hulk which does duty for a wharf at Thursday Island. Ewing, armed with a manifest of stores, and with the joyous light of battle in his shrewd Scots eye, departed to open an offensive upon the local markets. The Skipper disappeared as skippers always disappear in harbour, and Madame was left alone. Port Kennedy was flagrantly uninviting, yet she felt impelled to go ashore. One always does. First she exchanged gracious compliments with the Administrator to whom she carried letters of introduction from the Colonial Office, and then, by a happy inspiration, wandered off to find Willatopy's banker. The boy fascinated her, and she wanted to talk about him. He was so entirely different from what Roger Gatepath had led her to expect that her mind was in a whirl. Perhaps this banker, who keptWillatopy's money—in large bags—might prove to be an understanding and communicative friend. He proved to be both—though Robert Grant, like all managers of banks in the outer fringes of the Empire, was a Scot of Scots. Madame commanded confidences even from a Scot of Scots.
"Mr. Grant," said she, after her connection with the Family of Toppys had been discreetly explained. "This queer boy Willatopy swooped down upon us in his yawl out of the wide sea, saved the Family yacht from imminent destruction on the reefs in your most dangerous Straits, piloted us here as easily as if he were sailing his own little boat, and then vanished. I understand that he has been here to draw his money in a bag, and has skipped away in his own rapid decided fashion to lay tribute at the naked feet of one of his brown girls. As a scorcher this Willatopy of yours would give points to any young man whom I have ever met."
Grant smiled. "He is what the Americans call a live wire. But before I tell you what I know about him, may I be permitted to ask the purpose of your enquiries?"
Madame saw that she must put most of her cards on the table. The finer arts of feminine diplomacy would be wasted upon a creature so direct.
"That yacht yonder of mine," said she, "is owned by Sir John Toppys of Wigan, cousin and heir of the late Lord of Topsham. I have come out at his request to visit the irregular branch of the Family which is settled in the Torres Straits, and to do what I can to help them if they need or will accept my help."
"Sir John Toppys, cousin and heir," repeatedGrant curiously. "Has the direct line then failed?"
Madame explained how the casualties of war had left the House desolate.
"So Sir John Toppys, cousin of the late Lord, is the heir," mused Grant reflectively. His brow puckered, and he looked at Madame acutely and suspiciously. She bore the scrutiny in that bland impenetrable way which has so often baffled me.
"So you are interested," said he at last, "in the irregular branch?" The emphasis upon the adjective was unmistakable.
"Well," drawled Madame Gilbert, "you will agree that the colour is somewhat unusual."
Grant smiled again. He was thinking hard, and it was plain that he was familiar with the ramifications of the Family of Toppys, and with the lawful rights of the Twenty-Eighth Baron. Until that moment, however, he had not known that the direct white heirs had failed.
When he spoke it was with deliberate, anxiously deliberate, emphasis. "The kindest service which you can render, Madame, to the coloured branch of Toppys is to leave them alone—in happy ignorant security. I repeat, ignorant security."
Madame drew a deep breath. For reasons which she did not yet appreciate, but which she was soon to understand, Willatopy's banker was on her side, the side of Sir John Toppys, Baronet of Wigan.
"I was an intimate friend of Will Toppys," went on Grant. "I loved him, and think that I, alone among his white friends, sympathised with his withdrawal from white civilisation. Money and honours meant nothing to his simple soul. The fewhundreds a year which he drew through me from his property in England, the small plantation which he bought upon Tops Island, sufficed. He was in his way wealthy, and also in his own way gloriously happy. His wife—you have not seen his wife—honoured him as a king of men. Willatopy, his only son, worshipped him as a god. You may perhaps have noticed how Willatopy, although but twelve years old when his father died, quotes his lightest saying as the last word in human or divine wisdom?"
Madame nodded.
"I was my friend's executor, and, in my humble way, have tried to be a guardian to Willatopy. I love the boy for his father's sake and his own sake. He is a good boy. His courage has the quality of tempered steel: he is honest and generous. He comes here about once a month, draws a pound or two in silver from me, buys gear for his yawl and a few delicacies for his family—they all have a queer passion for sardines and tinned tongue—picks up some beads for his brown girls, and then disappears. He does not drink; he has not, I believe, ever tasted alcohol. His relations with brown girls are those customary in the Straits. Here, Madame, boys and girls follow their inclinations, but they are free from the vices of the white races. The unmarried flit from flower to flower, but those who are married—though wedded by the sketchiest of native ceremonial—are faithful to one another with a rigidity unknown in Europe or America. All the vices and all the diseases in these islands are the gift of the white man. I have always feared for Willatopy, and now your coming fills me with dreadfor him. White and brown blood form a bad mixture—an explosive mixture. A mixture unstable as nitro-glycerine. So long as Willie remains brown, and follows the precepts of his father, he will be safe and happy. But let him incline by ever so little towards the white side of him, let him once awaken to a taste for wine or whisky, and become conscious of the seductions of white women—and Willatopy will be a lost soul. Here in my desk lies the will of my friend Toppys and—other papers. I see the danger which threatens Willatopy, and I tremble. Take your yacht away, Madame Gilbert, and trouble the boy no more."
"I have no wish, we have no wish, that Willatopy should leave the Torres Straits, least of all that he should go to England. But he interests me extremely, and I would see more of him and of his home before we go away. It will be but for a few weeks, Mr. Grant, and all that while I will be his zealous guardian. Besides myself there is only one white woman in the yacht and she is my maid and at my strict orders. I can appreciate the danger of alcohol for him, but surely a boy like Willatopy—whose eyes are blue as the sky at dawn—has already experienced the seductions of sex?"
"No," emphatically declared Robert Grant. "Where there are no clothes there is no curiosity, and where there is no conscious shame, there is no viciousness. Willatopy in the hands of an unscrupulous white woman would become a devil. Drink and debased white women are the man-eating tigers in the path of his life; if they fall upon Willatopy they will devour him. Go back to your yacht,Madame Gilbert, turn her head towards England, and trouble us no more."
"Bereft of our accomplished pilot we should be ashore within the hour," quoth Madame slyly.
"The boy's a wonder," mused Grant. "He arrives and conquers without an effort. He has bound you to him by his skill in pilotage, and now, I suppose, you will make him lead you to his island, happy no longer. The curses of the white man will descend upon it and upon him. Drink and Lust.... You will not have known the father of Willatopy; he was before your time. In the eyes of the world he was mad; in all eyes, perhaps, except my own. He gave up his home in England, he married a Hula girl out of New Guinea, and he settled upon Tops Island. All these evidences of rank insanity are known to you; to me alone is known an incident which would class Will Toppys among the doddering idiots. When I first heard of it from the man's own lips I was staggered. I am a Scot and a banker and a materialist. I should not have done what he did; I would have realised a quick fortune, and dashed home to bonny Scotland. I do not live on this filthy island for fun. You cannot conceive, Madame, how after thirty years of the tropics I ache for a bitter Scots haar. But Will Toppys was true to himself; he rejected the lure of the millions as he had rejected that of the thousands and the hundreds. During the wanderings of Will Toppys some twenty years ago, when first he went to New Guinea, he came across an old Australian gold hunter, one of the original gang who in the fifties had staked out claims and washed gravel for gold dust in the river beds beyond Balaarat. This oldfellow had found gold in a creek in New Guinea, and was washing for dust in the old, old patient fashion when Toppys discovered him. The old man was unhappy. He had, it is true, found gold in paying quantities, but mixed with the gold was some dark, heavy obtrusive substance which marred the serenity of his daily operations. The gold would not wash clear by itself. Always it was mixed with this miserable stuff which had to be painfully separated from it. The old man showed Toppys some of it; he had kept a little under his bunk, but had thrown the rest away. Neither Toppys nor the digger knew anything of the stuff except that it was a nuisance. But Toppys took a pinch or two away with him in an envelope. His curiosity was so far stimulated that he despatched the envelope to the Assay Office at Brisbane, and asked for particulars of identity. Years afterwards he showed me the reply which came to him from the Assay Office. The dark, obtrusive, heavy metal, which the old digger had been throwing away because it interfered with the purity of his gold dust, was one of the iridium family, of great commercial importance, and was valued at fifty pounds sterling an ounce. Fifty pounds an ounce! By comparison the gold dust was mere dross. You will inquire, as I did, what course William Toppys took. Many men, who pass for honest, would have persuaded the old man to sell his claim for some derisory pittance and have stolen the fruits of his discovery. Others would have offered to help the old man at his gold washing and have taken their payment in osmiridium. Others again would have slain the discoverer. Toppys did none of these things. He went to theold digger's hut to acquaint him with the gift which God had sent, and found that, while he waited, God had vouchsafed another and a greater boon. The old man lay in his bunk dead. Toppys buried him there among the wealth of which he had never learned the value—and went away. The man was true to himself. He had come to the Torres Straits to live the simple native life, and he would not look back for all the riches of New Guinea at fifty pounds an ounce. And he never disclosed to anyone, even to me, the secret of the deposits. They were somewhere on the south coast, that was all that he would tell. His reason was like himself, sanely mad. God, who had hidden those treasures for millions of years, had disclosed them to two men—one who was dead, and the other who was as good as dead. Toppys accepted the revelation as a Divine test of his sincerity, and it would, in his eyes, have been sacrilege to have given away or sold the knowledge. I admit," concluded Grant rather savagely, "that if I could have won the secret from him, I would have scratted up the blessed stuff with my finger nails. Fifty pounds an ounce! More than a million pounds a ton. From his own point of view Will Toppys was right in rejecting the useless wealth, but I still think that he might have given me the tip."
"I must tell that story to Alexander," said Madame, "if only to enjoy his writhings. Fifty pounds the ounce. Poor Mr. Grant and poor Alexander. Though one does not need to be a Scot to jump at fifty pounds an ounce. I could do a bit of scratching at that price with my own lily hands."
"That was William Toppys, the father ofWillatopy. Though how that serene and unworldly soul came to inhabit the body of an ancient and commonplace Toppys passes my poor comprehension. Willatopy, who worshipped his father as a god, is not a bit like him in temperament. He reminds me sometimes curiously of an English public school boy. He has the typically English unintellectual love of life. There is nothing of the anchorite about him. He enjoys every minute of his life. His virility and extraordinary endurance are Melanesian. Do you know how William Toppys died when that boy of his was twelve years old? No? Let me tell you, and perhaps my story of the son will be as illuminating as my story of the father. Toppys loved his son, though he could have wished him to have been less dark. The sisters are almost white, not darker in skin than many southern Europeans. They wear nothing but the native petticoats, so that one has full opportunity of inspecting their colour. Willatopy is black beside them. Toppys and his son were always about in their yawl, which the father brought out from England. It is fully decked and a fine seaboat. They went everywhere in it, and cared nothing for the storms or the currents which make our navigation so difficult and dangerous. It was in March of 1912 that William Toppys was killed, accidentally killed, in the presence of Willatopy."
"Killed!" exclaimed Madame. "I did not know that."
"Yes, killed. I have the particulars here in my drawer with the—the other papers. Toppys and the boy were cruising to the north and one evening at sunset had let go their anchor in the lee of a widecoral garden. It was the season of monsoon, when storms and rain sweep down from the north-west. The wind blows sometimes with hurricane velocity. We have a very brief twilight; at one rush comes the dark, or almost. The anchor had gone down in fifteen feet of water on the edge of the coral, and Toppys had gone forward to lower the sails. Somehow, I don't know how, his feet became entangled, and he pitched overboard. This was nothing in itself. The yawl has no more than two inches of rail, and both father and son frequently went overboard without intention. Willatopy swims like a seal, and Toppys was quite at home in the water. Willatopy, when he heard the splash, ran forward, cast off the halliard of the mainsail, and threw the bight over the rail. It was difficult to climb back without a line. He saw his father come to the surface, gasp, roll over, and sink again, leaving a trail of blood in the sea. As he fell, Toppys must have struck his head against a spur of coral, and when he gasped must have filled his lungs with water. He sank like a stone to the bottom. It was after sunset, and rapidly growing dark. Willatopy, the small boy of twelve, dived at once and sought for the heavy man of twelve stone on the floor fifteen feet below. It was already dark below, and quite a minute passed before Willatopy got his hand under his father's arm and struck up to the surface. Then he found himself six feet from the yawl, and drifting past her. There followed a furious struggle. The small boy, hopelessly overweighted, fought every inch of the distance, struggled across those interminable two yards, and just got his fingers on the counter as the current carried him away. Ifhe had missed his last grab at the rail, Willatopy could never have swum back bearing his father's body, and he would never have let go. He is Melanesian in muscle and skin, but his heart is that of an English bulldog. The boy's fingers gripped the rail, he hung at arm's length, and with the other arm he grappled to him the man whom he worshipped as a god. Picture to yourself the situation. The night had fallen, the wind was soughing overhead, and threatening a gale, the tide was swirling past the coral and dragging at Willatopy's burden—and the mainsail halliard, by which alone he could essay to regain the yawl, was more than fifteen feet distant toward the bows. And Willatopy was twelve years old, and his father weighed twelve stone. I want you to get all these details clear before you, Madame. An English boy could never have done what Willatopy did then, and afterwards. He would have possessed the heart but not the lithe enduring strength nor the profound sea knowledge. Willatopy pulled himself in towards the boat, and her side inclined slightly towards him. Then he gave the leap and kick of a dolphin, and shifted his grip from the counter to the side rail. By a succession of kicks and leaps he worked his way forward inch by inch, foot by foot. He does not know how long it took him to reach the halliard, which trailed in the water. He says it was hours, but Willatopy has vague ideas of time. At last he arrived. He seized the line and swung clear. Treading water he passed the line under his father's arms, and made sure that when his own support was withdrawn, the man's head would be clear of the water. All through that desperate, one-armed progress fromthe stern to the midships of the yawl Willatopy had never once loosened his grip upon his father, nor allowed the dear drooping head to sink under water. Then when his father had been securely tied, Willatopy worked forward to the anchor chain and climbed on board by the bowsprit. He was up and hauling in an instant. The yawl inclined more and more as the heavy body came in over the rail, but the boy took a grip on the deck with his naked toes, and hauled more vigorously than ever. Now was the beloved body stretched at last upon the deck. The boy felt a long gash on his father's head, and could not distinguish a sign of life. There was no breath that he could perceive in the limp sodden body. The Hula fishers of New Guinea have their own methods of restoring the apparently drowned. Willatopy applied them. He also remembered his father's lessons and turned them to account, working the dead arms up and down to induce respiration. It was dark as a wolf's mouth; Willatopy had to work by touch and ear. The time passed, how long I do not know, and without pause for rest or food the boy worked on. He went on until the grey dawn found him still working. And then he knew that his father was dead. The blue Toppys eyes were cold and sightless. The body which Willatopy had rubbed and kneaded all though the night was becoming fixed in the rigor of death. Willatopy rose up and went below. He filled himself vigorously with food, thinking hard all the time of a method by which he might transfer his father from the exposed deck to the little bunk which had been his bed at sea. He felt very lonely. His white god had withdrawn its presence; no longer wouldthe two, father and son, sail the seas together. In the ordinary sense, I do not think that Willatopy grieved at all. He was too busy. After a vigorous attempt he was obliged to leave the body on the deck. His strength was not equal to the work of transfer to the cabin, but he did what he could. He lashed the body so that it could not be disturbed by the rough movements of the yawl, or by the washing of heavy seas. Then he set the sails, hauled up the anchor, and laid a course for home. The disaster had occurred some fifty miles to the north of Tops Island. But three days passed before a small boy, grey with exhaustion and the continual beating upon his naked body of salt sea foam, sailed a yawl, with the corpse of his father lashed to the deck, into the harbour of Murray Island thirty miles to the south.
"Of those three days Willatopy can tell little. He had been caught in a furious gale and blown out into the Gulf, driving before it with no sails set except the small jib. Soon after leaving the fatal anchorage, where Toppys had been killed, Willatopy's eye for weather had told him to strip the yawl of her canvas, and she had come down, as it were, from full dress to a loin cloth before the tempest burst. For twenty-four hours—as Willie put it, 'from sun to sun'—he had sat by the tiller without food or sleep. And the previous night had been sleepless, too. Then the wind fell, but the waves ran high under the eternal Pacific swell. By lashing the tiller for a few minutes at a time the boy was able to take food, but sleep was still denied to him. He came back in long reaches, steering by the sun, for he had been blown far from familiar waters. Hewas a long way to the south of Tops Island, and east of the Great Barrier itself, so that when he sighted land after two whole days in the open, it was a great unknown, unfriendly reef within which the passages were narrow and tortuous. Still he worked his way through, and getting under shelter of a strange island, let go his anchor and slept. I do not think that he could have held out but for that God-given sleep. And so after yet another day he arrived in Murray Island. They took his father's body and would have buried it there, but Willatopy forbade. He was all right, he said, and going on home, but for the moment he was tired, and wanted to lie up among friends. So the good souls of Murray Island made a rough coffin, and laid Toppys upon that bunk in the little cabin where he had so often slept. Willatopy slept peacefully on the opposite bunk. He did not shrink from his father's body as an English boy would have done; he was happy in the thought that his god was still with him. And then, still alone, that boy of twelve sailed homewards with his father's corpse. He laughed when assistance was offered, and scorned companionship. 'Now that my father is dead I will sail his yawl,' said he. 'No one understands her except him and me.' Will Toppys is buried near the hut where he had lived with his wife and children. The family buried him themselves, and repeated over his body the prayers which the dead man had taught them. That is how William Toppys died, and that is how his son, a little boy of twelve years old, brought the father home."
Madame Gilbert's eyes were full of tears, and she did not speak for a few minutes.
"He comes of good stock," said she at last. "Blood always tells."
"Good stock," assented Grant, "on both sides of the house. If his father was a Toppys of Devon, his mother is a Hula of New Guinea. Willatopy is grit all though."
"I am very very much obliged to you," said Madame. "I understand now something of the father and more of the son. Believe me I wish Willatopy nothing that is not good."
"Then," said Grant very seriously, "if you mean him nothing except good you will sail away from the Torres Straits and trouble him no more."
Three days later at noon theHumming Top, with thick oily smoke pouring from her funnel, was getting up steam and awaiting her pilot. Alexander Ewing, a grim happy Ewing, was down in the engine-room. For days he had been stimulating the hunger of a market by exiguous sales at the most appalling of prices; when money failed he graciously accepted pearl—at his own valuation. Reflecting now upon his work, he saw that it had been very good. And since the financial risk had been laid to account of Sir John Toppys and all the profits were divisible between himself and Ching, no thought of dividends payable to the Idle Rich obtruded to mar his pure satisfaction. He had become, by exercise of his own brains, a profiteer and a capeetalist—and the world was a very pleasant place. But though conscious of well-doing, his great mind had been for a while slightly disturbed by two exasperating thoughts. In a moment of expansive generosity, while receiving the congratulations of Madame upon his commercial abilities, he had presented her with a large pearl. He did not grudge a present to one whom he loved—and in his queer fashion he really loved Madame Gilbert—but it had been an unnecessarily large pearl. A smaller one would have earned for him as sweet asmile of thanks. Alexander hated an over-payment. And he never could forget that five per cent. for the officers and men which Madame had wrung from his grip. Even as he rejoiced in his gains, and counted them over in his recollection, that five per cent.—a whole shilling in every pound sterling—worried him dreadfully. It was as bad as an income tax. He wondered how Madame would take a proposal that some charge under the head of a "management expenses" should be debited against that five per cent. If a labourer were worthy of reward for his bodily toil, surely Alexander Ewing should be conceded some adequate remuneration for the wor-r-k of his br-r-ains.
And while he reflected upon the flies which always will defile the most perfect human ointment, an inspiration came to him. Only really great business minds are favoured in this way. He saw that he might make good the cost of Madame's excessively large pearl, and recover no small portion of that scandalous five per cent., by judicious wangling of the accounts. It was an operation which promised almost infinite possibilities, a simple operation seeing that no one except himself had any grasp of the true principles of finance. A grievous load lifted from his mind. God was in His Heaven—luckily a long way off—and all was right with the world. Human happiness is so rare that one loves to contemplate it unalloyed. I figure to myself Alexander Ewing, in his engine-room, grimly and perfectly happy.
It was at slack water, at the moment when the tide turning began to run eastwards through the Straits, that Willatopy's yawl hove in sight, andhe bore down in his usual impetuous style. He had not come before, he explained to the gloomy Skipper, because it was absurd to waste steam by forcing the yacht against a five or six knot current. An hour or two of delay had turned that current to one of equal velocity in theHumming Top'sfavour, and he was prepared forthwith to make up, and more than make up, for the apparent procrastination. Ching, who was sick of Thursday Island, and had wanted to get away at daybreak whatever might have been the state of the tide, was obliged to admit the force of so seamanlike an explanation, but he did not love the "Moor" any better for presenting it. In his view a coloured man's place was the stokehole, not the bridge, and most certainly not the cabin. He detested the favour which Willatopy had gained on board theHumming Topand scorned his pretensions to be a member of the House of Toppys. When the fathers have for generations played the merry three-legged game—Plymouth, Slave Coast, West Indies, Plymouth—a black skin remains a covering for merchandise in the eyes of the children, even in the Twentieth Century.
Fully a hundred miles interposed between Thursday Island and the "miles and miles of shore and forest" which were the home of Willatopy. Between lay a labyrinth of coral, for the most part uncharted, of which he alone in the yacht had the secret. Ching might call him a Moor and detest his presence on the sacred bridge, but Ching knew, better perhaps than anyone else, that the safety of yacht and of all who sailed therein rested in the brown hands of the half-caste boy. By unchallengeable right, Willatopy conned the ship while herlawful commander glowered below in the chart-room. If he had not put the yacht aground away yonder on the fringes of the Warrior Reef, Ching would still have believed in his own capacity, somehow by rule of thumb and lead, to navigate his own vessel. Now he knew that he couldn't, and that Willatopy could, but he grudged the boy the skill which was denied to himself. It was very absurd, and I am really rather ashamed of my compatriot of Devon. No seaman can have precise local knowledge of all waters everywhere. Ching would have subordinated himself without a murmur to an authorised pilot in the Thames or the Scheldt. What irked him was to play second fiddle before Madame Gilbert to a wholly unauthorised Moor. It was no consolation to Ching to know, as did everyone else in the yacht, that Willatopy had swum in these Straits before he could walk, and had sailed them before he could talk. They were his own back yard, and there was nothing specially commendable in the precision of his acquaintance with them. He had, it is true, more than a mere accumulation of local knowledge; he had a sure sea instinct. But that came to him by inheritance on both sides of the house. Daily habit, inspired by instinct, had made him the ideal pilot whom Ching should have hugged to his bosom on the bridge instead of cursing under his feet in the chart-room. But it was all the same to Willatopy. He had never been in sole charge of a big steamer before, and he joyously played with the yacht as any boy would. He loved to drive her at full speed, to tickle her sensitive steam steering gear with his pretty little telegraph, and to watch the whole length of her sweep round corners wherea fractional misjudgment would have ripped the bilge keels off her frames.
Alexander Ewing highly approved of the methods of Willatopy. He hated what he called backing and filling. He liked his engines to be kept running at a sound steady speed, and not to be perpetually bothered with stopping and reversing and forcing the propellers to make good the deficiencies of the rudder. With Willatopy in command, theHumming Topdrove along as if coral reefs did not exist, and as if the deep water channels had been never less than a mile wide. He never ran into difficulties, because for him there were no difficulties.
They lay up that night, and picking up the eastward current again early in the morning, ramped up to Tops Island at a speed to which the cautious Ching had not yet become reconciled. Madame was on the boat deck watching the thickly wooded island rise up with the sun out of the sea. It was no low coral atoll, but a fine volcanic lump of basalt towering six hundred feet out of the water, and clothed with green woods up to the summits of the hills. As the yacht approached the shores she saw a multitude of pretty little coves bounded by rocky headlands and fringed with white coral sand. Here and there groves of cocoa-nut palms delicately skirted the sea edge, while patches of the devouring mangrove ran right into the salt water, and won back to the land wide stretches which the sea had covered. Madame had seen many islands in the Straits, but this Island of Tops came most near to the realisation of her imaginative dreams of the South Seas. It was in truth an Island of Dreams, and Will Toppys, madman and saint, had chosen well whenhe built his hut upon it, and pegged out his claim upon hundreds of acres of shore and woodland. To the north-east, as they slipped along the coast, appeared the entrance to a long narrow bay—described by Alexander as "just a wee Scots loch"—of which the whole line of shore to the left was owned by Willatopy.
I do not know the dimensions of the Estate of Toppys. Willatopy's ideas of space were as vague as his ideas of time—one was miles and miles, the other hours and hours—but from what Madame told me it must have run to a thousand acres at the least. There was more than a mile of shore to Willatopy's front garden, and the natural park at the back—called by Alexander the policies—extended up the hillside for another mile or so. I don't suppose that the Honourable William Toppys paid very much for it. Grant of Thursday Island, who has all his papers, would know. Madame, who is much more interested in people than in their possessions, never troubled to enquire about the property, and proved to be quite useless as an authority upon it. Alexander Ewing, with whom I had much intimate conversation before I ventured upon the details of this story, declared dogmatically at first that it was "about twa squar-r-e miles." On cross-examination he admitted that "the policies" had no ring fence, and that he had never explored their alleged boundaries. Though I love to be particular, and refused to describe theHumming Topuntil Denny's of Dumbarton had sent me a scale plan of her—which they very kindly and obligingly did—I have not troubled Mr. Robert Grant. For one thing he is toofar away, and for another—before I have done, the other reason will be clear to the discerning reader.
The narrow bay, the "wee Scots loch," bit deep into Tops Island, and across it had been piled up by the mountain streams a bar of mud and sand, a low wave-swept barrier. Though the yacht could not cross the bar, she could lie safely within the entrance to the bay, and under shelter from the prevailing trade wind—which at that season blew from the south-east, swelling up almost into a gale at midday and dying away to nothing shortly after sunset. The shore of the island was very steep, and Willatopy brought the yacht in to within a hundred yards of a thick clump of mangroves. He let go the bow anchor.
"The tide is now near the turn," said he, "and there is a rise of ten feet at high water. You had better run out another anchor seawards, and let her swing with the current."
"Thanks," growled Ching, rudely. "You can pilot me up the Straits, but you can't teach me anything about the mooring of a ship."
Willatopy turned away, and descended to the boat deck. He inspected the twenty-two-foot lifeboats with great care, and shook his head with emphasis. "No good, no damn good," said he.
"What is troubling you, Willie?" asked Madame.
"Those fool boats," grumbled he, "have rudders. They are no good for the surf. Look," he pointed to where half-a-mile from them the swell broke in huge curling rollers on the bar of Tops Island. "One can't hold a boat true in that surf with a bit of wood stuck on rudder pintles. If I took you in now when there is little water on the bar in a boatlike that she would broach and roll over and over. And the sharks are watching there for the meal that they would get. If you don't want to be food for sharks, Madame, you trust to Willatopy."
"For days past," said she, "our lives have been in your hands, Willie, and you have not failed us. Show us what we should do."
Willatopy beckoned to the second officer and explained that he wanted the rudder to be unshipped from one of the lifeboats and a strong eye of rope lashed to the top of the sternpost. It was to take a steering sweep, and to be very, very strong. "I take Madame in through the surf," he added.
"The devil you do," said the officer, gazing upon the huge foaming rollers, whose thunder as they broke upon the bar made conversation difficult. "Will it not be safer to wait till high water?"
"No," returned Madame calmly. "I go now—with Willatopy."
"If you go I shall go too. Though it seems to me just foolishness. At high water it would be easy."
"Yes," assented Willatopy. "Quite easy. There is a channel inshore which you could pass in the motor boat. It is only now at low water that the surf breaks heavily like that."
"No," repeated Madame firmly. "Where Willatopy leads, I follow. Make ready and be quick about it."
The second officer lashed on the eye of rope himself, and tested carefully the fitting of the longest sweep that he could find. He had pledged himself to share Madame's risks, but he was not going to take more chances than he could help. When hehad finished the job, Willatopy passed it as very good.
"I could steer you over the bar of the Fly River with that," said he, "and the surf up north is not like those little breakers."
The "little breakers" were rearing their heads fifteen or twenty feet above the sea level, and crashing down in a welter of foam which stretched as far into the bay as they could see. The little breakers were big enough for Madame and the second officer, though Willatopy made light of them.
The officer climbed into the boat, in which six sailors stood ready to swing out and lower. Madame was about to follow when Willie checked her. He looked with disapproval at her graceful white muslin dress and shook his frizzy head.
"It will be very wet," said he. "I go like this."
In a moment the shirt and trousers of civilisation dropped from him, and he stood up a bare, naked savage. When Roger Gatepath first met Willatopy he had feathers in his hair and a bootlace about his middle; now Madame beheld him without either the feathers or the bootlace.
"Whew!" whistled the second officer.
"I cannot quite follow your admirable example," said Madame, smiling, "but if you will wait a moment I will dress the part of surf bather."
She ran down to her cabin, whipped off her clothes, wriggled into a blue silk bathing dress, and above it buckled a light linen trench coat. In this garb she did not mind how much water came aboard. Indeed afterwards the bathing dress andthe trench coat became her standard wear while braving the surf of the Islands.
"Will this do, Willie?" asked Madame upon her return to the deck.
He surveyed her gravely. "My sisters would have thrown off their petticoats."
"But I am not your sister," answered Madame, climbing into the boat.
Willatopy followed, and was observed to tuck the discarded shirt and trousers carefully under the stern sheets. He had wrapped them up in a bit of sea cloth.
The boat was swung out and lowered, and the six sailors bent to their oars. Willatopy standing upright on a thwart firmly grasped the eighteen-foot sweep, and flicked the boat this way and that to test her response to his will. He appeared to be satisfied, for his lips opened in a grin of sheer boyish enjoyment.
"Give way," cried Willatopy.
Madame Gilbert, thorough in all that she undertook, had gone right forward, and, seated firmly, gripped a thwart with both hands. She was sure that Willatopy would hold the boat true in the surf, but she felt some small apprehension lest she might herself be pitched out into the mouths of those hungry waiting sharks. At about a hundred yards from the bar, Willatopy cried to the men to hold up the boat and await his orders. He was watching for the big roller which comes at fairly regular intervals, and which was the one to sweep them forward on the furious race through the surf.
"Now," he roared, and the lifeboat rushed upon the bar.
Madame felt her lift, lift, lift until the boat seemed to be poised upon a steep swiftly moving roof edge. She looked forward into the depths of an enormous hollow; she looked back to where Willatopy stood, naked as when he was born, his hands frozen upon the big sweep, the happy grin upon his joyful face. Time stood still. They were travelling at a full twenty knots, but it seemed ages before the lift of the boat ceased, and her bows fell to the level.
"Oars," cried Willatopy, and the men tossed them inboard.
The bows, with Madame clinging to her thwart, toppled steeply forward. The stern rose and rose until Willatopy, standing upright, and clutching the edge of the thwart with his bare, prehensile toes, towered over Madame's wet head. The surf all around boiled and roared and foamed over the gunwale. Madame low down got the worst of it, and wished that she had left that drenched linen coat in her cabin. The bathing dress was enough for decency, and was meant to be wetted. Down the hill of foaming water they raced faster, much faster, than they had climbed it, and always the line held true. Willatopy was always ready. He had played the game so often that his firmly planted swaying body met every jerk and strain of the struggling lifeboat, as if he knew exactly when to expect those desperate efforts to broach and roll over which are the obsession of boats in surf. At the foot of the hill of water Willatopy called again, and the men again obeyed promptly, falling to their oars, and driving the heavy boat down the bay. For half a mile they ran, still tossing through broken water,and Madame, picking the strands of copper hair out of her eyes, looked out towards the sandy beach towards which Willatopy was steering. He drove the boat right up on the sand, splashed over the side, and ran shouting up the beach. Instantly a pale brown figure emerged from the woods, another followed, and Willie was in the arms of two girls, who, save for their banana leaf petticoats, were as bare-skinned as himself. With an arm about the waist of each he marched off towards his home amid the trees. Madame was again forgotten. She, that proud beautiful white woman, was becoming used to being forgotten.
But presently Willatopy came back, and with him walked his mother, the Hula woman of Bulaa whom the Hon. William Toppys had made his lawful wife. Madame advancing looked at her curiously. Although the half-blooded daughters wore nothing but the native petticoats, the mother was clad in a white European blouse and skirt of cotton. She may have put them on for the dignity of the Family, but Madame thinks that she always went clothed.
"This is my mother," said Willatopy proudly. Madame held out her hands, and the native woman came to her, shyly at first, and then eagerly as she drew courage from the sweet irresistible smile of welcome on the most beautiful face in the world. She took both Madame's hands and knelt at her feet.
"No," said Madame Gilbert. "Here," and lifting the poor shy, humble creature in her strong arms, she took her to the wet trench coat and kissed her on both cheeks.
And that is how Madame Gilbert came to TopsIsland. One may well ask what Sir John Toppys, Baronet of Wigan, the entirely neglected paymaster of Madame's most expensive expedition, would have thought of that pretty little scene.
Between the arrival of Madame Gilbert at Tops Island and the coming of the Hedge Lawyer there interposed three or four brief weeks of happiness. Not for years had Madame been so purely and childishly happy. She had sailed away from that man-destroying white civilisation which during four desperate years of savagery had torn her own world into rags; she had descended upon an island where the joy of life reigned as King, and death had no terrors. From a Europe worn out by passion, a Europe grown old and weary and corrupt, she had flown back, as it were, to the sparkling morning of free, joyous human life. And with quick sympathy she revelled in her new experiences.
TheHumming Topwas moored in shelter hard by the shore of Tops Island where the tide rose and fell ten feet, and the Pacific swell rolled continuously. And with it the yacht rolled, too, continuously in spite of her sturdy bilge keels. She was long and narrow and of light draught, she was built for speed in the open sea, not for threading the labyrinths of coral reefs or for lying up indefinitely in the lee of mangrove swamps. It took all the superb skill of a Willatopy to navigate her in safety through the channels of the Coral Sea, but not even the stomach of Willatopy, sound though it was bypractice and inheritance, would have relished the perpetual roll of theHumming Topat anchor. Madame cleared out of her most comfortable sea home, and took with her Marie, who had all the Frenchwoman's hatred of uneasy salt water. Sir John Toppys, at a hint from Madame months before, had purchased three large tents of the Thames pattern, oblong in shape, and with a wide air space between walls and roof. These tents were borne ashore and pitched in an agreeable clearing about a quarter of a mile from Willatopy's home. Madame desired privacy for herself, and had no wish to intrude upon that of the Family of Toppys. One tent was equipped for the use of Madame and Marie, a second contained the gear of a cook and steward, and the third was set aside for any of the officers or men who might be assigned to Madame as her shore escort. There were a score or more of native families on the island, and both Ching and Ewing set their faces against leaving Madame Gilbert unguarded in their midst. Ching hinted that head hunting, though a dying industry in the Straits, might be capable of revival under severe provocation. And Ewing, as he contemplated Madame's gorgeous copper mane shining in coils upon her bonny head, hinted that the provocation to secure so unique a specimen might prove irresistible. Madame laughed and flicked at them both the muzzle of her Webley automatic.
"I am a perfect shot," quoth she, "and if you will be reassured, I will promise to keep my gun ever beside my virtuous couch." But in spite of Madame's skill in shooting—of which she gave an impressive demonstration on the boat deck—theyinsisted upon the necessity for an escort I suspect that neither Ching nor Ewing could endure a long separation from their Madame Gilbert, and that both senior and junior officers welcomed a few days of respite from the ever restlessHumming Top. There was never any lack of volunteers for the duty of furnishing the escort and of beguiling the ample leisure of the capacious-hearted Marie Lambert.
"Profiteering has solid advantages," observed Madame to me, "for those who draw upon its unfathomable resources of ill-gotten wealth. That dear old John Toppys of Wigan said nothing to me at the time, but it appeared that he dredged London and Southampton for the latest and most luxurious of camp equipment. Our tents had floor boards covered with thick rubber, and strewn with extravagantly costly rugs. There were beds with the springiest of mattresses, adjustable rest chairs, dressing tables, and the dinkiest of toilet apparatus. Unbeknownst, as Ching expressed it—Sir John had laid down for my use a camp toilet service in solid silver—and with silver at famine prices!—and had stuck in a card requesting me to honour it with my gracious acceptance, for keeps. You see, I had told him that I was a forlorn widow! He had not overlooked equipment for my maid. Every conceivable device for cooking and serving food in camp had been thought of and provided, including Primus stoves, and the men's tent—though less like a bower of Venus than my own—was good enough for anyone below the exalted standing of a goddess. Even Ching and Ewing, who had managed to decide in their wise heads that I was not Sir John Toppys' wayward mistress, opened their eyes at hislavish provision for my comfort. When he saw his own tent, Alexander became, if possible, more convinced a business man than ever. 'Wealth is power,' said he gravely, 'even in a desert island. I have done no so badly with the dopes and the legitimate trade, but I must do a power of robbery yet before I can count dollars with Sir John Toppys.' We camped out on Tops Island, but there was not much of roughing it about Sir John's notions of camp life."
Madame had won the heart of the Widow Toppys when as a beautiful white stranger she had clasped the little creature to the bosom of her wet trench coat, and she speedily gained also the hearts of the two "useless daughters," scorned by Roger Gatepath. They were twins, very light in colour, aged about sixteen. Their names, as locally rendered, were Joytopy and Crytopy. Queer names. Mrs. Toppys, who spoke an English of her own in the halting accent to which the middle-aged Roger Gatepath had lingered to listen, explained that one of the girls in her early infancy had been the most joyous, smiling angel that ever came down from Heaven. The other twin had howled unceasingly. The Hon. William Toppys had called one Joy and the other Cry, and had dug up real names which would suggest the infantile characteristics. The girls had been christened Joyce and Chrystal, but Joytopy and Crytopy they had always remained. When Madame met them there was much bubbling joy and little cry about either of them. They frisked about in their short voluminous petticoats of stripped banana leaf, wearing bright beads round their necks, and short-lived tropical flowers in theirdusky hair. The girls were not pretty by European standards, and the blue eyes of Toppys had passed them by. But there was a glow of splendid health on their pale brown skin, and the lithe grace of free tropical creatures about their fully developed figures.
These girls had never worn European clothes. Will Toppys, true to his theory that the mystery of woman, which has played so devastating a role in human history, is due to the seduction of clothes, always insisted that his daughters should wear the native petticoats. They were enough for decency, said he, but not enough to excite the smallest curiosity. Especially as the native girls, amphibious as their men folk, always stripped bare when plunging into the sea. But though Joy and Cry had never worn, never even seen, the contents of a European draper's shop, they showed the most fascinated interest in the toilet fripperies of Madame Gilbert. It was some little time before she could induce them to enter her tent. To them it suggested a trap of canvas of which one pulled the string and smothered the incautious entrant. But gradually she won their confidence. With instinctive courtesy they never would approach her dwelling unless by direct invitation, and when within moved about gravely and spoke seldom. Madame to them was a remote royal personage. The silver toilet service did not move them—thinking that silver was always money, they called the precious metal bright tin—and the Persian rugs were an encumbrance to the feet. They hinted also that the floor coverings and hangings would in time prove a happy hunting ground for insects and other vermin of the woods.But when one day Madame opened a trunk and spread before their astonished eyes the glories of her underwear, they instantly fell down and worshipped. They had never seen such garments, they had not the slightest notion of how to put them on, yet the beautiful texture and soft feel of the feminine things bowled them over instantly. Perhaps it was the instinct of clothes in their white blood bursting forth; perhaps it was some deeper, more universal, instinct which makes women of all races kin. I don't know. But Madame assures me, and I believe her, that at the first sight and touch of her "things," Joy and Cry bowed their frizzy heads and did obeisance. They did more than that a few days later. Coming home late one afternoon after a turtle hunt with Willatopy, Madame found Joy and Cry in her tent posturing before the deeply interested eyes of her maid Marie. The banana petticoats lay neglected on the floor, where they had been tossed, and the girls were clad in French frillies with which Marie had invested them. Madame was angry, and the girls shrank away from her. In rapid, furious French, Madame scarified that thoughtless, warm-hearted maid of hers, and warned her to leave the girls alone as she had warned her to leave Willatopy alone. Robbed by Madame's stern orders of the fascinating frillies, the girls resumed their own petticoats and sadly withdrew. The incident worried Madame not a little, and she spoke very plainly and seriously to Marie about it. It showed by how frail a tie these half-white feminine creatures were held to the simple native habit of life which their white father had laid down for them. I had nearly written "nativelife and customs," but checked when I remembered a discovery which Madame had made concerning these girls. Though they dressed like natives, and lived in all other respects the lives of natives, there was a subconscious force in their white blood which cut them off from familiar commerce with native boys. Girls and widows in the Torres Straits follow their inclinations, the girls of their hearts, the widows—one is told—more commonly of their mature avarice. Married women, by immemorial and most potent custom, are chaste as Junos. But from this most universal of social customs these two girls, Joy and Cry, tacitly yet resolutely stood apart. Their own mother was astonished; she could not comprehend an abstinence which consorted so queerly, to her mind, with their vigorous healthy natures. Yet it was so, as she almost tearfully assured Madame.
"But surely you should be glad," said Madame, puzzled and inclined towards laughter at the woeful visage of little Mrs. Toppys. "Their father, had he lived, would have honoured his daughters for this—exclusiveness."
"But how will they ever claim husbands?" wailed the Hula woman from New Guinea. "How ever can they ask a boy in marriage if already they are known to be so cold and unnatural?" It is the woman who proposes marriage in the Straits, and the man who, after full consideration, gives or withholds his assent.
Madame soothed the disconsolate widow, and went away smiling. Grant had declared that all the vices and diseases in the Torres Straits were the gift of the white man, but the instinctive aloofnessof Joy and Cry revealed to the uncomprehending world of Tops Island that some hidden virtue after all sprang from the white strain in their blood.
Madame, a hardy investigator and always frank in her dealings with mankind, tackled Willatopy, the brother of Joy and Cry, and the lover of numberless brown girls whom his blue eyes vanquished at sight.
"My brown girls, they are nothing," declared this easy-mannered Don Juan, "but Joy and Cry are the daughters of my father, the Great White Chief. They are not meat for the scum of Baru. The boys here, what are they but tillers of my garden when they work and whipping blocks for my stick when they don't? I am rich, I do not work. These others I make work for me, and pay in white silver from my banker. They are the dirt under my feet, and if one of them drew near to Joy or Cry, to speak to them without my leave, I would let out his blood upon the sand, and would smoke his head over the fire in my cookhouse."
There was nothing of the modern democrat about Willatopy.
As he imagined to himself, and declared to Madame, the fate of a native island suitor for the temporary favours of his sisters, he drew forth one of the deadly trench daggers which Alexander, a trader in hardware for the Islands, had given him in a moment of expansion. I beg the pardon of Alexander Ewing, man of business. He had sold two daggers to Willatopy at "trade prices," at a tremendous discount which had made them seem to him like gifts.