These two trench daggers, which had attractedWillatopy as "just the things for sharks," bring me to the display before my patient readers of Willatopy the Sportsman. He was rich, he did no work. He paid reluctant impecunious native boys to cut his bananas and plant their rhizomes—even the bountiful banana needs some culture—to sow and reap vegetables in his garden, to feed his fowls and pigs, and to keep fresh and sweet the sago palm thatch of his hut. But though he did no work, Willatopy was an indefatigable sportsman. Incidentally, it is true, he supplied the family with fish and dugong and turtle, but in his code—which had a recognisable family likeness to the code of his father's country—fishing and hunting and shooting, whatever their yield in food, were not to be confounded with loathsome and derogatory Work. The labour which they exacted was Sport, and rich man that he was he could pour out his sweat over them and still remain proudly and unstainedly idle.
At Auckland, Alexander had fallen in with brother Scots, who seemed to be flourishing in exile, though they lamented, in the manner of their great race, the harsh fate which had separated them from a beloved country to which they had no intention whatever to return. These brother Scots of Alexander's had assured him that any kind of iron or steel junk would yield fabulous profits in the Islands, and he after cautiously testing the advice by taking counsel of mere English New Zealanders, had gone all out on hardware. Much that he bought at old iron prices was surplus war material, and included sword bayonets and trench daggers. Never had such lovely killing knives been seen in the Straits, and the traders of Thursday Island justrose at them. Alexander sold out at a rate of profit which made even him gasp, and he was a business man who could stand a great deal of profit without turning a hair. Willatopy's trench daggers were sweet weapons. They slipped over the fingers, and were gripped in the fist, so that the six-inch blades stood out as deadly steel extensions of the forearm. With the ordinary dagger one stabs up or down with a blade held at right angles to the wrist, but with trench daggers one hits out as in boxing, and delivers a blow with the weight of the body behind it. When Willatopy first put the two daggers on his hands and hit out, right, left, Ewing bolted behind the smoke stack.
"They are just the thing for sharks," commented Willie with approval.
"Then take them off, boy, till you meet the sharks," implored our cautious Alexander.
Soon after Madame had been installed in her tents, after much going and coming at high tide through the "lubbers' hole" of the bar—she held that one hair-raising journey through the surf was enough for honour—Willatopy summoned his gracious lady to witness the first trial of the daggers.
"There are plenty of sharks in the bay," said he, "fine sharks, as big as a whaleboat."
"But what do you want with daggers?" inquired Madame, vaguely recalling pictures of shark fishing with ropes and hooks.
"To kill the sharks with," explained Willatopy. "One hits, so and so, under the side fins."
"But surely you don't mean to go into the water among the sharks?" gasped Madame, who had she been a loyal representative of the Baronet of Wiganshould have welcomed any hazard to the life of the Heir of Topsham.
"Of course," said Willatopy, grinning. "Sharks are just clumsy sheep. No good, Madame. One at a time is no sport at all, but if I can get two at once, one with each dagger, there should be fun. So and so." He hit out as he had done before Ewing, and Madame skipped like a she-goat. Willie with a dagger on each fist was a most alarming neighbour.
Madame became reconciled to the expedition with difficulty. To her it was a wanton trifling with death for Willatopy, however expert a swimmer, to venture with two bits of steel on his fists into the shark-infested bay. She had all the white woman's dread of the man-eating shark, and could not get contact with Willatopy's indifference. But when Mrs. Toppys had assured her that a shark, properly approached, is as harmless as a seal, and the two girls were not sufficiently interested to look on at the hunting, she consented to be present herself. But she made conditions. The yacht's dinghy in which she was going must be rowed by two sailors and a third must stand in the bows with a dugong spear ready to interpose should Willatopy seem to be in grievous peril. The Heir of Toppys grinned at these childish precautions. To him they were just a white woman's foolishness.
The dinghy was rowed out to a part of the bay which was known to Willatopy as good shark country, and the boy busied himself in tying scraps of cord to the grips of the daggers and to his own wrists. He wanted to make sure that the daggers would not get adrift when he opened his hands in swimming, and would be ready in place at themoment when his fists closed. He was not excited in the least degree; his one feeling was a mild desire to test the efficiency of trench daggers as shark killers. When he had brought the lifeboat through the big rollers on the bar, he had been visibly exalted; now on the eve of shark killing he was no more than placidly interested in the efficacy of his twin daggers.
He slipped over the side of the dinghy, and the rowers lay on their oars. He had told them to give him room, at least a hundred yards, lest the sharks might be frightened away. I think that that direction eased Madame's mind more than all his previous protestations. Sharks must be far less terrible than she had supposed if they could be frightened away by a dinghy.
Madame, herself a good swimmer by European standards, watched Willie amazed. She had never supposed that a human being could swim with that perfect ease and swift smoothness. His brown body lay down in the water as if it loved it, and a bow wave rose and curled over the almost buried head. He swam on his side with a tremendous reach forward and thrust of his powerful right arm, and the drive of his legs was a revelation in the possibilities of marine propulsion. Madame could not see how he breathed, for his head was cuddled down on the left shoulder, though breathe he must have done somehow.
"I can't properly describe it," said Madame to me afterwards. "He was a human torpedo. He went forward in one continuous smooth rush with that clear bow wave curling over his head."
At a little distance, which to Madame lookedtoo far for safety—she still placed an emergency trust in the dugong spear—Willatopy's head rose up and he stopped. Balancing himself in the water by imperceptible movements of hands and legs, Willatopy was hanging out his body as a bait for timid sharks. It was not long before one swooped down upon so attractive a prey. Madame saw the feather of water flung up by a black moving fin, while Willatopy, peering far down into the clear waters of the bay, was on the alert against an attack more subtle.
"Silly beast," murmured he, and his fists tightened on the trench daggers. The black fin ran up and then disappeared as the shark rolled over to strike upwards with those triple rows of teeth which are set at some distance behind and below the snout. A shark must attack its prey belly upwards, and strike from below; if its mouth were in its snout like a crocodile's it would be a much more dangerous foe. The shark rolled over and struck upwards. Willatopy's head vanished, his brown body curled over lazily, and he dived exactly as a dolphin dives. A long swooping flash downwards. The shark broke the surface where Willie's head had been, and Willatopy reappeared where the black fin had been. Shark and boy had changed places, and, if Madame had been nearer, she might have seen the grin spread out on Willatopy's face. The shark twisted its long body about, again rolled over and again struck upwards. Grinning contemptuously, Willatopy slipped downwards under the rising shark, and appeared again behind its tail.
"Why doesn't he kill the brute?" muttered Madame.
"I don't rightly understand," replied the man with the fatuous spear.
"It looks 'orrible dangersome to me, ma'am. I can't 'ardly believe the nigger boy will come back alive."
Once or twice more the shark struck at Willie, and once or twice more the boy evaded the stroke, but made no attack himself. Then all saw for what he waited. Another black fin, with a curling feather rising before it, came sliding up to take part in the sport. Madame, frightened, was now on her feet. Had time permitted, she would, I think, have disobeyed Willatopy's instructions, and urged the boat forward to his assistance. But there was no time. The first shark was attacking again, and the second was rapidly approaching. Willatopy no longer delayed action. He evaded as before the upward stroke of shark number one, and then, before the beast could turn, twisted about under water and rose beneath the belly of shark number two. Right, left, both daggers went home under the fin. Turning without coming to the surface for breath—he could stay nearly two minutes under water—Willatopy swooped back at his first opponent, slipped under it as he had done with the other, and again shot out both fists—so and so. He came up between the two big fish in water reddened by their blood, and watched warily for further signs of activity. But both sharks were dead; he had struck very swiftly, but he had struck home truly.
Willatopy swam easily towards the boat. Shark hunting, especially with the very efficient trenchdaggers, was a sport which rapidly palled, and he had done with it. But it had not quite done with him. When he was some twenty yards from the motionless boat, a third shark, more cunning than his two fellows, rose at Willie from the depths without giving him warning on the surface. But Willatopy was not caught yet. One swims with very clearly skinned eyes in shark-infested waters, and the boy saw the shark's shadow before its body was near enough to be dangerous. The shark rising belly upwards could not see the boy drop downwards like a stone, and when it did sight him, the stroke had failed, and Willatopy had dived under the boat. Madame leaning out over the side glared down into the clear, almost still, water. She saw what is rarely seen, an under-water fight between a man and a shark, and she saw, moreover, how fully Willatopy was justified in his self-confidence. The white body of the great fish shot by the dark form of the lithe, quickly manœuvring boy, who, as it went past, flashed out two blows, right and left, as if he were a boxer side-stepping and countering an opponent's rush. Madame could not see the daggers rip home, but she saw the blood spurt from the side of the shark and its huge body writhe and shudder. Then up came Willatopy's head not six feet from the boat, and he swung himself in over the stern. The dead shark, still quivering, rolled slowly up to the surface, and floated there beside its slayer. The body after allowing for the immersed portions, was a good deal longer than the sixteen foot dinghy.
"They are good knives," said Willatopy, pulling the trench knives off his fists, and unfastening theretaining cords. "They are good knives, just the things for sharks. But sharks are silly sheep, Madame, hardly worth the trouble of killing." He pointed to the three big bodies, each floating in its own red pool, and laughed. "Two at once and then the third. One kills them just like the sheep that they are. There is no danger at all, not one little bit."
* * * * * * *
But though Joy and Cry would not trouble to come out of their hut to see Willatopy kill sharks in the bay, they skipped like schoolgirls at the promise of a dance, when offered a fishing trip to the Great Barrier. They were Hulas of New Guinea, whose savage ancestors had for countless ages fished the waters to leeward of the Barrier. It was the great kindly sea farm of the Hulas, it had grown with them through more thousands of years than mankind can count, and it will stand there, grand, massive and mysterious, long after the last Hula has vanished from the earth. The abrupt north end of the Barrier was some ten miles distant—Madame could hear in her tent the everlasting thunder of the surf against its outer wall—and thence it wound southwards, skirting the North Queensland coast though never touching it, for twelve hundred wave-swept miles. Inshore, from Brisbane to Cape York, there interpose deep navigable channels, starred with islands, and through the Barrier itself are cut gaps here and there by which the hardy navigator may pass in safety from the outside Pacific Ocean to the inner channels. By such a passage, Willatopy, the boy of twelve, hadsteered his father's yawl with his father's corpse lashed to its deck.
The Barrier is a long, narrow, tortuous wall of which the outer face—where the coral polyps love to cling in the foaming surf of the Pacific—drops down almost sheer for hundreds of feet. On the inner side the water is more shallow and broken up by reefs. This wall, twelve hundred miles long, is not more than a quarter of a mile wide on its coping, and in some stretches is no more than a hundred feet. For hundreds of thousands of years the madrepores have been working upon it, each one living out his tiny life in the whirl of the surf, and then dying, to leave his skeleton of lime as one more brick in the gigantic masonry.
The coral polyp, species madrepore, of the Barrier is a patient, courageous little seaman. He is born and bred in the wide ocean. He cannot endure the boredom of life in the still, tame, waters below the hundred-foot level; he cannot exist above the low tidal mark, and his salt soul withers in the muddy freshness of river mouths. I love Darwin's romantic theory of the Barrier, though later authorities have cast doubts upon its sufficiency. Project your mind back, says Darwin, some few hundreds of thousands of years to the time when the Queensland coast was much higher out of the water than it is now in these degenerate days. Imagine the land slowly sinking, a few inches maybe in a century, and there you are! The Great Barrier, skirting the coast yet never touching it, is explained. The coral polyps, which cannot support life except between low water mark and twenty fathoms, can only build fringing reefs along the shore.Wherever a river or stream comes down there is a gap, for the coral polyps cannot live away from their native salt. We have then a fringing reef, cut transversely with gaps, and this reef continually rises in height from the sea bottom as the land slowly sinks. Each foot of subsidence gives to the polyps an added foot of water in which to live and multiply. The æons pass, the land subsides, and presently a water-filled channel opens out between the original fringing reef and the shore. As the land sinks still further, the channel widens, and is ever widening. The fringing reef has become a barrier of which the base on the sea floor is always sinking, and the coping of the roof always rising, built up by madrepore skeletons. Against the edge of the new shore a new fringing reef is built up. And so on through the long centuries. That is Darwin's theory. There are others, less imaginative and more mechanical, but my instinct rejects them. I feel that Charles Darwin, though himself a very bad sailor, has alone done full and sympathetic justice to the splendid sea instincts of the bold madrepores. They scorn the ease of shelter and shallows. Theirs is the open coast on which the wild waves break; they make the long fringe of it one vast coral tomb, and when the land sinks they turn that ancient fringing tomb into a vast outer Barrier. The madrepore is a true sea architect, and no peddling theory of under-water detritus, slowly accumulating as a foundation for his masonry, would deceive him into building on the rubbish.
Willatopy took charge of the expedition to the Great Barrier. He was well equipped with gear, for being very rich and not consenting to do anywork, he bought his nets in Thursday Island. The one which he dragged out of store looked as if it would hold enough fish to feed the Island for twelve months. It was sixty feet long and about ten feet wide. One edge was weighted and the other buoyed, and draw ropes were arranged so that the whole net could be pulled into one long narrow bag. For the service of the fishing party he commandeered the motor launch and two whaleboats.
"We will go out with the ebb and come back on the flood," said he, "and the jolly little motor boat shall tow the whalers. When we arrive, the motor boat shall be anchored in safety while we fish from the whaleboats. We shall want"—he spoke as confidently as if the resources of theHumming Topwere as unreservedly at his call as were those of Tops Island—"we shall want six strong sailors for each boat, and an engineer to look after the motor. I don't understand motors."
"May we have the boats and men?" asked Madame sweetly of Ching, who had come ashore to pay his regular morning visit. He was responsible for Madame's safety on the Island, and nothing would persuade him that her pretty head was not in grievous peril. The Skipper belonged to the dark adventurous past.
"You are the owner," growled he, "and if you choose to butt my boats on the reefs it is your responsibility, Madame Gilbert."
"Willatopy is a first-rate pilot," said she. "I will trust the boats with him."
The Skipper swore under his breath. "It is not my boats I think of, but of your foolishness, Madame. You will spoil that Moor until he getsoutside of himself, and then you will be sorry for the rest of your life. Once a savage always a savage. He is a grand pilot of the Straits, because he has lived in them and sailed them all his life. But in everything else he is a naked savage. Go away fishing if you please; you will be safe with my men."
Ching turned sulkily away. He grudged Willatopy that local knowledge of the Coral Sea which he would never have opportunity to accumulate for himself, and above all he grudged him Madame's undisguised favours. Madame landed a parting dig in the middle of the Skipper's back.
"Willatopy may be a Moor," said she, "whatever a Moor may be. But you can't look him in the eyes and protest that he isn't a Toppys." That was the worst of the poor Skipper's troubles. He had served the Family for twenty-five years, he had all the Devon man's respect for the landed gentry of his native county, and he was subjected almost nightly to the veiled hints of Alexander Ewing. Why had Madame Gilbert sailed for the Torres Straits, and did she and Sir John know that the Willatopy whom they had found was there waiting to be found? It was not only the naked savagery of Willatopy which made Captain Ching long to destroy him.
Madame, the girls, and Willatopy went forth to the yacht in the dinghy, passing the bar at nearly high water, and there joined the procession of boats which lay waiting for them. The second engineer took charge of the motor engine, Willatopy himself grasped the tiller, Joy and Cry bubbling with eagerness to travel in a "buzz boat," clambered into the bows, and the adventurers set forth for theGreat Barrier, which a page or two back I have ventured to describe. It was early morning. The sun shone as it shone every day throughout that gracious southern winter. Its rays had a shrewd bite in them which one never feels in the moist English summer, so that Madame never ventured to confront them at high noon without the protection of a helmet. The wind was blowing up from the south-east as it always did, freshening every moment, and urging on the tireless Pacific rollers. The string of boats rose and fell as Willatopy drove them across the swell, and every now and then a wave would break over the bows, and the warm salt spray lash across the faces of the passengers. Madame Gilbert, in her bathing dress and thin trench coat, was equipped to laugh at the lashing of salt water, and the skins of the half-castes glistened as it soaked into them. Willatopy at a hint from Madame—though he raised his eyebrows in surprise—had put on the holiday trousers of Thursday Island. But he warned her that when the serious business of fishing called for his professional attention, the absurd usages of civilisation would go scat.
"That is right," explained Madame, "in the water. But on land or in a boat you should be dressed—slightly. Your father was an English gentleman, Willatopy."
"My father said," quoted Willatopy, "without clothes there is no curiosity. Sin came into the world with clothes."
"Yes," drawled Madame. "But that was a long time ago. And sin having come we have got to put up with it. I prefer you in trousers, Willatopy."
"As my lady pleases," said he, and Madamestarted. It was a strange sentence to come from so very dark a mouth, and she wondered where he had heard it. Then she remembered that it was Marie's English formula in acknowledgment of an instruction. Willatopy never came to her tent without invitation, and, so far as she knew, had never met Marie except in the officers' mess of the yacht. Where could he have heard her use just that phrase? Had Marie, in her clandestine French fashion, constituted herself the instructress of Willatopy in polite usages as she herself understood them? Violet lightning began to flash from Madame's eyes, and she determined to be very watchful of the movements of that maid of hers. Ever since her confidential talk with Grant of Thursday Island she had felt that the presence of Marie in the yacht and on the Island was a danger. Marie was a promiscuous little she-devil wholly devoid of moral scruples. If in defiance of Madame's warning she indulged her esoteric tastes for Willatopy's brown skin and bright blue eyes, grave mischief might be done before it could be stopped. "If she does," murmured Madame, through her gritting teeth, "I will send her back to France to be shot. And I will give myself the pleasure of attending her execution. There is no weak masculine softness about me."
The water had fallen below its full height when Madame caught her first glimpse of the famous Barrier, and the Pacific swell, urged against the outer face by the south-east trade wind, was meeting the tidal flow and tossing great spumes of spray high into the air. Over the whole width of the reef the water boiled and roared, and masses of corallimestone, tons in weight, were flung about like small stones. Although the madrepores cannot live above the level of low water, the Barrier was several feet higher, and here comes in the mechanical theory of Chamisso and his followers to modify the beautiful simplicity of Darwin's hypothesis of subsidence. By force of the swell which beats perpetually on the outer wall, where the polyps flourish in surf, and where their millions of tiny skeletons are perpetually adding to the structure, lumps are being torn off and piled upon the coping of the wall. These lumps under the solvent action of sun and water become cemented into masses, so that the purity of the original madrepore design is partially lost. The Barrier has risen higher than the polyps unaided could have built it. The sea is no respecter of coral graveyards. In this way the interior of purely coral islands may have become heaped up by masses torn by the sea from the fringing reefs and flung high up the shore.
Though the Barrier broke the full force of the Pacific rollers, enough of water swirled over it to set the string of boats tossing and bucking in the tide rips of the sheltered western face. Willatopy ordered the whaleboats to be cast off, and the motor launch to be anchored some half a mile short of the reefs. The second engineer remained on board of her, but the Topy family and Madame Gilbert transferred their wet persons to one of the whaleboats. The long net was dragged out and stretched between the boats, which drifted slowly on parallel courses towards the Barrier. Between them ran the line of floats which marked the upper edge of the net. As the boats moved rather faster than the heavilyweighted net, it sagged between them, pulling out into a long wide-mouthed bag from the jaws of which the fish feeding in the shallows could not readily escape. The net was carried forward in this fashion until the boats which were controlling it had reached the inner shelving edge of the reef, and the depth of water had come down to about ten feet, which, it may be recalled, was the depth to which the weighted edge of the net descended. Then the fun began, for the drag-rope on the lower edge became entangled in the rough coral lumps on the sea floor, and the fish which had been herded between the net's capacious jaws began to skurry forth through the opening avenues of escape. To Madame this overflow, as it were, seemed to matter little, for, between the boats, the fish were leaping in hundreds, even thousands, and even if half of them won a way to freedom, there would be far more left than theHumming Topor Tops Island could possibly consume. But the family of Topy had other views. The moment had arrived for which these amphibians had waited and hoped; anyone, white or brown, could trap sea fish in a net; it was vouchsafed to them alone, hereditary fishers of Hula, to pursue escaping fish into their own depths, and to catch them directly by hand and teeth.
When the lower drag-rope caught and strained, Willatopy directed both boats to anchor, and cried out to his sisters in native dialect. What he said in words Madame did not know, but what he meant was instantly made plain. Up leapt the three Topys, away went trousers and banana-skin petticoats, and the three of them, bare as when they were born, and revelling in their supreme sea skill, streakedoverboard. The one dark body and the two light ones flashed over the gunwale, and took the water like seals. Down they went to where gaps opened between the net and the sea floor, and the fish were struggling to escape. The human fish swooped upon the sea natives, and grappled them with claws and teeth. These were no small feeble, defenceless fish; the least of them weighed a pound and a half, and the erectile spines near the tail fins made them in their own element opponents worthy even of the Hula Topys. Avoiding the spines, the Topys, boy and girls of equal skill and quickness, grabbed the elusive fish by the gills, and when both hands were full, buried their sharp white fangs in the backs of them.
"I shall never forget that sight," said Madame to me. "Down they would all flash for a few seconds, and then the three black heads shot up and fish in torrents poured into the boat. Blood ran from their mouths, and from the bitten backs of the captured fish. Often and often they shot up, all three of them, with a two-pounder in each hand, and another gripped in their jaws. We poor white folk are proud if we can by artifice tickle a trout in its lair and ravish it from a hole with our hands. These Hula Topys caught those fish in the free open sea. They never seemed to miss their swoop, for they stayed down a few seconds only at each dive, and never came up with empty hands. Their diving was a revelation. There was no effort in it, no clumsy heaving up of the loins and extravagant splashing. Their brown bodies rolled over and vanished with as little fuss as the diving of a seal. Perhaps that is the nearest word to describe whatI saw. The Topys were just seals. Their frizzy hair plastered down by the water gave them, too, something of the look of seals. All the while they never paused for breath. It was up and down, up and down, without ceasing, for fully a quarter of an hour, and the fish came aboard in a torrent. Our bottom boards were covered before the Topys ceased. And then it was the girls who stopped to rest, not that indefatigable Willatopy. Joy and Cry swung in over the high sharp bows and sat down panting on the forward thwart." Madame laughed a little to herself before she resumed the description. "I was interested to observe," she went on, "that the girls were tattooed in deep blue patterns down the centre line of the body and on the upper part of their thighs. And this interested me, for Willatopy had no tattoo marks at all. The pattern was identical on both girls, a series of light brown saltires on a blue ground resembling Alexander's Scottish St. Andrew's Cross. It was curious that the Hon. William Toppys should have permitted his daughters to submit to the Hula tribal markings while his son was excluded. But perhaps men are not tattooed in the tribe though most of the brown Melanesian boys on Tops Island had some face markings. What struck me most vividly was the effect of the tattooing in removing the appearance of bareness. If the Topy girls had been tattooed from breast to knee they would have appeared to the casual eye to have been wearing tight bathing dresses, woven in blue and brown checks. There is a lot to be said for tattooing. Though my dear men turned their bashful backs there was no suggestion at all of immodestyabout Joy and Cry. I loved their admirable, unconscious simplicity."
When the whaleboats had been loaded with fish to their utmost capacity, the unwanted remainder were allowed to go free, and the net was hauled in and coiled down. It was the hand and mouth fishing which the Toppys really loved, the savage sport, not the larder which absorbed their interests. The net was the means to an end—the penning up of fish so that Willie and his sisters might attack them in their native element. The party lunched by the Barrier while waiting for the tide to turn, and at slack water Willatopy suggested that Madame, already clad in her silk bathing gear, should go over the side with him. Madame was willing, but dreaded sharks. She was quite fearless when confronted by risks which she understood, but the thought of swimming with sharks smelling at her toes made the brave lady's blood run cold. For her daily swims off the Island she always kept to a small narrow creek warranted by Willatopy to be shark-proof.
"Sharks are nothing," remonstrated Willie. "They will not come where there are so many boats, and if they do I will drive them away."
"But you have no daggers here, Willie," objected Madame. "Even you cannot shoo away sharks with bare hands."
One of the sailors offered his sheath knife, but Willatopy put it aside. "If a silly shark comes by I will borrow it," said he. "There will be time enough."
Spurred by all this easy indifference—though she saw herself being gobbled up by a huge shark whileWillatopy was strolling off to borrow the sailor's knife—Madame flung aside the trench coat and her sun helmet and stood forth as a reluctant sacrifice for the honour of the white race. Though it may have really been a case of heroism without risk, in her terrified imagination the seas swarmed with black shark fins. Over she went, and following her went Willatopy and the girls.
"I can swim a bit," said Madame, "and rather fancied myself at home. But those brown seals made rings around me. While I lumbered noisily along they would frisk to and fro, now behind, now in front, now on either side. Whenever they pleased, they would join me in half a dozen swift vivid strokes. My progress was exactly like that of an elderly fat woman down a field with three terriers sporting about her. It was a humiliating spectacle. I did my best; I swam as fast as I could, and when I got back to the boat I was puffing like an asthmatic grampus. Willatopy was good enough to say that I had quite a useful leg drive and might learn to swim some day if I stuck at it. He regarded me much as a plus golfer does his thirty-six handicap grandmother. I knew better than to show those Topys that ungainly agitated sprawl which in Europe we call diving from the surface. But though the swimming was a humiliation I enjoyed sitting in the sun to dry."
They returned as they had come, the motor launch towing the whaleboats, and were sped homewards by the welling flood tide. Madame, though she knew it not, was nearing the end of her brief spell of irresponsible happiness. While they had been disporting themselves off the Barrier, Fate hadrung up the curtain for the Final Act in the drama of Willatopy. It was an Act which was long in the playing, but the end loomed inevitable almost from the opening bars of the overture. As the string of boats merrily buzzed into the narrow bay, they all saw that theHumming Topno longer lay there alone. Within the entrance moored to the opposite bank was a small schooner which had just come in, for the crew were even at that moment stowing her lowered sails upon the deck.
"What is that ship?" asked Madame, her brows gathering into an uneasy frown. The Island had seemed so much the private property of the Topys and of theHumming Topthat the presence of a stranger schooner became an unmannerly intrusion. Especially so weather-beaten and dirty a schooner as that one over there.
"Trading schooners often shelter here for the night while on a round of the islands," explained Willatopy. "My yawl does all the Baru trade that there is."
But Madame Gilbert, in spite of this satisfying explanation of the schooner's presence in the bay, continued to look upon the vessel with disfavour. If one schooner dropped in thus unceremoniously, another might come, and another. Some day strangers might land, strangers from Thursday Island or from the big world beyond Thursday Island. The splendid steam yacht at its moorings and Madame's luxurious camp outfit in the woods were not common objects of the shore to be accepted in the Straits without explanation. And they would use up a lot of explanation, and still leave the curious unsatisfied. There was too much of Toppysabout the Island and the yacht for their conjunction to be wholly a matter of chance. Grant, Willatopy's banker, already knew much, and had guessed the rest. He was safe, for his own reasons. But others coming might carry away to Thursday Island, and thence to the big world beyond Thursday Island, a story of the Toppys yacht afloat, and of the Topy family ashore; and some might—some certainly would—connect the one with the other. From that discovery to a peering into local registers would be, for our inquisitive white race, a brief step. Too many people knew the Toppys secret already, and too many more must presently get some hint of it. It was not much of a secret after all. Madame frowned at the dirty schooner and shrugged her shoulders. It was not her secret anyway, though she had done her best to keep it.
The island schooner sailed at dawn. But three days later another came and went, and three days later yet another. It never rains but it pours. The Hedge Lawyer, spurred by a greater master of Fate than his employers in London City, came as a sick and draggled passenger in Schooner number Three. He did not land upon the evening of his arrival, so that Madame did not see him, or hear of him, until the early forenoon after his ship had gone and left him stranded as a trespasser on Tops Island. From this marooning of the Hedge Lawyer sprang many things which shall be told in their place. The first consequence was that the man, a Cockney of Cockneys, was without a home in an island which possessed few huts and no houses of rest for travellers. The feckless intruder had not even bethought him to bring along a tent. With his luggage, a small suit case, he was put ashore in the schooner's dinghy, and left, a black-footed, frock-coated figure of fun, upon the fair white sandy beach.
Madame Gilbert, returning from her morning dip in the shark-proof creek, heard shrieks of pain interspersed with the savage howls of Willatopy. She scurried towards the sounds as fast as her bare feet would carry her. A black-booted, frock-coatedstranger was flying shrieking towards the sea; behind him, keeping foot to foot with him so that the sharp fish spear which he carried might maintain its painful pressure upon the small of the man's back followed Willatopy, naked and extremely angry.
"Huh!" roared Willatopy, thrusting with the spear. The stranger, brought up short by the sea margin, rolled over screaming. He buried his miserable face in the sand so that he might not see the stroke of death which his terrors anticipated. Madame, rushing forward, stepped across the man's body, and held up a restraining hand.
"Stop," she cried. "Who is this man, Willatopy, that you should frighten him so?"
"He wants to eat me," roared Willatopy. "Stand aside, Madame, that I may cut off his ugly white head and smoke it in the fire of my cook-house."
The stranger howled, and wriggled between Madame's feet, as if, like an armadillo, he would burrow his way to safety through the fine sharp sand. It was not the flaked oatmeal of a coral beach, for the water of the bay, flushed by island streams, did not carry the madrepores' living ration of salt.
"Stand back, Willatopy," commanded Madame Gilbert sternly. She pushed the stranger contemptuously with her bare white foot. "Get up, you crawling thing there, and tell me who you are. This island is private property, and you have no business here."
The man cautiously got upon his feet, and stood so that Madame's strong body interposed between his terrified person and the savage spear of Willatopy. His absurd clothes were plastered thicklywith damp, clinging sand—his thin rat face was pinched and white, and his lank, mud-coloured hair and moustache drooped forlornly. He was not a proud specimen of the dominant white race. He gasped and stuttered behind the protective back of Madame, who still faced towards Willatopy, and held the savage half of him in subjection. Willatopy threw down his spear.
"As my lady pleases," said he sourly.
The trespasser upon the fair strand of Tops Island regained some little of the thin courage which had poured out of his black boots. He was no longer menaced with immediate death at the point of the barbarous fish spear; a beautiful white woman was present; had he not been an officer—God forgive our blear-eyed War Office—and was he not a gentleman? He perked up a little, tried to brush the sand from his sleeves and spoke.
"I am John Clifford, managing clerk to Chudleigh, Caves, Caves, and Chudleigh, solicitors, of St. Mary Axe."
"Another lawyer!" cried Madame, and broke into peal after peal of rippling laughter. "Another lawyer! And once again that wonderful perspicuous Willatopy has chased a lawyer to the sea with a fish spear. Willatopy, I forgive you. What a happy world it would be if all men had your instinct for vermin and had from the first adopted your methods of extermination."
"So that's all right," quoth Willatopy, possessing himself of the fallen fish spear.
The late officer and present gentleman shrieked and grovelled.
"You poor worm a British officer, even one themost temporary!" Madame's lip curled in disgust. "And yet we won the war."
"The black boy has a spear and I am unarmed. If I had a bomb now...."
"You would throw it at him. And miss because your hand trembles so. Get behind me, British officer. I have no skirts for your protection; though, had I known of your coming, I would have stayed to put them on. Perhaps by then your head would have been fizzling in Willatopy's smoke, and I, for one, would not have felt regret."
The scorn of her bit deep. "If, lady, you will send for another spear, I will not shelter any more behind your—skirts."
"That is better," said Madame. "The worm has turned at last. Shall we send for another spear, Willatopy?"
Willatopy did not reply. Instead he threw away his own weapon, doubled round Madame, grabbed the stranger's arm; ducked his head under it, and with a great lift and heave of the buttock tossed Mr. John Clifford six feet out into the water. The shore fell steeply, and the lawyer soused under. When he struggled out his damaged clothes had become irreparable. Madame surveyed the dripping figure, more a figure of fun than ever.
"I hope," observed she politely, "that you have brought a change with you. Chills are as dangerous to health in the Tropics as fish spears. Now, Willatopy, while our uninvited and rudely handled guest steams elegantly in the morning sun, perhaps you will explain what stimulated into vigorous action those admirable instincts of yours for theextermination of lawyers. What is all the row about?"
"He came ashore in a boat," said Willatopy, "and landed on my island, Tops Island. He walked up the beach, and I met him at the fringe of the woods. 'What do you here?' I said. 'This is my island. I am very rich, and my name is Willatopy.' 'You are the man I have come to see,' he said. 'You are a great English Lord, and I have come to take you to England, and to get you all your rights. You are kept out of them by villains,' said he. 'My father was a White Chief,' said I, 'but I am just Willatopy.' 'No,' said he, 'you are the Lord of Tops Ham, the Home of the Toppys. Your father is dead, and your uncle is dead. You are now the Lord. Come home to England with me, and I will get you all your rights.' Then I knew that the white rat lied, for why should a man come all the way from England to get his rights for a stranger? I remember what my father said that the English devoured one another. This English man wanted to draw me away from my Island that he might kill and eat me. The English are all Cannibals. So I caught up my fish spear, and thrust at him. He ran away howling, and I ran behind jabbing my spear in his back. He must be covered with my jabs under that black coat of his. He is like a missionary in his clothes, but really he is a cannibal."
"So now you know," observed Madame to John Clifford. "Willatopy is not to be taken in by fairy stories about English Lords and the rights in England. And Willatopy, as you have found out, is an awkward customer to humbug, I should advise youto up stakes and begone, fair stranger. 'Twere better so," she sang. "Bid me good-bye and go." Madame held out a hand, and smiled winningly. "I have done you a service, and perhaps you will remember Madame Gilbert, when you are far away in England. The scars upon your back will always remind you of my friend Willatopy, that perspicuous exterminator of vermin. I am sorry that we cannot entertain you, even with a share in our breakfast. We are hospitable folk, but we draw the hard stiff line at lawyers. Farewell, officer and gentleman."
"But I have lost my suit case," wailed the damp, unhappy Clifford—he was drying quite nicely in the sunshine—"and the schooner which brought me here has sailed away. How can I go? You are a white woman, and should take pity on a fellow countryman. I am wet and hungry, and the chills are running all over me. I am sure the spear was poisoned, and that I shall die here like a dog and be damned."
"Name of a Dog!" swore Madame Gilbert. "Do you suppose I care how you die or where you go afterwards? You are not worth the price of good pit coal, so I take leave to doubt the damning. How did you expect to get away when you had your black carcase dumped upon our Island? By your own dirty law you are no better than a trespasser."
"I expected that Lord—that Mr. Willatopy would carry me away in his yawl when he had learned my news of his inheritance. It is all true that I spoke to him. They told me in Thursday Island that he had a yawl and was the boldest sailor in the Straits."
"Willatopy, leave us," said Madame. "I would be alone with the little stranger. If you should see his suit case on the sand you might pitch it down. He steams prettily, but would be the better for a dry change. If he dies before I have ragged him to the bones, I shall be for ever desolated. I am pleased with you, Willatopy. You are the worthy son of the Great White Chief, your father. If you could look in at my camp, and send the steward down with breakfast—with breakfast for two; he might die too soon if I don't feed him—I shall be infinitely obliged. Be quick, my dear, for I am powerful hungry. And ask Marie for my trench coat," she shouted after the departing Willie. "I came away to bathe in private, and did not expect strangers. Specially when they were not invited," added she pointedly.
"It is lucky for you, Mr. John Clifford, officer and gentleman, that I did not go swimming to-day in the fashion of Joy and Cry, just to see how it felt to be quite unhampered. I did think of trying. You would not then have had me run a step to your assistance. And now I am not going to speak another word until my hunger is appeased. You have my permission to be seated. What ever possessed you, man, to enter the Tropics in those funereal clothes? This is not St. Mary Axe. If your suit case is really lost there will be for you no wear except a loin cloth and a sun-stripped skin. You have no idea until you feel it in the buff how the sun bites. And this is our island winter. In the summer—we shall not take you off, my poor friend, and no schooner comes inside our bar—in the summer you will fry, and your miserable thinwhite hide will frizzle off your wasted flesh. And now be silent, if you can, until I have eaten." The wretched victim had not spoken a word for the past five minutes, but that was nothing to Madame. I have already said that in action she was as swift and ruthless as she was babblesome in speech.
They had breakfast together seated on the sand, and the cabin steward of the yacht waited upon them. He showed no visible sign of surprise at the little stranger's appearance, though his soul must have been ravaged with curiosity. Even yacht stewards are human.
"Now," said Madame, when the steward had gone, and she had deeply inhaled her first beloved after-breakfast cigarette. "Now, if it is possible for a lawyer, tell me something of the bare unvarnished truth. Your story of Willatopy's Lordship is only one degree less probable than your own reputed status of officer and gentleman. You are John Clifford, managing clerk to some many-partnered firm in St. Mary Axe, London, E.C. So far, the Court is with you. Get on with the rest."
"I was an officer, for three months before the Armistice. A second lieutenant of Royal Artillery."
"Mon Dieu!" said Madame politely. "I knew the English Army was hard put to it, but was it as bad as all that? Did you see any service?"
"No. I got exemption during most of the war. I was indispensable at home."
"While gallant French and English boys were being killed," Madame's teeth snapped. "You lawyers look after yourselves. God, if I had lost a son of mine in the war I would take you out inyonder dinghy and throw you to the sharks. That is what you are fit for. Shark's food."
"You are not very civil, Madame Gilbert," grumbled the managing indispensable clerk.
"My unshakeable urbanity under the most severe provocation," responded Madame, "fills me with wonder. Also with admiration. How I keep it up I cannot understand. Get on. I accept the story that you got yourself made a stay-at-home second lieutenant of Garrison Artillery because you were afraid of the open field. I accept that. Now, what about Willatopy?"
"It is true about him. His father and uncle are dead, and he is the heir of Topsham. We were almost sure of it in St. Mary Axe—we have a large Devonshire connection, and know the line of every family of note. We were nearly sure in London; since then I have inspected the registers in Thursday Island. That black boy is the Twenty-Eighth Baron of Topsham."
"Humph!" said Madame. "It is no business of mine, though my yacht yonder is chartered from one member of the Toppys family. I expect there is a catch somewhere, which you will find out—in St. Mary Axe. But how comes it that your firm have intervened? Do they represent the interests of the Family?"
Madame must be highly favoured by the Immortal Gods. For the second time in this history she was privileged to see a lawyer blush. First it was Roger Gatepath, now it was that lesser luminary John Clifford.
"No," he stammered. "Not exactly. We havea large Devonshire connection, and we wish to see justice done to the Heir of an ancient House."
"And incidentally to increase the large Devonshire connection." Madame's voice, when she pleased, could rasp like a file of high carbon steel. "To habitual knavery you add incidental poaching when it offers a profitable connection. What a trade! Man, look at this island. It is the most beautiful in the Straits, and until this morning shone as if blessed by Heaven. With your coming, the air grows chill and dark as though a curse had fallen. It is lucky I have eaten, or your ill-omened presence would banish my appetite. And yet in spite of the most overwhelming provocation I continue to comport myself towards you with the most suave politeness.Vive la politesse!But I won't indefinitely answer for my own restraint. If you provoke me further, I may forget myself and become abusive."
"I shall not stay here to be insulted. I am a demobilised British officer, and——"
"A temporary gentleman," put in Madame. "Sit down, British officer, or I will set Willatopy at you. Where will you go? This Island belongs to Willatopy, and if you pick a banana without his leave, we will hale you to Thursday Island, and consign you to the deepest dungeon. No, on second thoughts we will punish you ourselves. To us is entrusted the high justice, the middle, and the low. We are monarchs of all we survey. We can keel-haul you under the teak fenders of theHumming Top, toast you over a slow fire, or throw you to your brethren the sharks of the sea. We can do any violent thing we please with you. No onewill miss you; no one will inquire after you. We will say that you left the Island—the rest will be silence. Every man and boy in my yacht is my devoted servant; every man, woman, and child on this Island is a slave of Willatopy. Man, you did not know what perils you called up when you had yourself cast on this Island of Tops. Do not, I implore you, repeat in the hearing of my sailors this preposterous story of Willatopy's Heirship. For the moment they are my servants, but in blood and bone they are the feudal retainers of the Family of Toppys. The little fingers of my sailors are thicker than Willatopy's loins. You have felt the scorpion sting of his fish spear; you have yet to feel the searing shattering blast from theHumming Top'sguns. My sailors would blow you into fragments from the foc's'le, and say grace afterwards with unction. We are smugglers and pirates every one of us. What to us is a lawyer more or less? You are homeless, and friendless, and in our power. We can put you to frizzle in the heat by day, and starve you with cold in the long nights. We can deny you food. Even the wayside streams belong to us. You cannot walk or lie down, or eat, or drink, save by our gracious permission. You are cut off from the world, an outcast. Draw comfort if you can from my words."
"You are pleased to chaff me, Madame Gilbert. The King's writ runs even in Tops Island."
"In the immortal words of a famous British statesman: wait and see, Mr. John Clifford, demobilised second lieutenant. And now for the moment I have done with you. Keep clear of my camp, and, for your life, flee from Willatopy. When youare hungered lie on the beach and howl like a dog that is lost. Maybe someone will hear you; maybe, on the other hand, someone won't. It is still less likely that anyone will minister to your wants even if your cries are heard. But as a merciful sister I indicate this one thin chance of preserving from extinction the pale flame of your life. If you will now excuse me, Mr. John Clifford, I will withdraw to my tent and complete my interrupted toilet. Good-bye-e-e."
"A good morning's work," murmured Madame Gilbert as she strolled away leaving the disconsolate Hedge Lawyer to complete his drying alone. "And let us pray that yet another wandering island schooner may drop into our bay that we may urgently speed the parting guest—with a boathook if he won't get moving of his own volition. In these remote islands of the British Empire one should never omit that punctilious hospitality which is due even to the most noxious of strangers."
Madame Gilbert kept no diary of her adventures, and her memory for dates is precarious. But the log of theHumming Top—to which I have had access—confirms her impression that she arrived at Tops Island on the twentieth of May. It was in the fourth week of her stay that the island schooners began to arrive, of which the third carried the little unwelcome stranger, of whom Madame longed to be quit. But although three schooners came within a week, the much-desired fourth, for whose dirty sails Madame looked out so anxiously, tarried until the occasion for its employment vanished with the flying days. During this lamentable period of delay in speeding the parting guest, the opening rounds in the contest between Madame and the Hedge Lawyer had been fought and lost—lost by Madame Gilbert. No longer was it possible to eject him with a boathook; he had become the guest of Willatopy, and Willatopy, Lord of Topsham, was also Lord of Tops Island.
Looking back now over the series of incidents which I have to relate, I cannot but feel that there was some failure of adroitness in Madame's conduct of the campaign. It is true that she had no cards at all—except her own dominatingpersonality—and the Hedge Lawyer possessed the entire pack. But even so her failure to put a wide distance in material space between the Heir of Topsham and his self-appointed legal adviser is almost inexplicable. She must have failed through excess of confidence. She did not grasp the elusive inconsistency of Willatopy's undeveloped mind. She believed that the influence of his dead white father would remain ineradicable—she conceived that it was bitten into steel instead of into soft South Sea wax—and she was misled utterly by the violence of Willatopy's first onslaught upon the managing indispensable clerk. When seated at that breakfast on the shore, she had torn with her feminine claws the quivering flesh of the miserable Hedge Lawyer, she had judged him to be a cowardly fool who could be readily frightened away from his purpose. He was no coward, and a long way from being a fool. A man needs more than the average equipment of Cockney cunning to become, at thirty-two, the managing clerk of a firm of speculative lawyers. This fellow, John Clifford, possessed the quick shrewdness of the City's streets, and the indomitable persistence of a man whose professional advancement depended upon his own unscrupulous ability. His employers had promised, ere he set sail for the Torres Straits, that his return to London with Willatopy as a dazzling and valuable new client, would mark his own promotion to the status of junior partner. He had everything to gain by persistence, and nothing to lose except his life. He was sufficiently astute to realise that Madame's threats were vain persiflage; that she was helpless if he chose to remain on the Island,and that the mind of a half-caste savage might, by adroit moulding, become receptive of strange and flattering impressions. He held all the cards—those which we know of, others which he played later. As he dried on the blazing beach, after Madame had left him, he determined to hang on at any risk from Willatopy's spear and the rude hands of Madame Gilbert's sailors, until he had won over to his side the wandering intelligence of the Lord of Topsham.
"After all," muttered Clifford to himself, "he is an English Lord, and it is a very great thing to be an English Lord." Madame he already hated—which is not surprising. She had not exactly cultivated his favour. He did not know that she had any interest in opposing his plans for the transfer of Willatopy to England, and he did not anticipate serious opposition from her when proof was offered of Willatopy's legal heirship. That proof—copies of the registers in Thursday Island—was in his lost suit case. Also the light flannel clothes which his damp blackness made urgently desirable. So the first step taken by John Clifford in his campaign was to hunt for that case which he had flung away in his flight from the terrible fish spear.
Had Madame realised at the beginning how rapidly the atmosphere would change, how quickly the wild ingenuous boy Willatopy would become interested in the adroit cunning man, John Clifford, she might have acted with her customary and ruthless illegality. On that first morning she could easily have persuaded Willatopy to convey the intruder out to theHumming Top, and could have held him there inactive until a convenient momentarrived for carrying him back to Thursday Island. Adequately frightened, Clifford might have been prevailed upon to set sail for home, alone, but I doubt whether this temporarily drastic course would have availed for long. The firm of poachers in St. Mary Axe could not indefinitely have been denied access to their prey on Tops Island. After Madame and her yacht had gone, John Clifford, or another, would have returned. Willatopy, as the half-caste Heir of Topsham, was too attractive a bait for lawyers to have been left for many months in the security of his island solitude. Roger Gatepath, who understood his own profession, was convinced that the legal vultures of London would speedily discover and fasten upon the profitable pigeon of the Torres Straits.
Clifford found his suit case within the fringe of woodland where first he had encountered Willatopy. And as he stooped to pick it up, a heavy hand smote him upon the back. It was Willatopy again. The boy had been watching the breakfast party of two, and now that Clifford was alone interposed his dark powerful figure between the lawyer and the beach.
"This time," said he, smacking his lips, "there will be no Madame Gilbert."
"Why should you chase me again?" asked Clifford, who feared the boy less now that he had breakfasted. Besides, Willatopy no longer carried the fish spear. "Why should you chase me, my lord? I am your friend, and have come to make you a very rich and great lord in England."
Willie frowned. "I am very rich now. You English are cannibals. You want to get me awaythat you may kill and eat me. My father said that the English devoured one another."
"That meant, my lord," said Clifford, "that the English try to take money from one another."
"As they try to do in Thursday Island," assented Willatopy. "The English try to make me drink so that they may steal my money. I keep it in a bag tied round my waist. Miles and miles of shore and forest are mine, my banker has piles and piles of my silver, all in bags. It comes from England. The brown girls love my bright blue eyes and the brown boys are my servants. I am already rich, and the lord of Tops Island. You are a liar."
"It is a small thing," said Clifford, "to be the lord of a little island in the Straits, and to be master of brown girls and boys. In England you would be a real Lord, the Lord of Topsham; you would have houses, big houses, and your servants would be white, not brown. White women, beautiful white women, would be at your pleasure, and white men would obey your commands."
"White women!" asked Willatopy, who began to be interested. "Would white women love my blue eyes which are like the sky at dawn?"
"They would, my lord. And if you wish to marry one of them she would feel honoured by your choice."
"I don't want to marry one, just yet," replied Willatopy indifferently. "If they loved my bright blue eyes, and were to me as are my brown girls, that would please me."
"You are a great Lord, and there would be no lack of beautiful white women to seek your favour,"said Clifford, whose little close-set eyes began to twinkle. He was progressing.
"I have a very fine hut," observed Willie. "It is thatched with sago palm. There is not a finer hut in the islands."
"In England you would have big houses, not huts," said Clifford. "Big houses with many rooms."
"I do not like English houses," said Willatopy. "The walls are iron and roofs are iron. They are painted white and glare in the sun. I have seen them on Thursday Island."
"Those are not real houses, my lord. Your lordship's chief house in Devonshire has red stone walls and a roof of burnt clay tiles. It is a splendid house, hundreds of years old. Green ivy grows upon the walls. There are many servants in the house and in the gardens; white servants."
"I should like to have white men working in my garden as my servants. They are very proud. I should like to have the Skipper as my servant. I would lay my stick on his back and make him—skip. When I am an English Lord will the Skipper be my servant?"
"If you wish, my lord, all men will be your servants. In England the great lords are the masters of the people."
"Shall I be your master?"
Clifford hesitated. The boy with his childlike savage logic was moving too fast, but it would not do to hesitate. He decided to go the whole hog.
"Of course, my lord. I should be your most obedient humble servant."
"Good," said Willatopy. "Then since I amalready a great English lord you are now my servant. I should like to see a white man working in my garden under the hot sun and jumping when I lay my stick upon him. You shall work in my garden. Come."
"Certainly, my lord, with the utmost pleasure. But may I first change my clothes? I have some others in this suit case."
"Clothes?" cried Willatopy contemptuously. "It is always clothes with you foolish white people. When I go with Madame in a boat she makes me wear my trousers, though I throw them off when I plunge into the water. Madame will never swim like Joy and Cry if she always wears that tight blue bathing dress. Now that I am a great English Lord, all men and women shall be my servants, and shall do what I command. Put on your foolish trousers, white man, and come with me. I will make you labour in my garden, and presently when the sun grows hot at noon you will be glad to put them off for coolness. For now that you are my servant, I shall make you work very hard."
"I cannot work too hard in your service, my lord," replied Clifford obsequiously. He had been successful beyond all expectation, and was willing to sweat copiously in Willie's garden as a sacrifice to the High Gods.
Meanwhile, Madame Gilbert had changed into the whitecrepe de chineand muslin gear which was her toilet on land and in the yacht. She sat in the entrance of her big tent, smoking Russian cigarettes, and mildly wondering what had become of Clifford, the "sharks' food." She anticipated with some pleasure hearing the howls of a dog whichwould announce the hollow emptiness of his stomach. She intended to feed him sparingly as evidence of her punctilious hospitality, though under her austere regimen there would be no margin for pride and fatness. And while she smoked there, ignorantly idle, Clifford had fought and won the first and most difficult battle in his campaign. He was already the victor, though for long hours he sweated outrageously in Willie's garden while that lordly task-master looked on, and now and then administered painful stimulus. John Clifford was, I am convinced, almost flattered by receiving upon his servile, middle-class back the haughtily administered blows of an undoubted Baron of ancient lineage.
It was not until late that afternoon that Madame Gilbert had an opportunity to perceive the changed relations between the Hedge Lawyer and his baronial client. There had been no starving yelps from the beach, and though she had despatched her steward to look for the little stranger, the man of food had returned with his supplies undevoured. None of the sailors had seen the black-coated intruder, and Madame began to hope that Willatopy, true to his instincts, had completed the despatch of John Clifford, and had consigned his remains to his brother sharks of the bay. Madame, I regret to say, has no respect for the lives of those whom she dislikes. When she acted as the lawyer's shield in the early morning, she had not yet made his professional acquaintance. Afterwards, Willatopy might have carved him into pieces if he chose.
In the late afternoon, Madame was roaming in search of some rare tropical flowers which grewat the head of the bay when she came upon Willatopy, attended at a respectful distance by a bare-headed and bare-footed menial dressed in grey flannels.
"Hullo, Willie," cried Madame, not recognising Clifford in this new incarnation, "whom have you picked up?"
"This, Madame," replied Willatopy with hauteur, "is John, my white slave. He works much better than my brown boys, and I shall keep him on my island. He has hoed the weeds all day in my garden, and I have given him food in payment. Now I am taking him to my yawl that he may clean it properly inside and polish up the brass-work. John, can you clean my yawl properly, so that the brass shines?"
"Yes, my lord. Certainly, my lord," said John, cocking an eye at Madame, in which she detected some light of derisive humour.
"You had better," said Willie ominously. "I am a great English Lord, and most particular. If you do not work properly, I shall throw you overboard. The sharks will get you."
"As your lordship pleases," responded John Clifford.
Madame, frowning deeply, watched the two figures—the lord marching ahead with the villein humbly following—embark in Willatopy's collapsible boat, and row out to the yawl, which lay at anchor at the head of the bay. Willatopy would sail her in or out over the bar when the tide was high, though even he dared not push her through the rollers which broke on the bar when the water was at its lowest. Madame realised instantly thatClifford, by cunning flattery, had turned her flank and captured the interest of Willatopy. It was a new experience for the brown youth to possess an obsequious white slave who sweated at his orders, and who addressed him as "lord" and "lordship" in every sentence. The Baron of Topsham was beginning to believe that he must be something out of the common way if a white stranger would come all the way from England to call him lord, to work in his garden, and to clean the brass of his yacht. He supposed that a Lord in England was a kind of headman in a village or the chief in a tribe. Only, as the English were very rich and very proud, a Lord in England must be much more exalted than any man in the Straits—except, of course, the Administrator in Thursday Island, or Grant, the banker. He marched with his head held high, ordered John to row the collapsible boat—which job from long practice on the Thames in summer he achieved tolerably—and, after the yawl had been boarded, directed John towards the objects of his labour, and surveyed his operations from a critical distance. Cleaning the yawl was the one job of work which the Rich and Idle Willatopy had hitherto undertaken with his own hands. He had cared for the yawl as a Sportsman cares for his gun or his horse, and as a golfer cares for his clubs. It was, however, much pleasanter to superintend the labours of John.
"You are clever," he said at last approvingly. "Not stupid like my brown boys. I shall not go to England. I will be a great Lord in my island, and you shall stay with me always as my slave. Thatwhite girl, Marie, who looks at me sideways—so—with eyes that bite, I will ask Madame to give her to me. Now that I am an English Lord, and no longer a brown Hula of Bulaa, the girl Marie shall kiss my feet."
"You will never be really a great Lord unless you go to England where all the men and women are white slaves of the Lords who rule them," said John mendaciously. Having decided to go the whole hog, he did not spare decoration upon the beast. "Here you will be always Willatopy, the brown boy. There beyond the wide sea you will be the Right Honourable William Toppys, Twenty-Eighth Baron of Topsham."
"My father, the Honourable William Toppys, was a great Chief here on his island. I cannot be greater than my father."
"You can be, and you are," said John Clifford earnestly. "Your father was a younger son, never a great Lord. You are the Head of the House, Head of the ancient Family of Toppys. Even Sir John Toppys, who owns theHumming Topyonder, will be your servant."
"Huh!" cried Willatopy. "Is the yacht also mine? I will throw the Skipper, he who called me 'nigger,' and scorns me, I will throw him into the sea, and sail theHumming Topmyself. It will be better even than my yawl."
"No," explained John, who had started Willatopy's mind working, and was alarmed where it would fetch up. "No. The yacht is not yours. It belongs to Sir John Toppys, not to you."
"But if I am the Lord of Topsham, it must be mine," roared Willie.
"No," repeated John, and tried to explain.
But Willatopy, with cries of "Liar, liar, liar," fell upon his white slave, and beat him severely. And so John Clifford discovered, very early in his campaign, that the man who would teach the English law of inheritance to a half-caste and fully logical heir, runs a grievous risk of being mangled by his pupil.
"There," said Willatopy, as he picked up the crumpled body of John Clifford by the slack of its breeches, and hammered it on the yawl's deck. "If the yacht is not mine, I cannot be the Lord of Topsham, and you are a liar and a cannibal. Die-cannibal."