IT was at Colombo in Ceylon that we met with Ram Nad. I asked for him in the market place, and found him. He was sitting on a cobblestone, and leaning over his basket, asleep.
My acquaintance with Ram Nad began many years ago. Somewhere in my indefinite and unmapped past, I once lived on the island of Ceylon, and knew Ram Nad. He was by faith a Buddhist, by nature a painstaking liar, by profession a medical practitioner, or quasi-physician,—not of the allopathic school, nor of the homeopathic, but of the heteropathic and absurd. But he practised sleight-of-hand tricks and mesmerism in a manner that roused my profound respect. We exchanged informations, and I had a great affection for him in those days.
Even then he looked like a mixture of Abraham and an early Christian martyr, with some resemblance to a sheep.
I took him aboard theViolettain order to get his advice respecting the orphan-asylums of his native land.
Ram Nad already knew himself to be more vertebrate and sagacious than I, but he did not know Mrs. Ulswater.
The harbour at Colombo is no harbour, but an open roadstead, though quiet at that time.
“ The spicy breezes blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle,
And every prospect pleases, and only man is vile.'
The hymnal says so, but I don't agree with it. Three-quarters of Ceylon is an abomination of swamp, sand, and jungle, with a most pestilential and vile climate; whereas the normal Cingalese person is the mildest, most peaceful and pious agriculturist that's to be found.
Ram Nad wore a blue head cloth. The rest of his clothes were meant to be white, like his beard. He squatted behind his basket. Mrs. Ulswater rocked in her rocking-chair, knitting, looking at Ram Nad as if she did not make out how to begin benefiting him. She examined Ram Nad, who in turn examined Susannah, who in turn was, at that moment, playing jackstraws.
Ram Nad said there were no orphan-asylums in Ceylon that he could truly recommend, which sounded conscientious.
He continued: But for himself, he said, he was a lonely man; desolate and empty was his house of the beautiful gardens; he was desirous of children in his old age. The excellent Mrs. Ulswater—might her benevolence be rewarded! the learned Dr. Ulswater—might his folly and ignorance have been by time corrected!—he hoped these all would understand his immaculate motives. For what said the Great Teacher? “Let parents train their children, and their memories be honoured by the same: let the husband give his wife kindness, together with suitable ornaments and clothes, and let her be a thrifty housekeeper; finally, let the pupils give attention, and the teacher instruct them in knowledge.” The girl, he said, pleased him; therefore it was possible that he might in righteous charity adopt her, instruct her. By a singular accident he had but yesterday taken a solemn vow to adopt a child to his old age; many had been witness to this vow.
Mrs. Ulswater looked thoughtful. She rather wanted Susannah brought up Presbyterian. “He quotes Scripture very well,” she whispered to me. “It sounds queer, but maybe it's his clothes.” But she seemed disturbed, and looked away at Susannah, who played jackstraws.
I reflected vaguely about Ram Nad, on the different kinds of guile he was equal to, and how if he went off with Susannah, the Indian Ocean would seem less entertaining. Mrs. Ulswater appeared worried.
Ram Nad waived the point, or appeared to. He said he would, if we liked, display some marvels for our instruction, while further considering. Then he opened a few common tricks.
He took Mrs. Ulswater's sewing, threw it over the rail into the sea, picked it out of the inner folds of his turban, and returned it. Then he thrust Mrs. Ulswater's knitting needles down my throat and drew them one by one from the pit of my diaphragm. It seemed so, sufficiently so. In fact, it made me feel unwell. He induced Susannah to enter his enormous conical basket, covered her and stirred inside with his hand, with a violent circular motion, as one beats eggs with a spoon—took off the cover, disclosed the interior, and shook it bottom up. No Susannah there!
He covered it, stirred again—eggs and spoons—turned it over, lifted it again. There sat Susannah on the deck, safe but indignant.
“You punched me!” she cried, and then turned distracted to clutch at the small of her back. Mrs. Ulswater came to her help, and unbuttoning her frock took out the jackstraws. They seemed to have been dropped down her neck. Susannah was furious.
Ram Nad next seated himself opposite her, and fell to crooning and spooning with both hands—two spoons, infinite eggs.
Mrs. Ulswater said, “Well, I never!” Even I may possibly have ejaculated, “Ha!”
The eyes of Susannah became fixed, her form rigid. Ram Nad stroked his beard, Susannah the front of her frock. He sighed, she sighed. “Roll!” She rolled; she kept on rolling; she rolled across the deck and brought up in the scuppers, where she struggled to continue rolling. “Roll back!” She rolled back. “Sit up!” She sat up. He fell to crooning and waving—reversed spoons and a reaching after dispersed eggs. Susannah blinked, relapsed, awoke.
Remarkable maid, Susannah, strenuous, decided. She dashed at Ram Nad. She snatched off his head cloth. She flung it in his face. She fled to Mrs. Ulswater and wept loudly in her arms.
Ram Nad looked surprised and partly martyred.
“Nevertheless, I am not displeased,” he said, picking up his head cloth. “I will take her to my house of beautiful gardens.”
“Indeed you won't!” cried Mrs. Ulswater. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
Ram Nad bowed his head, pulled his beard, and covered himself with meekness. I suggested to Mrs. Ulswater that there was a Cingalese point of view.
“Surely,” Ram Nad, ineffably mild. “We say no more, excellent Mrs. Ulswater. Other orphans are elsewhere to be found and the vow accomplished. But now, if permitted, I go, and return soon with gifts of fruit plucked in the gardens of my house, that our happiness may be complete as the meeting of long-parted friends, pleasant as to the bee is the honey of the flower.”
It was all gammon about his house. He had no property except his trick outfit in a basket, his moderate but amusing clothes, and a lien on a cobblestone in the market. Mrs. Ulswater observed him quietly. I didn't make out what she thought of his handsome remarks.
He was rowed ashore in the gig, and came back later in a misshaped Cingalese canoe, kilted fore and aft, with two coolies for rowers, who promptly departed. He fished pomegranates and pineapples out of his basket, and was very pleasant. He begged to be allowed to sleep on a deck rug beneath our palatial awning. He said it was the custom of the country. So it was, granted a rug and awning were handy. He talked a number of kinds of gammon, and he knew I knew it was gammon. But, then, I allowed that a Cingalese of his age and acquirements had a right to be mythological in his statements.
Oh, Ram Nad, friend of my earlier days! I'm free to admit your standards of virtuous conduct were ever in some respects obscure, not to say too much for me.
MY family at midnight lay asleep in their staterooms. The Indian moon shone on theVioletta, which lay lifting slowly with the swell. The watchman sat forward. Ram Nad, with his chief garment wrapped about his head, was stretched on a rug on the lee side and just above the portholes of the stateroom occupied by Susannah.
I was awakened by Mrs. Ulswater's suddenly pulling my arm. It was near three o'clock in the morning.
“Listen!” she whispered. “Now, wait!” To my bewildered sense became now audible the sound of soft, regular steps in the outer cabin and on the cabin stairs leading to the deck. I arose softly.
I saw Susannah in her long night garment, of Mrs. Ulswater's making, stiffly mounting the stairs with a military step! and beyond her, on the moonlit deck, whom but Ram Nad, white-bearded, blue-turbaned, white-garmented, beckoning, retreating! I was about to advance, when at that moment Mrs. Ulswater shrieked loudly in my ear, and Ram Nad, running forward, sharply shut and bolted the cabin door. An instant's silence followed, then shouts and swift feet running aft. I rushed to the port-hole. Past it and past my face went a swiftly falling and fluttering body, which splashed in the sea. Was it Ram Nad? Was it Susannah? Mrs. Ulswater was beating the door with her hands and crying: “Catch that man, Captain Jansen! Catch that man!” Distressing moment! Norah came from her room and mingled her voice in the tumult. But there we were, locked in.
The cabin door was opened. Captain Jansen's comfortable bearded face appeared, “Yes, 'm. But he yump for das boat. He gone ofer.”
“Then catch the boat. Quick!”
“Yes'm. But I got das boat mit un grapple.”
We all emerged on the warm night, on the moonlit deck. The women had donned their shawls. This was the situation.
Ram Nad's misshaped and kilted canoe was held fast, and one end lifted from the water by a grappling-iron, at which a sailor was tugging with a rope over the rail. The two black heads of his rowers were just above the water at some distance, moving hastily shoreward, their wakes shining in the moonlight. Ram Nad was nowhere in sight. Susannah stood on deck, the watchman forward sat stiff and motionless—both of them rigid, frozen, mesmerised, wrapped up in his or her inner consciousness like a ball of yarn.
“There!” said Mrs. Ulswater. “He didn't get Susannah. Doctor, we must go away from this place. I don't like it.”
“We can weigh anchor,” I said, “surely, now as well as any time. But, my dear, as to these ossified unfortunates, I don't quite see. I'm no Ph. D. Mahatma, nor yet a brindle cat, hell-broth witch. It's mortifying, but that's my limit. I'm not on to Ram Nad's spoon motion, nor yet his lullaby. Hadn't we better wait and find another magician that knows how to untwist the charm? Because Ram Nad appears to be drowned, and these two, according to my notion, are, as you might say, tied up particularly tight.”
Mrs. Ulswater tried to wake Susannah, but could not. She was indignant. She thought that I treated the subject too lightly, in language I ought to be ashamed of, that there was nothing funny about it. Maybe not. I gave it up. I thought the situation was not without a certain sepulchral but natural gayety.
“Ashamed” I take to be a vertebrate condition. I never could fetch it. It's left out of me. I've got no centre of personality, no angles to my circumference on which to hitch a conviction of sin, never could seem to get hold of that kind of embarrassment. Calling myself a series of conventionally derogatory and ineffective names is the nearest I can come to remorse. But speaking impersonally, no doubt Mrs. Ulswater was right.
At this point Captain Jansen called: “He's yump in! Yes, 'm. He's yump!”
We ran to the rail. There Ram Nad sat in his kilted canoe, wringing the water from his garments.
Mrs. Ulswater said, “You come up here right away!”
He seemed unwilling, but Captain Jansen dropped a rope ladder, and the sailor jerked on the grapnel, rendering his position untenable. He yielded and came, wearing an expression of injured meekness. He yielded to Mrs. Ulswater's command. He spooned and crooned Susannah and the watchman into normal condition, and retired hastily to some distance, holding on to his head cloth, avoiding Susannah.
Mrs. Ulswater now reduced matters to order. The indignant Susannah was persuaded to bed. Ram Nad was put under guard. Mrs. Ulswater and Norah retired.
The anchor was raised. TheViolettagot under steam. We glided away into the Indian Ocean. I remained on deck reflecting, inhaling the soft breath of the dawn, gazing at the fair palace of the night,—how marvellously roofed and lit, how floored with sparkling mosaic,—considering two things which equally excited my admiration, namely, the constitution of this world and Mrs. Ulswater.
I conversed with Ram Nad.
As far as I could gather from Ram Nad, he had first gotten into conversation with the watch, and mesmerised that: Norwegian, after which he had hung himself down from the rail and mesmerised Susannah through the port-hole. A subtle performance! He did not dare enter the cabin, having a nervous fear of Mrs. Ulswater. Mrs. Ulswater's emphatic cry had roused the crew. He had plunged over, and, rising, clutched the edge of the boat; which being grappled and the coolies fled, he had submitted, first to concealment, then to capture. Now,—he continued,—were his excellent intentions frustrated, his purposes to instruct the damsel, who had intelligence and temperament suitable,—excepting that she was a female of a tiger and not respectful of elderly men,—to instruct her in wisdom, according to the Precept, to the end that people might behold him performing wonders, and his riches increase. But how then? The righteous man endeavours. But if frustrated, let him be content. Yet he could but wonder for what reason he was now being carried away, recklessly, from his native land.
I didn't see, either, why we were carrying off Ram Nad, but it seemed to have points of interest. I didn't see any real objection to it. I suggested:
“You don't think that you ought to be skinned or drowned? Why not? It depends on Mrs. Ulswater's opinion. But see here, Ram Nad, if you ever try to mesmerise Susannah again, or anybody aboard, I'll see to the skinning privately. I'll insert Mrs. Ulswater's knitting needles into your digestion, Susannah shall stuff your mouth full of jackstraws and head cloth, and Mrs. Uls-water shall make a Presbyterian of your mangled remains. You hear me!”
Ram Nad took oath he would not.
PEACEFULLY we journey then over this balmy sea. My enlarged family is at peace, excepting Susannah. The meekness, the surprised interest of Ram Nad in us, in our purposes and his own situation, are irresistible, except to Susannah. Mrs. Ulswater seems to regard him as a sort of second orphan. Susannah resents this idea.
We approach the Malay Peninsula. Ram Nad sits cross-legged on a rug, teaching Susannah the Pali alphabet. I read the English poets to Mrs. Ulswater, who sews garments for Susannah. So does Susannah, sometimes, with vicious jabs.
Mrs. Ulswater does not attend to the reading. She has something on her mind.
“Dr. Ulswater,” she says at last, “is Ram Nad a well-educated man?”
“My dear, he knows everything that I don't. Therefore he knows infinitely more than I do.”
“Why shouldn't we bring up Susannah among us, instead of looking for an orphanage any more?”
“Perfectly possible.”
“Why shouldn't we have a mission of our own on theVioletta, instead of hunting for other people's missions?”
“An idea!”
“Well, then, we will.”
“A sort of floating mission,” I continue. “Fascinating, unique conception! That is, if pursued moderately. The orphans are a success, so far, including—with some reservations—Ram Nad. But I wouldn't invest too heavily, too rapidly, in orphans. I would take, in fact, some pains to get hold of preferred stock.”
She agrees thoughtfully: “Of course, theViolettawon't hold a great many. I should want nice ones. That's what you mean.”
“Precisely. For instance, Ram Nad is more interesting, perhaps, than those whom Susannah so forcibly described as inwardly composed of 'mush and dassent.'”
“Then that's what we'll do.”
I think, then, with all deference to destiny, that we will.
“I have sometimes wondered,” I remark to Mrs. Ulswater, “just what our idea was in kidnapping Ram Nad—if it was quite accidental, or if we were not, on that occasion—shall we say?—in collusion with accident.”
“Why”—Mrs. Ulswater returns to her sewing—“of course! I thought he wanted to steal Susannah. He wasn't a bit good at pretending. Goodness, no! But I didn't know how he was going to do it, so I asked Captain Jansen to stay awake below. But it would have been dreadful if Ram Nad had drowned. I just let him try, because, of course, I thought, after behaving so, he couldn't say much if we carried him off.”
“But why, at that time, did we want to carry him off?”
“It was the pictures in the big Bible,” Mrs. Ulswater replies. “All the old men there look like him. I thought it would be nice to have him.”
Such is our situation. Here I float on Elysian seas. (My next article, on the Scaphopodae, will astonish the scientific world. My collection of Cephalopterae is now unique. I have proved three mistakes in Schmidt's classification of the Coelenterates.)
Ulswater.
P. S.—Ram Nad begs to remain with us. He is inwardly composed of guile and gammon. Still, like Susannah, he is in a way a personage.
But suppose Mrs. Ulswater learns Oriental mesmerism of Ram Nad, and supplements—quite unnecessarily—by this means, her government of me. I should protest: “No, Mrs. Ulswater! Not while I know myself master of this household!”
P. P. S.—Suppose she insists!
South Pacific,January.
MRS. ULSWATER has collected more orphans.
There are, without doubt, many methods of selecting the beneficiaries of a mission, asylum, home for curables or incurables, or similar foundation. Mrs. Ulswater's favourite method seems to be what one of the new orphans calls “a coopdeetat,” but she denies any such preference. She says “It happens so.” That may be, and yet I have a feeling—a marital weakness perhaps—that she has a sort of pull, a secret understanding, so to speak, with circumstances. With the bait foresight, and the rod discretion, she catches the trout accident.
Mrs. Ulswater, who first established over me a kind of Monroe Doctrine, forbidding to other powers the annexation of any territorial portion of me, followed it up by a species of suzerainty controlling foreign relations; which having developed into something resembling the German Empire,—that is, nominally an alliance, practically a solid entity of control,—therein I rest, on the whole, patriotic and pleased.
A month ago my family consisted of Mrs. Ulswater, Norah the maid, Susannah the orphan, Georgiana the hen,—both from the island of Clementina,—and Ram Nad, a Cingalese pundit and fakeer, whom Mrs. Ulswater had collected cavalierly—I admit, cavalierly,—who, after the learning of his race, practised medicine, hypnotism, and sleight of hand; whose medical ideas were ridiculous, his magic good, his status as an orphan an acceptable probability; whose chief property was his wicker basket, shaped like a truncated cone, with a flat cover on top, his vade-mecum, his universal container.
All things he put into it, and there they disappeared. Many things he took out of it. He was a bully magician, and looked something like a prophet and something like a lamb.
Mrs. Ulswater was originally interested in foreign missions. Out of this interest she developed a mission of her own. Her purpose was to employ theViolettaas a migratory orphan asylum, or mobile base of operations, from which to scatter regenerative ideas; to sail about picking up casual orphans perhaps, introducing neatness, good habits, and practical housekeeping to the Pacific Ocean, rearranging haply its populations and politics; a sort of slumming on the high seas, an oceanic College Settlement. A stupendous idea! The Pacific Ocean was much in need of Mrs. Ulswater. It is a loose, untidy ocean, a “Bohemian” ocean with its far scattered islands, lunging seas, and idle solitudes.
“Brooms,” Mrs. Ulswater said, speaking of the islanders, “brooms, soap, and taking pains, are what they need.”
An ominous phrase, “taking pains”! Is it a fact that not enough pains are thrust upon us in the normal course of events, that we must acquire “pains”?
I stumped Mrs. Ulswater with that question. Hadn't mankind enough pains without taking pains? She said:
“The Kanakas haven't,” and then reflected. “People,” she said, “never got civilised by having a good time.”
I fear that proposition is sound.
The festival of Christmas was approaching. Susannah was greatly excited over the preparations. Mrs. Ulswater was making mince pies. Ram Nad—whose opinion of himself is that he is an astral and unworldly soul, while Mrs. Ulswater's is that he differs from all heathen described in the missionary quarterlies, and my own is that he is as full of gammon as an eggshell is full of egg—Ram Nad was taking no interest in mince pies. For myself, in the tropics, I would as soon have eaten a pound of bent whalebone, or a swarm of congealed bees, as a mince pie, whose inward action upon me would, I was sure, be similar to that of resilient whalebone or thawed-out bees; and therefore, although interested in mince pies, I yet regarded the subject with a certain,—shall I say?—anxiety. It was under these circumstances that we sighted, approached, and at length took anchorage at the island of Lua.
It was not an unknown Pacific Island, nor yet well-known. The date of its discovery, its size, inhabitants and products will not be found stated in a school geography, but a good chart will show its location. Whether or not there were any white men there I did not know, but thought it likely. There is a considerable and curious drifting white population in the South Pacific. The Caucasian is ubiquitous. There is a restless germ in his blood, unknown to the Oriental and mysterious to himself.
A numerous village of wattled huts stretched along the white beach of the bay where we came to anchor. I have been not a little here and there in the South Pacific in my time, but never before on the island of Lua. Its blue and lilac mountains in panorama,—white threads of falling water on their steeps,—its nearer hills, palmy and green and like moss in the softening distance, the smooth lacquered water in the bay, the beach, the little brown huts with domed roofs of leafy thatch, truly all seemed at peace. A few people came down to the beach to observe us, and presently a boat put out,—not one of the native outriggers, but a dumpy little ship's dinghy. With the aid of a glass I made out that the occupants were two white men.
Of the two men, who now came aboard theVioletta, the foremost was a tall, bony, swing-shouldered powerful man, with a melancholy countenance, dangling gray moustache, whitish hair, lean throat, remarkably large hands, and a husky voice, who carried a banjo swung by a cord around his neck; the other was plainly a Hibernian, stoop-shouldered, his hair and whiskers forming a circular, complete, and resplendent aureole around his face, at the centre of which aurora a short black tobacco pipe was firmly inserted.
“How do?” said the bony stranger, mournfully, and then casting his eyes down on theVioletta's deck, he stopped and gazed.
On the flowered carpet under the neat awning sat Mrs. Ulswater as usual with her workbasket beside her, her knitting in her hand; there were the rocking chairs with their doilies, some geranium pots along the scuppers, and some lashed to the awning supports; there sat that venerable Cingalese, Ram Nad, with his magic-basket beside him; Susannah held Georgians Tupper in her lap.
“I don't seem to get my vest around your combination,” said the bony one, observing this domestic scene. “Is it waxworks, or pirates?” He looked worried about it. “My name's Sadler,” he continued, “and this yere conflagration behind me is named Irish or Jimmie Hagan, just as you like. We'd be pleased to know you.”
This sounded ingratiating, though his countenance was melancholy. Presently he sat in one of the doilied rocking chairs, with his feet tucked away behind him, and he seemed easy-going in his talk, and candid as to his history.
He had been a sailor once, as it seemed, on a smuggling or filibustering ship along South American coasts, and after that had lived in the city of Portate, South America, and from there he had gotten himself banished on account of his interest in romantic politics, and gone to California, and made money in some kind of Oriental trade; but lately he had been in Burmah professionally, that is to say, his profession there had been that of a sort of high priest, a species of abbot of a kind of monastery; and after that in Sumatra. But a month or more since he had dropped on Lua. The island had interested him by its romantic politics. He had resolved to “take a hand in that seducing game, which it looked real sporty,” he said, “and I judged the showdown was coming soon, but it hasn't yet, and it's been rolling up the blankedest jackpot you ever saw.”
“What!” said Mrs. Ulswater.
“Beg pardon, ma'am. I shouldn't have swore, but them's the facts.”
“What are the facts?”
Sadler looked worried.
“May I,” I said, “venture to suggest that your terms are perhaps a trifle technical, or—shall I say?—a trifle remote. Let me explain to Mrs. Ulswater that by a 'showdown' is intended merely the decision of a given issue; that a 'jackpot,' as such, may be defined as an accumulation of undecided issues.”
“Why,” said Sadler, “you see, doctor, it's this way. Your ideas about technical language and mine don't jibe with each other, and I'll bet my last week's shirt to yours of the week before, Mrs. Ulswater's idea ain't agreeable with either of us on which point my own opinion was similar to his, and I regretfully let pass that interesting wager.
“Well!” said Mrs. Ulswater again; “What are the facts?”
Sadler then described the politics of Lua, in a voice slow, husky, and bereaved.
“Some years ago,” he said, “a friend of mine, who was a white man named Craney, was king of Lua, for he bought out the different candidates, or pooled the interests, or something, and mounted the throne himself. Anyhow, he was killed in a ruction. It occurred to me to come around this way, which happened about a month back, to ask Craney for the job of Prime Minister, but I found he was dead, and the place seemed to me then on the edge of another dynastic war. There was a young chap named Kolosama, who was the son of the king who succeeded Craney, and there was an old chap named Ogelomano, who claimed the throne by right of superior wisdom, with some other complicated rights, and relations, by which it appeared he ought to have been king before. Awful names, ain't they? Well, this yere royalty appeared to be partly hereditary, partly elective, and mostly revolutionary, which is all very well, but hard feeling inside of families is vicious. That's my opinion. Kolo had the largest backing, but Ogel had the superior wisdom, as appeared from this: namely, he immejitly laid himself out to get the support of the newly arrived combination of military genius, statecraft, and diplomacy—that's me. Arguing with a scrupulous conscience, then, I comes to this conclusion; I says: 'The first requirement for a happy kingdom is a forehanded king; the next is a superior Prime Minister; which it's clear from the behaviour of this party that he knows what's what, and it's clear from the behaviour of the other party that he ain't got no real penetration at all; nor he ain't onto the points of royalty, or he'd know that a kingdom without a Prime Minister is as unhappy as a cat with no dog to chase her, which anybody but a fool knows; and consequently this yere Kolosama is unfit to rule this balmy isle, and this yere Ogel is a promising monarch. That's my opinion.' I stated that argument to Ogel, and he agreed that was a tart argument all right, and I was a Prime Minister sent by the gods. Then Ogel and Irish and I, we went over till we come to the palace, which is built of bamboo and all on the ground floor, but else-wise is a commojous mansion, and chuck full of Craney's furnishings; and we discharged artillery from the front door, to let folks know we was on the throne. Then Kolosama collected his party, and went off to the other side of the island, and declared war. Then we called him, on the chance it was a bluff. So it was, and so was ours. Neither of us showed down. That's how it is. Me and Irish with Ogel's warriors, and Kolosama with his warriors, have been prancing forth over these picturesque mountains like we intended to be real vicious, and dodging back till the island's near distracted. We've got the wisdom and foresight, and we got all Craney's firearms by the coopdee-tat, but Kolo appears to have a majority of the foolish population with him just now, and there you are. There's your jackpot, which me and Kolo are playing for. I haven't got the hand to open it, or to do anything but jockey for position, for Kolo's got most of the warriors. I don't know what's the matter with him, unless his warriors don't like gunpowder. Maybe his hand's weaker than it looks, but I'd bet something if I held it, this jackpot would be opened.”
“What sort of a man is Ogelomano?” I asked, when Sadler paused.
“Fat and sulky,” he said; “but I've seen worse. I've seen homelier looking men too, somewhere, but I've forgotten where that was. Maybe it was in a nightmare. For that matter Kolo's all right enough too. I guess the island would be happy with either, were t'other dear charmer away.”
Sadler stopped and rubbed his chin gloomily, and said: “Nice outfit of yours. Waxwork pirates, maybe?”
I explained the purposes and mission of theVioletta.
“Floating orphan asylum,” said Sadler, “sort of perambulating benevolence, and steam-propulsion mission house, to teach temperateness to the tropics. Why, that's all right. A chap that wants to pad his soul with good deeds, and go to sleep on his benevolence like a downy bed, why, he's got a good proposition. I've done it myself, and it worked, more or less. But I always got restless.”
He began thrumming distressful and complaining chords on his banjo, looked off to sea with a dreamy expression, until presently he raised a tune that never should have existed, and sang to it in a voice like that of a walrus with a cold:
“ I want to be an orphan,
And with the orphans roam,
A millionaire my guardian,
A steam yacht for my home—-
“Doctor,” he said, huskily; “it's this way. You've come to the right shop with those goods. Yere's your chance for benevolence. If you'd steam around to the other side of Lua, and find Kolo, which I could spot his location for you pretty near; and if you'd ladle him out some of that there benevolence, and tell him you were his long-lost aunt that was thinking of giving him some toy firearms, maybe he'd come aboard. I shouldn't wonder. But if he brought any warriors with him, you'd better make him send them ashore to wash their faces, which they'll need it all right. Then if you happened to get up steam and sail away with him, and took him to the States, and give him a college education, and sent me the bill, why, I'd send a draft on San Francisco for any amount in reason. Why, see yere, doctor, that scheme is neat surely, and benevolent to hatch eggs, ain't it? Yere you leave the island of Lua with its politics smooth as milk, and a forehanded king whose policy is guided by an unequalled Prime Minister, in the direction of single matrimony and a vegetarian diet. Consider that strategy! Regard it! Look at it all around! Remark the moral purpose! Catch onto its simplicity of design! Why, it's a wonder!” I looked at Mrs. Ulswater, who had said nothing during the above, but sat there sewing, and sometimes glancing up at Sadler. Now she laid down her sewing and said: “Are you sure the island would be better off if one of the kings were taken away?”
“Sure, ma'am! Why, look at it! You can see for yourself.”
“Of course it would look so. But then, is Kolosama a nice person? We don't like to take orphans without knowing about them.”
“I'll tell you on the square, ma'am,” said Sadler, “Kolo ain't bright, or he'd have called me before now. He's slow. He's plodding. Moreover he's self-willed and opinionated. He don't take to prime ministers, or official advice. He needs discipline, and he needs encouragement. And yet I'd call him a promising kid, and a hopeful orphan. He'd be a credit to you. Yes'm. No doubt of it.”
Mrs. Ulswater took up her knitting and said, “I should like to see the older king first.”
“If you'll come up to the palace to-morrow,” said Sadler, “the old man'd be pleased to see you. You've no notion how he'd like Kolo to have a foreign education.”
He gathered up his large frame, murmured, “Piratical waxworks!” and departed, together with Irish, who silently smoked his short black pipe.
IT seemed to me that a Prime Minister who composed poetry impromptu and played the banjo, was a species never yet examined and classified by me. But as to Kolosama's entry into my family circle, it seemed to me the selection of orphans should be made only on strong recommendations.
The next morning Mrs. Ulswater, Susannah, and I started. A well-trodden path led through the forest, and at the end of a few miles came out into a pleasant valley, where lay a scattered village of huts for the most part small, fragile, and consisting generally of a woven roof, posts to support it, and an occasional mat between posts. The palace was easily distinguished, standing in a grove on a hill, a long one-storied bamboo house, surrounded by piazzas. Evidently it had been built by a white man. In some odd way it suggested the States.
Sadler met us in the village, and brought us to his own dwelling, which stood at the foot of the palace hill. I judged it had been furnished from the palace with properties of King Craney. It included five bamboo huts adjoining each other.
A Kanaka servant, who stood by the door of one of them, shrieked and vanished. That hut seemed to be the kitchen. A cat of faded and depressed appearance replaced the Kanaka in the doorway.
“Oh, please!” cried Susannah, “May I have that cat?”
“Dolores is her name,” said Sadler, looking dreamily at the cat, “which she likes to sleep on pies. She's got a heart sorrow, sort of indigestion of the spirit, same as me. Some of it comes from dissipation, some of it on account of sleeping in the oven on pies, which has varieties of climate pretty stiff, so she's got a seared and wasted look, as you might say. Besides,” he added after a moment's thought, “she ain't got no dog to chase her.”
“Goodness!” said Mrs. Ulswater, looking into the kitchen. “Isn't it awful!”
She was down on Sadler's housekeeping to an extent you'd hardly believe. Still, it must be admitted that the weeds growing over the floor made his kitchen look like a pasture lot, and that the kitchen windows were somewhat untidy on account of the Kanaka cook throwing slops at them from a distance. There was coffee in a china vase, and tobacco in the teapot. There was a hen laying an egg in the soup tureen, which fitted her very neatly and snugly.
“Please!” cried Susannah again, “May I have this cat?”
“Sure!” said Sadler. “It ain't good for her here. She gets bad habits living along of me. Any cat would that lived along of me.”
We went up to the palace. It was furnished profusely with the kind of things that seem stuffy in the tropics, for the lamented royalty called Craney seemed to have had a taste for plush-covered chairs, red-flowered carpets, portières with fringes and tassels, glass-bangled lamps, and gilded clocks. For the clocks King Ogel seemed to share King Craney's weakness. I counted fourteen clocks in the audience room, all going but three. The king sat on a plush sofa among his clocks, fanning himself. The largest and gildedest clock stood on the floor in front of him.
He was an elderly man, stout and unwieldy, of morose expression, his complexion inferior, and his grizzled hair stuck full of chicken bones. He wore a pink shirt without a collar, a shell necklace, and a kind of skirt that seemed to have been formerly a lace window curtain. Sadler introduced us. The king grunted, “How do,” and we sat down on the plush chairs and discussed Sadler's scheme. Sadler expatiated on the highly moral qualities in it, the peace that would fall on the distracted island, when Kolo was thus removed strategically and for his own best welfare. The king looked pleased. His pleasure seemed to arouse his hospitality, and his hospitality was startling. He rose, shouted, and stamped. From far piazzas came scuttling, came running, brown men and women bearing baskets and platters; in the baskets was fruit, in the platters fish cooked most messily, and other articles of diet indescribable, which I had no curiosity to taste. But I thought Mrs. Ulswater seemed favourably impressed with the king.
Now fell the hour of ten, and the clocks broke out striking noisily.
Over the king's face passed an expression of unutterable delight. His heavy cheeks wrinkled into smiles. He thumped his chest and chuckled. He turned from clock to clock, keeping his eye in particular on the great gilt clock at his feet, from whose ornate front no sound as yet was come.
The clocks all ceased. But the great gilt clock had not struck.
Suddenly as a crash of thunder the king passed from chuckling happiness to anger, violent and uncontrolled. He clambered to his feet. He stamped. He swore in the language of beach combers and decayed mariners, inexcusable, abominable. He shook his fists at Sadler.
“My clock don' go!” he shrieked. “Arrr! She don' go!” and snatching up a fruit basket, he fell, in utter and abandoned rage, beating, kicking, yelling, swearing, scattering fruit, upon the frightened and frizzle-haired henchmen and henchwomen, who fled with tumult and wailing, from room to room, from piazza to far piazza, and beyond into the forest, where the noise of pursuit died distantly away.
I was amazed. Mrs. Ulswater sprang up.
“Isthata king!” she said indignantly, and started for the piazza followed by myself, by Susannah with the cat, and by Sadler in deprecation. “He ought to be spanked! That's what he ought,” said Mrs. Ulswater.
“You're right, ma'am,” said Sadler. “Ain't a doubt it would be a good thing, and I was thinking, when you spoke, as how, when Kolo was gone and things was settled, I'd just get that introduced quiet like into the regular court ceremonial, putting it under the heading of 'Official Care of the King's Person,' which I was thinking, ma'am, as how it was my recollection a strap got there better'n a shingle. Yes'm.”
Mrs. Ulswater stopped on the edge of the porch, mollified.
“Would you really do that?”
“Yes'm.”
“Well,” she said, “if you'll catch that king and bring him down to tea this evening, we'll think it over by that time. Goodness! How do you know Kolo is any better?” And we returned to theVioletta.