With clenched hand grasping the two letters—the one that sank his last hope of saving his plantation, and the other that blasted his trust in human nature—Hilliard, the planter of Nairai Viwa, walked with quick, firm step to his house, and sat down to think awhile. The great cotton “burst-up” had ruined most men in Fiji, and although long delayed in his case the blow had crushed him utterly.
An angry flush tinged his set features for a few seconds as he re-read the curt, almost savage denial, by his father of the “couple of thousand” asked for. “A fool to resign his commission in the Service and go into a thing he knew nothing about, merely to humour the fantastic whim of a woman of fashion who will, no doubt, now sheer very clear of your wrecked fortunes.”
Ten minutes previously when Hilliard, who had thought his father would never see him go under for the sake of a couple of thou., had read these lines he had smiled, even with the despair of broken fortune at his heart, as he looked at the other letter yet unopened.
Kitty, at least, would stick to him. He was not a maudlin sentimentalist, but the memory of her farewell kisses was yet strong with him; and his past experiences of woman's weaknesses and his own strength justified him in thinking that in this one woman he had found his pearl of great price.
Then he read her letter; and as he read the tappa mallets at work in the Fijian houses hard by seemed to thump in unison with the dull beats of his heart as he stared at the correctly-worded and conventionally-expressed lines that mocked at his fond imaginings of but a few breaths back.
Jimmy, the curly-headed half-caste who had brought him his letters from Levuka, had followed in his steps and was sitting, hat in hand, on the sofa before him when Hilliard raised his face. The fixed pallor had left his bronzed cheeks. For an instant the face of another man had passed before him—Lamington, his one-time fellow-officer, whom every one but Hilliard himself looked upon as being “first in the running” with the woman who had pledged herself to him. But, then, Lamington himself had told him that she had refused him, heir to a big fortune as he was, and they had shaken hands, and Lamington had wished him luck in his honest, good-natured fashion. “Perhaps,” and here the dark flush mantled his forehead, “he's tried again and she's slung me. And I... what a damnably unpleasant and quick intuition of women's ways my old dad has! I always wondered why such a fiery devil as he was married such a milk-and-water creature as my good mother. By ———, I begin to think he went on safe lines, and I on a fallacy!”
The stolid face of Jimmy recalled him to the present. He must give up the plantation and take a berth of some sort. From the sideboard he took a flask of liquor and poured out two big drinks.
“Here, Jimmy, my boy. This is the last drink you'll get on Nairai Viwa. I'm burst up, cleaned out, dead broke, and going to hell generally.”
Jimmy grunted and held out his brown hand for the grog. “Yes? I s'pose you'll go to Levuka first? I'll give you a passage in the cutter.”
Hilliard laughed with mingled bitterness and sarcasm. “Right, Jimmy. Levuka is much like the other place, and I'll get experience there, if I don't get a billet.”
“Here's luck to you, sir, wherever you go,” and Jimmy's thick lips glued themselves lovingly to the glass.
Hilliard drank his oft quietly, only muttering to himself, “Here's good-bye to the fallacies of hope,” and then, being at bottom a man of sense and quick resolution, he packed his traps and at sunset went aboard the cutter. As they rippled along with the first puffs of the land-breeze, he glanced back but once at the lights of Nairai Viwa village that illumined the cutter's wake, and then, like a wise man, the hopes and dreams of the past drifted astern too.
And then for the next two years he drifted about from one group to another till he found an island that suited him well—no other white man lived there.
The laughing, merry-voiced native children who, with speedy feet, ran to the house of Iliâti, the trader, to tell him that a visitor was coming from the man-of-war, had gathered with panting breath and hushed expectancy at the door as the figure of the naval officer turned a bend in the path, his right hand clasped with a proud air of proprietorship by that or the ten-year-old son of Alberti the Chief.
Iliati with a half-angry, half-pleased look, held out his hand. “Lamington!”
“Hilliard! old fellow. Why didn't you come on board i Are all your old friends forgotten?”
“Pretty nearly, Lamington. Since I came a cropper over that accursed cotton swindle I've not had any inclination to meet any one I knew—especially any one in the Service, but”—and his voice rang honestly, “I always wondered whether you and I would ever meet again.”
“Hilliard,” and Lamington placed his hand on the trader's shoulder, “I know all about it. And look here, old man. I saw her only two months ago—at her especial request. She sent for me to talk about you.”
“Ah!” and the trader's voice sounded coldly, “I thought, long ago, that she had reconsidered her foolish decision of other days and had long since become Mrs. Lamington. But it doesn't interest me, old fellow. Can you drink Fiji rum, Lamington? Haven't anything better to offer you.”
“I'll drink anything you've got, old fellow, even liquid Tophet boiled down to a small half-pint; but I want you to listen to me first. I've been a bit of a scoundrel to you, but, by God, old man, I exchanged into the beastly oldPetrelfor this cruise expressly to find you and make a clean breast of it. I promised her I would.”
“Confound it all, Lamington, don't harrow your feelings needlessly, and let us have the rum and talk about anything else.”
“No, we won't. Look here, Hilliard, it sounds beastly low, but I must get it out. We met again—at a ball in Sydney more than two years ago. Some infernal chattering women were talking a lot of rot about the planters in Fiji having very pretty and privileged native servants—and all that, you know. She fired up and denied it, but came and asked me if it was true, and I was mean enough not to give it a straight denial. How the devil it happened I can't tell you, but we danced a deuce of a lot and I lost my senses and asked her again, and she said 'Yes.' Had she been any other woman but Miss ———, I would have concluded that the soft music and all that had dazed her. It does sometimes—lots of 'em; makes the most virtuous wife wish she could be a sinner and resume her normal goodness next day. But Kitty is different. And it was only that infernal twaddle caused it and made her write you that letter. A week hadn't passed before she wrote to me and told me how miserable she was. But I knew all through she didn't care a d———about me. And that's the way it occurred, old man.”
Hilliard's hand met his. “Say no more about it, Lamington; it's amea matêas we say here—a thing that is past.”
“But, good God, old fellow, you don't understand. She's written ever so many times to you. No one in Levuka knew where you had gone to; there's thousands of islands in the South Seas. And this letter here,” he held it toward him, “she gave to me, and I promised her on my honour as a man to effect an exchange into thePetreland find you.”
“Thanks, Lamington. You always were a good fellow.” He laid the letter on the table quietly and rose and got the rum.
A young native girl, with deep lustrous eyes shining from a face of almost childish innocence, had entered the door and stood with one bare and softly-rounded arm clasped round the neck of Alberti's little son. Her lips parted in a smile as Lamington, with a gasping cough, set down his glass after drinking the potent spirit, and she set her brows in mock ferocity at Hilliard who drank his down like an old-time beachcomber.
“By Jove, Hilliard, what an astonishingly pretty face! She could give any New Orleans créole points. Time you got out of this before some of the Rotumah beauties make you forget things; and oh, by the way, I'm forgetting things. Remember you are to come aboard and dine with us to-night, and that you're in indifferent health, and that Captain ———, of Her Majesty's shipPetrelis going to give you a passage to Sydney.”
At an angry sign from Hilliard the girl disappeared. Then he shook his head. “No, Lamington. I appreciate your kindness, but cannot accept it. I've been here two years now, and Alberti, the principal local chief, thinks no end of me; and he's a deuced fine fellow, and has been as good as ten fathers to me. And I've business matters to attend to as well.”
Lamington pressed him no further. “Lucky devil,” he thought. “I suppose he'll clear out in the trading schooner to Sydney, next week; be there long before us any way, and I'll find them well over the first stage of married infatuation when I see him next.”
Another hour's chat of old times and old shipmates in theChallengerand Lamington, with his honest, clean-shaven face looking into the quiet, impassive features of the ex-officer, had gripped his hand and gone, and Hilliard went over to the house of Alberti, the chief, to drinkkava—and see the old French priest. From there, an hour afterward, he saw the cruiser with wet, shining sides dip into the long roll of the ocean swell, as with the smoke pouring from her yellow funnel she was lost to sight rounding the point.
Said the son of Alberti to Léla, the innocent-faced girl with the dancing, starlike eyes and red lips, as they stood watching the last curling rings of the steamer's smoke—“And so that is why I knew much of what thepapalagifrom the man-of-war said to your Iliâti; Alberti, my father, has taught me much of your man's tongue. # And, look thou, Léla the Cunning, Iliâti hath a wife in his own country!”
“Pah!”—and she shook her long, wavy locks composedly, and then plucked a scarlet hibiscus flower to stick in front of one of her pretty little ears—“what does that matter to me, fathead? I am she here; and when Iliâti goeth away to her she will be me there. But he loveth me more than any other on Rotumah, and hath told me that where he goeth I shall go also. And who knoweth but that if I have a son he may marry me? Then shalt thou see such a wedding-feast as only rich people give. And listen—for why should I not tell thee: 'Tis well to starve thyself now, for it may be to-morrow, for look! fathead, there goeth the priest into thy father's house, and Iliâti is already there.”
Lannigan, who lived on Motukoe, was in debt to his firm. This was partly due to his fondness for trade gin and partly because Bully Hayes had called at the island a month or so back and the genial Bully and he had played a game or two of poker.
“I'll give you your revenge when I come back from the Carolines, Lannigan,” said the redoubtable captain as he scooped in every dollar of the trader's takings for the past six months. And Lannigan, grasping his hand warmly and declaring it was a pleasure to be “claned out by a gintleman,” bade him good-bye and went to sleep away from home for a day with some native friends. Tariro, his Manhiki wife, had a somewhat violent temper, and during the poker incident had indulged in much vituperative language outside, directed at white men in general and Lannigan in particular.
“See, thou swiller of gin, see what thy folly has brought us to,” said the justly-incensed Tariro, when he came back, and with her took stock of his trade goods; “a thousand and five hundred dollars' worth of trade came we here with, and thou hast naught to show for it but five casks of oil and a few stinking shark-fins; and surely the ship of themalo(his firm) will be here this month.”
Lannigan was in a bit of a fix. The firm he was trading for on Motukoe didn't do business in the same free-and-easy way as did Bobby Towns' captains and the unconventional Bully Hayes. They made him sign papers, and every time the ship came the rufous-headed Scotch supercargo took stock, and a violent altercation would result over the price of the trade; but as the trader generally had a big lot of produce for the ship, matters always ended amicably. He—or rather his wife, Tariro—was too good a trader to have an open rupture with, and the wordy warfare always resulted in the trader saying, in his matter-of-fact way, “Well, I suppose it's right enough. You only rob me wanst in twelve months, and I rob the natives here every day of my life. Give me in a case of gin, an' I'll send ye a pig.”
But he had never been so much in debt as he was now. Tariro and he talked it over, and hit upon a plan. He was to say, when the ship came, that he had but five casks of oil; all his trade had been sold for cash, and the cash—a thousand dollars—represented by a bag of copper bolts picked up on the reef from an old wreck, was to be taken off to the ship and accidentally dropped overboard as it was being passed up on deck. This was Lannigan's idea, and Tariro straightway tied up the bolts in readiness in many thicknesses of sail-cloth.
“Here's Lannigan coming,” called out the captain of the trading vessel to the supercargo, a week or so afterwards, “and that saucy Manhiki woman as usual with him, to see that he doesn't get drunk. The devil take such as her! There's no show of getting him tight.”
“How are you, Lannigan?” said the supercargo, wiping his perspiring brow. He had just come out of the hold where he had been opening tinned meats, and putting all the “blown” tins he could find into one especial case—for Lannigan. This was what he called “makin' a mairgin for loss on the meats, which didna pay well.”
“Fine,” said the genial Lannigan, “an' I haven't got but five casks of oil for yez. Devil a drop av oil would the people make when they looked at the bewtiful lot av trade ye gave me last time. They just rushed me wid cash, an' I tuk a matter av a thousand dollars or so in a month.”
“Verra guid business,” said the supercargo, “but ye made a gran' meestake in selling the guids for Cheelian dollars instead of oil. An' sae I must debit ye wi' a loss of twenty-five par cent, on the money——”
“Chile dollars be damned!” said Lannigan; “all good American dollars—we've had about twenty whaleships here, buyin' pigs an' poultry an' pearl shell.”
“Twenty-one ship!” said Tariro, blowing the smoke of her cigarette through her pretty little nose.
“Whaur's the money, onyway?” said the supercargo; “let's get to business, Lannigan. Eh, mon, I've some verra fine beef for ye.”
“Get the bag up out of the boat, Tariro,” said the trader; “it's mighty frightened I was havin' so much money in the house at wanst, wid all them rowdy Yankee sailors from the whaleships ashore here.”
There was a great crowd of natives on deck—over a hundred—and the mate was swearing violently at them for getting in his way. The schooner was a very small vessel, and Motukoe being her first place of call for cargo, she was in light trim, having only her trade and a little ballast on board.
“Send those natives away from the galley,” he called out to the cook, who was giving some of the young women ship-biscuits in exchange for young cocoanuts; “can't you see the ship keeps flying up in the wind with all those people for'ard!”
Hekemanu, Lannigan's native “Man Jack,” sat in the boat towing alongside, with the bag of “dollars” at his feet. He and all the boat's crew were in the secret. Lannigan owned their souls; besides, they all liked him on Motukoe.
Tariro stood for a moment beside the captain, indulging in the usual broad “chaff,” and then leaning over the rail she called out to Hekemanu:Ta mai te taga tupe(“give me the bag of money”).
The man for'ard hauled on the line to bring the boat alongside the schooner, and Hekemanu stood up with the heavy bag in his hand.
“Hold on there, you fool! If you drop that bag I'll knock your head off,” said the skipper. “Here, Mr. Bates, just you jump down and take that money from that native, or he'll drop it, sure.”
Before Hekemanu had time to let it fall over the side the mate had jumped into the boat and taken it.
Lannigan, putting his head up out of the little cabin, groaned inwardly as he saw the mate step over the rail with the fateful bag and hand it to the supercargo.
“Be the powers, ye're in a mighty hurry for the money,” said Lannigan, roughly, taking it from him, “ye might ax me if I had a mouth on me first.”
The supercargo laughed and put a bottle of gin on the table, and Lannigan's fertile brain commenced to work. If he could only get the supercargo out of the cabin for a minute he meant to pick up the bag, and declaring he was insulted get it back into his boat and tell him to come and count it ashore. Then he could get capsized on the reef and lose it. They were always having “barneys,” and it would only be looked upon as one of his usual freaks.
“What the deuce is that?” he said, pointing to a hideous, highly-coloured paper mask that hung up in the cabin.
The supercargo handed it to him. “It's for a man in Samoa—a silly, joking body, always playing pranks wi' the natives, and I thoct he would like the thing.”
“Bedad, 'tis enough to scare the sowl out av the divil,” said Lannigan.
Just then a mob of natives came aft, and the two men in the cabin heard the captain tell them to clear out again. They were saucy and wouldn't go. Hekemanu had told them of the failure of Lannigan's dodge, and they had an idea that the ship would take him away, and stood by to rescue him at the word of command.
“I'll verra soon hunt them,” said the supercargo, with a proud smile, and he put the mask on his face. Tariro made a bolt on deck and called out to the natives that the supercargo was going to frighten them with a mask.
Instead of wild yells of fear and jumping overboard, as he imagined would happen, the natives merely laughed, but edged away for'ard.
The schooner was in quite close to the reef; the water was very deep, and there was no danger of striking. She was under jib and mainsail only, but the breeze was fresh and she was travelling at a great rate. The wind being right off the land the skipper was hugging the reef as closely as possible, so as to bring up and anchor on a five-fathom patch about a mile away.
“Here, quit that fooling,” he called out to the supercargo, “and come aft, you fellows! The ship is that much down by the head she won't pay off, with the helm hard up.”
One look at the crowd of natives and another at the shore, and a wild idea came into Lannigan's head. He whispered to Tariro, who went up for'ard and said something to the natives. In another ten seconds some of them began to clamber out on the jib-boom, the rest after them.
“Come back!” yelled the skipper, jamming the helm hard up, as the schooner flew up into the wind. “Leggo peak halyards. By G—d! we are running ashore. Leggo throat halyards, too!”
The mate flew to the halyards, and let go first the peak and then the throat halyards, but it was too late, and, with a swarm of natives packed together for'ard from the galley to the end of the jib-boom, she stuck her nose down, and, with stern high out of the water, like a duck chasing flies, she crashed into the reef—ran ashore dead to windward.
No one was drowned. The natives took good care of the captain, mate, and supercargo, and helped them to save all they could. But Lannigan had a heavy loss—the bag of copper bolts had gone to the bottom.
We were in Kitti Harbour, at Ponape, in the Carolines, when, at breakfast, a bleary-eyed, undersized, more-or-less-white man in a dirty pink shirt and dungaree pants, came below, and, slinging his filthy old hat over to the transoms, shoved himself into a seat between the mate and Jim Garstang, the trader.
“Mornin', captin,” said he, without looking at the skipper, and helping himself to about two pounds of curry.
“Morning to you. Who the deuce are you, anyway? Are you the old bummer they call 'Espiritu Santo'?” said Garstang.
“That's me. I'm the man. But I ain't no bummer, don't you b'lieve it. I wos tradin' round here in these (lurid) islands afore you coves knowed where Ponape was.”
“Are you the skunk that Wardell kicked off the Shenandoah for stealing a bottle of wine?” said the mate.
“That's me. There was goin' ter be trouble over that on'y that the Shennydor got properly well sunk by theAllybarmer(history wasn't his forte), and that ——— Wardell got d———d well drownded. Hingland haint a-goin' to let no Yankee insult nobody for nuthin'—an' I'm a blessed Englishman. I didn't steal the wine. Yer see, Wardell arst me off to dinner, and then we gets talkin' about polertics, an' I tells 'im 'e wos a lyin' pirut. Then he started foolin' around my woman, an' I up with a bottle of wine an'——”
“Why, you thundering liar,” said Garstang, “you stole it out of the ward-room.”
“I wouldn't call no man a liar if I was you, Mister—by G——, that Chinaman cook knows how to make curry.”
He ate like a starving shark, and between mouthfuls kept up a running fire of lies and blasphemy. When he had eaten three platefuls of curry and drunk enough coffee to scald a pig, the skipper, who was gettin' tired of him, asked him if he had had enough.
Yes, he had had enough breakfast to last him a whole (Australian adjective) week.
“Then clear out on deck and swab the curry off your face, you beast!”
“That's always the way with you tradin' skippers. A stranger don't get no civility unless he comes aboard in a (red-painted) gig with a (crimson) umbrella and a (gory) 'elmet 'at, like a (vermilion) Consul.”
The mate seized him, and, running him up the companion way, slung him out on deck.
“What do you think of him?” asked the skipper, a man fond of a joke—it was Bully Hayes. “I thought I'd let you all make his acquaintance. He's been bumming around the Ladrones and Pelews since '50; used to be cook on a Manilla trading brig, theEspiritu Santo.”
Then he told us how this wandering mass of blasphemy got his name of “Spreetoo Santoo.” While in the brig he had been caught smuggling at Guam by the guarda costas, and had spent a year or two in the old prison fort at San Juan de 'Apra. (I don't know how he got out: perhaps his inherently alcoholic breath and lurid blasphemy made the old brick wall tumble down.)
After that he was always welcome in sailors' fo'c's'les by reason of his smuggling story, which would commence with—“When I was cook on theEspiritu Santo” (only he used the English instead of the Spanish name) “I got jugged by the gory gardy costers,” &c, &c.
When we came on deck he was sitting on the main-hatch with the Chinese carpenter—whose pipe he was smoking—and telling him that he ought to get rid of his native wife, who was a Gilbert Island girl, and buy a Ponape girl.
“I can git yer the pick o' the (crimson) island, an' it won't cost yer more'n a few (unprintable) dollars. I'm a (bad word) big man 'ere among the (adjective) natives.”
Hung looked up at him stolidly with half-closed eyes. Then he took the pipe out of his mouth and said in a deadly cold voice—
“You palally liar, Spleetoo.”
He slouched aft again presently, and asked the mate, in an amiable tone of voice, if he had “any (ruddy) noospapers from Sydney.”
“What the devil doyouwant newspapers for?” inquired Hayes, turning round suddenly in his deck-chair, “you can't read, Spreetoo.”
“Can't read, eh?” and his red-rimmed, lashless eyes simulated intense indignation. “Wot about that 'ere (red) bishop at Manilla, as wanted me to chuck up me (scarlet) billet on theSpreetoo S antooand travel through the (carnaged) Carryline Grewp as 's (sanguinary) sekketerry? 'Cos why? 'Cos there ain't any (blank) man atween 'ere an' 'ell as can talk the warious lingoes like me.”
“Here,” said the mate, giving him two or three old Maoriland newspapers—“here's some Auckland papers. Know anybody there?”
“No,” he answered, promptly, “not a soul, but he knowed Sydney well. Larst time I wos there I sold old Bobby Towns £6,000 worth of oil—a bloomin' shipful. I got drunk, an' a (blank) policeman went through me in the cell and took the whole blessed lot outer me (scarlet) pocket.” (Nine bad words omitted.)
“Bank notes?” queried Bully.
“No, sov'reigns—(gory) sov'reigns.”
He asked us if we had seen any men-o'-war about lately, and said that the captain of H.M.S. ———— had wanted to marry his daughter, but he wouldn't let her marry no man-o'-war cove after the way that ——— Wardell had treated him. He thought he would go back to Sydney again for a spell. His brother had a flaming fine billet there.
The Cook of the “Spreetoo Santoo” 243
“What is he?” asked Hayes.
“'E's a (blessed) Soopreme Court Judge, wears a (gory) wig big enough to make chafin' gear for a (crimson) fleet o' ships; 'e lives at Guvment 'Ouse, and Vs rollin' in money an' drinks like a (carmine) fish. I thought I might see somethin' about the ——— in a (blank) Sydney noospaper. I'll come in for all his (ensanguined) money when 'e dies.”
Bully gave him a bottle of gin after a while. Then he hurriedly bade us farewell and went ashore.
A long sweeping curve of coast, fringed with tall plumed palms casting wavering shadows on the yellow sand as they sway and swish softly to the breath of the brave trade-wind that whistles through the thickly-verdured hummocks on the weather side of the island, to die away into a soft breath as, after passing through the belt of cocoanuts, it faintly ripples the transparent depths of the lagoon—a broad sheet of blue and silver stretching away from the far distant western line of reef to the smooth, yellow beach at the foot of the palms on the easternmost islet. And here, beneath their lofty crowns, are the brown thatched huts of the people and the home of Lupton the trader.
This is Mururea. And, if it be possible, Mururea surpasses in beauty any other of the “cloud of islands” which, lying on the blue bosom of the Eastern Pacific like the islands of a dream, are called by their people the Paumotu. And these people—it is not of very long ago I speak—are a people unto themselves. Shy and suspicious of strangers, white or brown, and endued with that quick instinct of fear which impels untutored minds to slay, and which we, in our civilised ignorance, call savage treachery, they are yet kind-hearted and hospitable to those who learn their ways and regard their customs. A tall, light-skinned, muscular people, the men with long, straight, black hair, coiled up in a knot at the back, and the women—the descendants of those who sailed with broken Fletcher Christian and his comrades of theBountyin quest of a place where to die—soft-voiced, and with big, timorous eyes.
'Twas here that Ben Peese, the handsome, savagely humorous, and voluble colleague of Captain “Bully” Hayes, the modern rover of the South Seas, one day appeared. Lupton, with his son and two natives, were out searching the beach of a little islet for turtles' eggs, when the boy, who had been sent to obtain a few young drinking cocoanuts from a tree some little distance away, called out, “Te Pahi!” (a ship). A few minutes passed, and then, outlined against the narrow strip of cocoanuts that grew on the north end of the main islet of the lagoon, Lupton saw the sails of a schooner making for the only opening—a narrow passage on the eastern side.
Now vessels came but rarely to Mururea, for Du Petit Thouars, the French Admiral of the Pacific fleet, had long since closed the group to the Sydney trading ships that once came there for pearl-shell, and Lupton felt uneasy. The vessel belonging to the Tahitian firm for whom he traded was not due for many months. Could the stranger be that wandering Ishmael of the sea—Peese? Only he—or his equally daring and dreaded colleague, Bully Hayes—would dare to sail a vessel of any size in among the coral “mushrooms” that studded the current-swept waters of the dangerous passage.
What did he want? And honest Frank Lupton, a quiet and industrious trader, thought of his store of pearl-shell and felt still more doubtful. And he knew Peese so well, the dapper, handsome little Englishman with the pleasant voice that had in it always a ripple of laughter—the voice and laugh that concealed his tigerish heart and savage vindictiveness. Lupton had children too—sons and daughters—and Peese, who looked upon women as mere articles of merchandise, would have thought no more of carrying off the trader's two pretty daughters than he would of “taking” a cask of oil or a basket of pearl-shell.
His anxious face, paling beneath the tropic bronze of twenty years' ocean wanderings, betrayed his feelings to the two natives who were now pulling the boat with all their strength to gain the village, and one—Maora, his wife's brother, a big, light-skinned man, with that keen, hawk-like visage peculiar to the people of the eastern islands of Polynesia, said—
“'Tis an evil day, Farani! No ship but that of the Little Man with the Beard hath ever passed into the lagoon since the great English fighting ship came inside” (he spoke of 1863), “for the reef hath grown and spread out and nearly closed it. Only the Little Bearded Devil would dare it, for he hath been here twice with the Man of the Strong Hand” (Hayes). “And, Farani, listen! 'The hand to the club!'”
They ceased pulling. From the village came the sound of an almost forgotten cry—a signal of danger to the dwellers under the palms—“The hand to the club!”—meaning for the men to arm.
Lupton hesitated. The natives would, he knew, stand to him to a man if violence to or robbery of him were attempted. But to gain the village he must needs pass close the vessel, and to pass on and not board her would savour of cowardice—and Lupton was an Englishman, and his twenty years' wanderings among the dangerous people of some of the islands of the Paumotu Group had steeled his nerves to meet any danger or emergency. So, without altering the course of the boat, he ran alongside of the vessel—which was a brigantine—just as she was bringing to, and looking up, he saw the face he expected.
“How are you, Lupton, my dear fellow?” said Peese, as the trader gained the deck, wringing his hand effusively, as if he were a long-lost brother. “By Heavens! I'm glad to meet a countryman again, and that countryman Frank Lupton. Don't like letting your hand go.” And still grasping the trader's rough hand in his, delicate and smooth as a woman's, he beamed upon him with an air of infantile pleasure.
This was one of Peese's peculiarities—an affectation of absolute affection for any Englishman he met, from the captain of a man-of-war (these, however, he avoided as much as possible), to a poor beachcomber with but a grass girdle round his loins.
“What brings you here, Captain Peese?” said Lupton, bluntly, as his eye sought the village, and saw the half-naked figures of his native following leaving his house in pairs, each carrying between them a square box, and disappearing into thepukascrub. It was his pearl-shell. Màmeri, his wife, had scented danger, and the shell at least was safe, however it befell. Peese's glance followed his, and the handsome little captain laughed, and slapped the gloomy-faced and suspicious trader on the back with an air ofcamaraderie.
“My dear fellow, what an excessively suspicious woman your good Màmeri is! But do not be alarmed. I have not come here to do any business this time, but to land a passenger, and as soon as his traps are on the beach I'm off again to Maga Reva. Such are the exigencies, my dear Lupton, of a trading captain's life in the South Seas, I cannot even spare the time to go on shore with you and enjoy the hospitality of the good Màmeri and your two fair daughters. But come below with me and see my passenger.” And he led the way to his cabin.
The passenger's appearance, so Lupton told me, “was enough to make a man's blood curdle,” so ghastly pale and emaciated was he. He rose as Lupton entered and extended his hand.
“My friend here,” said the worthy little Ishmael, bowing and caressing his long silky beard, “is, ah, hum, Mr. Brown. He is, as you will observe, my dear Lupton, in a somewhat weak state of health, and is in search of some retired spot where he may recuperate sufficiently——”
“Don't lie unnecessarily, sir.”
Peese bowed affably and smiled, and the stranger addressed Lupton.
“My name is not Brown—'tis of no consequence what it is; but I am, indeed, as you see, in a bad way, with but a few months at most to live. Captain Peese, at my request, put into this lagoon. He has told me that the place is seldom visited by ships, and that the people do not care about strangers. Yet, have you, Mr. Lupton, any objections to my coming ashore here, and living out the rest of my life? I have trade goods sufficient for all requirements, and will in no way interfere with or become a charge upon you.”
Lupton considered. His influence with the people of Mururea was such that he could easily overcome their objections to another white man landing; but he had lived so long apart from all white associations that he did not care about having the even monotony of his life disturbed. And then, he thought, it might be some queer game concocted between the sick man and the chattering little sea-hawk that sat beside him stroking and fondling his flowing beard. He was about to refuse when the sunken, eager eyes of “Mr. Brown” met his in an almost appealing look that disarmed him of all further suspicion.
“Very well, sir. The island is as free to you as to me. But, still, Icouldstop any one else from living here if I wished to do so. But you do look very ill, no mistake about that. And, then, you ain't going to trade against me! And I suppose you'll pass me your word that there isn't any dodge between you and the captain here to bone my shell and clear out?”
For answer the sick man opened a despatch-box that lay on the cabin table, and took from it a bag of money.
“This,” he said, “is the sum I agreed to pay Captain Peese to land me on any island of my choice in the Paumotu Archipelago, and this unsigned order here is in his favour on the Maison Brander of Tahiti for a similar sum.”
Signing the paper he pushed it with the money over to Peese, and then went on:—
“I assure you, Mr. Lupton, that this is the only transaction I have ever had with Captain Peese. I came to him in Tahiti, hearing he was bound to the Paumotu Group. I had never heard of him before, and after to-day I will not, in all human probability, see him again.”
“Perfectly correct, my dear sir,” said Peese. “And now, as our business is finished, perhaps our dear friend, Lupton, will save me the trouble of lowering a boat by taking you ashore in his own, which is alongside.”
Five minutes later and Lupton and the stranger were seated in the boat.
“Good-bye, my dear Lupton, andadiosmy dear Mr. Brown. I shall ever remember our pleasant relations on board my humble little trading vessel,” cried the renowned Peese, who, from former associations, had a way of drifting into the Spanish tongue—and prisons and fetters—which latter he once wore for many a weary day on the cruiserHernandez Pizarroon his way to the gloomy prison of Manilla.
The boat had barely traversed half the distance to the shore ere the brigantine's anchor was hove-up and at her bows, and then Peese, with his usual cool assurance, beat her through the intricate passage and stood out into the long roll of the Pacific.
When Lupton, with his “walking bone bag,” as he mentally called the stranger, entered his house, Màmeri, his bulky native wife, uttered an exclamation of pity, and placing a chair before him uttered the simple word of welcomeIorana!and the daughters, with wonder-lit star-like eyes, knelt beside their father's chair and whispered, “Who is he, Farani?”
And Lupton could only answer, “I don't know, and won't ask. Look to him well.”
He never did ask. One afternoon nearly a year afterwards, as Lupton and Trenton, the supercargo of theMaramasat on an old nativemaraeat Arupahi, the Village of Four Houses, he told the strange story of his sick guest.
The stranger had at first wished to have a house built for himself, but Lupton's quiet place and the shy and reserved natures of his children made him change his intention and ask Lupton for a part of his house. It was given freely—where are there more generous-hearted men than these world-forgotten, isolated traders?—and here the Silent Man, as the people of Mururea called him, lived out the few months of his life. That last deceptive stage of his insidious disease had given him a fictitious strength. On many occasions, accompanied by the trader's children, he would walk to the north point of the low-lying island, where the cloudy spume of the surge was thickest and where the hollow and resonant crust of the black reef was perforated with countless air-holes, through which the water hissed and roared, and shot high in air, to fall again in misty spray.
And here, with dreamy eyes, he would sit under the shade of a clump of young cocoanuts, and watch the boil and tumble of the surf, whilst the children played with and chased each other about the clinking sand. Sometimes he would call them to him—Farani the boy, and Teremai and Lorani, the sweet-voiced and tender-eyed girls—and ask them to sing to him; and in their soft semi-Tahitian dialect they would sing the old songs that echoed in the ears of the desperate men of theBountythat fatal dawn when, with bare-headed, defiant Bligh drifting astern in his boat, they headed back for Tahiti and death. *****
Four months had passed when one day the strange white man, with Lupton's children, returned to the village. As they passed in through the doorway with some merry chant upon their lips, they saw a native seated on the matted floor. He was a young man, with straight, handsome features, such as one may see any day in Eastern Polynesia, but the children, with terrified faces, shrank aside as they passed him and went to their father.
The pale face of the Silent Man turned inquiringly to Lupton, who smiled.
“'Tis Màmeri's teaching, you know. She is a Catholic from Magareva, and prays and tells her beads enough to work a whaleship's crew into heaven. But this man is a 'Soul Catcher,' and if any one of us here got sick, Màmeri would let the faith she was reared in go to the wall and send for the 'Soul Catcher.' He's a kind of an all-round prophet, wizard, and general wisdom merchant. Took over the soul-catching business from his father—runs in the family, you know.”
“Ah!” said the Silent Man in his low, languid tones, looking at the native, who, the moment he had entered, had bent his eyes to the ground, “and in which of his manifold capacities has he come to see you, Lupton?”
Lupton hesitated a moment, then laughed.
“Well, sir, he says he wants to speak to you. Wants topahihi(talk rot), I suppose. It's his trade, you know. I'd sling him out only that he isn't a bad sort of a fellow—and a bit mad—and Màmeri says he'll quit as soon as he has had his say.”
“Let him talk,” said the calm, quiet voice; “I like these people, and like to hear them talk—better than I would most white men.”
Then, with his dark, dilated eyes moving from the pale face of the white man to that of Lupton, the native wizard and Seer of Unseen Things spoke. Then again his eyes sought the ground.
“What does he say?” queried Lupton's guest.
“D———rot,” replied the trader, angrily.
“Tell me exactly, if you please. I feel interested.”
“Well, he says that he was asleep in his house when his 'spirit voice' awoke him and said”—here Lupton paused and looked at his guest, and then, seeing the faint smile of amused interest on his melancholy features, resumed, in his rough, jocular way—“and said—the 'spirit voice,' you know—that your soul was struggling to get loose, and is going away from you to-night. And the long and short of it is that this young fellow here wants to know if you'll let him save it—keep you from dying, you know. Says he'll do the job for nothing, because you're a good man, and a friend to all the people of Mururea.”
“Mr. Brown” put his thin hand across his mouth, and his eyes smiled at Lupton. Then some sudden, violent emotion stirred him, and he spoke with such quick and bitter energy that Lupton half rose from his seat in vague alarm.
“Tell him,” he said—“that is, if the language expresses it—that my soul has been in hell these ten years, and its place filled with ruined hopes and black despair,” and then he sank back on his couch of mats, and turned his face to the wall.
The Seer of Unseen Things, at a sign from the now angry Lupton, rose to his feet. As he passed the trader he whispered—
“Be not angry with me, Farani; art not thou and all thy house dear to me, the Snarer of Souls and Keeper Away of Evil Things? And I can truly make a snare to save the soul of the Silent Man, if he so wishes it.” The low, impassioned tones of the wizard's voice showed him to be under strong emotion, and Lupton, with smoothened brow, placed his hand on the native's chest in token of amity.
“Farani,” said the wizard, “see'st thou these?” and he pointed to where, in the open doorway, two large white butterflies hovered and fluttered. They were a species but rarely seen in Mururea, and the natives had many curious superstitions regarding them.
“Aye,” said the trader, “what of them?”
“Lo, they are the spirits that await the soul of him who sitteth in thy house. One is the soul of a woman, the other of a man; and their bodies are long ago dust in a far-off land. See, Farani, they hover and wait, wait, wait. To-morrow they will be gone, but then another may be with them.”
Stopping at the doorway the tall native turned, and again his strange, full black eyes fixed upon the figure of Lupton's guest. Then slowly he untied from a circlet of polished pieces of pearl-shell strung together round his sinewy neck a little round leaf-wrapped bundle. And with quiet assured step he came and stood before the strange white man and extended his hand.
“Take it, O man, with the swift hand and the strong heart, for it is thine.”
And then he passed slowly out.
Lupton could only see that as the outside wrappings offalaleaves fell off they revealed a black substance, when Mr. Brown quickly placed it in the bosom of his shirt.
“And sure enough,” continued Lupton, knocking the ashes from his pipe out upon the crumbling stones of the old marae, and speaking in, for him, strangely softened tones, “the poor chap did die that night, leastways atkalaga moa(cockcrow), and then he refilled his pipe in silence, gazing the while away out to the North-West Point.”
“What a curious story!” began the supercargo, after an interval of some minutes, when he saw that Lupton, usually one of the merriest-hearted wanderers that rove to and fro in Polynesia, seemed strangely silent and affected, and had turned his face from him.
He waited in silence till the trader chose to speak again. Away to the westward, made purple by the sunset haze of the tropics, lay the ever-hovering spume-cloud of the reef of North-West Point—the loved haunt of Lupton's guest—and the muffled boom of the ceaseless surf deepened now and then as some mighty roller tumbled and crashed upon the flat ledges of blackened reef.
At last the trader turned again to the supercargo, almost restored to his usual equanimity. “I'm a pretty rough case, Mr.———, and not much given to any kind of sentiment or squirming, but I would give half I'm worth to have him back again. He sort of got a pull on my feelin's the first time he ever spoke to me, and as the days went on, I took to him that much that if he'd a wanted to marry my little Teremai I'd have given her to him cheerful. Not that we ever done much talkin', but he'd sit night after night and make me talk, and when I'd spun a good hour's yarn he'd only say, 'Thank you, Lupton, good-night,' and give a smile all round to us, from old Màmeri to the youngesttama, and go to bed. And yet he did a thing that'll go hard agin' him, I fear.”
“Ah,” said Trenton, “and so he told you at the last—I mean his reason for coming to die at Mururea.”
“No, he didn't. He only told me something; Peese told me the rest. And he laughed when he told me,” and the dark-faced trader struck his hand on his knee. “Peese would laugh if he saw his mother crucified.”
“Was Peese back here again, then?” inquired Trenton.
“Yes, two months ago. He hove-to outside, and came ashore in a canoe. Said he wanted to hear how his dear friend Brown was. He only stayed an hour, and then cleared out again.9'
“Did he die suddenly?” the supercargo asked, his mind still bent on Lupton's strange visitor.
“No. Just before daylight he called me to him—with my boy. He took the boy's hand and said he'd have been glad to have lived after all. He had been happy in a way with me and the children here in Mururea. Then he asked to see Teremai and Lorani. They both cried when they saw he was a goin'—all native-blooded people do that if they cares anything at all about a white man, and sees him dyin'.”
“Have you any message, or anything to say in writin', sir?” I says to him.
He didn't answer at once, only took the girls' hands in his, and kisses each of 'em on the face, then he says, “No, Lupton, neither. But send the children away now. I want you to stay with me to the last—which will be soon.”
Then he put his hand under his pillow, and took out a tiny little parcel, and held it in his closed hand. *****
“Mr. Lupton, I ask you before God to speak honestly. Have you, or have you not, ever heard of me, and why I came here to die, away from the eyes of men?”
“No, sir,” I said. “Before God I know no more of you now than the day I first saw you.”
“Can you, then, tell me if the native soul-doctor who came here last night is a friend of Captain Peese? Did he see Peese when I landed here? Has he talked with him?”
“No. When you came here with Peese, the soul-seer was away at another island. And as for talking with him, how could he? Peese can't speak two words of Paumotu.”
He closed his eyes a minute. Then he reached out his hand to me and said, “Look at that; what is it?”
It was the little black thing that the Man Who Sees Beyond gave him, and was a curious affair altogether. “You know what anaitu taligais?” asked Lupton.
“Yes; a 'devil's ear'—that's what the natives call fungus.”
“Well,” continued Lupton, “this was a piece of dried fungus, and yet it wasn't a piece of fungus. It was the exact shape of a human heart—just as I've seen a model of it made of wax. That hadn't been its natural shape, but the sides had been brought together and stitched with human hair—by the soul-doctor, of course. I looked at it curiously enough, and gave it back to him. His fingers closed round it again.”
“What is it?” he says again.
“It's a model of a human heart,” says I, “made of fungus.”
“My God!” he says, “how could he know?” Then he didn't say any more, and in another half-hour or so he dies, quiet and gentlemanly like. I looked for the heart with Màmeri in the morning—it was gone.
“Well, we buried him. And now look here, Mr. ———, as sure as I believe there's a God over us, I believe that that native soul-catcherhasdealings with the Devil. I had just stowed the poor chap in his coffin and was going to nail it down when the kanaka wizard came in, walks up to me, and says he wants to see the dead man's hand. Just to humour him I lifted off the sheet. The soul-catcher lifted the dead man's hands carefully, and then I'm d———d if he didn't lay that dried heart on his chest and press the hands down over it.”
“What's that for?” says I.
“'Tis the heart of the woman he slew in her sleep. Let it lie with him, so that there may be peace between them at last,” and then he glides away without another word.
“I let it stay, not thinking much of it at the time. Well, as I was tellin' you, Peese came again. Seeing that I had all my people armed, I treated him well and we had a chat, and then I told him all about 'Mr. Brown's' death and the soul-saver and the dried heart. And then Peese laughs and gives me this newspaper cutting. I brought it with me to show you.”
Trenton took the piece of paper and read.
“'Lester Mornington made his escape from the State prison at San Quentin (Cal.) last week, and is stated to be now on his way either to Honolulu or Tahiti. It has been ascertained that a vast sum of money has been disbursed in a very systematic manner during the last few weeks to effect his release. Although nearly eight years have elapsed since he committed his terrible crime, the atrocious nature of it will long be remembered. Young, wealthy, respected, and talented, he had been married but half a year when the whole of the Pacific Slope was startled with the intelligence that he had murdered his beautiful young wife, who had, he found, been disloyal to him.
“'Entering the bedroom he shot his sleeping wife through the temples, and then with a keen-edged knife had cut out her still-beating heart. This, enclosed in a small box, he took to the house of the man who had wronged him, and desired him to open it and look at the contents. He did so, and Mornington, barely giving him time to realise the tragedy, and that his perfidy was known, shot him twice, the wounds proving fatal next day. The murderer made good his escape to Mexico, only returning to California a month ago, when he was recognised (although disguised) and captured, and at the time of his escape was within two days of the time of his trial before Judge Crittenden.'”
“There's always a woman in these things,” said Lupton, as the supercargo gave him back the slip. “Come on.” And he got down from his seat on the wall. “There's Màmeri calling us tokaikai—stewed pigeons. She's a bully old cook; worth her weight in Chile dollars.”