SOUTH SEA TALES By Jack London CONTENTS The House of Mapuhi The Whale Tooth Mauki "Yah! Yah! Yah!" The Heathen The Terrible Solomons The Inevitable White Man The Seed of McCoy THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI Despite the heavy clumsiness of her lines, the Aorai handled easily inthe light breeze, and her captain ran her well in before he hove to justoutside the suck of the surf. The atoll of Hikueru lay low on the water, a circle of pounded coral sand a hundred yards wide, twenty miles incircumference, and from three to five feet above high-water mark. On thebottom of the huge and glassy lagoon was much pearl shell, and from thedeck of the schooner, across the slender ring of the atoll, the diverscould be seen at work. But the lagoon had no entrance for even a tradingschooner. With a favoring breeze cutters could win in through thetortuous and shallow channel, but the schooners lay off and on outsideand sent in their small boats. The Aorai swung out a boat smartly, into which sprang half a dozenbrown-skinned sailors clad only in scarlet loincloths. They took theoars, while in the stern sheets, at the steering sweep, stood a youngman garbed in the tropic white that marks the European. The goldenstrain of Polynesia betrayed itself in the sun-gilt of his fair skinand cast up golden sheens and lights through the glimmering blue of hiseyes. Raoul he was, Alexandre Raoul, youngest son of Marie Raoul, the wealthy quarter-caste, who owned and managed half a dozen tradingschooners similar to the Aorai. Across an eddy just outside theentrance, and in and through and over a boiling tide-rip, the boatfought its way to the mirrored calm of the lagoon. Young Raoul leapedout upon the white sand and shook hands with a tall native. The man'schest and shoulders were magnificent, but the stump of a right arm, beyond the flesh of which the age-whitened bone projected severalinches, attested the encounter with a shark that had put an end to hisdiving days and made him a fawner and an intriguer for small favors. "Have you heard, Alec?" were his first words. "Mapuhi has found apearl--such a pearl. Never was there one like it ever fished up inHikueru, nor in all the Paumotus, nor in all the world. Buy it from him. He has it now. And remember that I told you first. He is a fool and youcan get it cheap. Have you any tobacco?" Straight up the beach to a shack under a pandanus tree Raoul headed. He was his mother's supercargo, and his business was to comb all thePaumotus for the wealth of copra, shell, and pearls that they yieldedup. He was a young supercargo, it was his second voyage in such capacity, and he suffered much secret worry from his lack of experience in pricingpearls. But when Mapuhi exposed the pearl to his sight he managed tosuppress the startle it gave him, and to maintain a careless, commercialexpression on his face. For the pearl had struck him a blow. It waslarge as a pigeon egg, a perfect sphere, of a whiteness that reflectedopalescent lights from all colors about it. It was alive. Never hadhe seen anything like it. When Mapuhi dropped it into his hand he wassurprised by the weight of it. That showed that it was a good pearl. Heexamined it closely, through a pocket magnifying glass. It was withoutflaw or blemish. The purity of it seemed almost to melt into theatmosphere out of his hand. In the shade it was softly luminous, gleaming like a tender moon. So translucently white was it, that whenhe dropped it into a glass of water he had difficulty in finding it. Sostraight and swiftly had it sunk to the bottom that he knew its weightwas excellent. "Well, what do you want for it?" he asked, with a fine assumption ofnonchalance. "I want--" Mapuhi began, and behind him, framing his own dark face, thedark faces of two women and a girl nodded concurrence in what he wanted. Their heads were bent forward, they were animated by a suppressedeagerness, their eyes flashed avariciously. "I want a house, " Mapuhi went on. "It must have a roof of galvanizediron and an octagon-drop-clock. It must be six fathoms long with a porchall around. A big room must be in the centre, with a round table in themiddle of it and the octagon-drop-clock on the wall. There must be fourbedrooms, two on each side of the big room, and in each bedroom must bean iron bed, two chairs, and a washstand. And back of the house must bea kitchen, a good kitchen, with pots and pans and a stove. And you mustbuild the house on my island, which is Fakarava. " "Is that all?" Raoul asked incredulously. "There must be a sewing machine, " spoke up Tefara, Mapuhi's wife. "Not forgetting the octagon-drop-clock, " added Nauri, Mapuhi's mother. "Yes, that is all, " said Mapuhi. Young Raoul laughed. He laughed long and heartily. But while he laughedhe secretly performed problems in mental arithmetic. He had never builta house in his life, and his notions concerning house building werehazy. While he laughed, he calculated the cost of the voyage to Tahitifor materials, of the materials themselves, of the voyage back againto Fakarava, and the cost of landing the materials and of building thehouse. It would come to four thousand French dollars, allowing a marginfor safety--four thousand French dollars were equivalent to twentythousand francs. It was impossible. How was he to know the value of sucha pearl? Twenty thousand francs was a lot of money--and of his mother'smoney at that. "Mapuhi, " he said, "you are a big fool. Set a money price. " But Mapuhi shook his head, and the three heads behind him shook withhis. "I want the house, " he said. "It must be six fathoms long with a porchall around--" "Yes, yes, " Raoul interrupted. "I know all about your house, but itwon't do. I'll give you a thousand Chili dollars. " The four heads chorused a silent negative. "And a hundred Chili dollars in trade. " "I want the house, " Mapuhi began. "What good will the house do you?" Raoul demanded. "The first hurricanethat comes along will wash it away. You ought to know. " "Captain Raffy says it looks like a hurricane right now. " "Not on Fakarava, " said Mapuhi. "The land is much higher there. On thisisland, yes. Any hurricane can sweep Hikueru. I will have the house onFakarava. It must be six fathoms long with a porch all around--" And Raoul listened again to the tale of the house. Several hours hespent in the endeavor to hammer the house obsession out of Mapuhi'smind; but Mapuhi's mother and wife, and Ngakura, Mapuhi's daughter, bolstered him in his resolve for the house. Through the open doorway, while he listened for the twentieth time to the detailed description ofthe house that was wanted, Raoul saw his schooner's second boat draw upon the beach. The sailors rested on the oars, advertising haste to begone. The first mate of the Aorai sprang ashore, exchanged a word withthe one-armed native, then hurried toward Raoul. The day grew suddenlydark, as a squall obscured the face of the sun. Across the lagoon Raoulcould see approaching the ominous line of the puff of wind. "Captain Raffy says you've got to get to hell outa here, " was the mate'sgreeting. "If there's any shell, we've got to run the risk ofpicking it up later on--so he says. The barometer's dropped totwenty-nine-seventy. " The gust of wind struck the pandanus tree overhead and tore through thepalms beyond, flinging half a dozen ripe cocoanuts with heavy thuds tothe ground. Then came the rain out of the distance, advancing with theroar of a gale of wind and causing the water of the lagoon to smoke indriven windrows. The sharp rattle of the first drops was on the leaveswhen Raoul sprang to his feet. "A thousand Chili dollars, cash down, Mapuhi, " he said. "And two hundredChili dollars in trade. " "I want a house--" the other began. "Mapuhi!" Raoul yelled, in order to make himself heard. "You are afool!" He flung out of the house, and, side by side with the mate, fought hisway down the beach toward the boat. They could not see the boat. Thetropic rain sheeted about them so that they could see only the beachunder their feet and the spiteful little waves from the lagoon thatsnapped and bit at the sand. A figure appeared through the deluge. Itwas Huru-Huru, the man with the one arm. "Did you get the pearl?" he yelled in Raoul's ear. "Mapuhi is a fool!" was the answering yell, and the next moment theywere lost to each other in the descending water. Half an hour later, Huru-Huru, watching from the seaward side of theatoll, saw the two boats hoisted in and the Aorai pointing her noseout to sea. And near her, just come in from the sea on the wings of thesquall, he saw another schooner hove to and dropping a boat into thewater. He knew her. It was the OROHENA, owned by Toriki, the half-castetrader, who served as his own supercargo and who doubtlessly was eventhen in the stern sheets of the boat. Huru-Huru chuckled. He knew thatMapuhi owed Toriki for trade goods advanced the year before. The squall had passed. The hot sun was blazing down, and the lagoon wasonce more a mirror. But the air was sticky like mucilage, and the weightof it seemed to burden the lungs and make breathing difficult. "Have you heard the news, Toriki?" Huru-Huru asked. "Mapuhi has founda pearl. Never was there a pearl like it ever fished up in Hikueru, noranywhere in the Paumotus, nor anywhere in all the world. Mapuhi is afool. Besides, he owes you money. Remember that I told you first. Haveyou any tobacco?" And to the grass shack of Mapuhi went Toriki. He was a masterful man, withal a fairly stupid one. Carelessly he glanced at the wonderfulpearl--glanced for a moment only; and carelessly he dropped it into hispocket. "You are lucky, " he said. "It is a nice pearl. I will give you credit onthe books. " "I want a house, " Mapuhi began, in consternation. "It must be sixfathoms--" "Six fathoms your grandmother!" was the trader's retort. "You want topay up your debts, that's what you want. You owed me twelve hundreddollars Chili. Very well; you owe them no longer. The amount is squared. Besides, I will give you credit for two hundred Chili. If, when I getto Tahiti, the pearl sells well, I will give you credit for anotherhundred--that will make three hundred. But mind, only if the pearl sellswell. I may even lose money on it. " Mapuhi folded his arms in sorrow and sat with bowed head. He had beenrobbed of his pearl. In place of the house, he had paid a debt. Therewas nothing to show for the pearl. "You are a fool, " said Tefara. "You are a fool, " said Nauri, his mother. "Why did you let the pearlinto his hand?" "What was I to do?" Mapuhi protested. "I owed him the money. He knew Ihad the pearl. You heard him yourself ask to see it. I had not told him. He knew. Somebody else told him. And I owed him the money. " "Mapuhi is a fool, " mimicked Ngakura. She was twelve years old and did not know any better. Mapuhi relievedhis feelings by sending her reeling from a box on the ear; while Tefaraand Nauri burst into tears and continued to upbraid him after the mannerof women. Huru-Huru, watching on the beach, saw a third schooner that he knewheave to outside the entrance and drop a boat. It was the Hira, wellnamed, for she was owned by Levy, the German Jew, the greatest pearlbuyer of them all, and, as was well known, Hira was the Tahitian god offishermen and thieves. "Have you heard the news?" Huru-Huru asked, as Levy, a fat man withmassive asymmetrical features, stepped out upon the beach. "Mapuhi hasfound a pearl. There was never a pearl like it in Hikueru, in all thePaumotus, in all the world. Mapuhi is a fool. He has sold it to Torikifor fourteen hundred Chili--I listened outside and heard. Toriki islikewise a fool. You can buy it from him cheap. Remember that I told youfirst. Have you any tobacco?" "Where is Toriki?" "In the house of Captain Lynch, drinking absinthe. He has been there anhour. " And while Levy and Toriki drank absinthe and chaffered over the pearl, Huru-Huru listened and heard the stupendous price of twenty-fivethousand francs agreed upon. It was at this time that both the OROHENA and the Hira, running in closeto the shore, began firing guns and signalling frantically. The threemen stepped outside in time to see the two schooners go hastily aboutand head off shore, dropping mainsails and flying jibs on the run inthe teeth of the squall that heeled them far over on the whitened water. Then the rain blotted them out. "They'll be back after it's over, " said Toriki. "We'd better be gettingout of here. " "I reckon the glass has fallen some more, " said Captain Lynch. He was a white-bearded sea-captain, too old for service, who had learnedthat the only way to live on comfortable terms with his asthma was onHikueru. He went inside to look at the barometer. "Great God!" they heard him exclaim, and rushed in to join him atstaring at a dial, which marked twenty-nine-twenty. Again they came out, this time anxiously to consult sea and sky. The squall had cleared away, but the sky remained overcast. The twoschooners, under all sail and joined by a third, could be seen makingback. A veer in the wind induced them to slack off sheets, and fiveminutes afterward a sudden veer from the opposite quarter caught allthree schooners aback, and those on shore could see the boom-tacklesbeing slacked away or cast off on the jump. The sound of the surf wasloud, hollow, and menacing, and a heavy swell was setting in. A terriblesheet of lightning burst before their eyes, illuminating the dark day, and the thunder rolled wildly about them. Toriki and Levy broke into a run for their boats, the latter amblingalong like a panic-stricken hippopotamus. As their two boats swept outthe entrance, they passed the boat of the Aorai coming in. In the sternsheets, encouraging the rowers, was Raoul. Unable to shake the vision ofthe pearl from his mind, he was returning to accept Mapuhi's price of ahouse. He landed on the beach in the midst of a driving thunder squall that wasso dense that he collided with Huru-Huru before he saw him. "Too late, " yelled Huru-Huru. "Mapuhi sold it to Toriki for fourteenhundred Chili, and Toriki sold it to Levy for twenty-five thousandfrancs. And Levy will sell it in France for a hundred thousand francs. Have you any tobacco?" Raoul felt relieved. His troubles about the pearl were over. He need notworry any more, even if he had not got the pearl. But he did not believeHuru-Huru. Mapuhi might well have sold it for fourteen hundred Chili, but that Levy, who knew pearls, should have paid twenty-five thousandfrancs was too wide a stretch. Raoul decided to interview Captain Lynchon the subject, but when he arrived at that ancient mariner's house, hefound him looking wide-eyed at the barometer. "What do you read it?" Captain Lynch asked anxiously, rubbing hisspectacles and staring again at the instrument. "Twenty-nine-ten, " said Raoul. "I have never seen it so low before. " "I should say not!" snorted the captain. "Fifty years boy and man on allthe seas, and I've never seen it go down to that. Listen!" They stood for a moment, while the surf rumbled and shook the house. Then they went outside. The squall had passed. They could see theAorai lying becalmed a mile away and pitching and tossing madly inthe tremendous seas that rolled in stately procession down out of thenortheast and flung themselves furiously upon the coral shore. One ofthe sailors from the boat pointed at the mouth of the passage and shookhis head. Raoul looked and saw a white anarchy of foam and surge. "I guess I'll stay with you tonight, Captain, " he said; then turned tothe sailor and told him to haul the boat out and to find shelter forhimself and fellows. "Twenty-nine flat, " Captain Lynch reported, coming out from another lookat the barometer, a chair in his hand. He sat down and stared at the spectacle of the sea. The sun came out, increasing the sultriness of the day, while the dead calm still held. The seas continued to increase in magnitude. "What makes that sea is what gets me, " Raoul muttered petulantly. "There is no wind, yet look at it, look at that fellow there!" Miles in length, carrying tens of thousands of tons in weight, itsimpact shook the frail atoll like an earthquake. Captain Lynch wasstartled. "Gracious!" he bellowed, half rising from his chair, then sinking back. "But there is no wind, " Raoul persisted. "I could understand it if therewas wind along with it. " "You'll get the wind soon enough without worryin' for it, " was the grimreply. The two men sat on in silence. The sweat stood out on their skin inmyriads of tiny drops that ran together, forming blotches of moisture, which, in turn, coalesced into rivulets that dripped to the ground. Theypanted for breath, the old man's efforts being especially painful. Asea swept up the beach, licking around the trunks of the cocoanuts andsubsiding almost at their feet. "Way past high water mark, " Captain Lynch remarked; "and I've been hereeleven years. " He looked at his watch. "It is three o'clock. " A man and woman, at their heels a motley following of brats and curs, trailed disconsolately by. They came to a halt beyond the house, and, after much irresolution, sat down in the sand. A few minutes lateranother family trailed in from the opposite direction, the men and womencarrying a heterogeneous assortment of possessions. And soon severalhundred persons of all ages and sexes were congregated about thecaptain's dwelling. He called to one new arrival, a woman with a nursingbabe in her arms, and in answer received the information that her househad just been swept into the lagoon. This was the highest spot of land in miles, and already, in many placeson either hand, the great seas were making a clean breach of the slenderring of the atoll and surging into the lagoon. Twenty miles aroundstretched the ring of the atoll, and in no place was it more than fiftyfathoms wide. It was the height of the diving season, and from all theislands around, even as far as Tahiti, the natives had gathered. "There are twelve hundred men, women, and children here, " said CaptainLynch. "I wonder how many will be here tomorrow morning. " "But why don't it blow?--that's what I want to know, " Raoul demanded. "Don't worry, young man, don't worry; you'll get your troubles fastenough. " Even as Captain Lynch spoke, a great watery mass smote the atoll. The sea water churned about them three inches deep under the chairs. Alow wail of fear went up from the many women. The children, with claspedhands, stared at the immense rollers and cried piteously. Chickens andcats, wading perturbedly in the water, as by common consent, with flightand scramble took refuge on the roof of the captain's house. A Paumotan, with a litter of new-born puppies in a basket, climbed into a cocoanuttree and twenty feet above the ground made the basket fast. The motherfloundered about in the water beneath, whining and yelping. And still the sun shone brightly and the dead calm continued. They satand watched the seas and the insane pitching of the Aorai. Captain Lynchgazed at the huge mountains of water sweeping in until he could gazeno more. He covered his face with his hands to shut out the sight; thenwent into the house. "Twenty-eight-sixty, " he said quietly when he returned. In his arm was a coil of small rope. He cut it into two-fathom lengths, giving one to Raoul and, retaining one for himself, distributed theremainder among the women with the advice to pick out a tree and climb. A light air began to blow out of the northeast, and the fan of it onhis cheek seemed to cheer Raoul up. He could see the Aorai trimming hersheets and heading off shore, and he regretted that he was not on her. She would get away at any rate, but as for the atoll--A sea breachedacross, almost sweeping him off his feet, and he selected a tree. Thenhe remembered the barometer and ran back to the house. He encounteredCaptain Lynch on the same errand and together they went in. "Twenty-eight-twenty, " said the old mariner. "It's going to be fair hellaround here--what was that?" The air seemed filled with the rush of something. The house quivered andvibrated, and they heard the thrumming of a mighty note of sound. Thewindows rattled. Two panes crashed; a draught of wind tore in, strikingthem and making them stagger. The door opposite banged shut, shatteringthe latch. The white door knob crumbled in fragments to the floor. The room's walls bulged like a gas balloon in the process of suddeninflation. Then came a new sound like the rattle of musketry, as thespray from a sea struck the wall of the house. Captain Lynch lookedat his watch. It was four o'clock. He put on a coat of pilot cloth, unhooked the barometer, and stowed it away in a capacious pocket. Again a sea struck the house, with a heavy thud, and the light buildingtilted, twisted, quarter around on its foundation, and sank down, itsfloor at an angle of ten degrees. Raoul went out first. The wind caught him and whirled him away. He notedthat it had hauled around to the east. With a great effort he threwhimself on the sand, crouching and holding his own. Captain Lynch, driven like a wisp of straw, sprawled over him. Two of the Aorai'ssailors, leaving a cocoanut tree to which they had been clinging, cameto their aid, leaning against the wind at impossible angles and fightingand clawing every inch of the way. The old man's joints were stiff and he could not climb, so the sailors, by means of short ends of rope tied together, hoisted him up the trunk, a few feet at a time, till they could make him fast, at the top of thetree, fifty feet from the ground. Raoul passed his length of ropearound the base of an adjacent tree and stood looking on. The wind wasfrightful. He had never dreamed it could blow so hard. A sea breachedacross the atoll, wetting him to the knees ere it subsided into thelagoon. The sun had disappeared, and a lead-colored twilight settleddown. A few drops of rain, driving horizontally, struck him. The impactwas like that of leaden pellets. A splash of salt spray struck his face. It was like the slap of a man's hand. His cheeks stung, and involuntarytears of pain were in his smarting eyes. Several hundred natives hadtaken to the trees, and he could have laughed at the bunches of humanfruit clustering in the tops. Then, being Tahitian-born, he doubled hisbody at the waist, clasped the trunk of his tree with his hands, pressedthe soles of his feet against the near surface of the trunk, and beganto walk up the tree. At the top he found two women, two children, and aman. One little girl clasped a housecat in her arms. From his eyrie he waved his hand to Captain Lynch, and that doughtypatriarch waved back. Raoul was appalled at the sky. It had approachedmuch nearer--in fact, it seemed just over his head; and it had turnedfrom lead to black. Many people were still on the ground grouped aboutthe bases of the trees and holding on. Several such clusters werepraying, and in one the Mormon missionary was exhorting. A weird sound, rhythmical, faint as the faintest chirp of a far cricket, enduring butfor a moment, but in the moment suggesting to him vaguely the thoughtof heaven and celestial music, came to his ear. He glanced about him andsaw, at the base of another tree, a large cluster of people holding onby ropes and by one another. He could see their faces working and theirlips moving in unison. No sound came to him, but he knew that they weresinging hymns. Still the wind continued to blow harder. By no conscious process couldhe measure it, for it had long since passed beyond all his experience ofwind; but he knew somehow, nevertheless, that it was blowing harder. Notfar away a tree was uprooted, flinging its load of human beings tothe ground. A sea washed across the strip of sand, and they were gone. Things were happening quickly. He saw a brown shoulder and a black headsilhouetted against the churning white of the lagoon. The nextinstant that, too, had vanished. Other trees were going, falling andcriss-crossing like matches. He was amazed at the power of the wind. Hisown tree was swaying perilously, one woman was wailing and clutching thelittle girl, who in turn still hung on to the cat. The man, holding the other child, touched Raoul's arm and pointed. Helooked and saw the Mormon church careering drunkenly a hundred feetaway. It had been torn from its foundations, and wind and sea wereheaving and shoving it toward the lagoon. A frightful wall of watercaught it, tilted it, and flung it against half a dozen cocoanut trees. The bunches of human fruit fell like ripe cocoanuts. The subsiding waveshowed them on the ground, some lying motionless, others squirming andwrithing. They reminded him strangely of ants. He was not shocked. He had risen above horror. Quite as a matter of course he noted thesucceeding wave sweep the sand clean of the human wreckage. A thirdwave, more colossal than any he had yet seen, hurled the church intothe lagoon, where it floated off into the obscurity to leeward, half-submerged, reminding him for all the world of a Noah's ark. He looked for Captain Lynch's house, and was surprised to find it gone. Things certainly were happening quickly. He noticed that many of thepeople in the trees that still held had descended to the ground. Thewind had yet again increased. His own tree showed that. It no longerswayed or bent over and back. Instead, it remained practicallystationary, curved in a rigid angle from the wind and merely vibrating. But the vibration was sickening. It was like that of a tuning-fork orthe tongue of a jew's-harp. It was the rapidity of the vibration thatmade it so bad. Even though its roots held, it could not stand thestrain for long. Something would have to break. Ah, there was one that had gone. He had not seen it go, but there itstood, the remnant, broken off half-way up the trunk. One did not knowwhat happened unless he saw it. The mere crashing of trees and wailsof human despair occupied no place in that mighty volume of sound. Hechanced to be looking in Captain Lynch's direction when it happened. Hesaw the trunk of the tree, half-way up, splinter and part withoutnoise. The head of the tree, with three sailors of the Aorai and the oldcaptain sailed off over the lagoon. It did not fall to the ground, butdrove through the air like a piece of chaff. For a hundred yards hefollowed its flight, when it struck the water. He strained his eyes, andwas sure that he saw Captain Lynch wave farewell. Raoul did not wait for anything more. He touched the native and madesigns to descend to the ground. The man was willing, but his women wereparalyzed from terror, and he elected to remain with them. Raoul passedhis rope around the tree and slid down. A rush of salt water went overhis head. He held his breath and clung desperately to the rope. Thewater subsided, and in the shelter of the trunk he breathed once more. He fastened the rope more securely, and then was put under by anothersea. One of the women slid down and joined him, the native remaining bythe other woman, the two children, and the cat. The supercargo had noticed how the groups clinging at the bases of theother trees continually diminished. Now he saw the process work outalongside him. It required all his strength to hold on, and the womanwho had joined him was growing weaker. Each time he emerged from a seahe was surprised to find himself still there, and next, surprised tofind the woman still there. At last he emerged to find himself alone. He looked up. The top of the tree had gone as well. At half its originalheight, a splintered end vibrated. He was safe. The roots still held, while the tree had been shorn of its windage. He began to climb up. Hewas so weak that he went slowly, and sea after sea caught him before hewas above them. Then he tied himself to the trunk and stiffened his soulto face the night and he knew not what. He felt very lonely in the darkness. At times it seemed to him that itwas the end of the world and that he was the last one left alive. Stillthe wind increased. Hour after hour it increased. By what he calculatedwas eleven o'clock, the wind had become unbelievable. It was a horrible, monstrous thing, a screaming fury, a wall that smote and passed on butthat continued to smite and pass on--a wall without end. It seemed tohim that he had become light and ethereal; that it was he that was inmotion; that he was being driven with inconceivable velocity throughunending solidness. The wind was no longer air in motion. It had becomesubstantial as water or quicksilver. He had a feeling that he couldreach into it and tear it out in chunks as one might do with the meat inthe carcass of a steer; that he could seize hold of the wind and hang onto it as a man might hang on to the face of a cliff. The wind strangled him. He could not face it and breathe, for it rushedin through his mouth and nostrils, distending his lungs like bladders. At such moments it seemed to him that his body was being packed andswollen with solid earth. Only by pressing his lips to the trunk of thetree could he breathe. Also, the ceaseless impact of the wind exhaustedhim. Body and brain became wearied. He no longer observed, nolonger thought, and was but semiconscious. One idea constitutedhis consciousness: SO THIS WAS A HURRICANE. That one idea persistedirregularly. It was like a feeble flame that flickered occasionally. From a state of stupor he would return to it--SO THIS WAS A HURRICANE. Then he would go off into another stupor. The height of the hurricane endured from eleven at night till three inthe morning, and it was at eleven that the tree in which clung Mapuhiand his women snapped off. Mapuhi rose to the surface of the lagoon, still clutching his daughter Ngakura. Only a South Sea islander couldhave lived in such a driving smother. The pandanus tree, to which heattached himself, turned over and over in the froth and churn; and itwas only by holding on at times and waiting, and at other times shiftinghis grips rapidly, that he was able to get his head and Ngakura's to thesurface at intervals sufficiently near together to keep the breath inthem. But the air was mostly water, what with flying spray and sheetedrain that poured along at right angles to the perpendicular. It was ten miles across the lagoon to the farther ring of sand. Here, tossing tree trunks, timbers, wrecks of cutters, and wreckage of houses, killed nine out of ten of the miserable beings who survived the passageof the lagoon. Half-drowned, exhausted, they were hurled into this madmortar of the elements and battered into formless flesh. But Mapuhi wasfortunate. His chance was the one in ten; it fell to him by the freakageof fate. He emerged upon the sand, bleeding from a score of wounds. Ngakura's left arm was broken; the fingers of her right hand werecrushed; and cheek and forehead were laid open to the bone. He clutcheda tree that yet stood, and clung on, holding the girl and sobbing forair, while the waters of the lagoon washed by knee-high and at timeswaist-high. At three in the morning the backbone of the hurricane broke. By five nomore than a stiff breeze was blowing. And by six it was dead calm andthe sun was shining. The sea had gone down. On the yet restless edge ofthe lagoon, Mapuhi saw the broken bodies of those that had failed in thelanding. Undoubtedly Tefara and Nauri were among them. He went along thebeach examining them, and came upon his wife, lying half in and half outof the water. He sat down and wept, making harsh animal noises after themanner of primitive grief. Then she stirred uneasily, and groaned. Helooked more closely. Not only was she alive, but she was uninjured. Shewas merely sleeping. Hers also had been the one chance in ten. Of the twelve hundred alive the night before but three hundred remained. The Mormon missionary and a gendarme made the census. The lagoon wascluttered with corpses. Not a house nor a hut was standing. In the wholeatoll not two stones remained one upon another. One in fifty of thecocoanut palms still stood, and they were wrecks, while on not one ofthem remained a single nut. There was no fresh water. The shallow wells that caught the surfaceseepage of the rain were filled with salt. Out of the lagoon a fewsoaked bags of flour were recovered. The survivors cut the hearts out ofthe fallen cocoanut trees and ate them. Here and there they crawledinto tiny hutches, made by hollowing out the sand and covering over withfragments of metal roofing. The missionary made a crude still, but hecould not distill water for three hundred persons. By the end of thesecond day, Raoul, taking a bath in the lagoon, discovered that histhirst was somewhat relieved. He cried out the news, and thereupon threehundred men, women, and children could have been seen, standing up totheir necks in the lagoon and trying to drink water in through theirskins. Their dead floated about them, or were stepped upon where theystill lay upon the bottom. On the third day the people buried their deadand sat down to wait for the rescue steamers. In the meantime, Nauri, torn from her family by the hurricane, had beenswept away on an adventure of her own. Clinging to a rough plank thatwounded and bruised her and that filled her body with splinters, shewas thrown clear over the atoll and carried away to sea. Here, under theamazing buffets of mountains of water, she lost her plank. She was anold woman nearly sixty; but she was Paumotan-born, and she had neverbeen out of sight of the sea in her life. Swimming in the darkness, strangling, suffocating, fighting for air, she was struck a heavy blowon the shoulder by a cocoanut. On the instant her plan was formed, and she seized the nut. In the next hour she captured seven more. Tiedtogether, they formed a life-buoy that preserved her life while at thesame time it threatened to pound her to a jelly. She was a fat woman, and she bruised easily; but she had had experience of hurricanes, andwhile she prayed to her shark god for protection from sharks, she waitedfor the wind to break. But at three o'clock she was in such a stuporthat she did not know. Nor did she know at six o'clock when the deadcalm settled down. She was shocked into consciousness when she wasthrown upon the sand. She dug in with raw and bleeding hands and feetand clawed against the backwash until she was beyond the reach of thewaves. She knew where she was. This land could be no other than the tiny isletof Takokota. It had no lagoon. No one lived upon it. Hikueru was fifteen miles away. She could not see Hikueru, but sheknew that it lay to the south. The days went by, and she lived on thecocoanuts that had kept her afloat. They supplied her with drinkingwater and with food. But she did not drink all she wanted, nor eat allshe wanted. Rescue was problematical. She saw the smoke of the rescuesteamers on the horizon, but what steamer could be expected to come tolonely, uninhabited Takokota? From the first she was tormented by corpses. The sea persisted inflinging them upon her bit of sand, and she persisted, until herstrength failed, in thrusting them back into the sea where the sharkstore at them and devoured them. When her strength failed, the bodiesfestooned her beach with ghastly horror, and she withdrew from them asfar as she could, which was not far. By the tenth day her last cocoanut was gone, and she was shrivellingfrom thirst. She dragged herself along the sand, looking for cocoanuts. It was strange that so many bodies floated up, and no nuts. Surely, there were more cocoanuts afloat than dead men! She gave up at last, andlay exhausted. The end had come. Nothing remained but to wait for death. Coming out of a stupor, she became slowly aware that she was gazing at apatch of sandy-red hair on the head of a corpse. The sea flung the bodytoward her, then drew it back. It turned over, and she saw that it hadno face. Yet there was something familiar about that patch ofsandy-red hair. An hour passed. She did not exert herself to make theidentification. She was waiting to die, and it mattered little to herwhat man that thing of horror once might have been. But at the end of the hour she sat up slowly and stared at the corpse. An unusually large wave had thrown it beyond the reach of the lesserwaves. Yes, she was right; that patch of red hair could belong to butone man in the Paumotus. It was Levy, the German Jew, the man who hadbought the pearl and carried it away on the Hira. Well, one thing wasevident: The Hira had been lost. The pearl buyer's god of fishermen andthieves had gone back on him. She crawled down to the dead man. His shirt had been torn away, and shecould see the leather money belt about his waist. She held her breathand tugged at the buckles. They gave easier than she had expected, andshe crawled hurriedly away across the sand, dragging the belt after her. Pocket after pocket she unbuckled in the belt and found empty. Wherecould he have put it? In the last pocket of all she found it, the firstand only pearl he had bought on the voyage. She crawled a few feetfarther, to escape the pestilence of the belt, and examined the pearl. It was the one Mapuhi had found and been robbed of by Toriki. Sheweighed it in her hand and rolled it back and forth caressingly. But init she saw no intrinsic beauty. What she did see was the house Mapuhiand Tefara and she had builded so carefully in their minds. Each timeshe looked at the pearl she saw the house in all its details, includingthe octagon-drop-clock on the wall. That was something to live for. She tore a strip from her ahu and tied the pearl securely about herneck. Then she went on along the beach, panting and groaning, butresolutely seeking for cocoanuts. Quickly she found one, and, as sheglanced around, a second. She broke one, drinking its water, which wasmildewy, and eating the last particle of the meat. A little later shefound a shattered dugout. Its outrigger was gone, but she was hopeful, and, before the day was out, she found the outrigger. Every find was anaugury. The pearl was a talisman. Late in the afternoon she saw a woodenbox floating low in the water. When she dragged it out on the beach itscontents rattled, and inside she found ten tins of salmon. She openedone by hammering it on the canoe. When a leak was started, she drainedthe tin. After that she spent several hours in extracting the salmon, hammering and squeezing it out a morsel at a time. Eight days longer she waited for rescue. In the meantime she fastenedthe outrigger back on the canoe, using for lashings all the cocoanutfibre she could find, and also what remained of her ahu. The canoe wasbadly cracked, and she could not make it water-tight; but a calabashmade from a cocoanut she stored on board for a bailer. She was hard putfor a paddle. With a piece of tin she sawed off all her hair close tothe scalp. Out of the hair she braided a cord; and by means of the cordshe lashed a three-foot piece of broom handle to a board from the salmoncase. She gnawed wedges with her teeth and with them wedged the lashing. On the eighteenth day, at midnight, she launched the canoe through thesurf and started back for Hikueru. She was an old woman. Hardship hadstripped her fat from her till scarcely more than bones and skin and afew stringy muscles remained. The canoe was large and should have beenpaddled by three strong men. But she did it alone, with a make-shift paddle. Also, the canoe leakedbadly, and one-third of her time was devoted to bailing. By cleardaylight she looked vainly for Hikueru. Astern, Takokota had sunkbeneath the sea rim. The sun blazed down on her nakedness, compellingher body to surrender its moisture. Two tins of salmon were left, and inthe course of the day she battered holes in them and drained the liquid. She had no time to waste in extracting the meat. A current was settingto the westward, she made westing whether she made southing or not. In the early afternoon, standing upright in the canoe, she sightedHikueru. Its wealth of cocoanut palms was gone. Only here and there, atwide intervals, could she see the ragged remnants of trees. The sightcheered her. She was nearer than she had thought. The current wassetting her to the westward. She bore up against it and paddled on. Thewedges in the paddle lashing worked loose, and she lost much time, atfrequent intervals, in driving them tight. Then there was the bailing. One hour in three she had to cease paddling in order to bail. And allthe time she drifted to the westward. By sunset Hikueru bore southeast from her, three miles away. There wasa full moon, and by eight o'clock the land was due east and two milesaway. She struggled on for another hour, but the land was as far away asever. She was in the main grip of the current; the canoe was too large;the paddle was too inadequate; and too much of her time and strengthwas wasted in bailing. Besides, she was very weak and growing weaker. Despite her efforts, the canoe was drifting off to the westward. She breathed a prayer to her shark god, slipped over the side, and beganto swim. She was actually refreshed by the water, and quickly left thecanoe astern. At the end of an hour the land was perceptibly nearer. Then came her fright. Right before her eyes, not twenty feet away, alarge fin cut the water. She swam steadily toward it, and slowly itglided away, curving off toward the right and circling around her. Shekept her eyes on the fin and swam on. When the fin disappeared, shelay face downward in the water and watched. When the fin reappeared sheresumed her swimming. The monster was lazy--she could see that. Withoutdoubt he had been well fed since the hurricane. Had he been very hungry, she knew he would not have hesitated from making a dash for her. He wasfifteen feet long, and one bite, she knew, could cut her in half. But she did not have any time to waste on him. Whether she swam or not, the current drew away from the land just the same. A half hour wentby, and the shark began to grow bolder. Seeing no harm in her he drewcloser, in narrowing circles, cocking his eyes at her impudently ashe slid past. Sooner or later, she knew well enough, he would get upsufficient courage to dash at her. She resolved to play first. It was adesperate act she meditated. She was an old woman, alone in the sea andweak from starvation and hardship; and yet she, in the face of this seatiger, must anticipate his dash by herself dashing at him. She swam on, waiting her chance. At last he passed languidly by, barely eight feetaway. She rushed at him suddenly, feigning that she was attacking him. He gave a wild flirt of his tail as he fled away, and his sandpaperhide, striking her, took off her skin from elbow to shoulder. He swamrapidly, in a widening circle, and at last disappeared. In the hole in the sand, covered over by fragments of metal roofing, Mapuhi and Tefara lay disputing. "If you had done as I said, " charged Tefara, for the thousandth time, "and hidden the pearl and told no one, you would have it now. " "But Huru-Huru was with me when I opened the shell--have I not told youso times and times and times without end?" "And now we shall have no house. Raoul told me today that if you had notsold the pearl to Toriki--" "I did not sell it. Toriki robbed me. " "--that if you had not sold the pearl, he would give you five thousandFrench dollars, which is ten thousand Chili. " "He has been talking to his mother, " Mapuhi explained. "She has an eyefor a pearl. " "And now the pearl is lost, " Tefara complained. "It paid my debt with Toriki. That is twelve hundred I have made, anyway. " "Toriki is dead, " she cried. "They have heard no word of his schooner. She was lost along with the Aorai and the Hira. Will Toriki pay you thethree hundred credit he promised? No, because Toriki is dead. And hadyou found no pearl, would you today owe Toriki the twelve hundred? No, because Toriki is dead, and you cannot pay dead men. " "But Levy did not pay Toriki, " Mapuhi said. "He gave him a piece ofpaper that was good for the money in Papeete; and now Levy is dead andcannot pay; and Toriki is dead and the paper lost with him, and thepearl is lost with Levy. You are right, Tefara. I have lost the pearl, and got nothing for it. Now let us sleep. " He held up his hand suddenly and listened. From without came a noise, as of one who breathed heavily and with pain. A hand fumbled against themat that served for a door. "Who is there?" Mapuhi cried. "Nauri, " came the answer. "Can you tell me where is my son, Mapuhi?" Tefara screamed and gripped her husband's arm. "A ghost!" she chattered. "A ghost!" Mapuhi's face was a ghastly yellow. He clung weakly to his wife. "Good woman, " he said in faltering tones, striving to disguise his vice, "I know your son well. He is living on the east side of the lagoon. " From without came the sound of a sigh. Mapuhi began to feel elated. Hehad fooled the ghost. "But where do you come from, old woman?" he asked. "From the sea, " was the dejected answer. "I knew it! I knew it!" screamed Tefara, rocking to and fro. "Since when has Tefara bedded in a strange house?" came Nauri's voicethrough the matting. Mapuhi looked fear and reproach at his wife. It was her voice that hadbetrayed them. "And since when has Mapuhi, my son, denied his old mother?" the voicewent on. "No, no, I have not--Mapuhi has not denied you, " he cried. "I am notMapuhi. He is on the east end of the lagoon, I tell you. " Ngakura sat up in bed and began to cry. The matting started to shake. "What are you doing?" Mapuhi demanded. "I am coming in, " said the voice of Nauri. One end of the matting lifted. Tefara tried to dive under the blankets, but Mapuhi held on to her. He had to hold on to something. Together, struggling with each other, with shivering bodies and chattering teeth, they gazed with protruding eyes at the lifting mat. They saw Nauri, dripping with sea water, without her ahu, creep in. They rolled overbackward from her and fought for Ngakura's blanket with which to covertheir heads. "You might give your old mother a drink of water, " the ghost saidplaintively. "Give her a drink of water, " Tefara commanded in a shaking voice. "Give her a drink of water, " Mapuhi passed on the command to Ngakura. And together they kicked out Ngakura from under the blanket. A minutelater, peeping, Mapuhi saw the ghost drinking. When it reached outa shaking hand and laid it on his, he felt the weight of it and wasconvinced that it was no ghost. Then he emerged, dragging Tefara afterhim, and in a few minutes all were listening to Nauri's tale. And whenshe told of Levy, and dropped the pearl into Tefara's hand, even she wasreconciled to the reality of her mother-in-law. "In the morning, " said Tefara, "you will sell the pearl to Raoul forfive thousand French. " "The house?" objected Nauri. "He will build the house, " Tefara answered. "He ways it will cost fourthousand French. Also will he give one thousand French in credit, whichis two thousand Chili. " "And it will be six fathoms long?" Nauri queried. "Ay, " answered Mapuhi, "six fathoms. " "And in the middle room will be the octagon-drop-clock?" "Ay, and the round table as well. " "Then give me something to eat, for I am hungry, " said Nauri, complacently. "And after that we will sleep, for I am weary. Andtomorrow we will have more talk about the house before we sell thepearl. It will be better if we take the thousand French in cash. Moneyis ever better than credit in buying goods from the traders. " THE WHALE TOOTH It was in the early days in Fiji, when John Starhurst arose in themission house at Rewa Village and announced his intention of carryingthe gospel throughout all Viti Levu. Now Viti Levu means the "GreatLand, " it being the largest island in a group composed of many largeislands, to say nothing of hundreds of small ones. Here and there onthe coasts, living by most precarious tenure, was a sprinkling ofmissionaries, traders, bêche-de-mer fishers, and whaleship deserters. The smoke of the hot ovens arose under their windows, and the bodies ofthe slain were dragged by their doors on the way to the feasting. The Lotu, or the Worship, was progressing slowly, and, often, incrablike fashion. Chiefs, who announced themselves Christians andwere welcomed into the body of the chapel, had a distressing habit ofbacksliding in order to partake of the flesh of some favorite enemy. Eator be eaten had been the law of the land; and eat or be eaten promisedto remain the law of the land for a long time to come. There werechiefs, such as Tanoa, Tuiveikoso, and Tuikilakila, who had literallyeaten hundreds of their fellow men. But among these gluttons RaUndreundre ranked highest. Ra Undreundre lived at Takiraki. He kept aregister of his gustatory exploits. A row of stones outside his housemarked the bodies he had eaten. This row was two hundred and thirtypaces long, and the stones in it numbered eight hundred and seventy-two. Each stone represented a body. The row of stones might have been longer, had not Ra Undreundre unfortunately received a spear in the small of hisback in a bush skirmish on Somo Somo and been served up on the table ofNaungavuli, whose mediocre string of stones numbered only forty-eight. The hard-worked, fever-stricken missionaries stuck doggedly to theirtask, at times despairing, and looking forward for some specialmanifestation, some outburst of Pentecostal fire that would bring aglorious harvest of souls. But cannibal Fiji had remained obdurate. Thefrizzle-headed man-eaters were loath to leave their fleshpots so long asthe harvest of human carcases was plentiful. Sometimes, when the harvestwas too plentiful, they imposed on the missionaries by letting the wordslip out that on such a day there would be a killing and a barbecue. Promptly the missionaries would buy the lives of the victims with sticktobacco, fathoms of calico, and quarts of trade beads. Natheless thechiefs drove a handsome trade in thus disposing of their surplus livemeat. Also, they could always go out and catch more. It was at this juncture that John Starhurst proclaimed that he wouldcarry the Gospel from coast to coast of the Great Land, and that hewould begin by penetrating the mountain fastnesses of the headwaters ofthe Rewa River. His words were received with consternation. The native teachers wept softly. His two fellow missionaries strove todissuade him. The King of Rewa warned him that the mountain dwellerswould surely kai-kai him--kai-kai meaning "to eat"--and that he, theKing of Rewa, having become Lotu, would be put to the necessity of goingto war with the mountain dwellers. That he could not conquer them hewas perfectly aware. That they might come down the river and sack RewaVillage he was likewise perfectly aware. But what was he to do? If JohnStarhurst persisted in going out and being eaten, there would be a warthat would cost hundreds of lives. Later in the day a deputation of Rewa chiefs waited upon John Starhurst. He heard them patiently, and argued patiently with them, though heabated not a whit from his purpose. To his fellow missionaries heexplained that he was not bent upon martyrdom; that the call had comefor him to carry the Gospel into Viti Levu, and that he was merelyobeying the Lord's wish. To the traders who came and objected most strenuously of all, he said:"Your objections are valueless. They consist merely of the damage thatmay be done your businesses. You are interested in making money, butI am interested in saving souls. The heathen of this dark land must besaved. " John Starhurst was not a fanatic. He would have been the first man todeny the imputation. He was eminently sane and practical. He was sure that his mission would result in good, and he hadprivate visions of igniting the Pentecostal spark in the souls of themountaineers and of inaugurating a revival that would sweep down out ofthe mountains and across the length and breadth of the Great Land fromsea to sea and to the isles in the midst of the sea. There were nowild lights in his mild gray eyes, but only calm resolution and anunfaltering trust in the Higher Power that was guiding him. One man only he found who approved of his project, and that was Ra Vatu, who secretly encouraged him and offered to lend him guides to the firstfoothills. John Starhurst, in turn, was greatly pleased by Ra Vatu'sconduct. From an incorrigible heathen, with a heart as black as hispractices, Ra Vatu was beginning to emanate light. He even spoke ofbecoming Lotu. True, three years before he had expressed a similarintention, and would have entered the church had not John Starhurstentered objection to his bringing his four wives along with him. RaVatu had had economic and ethical objections to monogamy. Besides, themissionary's hair-splitting objection had offended him; and, to provethat he was a free agent and a man of honor, he had swung his huge warclub over Starhurst's head. Starhurst had escaped by rushing in underthe club and holding on to him until help arrived. But all that was nowforgiven and forgotten. Ra Vatu was coming into the church, not merelyas a converted heathen, but as a converted polygamist as well. He wasonly waiting, he assured Starhurst, until his oldest wife, who was verysick, should die. John Starhurst journeyed up the sluggish Rewa in one of Ra Vatu'scanoes. This canoe was to carry him for two days, when, the head ofnavigation reached, it would return. Far in the distance, liftedinto the sky, could be seen the great smoky mountains that marked thebackbone of the Great Land. All day John Starhurst gazed at them witheager yearning. Sometimes he prayed silently. At other times he was joined in prayer byNarau, a native teacher, who for seven years had been Lotu, ever sincethe day he had been saved from the hot oven by Dr. James Ellery Brownat the trifling expense of one hundred sticks of tobacco, two cottonblankets, and a large bottle of painkiller. At the last moment, aftertwenty hours of solitary supplication and prayer, Narau's ears hadheard the call to go forth with John Starhurst on the mission to themountains. "Master, I will surely go with thee, " he had announced. John Starhurst had hailed him with sober delight. Truly, the Lord waswith him thus to spur on so broken-spirited a creature as Narau. "I am indeed without spirit, the weakest of the Lord's vessels, " Narauexplained, the first day in the canoe. "You should have faith, stronger faith, " the missionary chided him. Another canoe journeyed up the Rewa that day. But it journeyed anhour astern, and it took care not to be seen. This canoe was also theproperty of Ra Vatu. In it was Erirola, Ra Vatu's first cousin andtrusted henchman; and in the small basket that never left his hand wasa whale tooth. It was a magnificent tooth, fully six inches long, beautifully proportioned, the ivory turned yellow and purple with age. This tooth was likewise the property of Ra Vatu; and in Fiji, when sucha tooth goes forth, things usually happen. For this is the virtue ofthe whale tooth: Whoever accepts it cannot refuse the request that mayaccompany it or follow it. The request may be anything from a human lifeto a tribal alliance, and no Fijian is so dead to honor as to deny therequest when once the tooth has been accepted. Sometimes the requesthangs fire, or the fulfilment is delayed, with untoward consequences. High up the Rewa, at the village of a chief, Mongondro by name, JohnStarhurst rested at the end of the second day of the journey. In themorning, attended by Narau, he expected to start on foot for the smokymountains that were now green and velvety with nearness. Mongondro wasa sweet-tempered, mild-mannered little old chief, short-sightedand afflicted with elephantiasis, and no longer inclined toward theturbulence of war. He received the missionary with warm hospitality, gave him food from his own table, and even discussed religious matterswith him. Mongondro was of an inquiring bent of mind, and pleasedJohn Starhurst greatly by asking him to account for the existence andbeginning of things. When the missionary had finished his summary ofthe Creation according to Genesis, he saw that Mongondro was deeplyaffected. The little old chief smoked silently for some time. Then hetook the pipe from his mouth and shook his head sadly. "It cannot be, " he said. "I, Mongondro, in my youth, was a good workmanwith the adze. Yet three months did it take me to make a canoe--a smallcanoe, a very small canoe. And you say that all this land and water wasmade by one man--" "Nay, was made by one God, the only true God, " the missionaryinterrupted. "It is the same thing, " Mongondro went on, "that all the land and allthe water, the trees, the fish, and bush and mountains, the sun, themoon, and the stars, were made in six days! No, no. I tell you that inmy youth I was an able man, yet did it require me three months for onesmall canoe. It is a story to frighten children with; but no man canbelieve it. " "I am a man, " the missionary said. "True, you are a man. But it is not given to my dark understanding toknow what you believe. " "I tell you, I do believe that everything was made in six days. " "So you say, so you say, " the old cannibal murmured soothingly. It was not until after John Starhurst and Narau had gone off to bedthat Erirola crept into the chief's house, and, after diplomatic speech, handed the whale tooth to Mongondro. The old chief held the tooth in his hands for a long time. It was abeautiful tooth, and he yearned for it. Also, he divined the requestthat must accompany it. "No, no; whale teeth were beautiful, " andhis mouth watered for it, but he passed it back to Erirola with manyapologies. ***** In the early dawn John Starhurst was afoot, striding along the bushtrail in his big leather boots, at his heels the faithful Narau, himselfat the heels of a naked guide lent him by Mongondro to show the way tothe next village, which was reached by midday. Here a new guide showedthe way. A mile in the rear plodded Erirola, the whale tooth in thebasket slung on his shoulder. For two days more he brought up themissionary's rear, offering the tooth to the village chiefs. But villageafter village refused the tooth. It followed so quickly the missionary'sadvent that they divined the request that would be made, and would havenone of it. They were getting deep into the mountains, and Erirola took a secrettrail, cut in ahead of the missionary, and reached the stronghold of theBuli of Gatoka. Now the Buli was unaware of John Starhurst's imminentarrival. Also, the tooth was beautiful--an extraordinary specimen, whilethe coloring of it was of the rarest order. The tooth was presentedpublicly. The Buli of Gatoka, seated on his best mat, surrounded by hischief men, three busy fly-brushers at his back, deigned to receive fromthe hand of his herald the whale tooth presented by Ra Vatu and carriedinto the mountains by his cousin, Erirola. A clapping of hands went upat the acceptance of the present, the assembled headman, heralds, andfly-brushers crying aloud in chorus: "A! woi! woi! woi! A! woi! woi! woi! A tabua levu! woi! woi! A mudua, mudua, mudua!' "Soon will come a man, a white man, " Erirola began, after the properpause. "He is a missionary man, and he will come today. Ra Vatu ispleased to desire his boots. He wishes to present them to his goodfriend, Mongondro, and it is in his mind to send them with the feetalong in them, for Mongondro is an old man and his teeth are not good. Be sure, O Buli, that the feet go along in the boots. As for the rest ofhim, it may stop here. " The delight in the whale tooth faded out of the Buli's eyes, and heglanced about him dubiously. Yet had he already accepted the tooth. "A little thing like a missionary does not matter, " Erirola prompted. "No, a little thing like a missionary does not matter, " the Bulianswered, himself again. "Mongondro shall have the boots. Go, you youngmen, some three or four of you, and meet the missionary on the trail. Besure you bring back the boots as well. " "It is too late, " said Erirola. "Listen! He comes now. " Breaking through the thicket of brush, John Starhurst, with Narau closeon his heels, strode upon the scene. The famous boots, having filled inwading the stream, squirted fine jets of water at every step. Starhurstlooked about him with flashing eyes. Upborne by an unwavering trust, untouched by doubt or fear, he exulted in all he saw. He knew thatsince the beginning of time he was the first white man ever to tread themountain stronghold of Gatoka. The grass houses clung to the steep mountain side or overhung therushing Rewa. On either side towered a mighty precipice. At the best, three hours of sunlight penetrated that narrow gorge. No cocoanutsnor bananas were to be seen, though dense, tropic vegetation overraneverything, dripping in airy festoons from the sheer lips of theprecipices and running riot in all the crannied ledges. At the far endof the gorge the Rewa leaped eight hundred feet in a single span, whilethe atmosphere of the rock fortress pulsed to the rhythmic thunder ofthe fall. From the Buli's house, John Starhurst saw emerging the Buli and hisfollowers. "I bring you good tidings, " was the missionary's greeting. "Who has sent you?" the Buli rejoined quietly. "God. " "It is a new name in Viti Levu, " the Buli grinned. "Of what islands, villages, or passes may he be chief?" "He is the chief over all islands, all villages, all passes, " JohnStarhurst answered solemnly. "He is the Lord over heaven and earth, andI am come to bring His word to you. " "Has he sent whale teeth?" was the insolent query. "No, but more precious than whale teeth is the--" "It is the custom, between chiefs, to send whale teeth, " the Buliinterrupted. "Your chief is either a niggard, or you are a fool, to come empty-handedinto the mountains. Behold, a more generous than you is before you. " So saying, he showed the whale tooth he had received from Erirola. Narau groaned. "It is the whale tooth of Ra Vatu, " he whispered to Starhurst. "I knowit well. Now are we undone. " "A gracious thing, " the missionary answered, passing his hand throughhis long beard and adjusting his glasses. "Ra Vatu has arranged that weshould be well received. " But Narau groaned again, and backed away from the heels he had dogged sofaithfully. "Ra Vatu is soon to become Lotu, " Starhurst explained, "and I have comebringing the Lotu to you. " "I want none of your Lotu, " said the Buli, proudly. "And it is in mymind that you will be clubbed this day. " The Buli nodded to one of his big mountaineers, who stepped forward, swinging a club. Narau bolted into the nearest house, seeking to hideamong the woman and mats; but John Starhurst sprang in under the cluband threw his arms around his executioner's neck. From this point ofvantage he proceeded to argue. He was arguing for his life, and he knewit; but he was neither excited nor afraid. "It would be an evil thing for you to kill me, " he told the man. "I havedone you no wrong, nor have I done the Buli wrong. " So well did he cling to the neck of the one man that they dared notstrike with their clubs. And he continued to cling and to dispute forhis life with those who clamored for his death. "I am John Starhurst, " he went on calmly. "I have labored in Fiji forthree years, and I have done it for no profit. I am here among you forgood. Why should any man kill me? To kill me will not profit any man. " The Buli stole a look at the whale tooth. He was well paid for the deed. The missionary was surrounded by a mass of naked savages, all strugglingto get at him. The death song, which is the song of the oven, wasraised, and his expostulations could no longer be heard. But socunningly did he twine and wreathe his body about his captor's that thedeath blow could not be struck. Erirola smiled, and the Buli grew angry. "Away with you!" he cried. "A nice story to go back to the coast--adozen of you and one missionary, without weapons, weak as a woman, overcoming all of you. " "Wait, O Buli, " John Starhurst called out from the thick of the scuffle, "and I will overcome even you. For my weapons are Truth and Right, andno man can withstand them. " "Come to me, then, " the Buli answered, "for my weapon is only a poormiserable club, and, as you say, it cannot withstand you. " The group separated from him, and John Starhurst stood alone, facing theBuli, who was leaning on an enormous, knotted warclub. "Come to me, missionary man, and overcome me, " the Buli challenged. "Even so will I come to you and overcome you, " John Starhurst madeanswer, first wiping his spectacles and settling them properly, thenbeginning his advance. The Buli raised the club and waited. "In the first place, my death will profit you nothing, " began theargument. "I leave the answer to my club, " was the Buli's reply. And to every point he made the same reply, at the same time watching themissionary closely in order to forestall that cunning run-in under thelifted club. Then, and for the first time, John Starhurst knew that hisdeath was at hand. He made no attempt to run in. Bareheaded, he stood inthe sun and prayed aloud--the mysterious figure of the inevitable whiteman, who, with Bible, bullet, or rum bottle, has confronted the amazedsavage in his every stronghold. Even so stood John Starhurst in the rockfortress of the Buli of Gatoka. "Forgive them, for they know not what they do, " he prayed. "O Lord! Havemercy upon Fiji. Have compassion for Fiji. O Jehovah, hear us for Hissake, Thy Son, whom Thou didst give that through Him all men might alsobecome Thy children. From Thee we came, and our mind is that to Theewe may return. The land is dark, O Lord, the land is dark. But Thou artmighty to save. Reach out Thy hand, O Lord, and save Fiji, poor cannibalFiji. " The Buli grew impatient. "Now will I answer thee, " he muttered, at the same time swinging hisclub with both hands. Narau, hiding among the women and the mats, heard the impact of theblow and shuddered. Then the death song arose, and he knew his belovedmissionary's body was being dragged to the oven as he heard the words: "Drag me gently. Drag me gently. " "For I am the champion of my land. " "Give thanks! Give thanks! Give thanks!" Next, a single voice arose out of the din, asking: "Where is the brave man?" A hundred voices bellowed the answer: "Gone to be dragged into the oven and cooked. " "Where is the coward?" the single voice demanded. "Gone to report!" the hundred voices bellowed back. "Gone to report!Gone to report!" Narau groaned in anguish of spirit. The words of the old song were true. He was the coward, and nothing remained to him but to go and report. MAUKI He weighed one hundred and ten pounds. His hair was kinky and negroid, and he was black. He was peculiarly black. He was neither blue-black norpurple-black, but plum-black. His name was Mauki, and he was the sonof a chief. He had three tambos. Tambo is Melanesian for taboo, andis first cousin to that Polynesian word. Mauki's three tambos wereas follows: First, he must never shake hands with a woman, nor have awoman's hand touch him or any of his personal belongings; secondly, hemust never eat clams nor any food from a fire in which clams had beencooked; thirdly, he must never touch a crocodile, nor travel in a canoethat carried any part of a crocodile even if as large as a tooth. Of a different black were his teeth, which were deep black, or, perhapsbetter, LAMP-black. They had been made so in a single night, by hismother, who had compressed about them a powdered mineral which wasdug from the landslide back of Port Adams. Port Adams is a salt-watervillage on Malaita, and Malaita is the most savage island in theSolomons--so savage that no traders or planters have yet gained afoothold on it; while, from the time of the earliest bêche-de-merfishers and sandalwood traders down to the latest labor recruitersequipped with automatic rifles and gasolene engines, scores of whiteadventurers have been passed out by tomahawks and soft-nosed Sniderbullets. So Malaita remains today, in the twentieth century, thestamping ground of the labor recruiters, who farm its coasts forlaborers who engage and contract themselves to toil on the plantationsof the neighboring and more civilized islands for a wage of thirtydollars a year. The natives of those neighboring and more civilizedislands have themselves become too civilized to work on plantations. Mauki's ears were pierced, not in one place, nor two places, but in acouple of dozen places. In one of the smaller holes he carried a claypipe. The larger holes were too large for such use. The bowl of the pipewould have fallen through. In fact, in the largest hole in each earhe habitually wore round wooden plugs that were an even four inches indiameter. Roughly speaking, the circumference of said holes was twelveand one-half inches. Mauki was catholic in his tastes. In the varioussmaller holes he carried such things as empty rifle cartridges, horseshoe nails, copper screws, pieces of string, braids of sennit, strips of green leaf, and, in the cool of the day, scarlet hibiscusflowers. From which it will be seen that pockets were not necessary tohis well-being. Besides, pockets were impossible, for his only wearingapparel consisted of a piece of calico several inches wide. A pocketknife he wore in his hair, the blade snapped down on a kinky lock. Hismost prized possession was the handle of a china cup, which he suspendedfrom a ring of turtle-shell, which, in turn, was passed through thepartition-cartilage of his nose. But in spite of embellishments, Mauki had a nice face. It was reallya pretty face, viewed by any standard, and for a Melanesian it was aremarkably good-looking face. Its one fault was its lack of strength. Itwas softly effeminate, almost girlish. The features were small, regular, and delicate. The chin was weak, and the mouth was weak. There was nostrength nor character in the jaws, forehead, and nose. In the eyes onlycould be caught any hint of the unknown quantities that were so large apart of his make-up and that other persons could not understand. Theseunknown quantities were pluck, pertinacity, fearlessness, imagination, and cunning; and when they found expression in some consistent andstriking action, those about him were astounded. Mauki's father was chief over the village at Port Adams, and thus, bybirth a salt-water man, Mauki was half amphibian. He knew the way of thefishes and oysters, and the reef was an open book to him. Canoes, also, he knew. He learned to swim when he was a year old. At seven years hecould hold his breath a full minute and swim straight down to bottomthrough thirty feet of water. And at seven years he was stolen bythe bushmen, who cannot even swim and who are afraid of salt water. Thereafter Mauki saw the sea only from a distance, through rifts in thejungle and from open spaces on the high mountain sides. He became theslave of old Fanfoa, head chief over a score of scattered bush-villageson the range-lips of Malaita, the smoke of which, on calm mornings, is about the only evidence the seafaring white men have of the teeminginterior population. For the whites do not penetrate Malaita. They triedit once, in the days when the search was on for gold, but they alwaysleft their heads behind to grin from the smoky rafters of the bushmen'shuts. When Mauki was a young man of seventeen, Fanfoa got out of tobacco. Hegot dreadfully out of tobacco. It was hard times in all his villages. He had been guilty of a mistake. Suo was a harbor so small that a largeschooner could not swing at anchor in it. It was surrounded by mangrovesthat overhung the deep water. It was a trap, and into the trap sailedtwo white men in a small ketch. They were after recruits, and theypossessed much tobacco and trade goods, to say nothing of three riflesand plenty of ammunition. Now there were no salt-water men living atSuo, and it was there that the bushmen could come down to the sea. Theketch did a splendid traffic. It signed on twenty recruits the firstday. Even old Fanfoa signed on. And that same day the score of newrecruits chopped off the two white men's head, killed the boat's crew, and burned the ketch. Thereafter, and for three months, there wastobacco and trade goods in plenty and to spare in all the bush villages. Then came the man-of-war that threw shells for miles into the hills, frightening the people out of their villages and into the deeper bush. Next the man-of-war sent landing parties ashore. The villages were allburned, along with the tobacco and trade stuff. The cocoanuts and bananas were chopped down, the taro gardens uprooted, and the pigs and chickens killed. It taught Fanfoa a lesson, but in the meantime he was out of tobacco. Also, his young men were too frightened to sign on with the recruitingvessels. That was why Fanfoa ordered his slave, Mauki, to be carrieddown and signed on for half a case of tobacco advance, along withknives, axes, calico, and beads, which he would pay for with his toilon the plantations. Mauki was sorely frightened when they brought him onboard the schooner. He was a lamb led to the slaughter. White men wereferocious creatures. They had to be, or else they would not make apractice of venturing along the Malaita coast and into all harbors, twoon a schooner, when each schooner carried from fifteen to twenty blacksas boat's crew, and often as high as sixty or seventy black recruits. Inaddition to this, there was always the danger of the shore population, the sudden attack and the cutting off of the schooner and all hands. Truly, white men must be terrible. Besides, they were possessed of suchdevil-devils--rifles that shot very rapidly many times, things of ironand brass that made the schooners go when there was no wind, and boxesthat talked and laughed just as men talked and laughed. Ay, and he had heard of one white man whose particular devil-devil wasso powerful that he could take out all his teeth and put them back atwill. Down into the cabin they took Mauki. On deck, the one white man keptguard with two revolvers in his belt. In the cabin the other white mansat with a book before him, in which he inscribed strange marks andlines. He looked at Mauki as though he had been a pig or a fowl, glancedunder the hollows of his arms, and wrote in the book. Then he held outthe writing stick and Mauki just barely touched it with his hand, in sodoing pledging himself to toil for three years on the plantations of theMoongleam Soap Company. It was not explained to him that the will ofthe ferocious white men would be used to enforce the pledge, and that, behind all, for the same use, was all the power and all the warships ofGreat Britain. Other blacks there were on board, from unheard-of far places, and whenthe white man spoke to them, they tore the long feather from Mauki'shair, cut that same hair short, and wrapped about his waist a lava-lavaof bright yellow calico. After many days on the schooner, and after beholding more land andislands than he had ever dreamed of, he was landed on New Georgia, andput to work in the field clearing jungle and cutting cane grass. For thefirst time he knew what work was. Even as a slave to Fanfoa he had notworked like this. And he did not like work. It was up at dawn and in atdark, on two meals a day. And the food was tiresome. For weeks at a timethey were given nothing but sweet potatoes to eat, and for weeks ata time it would be nothing but rice. He cut out the cocoanut from theshells day after day; and for long days and weeks he fed the firesthat smoked the copra, till his eyes got sore and he was set tofelling trees. He was a good axe-man, and later he was put in thebridge-building gang. Once, he was punished by being put in theroad-building gang. At times he served as boat's crew in the whaleboats, when they brought in copra from distant beaches or when the whitemen went out to dynamite fish. Among other things he learned beche-de-mer English, with which he couldtalk with all white men, and with all recruits who otherwise would havetalked in a thousand different dialects. Also, he learned certain thingsabout the white men, principally that they kept their word. If they tolda boy he was going to receive a stick of tobacco, he got it. If theytold a boy they would knock seven bells out of him if he did a certainthing, when he did that thing, seven bells invariably were knocked outof him. Mauki did not know what seven bells were, but they occurredin beche-de-mer, and he imagined them to be the blood and teeth thatsometimes accompanied the process of knocking out seven bells. One otherthing he learned: no boy was struck or punished unless he did wrong. Even when the white men were drunk, as they were frequently, they neverstruck unless a rule had been broken. Mauki did not like the plantation. He hated work, and he was the sonof a chief. Furthermore, it was ten years since he had been stolen fromPort Adams by Fanfoa, and he was homesick. He was even homesick for theslavery under Fanfoa. So he ran away. He struck back into the bush, withthe idea of working southward to the beach and stealing a canoe in whichto go home to Port Adams. But the fever got him, and he was captured and brought back more deadthan alive. A second time he ran away, in the company of two Malaita boys. They gotdown the coast twenty miles, and were hidden in the hut of a Malaitafreeman, who dwelt in that village. But in the dead of night two whitemen came, who were not afraid of all the village people and who knockedseven bells out of the three runaways, tied them like pigs, andtossed them into the whale boat. But the man in whose house they hadhidden--seven times seven bells must have been knocked out of him fromthe way the hair, skin, and teeth flew, and he was discouraged for therest of his natural life from harboring runaway laborers. For a year Mauki toiled on. Then he was made a house-boy, and had goodfood and easy times, with light work in keeping the house clean andserving the white men with whiskey and beer at all hours of the day andmost hours of the night. He liked it, but he liked Port Adams more. Hehad two years longer to serve, but two years were too long for him inthe throes of homesickness. He had grown wiser with his year of service, and, being now a house-boy, he had opportunity. He had the cleaning ofthe rifles, and he knew where the key to the store room was hung. Heplanned to escape, and one night ten Malaita boys and one boy from SanCristoval sneaked from the barracks and dragged one of the whale boatsdown to the beach. It was Mauki who supplied the key that opened thepadlock on the boat, and it was Mauki who equipped the boat with a dozenWinchesters, an immense amount of ammunition, a case of dynamite withdetonators and fuse, and ten cases of tobacco. The northwest monsoon was blowing, and they fled south in the nighttime, hiding by day on detached and uninhabited islets, or draggingtheir whale boat into the bush on the large islands. Thus they gainedGuadalcanar, skirted halfway along it, and crossed the IndispensableStraits to Florida Island. It was here that they killed the SanCristoval boy, saving his head and cooking and eating the rest of him. The Malaita coast was only twenty miles away, but the last night astrong current and baffling winds prevented them from gaining across. Daylight found them still several miles from their goal. But daylightbrought a cutter, in which were two white men, who were not afraid ofeleven Malaita men armed with twelve rifles. Mauki and his companionswere carried back to Tulagi, where lived the great white master of allthe white men. And the great white master held a court, after which, one by one, the runaways were tied up and given twenty lashes each, and sentenced to a fine of fifteen dollars. They were sent back to NewGeorgia, where the white men knocked seven bells out of them all aroundand put them to work. But Mauki was no longer house-boy. He was put inthe road-making gang. The fine of fifteen dollars had been paid by thewhite men from whom he had run away, and he was told that he would haveto work it out, which meant six months' additional toil. Further, hisshare of the stolen tobacco earned him another year of toil. Port Adams was now three years and a half away, so he stole a canoe onenight, hid on the islets in Manning Straits, passed through theStraits, and began working along the eastern coast of Ysabel, only tobe captured, two-thirds of the way along, by the white men on MeringeLagoon. After a week, he escaped from them and took to the bush. Therewere no bush natives on Ysabel, only salt-water men, who were allChristians. The white men put up a reward of five-hundred sticks oftobacco, and every time Mauki ventured down to the sea to steal a canoehe was chased by the salt-water men. Four months of this passed, when, the reward having been raised to a thousand sticks, he was caught andsent back to New Georgia and the road-building gang. Now a thousandsticks are worth fifty dollars, and Mauki had to pay the reward himself, which required a year and eight months' labor. So Port Adams was nowfive years away. His homesickness was greater than ever, and it did not appeal to him tosettle down and be good, work out his four years, and go home. Thenext time, he was caught in the very act of running away. His case wasbrought before Mr. Haveby, the island manager of the Moongleam SoapCompany, who adjudged him an incorrigible. The Company had plantationson the Santa Cruz Islands, hundreds of miles across the sea, and thereit sent its Solomon Islands' incorrigibles. And there Mauki was sent, though he never arrived. The schooner stopped at Santa Anna, and in thenight Mauki swam ashore, where he stole two rifles and a case of tobaccofrom the trader and got away in a canoe to Cristoval. Malaita was now tothe north, fifty or sixty miles away. But when he attempted the passage, he was caught by a light gale and driven back to Santa Anna, wherethe trader clapped him in irons and held him against the return of theschooner from Santa Cruz. The two rifles the trader recovered, but thecase of tobacco was charged up to Mauki at the rate of another year. Thesum of years he now owed the Company was six. On the way back to New Georgia, the schooner dropped anchor in MarauSound, which lies at the southeastern extremity of Guadalcanar. Maukiswam ashore with handcuffs on his wrists and got away to the bush. Theschooner went on, but the Moongleam trader ashore offered a thousandsticks, and to him Mauki was brought by the bushmen with a year andeight months tacked on to his account. Again, and before the schoonercalled in, he got away, this time in a whale boat accompanied by a caseof the trader's tobacco. But a northwest gale wrecked him upon Ugi, where the Christian natives stole his tobacco and turned him over to theMoongleam trader who resided there. The tobacco the natives stole meantanother year for him, and the tale was now eight years and a half. "We'll send him to Lord Howe, " said Mr. Haveby. "Bunster is there, andwe'll let them settle it between them. It will be a case, I imagine, ofMauki getting Bunster, or Bunster getting Mauki, and good riddance ineither event. " If one leaves Meringe Lagoon, on Ysabel, and steers a course due north, magnetic, at the end of one hundred and fifty miles he will lift thepounded coral beaches of Lord Howe above the sea. Lord Howe is a ring ofland some one hundred and fifty miles in circumference, several hundredyards wide at its widest, and towering in places to a height of ten feetabove sea level. Inside this ring of sand is a mighty lagoon studdedwith coral patches. Lord Howe belongs to the Solomons neithergeographically nor ethnologically. It is an atoll, while the Solomonsare high islands; and its people and language are Polynesian, while theinhabitants of the Solomons are Melanesian. Lord Howe has been populated by the westward Polynesian drift whichcontinues to this day, big outrigger canoes being washed upon itsbeaches by the southeast trade. That there has been a slight Melanesiandrift in the period of the northwest monsoon, is also evident. Nobody ever comes to Lord Howe, or Ontong-Java as it is sometimescalled. Thomas Cook & Son do not sell tickets to it, and tourists do notdream of its existence. Not even a white missionary has landed on itsshore. Its five thousand natives are as peaceable as they are primitive. Yet they were not always peaceable. The Sailing Directions speak ofthem as hostile and treacherous. But the men who compile the SailingDirections have never heard of the change that was worked in the heartsof the inhabitants, who, not many years ago, cut off a big bark andkilled all hands with the exception of the second mate. The survivorcarried the news to his brothers. The captains of three tradingschooners returned with him to Lord Howe. They sailed their vesselsright into the lagoon and proceeded to preach the white man's gospelthat only white men shall kill white men and that the lesser breeds mustkeep hands off. The schooners sailed up and down the lagoon, harryingand destroying. There was no escape from the narrow sand-circle, nobush to which to flee. The men were shot down at sight, and there wasno avoiding being sighted. The villages were burned, the canoes smashed, the chickens and pigs killed, and the precious cocoanut trees choppeddown. For a month this continued, when the schooner sailed away; but thefear of the white man had been seared into the souls of the islandersand never again were they rash enough to harm one. Max Bunster was the one white man on Lord Howe, trading in the pay ofthe ubiquitous Moongleam Soap Company. And the Company billeted himon Lord Howe, because, next to getting rid of him, it was the mostout-of-the-way place to be found. That the Company did not get rid ofhim was due to the difficulty of finding another man to take his place. He was a strapping big German, with something wrong in his brain. Semi-madness would be a charitable statement of his condition. He wasa bully and a coward, and a thrice-bigger savage than any savage on theisland. Being a coward, his brutality was of the cowardly order. When hefirst went into the Company's employ, he was stationed on Savo. When aconsumptive colonial was sent to take his place, he beat him up with hisfists and sent him off a wreck in the schooner that brought him. Mr. Haveby next selected a young Yorkshire giant to relieve Bunster. TheYorkshire man had a reputation as a bruiser and preferred fighting toeating. But Bunster wouldn't fight. He was a regular little lamb--forten days, at the end of which time the Yorkshire man was prostrated by acombined attack of dysentery and fever. Then Bunster went for him, amongother things getting him down and jumping on him a score or so of times. Afraid of what would happen when his victim recovered. Bunster fled awayin a cutter to Guvutu, where he signalized himself by beating up a youngEnglishman already crippled by a Boer bullet through both hips. Then it was that Mr. Haveby sent Bunster to Lord Howe, the falling-offplace. He celebrated his landing by mopping up half a case of gin and bythrashing the elderly and wheezy mate of the schooner which had broughthim. When the schooner departed, he called the kanakas down to the beachand challenged them to throw him in a wrestling bout, promising a caseof tobacco to the one who succeeded. Three kanakas he threw, but waspromptly thrown by a fourth, who, instead of receiving the tobacco, gota bullet through his lungs. And so began Bunster's reign on Lord Howe. Three thousand people livedin the principal village; but it was deserted, even in broad day, whenhe passed through. Men, women, and children fled before him. Even thedogs and pigs got out of the way, while the king was not above hidingunder a mat. The two prime ministers lived in terror of Bunster, whonever discussed any moot subject, but struck out with his fists instead. And to Lord Howe came Mauki, to toil for Bunster for eight long yearsand a half. There was no escaping from Lord Howe. For better or worse, Bunster and he were tied together. Bunster weighed two hundred pounds. Mauki weighed one hundred and ten. Bunster was a degenerate brute. ButMauki was a primitive savage. While both had wills and ways of theirown. Mauki had no idea of the sort of master he was to work for. He had hadno warnings, and he had concluded as a matter of course that Bunsterwould be like other white men, a drinker of much whiskey, a ruler and alawgiver who always kept his word and who never struck a boy undeserved. Bunster had the advantage. He knew all about Mauki, and gloated over thecoming into possession of him. The last cook was suffering from a brokenarm and a dislocated shoulder, so Bunster made Mauki cook and generalhouse-boy. And Mauki soon learned that there were white men and white men. On thevery day the schooner departed he was ordered to buy a chicken fromSamisee, the native Tongan missionary. But Samisee had sailed acrossthe lagoon and would not be back for three days. Mauki returned withthe information. He climbed the steep stairway (the house stood on pilestwelve feet above the sand), and entered the living room to report. The trader demanded the chicken. Mauki opened his mouth to explain themissionary's absence. But Bunster did not care for explanations. Hestruck out with his fist. The blow caught Mauki on the mouth and liftedhim into the air. Clear through the doorway he flew, across the narrowveranda, breaking the top railing, and down to the ground. His lips were a contused, shapeless mass, and his mouth was full ofblood and broken teeth. "That'll teach you that back talk don't go with me, " the trader shouted, purple with rage, peering down at him over the broken railing. Mauki had never met a white man like this, and he resolved to walk smalland never offend. He saw the boat boys knocked about, and one ofthem put in irons for three days with nothing to eat for the crime ofbreaking a rowlock while pulling. Then, too, he heard the gossip of thevillage and learned why Bunster had taken a third wife--by force, as waswell known. The first and second wives lay in the graveyard, under thewhite coral sand, with slabs of coral rock at head and feet. They haddied, it was said, from beatings he had given them. The third wife wascertainly ill-used, as Mauki could see for himself. But there was no way by which to avoid offending the white man whoseemed offended with life. When Mauki kept silent, he was struck andcalled a sullen brute. When he spoke, he was struck for giving backtalk. When he was grave, Bunster accused him of plotting and gave him athrashing in advance; and when he strove to be cheerful and to smile, he was charged with sneering at his lord and master and given a taste ofstick. Bunster was a devil. The village would have done for him, had it not remembered the lessonof the three schooners. It might have done for him anyway, if there hadbeen a bush to which to flee. As it was, the murder of the white men, of any white man, would bring a man-of-war that would kill the offendersand chop down the precious cocoanut trees. Then there were the boatboys, with minds fully made up to drown him by accident at the firstopportunity to capsize the cutter. Only Bunster saw to it that the boatdid not capsize. Mauki was of a different breed, and escape being impossible whileBunster lived, he was resolved to get the white man. The trouble wasthat he could never find a chance. Bunster was always on guard. Dayand night his revolvers were ready to hand. He permitted nobody to passbehind his back, as Mauki learned after having been knocked down severaltimes. Bunster knew that he had more to fear from the good-natured, evensweet-faced, Malaita boy than from the entire population of Lord Howe;and it gave added zest to the programme of torment he was carrying out. And Mauki walked small, accepted his punishments, and waited. All other white men had respected his tambos, but not so Bunster. Mauki's weekly allowance of tobacco was two sticks. Bunster passed themto his woman and ordered Mauki to receive them from her hand. But thiscould not be, and Mauki went without his tobacco. In the same way he wasmade to miss many a meal, and to go hungry many a day. He was ordered tomake chowder out of the big clams that grew in the lagoon. This he couldnot do, for clams were tambo. Six times in succession he refused totouch the clams, and six times he was knocked senseless. Bunster knewthat the boy would die first, but called his refusal mutiny, and wouldhave killed him had there been another cook to take his place. One of the trader's favorite tricks was to catch Mauki's kinky locks andbat his head against the wall. Another trick was to catch Mauki unawaresand thrust the live end of a cigar against his flesh. This Bunstercalled vaccination, and Mauki was vaccinated a number of times a week. Once, in a rage, Bunster ripped the cup handle from Mauki's nose, tearing the hole clear out of the cartilage. "Oh, what a mug!" was his comment, when he surveyed the damage he hadwrought. The skin of a shark is like sandpaper, but the skin of a ray fish islike a rasp. In the South Seas the natives use it as a wood file insmoothing down canoes and paddles. Bunster had a mitten made of ray fishskin. The first time he tried it on Mauki, with one sweep of the handit fetched the skin off his back from neck to armpit. Bunster wasdelighted. He gave his wife a taste of the mitten, and tried it outthoroughly on the boat boys. The prime ministers came in for a strokeeach, and they had to grin and take it for a joke. "Laugh, damn you, laugh!" was the cue he gave. Mauki came in for the largest share of the mitten. Never a day passedwithout a caress from it. There were times when the loss of so muchcuticle kept him awake at night, and often the half-healed surfacewas raked raw afresh by the facetious Mr. Bunster. Mauki continued hispatient wait, secure in the knowledge that sooner or later his timewould come. And he knew just what he was going to do, down to thesmallest detail, when the time did come. One morning Bunster got up in a mood for knocking seven bells out ofthe universe. He began on Mauki, and wound up on Mauki, in the intervalknocking down his wife and hammering all the boat boys. At breakfast hecalled the coffee slops and threw the scalding contents of the cup intoMauki's face. By ten o'clock Bunster was shivering with ague, and halfan hour later he was burning with fever. It was no ordinary attack. Itquickly became pernicious, and developed into black-water fever. Thedays passed, and he grew weaker and weaker, never leaving his bed. Maukiwaited and watched, the while his skin grew intact once more. He orderedthe boys to beach the cutter, scrub her bottom, and give her a generaloverhauling. They thought the order emanated from Bunster, and theyobeyed. But Bunster at the time was lying unconscious and giving noorders. This was Mauki's chance, but still he waited. When the worst was past, and Bunster lay convalescent and conscious, butweak as a baby, Mauki packed his few trinkets, including the chinacup handle, into his trade box. Then he went over to the village andinterviewed the king and his two prime ministers. "This fella Bunster, him good fella you like too much?" he asked. They explained in one voice that they liked the trader not at all. Theministers poured forth a recital of all the indignities and wrongsthat had been heaped upon them. The king broke down and wept. Maukiinterrupted rudely. "You savve me--me big fella marster my country. You no like 'm thisfella white marster. Me no like 'm. Plenty good you put hundredcocoanut, two hundred cocoanut, three hundred cocoanut along cutter. Him finish, you go sleep 'm good fella. Altogether kanaka sleep m goodfella. Bime by big fella noise along house, you no savve hear 'm thatfella noise. You altogether sleep strong fella too much. " In like manner Mauki interviewed the boat boys. Then he orderedBunster's wife to return to her family house. Had she refused, he wouldhave been in a quandary, for his tambo would not have permitted him tolay hands on her. The house deserted, he entered the sleeping room, where the trader layin a doze. Mauki first removed the revolvers, then placed the ray fishmitten on his hand. Bunster's first warning was a stroke of the mittenthat removed the skin the full length of his nose. "Good fella, eh?" Mauki grinned, between two strokes, one of which sweptthe forehead bare and the other of which cleaned off one side of hisface. "Laugh, damn you, laugh. " Mauki did his work throughly, and the kanakas, hiding in their houses, heard the "big fella noise" that Bunster made and continued to make foran hour or more. When Mauki was done, he carried the boat compass and all the rifles andammunition down to the cutter, which he proceeded to ballast with casesof tobacco. It was while engaged in this that a hideous, skinless thingcame out of the house and ran screaming down the beach till it fell inthe sand and mowed and gibbered under the scorching sun. Mauki lookedtoward it and hesitated. Then he went over and removed the head, whichhe wrapped in a mat and stowed in the stern locker of the cutter. So soundly did the kanakas sleep through that long hot day that theydid not see the cutter run out through the passage and head south, close-hauled on the southeast trade. Nor was the cutter ever sighted onthat long tack to the shores of Ysabel, and during the tedious head-beatfrom there to Malaita. He landed at Port Adams with a wealth of riflesand tobacco such as no one man had ever possessed before. But he didnot stop there. He had taken a white man's head, and only the bush couldshelter him. So back he went to the bush villages, where he shot oldFanfoa and half a dozen of the chief men, and made himself the chiefover all the villages. When his father died, Mauki's brother ruledin Port Adams, and joined together, salt-water men and bushmen, theresulting combination was the strongest of the ten score fighting tribesof Malaita. More than his fear of the British government was Mauki's fear of theall-powerful Moongleam Soap Company; and one day a message came upto him in the bush, reminding him that he owed the Company eight andone-half years of labor. He sent back a favorable answer, and thenappeared the inevitable white man, the captain of the schooner, theonly white man during Mauki's reign, who ventured the bush and came outalive. This man not only came out, but he brought with him seven hundredand fifty dollars in gold sovereigns--the money price of eight yearsand a half of labor plus the cost price of certain rifles and cases oftobacco. Mauki no longer weighs one hundred and ten pounds. His stomach isthree times its former girth, and he has four wives. He has manyother things--rifles and revolvers, the handle of a china cup, and anexcellent collection of bushmen's heads. But more precious than theentire collection is another head, perfectly dried and cured, with sandyhair and a yellowish beard, which is kept wrapped in the finest of fibrelava-lavas. When Mauki goes to war with villages beyond his realm, he invariably gets out this head, and alone in his grass palace, contemplates it long and solemnly. At such times the hush of death fallson the village, and not even a pickaninny dares make a noise. Thehead is esteemed the most powerful devil-devil on Malaita, and to thepossession of it is ascribed all of Mauki's greatness. "YAH! YAH! YAH!" He was a whiskey-guzzling Scotchman, and he downed his whiskey neat, beginning with his first tot punctually at six in the morning, andthereafter repeating it at regular intervals throughout the day tillbedtime, which was usually midnight. He slept but five hours out of thetwenty-four, and for the remaining nineteen hours he was quietly anddecently drunk. During the eight weeks I spent with him on Oolong Atoll, I never saw him draw a sober breath. In fact, his sleep was so shortthat he never had time to sober up. It was the most beautiful andorderly perennial drunk I have ever observed. McAllister was his name. He was an old man, and very shaky on his pins. His hand trembled as with a palsy, especially noticeable when he pouredhis whiskey, though I never knew him to spill a drop. He had beentwenty-eight years in Melanesia, ranging from German New Guinea to theGerman Solomons, and so thoroughly had he become identified with thatportion of the world, that he habitually spoke in that bastard lingocalled "bech-de-mer. " Thus, in conversation with me, SUN HE COME UPmeant sunrise; KAI-KAI HE STOP meant that dinner was served; and BELLYBELONG ME WALK ABOUT meant that he was sick at his stomach. He wasa small man, and a withered one, burned inside and outside by ardentspirits and ardent sun. He was a cinder, a bit of a clinker of a man, alittle animated clinker, not yet quite cold, that moved stiffly and bystarts and jerks like an automaton. A gust of wind would have blown himaway. He weighed ninety pounds. But the immense thing about him was the power with which he ruled. Oolong Atoll was one hundred and forty miles in circumference. Onesteered by compass course in its lagoon. It was populated by fivethousand Polynesians, all strapping men and women, many of them standingsix feet in height and weighing a couple of hundred pounds. Oolong wastwo hundred and fifty miles from the nearest land. Twice a year alittle schooner called to collect copra. The one white man on Oolong wasMcAllister, petty trader and unintermittent guzzler; and he ruled Oolongand its six thousand savages with an iron hand. He said come, and theycame, go, and they went. They never questioned his will nor judgment. He was cantankerous as only an aged Scotchman can be, and interferedcontinually in their personal affairs. When Nugu, the king's daughter, wanted to marry Haunau from the other end of the atoll, her father saidyes; but McAllister said no, and the marriage never came off. When theking wanted to buy a certain islet in the lagoon from the chief priest, McAllister said no. The king was in debt to the Company to the tune of180, 000 cocoanuts, and until that was paid he was not to spend a singlecocoanut on anything else. And yet the king and his people did not love McAllister. In truth, theyhated him horribly, and, to my knowledge, the whole population, with thepriests at the head, tried vainly for three months to pray him to death. The devil-devils they sent after him were awe-inspiring, but sinceMcAllister did not believe in devil-devils, they were without power overhim. With drunken Scotchmen all signs fail. They gathered up scraps offood which had touched his lips, an empty whiskey bottle, a cocoanutfrom which he had drunk, and even his spittle, and performed all kindsof deviltries over them. But McAllister lived on. His health was superb. He never caught fever; nor coughs nor colds; dysentery passed him by;and the malignant ulcers and vile skin diseases that attack blacks andwhites alike in that climate never fastened upon him. He must have beenso saturated with alcohol as to defy the lodgment of germs. I used toimagine them falling to the ground in showers of microscopic cinders asfast as they entered his whiskey-sodden aura. No one loved him, not evengerms, while he loved only whiskey, and still he lived. I was puzzled. I could not understand six thousand natives putting upwith that withered shrimp of a tyrant. It was a miracle that he had notdied suddenly long since. Unlike the cowardly Melanesians, the peoplewere high-stomached and warlike. In the big graveyard, at head and feetof the graves, were relics of past sanguinary history--blubber-spades, rusty old bayonets and cutlasses, copper bolts, rudder-irons, harpoons, bomb guns, bricks that could have come from nowhere but a whaler'strying-out furnace, and old brass pieces of the sixteenth century thatverified the traditions of the early Spanish navigators. Ship aftership had come to grief on Oolong. Not thirty years before, the whalerBLENNERDALE, running into the lagoon for repair, had been cut off withall hands. In similar fashion had the crew of the GASKET, a sandalwoodtrader, perished. There was a big French bark, the TOULON, becalmed offthe atoll, which the islanders boarded after a sharp tussle and wreckedin the Lipau Passage, the captain and a handful of sailors escaping inthe longboat. Then there were the Spanish pieces, which told of theloss of one of the early explorers. All this, of the vessels named, isa matter of history, and is to be found in the SOUTH PACIFIC SAILINGDIRECTORY. But that there was other history, unwritten, I was yet tolearn. In the meantime I puzzled why six thousand primitive savages letone degenerate Scotch despot live. One hot afternoon McAllister and I sat on the veranda looking out overthe lagoon, with all its wonder of jeweled colors. At our backs, acrossthe hundred yards of palm-studded sand, the outer surf roared on thereef. It was dreadfully warm. We were in four degree south latitude andthe sun was directly overhead, having crossed the Line a few days beforeon its journey south. There was no wind--not even a catspaw. The seasonof the southeast trade was drawing to an early close, and the northwestmonsoon had not yet begun to blow. "They can't dance worth a damn, " said McAllister. I had happened to mention that the Polynesian dances were superior tothe Papuan, and this McAllister had denied, for no other reason thanhis cantankerousness. But it was too hot to argue, and I said nothing. Besides, I had never seen the Oolong people dance. "I'll prove it to you, " he announced, beckoning to the black New Hanoverboy, a labor recruit, who served as cook and general house servant. "Hey, you, boy, you tell 'm one fella king come along me. " The boy departed, and back came the prime minister, perturbed, ill atease, and garrulous with apologetic explanation. In short, the kingslept, and was not to be disturbed. "King he plenty strong fella sleep, " was his final sentence. McAllister was in such a rage that the prime minister incontinentlyfled, to return with the king himself. They were a magnificent pair, the king especially, who must have been all of six feet three inches inheight. His features had the eagle-like quality that is so frequentlyfound in those of the North American Indian. He had been molded and bornto rule. His eyes flashed as he listened, but right meekly he obeyedMcAllister's command to fetch a couple of hundred of the best dancers, male and female, in the village. And dance they did, for two mortalhours, under that broiling sun. They did not love him for it, and littlehe cared, in the end dismissing them with abuse and sneers. The abject servility of those magnificent savages was terrifying. Howcould it be? What was the secret of his rule? More and more I puzzledas the days went by, and though I observed perpetual examples of hisundisputed sovereignty, never a clew was there as to how it was. One day I happened to speak of my disappointment in failing to trade fora beautiful pair of orange cowries. The pair was worth five poundsin Sydney if it was worth a cent. I had offered two hundred sticksof tobacco to the owner, who had held out for three hundred. When Icasually mentioned the situation, McAllister immediately sent for theman, took the shells from him, and turned them over to me. Fifty stickswere all he permitted me to pay for them. The man accepted the tobaccoand seemed overjoyed at getting off so easily. As for me, I resolved tokeep a bridle on my tongue in the future. And still I mulled over thesecret of McAllister's power. I even went to the extent of askinghim directly, but all he did was to cock one eye, look wise, and takeanother drink. One night I was out fishing in the lagoon with Oti, the man who hadbeen mulcted of the cowries. Privily, I had made up to him an additionalhundred and fifty sticks, and he had come to regard me with a respectthat was almost veneration, which was curious, seeing that he was an oldman, twice my age at least. "What name you fella kanaka all the same pickaninny?" I began on him. "This fella trader he one fella. You fella kanaka plenty fella toomuch. You fella kanaka just like 'm dog--plenty fright along that fellatrader. He no eat you, fella. He no get 'm teeth along him. What nameyou too much fright?" "S'pose plenty fella kanaka kill 'm?" he asked. "He die, " I retorted. "You fella kanaka kill 'm plenty fella white manlong time before. What name you fright this fella white man?" "Yes, we kill 'm plenty, " was his answer. "My word! Any amount! Longtime before. One time, me young fella too much, one big fella ship hestop outside. Wind he no blow. Plenty fella kanaka we get 'm canoe, plenty fella canoe, we go catch 'm that fella ship. My word--we catch 'mbig fella fight. Two, three white men shoot like hell. We no fright. We come alongside, we go up side, plenty fella, maybe I think fifty-ten(five hundred). One fella white Mary (woman) belong that fella ship. Never before I see 'm white Mary. Bime by plenty white man finish. Onefella skipper he no die. Five fella, six fella white man no die. Skipperhe sing out. Some fella white man he fight. Some fella white man helower away boat. After that, all together over the side they go. Skipperhe sling white Mary down. After that they washee (row) strong fellaplenty too much. Father belong me, that time he strong fella. He throw'm one fella spear. That fella spear he go in one side that white Mary. He no stop. My word, he go out other side that fella Mary. She finish. Me no fright. Plenty kanaka too much no fright. " Old Oti's pride had been touched, for he suddenly stripped down hislava-lava and showed me the unmistakable scar of a bullet. Before Icould speak, his line ran out suddenly. He checked it and attempted tohaul in, but found that the fish had run around a coral branch. Castinga look of reproach at me for having beguiled him from his watchfulness, he went over the side, feet first, turning over after he got under andfollowing his line down to bottom. The water was ten fathoms. I leanedover and watched the play of his feet, growing dim and dimmer, as theystirred the wan phosphorescence into ghostly fires. Ten fathoms--sixtyfeet--it was nothing to him, an old man, compared with the value of ahook and line. After what seemed five minutes, though it could not havebeen more than a minute, I saw him flaming whitely upward. He brokesurface and dropped a ten pound rock cod into the canoe, the line andhook intact, the latter still fast in the fish's mouth. "It may be, " I said remorselessly. "You no fright long ago. You plentyfright now along that fella trader. " "Yes, plenty fright, " he confessed, with an air of dismissing thesubject. For half an hour we pulled up our lines and flung them out insilence. Then small fish-sharks began to bite, and after losing a hookapiece, we hauled in and waited for the sharks to go their way. "I speak you true, " Oti broke into speech, "then you savve we frightnow. " I lighted up my pipe and waited, and the story that Oti told me inatrocious bech-de-mer I here turn into proper English. Otherwise, inspirit and order of narrative, the tale is as it fell from Oti's lips. "It was after that that we were very proud. We had fought many timeswith the strange white men who live upon the sea, and always we hadbeaten them. A few of us were killed, but what was that compared withthe stores of wealth of a thousand thousand kinds that we found on theships? And then one day, maybe twenty years ago, or twenty-five, therecame a schooner right through the passage and into the lagoon. It was alarge schooner with three masts. She had five white men and maybe fortyboat's crew, black fellows from New Guinea and New Britain; and shehad come to fish beche-de-mer. She lay at anchor across the lagoon fromhere, at Pauloo, and her boats scattered out everywhere, making campson the beaches where they cured the beche-de-mer. This made them weakby dividing them, for those who fished here and those on the schooner atPauloo were fifty miles apart, and there were others farther away still. "Our king and headmen held council, and I was one in the canoe thatpaddled all afternoon and all night across the lagoon, bringing wordto the people of Pauloo that in the morning we would attack the fishingcamps at the one time and that it was for them to take the schooner. Wewho brought the word were tired with the paddling, but we took partin the attack. On the schooner were two white men, the skipper and thesecond mate, with half a dozen black boys. The skipper with three boyswe caught on shore and killed, but first eight of us the skipper killedwith his two revolvers. We fought close together, you see, at handgrapples. "The noise of our fighting told the mate what was happening, and he putfood and water and a sail in the small dingy, which was so small thatit was no more than twelve feet long. We came down upon the schooner, athousand men, covering the lagoon with our canoes. Also, we were blowingconch shells, singing war songs, and striking the sides of the canoeswith our paddles. What chance had one white man and three black boysagainst us? No chance at all, and the mate knew it. "White men are hell. I have watched them much, and I am an old man now, and I understand at last why the white men have taken to themselves allthe islands in the sea. It is because they are hell. Here are you inthe canoe with me. You are hardly more than a boy. You are not wise, for each day I tell you many things you do not know. When I was a littlepickaninny, I knew more about fish and the ways of fish than you knownow. I am an old man, but I swim down to the bottom of the lagoon, andyou cannot follow me. What are you good for, anyway? I do not know, except to fight. I have never seen you fight, yet I know that you arelike your brothers and that you will fight like hell. Also, you are afool, like your brothers. You do not know when you are beaten. You willfight until you die, and then it will be too late to know that you arebeaten. "Now behold what this mate did. As we came down upon him, covering thesea and blowing our conches, he put off from the schooner in the smallboat, along with the three black boys, and rowed for the passage. Thereagain he was a fool, for no wise man would put out to sea in so smalla boat. The sides of it were not four inches above the water. Twentycanoes went after him, filled with two hundred young men. We paddledfive fathoms while his black boys were rowing one fathom. He had nochance, but he was a fool. He stood up in the boat with a rifle, and heshot many times. He was not a good shot, but as we drew close many of uswere wounded and killed. But still he had no chance. "I remember that all the time he was smoking a cigar. When we were fortyfeet away and coming fast, he dropped the rifle, lighted a stick ofdynamite with the cigar, and threw it at us. He lighted another andanother, and threw them at us very rapidly, many of them. I know nowthat he must have split the ends of the fuses and stuck in match heads, because they lighted so quickly. Also, the fuses were very short. Sometimes the dynamite sticks went off in the air, but most of them wentoff in the canoes. And each time they went off in a canoe, that canoewas finished. Of the twenty canoes, the half were smashed to pieces. Thecanoe I was in was so smashed, and likewise the two men who sat nextto me. The dynamite fell between them. The other canoes turned and ranaway. Then that mate yelled, Yah! Yah! Yah!' at us. Also he went at usagain with his rifle, so that many were killed through the back as theyfled away. And all the time the black boys in the boat went on rowing. You see, I told you true, that mate was hell. "Nor was that all. Before he left the schooner, he set her on fire, and fixed up all the powder and dynamite so that it would go off at onetime. There were hundreds of us on board, trying to put out the fire, heaving up water from overside, when the schooner blew up. So that allwe had fought for was lost to us, besides many more of us being killed. Sometimes, even now, in my old age, I have bad dreams in which I hearthat mate yell, Yah! Yah! Yah!' In a voice of thunder he yells, Yah!Yah! Yah!' But all those in the fishing camps were killed. "The mate went out of the passage in his little boat, and that was theend of him we made sure, for how could so small a boat, with four men init, live on the ocean? A month went by, and then, one morning, betweentwo rain squalls, a schooner sailed in through our passage and droppedanchor before the village. The king and the headmen made big talk, andit was agreed that we would take the schooner in two or three days. Inthe meantime, as it was our custom always to appear friendly, we wentoff to her in canoes, bringing strings of cocoanuts, fowls, and pigs, totrade. But when we were alongside, many canoes of us, the men on boardbegan to shoot us with rifles, and as we paddled away I saw the mate whohad gone to sea in the little boat spring upon the rail and dance andyell, Yah! Yah! Yah!' "That afternoon they landed from the schooner in three small boatsfilled with white men. They went right through the village, shootingevery man they saw. Also they shot the fowls and pigs. We who were notkilled got away in canoes and paddled out into the lagoon. Looking back, we could see all the houses on fire. Late in the afternoon we saw manycanoes coming from Nihi, which is the village near the Nihi Passage inthe northeast. They were all that were left, and like us their villagehad been burned by a second schooner that had come through Nihi Passage. "We stood on in the darkness to the westward for Pauloo, but in themiddle of the night we heard women wailing and then we ran into a bigfleet of canoes. They were all that were left of Pauloo, which likewisewas in ashes, for a third schooner had come in through the PaulooPassage. You see, that mate, with his black boys, had not been drowned. He had made the Solomon Islands, and there told his brothers of what wehad done in Oolong. And all his brothers had said they would come andpunish us, and there they were in the three schooners, and our threevillages were wiped out. "And what was there for us to do? In the morning the two schooners fromwindward sailed down upon us in the middle of the lagoon. The trade windwas blowing fresh, and by scores of canoes they ran us down. And therifles never ceased talking. We scattered like flying fish before thebonita, and there were so many of us that we escaped by thousands, thisway and that, to the islands on the rim of the atoll. "And thereafter the schooners hunted us up and down the lagoon. In thenighttime we slipped past them. But the next day, or in two days orthree days, the schooners would be coming back, hunting us towardthe other end of the lagoon. And so it went. We no longer counted norremembered our dead. True, we were many and they were few. But whatcould we do? I was in one of the twenty canoes filled with men who werenot afraid to die. We attacked the smallest schooner. They shot us downin heaps. They threw dynamite into the canoes, and when the dynamitegave out, they threw hot water down upon us. And the rifles never ceasedtalking. And those whose canoes were smashed were shot as they swamaway. And the mate danced up and down upon the cabin top and yelled, 'Yah! Yah! Yah!'" "Every house on every smallest island was burned. Not a pig nor a fowlwas left alive. Our wells were defiled with the bodies of the slain, orelse heaped high with coral rock. We were twenty-five thousand on Oolongbefore the three schooners came. Today we are five thousand. After theschooners left, we were but three thousand, as you shall see. "At last the three schooners grew tired of chasing us back and forth. Sothey went, the three of them, to Nihi, in the northeast. And then theydrove us steadily to the west. Their nine boats were in the water aswell. They beat up every island as they moved along. They drove us, drove us, drove us day by day. And every night the three schooners andthe nine boats made a chain of watchfulness that stretched across thelagoon from rim to rim, so that we could not escape back. "They could not drive us forever that way, for the lagoon was only solarge, and at last all of us that yet lived were driven upon the lastsand bank to the west. Beyond lay the open sea. There were ten thousandof us, and we covered the sand bank from the lagoon edge to the poundingsurf on the other side. No one could lie down. There was no room. Westood hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder. Two days they kept us there, and the mate would climb up in the rigging to mock us and yell, Yah!Yah! Yah!' till we were well sorry that we had ever harmed him or hisschooner a month before. We had no food, and we stood on our feet twodays and nights. The little babies died, and the old and weak died, and the wounded died. And worst of all, we had no water to quench ourthirst, and for two days the sun beat down on us, and there was noshade. Many men and women waded out into the ocean and were drowned, thesurf casting their bodies back on the beach. And there came a pest offlies. Some men swam to the sides of the schooners, but they were shotto the last one. And we that lived were very sorry that in our pride wetried to take the schooner with the three masts that came to fish forbeche-de-mer. "On the morning of the third day came the skippers of the threeschooners and that mate in a small boat. They carried rifles, all ofthem, and revolvers, and they made talk. It was only that they wereweary of killing us that they had stopped, they told us. And we toldthem that we were sorry, that never again would we harm a white man, andin token of our submission we poured sand upon our heads. And all thewomen and children set up a great wailing for water, so that for sometime no man could make himself heard. Then we were told our punishment. We must fill the three schooners with copra and beche-de-mer. And weagreed, for we wanted water, and our hearts were broken, and we knewthat we were children at fighting when we fought with white men whofight like hell. And when all the talk was finished, the mate stood upand mocked us, and yelled, Yah! Yah! Yah!' After that we paddled away inour canoes and sought water. "And for weeks we toiled at catching beche-de-mer and curing it, ingathering the cocoanuts and turning them into copra. By day and nightthe smoke rose in clouds from all the beaches of all the islands ofOolong as we paid the penalty of our wrongdoing. For in those days ofdeath it was burned clearly on all our brains that it was very wrong toharm a white man. "By and by, the schooners full of copra and beche-de-mer and our treesempty of cocoanuts, the three skippers and that mate called us alltogether for a big talk. And they said they were very glad that we hadlearned our lesson, and we said for the ten-thousandth time that we weresorry and that we would not do it again. Also, we poured sand upon ourheads. Then the skippers said that it was all very well, but just toshow us that they did not forget us, they would send a devil-devil thatwe would never forget and that we would always remember any time wemight feel like harming a white man. After that the mate mocked usone more time and yelled, Yah! Yah! Yah!' Then six of our men, whom wethought long dead, were put ashore from one of the schooners, and theschooners hoisted their sails and ran out through the passage for theSolomons. "The six men who were put ashore were the first to catch the devil-devilthe skippers sent back after us. " "A great sickness came, " I interrupted, for I recognized the trick. The schooner had had measles on board, and the six prisoners had beendeliberately exposed to it. "Yes, a great sickness, " Oti went on. "It was a powerful devil-devil. The oldest man had never heard of the like. Those of our priests thatyet lived we killed because they could not overcome the devil-devil. The sickness spread. I have said that there were ten thousand of usthat stood hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder on the sandbank. When thesickness left us, there were three thousand yet alive. Also, having madeall our cocoanuts into copra, there was a famine. "That fella trader, " Oti concluded, "he like 'm that much dirt. He like'm clam he die KAI-KAI (meat) he stop, stink 'm any amount. He like 'mone fella dog, one sick fella dog plenty fleas stop along him. We nofright along that fella trader. We fright because he white man. We savveplenty too much no good kill white man. That one fella sick dog traderhe plenty brother stop along him, white men like 'm you fight like hell. We no fright that damn trader. Some time he made kanaka plenty crossalong him and kanaka want 'm kill m, kanaka he think devil-devil andkanaka he hear that fella mate sing out, Yah! Yah! Yah!' and kanaka nokill 'm. " Oti baited his hook with a piece of squid, which he tore with his teethfrom the live and squirming monster, and hook and bait sank in whiteflames to the bottom. "Shark walk about he finish, " he said. "I think we catch 'm plenty fellafish. " His line jerked savagely. He pulled it in rapidly, hand under hand, andlanded a big gasping rock cod in the bottom of the canoe. "Sun he come up, I make 'm that dam fella trader one present big fellafish, " said Oti. THE HEATHEN I met him first in a hurricane; and though we had gone through thehurricane on the same schooner, it was not until the schooner had goneto pieces under us that I first laid eyes on him. Without doubt Ihad seen him with the rest of the kanaka crew on board, but I had notconsciously been aware of his existence, for the Petite Jeanne wasrather overcrowded. In addition to her eight or ten kanaka seamen, herwhite captain, mate, and supercargo, and her six cabin passengers, she sailed from Rangiroa with something like eighty-five deckpassengers--Paumotans and Tahitians, men, women, and children each witha trade box, to say nothing of sleeping mats, blankets, and clothesbundles. The pearling season in the Paumotus was over, and all hands werereturning to Tahiti. The six of us cabin passengers were pearl buyers. Two were Americans, one was Ah Choon (the whitest Chinese I have everknown), one was a German, one was a Polish Jew, and I completed the halfdozen. It had been a prosperous season. Not one of us had cause for complaint, nor one of the eighty-five deck passengers either. All had done well, and all were looking forward to a rest-off and a good time in Papeete. Of course, the Petite Jeanne was overloaded. She was only seventy tons, and she had no right to carry a tithe of the mob she had on board. Beneath her hatches she was crammed and jammed with pearl shell andcopra. Even the trade room was packed full with shell. It was a miraclethat the sailors could work her. There was no moving about the decks. They simply climbed back and forth along the rails. In the night time they walked upon the sleepers, who carpeted the deck, I'll swear, two deep. Oh! And there were pigs and chickens on deck, andsacks of yams, while every conceivable place was festooned with stringsof drinking cocoanuts and bunches of bananas. On both sides, between thefore and main shrouds, guys had been stretched, just low enough forthe foreboom to swing clear; and from each of these guys at least fiftybunches of bananas were suspended. It promised to be a messy passage, even if we did make it in the twoor three days that would have been required if the southeast trades hadbeen blowing fresh. But they weren't blowing fresh. After the firstfive hours the trade died away in a dozen or so gasping fans. The calmcontinued all that night and the next day--one of those glaring, glassy, calms, when the very thought of opening one's eyes to look at it issufficient to cause a headache. The second day a man died--an Easter Islander, one of the best diversthat season in the lagoon. Smallpox--that is what it was; though howsmallpox could come on board, when there had been no known cases ashorewhen we left Rangiroa, is beyond me. There it was, though--smallpox, aman dead, and three others down on their backs. There was nothing to be done. We could not segregate the sick, nor couldwe care for them. We were packed like sardines. There was nothing to dobut rot and die--that is, there was nothing to do after the night thatfollowed the first death. On that night, the mate, the supercargo, thePolish Jew, and four native divers sneaked away in the large whale boat. They were never heard of again. In the morning the captain promptlyscuttled the remaining boats, and there we were. That day there were two deaths; the following day three; then itjumped to eight. It was curious to see how we took it. The natives, for instance, fell into a condition of dumb, stolid fear. Thecaptain--Oudouse, his name was, a Frenchman--became very nervous andvoluble. He actually got the twitches. He was a large fleshy man, weighing at least two hundred pounds, and he quickly became a faithfulrepresentation of a quivering jelly-mountain of fat. The German, the two Americans, and myself bought up all the Scotchwhiskey, and proceeded to stay drunk. The theory was beautiful--namely, if we kept ourselves soaked in alcohol, every smallpox germ that cameinto contact with us would immediately be scorched to a cinder. And thetheory worked, though I must confess that neither Captain Oudouse nor AhChoon were attacked by the disease either. The Frenchman did not drinkat all, while Ah Choon restricted himself to one drink daily. It was a pretty time. The sun, going into northern declination, wasstraight overhead. There was no wind, except for frequent squalls, whichblew fiercely for from five minutes to half an hour, and wound up bydeluging us with rain. After each squall, the awful sun would come out, drawing clouds of steam from the soaked decks. The steam was not nice. It was the vapor of death, freighted withmillions and millions of germs. We always took another drink when we sawit going up from the dead and dying, and usually we took two or threemore drinks, mixing them exceptionally stiff. Also, we made it a ruleto take an additional several each time they hove the dead over to thesharks that swarmed about us. We had a week of it, and then the whiskey gave out. It is just as well, or I shouldn't be alive now. It took a sober man to pull through whatfollowed, as you will agree when I mention the little fact that only twomen did pull through. The other man was the heathen--at least, that waswhat I heard Captain Oudouse call him at the moment I first became awareof the heathen's existence. But to come back. It was at the end of the week, with the whiskey gone, and the pearlbuyers sober, that I happened to glance at the barometer that hung inthe cabin companionway. Its normal register in the Paumotus was 29. 90, and it was quite customary to see it vacillate between 29. 85 and 30. 00, or even 30. 05; but to see it as I saw it, down to 29. 62, was sufficientto sober the most drunken pearl buyer that ever incinerated smallpoxmicrobes in Scotch whiskey. I called Captain Oudouse's attention to it, only to be informed that hehad watched it going down for several hours. There was little to do, butthat little he did very well, considering the circumstances. He tookoff the light sails, shortened right down to storm canvas, spread lifelines, and waited for the wind. His mistake lay in what he did after thewind came. He hove to on the port tack, which was the right thing to dosouth of the Equator, if--and there was the rub--IF one were NOT in thedirect path of the hurricane. We were in the direct path. I could see that by the steady increase ofthe wind and the equally steady fall of the barometer. I wanted himto turn and run with the wind on the port quarter until the barometerceased falling, and then to heave to. We argued till he was reduced tohysteria, but budge he would not. The worst of it was that I could notget the rest of the pearl buyers to back me up. Who was I, anyway, toknow more about the sea and its ways than a properly qualified captain?was what was in their minds, I knew. Of course, the sea rose with the wind frightfully; and I shall neverforget the first three seas the Petite Jeanne shipped. She had fallenoff, as vessels do at times when hove to, and the first sea made a cleanbreach. The life lines were only for the strong and well, and littlegood were they even for them when the women and children, the bananasand cocoanuts, the pigs and trade boxes, the sick and the dying, wereswept along in a solid, screeching, groaning mass. The second sea filled the Petite Jeanne's decks flush with the rails;and, as her stern sank down and her bow tossed skyward, all themiserable dunnage of life and luggage poured aft. It was a humantorrent. They came head first, feet first, sidewise, rolling over andover, twisting, squirming, writhing, and crumpling up. Now and againone caught a grip on a stanchion or a rope; but the weight of the bodiesbehind tore such grips loose. One man I noticed fetch up, head on and square on, with the starboardbitt. His head cracked like an egg. I saw what was coming, sprang on topof the cabin, and from there into the mainsail itself. Ah Choon and oneof the Americans tried to follow me, but I was one jump ahead of them. The American was swept away and over the stern like a piece of chaff. Ah Choon caught a spoke of the wheel, and swung in behind it. But astrapping Raratonga vahine (woman)--she must have weighed two hundredand fifty--brought up against him, and got an arm around his neck. Heclutched the kanaka steersman with his other hand; and just at thatmoment the schooner flung down to starboard. The rush of bodies and sea that was coming along the port runway betweenthe cabin and the rail turned abruptly and poured to starboard. Awaythey went--vahine, Ah Choon, and steersman; and I swear I saw Ah Choongrin at me with philosophic resignation as he cleared the rail and wentunder. The third sea--the biggest of the three--did not do so much damage. Bythe time it arrived nearly everybody was in the rigging. On deck perhapsa dozen gasping, half-drowned, and half-stunned wretches were rollingabout or attempting to crawl into safety. They went by the board, asdid the wreckage of the two remaining boats. The other pearl buyers andmyself, between seas, managed to get about fifteen women and childreninto the cabin, and battened down. Little good it did the poor creaturesin the end. Wind? Out of all my experience I could not have believed it possiblefor the wind to blow as it did. There is no describing it. How can onedescribe a nightmare? It was the same way with that wind. It tore theclothes off our bodies. I say TORE THEM OFF, and I mean it. I am notasking you to believe it. I am merely telling something that I saw andfelt. There are times when I do not believe it myself. I went throughit, and that is enough. One could not face that wind and live. It wasa monstrous thing, and the most monstrous thing about it was that itincreased and continued to increase. Imagine countless millions and billions of tons of sand. Imagine thissand tearing along at ninety, a hundred, a hundred and twenty, orany other number of miles per hour. Imagine, further, this sand to beinvisible, impalpable, yet to retain all the weight and density of sand. Do all this, and you may get a vague inkling of what that wind was like. Perhaps sand is not the right comparison. Consider it mud, invisible, impalpable, but heavy as mud. Nay, it goes beyond that. Consider everymolecule of air to be a mudbank in itself. Then try to imagine themultitudinous impact of mudbanks. No; it is beyond me. Language maybe adequate to express the ordinary conditions of life, but it cannotpossibly express any of the conditions of so enormous a blast of wind. It would have been better had I stuck by my original intention of notattempting a description. I will say this much: The sea, which had risen at first, was beaten downby that wind. More: it seemed as if the whole ocean had been sucked upin the maw of the hurricane, and hurled on through that portion of spacewhich previously had been occupied by the air. Of course, our canvas had gone long before. But Captain Oudouse hadon the Petite Jeanne something I had never before seen on a South Seaschooner--a sea anchor. It was a conical canvas bag, the mouth ofwhich was kept open by a huge loop of iron. The sea anchor was bridledsomething like a kite, so that it bit into the water as a kite bitesinto the air, but with a difference. The sea anchor remained just underthe surface of the ocean in a perpendicular position. A long line, inturn, connected it with the schooner. As a result, the Petite Jeannerode bow on to the wind and to what sea there was. The situation really would have been favorable had we not been in thepath of the storm. True, the wind itself tore our canvas out of thegaskets, jerked out our topmasts, and made a raffle of our running gear, but still we would have come through nicely had we not been square infront of the advancing storm center. That was what fixed us. I was in astate of stunned, numbed, paralyzed collapse from enduring the impact ofthe wind, and I think I was just about ready to give up and die when thecenter smote us. The blow we received was an absolute lull. There wasnot a breath of air. The effect on one was sickening. Remember that for hours we had been at terrific muscular tension, withstanding the awful pressure of that wind. And then, suddenly, the pressure was removed. I know that I felt as though I was aboutto expand, to fly apart in all directions. It seemed as if every atomcomposing my body was repelling every other atom and was on the verge ofrushing off irresistibly into space. But that lasted only for a moment. Destruction was upon us. In the absence of the wind and pressure the sea rose. It jumped, itleaped, it soared straight toward the clouds. Remember, from every pointof the compass that inconceivable wind was blowing in toward the centerof calm. The result was that the seas sprang up from every point ofthe compass. There was no wind to check them. They popped up like corksreleased from the bottom of a pail of water. There was no system tothem, no stability. They were hollow, maniacal seas. They were eightyfeet high at the least. They were not seas at all. They resembled no seaa man had ever seen. They were splashes, monstrous splashes--that is all. Splashes that wereeighty feet high. Eighty! They were more than eighty. They went over ourmastheads. They were spouts, explosions. They were drunken. They fellanywhere, anyhow. They jostled one another; they collided. They rushedtogether and collapsed upon one another, or fell apart like a thousandwaterfalls all at once. It was no ocean any man had ever dreamed of, that hurricane center. It was confusion thrice confounded. It wasanarchy. It was a hell pit of sea water gone mad. The Petite Jeanne? I don't know. The heathen told me afterwards thathe did not know. She was literally torn apart, ripped wide open, beateninto a pulp, smashed into kindling wood, annihilated. When I came to Iwas in the water, swimming automatically, though I was about two-thirdsdrowned. How I got there I had no recollection. I remembered seeing thePetite Jeanne fly to pieces at what must have been the instant that myown consciousness was buffeted out of me. But there I was, with nothingto do but make the best of it, and in that best there was littlepromise. The wind was blowing again, the sea was much smaller and moreregular, and I knew that I had passed through the center. Fortunately, there were no sharks about. The hurricane had dissipated the ravenoushorde that had surrounded the death ship and fed off the dead. It was about midday when the Petite Jeanne went to pieces, and it musthave been two hours afterwards when I picked up with one of her hatchcovers. Thick rain was driving at the time; and it was the merest chancethat flung me and the hatch cover together. A short length of line wastrailing from the rope handle; and I knew that I was good for a day, at least, if the sharks did not return. Three hours later, possiblya little longer, sticking close to the cover, and with closed eyes, concentrating my whole soul upon the task of breathing in enough air tokeep me going and at the same time of avoiding breathing in enough waterto drown me, it seemed to me that I heard voices. The rain had ceased, and wind and sea were easing marvelously. Not twenty feet away from me, on another hatch cover were Captain Oudouse and the heathen. They werefighting over the possession of the cover--at least, the Frenchman was. "Paien noir!" I heard him scream, and at the same time I saw him kickthe kanaka. Now, Captain Oudouse had lost all his clothes, except his shoes, andthey were heavy brogans. It was a cruel blow, for it caught the heathenon the mouth and the point of the chin, half stunning him. I looked forhim to retaliate, but he contented himself with swimming about forlornlya safe ten feet away. Whenever a fling of the sea threw him closer, theFrenchman, hanging on with his hands, kicked out at him with both feet. Also, at the moment of delivering each kick, he called the kanaka ablack heathen. "For two centimes I'd come over there and drown you, you white beast!" Iyelled. The only reason I did not go was that I felt too tired. The very thoughtof the effort to swim over was nauseating. So I called to the kanaka tocome to me, and proceeded to share the hatch cover with him. Otoo, hetold me his name was (pronounced o-to-o ); also, he told me that hewas a native of Bora Bora, the most westerly of the Society Group. AsI learned afterward, he had got the hatch cover first, and, after sometime, encountering Captain Oudouse, had offered to share it with him, and had been kicked off for his pains. And that was how Otoo and I first came together. He was no fighter. He was all sweetness and gentleness, a love creature, though he stoodnearly six feet tall and was muscled like a gladiator. He was nofighter, but he was also no coward. He had the heart of a lion; and inthe years that followed I have seen him run risks that I would neverdream of taking. What I mean is that while he was no fighter, and whilehe always avoided precipitating a row, he never ran away from troublewhen it started. And it was "Ware shoal!" when once Otoo went intoaction. I shall never forget what he did to Bill King. It occurredin German Samoa. Bill King was hailed the champion heavyweight of theAmerican Navy. He was a big brute of a man, a veritable gorilla, one ofthose hard-hitting, rough-housing chaps, and clever with his fists aswell. He picked the quarrel, and he kicked Otoo twice and struck himonce before Otoo felt it to be necessary to fight. I don't think itlasted four minutes, at the end of which time Bill King was the unhappypossessor of four broken ribs, a broken forearm, and a dislocatedshoulder blade. Otoo knew nothing of scientific boxing. He was merely amanhandler; and Bill King was something like three months in recoveringfrom the bit of manhandling he received that afternoon on Apia beach. But I am running ahead of my yarn. We shared the hatch cover between us. We took turn and turn about, one lying flat on the cover and resting, while the other, submerged to the neck, merely held on with his hands. For two days and nights, spell and spell, on the cover and in the water, we drifted over the ocean. Towards the last I was delirious most of thetime; and there were times, too, when I heard Otoo babbling and ravingin his native tongue. Our continuous immersion prevented us from dyingof thirst, though the sea water and the sunshine gave us the prettiestimaginable combination of salt pickle and sunburn. In the end, Otoo saved my life; for I came to lying on the beach twentyfeet from the water, sheltered from the sun by a couple of cocoanutleaves. No one but Otoo could have dragged me there and stuck up theleaves for shade. He was lying beside me. I went off again; and the nexttime I came round, it was cool and starry night, and Otoo was pressing adrinking cocoanut to my lips. We were the sole survivors of the Petite Jeanne. Captain Oudouse musthave succumbed to exhaustion, for several days later his hatch coverdrifted ashore without him. Otoo and I lived with the natives of theatoll for a week, when we were rescued by the French cruiser and takento Tahiti. In the meantime, however, we had performed the ceremony ofexchanging names. In the South Seas such a ceremony binds two men closertogether than blood brothership. The initiative had been mine; and Otoowas rapturously delighted when I suggested it. "It is well, " he said, in Tahitian. "For we have been mates together fortwo days on the lips of Death. " "But death stuttered, " I smiled. "It was a brave deed you did, master, " he replied, "and Death was notvile enough to speak. " "Why do you 'master' me?" I demanded, with a show of hurt feelings. "We have exchanged names. To you I am Otoo. To me you are Charley. Andbetween you and me, forever and forever, you shall be Charley, and Ishall be Otoo. It is the way of the custom. And when we die, if it doeshappen that we live again somewhere beyond the stars and the sky, stillshall you be Charley to me, and I Otoo to you. " "Yes, master, " he answered, his eyes luminous and soft with joy. "There you go!" I cried indignantly. "What does it matter what my lips utter?" he argued. "They are only mylips. But I shall think Otoo always. Whenever I think of myself, I shallthink of you. Whenever men call me by name, I shall think of you. Andbeyond the sky and beyond the stars, always and forever, you shall beOtoo to me. Is it well, master?" I hid my smile, and answered that it was well. We parted at Papeete. I remained ashore to recuperate; and he went onin a cutter to his own island, Bora Bora. Six weeks later he was back. I was surprised, for he had told me of his wife, and said that he wasreturning to her, and would give over sailing on far voyages. "Where do you go, master?" he asked, after our first greetings. I shrugged my shoulders. It was a hard question. "All the world, " was my answer--"all the world, all the sea, and all theislands that are in the sea. " "I will go with you, " he said simply. "My wife is dead. " I never had a brother; but from what I have seen of other men'sbrothers, I doubt if any man ever had a brother that was to him whatOtoo was to me. He was brother and father and mother as well. And thisI know: I lived a straighter and better man because of Otoo. I caredlittle for other men, but I had to live straight in Otoo's eyes. Becauseof him I dared not tarnish myself. He made me his ideal, compoundingme, I fear, chiefly out of his own love and worship and there were timeswhen I stood close to the steep pitch of hell, and would have takenthe plunge had not the thought of Otoo restrained me. His pride in meentered into me, until it became one of the major rules in my personalcode to do nothing that would diminish that pride of his. Naturally, I did not learn right away what his feelings were toward me. He never criticized, never censured; and slowly the exalted place I heldin his eyes dawned upon me, and slowly I grew to comprehend the hurt Icould inflict upon him by being anything less than my best. For seventeen years we were together; for seventeen years he was atmy shoulder, watching while I slept, nursing me through fever andwounds--ay, and receiving wounds in fighting for me. He signed on thesame ships with me; and together we ranged the Pacific from Hawaii toSydney Head, and from Torres Straits to the Galapagos. We blackbirdedfrom the New Hebrides and the Line Islands over to the westward clearthrough the Louisades, New Britain, New Ireland, and New Hanover. Wewere wrecked three times--in the Gilberts, in the Santa Cruz group, andin the Fijis. And we traded and salved wherever a dollar promised inthe way of pearl and pearl shell, copra, beche-de-mer, hawkbill turtleshell, and stranded wrecks. It began in Papeete, immediately after his announcement that he wasgoing with me over all the sea, and the islands in the midst thereof. There was a club in those days in Papeete, where the pearlers, traders, captains, and riffraff of South Sea adventurers forgathered. The playran high, and the drink ran high; and I am very much afraid that I keptlater hours than were becoming or proper. No matter what the hour waswhen I left the club, there was Otoo waiting to see me safely home. At first I smiled; next I chided him. Then I told him flatly that Istood in need of no wet-nursing. After that I did not see him whenI came out of the club. Quite by accident, a week or so later, Idiscovered that he still saw me home, lurking across the street amongthe shadows of the mango trees. What could I do? I know what I did do. Insensibly I began to keep better hours. On wet and stormy nights, inthe thick of the folly and the fun, the thought would persist in comingto me of Otoo keeping his dreary vigil under the dripping mangoes. Truly, he made a better man of me. Yet he was not strait-laced. And heknew nothing of common Christian morality. All the people on BoraBora were Christians; but he was a heathen, the only unbeliever on theisland, a gross materialist, who believed that when he died he was dead. He believed merely in fair play and square dealing. Petty meanness, inhis code, was almost as serious as wanton homicide; and I do believethat he respected a murderer more than a man given to small practices. Concerning me, personally, he objected to my doing anything that washurtful to me. Gambling was all right. He was an ardent gambler himself. But late hours, he explained, were bad for one's health. He had seen menwho did not take care of themselves die of fever. He was no teetotaler, and welcomed a stiff nip any time when it was wet work in the boats. Onthe other hand, he believed in liquor in moderation. He had seen manymen killed or disgraced by square-face or Scotch. Otoo had my welfare always at heart. He thought ahead for me, weighed myplans, and took a greater interest in them than I did myself. At first, when I was unaware of this interest of his in my affairs, he had todivine my intentions, as, for instance, at Papeete, when I contemplatedgoing partners with a knavish fellow-countryman on a guano venture. Idid not know he was a knave. Nor did any white man in Papeete. Neitherdid Otoo know, but he saw how thick we were getting, and found out forme, and without my asking him. Native sailors from the ends of the seasknock about on the beach in Tahiti; and Otoo, suspicious merely, went among them till he had gathered sufficient data to justify hissuspicions. Oh, it was a nice history, that of Randolph Waters. Icouldn't believe it when Otoo first narrated it; but when I sheeted ithome to Waters he gave in without a murmur, and got away on the firststeamer to Aukland. At first, I am free to confess, I couldn't help resenting Otoo's pokinghis nose into my business. But I knew that he was wholly unselfish; andsoon I had to acknowledge his wisdom and discretion. He had hiseyes open always to my main chance, and he was both keen-sighted andfar-sighted. In time he became my counselor, until he knew more of mybusiness than I did myself. He really had my interest at heart more thanI did. Mine was the magnificent carelessness of youth, for I preferredromance to dollars, and adventure to a comfortable billet with all nightin. So it was well that I had some one to look out for me. I know thatif it had not been for Otoo, I should not be here today. Of numerous instances, let me give one. I had had some experience inblackbirding before I went pearling in the Paumotus. Otoo and I were onthe beach in Samoa--we really were on the beach and hard aground--whenmy chance came to go as recruiter on a blackbird brig. Otoo signed onbefore the mast; and for the next half-dozen years, in as many ships, weknocked about the wildest portions of Melanesia. Otoo saw to it that healways pulled stroke-oar in my boat. Our custom in recruiting labor wasto land the recruiter on the beach. The covering boat always lay on itsoars several hundred feet off shore, while the recruiter's boat, alsolying on its oars, kept afloat on the edge of the beach. When I landedwith my trade goods, leaving my steering sweep apeak, Otoo left hisstroke position and came into the stern sheets, where a Winchester layready to hand under a flap of canvas. The boat's crew was also armed, the Sniders concealed under canvas flaps that ran the length of thegunwales. While I was busy arguing and persuading the woolly-headed cannibals tocome and labor on the Queensland plantations Otoo kept watch. And oftenand often his low voice warned me of suspicious actions and impendingtreachery. Sometimes it was the quick shot from his rifle, knocking anigger over, that was the first warning I received. And in my rush tothe boat his hand was always there to jerk me flying aboard. Once, Iremember, on SANTA ANNA, the boat grounded just as the trouble began. The covering boat was dashing to our assistance, but the several scoreof savages would have wiped us out before it arrived. Otoo took a flyingleap ashore, dug both hands into the trade goods, and scattered tobacco, beads, tomahawks, knives, and calicoes in all directions. This was too much for the woolly-heads. While they scrambled for thetreasures, the boat was shoved clear, and we were aboard and forty feetaway. And I got thirty recruits off that very beach in the next fourhours. The particular instance I have in mind was on Malaita, the most savageisland in the easterly Solomons. The natives had been remarkablyfriendly; and how were we to know that the whole village had been takingup a collection for over two years with which to buy a white man's head?The beggars are all head-hunters, and they especially esteem a whiteman's head. The fellow who captured the head would receive the wholecollection. As I say, they appeared very friendly; and on this day I wasfully a hundred yards down the beach from the boat. Otoo had cautionedme; and, as usual when I did not heed him, I came to grief. The first I knew, a cloud of spears sailed out of the mangrove swampat me. At least a dozen were sticking into me. I started to run, but tripped over one that was fast in my calf, and went down. Thewoolly-heads made a run for me, each with a long-handled, fantailtomahawk with which to hack off my head. They were so eager for theprize that they got in one another's way. In the confusion, I avoidedseveral hacks by throwing myself right and left on the sand. Then Otoo arrived--Otoo the manhandler. In some way he had got hold of aheavy war club, and at close quarters it was a far more efficient weaponthan a rifle. He was right in the thick of them, so that they couldnot spear him, while their tomahawks seemed worse than useless. He wasfighting for me, and he was in a true Berserker rage. The way he handledthat club was amazing. Their skulls squashed like overripe oranges. It was not until he haddriven them back, picked me up in his arms, and started to run, thathe received his first wounds. He arrived in the boat with four spearthrusts, got his Winchester, and with it got a man for every shot. Thenwe pulled aboard the schooner, and doctored up. Seventeen years we were together. He made me. I should today be asupercargo, a recruiter, or a memory, if it had not been for him. "You spend your money, and you go out and get more, " he said one day. "It is easy to get money now. But when you get old, your money will bespent, and you will not be able to go out and get more. I know, master. I have studied the way of white men. On the beaches are many old menwho were young once, and who could get money just like you. Now they areold, and they have nothing, and they wait about for the young men likeyou to come ashore and buy drinks for them. "The black boy is a slave on the plantations. He gets twenty dollars ayear. He works hard. The overseer does not work hard. He rides a horseand watches the black boy work. He gets twelve hundred dollars a year. I am a sailor on the schooner. I get fifteen dollars a month. Thatis because I am a good sailor. I work hard. The captain has a doubleawning, and drinks beer out of long bottles. I have never seen him haula rope or pull an oar. He gets one hundred and fifty dollars a month. I am a sailor. He is a navigator. Master, I think it would be very goodfor you to know navigation. " Otoo spurred me on to it. He sailed with me as second mate on my firstschooner, and he was far prouder of my command than I was myself. Lateron it was: "The captain is well paid, master; but the ship is in his keeping, and he is never free from the burden. It is the owner who is betterpaid--the owner who sits ashore with many servants and turns his moneyover. " "True, but a schooner costs five thousand dollars--an old schooner atthat, " I objected. "I should be an old man before I saved five thousanddollars. " "There be short ways for white men to make money, " he went on, pointingashore at the cocoanut-fringed beach. We were in the Solomons at the time, picking up a cargo of ivory nutsalong the east coast of Guadalcanar. "Between this river mouth and the next it is two miles, " he said. "The flat land runs far back. It is worth nothing now. Next year--whoknows?--or the year after, men will pay much money for that land. Theanchorage is good. Big steamers can lie close up. You can buy the landfour miles deep from the old chief for ten thousand sticks of tobacco, ten bottles of square-face, and a Snider, which will cost you, maybe, one hundred dollars. Then you place the deed with the commissioner; andthe next year, or the year after, you sell and become the owner of aship. " I followed his lead, and his words came true, though in three years, instead of two. Next came the grasslands deal on Guadalcanar--twentythousand acres, on a governmental nine hundred and ninety-nine years'lease at a nominal sum. I owned the lease for precisely ninety days, when I sold it to a company for half a fortune. Always it was Otoo wholooked ahead and saw the opportunity. He was responsible for thesalving of the Doncaster--bought in at auction for a hundred pounds, andclearing three thousand after every expense was paid. He led me into theSavaii plantation and the cocoa venture on Upolu. We did not go seafaring so much as in the old days. I was too well off. I married, and my standard of living rose; but Otoo remained the sameold-time Otoo, moving about the house or trailing through the office, his wooden pipe in his mouth, a shilling undershirt on his back, and afour-shilling lava-lava about his loins. I could not get him to spendmoney. There was no way of repaying him except with love, and God knowshe got that in full measure from all of us. The children worshippedhim; and if he had been spoilable, my wife would surely have been hisundoing. The children! He really was the one who showed them the way of theirfeet in the world practical. He began by teaching them to walk. He satup with them when they were sick. One by one, when they were scarcelytoddlers, he took them down to the lagoon, and made them intoamphibians. He taught them more than I ever knew of the habits of fishand the ways of catching them. In the bush it was the same thing. Atseven, Tom knew more woodcraft than I ever dreamed existed. At six, Marywent over the Sliding Rock without a quiver, and I have seen strong menbalk at that feat. And when Frank had just turned six he could bring upshillings from the bottom in three fathoms. "My people in Bora Bora do not like heathen--they are all Christians;and I do not like Bora Bora Christians, " he said one day, when I, withthe idea of getting him to spend some of the money that was rightfullyhis, had been trying to persuade him to make a visit to his own islandin one of our schooners--a special voyage which I had hoped to make arecord breaker in the matter of prodigal expense. I say one of OUR schooners, though legally at the time they belonged tome. I struggled long with him to enter into partnership. "We have been partners from the day the Petite Jeanne went down, "he said at last. "But if your heart so wishes, then shall we becomepartners by the law. I have no work to do, yet are my expenses large. Idrink and eat and smoke in plenty--it costs much, I know. I do not payfor the playing of billiards, for I play on your table; but still themoney goes. Fishing on the reef is only a rich man's pleasure. It isshocking, the cost of hooks and cotton line. Yes; it is necessary thatwe be partners by the law. I need the money. I shall get it from thehead clerk in the office. " So the papers were made out and recorded. A year later I was compelledto complain. "Charley, " said I, "you are a wicked old fraud, a miserly skinflint, a miserable land crab. Behold, your share for the year in all ourpartnership has been thousands of dollars. The head clerk has given methis paper. It says that in the year you have drawn just eighty-sevendollars and twenty cents. " "Is there any owing me?" he asked anxiously. "I tell you thousands and thousands, " I answered. His face brightened, as with an immense relief. "It is well, " he said. "See that the head clerk keeps good accountof it. When I want it, I shall want it, and there must not be a centmissing. "If there is, " he added fiercely, after a pause, "it must come out ofthe clerk's wages. " And all the time, as I afterwards learned, his will, drawn up byCarruthers, and making me sole beneficiary, lay in the American consul'ssafe. But the end came, as the end must come to all human associations. It occurred in the Solomons, where our wildest work had been done in thewild young days, and where we were once more--principally on a holiday, incidentally to look after our holdings on Florida Island and to lookover the pearling possibilities of the Mboli Pass. We were lying atSavo, having run in to trade for curios. Now, Savo is alive with sharks. The custom of the woolly-heads ofburying their dead in the sea did not tend to discourage the sharks frommaking the adjacent waters a hangout. It was my luck to be coming aboardin a tiny, overloaded, native canoe, when the thing capsized. Therewere four woolly-heads and myself in it, or rather, hanging to it. Theschooner was a hundred yards away. I was just hailing for a boat when one of the woolly-heads began toscream. Holding on to the end of the canoe, both he and that portion ofthe canoe were dragged under several times. Then he loosed his clutchand disappeared. A shark had got him. The three remaining niggers tried to climb out of the water upon thebottom of the canoe. I yelled and cursed and struck at the nearest withmy fist, but it was no use. They were in a blind funk. The canoe couldbarely have supported one of them. Under the three it upended and rolledsidewise, throwing them back into the water. I abandoned the canoe and started to swim toward the schooner, expectingto be picked up by the boat before I got there. One of the niggerselected to come with me, and we swam along silently, side by side, nowand again putting our faces into the water and peering about for sharks. The screams of the man who stayed by the canoe informed us that he wastaken. I was peering into the water when I saw a big shark pass directlybeneath me. He was fully sixteen feet in length. I saw the whole thing. He got the woolly-head by the middle, and away he went, the poor devil, head, shoulders, and arms out of the water all the time, screeching ina heart-rending way. He was carried along in this fashion for severalhundred feet, when he was dragged beneath the surface. I swam doggedly on, hoping that that was the last unattached shark. But there was another. Whether it was one that had attacked the nativesearlier, or whether it was one that had made a good meal elsewhere, I donot know. At any rate, he was not in such haste as the others. I couldnot swim so rapidly now, for a large part of my effort was devoted tokeeping track of him. I was watching him when he made his first attack. By good luck I got both hands on his nose, and, though his momentumnearly shoved me under, I managed to keep him off. He veered clear, and began circling about again. A second time I escaped him by the samemanoeuvre. The third rush was a miss on both sides. He sheered at themoment my hands should have landed on his nose, but his sandpaper hide(I had on a sleeveless undershirt) scraped the skin off one arm fromelbow to shoulder. By this time I was played out, and gave up hope. The schooner was stilltwo hundred feet away. My face was in the water, and I was watching himmanoeuvre for another attempt, when I saw a brown body pass between us. It was Otoo. "Swim for the schooner, master!" he said. And he spoke gayly, as thoughthe affair was a mere lark. "I know sharks. The shark is my brother. " I obeyed, swimming slowly on, while Otoo swam about me, keeping alwaysbetween me and the shark, foiling his rushes and encouraging me. "The davit tackle carried away, and they are rigging the falls, " heexplained, a minute or so later, and then went under to head off anotherattack. By the time the schooner was thirty feet away I was about done for. Icould scarcely move. They were heaving lines at us from on board, butthey continually fell short. The shark, finding that it was receiving nohurt, had become bolder. Several times it nearly got me, but each timeOtoo was there just the moment before it was too late. Of course, Otoocould have saved himself any time. But he stuck by me. "Good-by, Charley! I'm finished!" I just managed to gasp. I knew that the end had come, and that the next moment I should throw upmy hands and go down. But Otoo laughed in my face, saying: "I will show you a new trick. I will make that shark feel sick!" He dropped in behind me, where the shark was preparing to come at me. "A little more to the left!" he next called out. "There is a line thereon the water. To the left, master--to the left!" I changed my course and struck out blindly. I was by that time barelyconscious. As my hand closed on the line I heard an exclamation from onboard. I turned and looked. There was no sign of Otoo. The next instanthe broke surface. Both hands were off at the wrist, the stumps spoutingblood. "Otoo!" he called softly. And I could see in his gaze the love thatthrilled in his voice. Then, and then only, at the very last of all our years, he called me bythat name. "Good-by, Otoo!" he called. Then he was dragged under, and I was hauled aboard, where I fainted inthe captain's arms. And so passed Otoo, who saved me and made me a man, and who saved me inthe end. We met in the maw of a hurricane, and parted in the maw ofa shark, with seventeen intervening years of comradeship, the like ofwhich I dare to assert has never befallen two men, the one brown and theother white. If Jehovah be from His high place watching every sparrowfall, not least in His kingdom shall be Otoo, the one heathen of BoraBora. THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS There is no gainsaying that the Solomons are a hard-bitten bunch ofislands. On the other hand, there are worse places in the world. But tothe new chum who has no constitutional understanding of men and life inthe rough, the Solomons may indeed prove terrible. It is true that fever and dysentery are perpetually on the walk-about, that loathsome skin diseases abound, that the air is saturated with apoison that bites into every pore, cut, or abrasion and plants malignantulcers, and that many strong men who escape dying there return as wrecksto their own countries. It is also true that the natives of the Solomonsare a wild lot, with a hearty appetite for human flesh and a fad forcollecting human heads. Their highest instinct of sportsmanship is tocatch a man with his back turned and to smite him a cunning blow with atomahawk that severs the spinal column at the base of the brain. It isequally true that on some islands, such as Malaita, the profit and lossaccount of social intercourse is calculated in homicides. Heads are amedium of exchange, and white heads are extremely valuable. Very often adozen villages make a jack-pot, which they fatten moon by moon, againstthe time when some brave warrior presents a white man's head, fresh andgory, and claims the pot. All the foregoing is quite true, and yet there are white men who havelived in the Solomons a score of years and who feel homesick when theygo away from them. A man needs only to be careful--and lucky--to livea long time in the Solomons; but he must also be of the right sort. He must have the hallmark of the inevitable white man stamped upon hissoul. He must be inevitable. He must have a certain grand carelessnessof odds, a certain colossal self-satisfaction, and a racial egotism thatconvinces him that one white is better than a thousand niggers everyday in the week, and that on Sunday he is able to clean out twothousand niggers. For such are the things that have made the white maninevitable. Oh, and one other thing--the white man who wishes to beinevitable, must not merely despise the lesser breeds and think a lotof himself; he must also fail to be too long on imagination. He must notunderstand too well the instincts, customs, and mental processes of theblacks, the yellows, and the browns; for it is not in such fashion thatthe white race has tramped its royal road around the world. Bertie Arkwright was not inevitable. He was too sensitive, too finelystrung, and he possessed too much imagination. The world was too muchwith him. He projected himself too quiveringly into his environment. Therefore, the last place in the world for him to come was the Solomons. He did not come, expecting to stay. A five weeks' stop-over betweensteamers, he decided, would satisfy the call of the primitive he feltthrumming the strings of his being. At least, so he told the ladytourists on the MAKEMBO, though in different terms; and they worshippedhim as a hero, for they were lady tourists and they would know onlythe safety of the steamer's deck as she threaded her way through theSolomons. There was another man on board, of whom the ladies took no notice. Hewas a little shriveled wisp of a man, with a withered skin the color ofmahogany. His name on the passenger list does not matter, but his othername, Captain Malu, was a name for niggers to conjure with, and toscare naughty pickaninnies to righteousness from New Hanover to theNew Hebrides. He had farmed savages and savagery, and from fever andhardship, the crack of Sniders and the lash of the overseers, hadwrested five millions of money in the form of bêche-de-mer, sandalwood, pearl-shell and turtle-shell, ivory nuts and copra, grasslands, tradingstations, and plantations. Captain Malu's little finger, which wasbroken, had more inevitableness in it than Bertie Arkwright's wholecarcass. But then, the lady tourists had nothing by which to judge saveappearances, and Bertie certainly was a fine-looking man. Bertie talked with Captain Malu in the smoking room, confiding to himhis intention of seeing life red and bleeding in the Solomons. CaptainMalu agreed that the intention was ambitious and honorable. It was notuntil several days later that he became interested in Bertie, when thatyoung adventurer insisted on showing him an automatic 44-caliber pistol. Bertie explained the mechanism and demonstrated by slipping a loadedmagazine up the hollow butt. "It is so simple, " he said. He shot the outer barrel back along theinner one. "That loads it and cocks it, you see. And then all I have todo is pull the trigger, eight times, as fast as I can quiver my finger. See that safety clutch. That's what I like about it. It is safe. It ispositively fool-proof. " He slipped out the magazine. "You see how safeit is. " As he held it in his hand, the muzzle came in line with Captain Malu'sstomach. Captain Malu's blue eyes looked at it unswervingly. "Would you mind pointing it in some other direction?" he asked. "It's perfectly safe, " Bertie assured him. "I withdrew the magazine. It's not loaded now, you know. " "A gun is always loaded. " "But this one isn't. " "Turn it away just the same. " Captain Malu's voice was flat and metallic and low, but his eyes neverleft the muzzle until the line of it was drawn past him and away fromhim. "I'll bet a fiver it isn't loaded, " Bertie proposed warmly. The other shook his head. "Then I'll show you. " Bertie started to put the muzzle to his own temple with the evidentintention of pulling the trigger. "Just a second, " Captain Malu said quietly, reaching out his hand. "Letme look at it. " He pointed it seaward and pulled the trigger. A heavy explosionfollowed, instantaneous with the sharp click of the mechanism thatflipped a hot and smoking cartridge sidewise along the deck. Bertie's jaw dropped in amazement. "I slipped the barrel back once, didn't I?" he explained. "It was sillyof me, I must say. " He giggled flabbily, and sat down in a steamer chair. The blood hadebbed from his face, exposing dark circles under his eyes. His handswere trembling and unable to guide the shaking cigarette to his lips. The world was too much with him, and he saw himself with dripping brainsprone upon the deck. "Really, " he said, ". .. Really. " "It's a pretty weapon, " said Captain Malu, returning the automatic tohim. The Commissioner was on board the Makembo, returning from Sydney, and byhis permission a stop was made at Ugi to land a missionary. And at Ugilay the ketch ARLA, Captain Hansen, skipper. Now the Arla was one ofmany vessels owned by Captain Malu, and it was at his suggestion andby his invitation that Bertie went aboard the Arla as guest for a fourdays' recruiting cruise on the coast of Malaita. Thereafter the ARLAwould drop him at Reminge Plantation (also owned by Captain Malu), whereBertie could remain for a week, and then be sent over to Tulagi, theseat of government, where he would become the Commissioner's guest. Captain Malu was responsible for two other suggestions, which given, hedisappears from this narrative. One was to Captain Hansen, the otherto Mr. Harriwell, manager of Reminge Plantation. Both suggestions weresimilar in tenor, namely, to give Mr. Bertram Arkwright an insight intothe rawness and redness of life in the Solomons. Also, it is whisperedthat Captain Malu mentioned that a case of Scotch would becoincidental with any particularly gorgeous insight Mr. Arkwright mightreceive. .. .. .. .. .. .. "Yes, Swartz always was too pig-headed. You see, he took four of hisboat's crew to Tulagi to be flogged--officially, you know--then startedback with them in the whaleboat. It was pretty squally, and the boatcapsized just outside. Swartz was the only one drowned. Of course, itwas an accident. " "Was it? Really?" Bertie asked, only half-interested, staring hard atthe black man at the wheel. Ugi had dropped astern, and the ARLA was sliding along through a summersea toward the wooded ranges of Malaita. The helmsman who so attractedBertie's eyes sported a ten penny nail, stuck skewerwise through hisnose. About his neck was a string of pants buttons. Thrust through holesin his ears were a can opener, the broken handle of a toothbrush, a claypipe, the brass wheel of an alarm clock, and several Winchester riflecartridges. On his chest, suspended from around his neck hung the half of a chinaplate. Some forty similarly appareled blacks lay about the deck, fifteenof which were boat's crew, the remainder being fresh labor recruits. "Of course it was an accident, " spoke up the ARLA'S mate, Jacobs, a slender, dark-eyed man who looked more a professor than a sailor. "Johnny Bedip nearly had the same kind of accident. He was bringing backseveral from a flogging, when they capsized him. But he knew how to swimas well as they, and two of them were drowned. He used a boat stretcherand a revolver. Of course it was an accident. " "Quite common, them accidents, " remarked the skipper. "You see that manat the wheel, Mr. Arkwright? He's a man eater. Six months ago, he andthe rest of the boat's crew drowned the then captain of the ARLA. Theydid it on deck, sir, right aft there by the mizzen-traveler. " "The deck was in a shocking state, " said the mate. "Do I understand--?" Bertie began. "Yes, just that, " said Captain Hansen. "It was an accidental drowning. " "But on deck--?" "Just so. I don't mind telling you, in confidence, of course, that theyused an axe. " "This present crew of yours?" Captain Hansen nodded. "The other skipper always was too careless, " explained the mate. "He butjust turned his back, when they let him have it. " "We haven't any show down here, " was the skipper's complaint. "Thegovernment protects a nigger against a white every time. You can't shootfirst. You've got to give the nigger first shot, or else the governmentcalls it murder and you go to Fiji. That's why there's so many drowningaccidents. " Dinner was called, and Bertie and the skipper went below, leaving themate to watch on deck. "Keep an eye out for that black devil, Auiki, " was the skipper's partingcaution. "I haven't liked his looks for several days. " "Right O, " said the mate. Dinner was part way along, and the skipper was in the middle of hisstory of the cutting out of the Scottish Chiefs. "Yes, " he was saying, "she was the finest vessel on the coast. But whenshe missed stays, and before ever she hit the reef, the canoes startedfor her. There were five white men, a crew of twenty Santa Cruz boysand Samoans, and only the supercargo escaped. Besides, there were sixtyrecruits. They were all kai-kai'd. Kai-kai?--oh, I beg your pardon. I mean they were eaten. Then there was the James Edwards, adandy-rigged--" But at that moment there was a sharp oath from the mate on deck and achorus of savage cries. A revolver went off three times, and then washeard a loud splash. Captain Hansen had sprung up the companionway onthe instant, and Bertie's eyes had been fascinated by a glimpse of himdrawing his revolver as he sprang. Bertie went up more circumspectly, hesitating before he put his headabove the companionway slide. But nothing happened. The mate wasshaking with excitement, his revolver in his hand. Once he startled, andhalf-jumped around, as if danger threatened his back. "One of the natives fell overboard, " he was saying, in a queer tensevoice. "He couldn't swim. " "Who was it?" the skipper demanded. "Auiki, " was the answer. "But I say, you know, I heard shots, " Bertie said, in tremblingeagerness, for he scented adventure, and adventure that was happily overwith. The mate whirled upon him, snarling: "It's a damned lie. There ain't been a shot fired. The nigger felloverboard. " Captain Hansen regarded Bertie with unblinking, lack-luster eyes. "I--I thought--" Bertie was beginning. "Shots?" said Captain Hansen, dreamily. "Shots? Did you hear any shots, Mr. Jacobs?" "Not a shot, " replied Mr. Jacobs. The skipper looked at his guest triumphantly, and said: "Evidently an accident. Let us go down, Mr. Arkwright, and finishdinner. " Bertie slept that night in the captain's cabin, a tiny stateroom off themain cabin. The for'ard bulkhead was decorated with a stand of rifles. Over the bunk were three more rifles. Under the bunk was a big drawer, which, when he pulled it out, he found filled with ammunition, dynamite, and several boxes of detonators. He elected to take the settee on theopposite side. Lying conspicuously on the small table, was the Arla'slog. Bertie did not know that it had been especially prepared for theoccasion by Captain Malu, and he read therein how on September 21, twoboat's crew had fallen overboard and been drowned. Bertie read betweenthe lines and knew better. He read how the Arla's whale boat hadbeen bushwhacked at Su'u and had lost three men; of how the skipperdiscovered the cook stewing human flesh on the galley fire--fleshpurchased by the boat's crew ashore in Fui; of how an accidentaldischarge of dynamite, while signaling, had killed another boat's crew;of night attacks; ports fled from between the dawns; attacks by bushmenin mangrove swamps and by fleets of salt-water men in the largerpassages. One item that occurred with monotonous frequency was death bydysentery. He noticed with alarm that two white men had so died--guests, like himself, on the Arla. "I say, you know, " Bertie said next day to Captain Hansen. "I've beenglancing through your log. " The skipper displayed quick vexation that the log had been left lyingabout. "And all that dysentery, you know, that's all rot, just like theaccidental drownings, " Bertie continued. "What does dysentery reallystand for?" The skipper openly admired his guest's acumen, stiffened himself to makeindignant denial, then gracefully surrendered. "You see, it's like this, Mr. Arkwright. These islands have got a badenough name as it is. It's getting harder every day to sign on whitemen. Suppose a man is killed. The company has to pay through the nosefor another man to take the job. But if the man merely dies of sickness, it's all right. The new chums don't mind disease. What they draw theline at is being murdered. I thought the skipper of the Arla had died ofdysentery when I took his billet. Then it was too late. I'd signed thecontract. " "Besides, " said Mr. Jacobs, "there's altogether too many accidentaldrownings anyway. It don't look right. It's the fault of the government. A white man hasn't a chance to defend himself from the niggers. " "Yes, look at the Princess and that Yankee mate, " the skipper took upthe tale. "She carried five white men besides a government agent. Thecaptain, the agent, and the supercargo were ashore in the two boats. They were killed to the last man. The mate and boson, with about fifteenof the crew--Samoans and Tongans--were on board. A crowd of niggers cameoff from shore. First thing the mate knew, the boson and the crew werekilled in the first rush. The mate grabbed three cartridge belts and twoWinchesters and skinned up to the cross-trees. He was the sole survivor, and you can't blame him for being mad. He pumped one rifle till it gotso hot he couldn't hold it, then he pumped the other. The deck was blackwith niggers. He cleaned them out. He dropped them as they went over therail, and he dropped them as fast as they picked up their paddles. Thenthey jumped into the water and started to swim for it, and being mad, hegot half a dozen more. And what did he get for it?" "Seven years in Fiji, " snapped the mate. "The government said he wasn't justified in shooting after they'd takento the water, " the skipper explained. "And that's why they die of dysentery nowadays, " the mate added. "Just fancy, " said Bertie, as he felt a longing for the cruise to beover. Later on in the day he interviewed the black who had been pointed outto him as a cannibal. This fellow's name was Sumasai. He had spent threeyears on a Queensland plantation. He had been to Samoa, and Fiji, andSydney; and as a boat's crew had been on recruiting schooners throughNew Britain, New Ireland, New Guinea, and the Admiralties. Also, he wasa wag, and he had taken a line on his skipper's conduct. Yes, he hadeaten many men. How many? He could not remember the tally. Yes, whitemen, too; they were very good, unless they were sick. He had once eatena sick one. "My word!" he cried, at the recollection. "Me sick plenty along him. Mybelly walk about too much. " Bertie shuddered, and asked about heads. Yes, Sumasai had several hiddenashore, in good condition, sun-dried, and smoke-cured. One was of thecaptain of a schooner. It had long whiskers. He would sell it fortwo quid. Black men's heads he would sell for one quid. He had somepickaninny heads, in poor condition, that he would let go for ten bob. Five minutes afterward, Bertie found himself sitting on thecompanionway-slide alongside a black with a horrible skin disease. Hesheered off, and on inquiry was told that it was leprosy. He hurriedbelow and washed himself with antiseptic soap. He took many antisepticwashes in the course of the day, for every native on board was afflictedwith malignant ulcers of one sort or another. As the Arla drew in to an anchorage in the midst of mangrove swamps, a double row of barbed wire was stretched around above her rail. Thatlooked like business, and when Bertie saw the shore canoes alongside, armed with spears, bows and arrows, and Sniders, he wished moreearnestly than ever that the cruise was over. That evening the natives were slow in leaving the ship at sundown. Anumber of them checked the mate when he ordered them ashore. "Nevermind, I'll fix them, " said Captain Hansen, diving below. When he came back, he showed Bertie a stick of dynamite attached to afish hook. Now it happens that a paper-wrapped bottle of chlorodyne witha piece of harmless fuse projecting can fool anybody. It fooled Bertie, and it fooled the natives. When Captain Hansen lighted the fuse andhooked the fish hook into the tail end of a native's loin cloth, thatnative was smitten with so an ardent a desire for the shore that heforgot to shed the loin cloth. He started for'ard, the fuse sizzling andspluttering at his rear, the natives in his path taking headers over thebarbed wire at every jump. Bertie was horror-stricken. So was CaptainHansen. He had forgotten his twenty-five recruits, on each of which hehad paid thirty shillings advance. They went over the side along withthe shore-dwelling folk and followed by him who trailed the sizzlingchlorodyne bottle. Bertie did not see the bottle go off; but the mate opportunelydischarging a stick of real dynamite aft where it would harm nobody, Bertie would have sworn in any admiralty court to a nigger blown toflinders. The flight of the twenty-five recruits had actually cost theArla forty pounds, and, since they had taken to the bush, there was nohope of recovering them. The skipper and his mate proceeded to drowntheir sorrow in cold tea. The cold tea was in whiskey bottles, so Bertie did not know it was coldtea they were mopping up. All he knew was that the two men got verydrunk and argued eloquently and at length as to whether the explodednigger should be reported as a case of dysentery or as an accidentaldrowning. When they snored off to sleep, he was the only white man left, and he kept a perilous watch till dawn, in fear of an attack from shoreand an uprising of the crew. Three more days the Arla spent on the coast, and three more nights theskipper and the mate drank overfondly of cold tea, leaving Bertieto keep the watch. They knew he could be depended upon, while he wasequally certain that if he lived, he would report their drunken conductto Captain Malu. Then the Arla dropped anchor at Reminge Plantation, onGuadalcanar, and Bertie landed on the beach with a sigh of relief andshook hands with the manager. Mr. Harriwell was ready for him. "Now you mustn't be alarmed if some of our fellows seem downcast, " Mr. Harriwell said, having drawn him aside in confidence. "There's been talkof an outbreak, and two or three suspicious signs I'm willing to admit, but personally I think it's all poppycock. " "How--how many blacks have you on the plantation?" Bertie asked, with asinking heart. "We're working four hundred just now, " replied Mr. Harriwell, cheerfully; "but the three of us, with you, of course, and the skipperand mate of the Arla, can handle them all right. " Bertie turned to meet one McTavish, the storekeeper, who scarcelyacknowledged the introduction, such was his eagerness to present hisresignation. "It being that I'm a married man, Mr. Harriwell, I can't very wellafford to remain on longer. Trouble is working up, as plain as thenose on your face. The niggers are going to break out, and there'll beanother Hohono horror here. " "What's a Hohono horror?" Bertie asked, after the storekeeper had beenpersuaded to remain until the end of the month. "Oh, he means Hohono Plantation, on Ysabel, " said the manager. "Theniggers killed the five white men ashore, captured the schooner, killedthe captain and mate, and escaped in a body to Malaita. But I alwayssaid they were careless on Hohono. They won't catch us napping here. Come along, Mr. Arkwright, and see our view from the veranda. " Bertie was too busy wondering how he could get away to Tulagi to theCommissioner's house, to see much of the view. He was still wondering, when a rifle exploded very near to him, behind his back. At the samemoment his arm was nearly dislocated, so eagerly did Mr. Harriwell draghim indoors. "I say, old man, that was a close shave, " said the manager, pawing himover to see if he had been hit. "I can't tell you how sorry I am. But itwas broad daylight, and I never dreamed. " Bertie was beginning to turn pale. "They got the other manager that way, " McTavish vouchsafed. "And adashed fine chap he was. Blew his brains out all over the veranda. Younoticed that dark stain there between the steps and the door?" Bertie was ripe for the cocktail which Mr. Harriwell pitched in andcompounded for him; but before he could drink it, a man in ridingtrousers and puttees entered. "What's the matter now?" the manager asked, after one look at thenewcomer's face. "Is the river up again?" "River be blowed--it's the niggers. Stepped out of the cane grass, nota dozen feet away, and whopped at me. It was a Snider, and he shot fromthe hip. Now what I want to know is where'd he get that Snider?--Oh, Ibeg pardon. Glad to know you, Mr. Arkwright. " "Mr. Brown is my assistant, " explained Mr. Harriwell. "And now let'shave that drink. " "But where'd he get that Snider?" Mr. Brown insisted. "I always objectedto keeping those guns on the premises. " "They're still there, " Mr. Harriwell said, with a show of heat. Mr. Brown smiled incredulously. "Come along and see, " said the manager. Bertie joined the procession into the office, where Mr. Harriwellpointed triumphantly at a big packing case in a dusty corner. "Well, then where did the beggar get that Snider?" harped Mr. Brown. But just then McTavish lifted the packing case. The manager started, then tore off the lid. The case was empty. They gazed at one another inhorrified silence. Harriwell drooped wearily. Then McVeigh cursed. "What I contended all along--the house-boys are not to be trusted. " "It does look serious, " Harriwell admitted, "but we'll come through itall right. What the sanguinary niggers need is a shaking up. Will yougentlemen please bring your rifles to dinner, and will you, Mr. Brown, kindly prepare forty or fifty sticks of dynamite. Make the fuses goodand short. We'll give them a lesson. And now, gentlemen, dinner isserved. " One thing that Bertie detested was rice and curry, so it happened thathe alone partook of an inviting omelet. He had quite finished his plate, when Harriwell helped himself to the omelet. One mouthful he tasted, then spat out vociferously. "That's the second time, " McTavish announced ominously. Harriwell was still hawking and spitting. "Second time, what?" Bertie quavered. "Poison, " was the answer. "That cook will be hanged yet. " "That's the way the bookkeeper went out at Cape March, " Brown spoke up. "Died horribly. They said on the Jessie that they heard him screamingthree miles away. " "I'll put the cook in irons, " sputtered Harriwell. "Fortunately wediscovered it in time. " Bertie sat paralyzed. There was no color in his face. He attempted tospeak, but only an inarticulate gurgle resulted. All eyed him anxiously. "Don't say it, don't say it, " McTavish cried in a tense voice. "Yes, I ate it, plenty of it, a whole plateful!" Bertie criedexplosively, like a diver suddenly regaining breath. The awful silence continued half a minute longer, and he read his fatein their eyes. "Maybe it wasn't poison after all, " said Harriwell, dismally. "Call in the cook, " said Brown. In came the cook, a grinning black boy, nose-spiked and ear-plugged. "Here, you, Wi-wi, what name that?" Harriwell bellowed, pointingaccusingly at the omelet. Wi-wi was very naturally frightened and embarrassed. "Him good fella kai-kai, " he murmured apologetically. "Make him eat it, " suggested McTavish. "That's a proper test. " Harriwell filled a spoon with the stuff and jumped for the cook, whofled in panic. "That settles it, " was Brown's solemn pronouncement. "He won't eat it. " "Mr. Brown, will you please go and put the irons on him?" Harriwellturned cheerfully to Bertie. "It's all right, old man, the Commissionerwill deal with him, and if you die, depend upon it, he will be hanged. " "Don't think the government'll do it, " objected McTavish. "But gentlemen, gentlemen, " Bertie cried. "In the meantime think of me. " Harriwell shrugged his shoulders pityingly. "Sorry, old man, but it's a native poison, and there are no knownantidotes for native poisons. Try and compose yourself and if--" Two sharp reports of a rifle from without, interrupted the discourse, and Brown, entering, reloaded his rifle and sat down to table. "The cook's dead, " he said. "Fever. A rather sudden attack. " "I was just telling Mr. Arkwright that there are no antidotes for nativepoisons--" "Except gin, " said Brown. Harriwell called himself an absent-minded idiot and rushed for the ginbottle. "Neat, man, neat, " he warned Bertie, who gulped down a tumblertwo-thirds full of the raw spirits, and coughed and choked from theangry bite of it till the tears ran down his cheeks. Harriwell took his pulse and temperature, made a show of looking out forhim, and doubted that the omelet had been poisoned. Brown and McTavishalso doubted; but Bertie discerned an insincere ring in their voices. His appetite had left him, and he took his own pulse stealthily underthe table. There was no question but what it was increasing, but hefailed to ascribe it to the gin he had taken. McTavish, rifle in hand, went out on the veranda to reconnoiter. "They're massing up at the cook-house, " was his report. "And they've noend of Sniders. My idea is to sneak around on the other side and takethem in flank. Strike the first blow, you know. Will you come along, Brown?" Harriwell ate on steadily, while Bertie discovered that his pulse hadleaped up five beats. Nevertheless, he could not help jumping when therifles began to go off. Above the scattering of Sniders could beheard the pumping of Brown's and McTavish's Winchesters--all against abackground of demoniacal screeching and yelling. "They've got them on the run, " Harriwell remarked, as voices andgunshots faded away in the distance. Scarcely were Brown and McTavish back at the table when the latterreconnoitered. "They've got dynamite, " he said. "Then let's charge them with dynamite, " Harriwell proposed. Thrusting half a dozen sticks each into their pockets and equippingthemselves with lighted cigars, they started for the door. And just thenit happened. They blamed McTavish for it afterward, and he admittedthat the charge had been a trifle excessive. But at any rate it wentoff under the house, which lifted up cornerwise and settled back onits foundations. Half the china on the table was shattered, while theeight-day clock stopped. Yelling for vengeance, the three men rushed outinto the night, and the bombardment began. When they returned, there was no Bertie. He had dragged himself awayto the office, barricaded himself in, and sunk upon the floor in agin-soaked nightmare, wherein he died a thousand deaths while thevalorous fight went on around him. In the morning, sick and headacheyfrom the gin, he crawled out to find the sun still in the sky and Godpresumable in heaven, for his hosts were alive and uninjured. Harriwell pressed him to stay on longer, but Bertie insisted on sailingimmediately on the Arla for Tulagi, where, until the following steamerday, he stuck close by the Commissioner's house. There were ladytourists on the outgoing steamer, and Bertie was again a hero, whileCaptain Malu, as usual, passed unnoticed. But Captain Malu sent backfrom Sydney two cases of the best Scotch whiskey on the market, for hewas not able to make up his mind as to whether it was Captain Hansen orMr Harriwell who had given Bertie Arkwright the more gorgeous insightinto life in the Solomons. THE INEVITABLE WHITE MAN "The black will never understand the white, nor the white the black, aslong as black is black and white is white. " So said Captain Woodward. We sat in the parlor of Charley Roberts' pubin Apia, drinking long Abu Hameds compounded and shared with us by theaforesaid Charley Roberts, who claimed the recipe direct from Stevens, famous for having invented the Abu Hamed at a time when he was spurredon by Nile thirst--the Stevens who was responsible for "With Kitchenerto Kartoun, " and who passed out at the siege of Ladysmith. Captain Woodward, short and squat, elderly, burned by forty years oftropic sun, and with the most beautiful liquid brown eyes I ever saw ina man, spoke from a vast experience. The crisscross of scars on his baldpate bespoke a tomahawk intimacy with the black, and of equal intimacywas the advertisement, front and rear, on the right side of his neck, where an arrow had at one time entered and been pulled clean through. Ashe explained, he had been in a hurry on that occasion--the arrow impededhis running--and he felt that he could not take the time to break offthe head and pull out the shaft the way it had come in. At the presentmoment he was commander of the SAVAII, the big steamer that recruitedlabor from the westward for the German plantations on Samoa. "Half the trouble is the stupidity of the whites, " said Roberts, pausing to take a swig from his glass and to curse the Samoan bar-boyin affectionate terms. "If the white man would lay himself out a bitto understand the workings of the black man's mind, most of the messeswould be avoided. " "I've seen a few who claimed they understood niggers, " Captain Woodwardretorted, "and I always took notice that they were the first to bekai-kai'd (eaten). Look at the missionaries in New Guinea and the NewHebrides--the martyr isle of Erromanga and all the rest. Look at theAustrian expedition that was cut to pieces in the Solomons, in the bushof Guadalcanar. And look at the traders themselves, with a score ofyears' experience, making their brag that no nigger would ever get them, and whose heads to this day are ornamenting the rafters of the canoehouses. There was old Johnny Simons--twenty-six years on the raw edgesof Melanesia, swore he knew the niggers like a book and that they'dnever do for him, and he passed out at Marovo Lagoon, New Georgia, hadhis head sawed off by a black Mary (woman) and an old nigger with onlyone leg, having left the other leg in the mouth of a shark while divingfor dynamited fish. There was Billy Watts, horrible reputation asa nigger killer, a man to scare the devil. I remember lying at CapeLittle, New Ireland you know, when the niggers stole half a case oftrade-tobacco--cost him about three dollars and a half. In retaliationhe turned out, shot six niggers, smashed up their war canoes and burnedtwo villages. And it was at Cape Little, four years afterward, thathe was jumped along with fifty Buku boys he had with him fishingbêche-de-mer. In five minutes they were all dead, with the exception ofthree boys who got away in a canoe. Don't talk to me about understandingthe nigger. The white man's mission is to farm the world, and it's abig enough job cut out for him. What time has he got left to understandniggers anyway?" "Just so, " said Roberts. "And somehow it doesn't seem necessary, afterall, to understand the niggers. In direct proportion to the white man'sstupidity is his success in farming the world--" "And putting the fear of God into the nigger's heart, " Captain Woodwardblurted out. "Perhaps you're right, Roberts. Perhaps it's his stupiditythat makes him succeed, and surely one phase of his stupidity is hisinability to understand the niggers. But there's one thing sure, thewhite has to run the niggers whether he understands them or not. It'sinevitable. It's fate. " "And of course the white man is inevitable--it's the niggers' fate, "Roberts broke in. "Tell the white man there's pearl shell in some lagooninfested by ten-thousand howling cannibals, and he'll head there all byhis lonely, with half a dozen kanaka divers and a tin alarm clock forchronometer, all packed like sardines on a commodious, five-ton ketch. Whisper that there's a gold strike at the North Pole, and that sameinevitable white-skinned creature will set out at once, armed with pickand shovel, a side of bacon, and the latest patent rocker--and what'smore, he'll get there. Tip it off to him that there's diamonds on thered-hot ramparts of hell, and Mr. White Man will storm the rampartsand set old Satan himself to pick-and-shovel work. That's what comes ofbeing stupid and inevitable. " "But I wonder what the black man must think of the--the inevitableness, "I said. Captain Woodward broke into quiet laughter. His eyes had a reminiscentgleam. "I'm just wondering what the niggers of Malu thought and still must bethinking of the one inevitable white man we had on board when we visitedthem in the DUCHESS, " he explained. Roberts mixed three more Abu Hameds. "That was twenty years ago. Saxtorph was his name. He was certainly themost stupid man I ever saw, but he was as inevitable as death. There wasonly one thing that chap could do, and that was shoot. I remember thefirst time I ran into him--right here in Apia, twenty years ago. Thatwas before your time, Roberts. I was sleeping at Dutch Henry's hotel, down where the market is now. Ever heard of him? He made a tidy stakesmuggling arms in to the rebels, sold out his hotel, and was killed inSydney just six weeks afterward in a saloon row. "But Saxtorph. One night I'd just got to sleep, when a couple of catsbegan to sing in the courtyard. It was out of bed and up window, waterjug in hand. But just then I heard the window of the next room go up. Two shots were fired, and the window was closed. I fail to impress youwith the celerity of the transaction. Ten seconds at the outside. Upwent the window, bang bang went the revolver, and down went the window. Whoever it was, he had never stopped to see the effect of his shots. Heknew. Do you follow me?--he KNEW. There was no more cat concert, and inthe morning there lay the two offenders, stone dead. It was marvelousto me. It still is marvelous. First, it was starlight, and Saxtorph shotwithout drawing a bead; next, he shot so rapidly that the two reportswere like a double report; and finally, he knew he had hit his markswithout looking to see. "Two days afterward he came on board to see me. I was mate, then, onthe Duchess, a whacking big one-hundred-and fifty-ton schooner, ablackbirder. And let me tell you that blackbirders were blackbirders inthose days. There weren't any government protection for US, either. Itwas rough work, give and take, if we were finished, and nothing said, and we ran niggers from every south sea island they didn't kick us offfrom. Well, Saxtorph came on board, John Saxtorph was the name he gave. He was a sandy little man, hair sandy, complexion sandy, and eyes sandy, too. Nothing striking about him. His soul was as neutral as his colorscheme. He said he was strapped and wanted to ship on board. Would gocabin boy, cook, supercargo, or common sailor. Didn't know anythingabout any of the billets, but said that he was willing to learn. Ididn't want him, but his shooting had so impressed me that I took him ascommon sailor, wages three pounds per month. "He was willing to learn all right, I'll say that much. But he wasconstitutionally unable to learn anything. He could no more box thecompass than I could mix drinks like Roberts here. And as for steering, he gave me my first gray hairs. I never dared risk him at the wheel whenwe were running in a big sea, while full-and-by and close-and-by wereinsoluble mysteries. Couldn't ever tell the difference between a sheetand a tackle, simply couldn't. The fore-throat-jig and the jib-jig wereall one to him. Tell him to slack off the mainsheet, and before you knowit, he'd drop the peak. He fell overboard three times, and he couldn'tswim. But he was always cheerful, never seasick, and he was the mostwilling man I ever knew. He was an uncommunicative soul. Never talkedabout himself. His history, so far as we were concerned, began the dayhe signed on the DUCHESS. Where he learned to shoot, the stars alone cantell. He was a Yankee--that much we knew from the twang in his speech. And that was all we ever did know. "And now we begin to get to the point. We had bad luck in the NewHebrides, only fourteen boys for five weeks, and we ran up before thesoutheast for the Solomons. Malaita, then as now, was good recruitingground, and we ran into Malu, on the northwestern corner. There's ashore reef and an outer reef, and a mighty nervous anchorage; but wemade it all right and fired off our dynamite as a signal to the niggersto come down and be recruited. In three days we got not a boy. Theniggers came off to us in their canoes by hundreds, but they onlylaughed when we showed them beads and calico and hatchets and talked ofthe delights of plantation work in Samoa. "On the fourth day there came a change. Fifty-odd boys signed on andwere billeted in the main-hold, with the freedom of the deck, of course. And of course, looking back, this wholesale signing on was suspicious, but at the time we thought some powerful chief had removed the banagainst recruiting. The morning of the fifth day our two boats wentashore as usual--one to cover the other, you know, in case of trouble. And, as usual, the fifty niggers on board were on deck, loafing, talking, smoking, and sleeping. Saxtorph and myself, along with fourother sailors, were all that were left on board. The two boats weremanned with Gilbert Islanders. In the one were the captain, thesupercargo, and the recruiter. In the other, which was the covering boatand which lay off shore a hundred yards, was the second mate. Both boatswere well-armed, though trouble was little expected. "Four of the sailors, including Saxtorph, were scraping the poop rail. The fifth sailor, rifle in hand, was standing guard by the water-tankjust for'ard of the mainmast. I was for'ard, putting in the finishinglicks on a new jaw for the fore-gaff. I was just reaching for my pipewhere I had laid it down, when I heard a shot from shore. I straightenedup to look. Something struck me on the back of the head, partiallystunning me and knocking me to the deck. My first thought was thatsomething had carried away aloft; but even as I went down, and beforeI struck the deck, I heard the devil's own tattoo of rifles from theboats, and twisting sidewise, I caught a glimpse of the sailor whowas standing guard. Two big niggers were holding his arms, and a thirdnigger from behind was braining him with a tomahawk. "I can see it now, the water-tank, the mainmast, the gang hanging on tohim, the hatchet descending on the back of his head, and all under theblazing sunlight. I was fascinated by that growing vision of death. The tomahawk seemed to take a horribly long time to come down. I saw itland, and the man's legs give under him as he crumpled. The niggers heldhim up by sheer strength while he was hacked a couple of times more. Then I got two more hacks on the head and decided that I was dead. Sodid the brute that was hacking me. I was too helpless to move, and I laythere and watched them removing the sentry's head. I must say they didit slick enough. They were old hands at the business. "The rifle firing from the boats had ceased, and I made no doubt thatthey were finished off and that the end had come to everything. It wasonly a matter of moments when they would return for my head. They wereevidently taking the heads from the sailors aft. Heads are valuable onMalaita, especially white heads. They have the place of honor in thecanoe houses of the salt-water natives. What particular decorativeeffect the bushmen get out of them I didn't know, but they prize themjust as much as the salt-water crowd. "I had a dim notion of escaping, and I crawled on hands and knees tothe winch, where I managed to drag myself to my feet. From there Icould look aft and see three heads on top the cabin--the heads of threesailors I had given orders to for months. The niggers saw me standing, and started for me. I reached for my revolver, and found they had takenit. I can't say that I was scared. I've been near to death severaltimes, but it never seemed easier than right then. I was half-stunned, and nothing seemed to matter. "The leading nigger had armed himself with a cleaver from the galley, and he grimaced like an ape as he prepared to slice me down. But theslice was never made. He went down on the deck all of a heap, and I sawthe blood gush from his mouth. In a dim way I heard a rifle go off andcontinue to go off. Nigger after nigger went down. My senses began toclear, and I noted that there was never a miss. Every time that therifle went off a nigger dropped. I sat down on deck beside the winch andlooked up. Perched in the crosstrees was Saxtorph. How he had managedit I can't imagine, for he had carried up with him two Winchesters andI don't know how many bandoliers of ammunition; and he was now doing theone only thing in this world that he was fitted to do. "I've seen shooting and slaughter, but I never saw anything like that. I sat by the winch and watched the show. I was weak and faint, and itseemed to be all a dream. Bang, bang, bang, bang, went his rifle, andthud, thud, thud, thud, went the niggers to the deck. It was amazing tosee them go down. After their first rush to get me, when about a dozenhad dropped, they seemed paralyzed; but he never left off pumping hisgun. By this time canoes and the two boats arrived from shore, armedwith Sniders, and with Winchesters which they had captured in the boats. The fusillade they let loose on Saxtorph was tremendous. Luckily for himthe niggers are only good at close range. They are not used to puttingthe gun to their shoulders. They wait until they are right on top ofa man, and then they shoot from the hip. When his rifle got too hot, Saxtorph changed off. That had been his idea when he carried two riflesup with him. "The astounding thing was the rapidity of his fire. Also, he nevermade a miss. If ever anything was inevitable, that man was. It was theswiftness of it that made the slaughter so appalling. The niggers didnot have time to think. When they did manage to think, they went overthe side in a rush, capsizing the canoes of course. Saxtorph never letup. The water was covered with them, and plump, plump, plump, he droppedhis bullets into them. Not a single miss, and I could hear distinctlythe thud of every bullet as it buried in human flesh. "The niggers spread out and headed for the shore, swimming. The waterwas carpeted with bobbing heads, and I stood up, as in a dream, andwatched it all--the bobbing heads and the heads that ceased to bob. Someof the long shots were magnificent. Only one man reached the beach, butas he stood up to wade ashore, Saxtorph got him. It was beautiful. Andwhen a couple of niggers ran down to drag him out of the water, Saxtorphgot them, too. "I thought everything was over then, when I heard the rifle go offagain. A nigger had come out of the cabin companion on the run for therail and gone down in the middle of it. The cabin must have been fullof them. I counted twenty. They came up one at a time and jumped for therail. But they never got there. It reminded me of trapshooting. A blackbody would pop out of the companion, bang would go Saxtorph's rifle, anddown would go the black body. Of course, those below did not know whatwas happening on deck, so they continued to pop out until the last onewas finished off. "Saxtorph waited a while to make sure, and then came down on deck. Heand I were all that were left of the DUCHESS'S complement, and I waspretty well to the bad, while he was helpless now that the shooting wasover. Under my direction he washed out my scalp wounds and sewed themup. A big drink of whiskey braced me to make an effort to get out. Therewas nothing else to do. All the rest were dead. We tried to get up sail, Saxtorph hoisting and I holding the turn. He was once more the stupidlubber. He couldn't hoist worth a cent, and when I fell in a faint, itlooked all up with us. "When I came to, Saxtorph was sitting helplessly on the rail, waiting toask me what he should do. I told him to overhaul the wounded and see ifthere were any able to crawl. He gathered together six. One, I remember, had a broken leg; but Saxtorph said his arms were all right. I layin the shade, brushing the flies off and directing operations, whileSaxtorph bossed his hospital gang. I'll be blessed if he didn't makethose poor niggers heave at every rope on the pin-rails before he foundthe halyards. One of them let go the rope in the midst of the hoistingand slipped down to the deck dead; but Saxtorph hammered the others andmade them stick by the job. When the fore and main were up, I told himto knock the shackle out of the anchor chain and let her go. I had hadmyself helped aft to the wheel, where I was going to make a shift atsteering. I can't guess how he did it, but instead of knocking theshackle out, down went the second anchor, and there we were doublymoored. "In the end he managed to knock both shackles out and raise the staysailand jib, and the Duchess filled away for the entrance. Our decks were aspectacle. Dead and dying niggers were everywhere. They were wedged awaysome of them in the most inconceivable places. The cabin was full ofthem where they had crawled off the deck and cashed in. I put Saxtorphand his graveyard gang to work heaving them overside, and over theywent, the living and the dead. The sharks had fat pickings that day. Of course our four murdered sailors went the same way. Their heads, however, we put in a sack with weights, so that by no chance should theydrift on the beach and fall into the hands of the niggers. "Our five prisoners I decided to use as crew, but they decidedotherwise. They watched their opportunity and went over the side. Saxtorph got two in mid-air with his revolver, and would have shot theother three in the water if I hadn't stopped him. I was sick of theslaughter, you see, and besides, they'd helped work the schooner out. But it was mercy thrown away, for the sharks got the three of them. "I had brain fever or something after we got clear of the land. Anyway, the DUCHESS lay hove to for three weeks, when I pulled myself togetherand we jogged on with her to Sydney. Anyway those niggers of Malulearned the everlasting lesson that it is not good to monkey with awhite man. In their case, Saxtorph was certainly inevitable. " Charley Roberts emitted a long whistle and said: "Well I should say so. But whatever became of Saxtorph?" "He drifted into seal hunting and became a crackerjack. For six years hewas high line of both the Victoria and San Francisco fleets. The seventhyear his schooner was seized in Bering Sea by a Russian cruiser, and allhands, so the talk went, were slammed into the Siberian salt mines. Atleast I've never heard of him since. " "Farming the world, " Roberts muttered. "Farming the world. Well here'sto them. Somebody's got to do it--farm the world, I mean. " Captain Woodward rubbed the criss-crosses on his bald head. "I've done my share of it, " he said. "Forty years now. This will be mylast trip. Then I'm going home to stay. " "I'll wager the wine you don't, " Roberts challenged. "You'll die in theharness, not at home. " Captain Woodward promptly accepted the bet, but personally I thinkCharley Roberts has the best of it. THE SEED OF McCOY The Pyrenees, her iron sides pressed low in the water by her cargo ofwheat, rolled sluggishly, and made it easy for the man who was climbingaboard from out a tiny outrigger canoe. As his eyes came level with therail, so that he could see inboard, it seemed to him that he saw a dim, almost indiscernible haze. It was more like an illusion, like a blurringfilm that had spread abruptly over his eyes. He felt an inclination tobrush it away, and the same instant he thought that he was growing oldand that it was time to send to San Francisco for a pair of spectacles. As he came over the rail he cast a glance aloft at the tall masts, and, next, at the pumps. They were not working. There seemed nothing thematter with the big ship, and he wondered why she had hoisted the signalof distress. He thought of his happy islanders, and hoped it was notdisease. Perhaps the ship was short of water or provisions. He shookhands with the captain whose gaunt face and care-worn eyes made nosecret of the trouble, whatever it was. At the same moment the newcomerwas aware of a faint, indefinable smell. It seemed like that of burntbread, but different. He glanced curiously about him. Twenty feet away a weary-faced sailorwas calking the deck. As his eyes lingered on the man, he saw suddenlyarise from under his hands a faint spiral of haze that curled andtwisted and was gone. By now he had reached the deck. His bare feet werepervaded by a dull warmth that quickly penetrated the thick calluses. He knew now the nature of the ship's distress. His eyes roved swiftlyforward, where the full crew of weary-faced sailors regarded himeagerly. The glance from his liquid brown eyes swept over them like abenediction, soothing them, rapping them about as in the mantle of agreat peace. "How long has she been afire, Captain?" he asked in a voiceso gentle and unperturbed that it was as the cooing of a dove. At first the captain felt the peace and content of it stealing in uponhim; then the consciousness of all that he had gone through and wasgoing through smote him, and he was resentful. By what right did thisragged beachcomber, in dungaree trousers and a cotton shirt, suggestsuch a thing as peace and content to him and his overwrought, exhaustedsoul? The captain did not reason this; it was the unconscious process ofemotion that caused his resentment. "Fifteen days, " he answered shortly. "Who are you?" "My name is McCoy, " came the answer in tones that breathed tendernessand compassion. "I mean, are you the pilot?" McCoy passed the benediction of his gaze over the tall, heavy-shoulderedman with the haggard, unshaven face who had joined the captain. "I am as much a pilot as anybody, " was McCoy's answer. "We are allpilots here, Captain, and I know every inch of these waters. " But the captain was impatient. "What I want is some of the authorities. I want to talk with them, andblame quick. " "Then I'll do just as well. " Again that insidious suggestion of peace, and his ship a ragingfurnace beneath his feet! The captain's eyebrows lifted impatiently andnervously, and his fist clenched as if he were about to strike a blowwith it. "Who in hell are you?" he demanded. "I am the chief magistrate, " was the reply in a voice that was still thesoftest and gentlest imaginable. The tall, heavy-shouldered man broke out in a harsh laugh that waspartly amusement, but mostly hysterical. Both he and the captainregarded McCoy with incredulity and amazement. That this barefootedbeachcomber should possess such high-sounding dignity was inconceivable. His cotton shirt, unbuttoned, exposed a grizzled chest and the fact thatthere was no undershirt beneath. A worn straw hat failed to hide the ragged gray hair. Halfway down hischest descended an untrimmed patriarchal beard. In any slop shop, twoshillings would have outfitted him complete as he stood before them. "Any relation to the McCoy of the Bounty?" the captain asked. "He was my great-grandfather. " "Oh, " the captain said, then bethought himself. "My name is Davenport, and this is my first mate, Mr. Konig. " They shook hands. "And now to business. " The captain spoke quickly, the urgency of a greathaste pressing his speech. "We've been on fire for over two weeks. She's ready to break all hell loose any moment. That's why I held forPitcairn. I want to beach her, or scuttle her, and save the hull. " "Then you made a mistake, Captain, " said McCoy. "You should have slackedaway for Mangareva. There's a beautiful beach there, in a lagoon wherethe water is like a mill pond. " "But we're here, ain't we?" the first mate demanded. "That's the point. We're here, and we've got to do something. " McCoy shook his head kindly. "You can do nothing here. There is no beach. There isn't evenanchorage. " "Gammon!" said the mate. "Gammon!" he repeated loudly, as the captainsignaled him to be more soft spoken. "You can't tell me that sort ofstuff. Where d'ye keep your own boats, hey--your schooner, or cutter, orwhatever you have? Hey? Answer me that. " McCoy smiled as gently as he spoke. His smile was a caress, an embracethat surrounded the tired mate and sought to draw him into the quietudeand rest of McCoy's tranquil soul. "We have no schooner or cutter, " he replied. "And we carry our canoes tothe top of the cliff. " "You've got to show me, " snorted the mate. "How d'ye get around to theother islands, heh? Tell me that. " "We don't get around. As governor of Pitcairn, I sometimes go. WhenI was younger, I was away a great deal--sometimes on the tradingschooners, but mostly on the missionary brig. But she's gone now, and wedepend on passing vessels. Sometimes we have had as high as six calls inone year. At other times, a year, and even longer, has gone by withoutone passing ship. Yours is the first in seven months. " "And you mean to tell me--" the mate began. But Captain Davenport interfered. "Enough of this. We're losing time. What is to be done, Mr. McCoy?" The old man turned his brown eyes, sweet as a woman's, shoreward, andboth captain and mate followed his gaze around from the lonely rock ofPitcairn to the crew clustering forward and waiting anxiously for theannouncement of a decision. McCoy did not hurry. He thought smoothly andslowly, step by step, with the certitude of a mind that was never vexedor outraged by life. "The wind is light now, " he said finally. "There is a heavy currentsetting to the westward. " "That's what made us fetch to leeward, " the captain interrupted, desiring to vindicate his seamanship. "Yes, that is what fetched you to leeward, " McCoy went on. "Well, youcan't work up against this current today. And if you did, there is nobeach. Your ship will be a total loss. " He paused, and captain and mate looked despair at each other. "But I will tell you what you can do. The breeze will freshen tonightaround midnight--see those tails of clouds and that thickness towindward, beyond the point there? That's where she'll come from, out ofthe southeast, hard. It is three hundred miles to Mangareva. Square awayfor it. There is a beautiful bed for your ship there. " The mate shook his head. "Come in to the cabin, and we'll look at the chart, " said the captain. McCoy found a stifling, poisonous atmosphere in the pent cabin. Straywaftures of invisible gases bit his eyes and made them sting. The deckwas hotter, almost unbearably hot to his bare feet. The sweat pouredout of his body. He looked almost with apprehension about him. Thismalignant, internal heat was astounding. It was a marvel that the cabindid not burst into flames. He had a feeling as if of being in a hugebake oven where the heat might at any moment increase tremendously andshrivel him up like a blade of grass. As he lifted one foot and rubbed the hot sole against the leg of histrousers, the mate laughed in a savage, snarling fashion. "The anteroom of hell, " he said. "Hell herself is right down there underyour feet. " "It's hot!" McCoy cried involuntarily, mopping his face with a bandanahandkerchief. "Here's Mangareva, " the captain said, bending over the table andpointing to a black speck in the midst of the white blankness of thechart. "And here, in between, is another island. Why not run for that?" McCoy did not look at the chart. "That's Crescent Island, " he answered. "It is uninhabited, and itis only two or three feet above water. Lagoon, but no entrance. No, Mangareva is the nearest place for your purpose. " "Mangareva it is, then, " said Captain Davenport, interrupting the mate'sgrowling objection. "Call the crew aft, Mr. Konig. " The sailors obeyed, shuffling wearily along the deck and painfullyendeavoring to make haste. Exhaustion was evident in every movement. Thecook came out of his galley to hear, and the cabin boy hung about nearhim. When Captain Davenport had explained the situation and announced hisintention of running for Mangareva, an uproar broke out. Against abackground of throaty rumbling arose inarticulate cries of rage, withhere and there a distinct curse, or word, or phrase. A shrill Cockneyvoice soared and dominated for a moment, crying: "Gawd! After bein' inell for fifteen days--an' now e wants us to sail this floatin' ell tosea again?" The captain could not control them, but McCoy's gentle presence seemedto rebuke and calm them, and the muttering and cursing died away, untilthe full crew, save here and there an anxious face directed at thecaptain, yearned dumbly toward the green clad peaks and beetling coastof Pitcairn. Soft as a spring zephyr was the voice of McCoy: "Captain, I thought I heard some of them say they were starving. " "Ay, " was the answer, "and so we are. I've had a sea biscuit and aspoonful of salmon in the last two days. We're on whack. You see, whenwe discovered the fire, we battened down immediately to suffocate thefire. And then we found how little food there was in the pantry. But itwas too late. We didn't dare break out the lazarette. Hungry? I'm justas hungry as they are. " He spoke to the men again, and again the throat rumbling and cursingarose, their faces convulsed and animal-like with rage. The second andthird mates had joined the captain, standing behind him at the break ofthe poop. Their faces were set and expressionless; they seemed bored, more than anything else, by this mutiny of the crew. Captain Davenportglanced questioningly at his first mate, and that person merely shruggedhis shoulders in token of his helplessness. "You see, " the captain said to McCoy, "you can't compel sailors to leavethe safe land and go to sea on a burning vessel. She has been theirfloating coffin for over two weeks now. They are worked out, and starvedout, and they've got enough of her. We'll beat up for Pitcairn. " But the wind was light, the Pyrenees' bottom was foul, and she could notbeat up against the strong westerly current. At the end of two hours shehad lost three miles. The sailors worked eagerly, as if by main strengththey could compel the PYRENEES against the adverse elements. Butsteadily, port tack and starboard tack, she sagged off to the westward. The captain paced restlessly up and down, pausing occasionally to surveythe vagrant smoke wisps and to trace them back to the portions of thedeck from which they sprang. The carpenter was engaged constantly inattempting to locate such places, and, when he succeeded, in calkingthem tighter and tighter. "Well, what do you think?" the captain finally asked McCoy, who waswatching the carpenter with all a child's interest and curiosity in hiseyes. McCoy looked shoreward, where the land was disappearing in thethickening haze. "I think it would be better to square away for Mangareva. With thatbreeze that is coming, you'll be there tomorrow evening. " "But what if the fire breaks out? It is liable to do it any moment. " "Have your boats ready in the falls. The same breeze will carry yourboats to Mangareva if the ship burns out from under. " Captain Davenport debated for a moment, and then McCoy heard thequestion he had not wanted to hear, but which he knew was surely coming. "I have no chart of Mangareva. On the general chart it is only a flyspeck. I would not know where to look for the entrance into the lagoon. Will you come along and pilot her in for me?" McCoy's serenity was unbroken. "Yes, Captain, " he said, with the same quiet unconcern with whichhe would have accepted an invitation to dinner; "I'll go with you toMangareva. " Again the crew was called aft, and the captain spoke to them from thebreak of the poop. "We've tried to work her up, but you see how we've lost ground. She'ssetting off in a two-knot current. This gentleman is the HonorableMcCoy, Chief Magistrate and Governor of Pitcairn Island. He willcome along with us to Mangareva. So you see the situation is not sodangerous. He would not make such an offer if he thought he was goingto lose his life. Besides, whatever risk there is, if he of his own freewill come on board and take it, we can do no less. What do you say forMangareva?" This time there was no uproar. McCoy's presence, the surety and calmthat seemed to radiate from him, had had its effect. They conferred withone another in low voices. There was little urging. They were virtuallyunanimous, and they shoved the Cockney out as their spokesman. Thatworthy was overwhelmed with consciousness of the heroism of himself andhis mates, and with flashing eyes he cried: "By Gawd! If 'e will, we will!" The crew mumbled its assent and started forward. "One moment, Captain, " McCoy said, as the other was turning to giveorders to the mate. "I must go ashore first. " Mr. Konig was thunderstruck, staring at McCoy as if he were a madman. "Go ashore!" the captain cried. "What for? It will take you three hoursto get there in your canoe. " McCoy measured the distance of the land away, and nodded. "Yes, it is six now. I won't get ashore till nine. The people cannot beassembled earlier than ten. As the breeze freshens up tonight, youcan begin to work up against it, and pick me up at daylight tomorrowmorning. " "In the name of reason and common sense, " the captain burst forth, "whatdo you want to assemble the people for? Don't you realize that my shipis burning beneath me?" McCoy was as placid as a summer sea, and the other's anger produced notthe slightest ripple upon it. "Yes, Captain, " he cooed in his dove-like voice. "I do realize that yourship is burning. That is why I am going with you to Mangareva. But Imust get permission to go with you. It is our custom. It is an importantmatter when the governor leaves the island. The people's interestsare at stake, and so they have the right to vote their permission orrefusal. But they will give it, I know that. " "Are you sure?" "Quite sure. " "Then if you know they will give it, why bother with getting it? Thinkof the delay--a whole night. " "It is our custom, " was the imperturbable reply. "Also, I am thegovernor, and I must make arrangements for the conduct of the islandduring my absence. " "But it is only a twenty-four hour run to Mangareva, " the captainobjected. "Suppose it took you six times that long to return towindward; that would bring you back by the end of a week. " McCoy smiled his large, benevolent smile. "Very few vessels come to Pitcairn, and when they do, they are usuallyfrom San Francisco or from around the Horn. I shall be fortunate if Iget back in six months. I may be away a year, and I may have to go toSan Francisco in order to find a vessel that will bring me back. Myfather once left Pitcairn to be gone three months, and two years passedbefore he could get back. Then, too, you are short of food. If you haveto take to the boats, and the weather comes up bad, you may be days inreaching land. I can bring off two canoe loads of food in the morning. Dried bananas will be best. As the breeze freshens, you beat up againstit. The nearer you are, the bigger loads I can bring off. Goodby. " He held out his hand. The captain shook it, and was reluctant to let go. He seemed to cling to it as a drowning sailor clings to a life buoy. "How do I know you will come back in the morning?" he asked. "Yes, that's it!" cried the mate. "How do we know but what he's skinningout to save his own hide?" McCoy did not speak. He looked at them sweetly and benignantly, andit seemed to them that they received a message from his tremendouscertitude of soul. The captain released his hand, and, with a last sweeping glance thatembraced the crew in its benediction, McCoy went over the rail anddescended into his canoe. The wind freshened, and the Pyrenees, despite the foulness of herbottom, won half a dozen miles away from the westerly current. Atdaylight, with Pitcairn three miles to windward, Captain Davenport madeout two canoes coming off to him. Again McCoy clambered up the side anddropped over the rail to the hot deck. He was followed by many packagesof dried bananas, each package wrapped in dry leaves. "Now, Captain, " he said, "swing the yards and drive for dear life. Yousee, I am no navigator, " he explained a few minutes later, as hestood by the captain aft, the latter with gaze wandering from aloft tooverside as he estimated the Pyrenees' speed. "You must fetch her toMangareva. When you have picked up the land, then I will pilot her in. What do you think she is making?" "Eleven, " Captain Davenport answered, with a final glance at the waterrushing past. "Eleven. Let me see, if she keeps up that gait, we'll sight Mangarevabetween eight and nine o'clock tomorrow morning. I'll have her on thebeach by ten or by eleven at latest. And then your troubles will be allover. " It almost seemed to the captain that the blissful moment had alreadyarrived, such was the persuasive convincingness of McCoy. Captain Davenport had been under the fearful strain of navigating hisburning ship for over two weeks, and he was beginning to feel that hehad had enough. A heavier flaw of wind struck the back of his neck and whistled by hisears. He measured the weight of it, and looked quickly overside. "The wind is making all the time, " he announced. "The old girl'sdoing nearer twelve than eleven right now. If this keeps up, we'll beshortening down tonight. " All day the Pyrenees, carrying her load of living fire, tore across thefoaming sea. By nightfall, royals and topgallantsails were in, and sheflew on into the darkness, with great, crested seas roaring after her. The auspicious wind had had its effect, and fore and aft a visiblebrightening was apparent. In the second dog-watch some careless soulstarted a song, and by eight bells the whole crew was singing. Captain Davenport had his blankets brought up and spread on top thehouse. "I've forgotten what sleep is, " he explained to McCoy. "I'm all in. Butgive me a call at any time you think necessary. " At three in the morning he was aroused by a gentle tugging at his arm. He sat up quickly, bracing himself against the skylight, stupid yet fromhis heavy sleep. The wind was thrumming its war song in the rigging, anda wild sea was buffeting the PYRENEES. Amidships she was wallowing firstone rail under and then the other, flooding the waist more often thannot. McCoy was shouting something he could not hear. He reached out, clutched the other by the shoulder, and drew him close so that his ownear was close to the other's lips. "It's three o'clock, " came McCoy's voice, still retaining its dovelikequality, but curiously muffled, as if from a long way off. "We'verun two hundred and fifty. Crescent Island is only thirty miles away, somewhere there dead ahead. There's no lights on it. If we keep running, we'll pile up, and lose ourselves as well as the ship. " "What d' ye think--heave to?" "Yes; heave to till daylight. It will only put us back four hours. " So the Pyrenees, with her cargo of fire, was hove to, bitting the teethof the gale and fighting and smashing the pounding seas. She was ashell, filled with a conflagration, and on the outside of the shell, clinging precariously, the little motes of men, by pull and haul, helpedher in the battle. "It is most unusual, this gale, " McCoy told the captain, in the lee ofthe cabin. "By rights there should be no gale at this time of the year. But everything about the weather has been unusual. There has been astoppage of the trades, and now it's howling right out of the tradequarter. " He waved his hand into the darkness, as if his vision coulddimly penetrate for hundreds of miles. "It is off to the westward. Thereis something big making off there somewhere--a hurricane or something. We're lucky to be so far to the eastward. But this is only a littleblow, " he added. "It can't last. I can tell you that much. " By daylight the gale had eased down to normal. But daylight revealeda new danger. It had come on thick. The sea was covered by a fog, or, rather, by a pearly mist that was fog-like in density, in so far as itobstructed vision, but that was no more than a film on the sea, for thesun shot it through and filled it with a glowing radiance. The deck of the Pyrenees was making more smoke than on the precedingday, and the cheerfulness of officers and crew had vanished. In the leeof the galley the cabin boy could be heard whimpering. It was his firstvoyage, and the fear of death was at his heart. The captain wanderedabout like a lost soul, nervously chewing his mustache, scowling, unableto make up his mind what to do. "What do you think?" he asked, pausing by the side of McCoy, who wasmaking a breakfast off fried bananas and a mug of water. McCoy finished the last banana, drained the mug, and looked slowlyaround. In his eyes was a smile of tenderness as he said: "Well, Captain, we might as well drive as burn. Your decks are not goingto hold out forever. They are hotter this morning. You haven't a pair ofshoes I can wear? It is getting uncomfortable for my bare feet. " The Pyrenees shipped two heavy seas as she was swung off and put oncemore before it, and the first mate expressed a desire to have all thatwater down in the hold, if only it could be introduced without takingoff the hatches. McCoy ducked his head into the binnacle and watched thecourse set. "I'd hold her up some more, Captain, " he said. "She's been making driftwhen hove to. " "I've set it to a point higher already, " was the answer. "Isn't thatenough?" "I'd make it two points, Captain. This bit of a blow kicked thatwesterly current ahead faster than you imagine. " Captain Davenport compromised on a point and a half, and then wentaloft, accompanied by McCoy and the first mate, to keep a lookout forland. Sail had been made, so that the Pyrenees was doing ten knots. Thefollowing sea was dying down rapidly. There was no break in the pearlyfog, and by ten o'clock Captain Davenport was growing nervous. All handswere at their stations, ready, at the first warning of land ahead, tospring like fiends to the task of bringing the Pyrenees up on the wind. That land ahead, a surf-washed outer reef, would be perilously closewhen it revealed itself in such a fog. Another hour passed. The three watchers aloft stared intently into thepearly radiance. "What if we miss Mangareva?" Captain Davenport askedabruptly. McCoy, without shifting his gaze, answered softly: "Why, let her drive, captain. That is all we can do. All the Paumotusare before us. We can drive for a thousand miles through reefs andatolls. We are bound to fetch up somewhere. " "Then drive it is. " Captain Davenport evidenced his intention ofdescending to the deck. "We've missed Mangareva. God knows wherethe next land is. I wish I'd held her up that other half-point, " heconfessed a moment later. "This cursed current plays the devil with anavigator. " "The old navigators called the Paumotus the Dangerous Archipelago, "McCoy said, when they had regained the poop. "This very current waspartly responsible for that name. " "I was talking with a sailor chap in Sydney, once, " said Mr. Konig. "He'd been trading in the Paumotus. He told me insurance was eighteenper cent. Is that right?" McCoy smiled and nodded. "Except that they don't insure, " he explained. "The owners write offtwenty per cent of the cost of their schooners each year. " "My God!" Captain Davenport groaned. "That makes the life of a schooneronly five years!" He shook his head sadly, murmuring, "Bad waters! Badwaters!" Again they went into the cabin to consult the big general chart; but thepoisonous vapors drove them coughing and gasping on deck. "Here is Moerenhout Island, " Captain Davenport pointed it out on thechart, which he had spread on the house. "It can't be more than ahundred miles to leeward. " "A hundred and ten. " McCoy shook his head doubtfully. "It might be done, but it is very difficult. I might beach her, and then again I might puther on the reef. A bad place, a very bad place. " "We'll take the chance, " was Captain Davenport's decision, as he setabout working out the course. Sail was shortened early in the afternoon, to avoid running past inthe night; and in the second dog-watch the crew manifested its regainedcheerfulness. Land was so very near, and their troubles would be over inthe morning. But morning broke clear, with a blazing tropic sun. The southeast tradehad swung around to the eastward, and was driving the PYRENEES throughthe water at an eight-knot clip. Captain Davenport worked up his deadreckoning, allowing generously for drift, and announced MoerenhoutIsland to be not more than ten miles off. The Pyrenees sailed theten miles; she sailed ten miles more; and the lookouts at the threemastheads saw naught but the naked, sun-washed sea. "But the land is there, I tell you, " Captain Davenport shouted to themfrom the poop. McCoy smiled soothingly, but the captain glared about him like a madman, fetched his sextant, and took a chronometer sight. "I knew I was right, " he almost shouted, when he had worked up theobservation. "Twenty-one, fifty-five, south; one-thirty-six, two, west. There you are. We're eight miles to windward yet. What did you make itout, Mr. Konig?" The first mate glanced at his own figures, and said in a low voice: "Twenty-one, fifty-five all right; but my longitude's one-thirty-six, forty-eight. That puts us considerably to leeward--" But Captain Davenport ignored his figures with so contemptuous a silenceas to make Mr. Konig grit his teeth and curse savagely under his breath. "Keep her off, " the captain ordered the man at the wheel. "Threepoints--steady there, as she goes!" Then he returned to his figures and worked them over. The sweat pouredfrom his face. He chewed his mustache, his lips, and his pencil, staringat the figures as a man might at a ghost. Suddenly, with a fierce, muscular outburst, he crumpled the scribbled paper in his fist andcrushed it under foot. Mr. Konig grinned vindictively and turned away, while Captain Davenport leaned against the cabin and for half anhour spoke no word, contenting himself with gazing to leeward with anexpression of musing hopelessness on his face. "Mr. McCoy, " he broke silence abruptly. "The chart indicates a groupof islands, but not how many, off there to the north'ard, ornor'-nor'westward, about forty miles--the Acteon Islands. What aboutthem?" "There are four, all low, " McCoy answered. "First to the southeast isMatuerui--no people, no entrance to the lagoon. Then comes Tenarunga. There used to be about a dozen people there, but they may be all gonenow. Anyway, there is no entrance for a ship--only a boat entrance, with a fathom of water. Vehauga and Teua-raro are the other two. Noentrances, no people, very low. There is no bed for the Pyrenees in thatgroup. She would be a total wreck. " "Listen to that!" Captain Davenport was frantic. "No people! Noentrances! What in the devil are islands good for? "Well, then, " he barked suddenly, like an excited terrier, "the chartgives a whole mess of islands off to the nor'west. What about them? Whatone has an entrance where I can lay my ship?" McCoy calmly considered. He did not refer to the chart. All theseislands, reefs, shoals, lagoons, entrances, and distances were markedon the chart of his memory. He knew them as the city dweller knows hisbuildings, streets, and alleys. "Papakena and Vanavana are off there to the westward, orwest-nor'westward a hundred miles and a bit more, " he said. "One isuninhabited, and I heard that the people on the other had gone off toCadmus Island. Anyway, neither lagoon has an entrance. Ahunui is anotherhundred miles on to the nor'west. No entrance, no people. " "Well, forty miles beyond them are two islands?" Captain Davenportqueried, raising his head from the chart. McCoy shook his head. "Paros and Manuhungi--no entrances, no people. Nengo-Nengo is fortymiles beyond them, in turn, and it has no people and no entrance. Butthere is Hao Island. It is just the place. The lagoon is thirty mileslong and five miles wide. There are plenty of people. You can usuallyfind water. And any ship in the world can go through the entrance. " He ceased and gazed solicitously at Captain Davenport, who, bending overthe chart with a pair of dividers in hand, had just emitted a low groan. "Is there any lagoon with an entrance anywhere nearer than Hao Island?"he asked. "No, Captain; that is the nearest. " "Well, it's three hundred and forty miles. " Captain Davenport wasspeaking very slowly, with decision. "I won't risk the responsibility ofall these lives. I'll wreck her on the Acteons. And she's a good ship, too, " he added regretfully, after altering the course, this time makingmore allowance than ever for the westerly current. An hour later the sky was overcast. The southeast trade still held, butthe ocean was a checker board of squalls. "We'll be there by one o'clock, " Captain Davenport announcedconfidently. "By two o'clock at the outside. McCoy, you put her ashoreon the one where the people are. " The sun did not appear again, nor, at one o'clock, was any land to beseen. Captain Davenport looked astern at the Pyrenees' canting wake. "Good Lord!" he cried. "An easterly current? Look at that!" Mr. Konig was incredulous. McCoy was noncommittal, though he said thatin the Paumotus there was no reason why it should not be an easterlycurrent. A few minutes later a squall robbed the Pyrenees temporarily ofall her wind, and she was left rolling heavily in the trough. "Where's that deep lead? Over with it, you there!" Captain Davenportheld the lead line and watched it sag off to the northeast. "There, lookat that! Take hold of it for yourself. " McCoy and the mate tried it, and felt the line thrumming and vibratingsavagely to the grip of the tidal stream. "A four-knot current, " said Mr. Konig. "An easterly current instead of a westerly, " said Captain "Davenport, glaring accusingly at McCoy, as if to cast the blame for it upon him. "That is one of the reasons, Captain, for insurance being eighteen percent in these waters, " McCoy answered cheerfully. "You can never tell. The currents are always changing. There was a man who wrote books, Iforget his name, in the yacht Casco. He missed Takaroa by thirty milesand fetched Tikei, all because of the shifting currents. You are up towindward now, and you'd better keep off a few points. " "But how much has this current set me?" the captain demanded irately. "How am I to know how much to keep off?" "I don't know, Captain, " McCoy said with great gentleness. The wind returned, and the PYRENEES, her deck smoking and shimmering inthe bright gray light, ran off dead to leeward. Then she worked back, port tack and starboard tack, crisscrossing her track, combing the seafor the Acteon Islands, which the masthead lookouts failed to sight. Captain Davenport was beside himself. His rage took the form of sullensilence, and he spent the afternoon in pacing the poop or leaningagainst the weather shrouds. At nightfall, without even consultingMcCoy, he squared away and headed into the northwest. Mr. Konig, surreptitiously consulting chart and binnacle, and McCoy, openly andinnocently consulting the binnacle, knew that they were running for HaoIsland. By midnight the squalls ceased, and the stars came out. CaptainDavenport was cheered by the promise of a clear day. "I'll get an observation in the morning, " he told McCoy, "though whatmy latitude is, is a puzzler. But I'll use the Sumner method, and settlethat. Do you know the Sumner line?" And thereupon he explained it in detail to McCoy. The day proved clear, the trade blew steadily out of the east, and thePyrenees just as steadily logged her nine knots. Both the captain andmate worked out the position on a Sumner line, and agreed, and at noonagreed again, and verified the morning sights by the noon sights. "Another twenty-four hours and we'll be there, " Captain Davenportassured McCoy. "It's a miracle the way the old girl's decks hold out. But they can't last. They can't last. Look at them smoke, more andmore every day. Yet it was a tight deck to begin with, fresh-calked inFrisco. I was surprised when the fire first broke out and we batteneddown. Look at that!" He broke off to gaze with dropped jaw at a spiral of smoke that coiledand twisted in the lee of the mizzenmast twenty feet above the deck. "Now, how did that get there?" he demanded indignantly. Beneath it there was no smoke. Crawling up from the deck, sheltered fromthe wind by the mast, by some freak it took form and visibility at thatheight. It writhed away from the mast, and for a moment overhung thecaptain like some threatening portent. The next moment the wind whiskedit away, and the captain's jaw returned to place. "As I was saying, when we first battened down, I was surprised. It wasa tight deck, yet it leaked smoke like a sieve. And we've calked andcalked ever since. There must be tremendous pressure underneath to driveso much smoke through. " That afternoon the sky became overcast again, and squally, drizzlyweather set in. The wind shifted back and forth between southeast andnortheast, and at midnight the Pyrenees was caught aback by a sharpsquall from the southwest, from which point the wind continued to blowintermittently. "We won't make Hao until ten or eleven, " Captain Davenport complainedat seven in the morning, when the fleeting promise of the sun had beenerased by hazy cloud masses in the eastern sky. And the next moment hewas plaintively demanding, "And what are the currents doing?" Lookouts at the mastheads could report no land, and the day passed indrizzling calms and violent squalls. By nightfall a heavy sea beganto make from the west. The barometer had fallen to 29. 50. There was nowind, and still the ominous sea continued to increase. Soon thePyrenees was rolling madly in the huge waves that marched in an unendingprocession from out of the darkness of the west. Sail was shortened asfast as both watches could work, and, when the tired crew had finished, its grumbling and complaining voices, peculiarly animal-like andmenacing, could be heard in the darkness. Once the starboard watch wascalled aft to lash down and make secure, and the men openly advertisedtheir sullenness and unwillingness. Every slow movement was a protestand a threat. The atmosphere was moist and sticky like mucilage, and inthe absence of wind all hands seemed to pant and gasp for air. The sweatstood out on faces and bare arms, and Captain Davenport for one, hisface more gaunt and care-worn than ever, and his eyes troubled andstaring, was oppressed by a feeling of impending calamity. "It's off to the westward, " McCoy said encouragingly. "At worst, we'llbe only on the edge of it. " But Captain Davenport refused to be comforted, and by the light of alantern read up the chapter in his Epitome that related to the strategyof shipmasters in cyclonic storms. From somewhere amidships the silencewas broken by a low whimpering from the cabin boy. "Oh, shut up!" Captain Davenport yelled suddenly and with such force asto startle every man on board and to frighten the offender into a wildwail of terror. "Mr. Konig, " the captain said in a voice that trembled with rage andnerves, "will you kindly step for'ard and stop that brat's mouth with adeck mop?" But it was McCoy who went forward, and in a few minutes had the boycomforted and asleep. Shortly before daybreak the first breath of air began to move from outthe southeast, increasing swiftly to a stiff and stiffer breeze. Allhands were on deck waiting for what might be behind it. "We're allright now, Captain, " said McCoy, standing close to his shoulder. "Thehurricane is to the west'ard, and we are south of it. This breeze is thein-suck. It won't blow any harder. You can begin to put sail on her. " "But what's the good? Where shall I sail? This is the second day withoutobservations, and we should have sighted Hao Island yesterday morning. Which way does it bear, north, south, east, or what? Tell me that, andI'll make sail in a jiffy. " "I am no navigator, Captain, " McCoy said in his mild way. "I used to think I was one, " was the retort, "before I got into thesePaumotus. " At midday the cry of "Breakers ahead!" was heard from the lookout. ThePyrenees was kept off, and sail after sail was loosed and sheeted home. The Pyrenees was sliding through the water and fighting a current thatthreatened to set her down upon the breakers. Officers and men wereworking like mad, cook and cabin boy, Captain Davenport himself, andMcCoy all lending a hand. It was a close shave. It was a low shoal, ableak and perilous place over which the seas broke unceasingly, where noman could live, and on which not even sea birds could rest. The PYRENEESwas swept within a hundred yards of it before the wind carried herclear, and at this moment the panting crew, its work done, burst outin a torrent of curses upon the head of McCoy--of McCoy who had come onboard, and proposed the run to Mangareva, and lured them all away fromthe safety of Pitcairn Island to certain destruction in this bafflingand terrible stretch of sea. But McCoy's tranquil soul was undisturbed. He smiled at them with simple and gracious benevolence, and, somehow, the exalted goodness of him seemed to penetrate to their dark and sombersouls, shaming them, and from very shame stilling the curses vibratingin their throats. "Bad waters! Bad waters!" Captain Davenport was murmuring as his shipforged clear; but he broke off abruptly to gaze at the shoal whichshould have been dead astern, but which was already on the PYRENEES'weather-quarter and working up rapidly to windward. He sat down and buried his face in his hands. And the first mate saw, and McCoy saw, and the crew saw, what he had seen. South of the shoalan easterly current had set them down upon it; north of the shoal anequally swift westerly current had clutched the ship and was sweepingher away. "I've heard of these Paumotus before, " the captain groaned, liftinghis blanched face from his hands. "Captain Moyendale told me about themafter losing his ship on them. And I laughed at him behind his back. Godforgive me, I laughed at him. What shoal is that?" he broke off, to askMcCoy. "I don't know, Captain. " "Why don't you know?" "Because I never saw it before, and because I have never heard of it. Ido know that it is not charted. These waters have never been thoroughlysurveyed. " "Then you don't know where we are?" "No more than you do, " McCoy said gently. At four in the afternoon cocoanut trees were sighted, apparently growingout of the water. A little later the low land of an atoll was raisedabove the sea. "I know where we are now, Captain. " McCoy lowered the glasses from hiseyes. "That's Resolution Island. We are forty miles beyond Hao Island, and the wind is in our teeth. " "Get ready to beach her then. Where's the entrance?" "There's only a canoe passage. But now that we know where we are, we canrun for Barclay de Tolley. It is only one hundred and twenty milesfrom here, due nor'-nor'west. With this breeze we can be there by nineo'clock tomorrow morning. " Captain Davenport consulted the chart and debated with himself. "If we wreck her here, " McCoy added, "we'd have to make the run toBarclay de Tolley in the boats just the same. " The captain gave his orders, and once more the Pyrenees swung off foranother run across the inhospitable sea. And the middle of the next afternoon saw despair and mutiny on hersmoking deck. The current had accelerated, the wind had slackened, andthe Pyrenees had sagged off to the west. The lookout sighted Barclay deTolley to the eastward, barely visible from the masthead, and vainly andfor hours the PYRENEES tried to beat up to it. Ever, like a mirage, thecocoanut trees hovered on the horizon, visible only from the masthead. From the deck they were hidden by the bulge of the world. Again Captain Davenport consulted McCoy and the chart. Makemo layseventy-five miles to the southwest. Its lagoon was thirty miles long, and its entrance was excellent. When Captain Davenport gave his orders, the crew refused duty. They announced that they had had enough of hellfire under their feet. There was the land. What if the ship could notmake it? They could make it in the boats. Let her burn, then. Theirlives amounted to something to them. They had served faithfully theship, now they were going to serve themselves. They sprang to the boats, brushing the second and third mates out of theway, and proceeded to swing the boats out and to prepare to lower away. Captain Davenport and the first mate, revolvers in hand, were advancingto the break of the poop, when McCoy, who had climbed on top of thecabin, began to speak. He spoke to the sailors, and at the first sound of his dovelike, cooing voice they paused to hear. He extended to them his own ineffableserenity and peace. His soft voice and simple thoughts flowed outto them in a magic stream, soothing them against their wills. Longforgotten things came back to them, and some remembered lullaby songs ofchildhood and the content and rest of the mother's arm at the end of theday. There was no more trouble, no more danger, no more irk, in allthe world. Everything was as it should be, and it was only a matter ofcourse that they should turn their backs upon the land and put to seaonce more with hell fire hot beneath their feet. McCoy spoke simply; but it was not what he spoke. It was his personalitythat spoke more eloquently than any word he could utter. It was analchemy of soul occultly subtile and profoundly deep--a mysteriousemanation of the spirit, seductive, sweetly humble, and terriblyimperious. It was illumination in the dark crypts of their souls, acompulsion of purity and gentleness vastly greater than that whichresided in the shining, death-spitting revolvers of the officers. The men wavered reluctantly where they stood, and those who had loosedthe turns made them fast again. Then one, and then another, and then allof them, began to sidle awkwardly away. McCoy's face was beaming with childlike pleasure as he descended fromthe top of the cabin. There was no trouble. For that matter there hadbeen no trouble averted. There never had been any trouble, for there wasno place for such in the blissful world in which he lived. "You hypnotized em, " Mr. Konig grinned at him, speaking in a low voice. "Those boys are good, " was the answer. "Their hearts are good. They havehad a hard time, and they have worked hard, and they will work hard tothe end. " Mr. Konig had not time to reply. His voice was ringing out orders, thesailors were springing to obey, and the PYRENEES was paying slowly offfrom the wind until her bow should point in the direction of Makemo. The wind was very light, and after sundown almost ceased. It wasinsufferably warm, and fore and aft men sought vainly to sleep. The deckwas too hot to lie upon, and poisonous vapors, oozing through the seams, crept like evil spirits over the ship, stealing into the nostrils andwindpipes of the unwary and causing fits of sneezing and coughing. The stars blinked lazily in the dim vault overhead; and the full moon, rising in the east, touched with its light the myriads of wisps andthreads and spidery films of smoke that intertwined and writhed andtwisted along the deck, over the rails, and up the masts and shrouds. "Tell me, " Captain Davenport said, rubbing his smarting eyes, "whathappened with that BOUNTY crowd after they reached Pitcairn? The accountI read said they burnt the Bounty, and that they were not discovereduntil many years later. But what happened in the meantime? I've alwaysbeen curious to know. They were men with their necks in the rope. Therewere some native men, too. And then there were women. That made it looklike trouble right from the jump. " "There was trouble, " McCoy answered. "They were bad men. They quarreledabout the women right away. One of the mutineers, Williams, lost hiswife. All the women were Tahitian women. His wife fell from the cliffswhen hunting sea birds. Then he took the wife of one of the native menaway from him. All the native men were made very angry by this, and theykilled off nearly all the mutineers. Then the mutineers that escapedkilled off all the native men. The women helped. And the natives killedeach other. Everybody killed everybody. They were terrible men. "Timiti was killed by two other natives while they were combing his hairin friendship. The white men had sent them to do it. Then the whitemen killed them. The wife of Tullaloo killed him in a cave because shewanted a white man for husband. They were very wicked. God had hiddenHis face from them. At the end of two years all the native men weremurdered, and all the white men except four. They were Young, JohnAdams, McCoy, who was my great-grandfather, and Quintal. He was a verybad man, too. Once, just because his wife did not catch enough fish forhim, he bit off her ear. " "They were a bad lot!" Mr. Konig exclaimed. "Yes, they were very bad, " McCoy agreed and went on serenely cooing ofthe blood and lust of his iniquitous ancestry. "My great-grandfatherescaped murder in order to die by his own hand. He made a still andmanufactured alcohol from the roots of the ti-plant. Quintal was hischum, and they got drunk together all the time. At last McCoy gotdelirium tremens, tied a rock to his neck, and jumped into the sea. "Quintal's wife, the one whose ear he bit off, also got killed byfalling from the cliffs. Then Quintal went to Young and demanded hiswife, and went to Adams and demanded his wife. Adams and Young wereafraid of Quintal. They knew he would kill them. So they killed him, the two of them together, with a hatchet. Then Young died. And that wasabout all the trouble they had. " "I should say so, " Captain Davenport snorted. "There was nobody left tokill. " "You see, God had hidden His face, " McCoy said. By morning no more than a faint air was blowing from the eastward, and, unable to make appreciable southing by it, Captain Davenport hauled upfull-and-by on the port track. He was afraid of that terrible westerlycurrent which had cheated him out of so many ports of refuge. All daythe calm continued, and all night, while the sailors, on a short rationof dried banana, were grumbling. Also, they were growing weak andcomplaining of stomach pains caused by the straight banana diet. All daythe current swept the PYRENEES to the westward, while there was no windto bear her south. In the middle of the first dogwatch, cocoanut treeswere sighted due south, their tufted heads rising above the water andmarking the low-lying atoll beneath. "That is Taenga Island, " McCoy said. "We need a breeze tonight, or elsewe'll miss Makemo. " "What's become of the southeast trade?" the captain demanded. "Why don'tit blow? What's the matter?" "It is the evaporation from the big lagoons--there are so many of them, "McCoy explained. "The evaporation upsets the whole system of trades. Iteven causes the wind to back up and blow gales from the southwest. Thisis the Dangerous Archipelago, Captain. " Captain Davenport faced the old man, opened his mouth, and was about tocurse, but paused and refrained. McCoy's presence was a rebuke tothe blasphemies that stirred in his brain and trembled in his larynx. McCoy's influence had been growing during the many days they had beentogether. Captain Davenport was an autocrat of the sea, fearing no man, never bridling his tongue, and now he found himself unable to curse inthe presence of this old man with the feminine brown eyes and thevoice of a dove. When he realized this, Captain Davenport experienced adistinct shock. This old man was merely the seed of McCoy, of McCoyof the BOUNTY, the mutineer fleeing from the hemp that waited him inEngland, the McCoy who was a power for evil in the early days of bloodand lust and violent death on Pitcairn Island. Captain Davenport was not religious, yet in that moment he felt a madimpulse to cast himself at the other's feet--and to say he knew notwhat. It was an emotion that so deeply stirred him, rather thana coherent thought, and he was aware in some vague way of his ownunworthiness and smallness in the presence of this other man whopossessed the simplicity of a child and the gentleness of a woman. Of course he could not so humble himself before the eyes of his officersand men. And yet the anger that had prompted the blasphemy still ragedin him. He suddenly smote the cabin with his clenched hand and cried: "Look here, old man, I won't be beaten. These Paumotus have cheated andtricked me and made a fool of me. I refuse to be beaten. I am goingto drive this ship, and drive and drive and drive clear through thePaumotus to China but what I find a bed for her. If every man deserts, I'll stay by her. I'll show the Paumotus. They can't fool me. She's agood girl, and I'll stick by her as long as there's a plank to stand on. You hear me?" "And I'll stay with you, Captain, " McCoy said. During the night, light, baffling airs blew out of the south, andthe frantic captain, with his cargo of fire, watched and measured hiswestward drift and went off by himself at times to curse softly so thatMcCoy should not hear. Daylight showed more palms growing out of the water to the south. "That's the leeward point of Makemo, " McCoy said. "Katiu is only a fewmiles to the west. We may make that. " But the current, sucking between the two islands, swept them to thenorthwest, and at one in the afternoon they saw the palms of Katiu riseabove the sea and sink back into the sea again. A few minutes later, just as the captain had discovered that a newcurrent from the northeast had gripped the Pyrenees, the mastheadlookouts raised cocoanut palms in the northwest. "It is Raraka, " said McCoy. "We won't make it without wind. The currentis drawing us down to the southwest. But we must watch out. A few milesfarther on a current flows north and turns in a circle to the northwest. This will sweep us away from Fakarava, and Fakarava is the place for thePyrenees to find her bed. " "They can sweep all they da--all they well please, " Captain Davenportremarked with heat. "We'll find a bed for her somewhere just the same. " But the situation on the Pyrenees was reaching a culmination. The deckwas so hot that it seemed an increase of a few degrees would cause it toburst into flames. In many places even the heavy-soled shoes of themen were no protection, and they were compelled to step lively to avoidscorching their feet. The smoke had increased and grown more acrid. Every man on board was suffering from inflamed eyes, and they coughedand strangled like a crew of tuberculosis patients. In the afternoon theboats were swung out and equipped. The last several packages of driedbananas were stored in them, as well as the instruments of the officers. Captain Davenport even put the chronometer into the longboat, fearingthe blowing up of the deck at any moment. All night this apprehension weighed heavily on all, and in the firstmorning light, with hollow eyes and ghastly faces, they stared at oneanother as if in surprise that the Pyrenees still held together and thatthey still were alive. Walking rapidly at times, and even occasionally breaking into anundignified hop-skip-and-run, Captain Davenport inspected his ship'sdeck. "It is a matter of hours now, if not of minutes, " he announced on hisreturn to the poop. The cry of land came down from the masthead. From the deck the land wasinvisible, and McCoy went aloft, while the captain took advantage of theopportunity to curse some of the bitterness out of his heart. Butthe cursing was suddenly stopped by a dark line on the water which hesighted to the northeast. It was not a squall, but a regular breeze--thedisrupted trade wind, eight points out of its direction but resumingbusiness once more. "Hold her up, Captain, " McCoy said as soon as he reached the poop. "That's the easterly point of Fakarava, and we'll go in through thepassage full-tilt, the wind abeam, and every sail drawing. " At the end of an hour, the cocoanut trees and the low-lying landwere visible from the deck. The feeling that the end of the PYRENEES'resistance was imminent weighed heavily on everybody. Captain Davenporthad the three boats lowered and dropped short astern, a man in eachto keep them apart. The Pyrenees closely skirted the shore, thesurf-whitened atoll a bare two cable lengths away. And a minute later the land parted, exposing a narrow passage and thelagoon beyond, a great mirror, thirty miles in length and a third asbroad. "Now, Captain. " For the last time the yards of the Pyrenees swung around as she obeyedthe wheel and headed into the passage. The turns had scarcely been made, and nothing had been coiled down, when the men and mates swept back tothe poop in panic terror. Nothing had happened, yet they averred thatsomething was going to happen. They could not tell why. They merelyknew that it was about to happen. McCoy started forward to take uphis position on the bow in order to con the vessel in; but the captaingripped his arm and whirled him around. "Do it from here, " he said. "That deck's not safe. What's the matter?"he demanded the next instant. "We're standing still. " McCoy smiled. "You are bucking a seven-knot current, Captain, " he said. "That is theway the full ebb runs out of this passage. " At the end of another hour the Pyrenees had scarcely gained her length, but the wind freshened and she began to forge ahead. "Better get into the boats, some of you, " Captain Davenport commanded. His voice was still ringing, and the men were just beginning to move inobedience, when the amidship deck of the Pyrenees, in a mass of flameand smoke, was flung upward into the sails and rigging, part of itremaining there and the rest falling into the sea. The wind being abeam, was what had saved the men crowded aft. They made a blind rush to gainthe boats, but McCoy's voice, carrying its convincing message of vastcalm and endless time, stopped them. "Take it easy, " he was saying. "Everything is all right. Pass that boydown somebody, please. " The man at the wheel had forsaken it in a funk, and Captain Davenporthad leaped and caught the spokes in time to prevent the ship from yawingin the current and going ashore. "Better take charge of the boats, " he said to Mr. Konig. "Tow one ofthem short, right under the quarter. .. . When I go over, it'll be on thejump. " Mr. Konig hesitated, then went over the rail and lowered himself intothe boat. "Keep her off half a point, Captain. " Captain Davenport gave a start. He had thought he had the ship tohimself. "Ay, ay; half a point it is, " he answered. Amidships the Pyrenees was an open flaming furnace, out of whichpoured an immense volume of smoke which rose high above the masts andcompletely hid the forward part of the ship. McCoy, in the shelter ofthe mizzen-shrouds, continued his difficult task of conning the shipthrough the intricate channel. The fire was working aft along the deckfrom the seat of explosion, while the soaring tower of canvas on themainmast went up and vanished in a sheet of flame. Forward, though theycould not see them, they knew that the head-sails were still drawing. "If only she don't burn all her canvas off before she makes inside, " thecaptain groaned. "She'll make it, " McCoy assured him with supreme confidence. "There isplenty of time. She is bound to make it. And once inside, we'll put herbefore it; that will keep the smoke away from us and hold back the firefrom working aft. " A tongue of flame sprang up the mizzen, reached hungrily for the lowesttier of canvas, missed it, and vanished. From aloft a burning shred ofrope stuff fell square on the back of Captain Davenport's neck. He actedwith the celerity of one stung by a bee as he reached up and brushed theoffending fire from his skin. "How is she heading, Captain?" "Nor'west by west. " "Keep her west-nor-west. " Captain Davenport put the wheel up and steadied her. "West by north, Captain. " "West by north she is. " "And now west. " Slowly, point by point, as she entered the lagoon, the PYRENEESdescribed the circle that put her before the wind; and point by point, with all the calm certitude of a thousand years of time to spare, McCoychanted the changing course. "Another point, Captain. " "A point it is. " Captain Davenport whirled several spokes over, suddenly reversing andcoming back one to check her. "Steady. " "Steady she is--right on it. " Despite the fact that the wind was now astern, the heat was so intensethat Captain Davenport was compelled to steal sidelong glances into thebinnacle, letting go the wheel now with one hand, now with the other, torub or shield his blistering cheeks. McCoy's beard was crinkling and shriveling and the smell of it, strongin the other's nostrils, compelled him to look toward McCoy with suddensolicitude. Captain Davenport was letting go the spokes alternately withhis hands in order to rub their blistering backs against his trousers. Every sail on the mizzenmast vanished in a rush of flame, compelling thetwo men to crouch and shield their faces. "Now, " said McCoy, stealing a glance ahead at the low shore, "fourpoints up, Captain, and let her drive. " Shreds and patches of burning rope and canvas were falling about themand upon them. The tarry smoke from a smouldering piece of rope at thecaptain's feet set him off into a violent coughing fit, during which hestill clung to the spokes. The Pyrenees struck, her bow lifted and she ground ahead gently to astop. A shower of burning fragments, dislodged by the shock, fell aboutthem. The ship moved ahead again and struck a second time. She crushedthe fragile coral under her keel, drove on, and struck a third time. "Hard over, " said McCoy. "Hard over?" he questioned gently, a minutelater. "She won't answer, " was the reply. "All right. She is swinging around. " McCoy peered over the side. "Soft, white sand. Couldn't ask better. A beautiful bed. " As the Pyrenees swung around her stern away from the wind, a fearfulblast of smoke and flame poured aft. Captain Davenport deserted thewheel in blistering agony. He reached the painter of the boat that layunder the quarter, then looked for McCoy, who was standing aside to lethim go down. "You first, " the captain cried, gripping him by the shoulder and almostthrowing him over the rail. But the flame and smoke were too terrible, and he followed hard after McCoy, both men wriggling on the rope andsliding down into the boat together. A sailor in the bow, withoutwaiting for orders, slashed the painter through with his sheath knife. The oars, poised in readiness, bit into the water, and the boat shotaway. "A beautiful bed, Captain, " McCoy murmured, looking back. "Ay, a beautiful bed, and all thanks to you, " was the answer. The three boats pulled away for the white beach of pounded coral, beyondwhich, on the edge of a cocoanut grove, could be seen a half dozen grasshouses and a score or more of excited natives, gazing wide-eyed at theconflagration that had come to land. The boats grounded and they stepped out on the white beach. "And now, " said McCoy, "I must see about getting back to Pitcairn. "