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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas, by 
+Lloyd Osbourne
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas
+
+Author: Lloyd Osbourne
+
+Release Date: August 6, 2009 [EBook #29621]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILD JUSTICE: STORIES OF SOUTH SEAS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bryan Ness, Barbara Kosker and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+WILD JUSTICE
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "'Jack,' she said suddenly, 'you come along with us.'"]
+
+
+
+
+  WILD JUSTICE
+
+  STORIES OF THE SOUTH SEAS
+
+
+
+
+  BY
+
+  LLOYD OSBOURNE
+
+  AUTHOR OF "BABY BULLET"
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+  D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
+  NEW YORK  ::  MCMXXI
+
+
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1906, 1921, BY
+  D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
+
+
+  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+Deep in every heart there seems to be a longing for a more primitive
+existence; and though in practice it is often an illusion, the South
+Seas lend themselves better to such dreams than any other part of the
+world. There are fewer races more attractive than the Polynesians.
+Frank, winning, gay and extraordinarily well-mannered, the higher types
+are often remarkably good-looking, and scarcely darker than Southern
+Europeans. Some aspects of their life are truly poetic. Half naked, with
+flowers in their hair, and just sufficient work to keep them in superb
+physical condition, they have an almost unlimited leisure to share with
+the wayfarer in their midst. And dirt, that greatest of all human
+barriers, is nonexistent. No people are cleaner; none have so intense a
+personal self-respect. One wonders sometimes whether it is not the white
+man who is the savage, and these in some ways his superiors.
+
+I went to the Pacific when I was a boy of twenty, remaining there till I
+was twenty-eight. For two years I sailed in various ships, visiting not
+only all the principal groups, but stopping at many a lost little
+paradise like Manihiki, Nieue or Gente Hermosa, which lie so lonely and
+apart that the rare stranger is greeted with open arms. Then, settled
+in Samoa, I learned the language as only the very young can learn it,
+and incidentally had a small part in the civil wars of that period. I
+was brought into intimate contact with many powerful chiefs, and became
+so wholly a Samoan that I once barely escaped assassination. I certainly
+have some claim to know South Sea life from the inside--from the
+native's side--and this must be my excuse for the present volume.
+
+That my stories should deal so often with the loves of white men and
+brown women is inevitable. The white man and the brown girl--that is the
+oldest story in the South Seas and the newest. The children of the sun
+are very easy-going; their standards are not our standards; they live
+for the moment, and love as lightly. It is often the white man who
+suffers, and not the maid with the sparkling eyes and radiant smile. He
+may take regrets away with him; perhaps one of those inner wounds that
+never heal, while she marries a native missionary and lives happily ever
+afterwards. Polynesians always live happily ever afterwards, no matter
+what happens.
+
+Yet do not think I am disparaging them. They probably have as much to
+teach us as we them. Courtesy, kindliness, good humor, a charming
+acceptance of life, and if the need comes for it an intrepid courage,
+all these, and more, are theirs. As I see the faces of my old friends
+through the mist I feel an undying affection for them. I shared their
+lives, their secrets, their happy days and their tragic days "in the
+diamond morning of long ago." I was the confidant in many a runaway
+match; was the writer of war epistles that the bearer was directed to
+eat if pursuit grew too hot; I had a little domain of my own where my
+word was law--an "out-island" village, living in a perpetual feud with
+its neighbors. Was this really myself--this tall youth in the
+whale-tooth necklace and girded tappa marching with his brother chiefs
+in stately procession? Incredible--yet it was. Was it I whose hand was
+kissed by this stalwart warrior whom I see flinging himself from his
+horse and running towards me with the sun glinting on his
+cartridge-belt? Incredible--yet it was. Was it really I, at the helm of
+that boat, the leader of twenty young men who were to play cricket by
+day and dance by night, halfway round Upolu? Incredible--yet it was.
+
+"Ina o mulumuluina o'u vae i le suasusu; na faapunaia mai foi e le papa
+tafe suauu mo a'u."
+
+My publishers have been encouraged to reissue the present volume,
+enlarged by the addition of several new tales. Whatever their demerits
+may be, my stories are at least true to a picturesque and little known
+life that is fast passing away.
+
+  LLOYD OSBOURNE
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+                                             PAGE
+
+  THE RENEGADE                                  1
+
+  THE SECURITY OF THE HIGH SEAS                55
+
+  FORTY YEARS BETWEEN                          86
+
+  O'S HEAD                                    113
+
+  PROFESSOR NO NO                             142
+
+  CAPTAIN ELIJAH COE                          162
+
+  MR. BOB                                     192
+
+  OLD DIBS                                    216
+
+  THE LABOR CAPTAIN                           274
+
+  A SON OF EMPIRE                             297
+
+  CLOUD OF BUTTERFLIES                        316
+
+  BEN                                         339
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                               FACING PAGE
+
+  "'Jack,' she said suddenly, 'you come along with us'"     _Frontispiece_
+
+  "In an instant she was tumbling backward"                             52
+
+  "Jack leaped to his feet, white and speechless"                       98
+
+  "'This is a black business, Silver Tongue,' I said"                  118
+
+
+
+
+THE RENEGADE
+
+
+I
+
+It was two o'clock in the afternoon, and from her uneasy anchorage in
+the pass the German man-of-war struck the time, four bells. Overhead the
+sun shone fiercely through a mist of fire; below, the bay gave back a
+dancing glare; on the outer reef the long breakers foamed and tumbled,
+white as far as the eye could reach. From his perch beneath the bows of
+the _Northern Light_ a sailor, paint brush in hand, was slowly wearing
+out the day--a brown-bearded, straight-nosed, handsome man of thirty,
+his red shirt open to the waist, his bare arms stained with the
+drippings of his brush. Astride of his plank, which hung suspended in
+midair by a block and tackle at either end, the seaman faced the task
+that seemed to have no end. For a week he had been at it, patch by
+patch, working his way round the bark, while the bells had struck on the
+man-of-war and the sun had risen and set.
+
+As he swept his brush across the blistered wall in front of him, he
+wondered moodily whether fate had nothing more in store for him than
+this. Was he to finish as he had begun, a common sailor, doing forever
+what others bade him?--painting other people's ships, pulling other
+people's ropes, clinging at night on other people's yards to take in
+other people's sails, facing tempests and squalls, reefs, lee shores,
+and all the vicissitudes of the deep--for others! He laid down the brush
+beside him, and in a somber reverie looked toward Apia. His eyes
+scarcely took in the bigger buildings that were dotted here and there
+round the circumference of the beach: the stone cathedral, the great
+yellow warehouses of the Firm, the two hotels, the consulates, churches,
+and stores. What attracted him, what held him in a sort of spell, were
+the lesser roofs showing through the green of trees and gardens, the
+tiny cottages on the outskirts of the town, or others still farther
+back, scattered and solitary on the wooded hills. Was he, then, never to
+possess a house of his own nor a yard of earth? Was the sea, the
+accursed sea, to claim him till he died? What had he done, he asked
+himself, that others drew all the prizes and left him but the
+blanks--that they should stay ashore and prosper--that they should marry
+and have children round them, while he drudged at sea alone? Those
+traders, clerks, saloon-keepers, those mechanics, carpenters,
+shipwrights, smiths, and stevedores, how he envied them! envied their
+houses, their wives, their children, their gardens, their soft and
+comfortable lives, everything that made them so different from himself;
+he, the outcast, with no home but his musty bunk; they, the poorest,
+kings beside him.
+
+It was the sea, he said to himself--the sea, that took all and gave
+nothing; the sea, mother of all injustice and misery; the sea, whose
+service was to tie oneself to the devil's tail and whisk forever about
+the world, sweating in doldrums, freezing in snow squalls, hanging on to
+lashing yards, blinded, soaked, benumbed, the gale above, death below.
+And yet even here there were some, no better indeed than he, who grasped
+the meager prizes that even the sea itself could not withhold; prizes
+that he could never hope to touch--the command of ships, the right to
+tread the quarter-deck, the handle to one's name. How did they do it,
+these favored ones of fortune? How did Hansen, that stinking Dutchman,
+ever rise to be the master of the _Northern Light_?--and that swine
+Bates, the mate, who already had the promise of a ship?--and Knight, the
+second mate, a boy but twenty-two, yet whose foot was even now on the
+upward ladder.
+
+"Jack Wilson," said the sailor to himself, "Jack Wilson, you're a fool!"
+
+Having several times delivered himself of this sentiment, always with an
+increasing heartiness of self-contempt, he slapped on some more paint
+and began to whistle. But the whistle died away again, for a little
+house was peeping through the trees at him, and he remembered how he had
+seen it from the road, embowered in flowers, with the river flowing at
+its foot, a cool, snug, inviting little house, with green blinds, a
+pigeon cote, and a flight of steps descending to the bathing pool. How
+happy, no doubt, that fellar that owned it--a fellar with a regular job;
+a wife, maybe, and kids to swing in that there contraption under the
+mango; a fellar, as like as not, no better than himself; and yet----!
+
+"Jack," he said huskily to himself, "how the hell have you missed it
+all?"
+
+"Women and drink," came the answer. "Women and drink, Jack, my boy."
+
+In the course of his long and wandering life how often had he been paid
+off; how often had he felt his pockets heavy with the gold so arduously
+toiled for; how often had he vowed to himself that this time he would
+keep it! And had he kept it? Never!
+
+There had been windfalls, too; money that had come easily; double
+handfuls of money that he had tossed in the air like a child, to see it
+glitter. Sixteen hundred dollars from a lucky whaling cruise; seven
+hundred dollars, his share for salvaging the derelict steamer _Shore
+Ditch_; sixty-six pounds eight and fourpence that the passengers had
+raised for him when he saved the girl at Durban--that, and a gold medal,
+and a fancy certificate with the British and American flags intertwined.
+That medal! It had gone for a round of drinks and five dollars for a
+wench. And the fancy certificate! Thunder! he had left it on the
+_Huascar_ when he had taken leg-bail of the Chilanean navy.
+
+"Women and drink, Jack Wilson!"
+
+That's where it has gone, every dollar of it. To the sharks and
+bloodsuckers of seaport towns; to the tawdry sisterhood that spun their
+nets for Jack ashore; to those women that wheedled the seaman's last
+cent, and laughed to see him starving in the streets. It was for these
+he worked, then! It was for these he was even this minute painting the
+bloody bark; for rumsellers and harlots! He repeated the words to
+himself as he looked at his torn nails and blackened hands. For
+these--by God, for these! He felt within himself the welling of a great
+resolution, of a great revolt. He would reform. He would save his money.
+He would live straight. When they were paid off at Portland there should
+be two hundred dollars coming to him--two hundred dollars, more or less.
+He would put it in the bank, and get a shakedown in one of them model
+lodging houses. He would turn in at night with "Jesus, lover of my soul"
+in worsted work above his blessed head, and in the morning he would
+plank down his fifteen cents and begin the day with gospel tea. He would
+be a man! Yes, sirree, a man! Not a hog!
+
+Then in his mind's eye he saw himself rolling down the street, a girl on
+either arm, the gaslights dancing in his tipsy head. He would meet a
+shipmate and drop in somewhere for a drink; another shipmate and another
+drink; and then, the party growing as it went, a general adjournment to
+one of them hurdy-gurdies. Here they would dance and drink and sing and
+whoop it up like hell, till--till--Yes, that's what would happen. That's
+what always happened. Them good resolutions always ended that way--in
+smoke. He had made them, man and boy, these fourteen years. He would
+make them, he supposed, until the day he died. And keep them? No; he was
+a hog; he would go on like a hog; he would die a hog--a durned, low,
+dirty, contemptible hog!
+
+He spat in the water to emphasize his self-disgust, cursed the infernal
+sun, and then, dipping into the pot again, continued his job.
+
+Turning round to rest his arms, he perceived, beneath the deep shade of
+the Matautu shore, the first sign of animation in that sleepy
+settlement. A crowd of natives were straggling out to a whaleboat that
+was apparently being made ready for sea. Men and girls were wading to
+it, with baskets of food, kegs of beef, a tin of biscuit, and a
+capacious chest. A couple of children bailed frantically in the stern
+sheets, while a shrill old woman slid over the gunwale with a live pig
+in her arms. Strange packages of _tapa_ cloth were carried out; bundles
+of mats, paddles, guns, a tin of kerosene, a huge stone for an anchor,
+a water demijohn, more pigs, a baby, and a parrakeet in a bamboo cage.
+These were all thrown in, and stored with noisy good-humor and a dozen
+different readjustments. The baby, in turn, was given the bow, the
+stern, the center, as though nothing would satisfy it. A pig broke loose
+and was hilariously recaptured. A dejected, thin person, somewhat past
+middle years, in what seemed no costume but his native skin, retired
+shoreward with the parrakeet. An old chief, his head white with lime,
+after a prolonged nose-rubbing with those on shore, marched out to the
+boat, carrying an umbrella above his stately head. There were more
+farewells in shallow water, more running to and fro; a brief
+reappearance of the undecided parrakeet. The young men took their places
+at the thwarts, the old chief settled the tiller on the rudder head, the
+women, girls, and children crowded in wherever they could, and then,
+amid shouts and cheers, the paddles dipped and the boat moved slowly
+seaward.
+
+Wilson watched it all with sullen envy. How was it that these brown
+savages were free, and he barnacled to a slab-sided bark? Was he not a
+white man, and their superior? Did he not look down at them from the
+heights of the world's ruling race, kindly, tolerantly, contemptuously,
+as one does on children? And yet who had the best of it, by God? Listen
+to the dip of the paddles; hear the mellow chorus that times the
+rowers' strokes; not a care on board, not a face that was not smiling!
+His white superiority! They might have it! His lonely and toiling life!
+What fool among them would exchange with him? His wages? Look at _them_!
+They had none and wanted none; and as like as not they were putting to
+sea without a dollar among the crowd. Civilization--hell! He would give
+all his share of it for a place in that there boat, to drive a paddle
+with the rest of them; to be, what he wished to God he had been born, a
+durned Kanaka!
+
+The whaleboat drew swiftly toward him as though to go beneath the bark
+on her way to the pass. The paddles leaped to a rousing song and crashed
+in unison on the slopping gunwales. Dip, swish, bang! and then the
+accentuated thunder of forty voices, the men's hoarse and straining, the
+women's rich, falsetto, and musical. In the stern the old chief swayed
+with every rush of the boat, one sinewy hand clinched on the tiller, the
+other enfolding a little child. In the bow a handsome boy stood erect
+and graceful, throwing a rifle in the air and dancing to the song of his
+comrades. Dip, swish, bang! On they came with an increasing roar, the
+white water splashing under their bow.
+
+Wilson dropped his brush and looked on with open mouth. Great Cæsar! he
+knew that old fellar in the stern. He had smoked pipes with him in the
+Samoa house by the bridge. And that girl there, who was waving and
+shaking her hand to him, that was little Fetuao, the daughter, who used
+to look at him so shyly and laugh when she met his eyes; little Fetuao,
+that he had given the dominoes to, and that dress from the Dutch firm,
+and them beads! Fetuao! Wasn't she pretty as she stood there in the boat
+calling to him; so slim and straight, with her splendid hair flying in
+the wind, and her brown bosom open to the sun! Pretty! My God, she was a
+spanking beauty, that girl!
+
+The boat came to a stop beneath him; the paddles backed, and Wilson,
+with some embarrassment, received the stare of the whole party below.
+
+"Poor white mans work all time!" exclaimed Fetuao, standing on a thwart
+to raise her head to the level of his foot.
+
+"Like hell!" said Jack.
+
+"Kanaka more better," said the girl.
+
+"A damn sight!" agreed Jack.
+
+"Jack," said Fetuao, "I go home now, and never see you no more. Good-by,
+Jack!"
+
+She raised her little hand, which the sailor clasped in his big one. Her
+tender, troubled eyes met his own; her mouth quivered; her fingers
+tightened on his palm.
+
+"Jack," she said suddenly, "you come along us, Jack."
+
+"Do you mean it, puss?" he said eagerly. "Do you mean it?"
+
+"Oh, Jack, you come, too," she pleaded.
+
+"You come--that's good!" cried the old chief.
+
+Jack, in a dream, looked above him and met the sour glances of Hansen
+and Bates, whom the noise had brought to the ship's rail; then he looked
+below into the girlish face upraised to his. For better or worse, his
+resolution was taken. They might keep his chest; they might keep his
+wages; their stinking ship might sink or swim for all he cared. They
+were welcome to what Jack Wilson left behind him, for Jack Wilson at
+last was FREE! He dropped lightly into the boat beside Fetuao, and with
+one arm around her naked waist he shouted to the natives to shove off.
+
+"_Fo'e!_" cried the chief, and the paddles moved again.
+
+Above their heads the astounded captain clutched the arm of the
+astounded mate, and pointed wildly after the deserter.
+
+"---- ----!" exclaimed Hansen.
+
+"The ---- ---- ---- ----!" roared Bates.
+
+
+II
+
+Jack landed in Oa Bay, the possessor, except for the clothes upon his
+back, of nothing but his rugged health, his stout heart, and a
+determination to make good his footing with his new friends. He
+remembered drawing apart from the others, as the welcoming throng came
+down to greet them in the dusk, forlornly struggling with his
+embarrassment and the penetrating sense of his own helplessness and
+isolation. Would he ever forget, standing there as he did, unremarked,
+solitary, shivering in his rags, the soft hand that felt through the
+darkness for his own, the voice so gentle, low, and sweet that whispered
+to him, "Come, Jack, you my white mans now!"
+
+This was the beginning of Jack's new life. He became a member of the
+chief's family, sleeping with the others at night on the outspread mats,
+and taking his share, by day, of all the work and play of the little
+Samoan village. He weeded _taro_, he carried stones for the building of
+the new church, he helped to lay out nets, he speared fish, he played
+cricket and _ta ti'a_. By nature neither an idler nor a shirk, he was
+consumed, besides, with a desire to repay the kindness and hospitality
+of his hosts; and the old chief, his friend from the start, now became
+his captain, to whom he rendered the unquestioning obedience of a
+seaman. And old Faalelei, whose loose authority was often disregarded by
+his own subjects, delighted in the possession of this stalwart white, so
+willing, so eager, so ingenious in the mending of boats and nets--a man
+to whom the mechanism of a gun had no secrets, and in whose hands a
+single hatchet became a tool chest.
+
+Living thus among the only mild, courteous, and refined people he had
+ever known, Jack insensibly altered and improved. His loud voice grew
+softer, his boisterous laugh less explosive, and his rough ways gave
+place to a clumsy imitation of Samoan good manners. Little by little the
+uncouth sailor patterned himself on the model of his new friends, and
+he, whose every second word had been an oath, whose only repartee a
+blow, now set himself to learn the most ceremonious language in the
+world, and the only one, perhaps, in which one cannot swear!
+
+And Fetuao? When he had first taken up his abode in Faalelei's house he
+had never doubted, seeing the girl's extravagant affection for him, and
+knowing the laxity of the native people, that it would not be long
+before he might form with her one of those irregular connections so
+common in the islands; and, indeed, it grew daily more plain to him that
+he had but to ask to have. But Jack, not a little to his own
+astonishment, and stirred by undreamed-of instincts and undreamed-of
+scruples, put the idea from him with a hesitation he could hardly
+explain to himself. In his wicked and lawless past he had known every
+kind of woman but a good woman; he had seen, in a thousand water-side
+dives, every variety of feminine degradation and feminine shame, and had
+sounded in his time all the squalid depths of sailor vice. With the
+memory of these unspeakable contrasts, Fetuao's freshness, purity, and
+beauty shone with a sort of angelic brightness. No, by God, she should
+never come to harm through him; and, clenching his huge hands together,
+he would repeat these words to himself when he sometimes felt his
+resolution falter. For the sailor, who never until then had known a
+modest woman, who had starved his whole life long for what his money
+could never buy, whose heart at thirty was as virgin as a boy's, now
+found himself moved by a sublime passion for the only creature that had
+ever loved him.
+
+For she did love him; of that, indeed, he had never the need to reassure
+himself; and in the knowledge of her love he became, almost in spite of
+himself, a better man. In her girlish self-abandonment Fetuao lacked the
+artifices which older women would have used; she never thought to guard
+herself, or to coquette with him. At night, as they walked hand in hand
+about the village, or sat close together on some log or boat, she would
+take his arm and draw it around her; she would lay her head against his
+breast; she would press herself so close to him that he could hear her
+beating heart. There was much of the mother in her love for him. He was
+her great baby, to be caressed, kissed, crooned over, to be petted and
+encouraged. Her tender laughter was always in his ears; she corrected
+him as she might a child, with a sweet seriousness, and an implication
+that his shame was hers whenever he blundered in Samoan etiquette; she
+prompted him and pushed him through scenes of trying formality, and
+drilled him assiduously in politeness.
+
+In the moonlight, when they were alone together, she taught him how to
+receive the _'ava_ cup; how to spill the libation to the gods; how to
+invoke a proper blessing on the company. She taught him how to say "_O
+susunga, lau susunga fo'i_," on entering a strange house; how to pull
+the mat over his knee to express his fictitious dependence; how to join
+in the chorus of "_Maliu mai, susu mai_" when others entered after him;
+how, indeed, to comport himself everywhere with the finished courtesy of
+a Samoan chief.
+
+Thus the bright days passed, and months melted into months, and still
+Jack remained an inmate of Faalelei's household. At first he had
+accepted this strange life as a sort of holiday, never doubting but
+that, in the end, he must turn his back on these pleasant people, and
+see, from a dizzy yardarm, their exquisite island sink forever behind
+him. The place thus possessed for him the charm of something he was
+destined soon to lose, and he clung to it as a man clings to his fading
+youth, with a sense that it is slipping from him. He sighed as he
+thought of the forecastle that he knew somewhere awaited him; how he
+would recall those still nights in Oa when he would be roused by the
+boatswain's handspike on the hatch, and the hoarse cry of "All hands on
+deck!"
+
+One day, when he was out in Faalelei's boat, an accident occurred that
+came very near to being the end of Jack. They were pursuing a school of
+bonito, and Pulu, the chief's brother, was standing in the bow with a
+stick of dynamite and was in the nick of letting it fly when it exploded
+prematurely in his hand. Pulu was killed, the rickety old boat parted
+and sank, and Jack, with his shoulder laid open to the bone, was towed
+in by a neighboring canoe, and carried up to the house. They laid him on
+the floor, pale and groaning, while the children ran out screaming for
+Fetuao. She came in like a whirlwind, still wet from the river, and
+threw herself on her knees beside him. With passionate imperiousness she
+made the rest of the household wait upon her bidding as she busied
+herself in stanching the flow of blood and in picking the splinters from
+the wound. Jack knew how wont she was, in common with all Samoans, to
+shrink from disagreeable sights. It touched him to see how love had
+conquered her repugnance; nor could he resist a smile when she began to
+tear her little wardrobe into bandages, those chemises and _lavalavas_
+that she used to iron under the trees, and put away with such care into
+the camphor-wood chest with the bell lock.
+
+For the better part of a fortnight Jack lay where they had placed him on
+the mats, undergoing, with intermissions of fever and delirium, the
+tedious stages of convalescence. Fetuao seemed never to leave him,
+attending to his wants, brushing away the flies, feeding and washing him
+with an anxious solemnity that at times almost awed the sailor. Her
+brilliant eyes, as black and limpid as some wild animal's, watched him
+with an unceasing stare. He often wondered what was passing in her
+graceful head as he lay looking up at her, too weak to speak, the drowsy
+hours succeeding one another in an unbroken silence. Once, when he ran
+his hand over his face and recollected with a pang how old and ugly he
+must seem to her, she had understood the sigh that expressed his own
+self-disgust, and had bent over and kissed him on the lips. From that
+moment his love for her deepened into an emotion transcending anything
+he had ever felt before. He saw now that to separate himself from her
+would be to break both their hearts; that, for good or evil, he was hers
+and she his; that fate had indeed joined them forever.
+
+When at last he grew strong enough to walk, he went with her across to
+the native pastor's house, where together they stood up before the Rev.
+Tavita Singua and were married. This was the prelude to another and more
+binding ceremony before the American Consul in Apia, whither they both
+went in a canoe borrowed from Faalelei. The official books were
+withdrawn from the safe and the thirty-six Americans in Samoa were
+increased by two new names: "Jack Wilson, aged thirty-one, birthplace
+Bath, Me., occupation seaman, present residence Oa Bay; and Fetuao
+Wilson, supposed to be seventeen, daughter of Faalelei, chief of Oa Bay,
+his lawful wife." (See Consular Marriage Record, p. 18.)
+
+As he stood there before the consul, painfully conscious of his bare
+feet, of his unkempt and ragged appearance, of the contrast between
+himself and that benignant official, he timidly brought up the subject
+of the fee. No doubt there is some kind of damage, he said, and might he
+leave this ring--his mother's wedding ring--in pawn until he might earn
+a little money and square the matter? The consul took the ring, looked
+at it a moment without a word, and then in a rough, friendly way seized
+Fetuao's hand and slipped it on her finger.
+
+"I think it belongs here," he said.
+
+"But the fee," said Jack.
+
+"Oh, damn the fee!" said the consul.
+
+With that he went into an inner office and returned with a sheepish air,
+as of a man about to do something he was ashamed of.
+
+"Here's ten dollars," he said. "Take it; it's a wedding present, you
+know. I never married anybody before."
+
+Jack refused the gift a little ungraciously, though his voice trembled
+in doing so.
+
+"Have a drink, then?" said the consul.
+
+"No, I thank you, sir," Jack blurted out.
+
+Embarrassment in a cloud descended on all three. The consul, like the
+worthy fellow he was, wished to do something for these waifs, and his
+eyes roved about the big, hot room in search of he knew not what. Jack
+and Fetuao, no less ill at ease, stood close together and waited
+submissively. Finally, noticing the new boat flag lying on his desk, the
+consul took it up in both his hands. "Wilson," he said oratorically,
+"this is my flag, and your flag, and it is now Mrs. Wilson's flag, for
+I've made her as good an American as the pair of us. Take it along with
+you, and if you have children, bring them up to love and honor Old Glory
+as we do, and teach them at your knee what it stands for--freedom,
+justice; and equal rights for every man born under it. And if there
+should ever be any trouble here--war, riot, or any little
+unpleasantness--just hoist it above your house, and its bright folds
+will protect you as though the whole U-nited States army lay in a
+mighty camp around you!"
+
+Jack took the flag respectfully, much impressed by the consul's speech,
+and tremendously pleased, besides, that Fetuao should see that an
+American, even a common, low-down American seaman like himself, counted
+for something in the official world. Would a Britisher, or one of those
+stinking Dutchmen, have acted like this consul did? _His_ consul, by
+God!--and his breast heaved with gratitude and patriotic fervor.
+Afterwards, when Fetuao and he ate their lunch under a tree, he spread
+out the consul's gift on the ground beside him, and the words freedom,
+justice, and equal rights boomed sonorously in his ears. To Fetuao, in
+her simplicity, the bunting appeared a sort of sanction or certificate
+of their civil marriage; and when she returned home she explained that
+it was all settled, the _faamasino_ having written their names in the
+book and given them the _fua Ameleke_!
+
+
+III
+
+Three years passed. Jack rubbed his eyes and wondered what had become of
+them; and he read the answer to his question in his coffee bushes, now
+breast high and crimson with fruit, in his trellised vanilla already so
+exacting and so profitable, in his sturdy breadfruit trees thickening
+with every rain, in the patches of bananas, _taro_, yams, _'ava_,
+egg-plant, sweet potatoes, pineapples, and sour-sops that were set out
+so trimly in the plantation his ax had won from the primeval forest. His
+house, too, had drawn not a little on his capital--his capital of
+strength, skill, and perseverance--but he grudged neither time nor labor
+in making it the best in Oa. For a house is an important matter to a
+family man, even if it weren't a paying thing like vanillar, nor capable
+of helping a fellar along like a cow or a boat. It paid you back in its
+own way--a mighty good way, too--and it grew to be a part of you, like
+your wife, if you weren't a poor, lone, seafaring slob without one.
+
+Of course, it wasn't much of a house, being a sort of beehive-shaped
+concern with a thatched roof a foot thick and open all round the sides
+when the cocoanut curtains was hysted. But when these were pulled down
+at night, and you were a-setting in one of your own home-made chairs
+with your wife on your knee, the night breeze rustling overhead and the
+breakers moaning a mile away on the outer reef, it made you sort of feel
+like things had come right at last, and that for two cents you'd plank
+right down on your knees, then and there, and thank God, by God!
+
+All this had not been accomplished without work, but then it was work
+for himself, and not for others. Jack had never known before what it was
+to enjoy the fruit of his own labor; he had always been a cog in the
+blind machinery of other people, exchanging so much toil for so much
+money. Now that he could see his little plantation grow and prosper
+beneath his hands, every hour repaid with nature's usury, he began to
+feel the elation that a man finds in independence. At first Fetuao had
+entered but half-heartedly into his plans; she would sit on a log and
+watch him with mirthful wonder as he swung his ax on the land Faalelei
+had given them; and when, for a spell, he took a place beside her she
+would tenderly wipe the sweat from his forehead and look at him with
+perplexity. Work, yes, that, as the preacher said, was the curse of
+Adam; but this daily persistency was not understandable. Had not
+Faalelei plenty for them both? And if one _taro_ sufficed, why be at the
+pains to plant two?
+
+But little by little it began to dawn on her that there was another side
+to this feverish devotion to work. Jack took a load of yams to Apia, and
+came back with fifteen silver dollars and a bolt of print for a dress.
+He went again, and returned with a sewing machine, a pack of cards, and
+a bottle of trade scent; still another trip, and lo! he towed behind him
+a fine new boat with _Fetuao_ painted on the stern. Then she at last
+succumbed to the fascination of the white way. _Paga!_ There were
+dollars in the ground, and for the asking they could be made to grow.
+This lesson learned, Fetuao threw off her indifference and became as
+ardent a planter as her unwearied husband. Lying in his arms at night,
+her talk ran continually on the theme of which neither ever tired. Not a
+dollar was earned but was thus laid out in advance, with eager
+questioning and debate. The cow was bought, the horse, the chickens, the
+wire for fencing. It was a game in which each played a part with
+enduring zest; a game with a constant round of prizes and enjoyment; a
+game in which green nature was the board and every plant and tree a
+piece. At sundown they knew no pleasure like that of wandering hand in
+hand through the paths of their little estate, two poetic peasants,
+filled with love for each other and immeasurably content.
+
+Thus the days passed in increasing satisfaction and prosperity, days so
+rare in the life of any man when he says to himself, "I am happy." To
+Jack, these three words, never spoken, but somewhere within him
+articulate and peremptory, these three words almost overwhelmed him with
+their significance. He trembled for this treasure, so elusive, so
+transitory, perhaps, so surely ill deserved; he grew humble with the
+thought of his own unworthiness, and, though no believer in the
+ordinary sense, he began to feel the first stirring of religion. When
+Fetuao, with sweet shame, laid her head against his shoulder and told
+him of her impending motherhood, he kissed her, comforted her, and then,
+rising to his feet, he sought the solitude that at such a moment he felt
+he could not share even with her. In one of the unfrequented corners of
+the bay, a narrow beach shadowed by the forest and faced by the open
+sea, he threw himself upon his knees with a passionate thankfulness that
+seemed to find its expression in this act. Knowing no prayer, addressing
+no God, he simply gazed above him in the sky, in a rapt, dumb gratitude.
+
+As he walked home he thought of his own parents, long since dead; of
+their hopes, their cares, their humble unfulfilled ambitions, now dead
+with them. He perceived himself, now for the first time, a link between
+the past and the future, the heir of bygone generations, generations
+that had loved, and suffered, and struggled, to no other end than that
+he might live--he, and the sister he had neither seen nor heard from in
+fourteen years. Hell! he ought to write to Amandar. Families oughtn't to
+drift apart like that. It was a shame, a durned shame, and it came over
+him with a shock that she, too, might be dead. He took a sheet of paper
+and a pencil, and with heaving breast and overflowing heart thus broke
+the silence of those long years:
+
+      OA BAY, SAMOA, May 14, 1899.
+
+      DEAR SIS, You will be surprised to get a letter
+      from me after all this time. I am well and hope you are
+      enjoying a simillar blessing. I am married now and left the
+      sea. I suppose Joe is a man along in middle life now and you
+      a handsome mattron with a family. This is a good country but
+      hot.
+
+      Ever your affectionate brother JACK WILSON.
+
+      P. S.--I often think of Pa and Ma and the old days.
+
+Not long after, Jack sailed into Apia with a load of copra and his
+letter for the outgoing mail. The town was in an uproar, and cracking
+like the Fourth of July. Jack wondered what in thunder it was about, as
+he landed at Leicester's wharf and discovered the postmaster lying
+underneath the post office in a nest of sand bags. Crawling in after the
+functionary, Jack handed him the letter.
+
+"That's for America," said Jack.
+
+"Five cents," said Leicester.
+
+"What's all this corrobborree?" asked Jack.
+
+"It's war, that's what it is," said Leicester, weighing the letter in a
+tin scale.
+
+Jack's jaw fell. For a month past he had heard rumors of a native war,
+but he had resolutely closed his ears to all that Fetuao was so
+insistent to tell him. It was none of his business, he had said to her
+uneasily. He wasn't no politician, and all he asked of anybody was to be
+let alone; and with that he had tried to put the matter by as something
+imaginary and disquieting, which, if boldly ignored, would disappear of
+itself.
+
+"Say, Mr. Leicester, what in hell is it about?" he inquired.
+
+"If you went to the bottom of it you would find Dutchmen," said
+Leicester grimly.
+
+Jack cursed the meddling scoundrels.
+
+"They want Mataafa for king, just because he has a majority of two
+thousand votes," said Leicester.
+
+"There sounds to be something in that," said Jack faintly.
+
+"Nothing at all!" exclaimed Leicester. "Just speciousness, that's what I
+call it. The other fellow, Tanumafili, is a nice-appearing boy from the
+missionary college, and being above wire-pulling and promising
+everything to everybody, he hasn't any following to speak of. But he's a
+good, decent Protestant boy, and will make a fine king."
+
+"Oh, ho!" said Jack, beginning to see how the wind lay, "and so the
+other dodger's a Catholic?"
+
+"A rank, bigoted Catholic," said Leicester hotly. "That's what makes
+the missionaries so wild against him, and likewise the British and
+American officials."
+
+"They won't let him be king, then?" asked Jack.
+
+"He's a rebel," said Leicester, "and they've posted proclamations
+against him on every cocoanut tree around the beach."
+
+"And the natives, they won't let Tanumafili be king neither?" said Jack.
+
+"That's him they're chasing into the sea this minute," explained
+Leicester.
+
+Jack looked perplexed. "I don't see why the Kanakas shouldn't have the
+king they fancy," he remarked.
+
+"To hear you talk, one would think you was a bloody Dutchman yourself,"
+said Leicester.
+
+"But the majority--" said Jack, "them two thousand----"
+
+"The Chief Justice ruled them out on a technicality," said Leicester,
+"and if the Supreme Court ain't right, who is? Do you think he's going
+to give over this country to a papist? No, the only king here is
+Tanumafili, and the men-of-war will reinstate him at the muzzle of their
+guns. Then we'll see who's who in Samoar!"
+
+Jack made his way across the street to the store where he usually sold
+his copra. Bullets were pattering on the roof, and the trader himself, a
+portly German in gold spectacles, was palpitating in a bomb-proof.
+
+"I hope Mrs. Meyerfeld is well," said Jack, who in Samoa had grown
+punctilious.
+
+"Oh, mein Gott!" exclaimed Meyerfeld.
+
+"And the children?--" inquired Jack, "Miss Hilda and Miss Theresa?"
+
+"Oh, mein Gott!" said Meyerfeld.
+
+"I have brought you forty bags of copra," said Jack.
+
+"Oh, mein Gott!" said Meyerfeld.
+
+"Don't you want it, then?" inquired Jack.
+
+"Hear the pullets," quavered Meyerfeld.
+
+"But forty bags," said Jack.
+
+"I've no man, no noding," groaned the trader.
+
+"Gome again negst week. Gome again after de war."
+
+"I'll put it in the shed myself," said Jack.
+
+He went out into the empty street and looked about him. The firing was
+going on as hotly as ever, but except for a single limp figure, face
+down in the dust, he failed to see the least sign of the contending
+parties. From the direction of the Mulivai bridge he heard bursts of
+cheering, with intermittent lulls and explosions as the battle rolled to
+and fro. War on so small a scale is startlingly like murder, and Jack
+shuddered as he went up to the corpse and turned it over. He returned to
+his boat, and in a fever of activity unloaded his forty bags and
+trundled them in batches into Meyerfeld's copra shed across the road. It
+took half a dozen trips of the little flat-car to accomplish this task
+single-handed, and then there was the further delay in weighing each bag
+and checking off the contents on a bit of paper. Nor was this all, for
+he had to make a copy, besides, and tack it on the warehouse door with
+the inscription, "Taly and find correct John Wilson."
+
+This done, he dropped into his boat and hoisted the sails, weary,
+heartsick, and anxious for what the future might have in store for him.
+Passing to leeward of the British man-of-war, he saw her decks swarming
+with refugees, her crew grouped about the guns, and an officer in the
+fore-crosstrees sweeping the town with his glass. A gust of wind carried
+down to him the sound of children crying, and with it an
+indistinguishable humming, at once menacing and dejected, like the sigh
+of an impending gale. It echoed in his ears long afterwards, the most
+poignant note in war, the voice of the herded, helpless multitude.
+
+He reached Oa in the gray of the morning, and the grating of his boat's
+keel in the sand brought out Fetuao to meet him. She could not restrain
+her joy at the sight of him, kissing his hands and clinging to him as he
+took out the sails and oars and carried them up to the house. She never
+seemed so sweet to him, never so girlish and charming in her fresh
+young womanhood as in that dawn of his home-coming. To hear her laugh,
+to see her eyes sparkle, to feel her warm breath against his cheek, all
+transported him into a state of unreasoning security. Apia and its
+blood-stained streets faded into the immeasurable distance; the war, and
+all the attendant horrors that had haunted him, now seemed for a moment
+too remote to even think of. What had he to fear, here on his own
+hearthstone, with his dear wife beside him, in another world from that
+he had so lately quitted? If there was trouble, wouldn't the consuls
+settle it, them and the treaty officials whose job it was to run the
+blessed group? He had never been no politician himself, and he wasn't
+agoing to begin now. Let them worry as was paid to worry.
+
+"Fetuao," he said, "where is the flag the _faamasino_ gave us when we
+were married in Apia?"
+
+"_O i ai pea i le pusa_," she returned.
+
+"Get it out, my pigeon," he said, "for I mean to hoist it above the
+house for a protection. And tell me, Fetuao," he went on, "what before I
+have never asked thee: on what side are thy people in this misa of
+Mataafa and Tanumafili?"
+
+"For Mataafa," she returned. "Dost thou think that Samoa wants this
+untattooed boy from the missionary college? Why else did Faalelei and
+the young men go last month to Apia to be numbered for Mataafa, the
+whites promising that he who had most voices should be king? And when
+all Samoa cried out 'Mataafa!' at the numbering place (all except the
+little handful of the Tuamasanga), lo! the word was given that
+Tanumafili was appointed after all, and that the white manner of choice
+was to be disregarded!"
+
+Jack sighed as he took the flag and went out with it. He realized that
+his old life was at an end, and that a new one, full of uncertainty and
+danger, was to date from the time he hoisted this bit of bunting. He
+trimmed a straight piece of _fuafua_ for a staff, and as he did so he
+cursed the missionaries for meddlers and the treaty officials for crazy
+fools. When the flag was at last in place, Fetuao and he drew away to
+get a better view of it from the beach. Standing there, in silence they
+watched the vivid colors flaunt and flutter against the wooded hills
+behind, while Jack, with a seaman's instinctive reverence for the flag,
+bared his head, and Fetuao clapped her hands with delight.
+
+"Is it not beautiful!--" she cried, "as starry as the nights before we
+were married, Jack, when we used to walk together, here and there, like
+uncaring children."
+
+Her husband did not answer; and as she turned and looked up into his
+face she saw that his eyes were wet with tears.
+
+
+IV
+
+The two months that followed were the most terrible in the history of
+Samoa. A handful of exasperated whites--treaty officials, missionaries,
+and consuls--were determined to foist Tanumafili on the unwilling
+natives of the group, and backed by three men-of-war, they declared
+Mataafa a rebel and plunged the country into a disastrous and sanguinary
+war. England and America, in the person of their respective naval
+commanders, vied with one another in their self-appointed task; and
+while the Germans stood aloof, protesting and aghast, our ships ravaged
+the Samoan coast, burning, bombarding, and destroying with
+indiscriminate fury. In this savage conflict, so unjust in its
+inception, so frightful in its effects on an unoffending people, the
+Samoans showed an extraordinary spirit in defending what all men hold
+most dear. Driven from the shore by our guns, they massed their warriors
+behind Apia, and on ground of their own choosing gave obstinate battle
+to the invaders.
+
+It is not the writer's purpose to follow the varying stages of this
+ignoble quarrel, in which blood flowed like water in our vain attempts
+to force the unwilling Samoans to accept a Protestant divinity student
+for their king. This little war, so remote, so ill understood at home,
+so brief, violent, and unjust, swept over the islands like a hurricane.
+Abruptly begun by headstrong naval officers and officials on the spot,
+it was as abruptly ended by peremptory orders from London and
+Washington; but the interval (necessarily a long one) before the news
+could go out and the orders return halfway round the world, was
+sufficient to reduce Samoa to the verge of ruin.
+
+In such a country, without roads, telegraphs, or newspapers, where rumor
+passes from mouth to mouth, and facts, in the process, get twisted out
+of all recognition, war brings with it a period of agonizing ignorance,
+when anything is told and anything believed. To Jack this waiting became
+almost intolerable; his suspense, and the uncertainty of those dreadful
+days, told on him with an augmented force, so that he grew thin and
+started at a sound. Through an unseen channel the news of fighting
+persistently trickled into Oa; more battles; more villages bombarded;
+such an one wounded, such an one killed, with stories of the increasing
+ruthlessness of the British and Americans. On some days the sound of
+cannon could be plainly heard from leeward, the signal for the women and
+children to crowd with their pastor into the church, and for the
+men--the scanty remnants that still remained--to grasp their rifles and
+melt into the forest.
+
+But as time passed, and one false alarm was succeeded by another, Jack
+plucked up a little heart. He began to make allowance for native
+exaggeration and laughed at his own former fears. If the men-of-war
+should come to Oa, were they likely to bombard an undefended village
+full of women and children, or burn, pillage, and destroy as mercilessly
+as he had been told? Bah! a pack of Kanaka lies, the gradual distortion
+of the truth as it passed along the line, until one burned house became
+a hundred and one village the whole coast of Atua! He went back to his
+neglected plantation, now overgrown with weeds, and set to work again
+with a determination not to borrow trouble. But, in spite of himself, he
+would find himself listening for the sound of cannon, laying down his ax
+or his bush knife in a panic and running back to the shore to make sure
+that nothing had happened in the hour he had been gone.
+
+It was during one of these mornings in the bush, a morning singularly
+free of the apprehensions which usually beset him, that Fetuao came
+rushing through the bananas where he was at work, crying out, "_Manuao,
+manuao!_" Together, without exchanging a single word, they flew headlong
+to the beach, never stopping until they took shelter beneath the eaves
+of their own house. Yes, there was the man-of-war, a Britisher with
+yellow funnels, well outside the reef, towing behind her a flotilla of
+boats chock-a-block with natives. The red head-dresses of their crews
+showed them to be the followers of Tanumafili, and a couple of
+unmistakable pith helmets in the stern of the biggest betrayed the
+presence of directing white men. At the tail of the boats was a large
+steam launch flying the stars and stripes, the American contribution to
+the little fleet.
+
+Jack breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of his own flag. Wherever
+that flew he knew that he and his were safe. By George! everybody in Oa
+Bay was safe so long as they didn't try to make a fight of it; and he
+could have laughed to see the terrified women scooting for the church,
+the children bawling at their heels. The fools, what had they to fear?
+American officers were not the kind to fire on women and children, nor
+were they likely to look on mum-chance, and let the lime-juicers do it
+neither. No, sirree!
+
+The man-of-war slowed down her engines and came almost to a standstill.
+There was a sudden flash from one of her sponsons, a puff of smoke, and
+then the roar of a six-inch gun. The shell struck a palm not a hundred
+yards from where Jack was standing, and with a loud explosion took off
+the entire top as neatly as though a knife had sliced it.
+
+"Good God!" cried the sailor; and the words were scarcely out of his
+mouth before he heard the venomous rush of another shell. Jack could
+not believe his senses. What! no warning, no notice beforehand; not
+even ten minutes to allow the women and children to get out of danger!
+
+Bang! The church this time! He clutched Fetuao as he saw the shower of
+cement and rocks, and the frenzied flight of its occupants for safety.
+If that shell had gone through the window instead of striking the
+corner----
+
+Bang!
+
+"Run! run!" cried Fetuao, and without even waiting for him to follow or
+turning round to see that he did so, she darted through the house and
+disappeared. But Jack, in a white heat of indignation, folded his arms
+and remained doggedly where he was. Let them shoot, the skunks! Let them
+shoot, the stinking cowards! This was his house, and he would remain
+beside it until the crack of doom, shells or no shells. He would stand
+off them fire-bugs and looters when they landed, and tell them officers
+what a plain American citizen thought of them. He wasn't afraid of the
+swine. By God! he would like to boot the raft of them. He shook his fist
+in their faces, he did; and as for that villainous launch rolling idly
+in the swell while the big bully fired on the defenseless town, he spat
+to express his disgust for it.
+
+The bombardment, like a salute, continued with regular intermissions
+between each gun. The marksmanship was poor, many of the shells falling
+short or bursting prematurely in midair. Except for the church, which
+was twice struck, and the chief's house that was set on fire, the damage
+done was inappreciable; and Jack, whose heart at first had been in his
+mouth, now grinned with derision as he watched for the recurring
+flashes.
+
+"The Chilaneans could do better nor you!" he cried.
+
+"Jack," whispered a voice beside him, and there was Fetuao back again in
+a state of the sweetest contrition and remorse. He took her in his arms
+and kissed her; and then, like a pair of lovers, they held each other's
+hands and shrank close together as the shells burst over the village.
+
+The firing lasted for an hour, and then the flotilla of boats, preceded
+by the American launch, passed in procession through the break in the
+reef, and headed for Jack's house.
+
+"Oh, it's the flag they see!" cried Fetuao, and she besought Jack, with
+tears in her eyes, to haul it down.
+
+"Never!" he said, grinding his teeth.
+
+There were some three or four hundred men in the boats, and as they
+raced in, cheering and yelling at the top of their voices, Jack quailed
+in spite of himself. But outwardly, at least, he showed no sign of
+agitation, standing like a rock before his house and facing the storm
+that was about to burst.
+
+It wasn't for himself that he was afraid, not so long as that
+puffing-billy of a steamboat held the lead, and the grand old flag
+streamed out behind her. The jackies would see him through this
+business, whatever deviltry they might inflict on the rest of the
+unfortunate village, for blood's thicker than water every time, and
+Americans stand together all the world over. He wasn't no politician nor
+side-taker, and it was all the same to him whether he had a missionary
+king or a benighted papist. All he asked of anybody, by God! was to be
+let alone, though this broadsiding of defenseless people made him sick
+at the stummick, it did.
+
+The launch came bumping into shallow water, blowing off clouds of steam
+as her crew jumped out with their rifles and waded ashore, while the
+Tanumafili boats, dashing up in quick succession, amid a furious and
+ever-deepening uproar, discharged in their turn cargo upon cargo of
+shrieking warriors. In the indescribable commotion that followed there
+seemed to be no prearranged plan nor any settled order of operation. The
+Tanus scattered in a dozen noisy parties, looting and burning the
+houses, barking the breadfruit trees, shooting the pigs and horses,
+devastating with diabolical thoroughness the inland plantations that
+sustained the village. The Americans, fearful of ambuscades, stuck to
+the shore and systematically destroyed the boats, which for a mile or
+two were drawn up on the edge of the beach. These boats, in a country
+without roads, are as much a necessity to a man as the house which
+shelters him. They often represent the hoardings of years, and are not
+seldom the result of a stern frugality and self-denial; they constitute,
+indeed, the only wealth of Samoa, and in them is invested the united
+savings of the whole population. In Oa these boats numbered perhaps a
+hundred, or a hundred and twenty in all, which, under the direction of a
+red-faced boatswain with a package of dynamite sticks, were one by one
+blown to pieces, and the shattered boards drawn into heaps and fired.
+That day the whole of Oa went up in smoke and flame. Nothing was spared,
+not even the church, nor the school, nor the pastor's house; not a canoe
+nor a dugout; not a net, nor a fish trap, nor a float; not a pig, a
+horse, nor a chicken. The boundary walls, emerging black and desolate
+above the embers of the village, alone survived the universal waste.
+
+Jack's boat, being the nearest, was the first to be singled out; and as
+the blue-jackets began to bore it with auger holes in which to place the
+dynamite, he walked down to the petty officer and roughly bade him leave
+it alone. "Hold on, there!" he said. "That's my boat!"
+
+The boatswain looked him up and down. "You get out of this!" he said.
+
+Jack twitched the auger from one of the seamen and flung it into the
+lagoon. Then, seizing a rifle from the heap lying on the ground, he
+whirled it round his head like a club and advanced furiously on the
+boatswain, who pulled out a six-shooter and leveled it at his head. Even
+as he did so, one of the officers came running up, waving his sword and
+shouting; while Jack, confident that he had nothing now to apprehend,
+dropped the rifle and turned to meet him. He had scarcely got so far as,
+"Please, sir, this boat is my property," when a scream from Fetuao
+warned him that the natives were rushing his house. Abandoning the boat,
+he ran back to face this new danger, which, of the two, was so
+infinitely the worse. His first instinct was to snatch a hatchet and
+kill one of the half-naked plunderers, but Fetuao, catching his hands,
+held him back, and the impulse passed as he realized his utter
+helplessness. With smarting eyes and a heart that seemed to burst within
+his breast, he saw his house gutted of everything--his chests torn open,
+his tools taken, his wife's poor finery divided, and her twenty-dollar
+sewing machine the subject of a wrangle that ended in its being smashed
+under the butt of a gun. It was horrible to look on, impotent and
+raging, and see the fruit of three years the prey of these yelling
+savages; to realize that he must begin again from the bottom; that all
+his labor, and care, and thrift, had gone for nothing. Not daring to
+leave Fetuao behind, he took her with him and started off to find the
+officer to whom he had at first complained. His protest had not
+apparently been very effective, to judge from the torn fragments of the
+boat now blazing in a bonfire, and he was hardly encouraged to make a
+second attempt. However, slim as the chance was, it was now the only
+thing left to do. Surely it was not possible that they would let his
+house be looted and fired with the others!
+
+The officer, a thin young man with a cigar, was standing in the shade of
+a palm.
+
+"Mister," said Jack timidly, for somehow all the fight had oozed out of
+him, "Mister, they're looting my house up there!"
+
+"Well?" said the officer.
+
+"I'm an American," said Jack.
+
+"Well?" said the officer.
+
+Jack regarded him helplessly. "Can't you do nothing for an American?" he
+asked.
+
+"Not for a damned beach-comber," said the officer, turning on his heel.
+
+Jack did not attempt to follow or to pester him. He knew when he was
+beat. He sat down on the nearest log, and making room for Fetuao beside
+him, drew out his pipe, filled it and began to smoke. The girl tried to
+speak to him, but he would not answer. She whispered to him that their
+house was burning, and he never even turned his head to look. She took
+his hand, but he snatched it impatiently away, refusing to be
+comforted. Thus he remained for hours, sullen and half-stupefied, until
+the returning Tanus embarked again, and the launch, with jubilant
+whistles, led the flotilla back to the man-of-war. It was only when the
+ship was out of sight that Jack rose, stretched himself, and breathed
+the profound sigh of a man who has endured and has survived the most
+terrible experience of a lifetime.
+
+With slow steps, and many expressions of anger and resentment, Fetuao
+and he walked through the village, gazing with bitter curiosity at the
+ruins that everywhere surrounded them. They made their way to their own
+little plantation, to find it devastated like the others, the breadfruit
+trees ringed, the coffee bushes torn up by the roots, the _taro_,
+bananas, and vanilla cut to pieces. In the paddock the cow and calf lay
+dead in a pool of blood; of the dairy, half-set in the stream, nothing
+remained but some stumps and smoking ashes; under a felled mango tree
+they saw the protruding hoofs of Fetuao's mare, Afiola.
+
+Returning with a few bananas they managed to find in the plantation,
+they built a fire and roasted them within a few feet of where, that
+morning, their house had stood. Though nothing now was left of it but
+some charred wood, the place was still home to them. As Fetuao moved
+forlornly about, picking up a few trifles that had been dropped or
+thrown away by the invaders--a comb, a spool of thread, a flatiron, a
+book or two with the covers scorched off--she lifted up a grimy rag and
+tossed it, with a little gesture of disdain, at her husband's feet. He
+spread it out and saw that it was the consul's flag, the flag he had
+flown above his house with such confidence in its protection; the flag
+which, until then, he had always reverenced.
+
+Jack slowly tore it into pieces.
+
+
+V
+
+Nothing is stranger than the effect of the same misfortune on different
+natures. To Jack, arrested in the full tide of his petty activities, it
+was absolutely overwhelming. When everything he possessed was swept
+away, and with it the routine that for three years had kept him busy and
+content, he knew not what to do nor which way to turn. Sunk in apathy,
+he spent whole days in dully mourning for what he had lost. He would
+have starved had not Fetuao forced him to follow her into the mountains,
+where, under her direction, he dug _tamu_ and climbed the trees for wild
+chestnuts; while she, with deft hands and a little tangled bunch of
+weeds, caught prawns in the pools and streams. At her bidding he made a
+tiny hut of cocoanut branches, a clumsy canoe good enough to fish with,
+and nets from the sinnet she taught him how to twist out of cocoanut
+husks. She even sent him back to work in the plantation, for the bananas
+at least could be saved, and there was a well of sprouting yams and some
+_tingapula_ that had somehow escaped destruction. But Jack's spirit was
+broken; the old incentive was gone; he could not revive the energy, the
+zest, the interest that before had never failed him. He did what Fetuao
+bade him and no more, and the days, once so short, seemed now never to
+end.
+
+One morning early he was awakened by the murmur of voices in the dark,
+and on going to the door of the hut he was surprised to see Fetuao's
+brothers, Tua and Anapu, Mele her uncle, Lapongi the orator, and a dozen
+others, some of them boys not yet tattooed. In answer to his questions
+Tua told him that a messenger had come for them with orders to at once
+join the Mataafa forces behind Apia.
+
+"And thou also, Jack," said Lapongi the orator, "for every man now is
+needed to withstand the fury of the whites."
+
+Jack, as usual, turned to Fetuao.
+
+"We shall both of us go," said she, "I to carry water for the wounded,
+thou with the _muaau_, a rock of strength and terror."
+
+Jack made no protest. Hell! what did it matter where they went? Munching
+the food that was handed him, he looked across the bay, now silvering
+in the dawn, and wondered whether he was not seeing it for the last
+time.
+
+It was late at night when they passed the outposts and reached the
+Mataafa camp, which stood on a high plateau overlooking Apia. Below them
+the search-lights of the men-of-war moved restlessly about, shining at
+times with a bewildering brilliancy into their very faces; and from the
+little war-encompassed capital there rose a distant drumming and bugling
+as the missionary boy king, unsafe even under the guns of Britain and
+America, took his precautions against a night attack. After the
+stillness of Oa there was something confusing in the stir and bustle of
+Mataafa's big camp--in the constant passing of armed men, the change of
+guards, and the rousing choruses around the fires. There was, besides,
+an atmosphere of recklessness and gayety, engendered by excitement, by
+danger, by the very desperation of their cause, that could not long be
+resisted by even the most impassive recruit. Jack alone, of his whole
+party, remained indifferent and unmoved; but his wife, all of the savage
+in her rising to the surface, grew intoxicated almost to the point of
+delirium.
+
+Ordinarily so demure and quiet, she became from henceforward a creature
+of another clay. Whirling her ax and dancing almost naked at the head of
+the Oa contingent, she led it wherever it was sent, daring bullets and
+shells with smiling intrepidity. In her wild beauty an artist might have
+taken her for the spirit of war itself, as she moved undaunted along the
+firing line, or with biting reproaches drove up skulkers from the rear.
+Like some untried actress bringing down her house, she was overborne
+with her own success; and the more she was praised the more
+extravagantly and unflinchingly she exposed herself. Under the stress of
+those fierce emotions her character in every way underwent a change for
+the worse. In war time, death, always in the air, seems to annihilate
+with its dark shadow all the bonds that bind society together. Life,
+hitherto so assured, of a sudden becomes the most transient of human
+gifts, to be enjoyed with a feverish heedlessness before it vanishes
+forever into the unknown. Thus Fetuao found and accepted a dozen lovers
+among her men, and while still according her husband the first place,
+she yet permitted them liberties and familiarities that they were not
+slow to take advantage of.
+
+Deep in every woman's heart there is a love for the men of her race, a
+love motherly and pitiful, that will bring the tears to her eyes at the
+sight of a passing regiment and cause her to passionately mourn the
+unknown soldier dead. This sentiment, this instinct, is a thousandfold
+intensified on the bloody field itself. The pang when those brave
+fellows fall is inexpressible; her pride is strangely humbled, and in
+her mad exaltation she shrinks from nothing, and makes a virtue of her
+own abandonment.
+
+Jack followed Fetuao everywhere, a despondent, woe-begone figure, who,
+amid the hail of bullets and the yells of contending warriors, lay or
+ran or advanced with the others in a black preoccupation. He had not a
+spark of interest in the struggle; his thoughts were forty miles away in
+that ruined home, with his plants, and trees, and shrubs, his cow, and
+his chickens. What victory could give them back? What terror had a
+defeat for one who had already lost his all! He lived in the past, in
+those frugal, thrifty, laborious years; for the present he had but an
+indifference, an apathy, that he had not even the desire to shake off.
+
+He became the butt of the warriors, who brought him their rifles to mend
+and called him a coward for his pains. They envied him Fetuao, who, for
+all her flirtations, slept every night by his side and was not happy
+when he was out of her sight. They nicknamed him her "Paalangi dog," and
+would whistle to him derisively and shout, "Come 'ere!" secure in the
+chronic absent-mindedness that had become a joke to them all. When he
+answered, as he always answered, "Eh, what?" and raised his vacant,
+moody face, there would be an outburst of laughter, in which he himself
+joined with a mirthless geniality, like a man unbending to a lot of
+children. If a shell went off some one was sure to cry, "Eh, what?" and
+this phrase, together with a mimicry of Jack's slow, dejected utterance
+of it, became the stock pleasantry of the camp humorists, who brought it
+out on all occasions.
+
+The conflicts about Apia were mostly affairs of outposts, a pressing in
+and a pressing back of the pickets on either side. The naval commanders,
+in spite of repeated bombardments and the enormous havoc they wrought
+along the coasts, found themselves hardly able to do more than hold
+their own against the Mataafa army. The safety of Apia was constantly in
+jeopardy, though barricades were thrown up in the streets and three
+hundred men landed from the ships. A desperate night attack on the main
+guard at the Tivoli Hotel betrayed the weakness of the whites to friends
+and foes alike, and redoubled the anxiety of the admiral and captains.
+It was plain that no decisive blow could be struck pending the arrival
+of the reënforcements that had been urgently cabled for from New
+Zealand, unless a better use were made of the missionary levies on the
+spot. These loose native organizations were accordingly broken up,
+consolidated into a single compact force of eight hundred men, well
+armed and well drilled, and placed under the absolute command of a naval
+lieutenant.
+
+This fine force, supported by whites and Maxims, was counted on to
+retrieve the situation and drive Mataafa from his mountain stronghold.
+The plan for a joint attack was accordingly drawn up. A quota of seamen
+and marines, with a couple of machine guns, was to form the center of
+the little army, while the native brigade on either wing was to advance
+simultaneously, lap round and outflank the Mataafas. This operation,
+covered by a terrific bombardment from the three ships of war, was
+forthwith begun; on its success was staked the hopes of the little
+clique who had so lightly adopted the cause of a divinity student of
+seventeen, against the vote and wish of well-nigh all Samoa.
+
+On that day the Oa party held the center of the Mataafa line, a stone
+wall stretching across a wide clearing to the forest on either side. It
+was the post of honor, for it crossed the road up which the enemy were
+toiling with their guns, and guarded the headquarters of the patriot
+king, not a hundred yards behind. In the trampled grass two hundred men
+sat or lay with their rifles in their hands and listened to the measured
+periods of the orators exhorting them to remember their wrongs and die
+fighting. These old men, white-haired, scarred with the wounds of bygone
+battles, their wrinkled hands clasping the staves on which they leaned,
+never winced as the shells whistled above their heads, nor abated by a
+hair's breadth their tone of strident warning and encouragement. At
+such a distance, and against a target six hundred feet above the sea
+level, the men-of-war made poor practice and did little more than waste
+their ammunition. But the shattering detonations of their guns, and the
+thundering echoes rolling and re-rolling round the bay, made pleasant
+music for their crews ashore. It seemed incredible that such
+earth-shaking explosions could be wholly without effect, and the tired
+seamen sweating up the hill were kindled by the thought that the rebels
+were already suffering heavily and likely to run at the first encounter.
+
+Sitting listlessly on a boulder, Jack scarcely took in the fact that
+anything out of the way was about to happen. His only concern was not to
+be too far from Fetuao, and so long as he had her in his sight he was
+dumbly content. He was as solitary among the thronging warriors as any
+castaway in mid-ocean, and his patient, stolid, inexpressive face, grown
+older in a month by a dozen years, was the only one which failed to
+reflect the coming conflict. Fetuao, on the contrary, was on fire from
+top to toe; her saucy tongue was loosened, and her bright eyes dancing
+in wild excitement. Joking and laughing in the roaring circle of her
+admirers, she matched her quick wit against them all in a victorious
+scream of banter and repartee.
+
+Suddenly a shot rang out in the lower woods; then two, with a faltering
+third; then a scattered volley like a bunch of firecrackers going off at
+once. A score of men showed at the turn of the road doubling back for
+dear life, the pickets who had been dislodged and driven in by the
+advancing whites. They had hardly leaped the wall, panting, and
+crouching with the main body behind it, when the machine guns wheeled
+into the open and began to fire. In the first murderous crash it seemed
+as though nothing human could withstand them, and the blue-jackets,
+dotted here and there in the grass, raised an exultant yell, and some
+even sprang up in anticipation of the call to charge. But the men that
+worked the guns had to stand exposed and helpless before a fire more
+galling than their own. They began to drop, and those who were unhurt
+disconcertedly turned and ran. A couple of officers sprang out of the
+grass to take charge of the abandoned guns, managing in their flurry to
+jam them both. For a minute they tinkered and hammered at the choked
+mechanism, exposing themselves, as they did so, to the concentrated
+volleys of a hundred Samoan rifles. Of a sudden, one clapped his hand to
+his breast and sank on his knees; his comrade caught him round the body
+and dragged him back, leaving the guns, now silent and useless, to shine
+innocuously in the sun.
+
+All this while the woods on either hand reverberated with the volleys
+and the cheers of an extended battle, and a haze of powder smoke
+drifted above the tree tops. No one knew how the day was going, and the
+most conflicting rumors ran like wildfire through the Mataafa lines
+together with the names of such an one killed and such an one wounded.
+Dodging the bullets, Fetuao flitted about with water for the parched
+fighters, passing the news and rolling cigarettes for such of the
+wounded as were not too far gone to care for them. Occasionally she
+ferreted out a trembling wretch in the rear and drove him to the front
+with taunts; or, if he were too panic-stricken to get up, she had no
+compunction in thrashing him with a stick until he did so. The little
+savage was beside herself as she danced and sang like a wanton child in
+the rain--a rain of Martini and Lee-Remington balls stinging the air all
+about her.
+
+After the machine guns were put out of action the fight became a rifle
+duel, which went on briskly for upward of an hour. Again and again the
+whites rose in the grass, blundered forward and took cover, each rush
+stemmed by the Oas, who, darting up from their wall, gave volley for
+volley at point-blank range. Standing in a slop of blood, their great
+naked feet trampling the dead and writhing bodies of their comrades,
+they rivaled the rocky wall itself in the unflinching obstinacy of their
+resistance. It was then the battle reached its deadliest stage, more
+falling in those terrible minutes than during the whole previous course
+of the action. There was no shouting, no cheering, but with clenched
+teeth each man held his place and panted for the supreme moment that
+should spell either victory or rout. That moment came with the bugle
+call to charge, when the whites, rising for the last time, flung
+themselves forward with bayonets fixed. On they came, crimson-faced,
+mouths open, British and Americans in a pellmell rush like a rally of
+boys at football. Even as they did so, Fetuao leaped bolt upright on the
+wall, and swinging her carbine round her head, opposed her slender body
+to the whole attack. In an instant she was tumbling backward with a
+bullet through her throat, and as she lay coughing and strangling in the
+mire, Jack ran forward with a cry and caught her in his arms. There she
+died, amid the crash and roar of a hand-to-hand fight, jostled and
+stumbled on, her little hot hands clinging to his in the convulsive
+grasp of dissolution.
+
+Jack sprang up like a madman. He had no thought in his dizzy head but
+vengeance--vengeance, sudden, bloody, and swift. He plunged into the
+thickest of the fray, cursing and raving as he opened a path with his
+brawny shoulders. A seaman tried to drive him through with a bayonet,
+but he caught the fellow round the neck and throttled him; he wrenched
+away the weapon and stabbed out with it right and left, with a strength,
+skill, and ferocity that nothing could withstand. He was fired at
+again and again; his ashen face was twenty times a target, once at so
+close a range that the powder burned his very skin. As the line swayed
+to and fro in that desperate final struggle, there was a hoarse cry
+against him, constantly repeated, of, "Shoot that white man!" "Kill the
+renegade!" But Jack, seemingly proof against bullet and sword, stood his
+ground like a lion and clubbed the butt of his gun into the faces of his
+foes; and when the whites, at last losing heart, began to weaken and
+fall back, it was Jack that led the Samoan charge, waving a dripping
+bayonet, and bellowing like a maniac for the rest to follow him.
+
+[Illustration: "In an instant she was tumbling backward."]
+
+He stopped beside the guns, laughing wildly to see the blue-jackets
+scattering like rabbits down the hill, and throwing away their rifles,
+water bottles, and accouterments in their precipitate flight. There were
+wounded men lying all about him, groaning, some of them, and calling out
+faintly for help; but, hell! what did he care! Let them groan, the
+skunks; let them remember the women and children they had bombarded, and
+the houses they had burned, and the honest hearts they had broken! To
+hell with them! Besides, for the matter of that, he was feeling sort of
+sick himself--sort of numb and shivery--and he staggered like a drunken
+man as he went slowly back up to the wall. It was all he could do to
+straddle the blamed thing, and then it was only with the help of a
+wounded Samoan who took his hand. The Kanaka, dizzily seen through a
+kind of mist, was no other than Tua; together, like men in a dream, they
+searched for Fetuao's body; and dragging it out of the shambles where it
+lay, they tried to clean away the blood with wisps of grass. Jack was
+sitting with the girl's head in his lap when he began to sway unsteadily
+backward and forward, feeling strangely sleepy and cold. He moaned. He
+gasped. Hell! they must have plugged him somewhere, after all. And then
+he rolled over--dead.
+
+
+
+
+THE SECURITY OF THE HIGH SEAS
+
+
+Things had been dull in Apia before the arrival of Captain Satterlee in
+the _Southern Belle_. Not business alone--which was, of course, only to
+be expected, what with the civil war being just over and the Kanakas
+driven to eat their cocoanuts instead of selling them to traders in the
+form of copra--but, socially speaking, the little capital of the Samoan
+group had been next door to dead. Picnics had been few; a heavy dust had
+settled on the floor of the public hall--a galvanized iron barn which
+social leaders could rent for six Chile dollars a night, lights
+included; the butcher's wedding, contrary to all expectation, had been
+strictly private, and might almost have slipped by unnoticed had it not
+been for a friendly editorial in the _Samoa Weekly Times_; and with the
+exception of an auction, a funeral, and a billiard tournament at the
+International Hotel, a general lethargy had overtaken Apia and the
+handful of whites who made it their home.
+
+As Mr. Skiddy, the boyish American consul, expressed himself, "You
+can't get anybody to do anything these days."
+
+Possibly this long spell of monotony contributed to Captain Satterlee's
+pronounced and instant success. The topsails of the Southern Belle had
+hardly more than appeared over the horizon, when people began to wake up
+and realize that stagnation had too long held them in its thrall.
+Satterlee was not at all the ordinary kind of sea captain, to which the
+Beach (as Apia always alluded to itself) was more than well acquainted.
+Gin had no attractions for Captain Satterlee, nor did he surround
+himself with dusky impropriety. He played a straight social game, and
+lived up to the rules, even to party calls, and finger bowls on his
+cabin table. He was a tall, thin American of about forty-five, with
+floorwalker manners, grayish mutton-chop whiskers, and a roving eye. The
+general verdict of Apia was that he was "very superior." His superiority
+was apparent in his gentlemanly baldness, his openwork socks, his
+well-turned references to current events, his kindly and indulgent
+attitude toward all things Samoan. He deplored the rivalry of the three
+contending nationalities, German, English, and American, whose official
+representatives quarreled fiercely among themselves and mismanaged the
+affairs of this unfortunate little South Sea kingdom, and whose
+unofficial representatives sold guns and cartridges indiscriminately to
+the warring native factions. Satterlee let it be inferred that the rôle
+of peacemaker had informally settled upon himself.
+
+"In a little place everybody ought to pull together," he would say, his
+bland tolerance falling like balm from heaven, and he would clinch the
+remark by passing round forty-cent cigars.
+
+The _Southern Belle_ was a showy little vessel of about ninety tons,
+with the usual trade room in the after part of the ship, where the
+captain himself would wait on you behind a counter, and sell you
+anything from a bottle of trade scent to a keg of dynamite. He never was
+so charming as when engaged in this exchange of commodities for coin,
+and it accorded so piquantly with his evident superiority that the
+purchaser had a pleasant sense of doing business with a gentleman.
+
+"Of course, I might run her as a yacht, and play the heavy swell," he
+would remark. "But, candidly, I like this kind of thing; it puts me on a
+level with the others, you know; and then it's handy for buying
+supplies, and keeping one in touch with the people." With this he would
+give you such a warming smile, and perhaps throw in free a handful of
+fishhooks, or a packet of safety matches, or a toothbrush. Indeed, apart
+from this invariable prodigality, his scale of prices was ridiculously
+low, and if you were a lady you could buy out the ship at half price. As
+for young Skiddy, the American consul, the bars in his case were
+lowered even more, and he was just asked to help himself; which young
+Skiddy did, though sparingly. Captain Satterlee took an immense fancy to
+this youthful representative of their common country, and treated him
+with an engaging mixture of respect and paternalism; and Skiddy, not to
+be behindhand, and dazzled, besides, by his elder's marked regard and
+friendship, threw wide the consular door, and constantly pressed on
+Satterlee the hospitality of a cot on the back veranda.
+
+The captain professed to find it remarkable--which, indeed, it was--that
+a boy of twenty-six should have been intrusted with the welfare of so
+considerable a section of Samoa's white population. The roll of the
+consulate bore the names of thirty-eight Americans, not to speak of a
+thirty-ninth who was soon expected, over whom the young consul possessed
+extraordinary powers withheld from far higher posts in far more
+important countries. Young Skiddy, on a modest salary of two hundred
+dollars a month and a house rent-free, was supposed, if need be, to
+marry you, divorce you, try you for crimes and misdemeanors, and in
+extreme cases might even dangle you from the flagstaff in his front
+yard.
+
+He had been very seldom called on, however, to use these extensive
+powers. In three years he had married as many couples, helped to baptize
+a half-caste baby, held an inquest on a dead sailor, bullied a Samoan
+army off his front grass, and had settled a disputed inheritance
+involving five acres of cocoanuts. This, of course, left him with some
+spare time on his hands, which, on the whole, he managed to get through
+with very tolerable enjoyment. But until the date of Captain Satterlee's
+arrival he had never had a friend, or at least so it seemed to him now
+in the retrospect. His official colleagues were out of the question--the
+standoffish Englishman, the sullen German, the grotesque Swede who held
+the highest judicial office. No, there was not the little finger of a
+friend in the whole galaxy. And elsewhere? Not a soul to whom one could
+give intimacy without the danger, almost the certainty, of its being
+abused. No wonder, then, that he turned to Satterlee, and grasped the
+hand of fellowship so warmly extended to him.
+
+The little consul had never known such a man; he had never heard such
+talk; he had never before realized the extent and splendor of the world.
+Sitting in the cabin of the _Southern Belle_, often far into the night,
+he would give a rapt attention to this extraordinary being who had done
+everything and seen everything. Paris, London, Constantinople, New York,
+all were as familiar to Satterlee as the palm of his hand, and he had
+the story-telling gift that can throw a glamour over the humblest
+incident. Not that his incidents were often humble. On the contrary, in
+his mysterious suggestive fashion he let it be inferred that his bygone
+part had been a great one. He would offer dazzling little peeps, and
+then shut the slide; a chance reference that would make his hearer gasp;
+the adroit use of a mighty name, checked by a sudden, "Oh, hold on--I'm
+saying more than I ought to!" You felt, somehow, that to have roused the
+interest of this powerful personage was to insure your own career. With
+a turn of his hand he was capable of gratifying your wildest ambition.
+He had remarked your unusual capacity, and had quietly determined it
+should be given proper scope. When and where and how were to be settled
+later. These questions you left confidently to Satterlee. It was enough
+that you were informed, in those fine shades of which he was a master,
+that your day would surely come. On leaving Satterlee you walked on air
+without knowing exactly why; or rather Skiddy did, for by "you" I mean
+the little consul.
+
+It is a sad commentary on human nature that it is so easily deceived. A
+glib tongue, an attractive manner, a few hundred dollars thrown
+carelessly about, and presto! you have the counterfeit of a Cecil
+Rhodes. We are not only willing to take people at their own valuation,
+but are ever ready to multiply that valuation by ten. Obtrude
+romance--rich, stirring romance--into the lives of commonplace people,
+and they instantly lose their heads. Romance, more than cupidity, is
+what attracts the gold-brick investor.
+
+Of course, Satterlee was a poser, a fraud, a liar; the highest type of
+liar; the day-dreaming, well-read, genuinely inventive, highly
+imaginative, loving-it-for-its-own-sake liar. But to Skiddy every word
+he said was Gospel-true. He never doubted the captain for an instant.
+Life grew richer to him, stranger and more wonderful. It was like a
+personal distinction--a medal, or the thanks of Congress--that Satterlee
+should thus have singled him out. His gratitude was unbounded. He felt
+both humble and elated. His cup was brimming over.
+
+Let not his credulity be counted against him. After all, he was not the
+only admirer of the captain. Did he not see Satterlee lionized by the
+Chief Justice and the rest of his brother officials; publicly honored by
+the head of the great German company; called to the bosom of both the
+missionary denominations? Was not all Apia, in fact, regardless of sex,
+creed, or nationality, acclaiming Satterlee to the skies, and vying
+among themselves for the privilege of entertaining him? Never, indeed,
+were there so many picnics, so many parties, such a constant succession
+of dances at the public hall. Even the king was galvanized into action,
+and, to the surprise of everyone, gave a sort of At Home, where
+Satterlee was the guest of honor, and received the second _kava_ cup. A
+half-caste couple, who before had barely held up their heads, sprang
+into social prominence by getting married under the direct patronage of
+the popular captain, and thus rallying to their visiting list all the
+rank, fashion, and beauty of Apia.
+
+It was a delirious month. There was an event for almost every night of
+it. The strain on the half-caste band was awful. Miss Potter's millinery
+establishment worked night and day. Of a morning you couldn't find a
+lady on a front veranda who wasn't stitching and sewing and basting and
+cutting out. And the men! Why, in the social whirl few of them had time
+to sober up, and the sale of Leonard's soda water was unprecedented.
+
+As the time began to draw near for the monthly mail from San Francisco,
+Satterlee got restless and talked regretfully of leaving. He gave a
+great P.P.C. bargain day on board the _Southern Belle_, where sandwiches
+and bottled beer were served to all comers, and goods changed hands at
+astonishing prices: coal oil at one seventy-five a case; hundred-pound
+kegs of beef at four dollars; turkey-red cotton at six cents a yard;
+square face at thirty cents a bottle; and similar cuts in all the
+standard commodities. There was no custom house in those days, and you
+were free to carry everything ashore unchallenged. A matter of eighty
+tons must have been landed all round the beach; and the pandemonium at
+the gangway, the crush and jostle in the trade room, and the steady
+hoisting out of fresh merchandise from the main hold, made a very
+passable South Sea imitation of a New York department store. At any
+rate, there was the same loss of temper, the same harassed expression on
+the faces of the purchasers, and the same difficulty in getting change.
+As like as not you had to take it--the change--in the form of Jews'
+harps, screw eyes, or anything small and handy that happened to be near
+by. It was the most lightning performance Apia had ever witnessed, and
+the captain carried it off in a brisk, smiling way, as though it was the
+best joke in the world, and he was only doing it all for fun.
+
+Unfortunate captain! Unhappy destiny that brought in the mail cutter two
+days ahead of schedule! Thrice unlucky popularity that found thee
+basking in the sunshine of woman's favor instead of on thy four-inch
+deck! The pilot signaled the mail; Skiddy put forth in his consular
+boat, intercepting the cutter in the pass, and receiving (on his head)
+his own especial Government bag. The proximity of the _Southern Belle_,
+and the likelihood of Satterlee being at home, caused Skiddy to board
+the ship and open the bag on her quarter-deck. One stout, blue, and
+important-looking letter at once caught his eye. He opened the stout,
+blue, and important-looking letter, and----
+
+There were no white men in the crew of the _Southern Belle_. They were
+all Rotumah boys, with the exception of Ah Foy, the Chinese cook. This
+amiable individual was singing over his pots and pans when he was
+suddenly startled by the apparition of Skiddy at the galley door. The
+little consul was deathly pale, and there was something fierce and
+authoritative in his look.
+
+"Come out of here," he said abruptly, "I want to talk to you!"
+
+The Chinaman followed him aft. He had a pretty good idea of what was
+coming. That was why he was sewn up with two hundred dollars in hard
+cash, together with a twenty-dollar bill under his left heel. He began
+to cry, and in five minutes had blurted out the whole thing.
+Self-preservation is the first law, and he had, besides, some dim
+conception of State's evidence. Skiddy made the conception clearer, and
+promised him immunity if he would make a clean breast of it. This the
+Chinaman forthwith did in his laborious pidgin. A good part of it was
+incomprehensible, but he established certain main facts, and confirmed
+the stout, blue, important-looking letter. As Satterlee came off on a
+shore boat, pulling like mad, and then darted up the ladder in a sweat
+of apprehension, he was met at the top by Skiddy--not Skiddy the
+friend, but Skiddy the arm of the law, Skiddy the retributive, Skiddy
+the world's avenger, with Seniko, his towering cox, standing square
+behind him.
+
+"John Forster," he said, "_alias_ Satterlee, I arrest you in the name of
+the United States, on the charge of having committed the crime of
+barratry, and warn you that anything you say now may be hereafter used
+against you."
+
+It was a horrible thing to say--to be forced to say--and no sense of
+public duty could make it less than detestable. Skiddy almost whispered
+out the words. The brutality of them appalled him. Remember, this was
+his friend, his hero, the man whose intimacy an hour before had been
+everything to him. Satterlee gave him a quick, blank, panicky look, and
+then, with a pitiful bravado, took a step forward with an attempted
+return to his usual confident air. He professed to be dumfounded at the
+accusation; he was the victim of a dreadful mistake; he tried, with a
+ghastly smile, to reassert his old dominion, calling Skiddy "old man"
+and "old chap" in a shaky, fawning voice, and wanting to take him below
+"to talk it over." But the little consul was adamantine. The law must
+take its course. He was sorry, terribly sorry, but as an officer of the
+United States he had to do his duty.
+
+Satterlee preceded him into the boat. The consul followed and took the
+yoke lines. They were both dejected, and neither dared to meet the
+other's eyes. It was a mournful pull ashore, and tragic in the
+retrospect. A silence lay between them as heavy as lead. The crew,
+conscious of the captain's humiliation, though they knew not the cause,
+felt also constrained to a deep solemnity. Yes, a funereal pull, and it
+was a relief to everyone when at last they grounded in the shingle off
+the consulate.
+
+Skiddy had a busy day of it. Leaving the captain at the consulate under
+guard, and sending off Asi, the chief of Vaiala, together with ten
+warriors armed with rifles and axes to take charge of the _Southern
+Belle_ and her crew, he walked into Apia to make arrangements to meet
+the painful situation. Single-handed he had to rear the structure of a
+whole judicial system, including United States marshals, a clerk of
+court, four assessor judges, and a jail. His first steps were directed
+toward a little cottage on the Motootua Road, the residence of Mr.
+Scoville Purdy, a goaty, elderly, unwashed individual, who formed the
+more respectable half of the Samoan bar. Mr. Purdy was forthwith
+retained by the United States Government, and the papers of the case
+left in his hands. Skiddy next sought out Mr. Thacher, the other half of
+the bar, and directed him to defend the prisoner. Then he bent his mind
+to the consideration of jails, of which Samoa boasted two.
+
+The municipal jail was a two-roomed wooden shed, sparingly furnished
+with a couple of tin pails. Humanity forbidding the incarceration of
+Captain Satterlee in such a hovel, the little consul passed on to
+Mulinuu, where the general Samoan Government held sway. The jail here
+was on a more pretentious scale. It consisted of a rectangular
+inclosure, perhaps sixty feet by forty, formed by four eight-foot walls
+of galvanized iron, and containing within five or six small huts of the
+kind that shipwrecked seamen might build on a desert island. In fact
+that was just about what they were, and as foul and repulsive as the
+real article. Owing to financial stringency the Samoan Government was
+unable to house or feed its prisoners, who for both these reasons might
+well be described as castaways. These unfortunates were absent at the
+time of Skiddy's visit, employing a very languid leisure on the
+improvement of the roads; and the consul could not have penetrated the
+jail at all had it not been for the king, who, on being appealed to, was
+obliging enough to lend the diplomat his spare key.
+
+Skiddy stood and regarded the place with an immense depression. It would
+not do at all. It was no better than a cattle pen. He was about to turn
+away, when the two Scanlons appeared on the scene, their keen noses
+having scented out a job. The Scanlons were burly half-castes, of a
+muddy, sweaty complexion, whose trustworthiness and intelligence were
+distinctly above the average. The Scanlon brothers, to any one in a
+difficult position, could be relied upon as pillars of strength. There
+was nothing a Scanlon brother wouldn't do, and do well, for two dollars
+and fifty cents a day. Mind and muscle were both yours--Scanlon mind and
+muscle--for this paltry and insignificant sum; and the consul, in his
+quandary, welcomed the stout, bristly haired pair as though they were
+angels from heaven.
+
+In less time than it takes to write, Alfred Scanlon was appointed a
+United States marshal, Charles Scanlon an assistant United States
+marshal, and the arrangement was made with them to take full charge of
+Captain Satterlee during his trial. He was to live in their cottage,
+have his meals served from the International Hotel, and, while carefully
+guarded night and day, was to be treated "first class" throughout.
+
+"The law of the United States," boomed out little Skiddy, "assumes that
+a prisoner is innocent until he is actually convicted. I want both of
+you to remember that."
+
+The Scanlons didn't understand a word of what he said, but they saluted,
+and looked very much impressed. When you bought a Scanlon you got a lot
+for your money, including a profound gravity when you addressed him. It
+was the Scanlon way of recognizing that you were paying, and the
+Scanlon receiving, two dollars and fifty cents a day!
+
+At the head of his two satellites, who kept pace respectfully behind
+him, Skiddy next directed himself to find Dillon. Dillon was a variety
+of white Scanlon, though of an infinitely lower human type, who kept a
+tiny store and cobbled shoes near the Mulivae bridge; and who, from some
+assumed knowledge of legal procedure, invariably acted as clerk of the
+court--any court--American, English, or the Samoan High. You associated
+his heavy, bloated, grog-blossomed face, and black-dyed whiskers, as an
+inevitable part of the course of justice. It was his custom to take
+longhand notes of all court proceedings, as, of course, stenographers
+were unknown in Apia; and at times it would seem as though all Samoan
+justice boiled down to dictating to Dillon. As a witness, you never
+looked at the judge; you looked at Dillon, and wondered whether he was
+taking you down right. A careful witness always went slowly, and used
+the words that Dillon was likely to understand.
+
+Dillon having been found and engaged, the next procedure was to appoint
+the assessor judges, of whom the consular instructions insisted on there
+being four. This weighty matter seemed to require the cooperation of the
+vice consul, Mr. Beaver, a highly respected quack doctor, whose
+principal nostrum was faith cure plus hot water. After arguing away
+your existence, which he always could do with extraordinary fluency, he
+would plunge you into a boiling bath till your imaginary skin turned a
+deep imaginary scarlet, and then send you home with some microscopic
+doses of aconite. The best that could be said of him was that he never
+really harmed anybody, scalded the poor for nothing, and was willing
+(and even pressing) to turn over serious cases to the regular
+practitioner, Dr. Funk.
+
+There were twenty-seven American citizens on the consular roll of male
+sex, sound mind, and above twenty-one years of age. Four of them lived
+far from Apia, and were therefore unavailable. Two more, as known
+deserters from the United States navy, were considered unworthy of the
+judgment seat. Forged or suspected naturalization papers threw out
+another five. This reduced the residuum to sixteen, whose names were
+written on slips of paper, thrown into a pith helmet, and tumbled
+together. The first four withdrawn constituted the assessor judges, who
+were at once warned by messenger to be in attendance at the consulate at
+ten the next morning, or be punished for contempt.
+
+What a stir was made in the little town as the news went round!
+Satterlee, the cherished, the entertained, the eagerly sought
+after--Satterlee, had been discovered to be a pirate! The _Southern_
+_Belle_ was no _Southern Belle_ at all, but the _James H. Peabody_! He
+had shipped as supercargo, putting in a thousand dollars of his own to
+lull Mr. Crawford's suspicions, and then had marooned the captain and
+mate on Ebon Island, and levanted with the ship! Heavens! what cackle,
+what excitement, what a furious flow of beer in every saloon along the
+beach! It was rumored that the great bargain-day sales might be
+canceled; that the goods might have to be returned; that not a penny of
+compensation would be paid to the unlucky purchasers. Then what a
+rubbing off of marks took place, what a breaking up of tell-tale cases,
+what a soaking off of tags! The whole eighty tons disappeared like
+magic, and you could not find a soul who would even confess to a packet
+of pins!
+
+The trial took place in the large office room of the consulate. The big
+front doors stood open to the sea, where a mile away the breakers tossed
+and tumbled on the barrier reef. The back door was kept shut, to keep
+out the meaner noises of domesticity, but at intervals in the course of
+the trial you could hear the deliberate grinding of the consular coffee;
+the chasing of consular chickens; the counting of the consular wash;
+shrill arguments over the price of fish--a grotesque juxtaposition that
+seemed to make a mock of the whole proceedings.
+
+The consul, in well-starched white clothes and pipe-clayed shoes, sat
+on a dais beneath the crossed flags of his country, giving the effect of
+an elegant and patriotic waxwork. Below him were the four assessors,
+sunburned, commonish, seafaring men, with enormous hands that they did
+not know what to do with, who moved uneasily in their chairs, and looked
+about for places to spit--and then didn't dare to! One, whose brawny
+arms far exceeded the shrunken sleeves of his jumper, unbared to view on
+his hairy skin the tattooed form of a naked mermaid. A table stood in
+the center of the uncarpeted room, with a lawyer on either side--Purdy,
+the goaty-haired, messy, elderly man, half-blind, sharp-voiced, rasping
+out his case; opposite him, Thacher, a slinky, mean-looking young man,
+who was reputed to have left New Zealand under a cloud. He looked what
+he was, a cheap lawyer's clerk, of the pinched, hungry variety one sees
+in gloomy anterooms. At the head of the table was Dillon, the
+everlasting dictatee, his dyed black whiskers drooping in the heat, who
+raised a fat hand from time to time as a brake on outstripping tongues.
+And there the captain, the cause of all this singular assembly, tilting
+back in his chair, or occasionally leaning over to whisper into his
+counsel's ear--spare, angular, careworn--with his grim mouth and
+resolute air, as though the soul within him refused to be cowed by such
+droning tomfoolery.
+
+Beside the front door was a shabby basket-work sofa, where members of
+the public were entitled to sit. They would tiptoe in, these members of
+the public, furtively, as though expecting to be shot on sight, the
+bolder ones perhaps exchanging a whisper, the weaker brethren silent,
+and trembling if they caught an official eye. Outside, on the steps of
+the broad veranda, the brothers Scanlon lolled and slumbered, with
+pewter stars on their sweaty breasts, enjoying the deep contentment that
+comes with two dollars and fifty cents a day.
+
+The trial lasted two days, but judgment was held over for the third. The
+case against Satterlee was complete. The San Francisco affidavits,
+properly made out by competent hands, were confirmed by the confession
+of Ah Foy, the cook, who (besides Satterlee) was the only present member
+of the original crew. Satterlee set up the lame defense that he had
+purchased the vessel from Crawford, and was therefore her actual owner.
+He was sworn, and gave evidence accordingly, but Purdy's
+cross-examination left him without a leg to stand on. He cut a pitiful
+figure as he floundered and lied and contradicted himself under the lash
+of that relentless tongue, miring himself ever deeper with explanations
+that did not explain, and agitated references to a "conspiracy" whose
+object it was to ruin him. No, the only thing to be considered was the
+degree of punishment that would adequately offset his crime.
+
+On the reassembling of the Court on the morning of the third day, little
+Skiddy, from the majesty of the dais, summed up the case at length. It
+covered nine sheets of foolscap, and had cost him hours of agonizing
+toil. Beginning with a general rhetorical statement about the "policy of
+nations" and "the security of the high seas," he descended by degrees to
+the crime of barratry--or, in plainer English, the theft of ships. He
+looked at barratry from every side, and the more he looked the less he
+seemed to like it. It was the cradle of piracy; it destroyed the
+confidence of owners; barratry, if frequently repeated, would shake the
+whole commercial structure. A person who committed barratry would commit
+anything. In this manner he went on and on, reviewing the evidence of
+the case, destroying the whole fabric of the defense, dwelling at length
+on the enormity of the entire transaction. The _James H. Peabody_ had
+been deliberately seized. The prisoner had lawlessly converted her, the
+property of another, to his own base uses. He had broken into the cargo
+and shamelessly sold it as his own. He could plead neither the
+extenuation of youth, nor ignorance, nor the urging of others. He had
+conceived the crime, and had carried it out single-handed. The Court
+could not accept the contention that Ah Foy, the Chinaman, had been in
+any sense a confederate or an accomplice. The Court dismissed the charge
+against Ah Foy. But, after mature deliberation, its unanimous judgment
+was that John Forster, _alias_ Satterlee, was _guilty_. The Court
+sentenced John Forster, _alias_ Satterlee, to _ten years' penal
+servitude_.
+
+Purdy popped up with some question as to the scale of court fees.
+Thacher winked at Dillon, and began to roll up his papers. Skiddy
+descended from the dais and became an ordinary human being again. The
+captain, leaning forward in his chair, gazed absently out to sea. The
+Scanlon brothers appeared, officiously wanting to know what they were to
+do next. Skiddy was unable to tell them, except that they were to stay
+by the prisoner until he could consult with the authorities. He put on
+his hat, lit a cigar, and forthwith departed.
+
+The President was kind, the Chief Justice urbane. The income of the
+kingdom barely sufficed for their two salaries, and they judged it
+incumbent (as they could do nothing else) to be as polite as possible to
+the American consul. But jails? Oh, no, they couldn't oblige Skiddy with
+a new jail! He was welcome to what they had, but it wasn't in reason
+that he could expect anything better. Skiddy said it was a hog-pen. The
+President retorted that the king's allowance was eight months in
+arrears, and that the western end of the island was still in rebellion.
+Jails cost money, and they had no money. Skiddy declared it was an
+outrage, and asked them if they approved of putting a white man into a
+bare stockade, with none of the commonest conveniences or decencies of
+life? They were both shocked at the suggestion. The pride of race is
+very strong in barbarous countries. A white man is still a white man
+even if he has committed all the crimes in the calendar. The Chief
+Justice very seriously pointed out that it would disgrace them all to
+confine Satterlee in the stockade, and force him to mix with the dregs
+of the native population. Surely Mr. Skiddy could not consider such a
+thing for a moment. Mr. Skiddy wanted to know, then, what the deuce he
+was to do? The Chief Justice benignantly shook his head. He had no
+answer to that question. The President murmured suavely, that perhaps
+next year, with an increased hut tax, and the suppression of the
+rebellion, the Government might see its way to----
+
+"Next year!" roared Skiddy. "I want to know what I'm to do
+NOW!"
+
+The two high officials gazed at him sadly. It was a great peety, they
+observed (with an air of gentle complaint), that Mr. Skiddy should have
+embarrassed the government at a time when its whole position was so
+precarious. Had he not better refer the matter to Washington? Doubtless
+Washington, recognizing the fact that----
+
+Skiddy flung himself out, lest his anger should get the best of him. He
+went and had another look at the jail, and liked it even less than
+before. Faugh! it was disgusting! It would kill a white man in a week.
+It would be nothing less than murder to put Satterlee into it. He
+returned to the consulate to talk over the matter with the trusty
+Scanlons.
+
+Would they consider a monthly arrangement on a reduced charge, giving
+Satterlee the best room in their cottage, and pledging themselves that
+he should never quit the confines of their three-acre cocoanut patch?
+The half-caste brothers fell in joyfully with the suggestion, and their
+first wild proposals were beaten down to forty dollars a month for
+custodianship and fifteen dollars for the room and the transport of
+Satterlee's food from the International Hotel--fifty-five dollars in
+all. Thirty dollars a month for the hotel raised the grand total to
+eighty-five dollars. Skiddy wondered ruefully whether Washington would
+ever indorse this arrangement, but in his desperation he couldn't see
+that he had any other choice. He would simply _make_ Washington indorse
+it. It was with great relief that he saw the captain's departure from a
+corner of his bedroom window, and felt that, for the moment, at least,
+he had a welcome respite from all his perplexities.
+
+He put a captain and crew on board the _James H. Peabody_, and packed
+her back to San Francisco, at the same time apprising the State
+Department by mail, and begging that a telegraphic answer might be sent
+him in respect to Satterlee's imprisonment, and the expense it had
+necessarily entailed. He calculated that the telegram would catch an
+outgoing man-of-war that was shortly due. The consular salary was two
+hundred dollars a month, and if the eighty-five dollars for Satterlee
+was disallowed, the sum was indubitably bound to sink to one hundred and
+fifteen dollars. Deducting a further fifty, which little Skiddy was in
+the habit of remitting to his mother, a widow in narrow circumstances,
+and behold his income reduced to sixty-five a month! It was hardly
+surprising, therefore, that Skiddy waited on pins and needles for the
+Department's reply.
+
+In the course of weeks it came.
+
+      _Skiddy U S consul apia samoa satterlee case the department
+      authorizes charge for food, but none for custody or lodging,
+      bronson assistant secretary._
+
+This was a staggering blow. It definitely placed his salary at
+ninety-five dollars. He sat down and wrote a stinging letter to the
+Department, inclosing snapshot pictures of the jail, the prisoners, the
+huts, and other things that cannot be described here. It evolved an
+acrimonious reply, in which he was bidden to be more respectful. He was
+at liberty (the dispatch continued), if he thought it advisable as an
+act of private charity, to maintain the convict Satterlee in a
+comfortable cottage, but the Department insisted that it should be at
+his (Skiddy's) expense. The Department itself advocated the jail. If the
+situation were as disgraceful as he described it, ought not the onus be
+put on the Samoan Government, and thus place the Department in a
+position "to make strong representations through the usual diplomatic
+channels"?
+
+"But in the meantime what would happen to Satterlee?" returned the
+consul in official language, across six thousand miles of sea and land.
+
+"You are referred to the previous dispatch," retorted the Department.
+
+"But it will kill him," said Skiddy, again crossing an ocean and a
+continent.
+
+"If the convict Satterlee should become ill, you are at liberty to send
+him to the hospital."
+
+"Yes, but there isn't any hospital," said Skiddy.
+
+"The Department cannot withdraw from the position it took up, nor the
+principle it laid down in Dispatch No. 214 B."
+
+Thus the duel went on, while Skiddy cut down his cigars, sold his riding
+horse, and generally economized. A regret stole over him that he hadn't
+sentenced Satterlee to a shorter term, and he looked up the Consular
+Instructions to see what pardoning powers he possessed. On this point
+the little book was dumb. Not so the Department, however, to whom a hint
+on the subject provoked the reply, "that by so doing you would stultify
+your previous action and impugn the finding of the Consular Court. The
+Department would view with grave displeasure, etc.----"
+
+Satterlee soon made himself very much at home in the Scanlon prison. His
+winning personality never showed to better advantage than in those days
+of his eclipse. He dandled the Scanlon off-spring on his knee; helped
+the women with their household tasks; played checkers with the burly
+brothers. He was prodigiously respected. He gathered in the Scanlon
+hearts, even to uncles and second cousins. You would have taken him for
+a patriarch in the bosom of a family of which he was the joy and pride.
+He received the best half-caste society on his front porch, and
+dispensed Scanlon hospitality with a lavish hand. These untutored souls
+had no proper conception of barratry. They couldn't see any crime in
+running away with a schooner. They pitied the captain as a bold spirit
+who had met with undeserved misfortunes. The Samoan has ever a
+sympathetic hand for the fallen mighty, and the hand is never empty of a
+gift. Bananas, pineapples, _taro_, sugar cane, _palusami_, sucking pigs,
+chickens, eggs, _valo_--all descended on Satterlee in wholesale lots.
+Girls brought him _leis_ of flowers to wear round his neck; anonymous
+friends stole milk for his refreshment; pigeon hunters, returning
+singing from the mountains, deferentially laid their best at his feet.
+Nothing was too good for this unfortunate chief, who bore himself so
+nobly, and had a smile and a kind word for even the humblest of his
+admirers.
+
+On Sundays Skiddy paid the captain a periodical visit. He would bring
+the latest papers, if there were any, or a novel or two from his scanty
+stock. Their original friendship had died a violent death, but a new one
+had gradually risen on the ashes of the old. Skiddy had no more
+illusions in respect to this romantic-minded humbug and semi-pirate; but
+the man was likable, tremendously likable, and, in spite of himself, the
+little consul could not forbear suffering some of the pangs of remorse.
+The world was so big, so wide, with such a sufficiency of room for all
+(even romantic-minded humbugs and semi-pirates), and it was hard that
+Providence should have singled him out to clip this eagle's wings. There
+was something, too, very pathetic in Satterlee's contentment. He
+confided to Skiddy that he had never been so happy. With glistening eyes
+he would discourse on "these simple people," "these good hearts," "this
+lovely and uncontaminated paradise, where evil seems never to have set
+its hand," and expatiate generally on the beauty, charm, and
+tranquillity of Samoan life. He dreaded the time, he said, when a
+ruthless civilization would sweep it all away.
+
+Satterlee and he took long walks into the mountains, invariably
+accompanied by a Scanlon brother to give an official aspect to the
+excursion. It maintained the fast-disappearing principle that Satterlee
+was a convict and under vigilant guard. It served to take away the
+appearance, besides (which they might otherwise have presented), of two
+friends spending a happy day together in the country. A Scanlon brother
+stood for the United States Government and the majesty of law, and
+propriety demanded his presence as peremptorily as a chaperon for a
+young lady. A Scanlon brother could be useful, too, in climbing cocoanut
+trees, rubbing sticks together when the matches were lost, and in
+guiding them to noble waterfalls far hidden in the forest.
+
+In this manner nearly a whole year passed, which, for the little consul,
+represented an unavoidable monthly outlay of fifty-five dollars. He got
+somewhat used to it, as everybody gets somewhat used to everything; but
+he could not resist certain recurring intervals of depression when he
+contrasted his present circumstances with his bygone glory. Fifty-five
+dollars a month made a big hole in a consular income, and he would gaze
+down that ten-year vista with a sinking heart. But relief was closer at
+hand than he had ever dared to hope. From the Department? No, but from
+Satterlee himself.
+
+The news was brought to little Skiddy early one morning. Alfred Scanlon,
+with an air of gloom, deprecatingly coughed his way into the bedroom,
+and handed the consul a letter. It was written on pale pink note-paper,
+of the kind Samoans like best, with two lavender love birds embossed in
+the corner. It was from Satterlee. The letter ran thus:
+
+      DEAR FRIEND: _When this reaches you I shall be far
+      to sea. My excuse for so long subsisting on your bounty must
+      be laid to my ignorance, which was only illuminated two days
+      ago by accident. I had no idea that you were paying for me
+      out of your own private purse, or that my ease and comfort
+      were obtained at so heavy a cost to yourself. Regretfully I
+      bring our pleasant relations to an end, impelled, I assure
+      you, by the promptings of a heartfelt friendship. I loved
+      the simple people among whom my lot was cast, and looked
+      forward, at the termination of my sentence, to end the
+      balance of my days peacefully among them. The world, seen
+      from so great a distance, and from within so sweet a nest,
+      frightened me, old stager that I am. God knows, I have never
+      seen but its ugliest side, and return to it with profound
+      depression. Kindly explain my abrupt departure to the
+      Scanlons, and if you would do me a last favor, buy a little
+      rocking-horse that there is at Edward's store, price three
+      dollars, and present it in my name to my infant goddaughter,
+      Apeli Scanlon. To them all kindly express my warmest and
+      sincerest gratitude; and for yourself, dear friend, the
+      best, the truest, the kindest of men, accept the warm grasp
+      of my hand at parting. Ever yours,_
+
+      JOHN SATTERLEE.
+
+"It must have been the Hamburg bark that sailed last night," quavered
+Scanlon.
+
+Of course, Skiddy blew that Scanlon up. He wiped the floor with him. He
+roared at him till the great hulking creature shook like jelly, and his
+round black eyes suffused with tears. He made him sit down then and
+there, swore him on the consular Bible, and made him dictate a
+statement, which was signed in the presence of the cook. This
+accomplished, Alfred was ingloriously dismissed, while the consul went
+out on the back veranda, and sat there in his pajamas, to think the
+matter over.
+
+It seemed a pity to rouse the Department. The Department's interest in
+Satterlee could at no time have been called brisk, and it had now ebbed
+to a negligible quantity. But it would be just like the Department to
+get suddenly galvanized, and hysterically head Satterlee off at Hamburg.
+This would mean his ultimate return to Samoa, and a perpetual further
+outlay of fifty-five dollars from a hard-earned salary. No, he wouldn't
+worry the Department.... Let sleeping dogs lie. There were better ways
+of spending fifty-five dollars a month.
+
+That night the consul had champagne at dinner, and drank a silent toast:
+
+"Good luck to him, poor old devil!"
+
+
+
+
+FORTY YEARS BETWEEN
+
+
+"What am I to enter in the log, sir?" asked Mr. Francis, the first
+lieutenant.
+
+"There's an old-fashioned word for it," said Captain Hadow grimly.
+
+"Had it been my brother it couldn't have hurt me more," said Mr.
+Francis.
+
+"Everybody loved that boy."
+
+"It will break his father's heart, sir."
+
+"A deserter, by God!"
+
+"He had everything in the world," said Francis, in the tone of a man who
+himself had fought hard for every step. "He had influence, money of his
+own, brains, a splendid professional future, everything!"
+
+"All thrown away like that," said Captain Hadow, with a gesture of his
+hand.
+
+"And the handsomest fellow I believe I ever saw," said Mr. Francis.
+
+"The pick of the basket," agreed Hadow.
+
+"And to think," continued Mr. Francis, "that I must sit down at my desk
+and write: 'Past Midshipman John de Vigne Garrard, Deserter.'"
+
+The pair were pacing the quarter-deck of H.M.S. _Dauntless_ as she lay
+at anchor within the reef. It was at Borabora, one of the Society
+Islands, and the time forty years ago. The wonderful old rock, rising
+sheer naked and frowning from the bluest water in the world, seemed to
+those at its foot as though it were holding up the very sky itself.
+Precipice upon precipice dizzily scaled the basaltic heights, giving
+here and there, on little shelves and crannies, a foothold for a vivid
+vegetation. The peak itself, a landmark at sea for ninety miles around,
+was half-hidden in the gloom of squalls and scud, and sometimes, for a
+moment, it would be altogether lost to view in the fierce murkiness of
+driving rain. Below the mountain, on the flat shore of the lagoon, an
+uninterrupted belt of palms concealed the little villages of the
+islanders. Here, in idyllic peace, a population of extraordinary
+attractiveness, gentleness, and beauty led their life of secluded ease.
+Money was all but unknown; food could be had in abundance for the most
+trifling labor; clothes could be stripped from the bark of trees.
+Nature, giving with both hands, was repaid with an usury of poetry and
+song; and these happy people, children forever at heart, well mannered,
+gay, and instinct with an untamed nobility, bore themselves with the
+grace of those whom the gods loved.
+
+"As like as not he is watching us now from somewhere up there," said the
+captain, sweeping the summits with his glass.
+
+"I doubt it, sir," returned Mr. Francis. "It's my conviction he isn't a
+cable's length behind the village."
+
+"Did you offer the reward?" asked the captain.
+
+The first lieutenant looked embarrassed.
+
+"I told you to offer fifty pounds," said the captain tartly.
+
+"I ventured to raise it to a hundred, sir," said Mr. Francis. "We talked
+it over in the wardroom, and we thought we wouldn't risk the boy for a
+matter of a few pounds between us."
+
+"I wonder if the mess would have done the same for _me_?" observed the
+captain.
+
+"We hardly look forward to your putting yourself in that position, sir,"
+said Mr. Francis.
+
+"No, by God!" said the captain. "When I quit her Majesty's service it
+will be neither for pique nor for love."
+
+"No, indeed, sir," agreed the first lieutenant.
+
+"I've had my follies, too, Mr. Francis," said the captain. "Every man
+who is worth anything has some time or other made a fool of himself
+about a woman. I don't pretend to be better than my neighbors. I can't
+forget I was once young myself."
+
+"I'm afraid even a hundred pounds isn't going to fetch him," said Mr.
+Francis. "I could see it in the king's eyes he meant to keep the boy."
+
+"The lady in the case is the king's sister, I suppose--" said the
+captain, "that tall slip of a girl who was always making such
+sheep's-eyes at Jack. Gad! I don't wonder he preferred a bower in Eden
+with her to the steerage of a man-of-war and a pack of young devils
+incarnate! Who knows what might not have happened if she had made
+sheep's-eyes at me, Mr. Francis!"
+
+"Very true, sir, very true," returned Mr. Francis, who had no sense of
+humor.
+
+"She's about the sweetest thing I ever saw," went on the captain.
+
+The two men laughed.
+
+"I hope to goodness he'll be the only one," said Mr. Francis. "The fact
+is, the whole ship's in love; even the lower deck is off its feed; the
+boatswain says they're messing up the rigging with true-lovers' knots,
+and I'm told the marines are writing poetry."
+
+"Ah, if it had been anyone but him!" exclaimed the captain.
+
+"It's horrible to call him a deserter," said Francis.
+
+"Don't let's do it," said the captain.
+
+"We have to say something, sir," returned the first lieutenant
+helplessly.
+
+"One can always lie, I suppose," said Hadow.
+
+"There's nothing I wouldn't do myself for Jack Garrard," volunteered Mr.
+Francis.
+
+"Why not say he was kidnapped here by the hill tribes?" said Hadow. "We
+aren't certain sure he wasn't, and no one can deny but what he might
+have been."
+
+"But the admiral would be bound to inquire into it," said Mr. Francis.
+"Sooner or later he'd send a ship."
+
+"Trust Jack to do his own lying when she gets here," said Hadow.
+"Besides, he'll be sick of the whole thing by that time and only too
+glad to step aboard."
+
+"But won't we be asked why _we_ didn't rescue him?" asked Francis.
+
+"No, no--I have it!" cried the captain.
+
+"It's certainly a case for stretching a point, sir," said Mr. Francis.
+
+"Enter in the log," said the captain, speaking slowly and thoughtfully,
+"that Passed Midshipman John de Vigne Garrard, failing to report himself
+at the expiration of his leave, was afterwards discovered to have been
+kidnapped by the hill tribes of Borabora Island. On my threatening to
+land a party to recover him, I was dissuaded by King George, who cleared
+himself of any personal responsibility in the matter, and who promised,
+if only I would give him time, to recover the man without bloodshed or
+any cost to her Majesty's Government. The king urged that the use of
+force would imperil the officer's life, which otherwise he had every
+confidence would be spared."
+
+"Very good, sir," said Mr. Francis.
+
+"You'll give old George a flaming character," added Hadow.
+
+"Very good, sir," said Mr. Francis.
+
+"Pile it on about his reverence for the Queen, and the way he gave beef
+to the ship," said Hadow.
+
+"And what then, sir?" inquired Mr. Francis.
+
+"Well, you know," went on Hadow, "my orders down here leave me a pretty
+wide latitude. You can't tie down a surveying ship in wild waters the
+way you can a simple patrol. By God, sir, I'll put the ship back here in
+nine months and retake Master Johnny Garrard."
+
+"If he has any realization of his position he will then go down on his
+knees and thank you, sir," said Mr. Francis.
+
+"He's more likely to come aboard whistling!" exclaimed the captain.
+
+"Of course, it will involve a little--insincerity," said Mr. Francis.
+
+"You mean we'll have to lie like hell!" said the captain.
+
+"Well, yes," observed Mr. Francis.
+
+"I hope that's understood," said the captain. "But I can't bear to see a
+fine lad ruined for a bit of squeamishness. Were he thirty he might go
+hang; but nineteen--Good Lord! one must have a little mercy."
+
+"Where would any of us be now, sir," said Mr. Francis, "if we had each
+of us received full measure for a boyish error?"
+
+"I know I was a rotten bad egg myself," said Captain Hadow.
+
+"If I may say it without offense, sir," said Mr. Francis, "I think you
+are taking a very noble course in respect to this unfortunate lad."
+
+"Of course, I don't want you to think I justify desertion," said Hadow
+quickly, not ill pleased at the compliment. "Gad, sir, it's a shocking
+thing; bar actual cowardice, I positively know nothing worse. Were Jack
+my son, I'd rather see him stretched dead at my feet. I tell you, Mr.
+Francis, that when I first heard the news I was stunned; I felt myself
+trembling; the dishonor, the infamy of it struck me here." Captain Hadow
+laid his hand on his heart.
+
+Mr. Francis nodded a silent assent.
+
+"But we'll save him!" cried the captain. "We won't permit this ugly
+business to blast his life."
+
+"You may count, Captain Hadow, on our most loyal and hearty support,"
+said Mr. Francis.
+
+"Thank you," said the captain; "and you will pass the word along that
+the subject is one not to be discussed."
+
+"Quite so, sir," said the first lieutenant.
+
+"Not a word!" exclaimed the captain; "and of course you will cancel the
+reward before we sail. You might even coach old George a bit about the
+hill tribes. But, of course, not a whisper that we're ever coming
+back."
+
+"No, sir," said Mr. Francis.
+
+"That must go no farther than you and me," said Hadow.
+
+"It shall not, sir," returned the first lieutenant.
+
+"We shall sail to-night at the turn of the tide," said the captain.
+
+"Very good, sir," said Mr. Francis.
+
+It was not nine months--it was fifteen, and some days to spare--before
+the _Dauntless_ again raised the peak of Borabora and backed her
+mainyard off the settlement. In the course of that eventful year and a
+quarter she had zigzagged the whole chart of the eastern Pacific; and
+from French Frigate Shoals to Pitcairn, from Diamond Head to Little
+Rapa, she had sounded and plotted reefs innumerable, and had covered,
+with a searching persistency, vast areas of blue water dotted with e.
+d.'s and p. d.'s.[1] She had twice taken the ground, once so hard and
+fast that she had shifted her guns and lightered a hundred tons of
+stores among the gulls and mews of a half-sunken reef; she had had an
+affair with the unruly natives of the Walker Group, and had blown a
+village to fragments, and not a few of the Walkers themselves into a
+land as uncharted as their own; she had tried a beach-comber for
+murder, and had dangled him at the main yardarm, giving him later on a
+Church of England service, a hammock, and the use of a cannon ball at
+his feet; she had poked her nose into cannibal bays, where women of wild
+beauty and wilder license swam off to the ship in hundreds until the
+marines drove them back with muskets, and fired at their own comrades,
+who in their madness leaped into the water and were floated ashore in
+the arms of naked girls; she had lain for weeks in enormous atolls,
+where the only life was that of birds, and the silence was unbroken save
+for the long roll of the surf, and at night the ghostly scurrying of
+turtles over the sand; she had been everywhere in those labyrinthine
+seas, those haunts of romance and mystery, with love, danger, and death
+always close aboard.
+
+It was morning when Hadow raised the island, a fleecy speck of cloud
+against the sky line, and he shortened sail at once and lingered out the
+day so as to bring him up to it by dark. After supper every light on
+board was doused, and the great hull, gliding through the glass-smooth
+water, merged her steep sides and towering yards and canvas into the
+universal shadow. With whispering keel and a wind so fair and soft that
+one wondered to see the sails stiffen in the bolt ropes, the man-of-war
+stole steadily to leeward, with no sound but the occasional creak of
+cordage, or the hoarse murmur of voices from the lower deck. Hadow
+himself, pacing the quarter-deck in his boat cloak, was lost in reverie,
+while the wardroom and the steerage in unredeemed darkness held nothing
+but dozing men.
+
+By ten the ship was hove to close ashore, and the lights of the little
+settlement glimmered through the palms. The warm night, laden with
+exotic fragrance and strangely exciting in the intensity of its
+stillness and beauty, hid beneath its far-reaching pall the various
+actors of an extraordinary drama. With pistols buckled to their hips,
+Brady, Winterslea, Hotham, and Stanbury-Jones, four officers of the
+ship, together with Hatch, a flinty-faced old seaman who could be
+trusted, all slipped down the ladder into the captain's gig and pulled
+with muffled oars for the break in the reef. Picking their way through
+the pass, with the surf on either hand roaring in their ears, they
+slowly penetrated the lagoon and headed for the king's house. The
+shelving beach brought them to a stop, and all jumping out to lighten
+the boat, they drew her over the shingle and made her painter fast to a
+_pandanus_ tree. Then, acting in accordance with a preconcerted plan,
+Winterslea was sent forward to track down their prey, while the rest
+huddled together to await his return.
+
+Ten minutes, twenty minutes passed in palpitating suspense. A girl drew
+by wreathed in flowers; she looked out to sea, then up at the stars, and
+shrank again into the shadow. From the neighboring houses there came the
+sound of mellow voices and of laughter. A pig rooted and rustled among a
+heap of cocoanut shells. Half an hour passed, and from far across the
+water, as faint and silvery as some elfin signal, the ship sent her
+message of the time: six bells.
+
+Panting and crouching, Winterslea groped his way among them.
+
+"Come," he said.
+
+They followed him in silence, unloosing their holsters and grimly ready.
+A pair of handcuffs clinked in Hatch's jumper. They inhaled the deep
+breath of tried and resolute men inured to danger, and accustomed to
+give and to receive an unflinching loyalty.
+
+Winterslea, with keen perception, led the way like a bloodhound,
+skirting lighted houses and following devious inland paths. The
+comparative openness of the village began to give way to the ranker
+undergrowth of the plantations behind it. The path sank into a choking
+vegetation that stood on either side and brushed their faces as they
+followed in single file. A fallen tree gave them the passage of a
+stream.
+
+"There!" said Winterslea.
+
+The path opened out on a little clearing among the trees, and showed
+them, set on high, the out-lines of a native house. Like all Tahitian
+houses, it was on the model of a bird cage, and the oval wall of
+bamboos, set side by side, let through vertical streaks of light from
+the lamp or fire within. As the whole party drew nearer, they heard,
+deep below them on the other side, the pleasant sound of falling water,
+and realized the cliff they were mounting overlooked a little river at
+its foot. Here, in exquisite seclusion, Jack Garrard had chosen the spot
+for his moral suicide.
+
+Creeping up to the house and looking through the cracks of the bamboos,
+his comrades had view of him within. Dressed like a native in _tapa_
+cloth, with bare chest, and flowers in his tawny hair, the handsome boy
+was seated in a hammock. With her head against his knee, a beautiful
+girl was looking up into his face, one hand locked in his. In that land
+of pretty women she was the one that outshone them all--Tehea, the
+sister of the king, for whose sweet favor every man on board had sought
+in vain. And here she was, with her long hair loosened and her eyes
+swimming with love, looking up at the lad who had given name and honor
+to win her heart. The pair were hardly more than children; and Brady, a
+sentimentalist of forty, with red hair, sighed as he peeped through the
+eaves and thought of his own dear girl at home.
+
+Garrard laid down the pipe he had been smoking, and, in happy
+unconsciousness of any audience but the woman at his feet, began to
+sing. His voice had always been his greatest charm, and the means of
+gaining him the friendship of men much older than himself. It had won
+Hadow; it had won Francis. There was not a blue-jacket on board the
+_Dauntless_ but whose eyes had moistened under the spell of Jack's clear
+tenor. No one could render with such delicacy, purity, and sentiment
+those ballads, now so old-fashioned, that used to solace our seafaring
+fathers in the fifties.
+
+Jack lay back in the hammock, and with wonderful tenderness and feeling
+sang "Afton Water," repeating the last verse several times over. It was
+plain that something in it, some phrase or line, had deeply moved him,
+for he suddenly bent over and laid his face in his hands, shaking with a
+strange emotion. Tehea rose, and throwing her arms round his neck and
+forcing away his hands, pressed her lips to his wet eyes. Even as she
+did so Brady gave the signal for the whole party to move round to the
+entrance. He passed through first, the others close behind him. Jack
+leaped to his feet, white and speechless, his wide-open eyes those of an
+animal at bay. Brady, Winterslea, Stanbury-Jones, Hotham, Hatch, the
+familiar faces, daunted him like the sight of ghosts. Friends no longer,
+they were now avengers, with the right to track him down and kill him.
+
+[Illustration: "Jack leaped to his feet, white and speechless."]
+
+"Jack!" cried Brady in a stifled voice.
+
+The lad took a step back. The girl moaned, and tried to run between
+Hatch and Stanbury-Jones. The old seaman caught and shook her like a
+dog, tearing away the whistle she put to her lips and dashing it on the
+floor. Jack put up his hand and snatched a pistol hidden in the thatch
+of the roof. Brady, on the instant, leveled his own and thundered out:
+
+"Drop it, or I'll shoot!"
+
+"Shoot, and be damned!" returned Jack, and with that he turned his
+pistol on himself, and, placing the muzzle against his forehead, pulled
+the trigger.
+
+It missed fire.
+
+Before he could try again Brady had caught him round the neck, while
+Hatch, resigning the girl to Stanbury-Jones, ran in and snapped the
+handcuffs on his wrists.
+
+"Jack," cried Brady, "we aren't going to hurt you. We're rescuing you
+from the hill tribes. Man, you're saved!"
+
+"You never was no deserter," said Hatch.
+
+"Mind you back us up, old fellow," said Winterslea.
+
+"Give us your fin, boy," said Hotham.
+
+It was some time before Jack could pull himself together. When at last
+he did so, and began to appreciate the generosity of his captain and
+shipmates and their astounding concern to save him from the penalty of
+his crime, he underwent one of those reactions when despair gives way to
+the maddest gayety. He swore at Hatch, and made him take off the irons;
+he got out a bottle of white rum and forced them all to drink his
+health; he kept them in a roar with the story of his adventures, and
+laughed and cried in turn as he described his life ashore.
+
+"What does she want?" demanded Brady, as Tehea insistently repeated some
+words in native.
+
+"She says," said Jack, calmly picking up the whistle from the floor and
+touching it to his lips, "she says I've only to blow this and you will
+all be dead in five minutes."
+
+A hush fell upon the company.
+
+Jack, with an oath, flung the whistle from him.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, "I am grateful. I am damned grateful! If I live I
+shall try and repay each one of you. I shall try and be a better man. I
+shall try to be worthy of your kindness."
+
+He went round and shook hands solemnly with every one of them. "Damned
+grateful!" he repeated.
+
+"Let's be off," said Brady.
+
+"Now, lad, your word of honor," said Winterslea. Jack looked about him
+helplessly.
+
+"I suppose I've no right to ask such a thing," he said. "I know how good
+you've been to me already, and all that. But--but, gentlemen, she's my
+wife. I love her. I shall never see her again. May I not entreat a
+minute to myself?"
+
+"No," said Brady.
+
+Jack went over to Tehea and took her hand. He put his arms about her,
+and, unashamed before them all, pressed her comely head against his
+breast. He tried to explain the inexorable fate he was so powerless to
+resist; in incoherent whispers he told her he would break his chains and
+return to her, free in the years to come to devote his life to the woman
+he loved. He called her the dearest names, and begged her not to forget
+him. But she, with a perception greater than his own, swept away these
+despairing protestations with disdain. The daughter of one king, the
+sister of another, could she not meet force by force? These fierce
+intruders, with their rough voices and drawn pistols, who were they, to
+threaten a princess of the royal blood and carry away her lover before
+her eyes? If they were strong, she was stronger; and what ship cannon,
+she asked, however murderous or far-ranging, could penetrate those
+mountain recesses whither she would carry him before the morning? Ah,
+she said, it was for him to choose between her and them; between Britain
+and the island; between love and the service of the white Queen beyond
+the seas.
+
+"I have chosen," he said.
+
+Her eyes flashed as she freed herself from his arms.
+
+"I am hateful in my own sight for having loved you," she said.
+
+"Will you not even wish me well, Tehea?" he asked.
+
+"No," she cried, "I hope you will die!" He turned away.
+
+"_Siati!_" she cried after him in agony.
+
+He turned back to her, downcast and silent.
+
+"Remember," she said with sweet relenting, "that wherever thou goest,
+however many the years that may divide us, however wide the waters or
+the land, I shall be here waiting for thee, here in this house of our
+happiness; and if I die before thou comest here thou wilt find my
+grave."
+
+"Tehea," he said, "as God sees me, some day I shall return!"
+
+She took his hands and looked up into his face with such poignant
+longing and tenderness, that Jack's comrades, already uncomfortable
+enough, were quite overborne by the scene. Tough old Hatch snuffled
+audibly, and Brady could hardly speak.
+
+"Come, come, lad," he cried huskily, "you mustn't keep us longer!"
+
+Jack unclasped the girl's hands and suffered himself to be led away by
+his comrades. Stumbling and falling against one another in the dark,
+they made shift to find the uncertain path, Winterslea, in the lead,
+coo-eeing like a bushfellow for them to follow. Little by little they
+gained the sleeping village, and pressed on to the beach beyond, where
+their boat was already afloat on the incoming tide. They took their
+places without a word and pulled out in the direction of the ship. In
+the pass, rising and falling in the heavy swell, they burned a blue
+light, which the _Dauntless_ answered with another, and ran up a
+masthead lantern to guide them. A few minutes later they clambered up
+the ladder, the boat was hoisted in, and the boatswain's whistle was
+rousing the watch on deck:
+
+"Mainsail haul!"
+
+By morning the island had sunk behind them, and standing on the dizzy
+main-royal yard with one arm round the mast, Jack could make out nothing
+but a little cloud on the horizon.
+
+At sixty, John Garrard was a post captain, a Knight Commander of the
+Bath, and within a year of receiving flag rank and the command of a
+fleet. His career had been more than distinguished, and he had won his
+way to the front as much by his fine personal qualities as by his
+invariable good judgment and high professional attainments. He had
+earned the character of a man who could be trusted in situations
+involving tact, temper, and diplomatic skill; and no captain in the navy
+was more confidently ordered to those scenes of international tension,
+which, in spite of statesmen, so often arise in some distant place to
+menace the peace of the world.
+
+He had never married, and when rallied on the subject was wont to say
+with a laugh that the sea was his only mistress. No one had ever
+ventured to question him much further, though his friends were often
+piqued, especially the women, as to an implied romance in the captain's
+earlier life. It was known he supported two old-maid sisters, the Misses
+Hadow, the impoverished daughters of his first commander; but in view of
+his considerable private fortune this drain on his resources seemed
+scarcely the reason of his renunciation. Nor did it seem to his admirers
+that any woman could have had the heart to refuse him, for even at sixty
+he was a noticeably handsome man, and was endowed, besides, with more
+than the advantage of good looks, a charm of manner, a distinction, a
+captivating gallantry that made him everywhere a favorite.
+
+He was in command of the _Inflexible_ battleship, one of the Australian
+squadron, when she developed some defects in her hydraulic turning gear
+and was ordered home to England by Admiral Lord George Howard for
+overhaul. The captain's heart beat a little faster as he realized his
+course would take him south of the Societies. He spread out the chart on
+his cabin table and sighed as he laid his finger on Borabora. He shut
+his eyes, and saw the basaltic cliffs, the white and foaming reefs, the
+green, still forests of that unforgotten island. He was a boy once more,
+with flowers in his hair, wandering beneath the palms with Tehea. How
+often had he thought of her during all these years; the years that had
+left him gray and old; the years that had carried him unscathed through
+so many dangers in every quarter of the world! For him she was still in
+her adorable girlhood, untouched by time, a radiant princess in her
+radiant isle, waiting by the shore for his return. It shocked him to
+remember she was not far short of sixty--a fat old woman, perhaps,
+married to some strapping chief, and, more than likely, with grown
+children of her own! How incredible it seemed!
+
+But a word, and he might land and see her. But a word, and the questions
+of forty years might yet be answered--answered, yes, to shatter, as like
+as not, with pitiless realities the tender figment of a dream. No, he
+said, he dared not expose himself to a possible disillusion, to play
+into the hands of sardonic nature, ever mocking at man. No; but he would
+carry his ship close inshore and watch from the bridge the unfolding
+bays and tiny settlements of that lost paradise, and then, dipping his
+flag to his vanished youth, he would sink over the horizon, his memory
+thrilled and his sentiment unimpaired, to set his face for England.
+
+Dawn was breaking as he slowed down to leeward of the island and watched
+the shadows melt away. It was Sunday, a day of heavenly calm, fresh yet
+windless, with a sea so smooth that the barrier reefs for once were
+silent, and one could hear, far across the hushed and shining water, the
+coo of pigeons in the forest. Under bare steerage way, with the leadsman
+droning in the fore chains, the ship hugged the shore and steamed at a
+snail's pace round the island. On the lofty bridge, high above the
+wondering faces of his command, the white-haired captain, impassive,
+supreme, and solitary, gave no sign of those inner emotions that were
+devouring him. Along the shore the sight of the battleship brought out
+here and there a startled figure or a group; a couple of laughing girls,
+astride on ponies, raced the _Inflexible_ for a mile, and then, their
+road ending in a precipice, threw kisses with their saucy hands; little
+children ran out into the lagoon, shouting with joy; old men, in Sunday
+_parius_ and with black Bibles under their arms, turned their solemn
+eyes to seaward and forgot for a moment the road to church. A white man,
+in striped pajamas, was surprised at morning coffee on the veranda of
+his little house. He darted inside, and reappeared with a magazine rifle
+which he emptied in the air, and followed up his courtesies by raising
+and lowering a Union Jack the size of a handkerchief. The battleship
+dipped her stately white ensign in acknowledgment, as a swan might
+salute a fly, and swept on with majesty.
+
+With every mile the bays and wooded promontories grew increasingly
+familiar as Sir John was borne toward Lihua, the scene of his boyish
+folly. He looked ashore in wonder, surprised at the vividness and
+exactness of his recollection. He might have landed anywhere and found
+his way through those tangled, scented paths with no other guide but
+memory. There was Papaloloa with its roaring falls; there, the ti'a a
+Peau where he had shot his first goat; yonder, the misty heights of
+Tiarapu, where Tehea and he had camped a night in the clouds in an air
+of English cold. It was like a home-coming to see all these familiar
+scenes spreading out before him. He looked at his hands, his thin,
+veined, wrinkled hands, and it came over him with a sort of wonder that
+he was an old man.
+
+"That was forty years ago," he said to himself. "Forty years ago!"
+
+And yet, by God! it all seemed like yesterday.
+
+As Lihua opened out and he perceived, with an inexpressible pang, the
+thatched houses set deep in the shade of palms and breadfruit trees, he
+felt himself in the throes of a strange and painful indecision. He paced
+up and down the bridge; he lit a cigar and threw it away again; he twice
+approached Captain Stillwell as though to give an order, and then,
+still in doubt, turned shamefacedly on his heel.
+
+"By the deep nine!" came the hoarse murmur of the leadsman.
+
+It lay with him to stop the ship or not; a word, and she would come
+shivering to a standstill; a word, and the boatswain would pipe away his
+gig and the crew would be running to their places. His heart ached with
+the desire to land, but something, he knew not what, withheld the order
+on his lips. Let him remain silent, and the opportunity would pass away
+forever; it was passing now with every turn of the propeller. Had he not
+told her he would return? Had he not whispered it that night when they
+were torn apart? Did he not owe it to her to keep the promise of forty
+years, a promise given in the flush of youth and hope, and sealed with
+scalding tears?
+
+His resolution was taken. He ordered Captain Stillwell to stop the ship
+and lower a boat.
+
+"I am going to treat myself to a run ashore," he said by way of
+explanation.
+
+The vessel slowly stopped. The covers were whipped off the gig. She was
+hoisted out and lowered, the crew dropping down the ladder into their
+places at the peep-peep-peep of the whistle.
+
+"I leave the ship," said Sir John, not to convey a fact patently
+obvious, but in obedience to a naval formula.
+
+He was landed at a little cove where in bygone days he had often whiled
+away an hour waiting in charge of Hadow's boat. It gave him a singular
+sensation to feel the keel grate against the shingle, and to find
+himself once more setting foot in Lihua. He drew a deep breath as he
+looked about and noticed how unchanged it all was. There were some new
+houses in new places, and grass on the sites of others that were
+endeared to him in recollection; but it was Lihua, after all, the Lihua
+of his boyhood, the Lihua of his dreams. For a while he strolled about
+at random, walking with the phantoms of the past, hearing their
+laughter, seeing their faces, recalling a thousand things he had
+forgotten.
+
+It came over him with a start that the village was empty. Then he
+remembered it was Sunday, and they were all in church. Thank God, there
+was none to watch him; no prying, curious eyes to disturb his thoughts.
+But they would soon be out again, and it behooved him to make the best
+use of his solitude while he might. He struck inland, his heart beating
+with a curious expectancy; at every sound he held his breath, and he
+would turn quickly and look back with a haunting sense that Tehea was
+near him; that perhaps she was gazing at him through the trees. He
+approached his old home through overgrown plantations. It awed him to
+part the branches and to feel himself drawing nearer at every step to
+the only house he had ever called his own. As he heard the splashing
+waterfall he stopped, not daring for the moment to go on. When at last
+he did so, and mounted the little hill, he found no house at all;
+nothing but ferns and weeds, man-high. He moved about here and there, up
+to the armpits in verdure, in a sort of consternation at discovering it
+gone.
+
+His foot struck against a boulder.
+
+He had forgotten there were any rocks on the hill. He moved along, and
+his foot struck again. He pressed the weeds back and looked down. He saw
+a tomb of crumbling cement, green with age and buried out of sight under
+the tangle.
+
+It had never occurred to him before that Tehea might be dead.
+
+He held back the undergrowth again and peered into the depths. Yes, it
+was the grave of a chief, or of a woman of rank, one of those artless
+mounds of cement and rock that the natives, with poetic fancy, used to
+call _falelauasi_, houses of sandalwood; _oliolisanga_, or the place
+where birds sing; or, in vulgar speech, simply _tuungamau_, or tombs.
+These words, unspoken, unthought of for forty years, lost, overlaid, and
+forgotten in some recess of his brain, now returned to him with
+tormenting recollection. He laid both hands on the thick stem of a shrub
+and tore it out of the ground. He seized another and dragged it out with
+the same ferocity. It was intolerable that she should suffocate under
+all this warm, wet jungle; he would give her air and sunshine, she that
+had loved them both; he would uncover the poor stones that marked her
+last resting place; he would lay bare the earth that wrapped her dead
+beauty.
+
+He worked with desperation until his hands were bleeding, until his eyes
+were stung and blinded with the streaming sweat. Dizzy with the heat,
+parched with thirst, and sick with the steam that rose from the damp
+ground, he was forced again and again to desist and rest. He cut his
+waistcoat into slips and bound them round his bloody hands; he broke the
+blades of his penknife on recalcitrant roots that defied the strength of
+his arms; he labored with fury to complete the task he had set before
+him. Here he stood, within four walls of vegetation, the sky above him,
+the cracked and rotted tomb below, satisfied at last by the
+accomplishment of his duty. The gold on his sleeves was dirty and
+disordered; one of his shoulder-straps dangled loose from his sodden
+coat; his trousers were splashed with earth. But for the moment the post
+captain was forgotten in the man, as he mused on the tragedy of human
+life, on the mysteries of love and death and destiny, on his own
+irrevocable youth now so far behind him, when he had forfeited his honor
+for the dead woman at his feet. He called her aloud by name. He bent
+down and kissed her mossy bed. He whispered, with a strange conviction
+that she could hear him, that he had kept his promise to return.
+
+Then, rising to his feet, he turned toward the sea and retraced his
+steps. The people were still in church, and the village was deserted as
+before. He walked swiftly lest they might come flocking out before he
+could reach his boat, to torture him with recognition, with the
+questions they would ask, with their story of Tehea's death. Then he
+laughed at his own fears, remembering his white hair and the intervening
+generation. Time had passed over Borabora, too. The world, he
+remembered, was older by forty years--older and sadder and emptier.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He swung himself up the ladder, mounted the bridge, and put the vessel
+on her course. The telegraph rang, the engineers repeated back the
+signal, and the great battleship, vibrating with her mighty engines,
+resumed once more her ponderous way.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: "Existence doubtful; position doubtful," familiar
+contractions still on any Pacific chart.]
+
+
+
+
+O'S HEAD
+
+
+Silver Tongue loved Rosalie, and Rosalie loved Silver Tongue, and ever
+since they had first met at the Taufusi Club dance their friends had
+seen the inevitable finish of their acquaintance. They were invited
+everywhere together, and the affair had progressed from the first or
+furtive stage to the secondary or solemn Sunday drive about the Eleele
+Sa. The third, that of carpenters adding a story to the bakery and
+dressmakers hard at work in Miss Potter's little establishment, was
+looming up close in view.
+
+Never was a match in Apia that gave a rosier promise of success. Silver
+Tongue, so called by the Samoans on account of his beautiful voice (but
+who in ordinary life answered to the homelier appellation of
+Oppenstedt), had been making a very good thing out of the Southern Cross
+Bakery, and was regarded throughout Apia as a man of responsibility and
+substance. He was a tall, spare German of about forty, who, like the
+most of us, had followed the sea before fate had brought him to the
+islands, there in years gone by to marry a Samoan maid and settle down.
+The little Samoan had died, leaving behind her nothing but a memory in
+Silver Tongue's heart, a tangled grave in the foreign cemetery, and a
+host of relations who lived in tumble-down quarters in the rear of the
+bakery. In one way and another these hungry mouths must have been a
+considerable drain on Silver Tongue's resources; and though they feebly
+responded to his bounty--one by driving a natty cart and delivering hot
+morning rolls, and another by pilfering firewood for the furnace--the
+account (if one had been made) was far from even. But to any objection
+to this Quixotic generosity Silver Tongue had a reply ever ready on his
+lips. "I lofe dem like my fader," he would say in his deep, fluty voice,
+and the conversation was seldom carried further. When it was--by some
+one ill advised enough to do so--Silver Tongue would flare up, and
+recall with flashing eyes and a face crimson with indignation the
+ten-year debt of gratitude he owed his dead wife's _ainga_.
+
+Indeed, if Silver Tongue had a fault it was a certain moroseness and
+fierceness of temper, a readiness and even an apparent pleasure in
+taking offense, that made him somewhat of a solitary in our midst and
+threw him more than ever on the companionship of his own Kanakas; so
+that at night, when one had occasion to seek him out, he was usually to
+be found on the mats of his native house, smoking his pipe or playing
+_sweepy_ with his bulky father-in-law, Papalangi Mativa. I doubt if he
+had another intimate in Apia besides myself, and though I must confess
+we often disagreed, and once or twice approached the verge of
+estrangement, I was too much his friend and too mindful of the old days
+on the _Ransom_ to let such trifles come between us.
+
+I was, besides, Rosalie's friend as well, for old Clyde, her father, had
+died in my arms at Nonootch, and with his last breath had consigned her
+to my care. This obligation, rendered sacred by an association that
+extended back to the days of Steinberg and Bully Hayes, when in the
+_Moroa_ and the _Eugenie_ we had slept under the same mats and had
+played our part together in the stirring times of Stewart and the great
+Atuona Plantation--this obligation, I say, I met easily enough so long
+as Rosalie was a child and safe in the convent at Savalalo. But when she
+grew to womanhood and went to live with her relations in their shanty
+near the Firm, I began to experience some anxiety in regard to her. Her
+relations, to begin with, were not at all the kind of natives I liked.
+They had been too long the hangers-on of the Firm, and had seen too much
+of a low class of whites to be the proper guardians of a very pretty
+half-caste of eighteen. They had an ugly name, besides--but I won't be
+censorious--and it may have been all beach talk. But they were certainly
+a whining, begging lot, the girls bold and the men impudent and saucy,
+and I never saw Rosalie in their midst but it made me heartsick for her
+future.
+
+I did the little I could, and let it be pretty well understood about the
+beach that the man who played fast and loose with her would have to
+reckon with old Captain Branscombe. And then I got the missionary ladies
+to take her up, and as I never stinted a bit of money for her dresses
+and what not (as though Clyde's daughter wasn't worthy of the best in
+the land), she made good headway in what little gayeties took place in
+the town. Of course, I went about to keep an eye on her--that is, when
+they asked me to their parties, which wasn't always; and I remember once
+making very short work of one fellow, a labor captain from the Westward,
+who seemed bent on mischief till I took him out in the starlight and
+showed him the business end of my gun. To tell the truth, I never had a
+peaceful moment till he up anchor and cleared, for he was a good deal
+the kind of man I was at thirty, and he hung on in spite of me, keeping
+half the family in his pay while I kept the other, and he even landed
+the last night with muffled oars, when, instead of finding Rosalie on
+the beach to fly with him, he ran into _me_, laying for him under an
+umbrella!
+
+There were many who said I was in love with the girl myself, which, as
+like as not, was true; for she was one of those tall, queenly women,
+with a wonderful grace to anything she did, and magnificent dark eyes,
+and a way of smiling,--brilliant, arch, and tender--that made even an
+old stager of sixty remember he still wore a heart under his jumper.
+Yes, I had a pretty soft spot for Rosalie, though I had sense enough to
+know that God had never meant her for an old sea horse like myself. And
+lacking me--whom the weight of three-score years had put out of the ring
+(not but what I'm a pretty game old devil yet)--I could see nobody in
+sight I preferred half so much as Silver Tongue.
+
+So there was the situation till the war of Ninety-three came along to
+jumble us all up and knock everything to spillikins. Oppenstedt in love
+with Rosalie; Rosalie in love with Oppenstedt; Bahn and old Taylor
+working on the second story of the Southern Cross Bakery; Miss Potter
+doing double tides at the trousseau, and I, the friend of both, with a
+six-hundred-dollar piano on the way from Bremen for their wedding
+present. A fair wind, port in sight, and (say you) everything drawing
+nicely alow and aloft. So it was till that wretched fight at Vaitele,
+when the Vaimaunga came pouring in at dusk, bearing wounded, chorusing
+their songs, and tossing in the air above them the heads of their dead
+enemies. It made me feel bad to see it all, for to me these people were
+children, and it seemed horrible they should kill one another; and it
+made me sicker still to watch the wounded carried into the Mission and
+stretched out in rows on the blood-stained boards. Though not a drinking
+man, I braced up at Peter's bar and then went on to pass the time of day
+with Oppenstedt.
+
+I found him, as usual, on the mats of the native house, glumly smoking a
+pipe and talking politics with Papalangi Mativa. His lean, dark,
+handsome face was overcast, his eyes uneasy, and had I not known him for
+a brave man I should have thought that he was frightened. He was
+certainly very curt and short in greeting me, and I had a dim perception
+that my visit was unwelcome.
+
+"This is a black business, Silver Tongue," I said; though, to be exact,
+I called him Leoalio, which means the same thing in native.
+
+"Plack!" he exclaimed. "It's horrible! It's disgusting! They have been
+cutting off beople's heads!"
+
+"Fourteen by one count," I said; "twenty-two by another."
+
+"Gabtain," said he with a look of extraordinary gravity, "dere's worse
+nor that!"
+
+"Worse?" I said.
+
+"I have it straight from Papalangi Mativa himself."
+
+"Have what?" I asked.
+
+"Excellency," said Papalangi Mativa, "perhaps it is not high-chief-known
+to thee that I and mine come from a noble Savai'i stock, and that the
+son of my mother's sister, a stripling named O, numbered himself among
+the enemy and was to-day killed and his head taken on the field of
+Vaitele."
+
+[Illustration: "'This is a black business, Silver Tongue,' I said."]
+
+"_Aue!_" I said, which in Kanaka is being sympathetic.
+
+"Dat is not all," said Silver Tongue. "Listen, gabtain!"
+
+"I'm listening," I said.
+
+"The warrior that killed O was To'oto'o, the _matai_," continued
+Papalangi Mativa with the air of one announcing the end of the world.
+
+"To'oto'o!" I said in all innocence.
+
+"To'oto'o," cried Silver Tongue; "why, Rosalie's uncle, the _faipule_,
+in whose house this very minute the head of my murdered relation lies!"
+
+"'Pon my soul," I exclaimed, "this is really unfortunate!"
+
+"Unfordunate!" cried Silver Tongue; "is it with such a word you describe
+two hearts broken, two lives plasted, the fairest prospect with suddenly
+crash the curdain led down!"
+
+"I don't know what you're talking about," I said. "It's disagreeable, I
+admit, but I can't see what difference it can make to you and Rosalie."
+
+"An Oppenstedt," said Silver Tongue, "could never indermarry with the
+family of a murderer, and least of all with a family that had the head
+of my dead wife's relation cut off and carried with gapers and cries of
+joy down the main street of Apia and past my place of peeziness!"
+
+"Do you mean to say it's all off with you and Rosalie?" I demanded.
+
+Silver Tongue nodded grimly. "All off," he said.
+
+"And you're going to break my girl's heart," I cried with what I think,
+under the circumstances, was a very justifiable indignation, "because
+the son of the aunt of your father-in-law has had his head cut off by
+poor Rosalie's adopted uncle?"
+
+"That's right," said Silver Tongue.
+
+"Old friend," I said, "let me go before I say something I might regret."
+I got up without waiting for any answer and strode into the street, too
+consumed with anger to utter another word. I walked along the beach,
+stopping here and there to discuss the news of the battle with those of
+my friends I happened to meet, until at last I passed Savalalo and drew
+near To'oto'o's house at Songi. Rosalie was standing at the gate, and
+when she saw me she ran up, threw her arms round my neck and kissed me.
+I had never known her so excited or so gay, and even in the dark I could
+see that her beautiful eyes were shining.
+
+"Captain," she said, giving me a hug, "nobody will ever say a word
+against To'oto'o again, or try to belittle him as they used to, just
+because he's poor and lives on Seu's land, for to-day he fought like a
+lion and covered himself with glory!"
+
+"Took a head, or something?" I said.
+
+"A hero!" she exclaimed. "They are composing a song in his honor; all
+Songi is ringing with his name; and he was complimented for his valor by
+the President and Chief Justice! You must come in and see it at once."
+
+"See what?" I asked.
+
+"The head!" she cried.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I haven't the heart to write how the news was broken to Rosalie, who
+steadfastly refused to believe the truth until she had heard it from
+Silver Tongue himself. I had hoped he might relent, with a night to
+think it over and a letter from myself in the morning pointing out his
+injustice and folly. Perhaps, now I remember it, that letter was a
+mistake. It was a trifle warm in spots, and I dare say I let a natural
+irritation get the better of me. Be that as it may, Oppenstedt was deaf
+to reason and protested with undiminished vehemence that he refused to
+ally himself with the family of a murderer. Indeed, so ridiculous did he
+get on the subject that he sent to Sydney for a tombstone (I daren't
+write headstone, though it was one, about the size of a silk hat) and
+put it behind the bakery above the spot where O's head was buried in a
+gin case.
+
+When a girl has gone a certain length she seems less able than a man to
+withstand a disappointment in love. Silver Tongue simply clenched his
+teeth, withdrew from the Concordia Club and the Wednesday night bowls at
+Conrad's, and went on baking bread and rolls much as usual. Poor Rosalie
+drooped like a flower in the sun, and though she had pride enough to act
+a part and show a becoming spirit before the world, she had received a
+wound that I sometimes feared might prove mortal. I sent her to Tonga
+Taboo for a month, and she came back no better, her eyes black ringed
+and her cheeks hollow, and her smile (always to me the most beautiful
+smile in the world), with a curious, haunting pathos that I remember so
+well in the old slaving days among the Line women in their chains.
+
+You must not think I tamely acquiesced in this state of affairs, or
+allowed my old friend an undisturbed possession of the Kanaka quarters
+behind the bakery. Late or early I gave him no peace, and plagued him, I
+dare say, to the very verge of distraction. But I might as well have
+tried to argue with his bread or soften his brick furnace for any
+impression I succeeded in making upon him. In his crazy obstinacy he
+would listen to nothing, and I would find myself, after one of these
+interviews, in a state of indescribable exasperation and determined
+never to go near him again.
+
+One night, when I was up at Malifa calling on a dear good friend of
+mine, Sasa French, a charming and most accomplished young native lady,
+our talk happened to run for the thousandth time on this vexing matter
+of Rosalie and Silver Tongue. All of a sudden an idea came into Sasa's
+pretty head--one of those brilliant, clever, feminine ideas--that seemed
+to us, in that triumphant moment, to be the means of untangling all our
+difficulties. Though it was eight o'clock, and there was the risk of
+gossip in my driving Sasa French alone about the Municipality at such an
+hour, I put her into my buggy, whipped up my horse, and set a straight
+course for Seumanutafa, the high chief of Apia. He laughed a good deal,
+demurred somewhat, and was finally persuaded to squeeze his Herculean
+dimensions into the trap and start off with us for To'oto'o's house at
+Songi. Here, after the usual ceremonious exchanges, the womenfolk and
+children melted away and left us alone with To'oto'o, whose ferretty
+eyes betrayed no small degree of curiosity and alarm. This man was one
+of the few Samoans I never liked. He was a gaunt, dangerous,
+crafty-looking customer of about fifty, and I never had had any use for
+him since he had stolen my tethering rope one evening when I was calling
+on the king. Well, to get on with my story, we talked about the weather,
+and the war, and what an ass the Ta'ita'ifono was, and finally got round
+to the matter in hand.
+
+Seumanutafa began mild, for he was a past master in the art of
+graduation, and thought to go slow at first. To'oto'o was informed that
+he had to make _ifonga_ for the death of O and be carried on the morrow
+by the _taulelea_ to Papalangi Mativa's house behind the bakery. This
+_ifonga_, as they call it, is a sort of public humiliation to expiate a
+fault, and nobody's very keen about doing it unless they have to--for it
+involves rubbing dirt in your hair, and singing small, and suffering a
+sort of social eclipse for a week or two afterwards. To'oto'o's face
+grew several shades darker at the suggestion, and though I promised him
+twenty dollars out of hand for himself and two kegs of beef and three
+tins of biscuit by way of peace offering to Papalangi Mativa, he hemmed
+and hawed and finally said no.
+
+Then Sasa bore a hand and spoke beautifully of Rosalie, and how this
+unfortunate business of O's head had divided her from Silver Tongue.
+
+"If thou makest peace with his _ainga_," said Sasa, "lo, what is there
+left for the white man to say? His bond is that of marriage; theirs,
+that of blood; and if the last be satisfied, what room is there for the
+former to complain?"
+
+"But to be carried like a pig through the public street!" cried
+To'oto'o. "Preferable far would be death itself than that the son of
+chiefs should be thus degraded, and his name become a mock throughout
+the Tuamasanga!"
+
+"O To'oto'o," said Seumanutafa, "we know thee for a brave man, and that
+thou tookst this head in open battle, even as David did that of Goliath,
+and I swear thee thy honor shall remain undimmed for all the seeming
+appearance of humiliation. Besides, is it not written in the Holy Book
+that thou shouldst turn the other cheek to the smiter? Is it not said
+also that blessed is the peacemaker, and that the meek shall inherit the
+earth?"
+
+"Weighty is my grief and pain," said To'oto'o, "but what your Highness
+asks of me is impossible!"
+
+"O To'oto'o," said Seumanutafa, "this house is mine; this land is mine;
+the plantation _i uta_ is mine also. Thou livest under the shadow of my
+power, and it is meet thou shouldst pay in service for the bounty thou
+hast so long enjoyed. First I spoke to thee as one brave man to another;
+then as a Christian to a fellow-Christian; now I command thee as thy
+chief, and verily thou shalt obey!"
+
+"And I will add to that twenty, making it twenty-five," I said.
+
+"And Rosalie shall marry her Silver Tongue after all," said Sasa.
+
+To'oto'o argued a little more for form's sake, and blustered somewhat
+about the Chief Justice, and how he would fight the matter out in the
+courts; but Seumanutafa's tone grew peremptory, and the old fellow
+finally gave way all round. Then _'ava_ was brought in, the
+arrangements made for the morrow, and we at length said _tofa_ on the
+threshold, well pleased with our night's work.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I wish you could have seen us next day going through the town in a
+little procession, headed by To'oto'o lashed to a pole and borne by a
+crowd of retainers. There was a flavor of the burial of Sir John Moore
+about the whole business--especially the hush--and not a funeral note
+being heard; we marching with measured tread, the municipal police
+bringing up the rear, and Seumanutafa in the center, nearly seven feet
+high, and bearing a white umbrella above his stately head.
+
+Silver Tongue was standing in the front of his shop having an
+altercation with the Chief Justice about a ham (for he did a little in
+groceries as well as baked) as we hove in sight and began to file down
+the lane to Papalangi Mativa's quarters behind the Southern Cross
+Bakery. I suppose Silver Tongue thought our man was hurt, or something,
+for he came running after us with a bottle of square-face and a packet
+of first aid to the wounded, elbowing his way excitedly through the
+crowd to where we had deposited To'oto'o at the feet of Papalangi
+Mativa. He was the most astonished baker in the South Seas as he saw who
+lay there in the jumble of beef and biscuit, and for a moment was too
+stupefied to let out a word.
+
+I don't mean to go into the speech-making part of the performance, for
+what between Seumanutafa and Papalangi Mativa, and the talking-man Sasa
+had lent me for the occasion, and a divinity student who happened along,
+and somebody who said he was Fale Upolu and spoke for the entire Group,
+and an aged _faipule_ from the Union Islands who seemed to have some
+kind of a grievance about his father's head, and the Chief Justice who
+had to butt in with the capitation tax--we were kept there a matter of
+three hours or more, until at last the principals officially made it up,
+To'oto'o was forgiven, and everything ended happily.
+
+"Now, Silver Tongue," I said as the meeting dispersed, "we'll consider
+that head affair canceled, and if you'll come over to my house to-night
+I dare say you'll find Rosalie sitting on the front veranda!"
+
+"And do you for a moment think," he said with a strange, writhen smile,
+"dat all dis talk and domfoolery will a gruel murder undo, and the young
+man cut off in his brime restore? Weel those lips, so gold in death,
+stir, think you, in the box where we laid him? Will my dead wife's
+family be less bereaved because of two kegs of peef and three tins of
+biscuit, or Rosalie's family less disgraced because her uncle was triced
+through the streets like a big? No, Gaptain Branscombe, I'm only a poor
+paker, but I'd count myself a traidor to my family were I to dake a
+murderess for my pride!"
+
+"Rosalie isn't a murderess," I said.
+
+"I meant niece of a murderer," he returned.
+
+I was too speechless with indignation to utter another word. In the
+course of sixty years on this planet I've seen many kinds of men, and
+I've learned to detect in some a certain look about the eyes--a curious
+light and a far-away dreaminess of expression--that seems always the
+sign or mark of an unflinching obstinacy. I remember that self-same look
+on Brand's face as we lay all flattened on the water tanks of the
+_Moroa_, and he blew the main deck off the ship together with three
+hundred human beings; and I guess the Christian martyrs had it, too,
+when lions tore them to pieces and bulls kited them on their horns in
+the Colosseum. Anyway, it was as plain as daylight that I had lost my
+time and money in bothering about Oppenstedt, and that I might as well
+give him up as the most incorrigible, stiff-necked, self-opinionated,
+blunder-headed ass and lunatic this side of Muggin.
+
+I gave him a wide berth after this, and took the other side of the
+street when I saw him coming; while he, for his part, would have
+cheerfully run a mile for the chance of avoiding me. I had cares of my
+own, too, about this time, what with the loss of the _Daisy Walker_, and
+my libel suit with Grevsmuhl, and other things to think about than that
+of bringing twin souls together. So the days drifted on and months came
+and went, and it seemed all over for good between Rosalie and Silver
+Tongue. Then that labor captain turned up again, him I had had trouble
+with before, a black-eyed, fierce, handsome little fellow, who was
+hotter than ever after my girl. Rosalie was just in the humor to do
+something awful, for she was desperately unhappy, with spells of wild
+gayety between, and a recklessness about herself that frightened me more
+than I can tell. She laughed in my face when I warned her about the
+labor captain, and told me straight out she was only a half-caste and it
+didn't matter what became of her. And from the way she carried on and
+got herself talked about from one end of the beach to the other, it
+began to look as though she meant what she said. Altogether I felt
+pretty blue about her, and savage enough against Silver Tongue to
+have--Well, what on earth could I do? What could anybody do? Why had God
+ever made such a silly ass of a baker?
+
+One day I got a note from Sasa French that took me up to Malifa at a
+tearing run. Scanlon, the half-caste policeman, was there, and when I
+had listened to his story I threw my hat in the air and shouted like a
+boy, and Sasa and I waltzed up and down the veranda to the petrifaction
+of two missionary ladies who happened to be passing in tow of some
+square-toes from the Home Society. Sasa and I plumped into a buggy, and
+with Scanlon on horseback pounding behind us we made all sail for
+Seumanutafa's. Bidding him follow, we then raced off to Mulinu'u, where,
+sure enough, we found a young man named Tautala in one of the houses,
+who brought out the music box and very soon satisfied me as to the truth
+of what Scanlon had said. Then at a slower pace, so that Tautala might
+keep up with us, we walked to To'oto'o's house and taxed him with the
+whole business!
+
+At first he made some show of denying it, but what could he say with
+Scanlon and Tautala in risen witness against him? He tried to refuse to
+come with us (which would have spoiled everything), until Scanlon took a
+hand in the fray and let his imagination run riot about the law, which,
+as he was the official representative of it and wore a pewter star on
+his breast, soon settled To'oto'o's half-hearted objections. If anything
+else were wanted, it was the arrival at this juncture of Seumanutafa at
+the head of a dozen retainers, who added the finishing stroke to the
+little resistance To'oto'o had left. Then we all started off for the
+Southern Cross Bakery, and, as we walked slowly and naturally, attracted
+a good deal of attention; and as we told every one we met where we were
+going to, and why, we grew and grew until, as I looked down the
+procession, I couldn't see the end of it. The Chief Justice was sucked
+in. Likewise the President. Marquardt, the chief of police, joined us;
+Haggard, the land commissioner; some Mormon missionaries; two lay
+brothers from the school; a lot of passengers from the mail boat, with
+handkerchiefs stuck into their sweaty collars; Captain Hufnagel on
+horseback, with a small army of Guadalcanaar laborers; half the synod of
+the Wesleyan church in white _lavalavas_ and hymn-books; a picnic party
+that had just returned (not wholly sober) from the Papase'ea;
+blue-jackets from the _Sperber_; blue-jackets from the _Walleroo_; three
+survivors of the British bark _Windsor Castle_, burned at sea; a German
+scientist in Jaeger costume, with blue spectacles and a butterfly net;
+six whole boatloads of an _aumoenga_ party from Manu'a; a lot of
+political prisoners on parole; two lepers, and Charley Taylor!
+
+It was well we had brought Marquardt with us, for he and his police
+caught the humor of the thing, and on reaching the bakery formed us up
+in a great hollow square with one side blank for Silver Tongue, who
+stood and gazed at us transfixed from the shade of his veranda. Then
+Seumanutafa, Sasa, Scanlon, Tautala, To'oto'o, and I broke ranks and
+marched up to him.
+
+"Old man," I said, "if you were to think a year you'd never guess what
+brought us here to-day!"
+
+"It's O's head again," he said, grinding his teeth and casting a
+vitriolic glance at To'oto'o, "and if there was any law or order in this
+Godforsaken land"--he looked daggers at the Chief Justice as he said
+this--"that fellar would have got short jift for murdering my
+fader-in-law's aunt's son!"
+
+"He didn't murder him," I said.
+
+Silver Tongue's jaw fell. He looked at us quite overcome. For a minute
+he couldn't say a word.
+
+"Oh, but he deed!" he said at last.
+
+"It was Tautala that killed him," I said, indicating the young man we
+had brought from Mulinu'u, "and it turns out he sold your relation's
+head to To'oto'o for seven dollars and a music box." At this, smiling
+from ear to ear, Tautala held up the music box to public view, and would
+have set it going had not something fortunately caught in the works.
+
+"It's a lie!" gasped Silver Tongue. "It's a lie!"
+
+"Scanlon himself was at the battle," I went on, "and he saw the whole
+thing and was a witness to Tautala getting the seven dollars, and he
+made To'oto'o pony up four dollars more as the price of his own
+secrecy."
+
+"Four dollars," ejaculated Scanlon. "That's right, Captain Branscombe.
+Four dollars!"
+
+"So, if you are angry with anybody," I said, "you ought to be angry
+with Tautala. All To'oto'o did was to buy a little cheap notoriety for
+eleven dollars and a music box."
+
+I never saw a man so stung in all my life as Oppenstedt. The eyes seemed
+to start from his head, and he glared at To'oto'o as though he could
+have strangled him. Tautala was quite forgotten in the intensity of his
+indignation toward Rosalie's uncle. You see, he had been hating To'oto'o
+ferociously for six months, and couldn't switch off at a moment's notice
+on an absolute stranger like Tautala. Besides, his hatred for To'oto'o
+had become a kind of monomania with him, and now here I was telling him
+what a fool he had made of himself, and proving it with two witnesses
+and a music box. No wonder that he was staggered.
+
+"Now, old fellow," I said, "we'll call bygones bygones, and maybe you'll
+let us see a little more of you than we've been doing lately."
+
+"You mean Rosalie, of gourse," he said, snapping the words like a mad
+dog.
+
+"Yes, Rosalie," I said.
+
+"Gaptain Branscombe," he said, his face convulsed with passion, "that
+gossumate liar and hybocrite has made such a thing impossible. Far rader
+would I lay me in the grave--far rader would I have wild horses on me
+trample--than that I should indermarry with a family and bossibly
+betaint my innocent kinder with the plood of so shogging and
+unprincibled a liar. A man so lost to shame, so beplunged in cowardice
+and deceit that he couldn't his own heads cut off, but must buy dem of
+others, and faunt himself a hero while honest worth bassed unnoticed and
+bushed aside."
+
+"It was honest worth that chopped off the head of your father-in-law's
+aunt's son!" I said.
+
+"Gaptain," he returned, "there are oggasions when in condrast to a
+liar--to a golossal liar--to one who has made a peeziness of systematic
+deception--a murderer is a shentlemans!"
+
+"Oh, you villain baker!" cried Sasa, joining in. "You make _tongafiti_.
+You never want marry the girl at all. All the time you say something
+different. Oh, you bad mans, you break girls' hearts--and serve you
+right somebody cut your head off!"
+
+"Wish they would," I said, out of all patience with the fellow. "First
+he can't marry Rosalie because her uncle's a murderer. Now he can't
+marry her because her uncle's a liar. Disprove that, and he'd dig up
+some fresh objection!"
+
+"I lofe her! I lofe her!" protested Silver Tongue.
+
+"Come, come," I said, "you aren't marrying the girl's adopted uncle."
+
+"A traidor to my family? No, gaptain, dat is what I can never be," said
+Silver Tongue.
+
+"Traitor--nothing!" I said.
+
+"Oh, the silly baker!" said Sasa.
+
+"He speaks like a delirious person," said Seumanutafa.
+
+"Now about that ham," said the Chief Justice, belligerently coming
+forward and speaking in rich Swedish accents, "when I send my servant
+for a ham, Mr. Oppenstedt, I want a good ham--not a great, coarse, fat,
+stinking lump of dog meat----"
+
+"Let's go," I said to Sasa; "Captain Morse is holding back the _Alameda_
+for a talk, and I know there's an iced bucket of something in the corner
+of his cabin."
+
+"Wish the dear old captain would land and punch his head off!" said Sasa
+vindictively.
+
+"Whose head?" I asked.
+
+"Silver Tongue's," she returned.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sasa had always plagued me to get up a moonlight sailing party on the
+_Nukanono_, a little fifteen-ton schooner of mine that plied about the
+Group. From one reason and another the thing had never come off, though
+we had talked and arranged it all time and time again. Now that I had
+remasted her and overhauled her copper and painted her inside and out,
+the subject had bobbed up again; and as I couldn't make any objection,
+and as the moon for the first time in seven years had happened to be
+full at the same moment when the vessel happened to be free, Sasa
+informed me (in the autocratic manner of lovely woman dealing with an
+old sea horse) that the invitations were out, the music engaged, and
+that my part was to plank down fifty dollars, keep my mouth shut, and do
+what I was told.
+
+I perceived from the beginning that there was something queer about the
+trip, for Sasa, usually so communicative, could scarcely be induced to
+speak of it at all; and then when she did it was with such a parade of
+mystery and reserve that I felt myself completely baffled. However, like
+the jossers in the poem, it wasn't for me to reason why, and so I
+obediently ran about the beach, did what I was bidden, and discreetly
+asked no questions. I confess, though, that on the day itself my
+curiosity began to reach the breaking point, when I was told, with
+gentle impressiveness, that I was to remain in my house till the minute
+of nine forty-five, pull off quietly to the _Nukanono_, board her by the
+fore chains, and crouch there in the bow till I was told to get up!
+
+It was a glorious moonlight night as I got into Joe's boat and saw the
+_Nukanono_ across the bay, her loosened sails flapping in the first
+faint breath of the land breeze, and her booms sparkling from end to end
+with Chinese lanterns. The water was like black glass, the outer reefs
+were silent, and the downpouring air from the mountains was fragrant
+with _moso'oi_, and so warm and scented against the cheek that I doubt
+not but what you could have smelled Upolu ninety miles to leeward. As
+we drew nearer, the sound of girls' laughter, the tuning of musical
+instruments, the hum and talk and gayety of a large company, floated
+over to us from the schooner's deck, wonderfully mellowed by the
+intervening water and (as it seemed to me) softened into a sort of
+harmony with the night itself.
+
+However, I did not allow these reflections to put me off my duty or make
+me forgetful of the strict commands I had previously received from Sasa.
+I came up softly under the bow of the _Nukanono_, dismissed Joe in a
+whisper, and climbed silently to my appointed station. I had not been
+there a minute when I felt Sasa's hand on my shoulder and heard her say
+softly in my ear, "_Malie_," which in Samoan means good or well done.
+Then she slipped away, and I heard her with sweet imperiousness ordering
+about the crew and bidding them slip the moorings. We had hardly got
+steerage-way when I heard a commotion aft, a choking, angry voice, that
+sounded through the hubbub like Silver Tongue's, a quick, fierce,
+violent struggle, and then suddenly the companion hatch went shut with a
+bang. Even as it did so the fore-hatch followed with a crash, and
+everybody began to cheer. From below there rose the sound of thumping,
+smothered Teutonic protests, and a long, poignant, and unmistakably
+feminine wail.
+
+"All finish, captain," said Sasa, coming up to me cheerfully.
+
+"Would you mind telling me what it's all about?" I asked.
+
+"Just a little _tongafiti_ to bring loving hearts together," said Sasa.
+"They threw Silver Tongue down the after hatchway, while me and the
+girls we pushed Rosalie down the forehold. There they are, all alone in
+the dark, with five hours to make it up!"
+
+I could not help laughing at Sasa's plan, especially when under my feet
+I began to hear more frenzied thumping and more feminine wails. Then I
+recollected there wasn't five feet of headroom below, and that the
+place, even with the hatches off, was hot enough to boil water in.
+
+"They'll die down there, Sasa," I said.
+
+"No fear," said Sasa. "Rosalie is half Samoa, and as for Silver
+Tongue--if he get roast like his own bread nobody care a banana."
+
+"But, Sasa--" I protested.
+
+"Now you go flirt with some my girls," she said, "and don't bother your
+old head about nothings!"
+
+"But, my dear girl--" I protested.
+
+"They'll do very nicely, thank you," said Sasa, interrupting me, "and if
+they're hungry, isn't there ham sandwich? And if they're thirsty, isn't
+there claret punch in a milk can? And as for lights--true lovers don't
+want no lights!"
+
+"Well, Sasa," I said, "I dare say it's a bright idea, and that you
+deserve the greatest credit for arranging it all; but for the lord's
+sake, let me off the ship before you remove the hatches."
+
+"Oh, no," said Sasa, "everybody stay and see the fun!"
+
+Fun, indeed, I thought, as I heard a terrific pounding below, and an
+uproar that would have been creditable to a sinking liner. The deck
+shook with sledge-hammer blows, and a lot of glasses tumbled off one of
+our improvised tables. Then we heard what was obviously a revengeful
+wrecking of the whole ship's interior--the smashing of crockery and
+lamps, a tramping and a kicking and a throwing down of everything that
+was loose or could be wrenched off, together with a hollow,
+reverberatory boom of German profan---- No, I won't be unjust, and one
+really couldn't hear well. Sasa stamped on the deck with her little foot
+and cried out: "Be quiet, you silly baker!" But the silly baker only
+roused himself to a renewed ferocity, and, instead of calming down, went
+off again like twenty-five bunches of firecrackers under a barrel--and
+large firecrackers, too.
+
+Off and on he must have kept this up for more than an hour; then at
+length he subsided, finding, I suppose, that one German baker, however
+infuriated, was unable to make an impression on a three-inch deck. By
+the end of the second hour we had forgotten all about him, for heeling
+over in the pleasant breeze, and what with singing and telling stories
+and flirting in the moonlight we were all too happy and too busy to take
+thought of the stifling lovers below our feet. Occasionally I had a
+haunting sense of a day of reckoning, but I held my peace and forebore
+to disquiet my pretty hostess, who was the life and soul of the whole
+party aboard, and whose silvery laughter chimed in so sweetly with the
+tropic night and the rippling gurgle of water along our keel.
+
+It was past three o'clock when we picked up the Mission light and ran
+back to our moorings off the Firm. Then the question arose as to who
+would uncage our love-birds and bear the first brunt of Silver Tongue's
+explosion. I confess I was very little eager for the job, and felt a
+peculiar sinking in the region of my watch pocket as we unlocked the
+after-hatch and rolled it softly back, Sasa, with a bull's-eye lantern
+penetrating the gloom with a dazzling circle of light. It fell on the
+figures of Rosalie and Silver Tongue seated on a settee and locked in
+each other's arms. Rosalie was asleep, with her graceful head lying on
+Silver Tongue's breast and her long lashes still wet with tears. The
+baker, his face crimson with heat and streaked with rivulets of
+perspiration, looked up at us grimly through a sort of mist. I waited
+for him to spring to his feet and throw himself like a lion on my
+shrinking form; but, instead of doing so, he pressed his arms closer
+round Rosalie and smiled--yes, by Jove, smiled--and, if you'll take the
+word of a retired master mariner, winked, with a peculiar, tender and
+calfish expression that in anybody else would have been called skittish.
+
+"How goes it, old man?" I said.
+
+"Gaptain," he returned in the tone of a clarionet tootling a love
+passage in grand opera, "me and Rosalie invites you all to the Bublic
+Hall Thursday night to dance at our wedding!"
+
+
+
+
+PROFESSOR NO NO
+
+
+It was years ago that he came to Uvea (said little Nofo, as we sat side
+by side on a derelict spar and watched the sun go down into the
+lagoon)--years and years and years ago, when I was an unthinking child
+and knew naught of men nor their crooked hearts. He was a chief, of wild
+and strange appearance, with a black beard half covering his piglike
+face; a thin, bent, elderly chief, with hairy hands, and a head on which
+there was nothing at all, and teeth so loose in his mouth that at night
+he laid them in a cup beside him. He was landed from a ship that
+forthwith sailed and was never seen again--he and three tents, and a
+boat and innumerable boxes, all numbered from one to a thousand, and a
+nigger named Billy Hindoo to care for him and cook.
+
+The Government gave him a piece of land next the lagoon, where he
+pitched his tents and lived; and they put a taboo round the land so that
+none might cross, and also a notice on a board, saying, "Be careful of
+the white man." Here he unpacked his things, and arranged a place for
+Billy Hindoo, and another place, open at the sides, where at a table he
+was daily served with sardines and bottled beer. He was named Professor,
+and his occupation, unlike that of all other white men, was to look at
+dead fish through bits of glass. He was a man of no kindness nor
+accomplishments, meanly solitary, and, in spite of two pairs of
+spectacles worn the one on the other, he was almost blind besides. Were
+you to come near him, he would scream out, "No, no!" Were you even to
+touch his bits of glass, or finger his sticky shadow pictures in the
+pool, he would run at you, crying, "No, no!" Were you to approach him as
+he bathed in the lagoon, marveling at his unsightliness, he would beat
+the water like one delirious, and scream again, "No, no!" So, in time,
+his name became changed from Professor into No No, or, as many called
+him in one word, Professor No No; and we all grew to hate him, as did
+also Billy Hindoo, who was generous and loving, and gave away
+unstintedly sardines and biscuit to those he favored.
+
+But Professor No No, unexpectedly returning in his boat with a new dead
+fish no bigger than that (a fish, too, of so little worth that one
+couldn't eat it without feeling ill for the succeeding week), discovered
+Billy Hindoo dividing a tin of biscuit among the girls with whom he had
+made friends. The rage of Professor No No was without limit, and he ran
+at Billy Hindoo and choked him with his hairy hands, and beat him over
+the body with a stick, and drove him away with execrations. Then he sat
+down at the table and drank bottled beer, and held up the fish to his
+blind eyes, and at intervals shouted out, "No, no; No, no," as we all
+crowded about the taboo line, watching and wondering.
+
+The next day Billy Hindoo came back, but Professor No No repelled him
+with a stick, having counted the beer and the sardines and the biscuit,
+and found many missing. Then Billy Hindoo sought a place in the house of
+Tamua, and being a man of subtle mind, though without paper on which to
+write, carved the date of his rejection on a tree, together with the
+names of witnesses who had seen him struck. He would fain have brought
+suit against his master before the ancients, but they were afraid of
+men-of-war, and thought it ill to interfere. But the anger of Billy
+Hindoo surpassed that of a woman whose man has cast her off; and,
+baffled in one direction, he redoubled his efforts in another, telling
+tales about Professor No No that made the strongest shudder to hear
+them; how, indeed, he was Antichrist, and that his coming to Uvea had
+been foretold in Revelations. Whether this was true or false, it was
+evident that Professor No No believed not in God; for it was seen he
+went never to church, and remembered (when strangers asked him if he
+were a missionary) that he would grow beside himself and roar, "No,
+no!" snorting like a suffocating person.
+
+Now there lived in the village a chief named Malamalama, a young man who
+owned a fine house and much land, and was withal so handsome and gay
+that there was scarce a woman but whose eyes shone at the sight of him.
+And Malamalama's wife was named Salesa, and the strange thing about
+Salesa was that she was white. Her father had been a _papalangi_, and
+her mother (who came from another island to the southward) a half-white;
+and Salesa, the child of the two, was fairer than either, and a girl,
+besides, of wonderful beauty. It was this that found her favor in
+Malamalama's sight, for she was without family, and what Kanaka blood
+she possessed was that of slaves; but the chief must needs have his way,
+being a man of imperious temper and willful under advice; and so the
+little out-islander was married to him and elevated to the rank of
+chieftainess.
+
+Then her arrogance and pride, previously concealed by the humbleness of
+her station, broke out with the fierceness of consuming flames. Were you
+to pass her on the road and say, "_Talofa, Salesa_," she often deigned
+not to return your greeting; and when people came to her house she did
+not like, she would say to them, "Go away," like that, so that everyone
+was insulted and retired with darkened faces. Of course, she was not
+utterly without friends, women of contemptible spirit who fawned on her
+like dogs, saying, "Lo, is she not beautiful?" But they were only a
+handful, and by degrees grew less and less, for she was as mean with her
+property as Professor No No, and made the most trifling returns for pigs
+or costly presents. So in time she was left alone in her fine house, and
+though she had a sewing machine and a musical box, and goldfish in a
+glass jar, and an umbrella with a glittering handle, she spent her days
+in yawning, and her nights in telling Malamalama what a fool she had
+been to marry him.
+
+After the manner of men, Malamalama's love increased in the proportion
+of her disdain, and there was nothing he would not do to try and please
+her. He took her on board every succeeding ship, and remained for hours
+in the trade room while she spent the price of many tons of copra and
+pearl shell in filling a chest with purchases, saying, in her
+presumptuous way, "Give me twenty fathoms of this; give me forty fathoms
+of the other. This silk is good, lo! I will take a bolt." And
+Malamalama, who perhaps wanted an anchor for his boat, or a little,
+tiny, trifling pea-soupo of paint, had perforce to do without either,
+and paddle ashore again, poorer, indeed, than many of his serfs and
+dependents.
+
+On these occasions also Salesa showed a lawless deportment among the
+whites that put her good name in jeopardy and caused many to wonder and
+gossip. She would sit at the cabin table and drink beer and eat
+sardines, saying saucily, "Me white mans, too," as she joked and laughed
+with the captains and supercargoes. Or, if some one put his head down
+the hatchway, she would call out, "Oh, the Kanaka dog! Go 'way, you
+peeping Kanaka dog!" Whereat the whites would slap her on the back, and
+it was said they even placed her on their knees and kissed her. Be that
+true or false, Malamalama grew to hate the sight of a ship; and
+sometimes, when he and Salesa went on board together, he showed her a
+sharp knife, and said, "Be careful, you wicked white woman, or I shall
+kill you."
+
+She was as changeable as a little child, and had humors, too, of
+tenderness and contrition, when she would put her arms round her
+husband's neck and be-darling him, saying, "I love you! I love you!" and
+bemoan her contrariness and the fact that she was white. For though she
+was born and bred with us, she felt she was not of our race; and
+sometimes she would say to Malamalama when he reproached her, "Sell me
+to one of the captains for a whaleboat and let me go." But Malamalama
+only loved her the more, and his handsome face grew sullen and angry as
+he threatened again to kill her if she misbehaved.
+
+Now when Professor No No came to live with us on the lagoon, Salesa was
+beside herself with curiosity, and heaped presents on Billy Hindoo in
+order to learn about his master. But Billy Hindoo knew nothing but his
+own stutter, and though he took the presents and came constantly to
+Salesa's house, very little in the way of information was accomplished.
+At last, greatly daring, Salesa arrayed herself in her finest clothes,
+and with servants carrying gifts of pigs and chickens, went down to the
+lagoon to pay a visit to the stranger. She found Professor No No sitting
+at his table, looking at dead fish through bits of glass, and he never
+turned round as the party halted at the taboo line and coughed
+deprecatorily in order to attract his attention. Then Salesa, who feared
+neither devil nor man, took the baskets in her arms and stepped across
+the taboo, saying in a voice of sweetness, "Professor No No! Professor
+No No!"
+
+He sprang from the table and rushed at her, waving his arms, and
+screaming as was his wont, "No, no! No, no!" while she, overcome with
+terror, dropped the gifts and fled like a sea mew on the wings of the
+wind. That night all Uvea joked about her discomfiture, while she sat in
+her house and cried, and Billy Hindoo was invited everywhere to tell the
+story in the antics that served him in the place of a tongue. But once
+Salesa had set her heart on a thing she never faltered nor turned aside;
+and though she waited and waited, it was not as one conquered or
+resigned. When the quarrel came between Billy Hindoo and his master,
+she saw the means, in Professor No No's desolation and abandonment, of
+obtaining the satisfaction of her purpose. For the white man, thus left
+to himself, grew increasingly dirty and uncared for; and his camp, once
+so clean under the care of Billy Hindoo, became as a pigsty of empty
+cans and bottles. Nothing therein was washed, and the savor of Professor
+No No and his camp blew noisomely across the taboo line as one walked to
+leeward.
+
+One day, after spying out that he had already sailed out for more fish
+to look at through bits of glass, Salesa crept into the settlement and
+began to make it clean again. She carried away all the tins and bottles;
+she swept the disordered grass; she entered the professor's tent,
+filling his water-bottles, making his bed and decorating it with flowers
+and _laumaile_. Then, as she had so often watched Billy Hindoo from a
+distance, she spread the table with a clean cloth, and on it she placed
+a bottle of beer and a tin of sardines under a wire netting and three
+ship's biscuits in a row. Then she went back and hid in the undergrowth,
+waiting and waiting, like a warrior in an ambush.
+
+But Professor No No made no sign as he landed from his boat, nor did he
+seem to perceive that anything unusual had taken place in the time he
+had been gone. He drank the bottle of beer and ate the sardines and
+biscuit, never troubling himself whence they had come; and while Salesa
+waited and waited with a suffocating heart, he looked at dead fish
+through bits of glass. But day by day she returned to his camp with the
+assiduity of a mother to her nursing child; and by degrees growing
+bolder with custom, she no longer watched until Professor No No had
+departed, but moved here and there about his land, secure by reason of
+his blindness and preoccupation. Like a wild animal to whom one
+approaches with gentleness and precaution, thus it was with Professor No
+No in the hands of Salesa. First he saw her only at a distance as she
+cleaned and swept; then a little closer as she spread his table and laid
+out his bottle of beer and the sardines and biscuit; then it came about
+that she even touched him with impunity, and sat beside him in a chair
+as he continued to look at dead fish through bits of glass. At last she
+dared to speak, telling him softly the names of the dead fish, which he
+wrote down in a little book, and informing him also that her name was
+Salesa, and that she loved him.
+
+And she, so defiant and proud, became as another person; so that she was
+kind not only to Professor No No, but to others whom she had previously
+treated with contumely. She carried the white man's packages when he
+went abroad, his photograph box and all manner of apparatus and tools,
+and the bottle of beer and the sardines for his well-being, never
+heeding the sun nor the fiery sand. She sat with him daily in his boat,
+baiting his hooks and catching fish likewise, and grew wise also in
+looking at them through bits of glass, so that he no longer ran at her
+and cried, "No, no!" when she touched his things. On the contrary, her
+wisdom increased in such matters, becoming in time even as his own, so
+that she also took photographs, and hammered off pieces of coral from
+the reef, and grew excited over little, common, worthless fish that
+stung you if you touched them.
+
+It is not to be supposed that Malamalama watched with any equanimity
+this increasing friendship between Professor No No and his wife, or that
+the constant tale of scandal and evil-doing fell on heedless ears. He
+beat Salesa repeatedly with a stick, and she bit him in return all over
+his beautiful body; and their fine house, once the envy of all Uvea,
+reechoed distressfully with screams and blows. But the madness of a
+woman for a man is not thus to be set aside, and the more Malamalama
+beat her with a stick, the more ardent grew her love for Professor No
+No; and when he talked with her and argued, she would answer unabashed
+that whites were whites and Kanakas were Kanakas, and that it was ill to
+mix the oil and water of the races.
+
+"But he is overgrown with hair like a dog," said Malamalama, "except on
+his head, which glistens like a sting ray in the sun, and he is
+altogether hideous and frightening. It is not reasonable that anyone
+should prefer him to me."
+
+"But there is that in his head which makes him beautiful," said Salesa.
+
+"Lo! I have things in my head also," said Malamalama, "and I pass my
+life, besides, like a man, diving for shell, and cutting copra on my
+property, and attending to the affairs of the church where I am deacon,
+and finding everywhere a better employment than that of looking at dead
+fish through bits of glass."
+
+"Malamalama," said Salesa, "divorce me and let me go, and take thy
+choice of all the maids of Uvea in my stead. Professor No No loves me
+not, but I am his bondslave in love, and care for no other man but him."
+
+Now this was very good advice, and the chief would have done well to
+follow it. But there is in men a pride about their women that blinds
+their eyes to sense, and Malamalama, instead of heeding, grew, on the
+contrary, morose and willful. He listened more greedily than ever to
+Billy Hindoo, and to the tales the nigger brought him constantly of
+Salesa's misdoing; for Billy Hindoo was crazed with anger against his
+master, and against the woman who had so successfully supplanted him,
+and was eager to revenge himself on both. And one day he brought not
+only a new tale, but a bottle of gin he had managed to pilfer from the
+camp of Professor No No.
+
+Malamalama began to drink the gin, and the more he drank the more he
+began to feel the aching of his spirit. He stopped the passers-by and
+told them of his wrongs; he rolled over in the road, so that he was all
+dirty, calling out curses on his wife and Professor No No. He cried and
+cried, and staggered about and shouted, and rushed hither and thither,
+exclaiming, "I will kill them! I will kill them!" And all the while he
+drank of the gin with an increasing fury, so that he went at last and
+got his rifle and four boxes of cartridges and walked unsteadily toward
+the lagoon, weeping and laughing and beating the air with his loaded
+gun. And I, then only a little child, followed him at a distance,
+wondering and mocking with the others.
+
+Now on this occasion it happened that Salesa was away in the boat, and
+Professor No No, all alone, was sitting at his table and looking at dead
+fish through bits of glass. Malamalama stopped at the taboo line, not
+daring to cross it, and withheld, besides, by the notice on the tree;
+and he was so tipsy with the gin that he could barely shout, nor hold
+the gun up to his shoulder. But he fired, as straight as he could, in
+the direction of Professor No No, and shattered a glass barrel of dead
+fish at his elbow. Professor No No leaped in the air, so that at first
+we thought, erroneously, that he had been hurt; and he ran this way and
+that, dodging the bullets from Malamalama's gun. He seemed to believe
+that the taboo gave him protection, for, instead of bolting into the
+undergrowth, he raced around and around in a circle, and then inside
+this tent and that, so that it was laughable to watch him popping in and
+out like a terrified rat. And Malamalama, so overcome with gin that he
+could barely see, fired and fired and fired from the four boxes of his
+cartridges. Then, when all was finished, he rose and went home, while
+the children crowded the line and shouted, "Professor No No, art thou
+dead?"
+
+That night there was a meeting of the ancients in the speak-house, and
+all the culprits were there under guard to receive a judgment.
+Malamalama was fined one dollar for being drunk and fifteen dollars for
+firing unwarrantably at Professor No No; and Professor No No was fined
+fifteen dollars for having won Salesa from her husband; and Billy Hindoo
+was fined fifteen dollars for having given the gin to Malamalama and for
+the mischief he had caused with his lying tongue; and Salesa was
+surrendered to the matrons of the village to receive a lashing for her
+misconduct. Then Tanielu, the pastor, prayed that God's wrath might be
+averted from so wicked a village, and made a beautiful parable about the
+Garden of Eden and the serpent.
+
+One might have thought that this would have healed the matter, and that
+a punishment so nearly equal would have been submitted to with humility
+and grace. But, on the contrary, the quarrel went from bad to worse, so
+that Tanielu, the pastor, would say sorrowfully from the pulpit that
+Uvea was like another hell, but with four devils instead of one.
+Malamalama, once a pillar of the church, was degraded from the rank of
+deacon and expelled, becoming speedily dissolute and abandoned, opening
+his house for forbidden dances, and taking new wives in shameless
+succession; and Salesa, her pretty body red with stripes, found no
+consolation whatever in her white darling, who ran at her repellingly,
+shouting "No, no!" like a lion; and Billy Hindoo, of whom everyone had
+tired on account of his light fingers and calumniating tongue, grew
+increasingly burdensome to his adopted family, and spent most of his
+time in stoning Professor No No from a safe distance and demanding his
+wages even to that day, together with a passage at once to the white
+country.
+
+During this season no ship at all came to Uvea, though Professor No No
+watched unceasingly for one, and likewise Billy Hindoo, and likewise
+Malamalama, the chief; and Tanielu prayed and prayed and prayed without
+end, "Lord, send Thou speedily a vessel and rid us of these intruders."
+The white man, for all his wisdom, was cowardly beyond belief, and so
+fearful of Malamalama that the sight of Salesa made him tremble
+forthwith with apprehension. And she, repelled by her husband and
+dependent on the bounty of those that despised her, became as one lost
+to all propriety, and would run at Professor No No and clasp him in her
+arms and cherish him, he fighting and resisting with all his might,
+crying "No, no!" in a terrible voice. Were he to unmoor his boat, lo!
+she was there swimming in its wake and demanding to be taken in, lest
+she drown; were he to sit down and quietly look at dead fish through
+bits of glass, lo! there also was she beside him in a chair; were he to
+slumber in a shady place during the afternoon, he would awake with his
+head in her lap or with her kisses against his lips.
+
+So weak, indeed, was his heart, that he was not even grateful for her
+assistance against Billy Hindoo, who came constantly, this day and that,
+with unfailing regularity, to throw stones at his former master and cry
+threateningly, "Hi, yi! give me wages even to this day, and return me to
+the white country according to thy covenant." Then it was that Salesa
+would throw stones back again, or would hide in the bushes and try to
+strike the nigger with a knife, saying in mockery as she sprang at him,
+"Hi, yi! take that!" And once she came to him so close that she slashed
+him across the breast, and he hastened bleeding before the ancients and
+vociferously complained. Then she was whipped again by the matrons, and
+Billy Hindoo was fined for throwing stones, and Professor No No was
+fined yet a second time for stealing away Malamalama's wife, and
+Malamalama was fined for leading a life of infamy and riot, and Tanielu
+said again from the pulpit, "Hasten, Lord, or Thy servants perish!"
+
+Thus the days passed in unending strife and bitterness, terrible now to
+be recalled. When Malamalama took a new wife, the former wife's family
+would lie in wait and try to kill him; and other husbands, before
+exemplary and well conducted, growing restive to see him so successful
+in his unbridled wickedness, took in their turn the pick of the village
+maids, propagating hatred and disorder the like of which had never
+before been known in Uvea. Then the drought came, and the young nuts
+shriveled on the trees, and the sky, as far as one's eye could reach,
+remained like shining copper, without a breath. It was plainly seen that
+God, in anger, was laying His hand heavily on Uvea; and lo! He spoke
+through the pastor Tanielu, saying, "Repent, repent, or else ye perish!"
+
+There was a great meeting of the ancients in the speak-house; and one
+ancient spoke for Malamalama, and another ancient spoke for Salesa, and
+another ancient spoke for Professor No No, and still another ancient
+spoke for Billy Hindoo; and the whole matter was inquired into from the
+first day and debated in turn by all the ancients, and a final judgment
+at length arrived at. Malamalama was confirmed in his latest marriage,
+swearing with his hand on the Holy Book that in future he would cease
+his evil and cling to her, giving a fine mat by way of reparation to
+each of her predecessors; and Salesa was declared divorced from
+Malamalama, and she and Professor No No were ordered to marry themselves
+forthwith before the pastor Tanielu; and Billy Hindoo was commanded to
+go back to his master and remain within the taboo line under pain of
+death, and an ancient was appointed to visit him daily to lash him if he
+misbehaved even in the smallest matter; and then the whole meeting
+prayed first for rain, and then that God might send a ship.
+
+When the new arrangement was with difficulty explained to the white man,
+he was as one crazed, waving his arms and screaming out "No, no!"
+without cessation; and he persisted thus, to the scandal of everyone,
+until Tanielu, losing patience, struck him like that on the head and
+married him immediately to Salesa, whose face shone with contentment and
+happiness. In this manner Professor No No and Salesa and Billy Hindoo
+were escorted homeward to their camp; and then everyone breathed with
+relief and congratulated one another on so peaceful and satisfactory a
+settlement.
+
+But the ancients were still in their places when Salesa returned, saying
+that Professor No No had repulsed her; and behind her was Billy Hindoo,
+equally repulsed, who said his master refused to pay him his wages to
+that day or to send him back at once to the white country according to
+the covenant; and behind them both was Professor No No with his head
+tied in a towel, where the pastor had hurt him, cursing and reviling
+like a maniac.
+
+Then the ancients held another meeting; and lo! it was a secret meeting;
+and Tanielu spoke for God, and everyone made speeches in turn; and it
+was recalled, with eloquent outbursts, how peaceful and happy Uvea had
+been in the days preceding Professor No No's arrival. There were some
+who wanted to have him killed as a punishment; and others who voted
+against Salesa, saying it was she who was at fault; and still others who
+burned with resentment against Billy Hindoo, declaring that he was the
+worst of all. Thus, like a battle rolling to and fro, Salesa, Professor
+No No, and Billy Hindoo were each in turn imperiled; and when day broke,
+their fate, though they knew it not, had been finally settled by the
+ancients.
+
+Professor No No's boat was carried by twenty men from the lagoon shore,
+where it lay, over to the ocean beach; and with it was borne sardines
+and biscuit and beer from the white man's store; and the glass barrels
+were emptied, many of them, of their dead fish, being washed and
+refilled with fresh water from the spring, and their glass tops fastened
+tightly with cocoanut sinnet. Then, when everything had been made ready,
+Billy Hindoo was forced to seat himself in the bow of the boat; and in
+the stern were put Salesa and Professor No No, side by side, the center
+being filled with the cargo of provisions and water.
+
+And Salesa laughed and joked with the men, begging them to take out
+Billy Hindoo, or to give him a boat of his own; and saying wildly, when
+denied, that she was going where none might whip her now, to find a
+beautiful island whereon to live with her husband. But the white man was
+convulsed with fear, and said nothing in the making ready of the boat,
+not even "No, no" when Salesa put her arms round him and kissed him
+again and again on the lips; and Billy Hindoo shook like a wet dog in
+the bow, whimpering, "Hi, yi! me British subject! me no likey!" babbling
+deliriously besides of his wages even to that day, and of the
+unfulfilled covenant with its passage to the white country in a ship.
+
+Then the sail was hoisted and the sheet put into Salesa's hand; and in
+this wise the boat was shoved into deep water, and her bow headed
+straight to seaward. Then Tanielu fell on his knees and prayed that Uvea
+might be delivered forever and ever of such an infliction; and the young
+men formed a line with their rifles, ready to shoot if the voyagers
+showed the least sign of coming back; and across the waves one could see
+Salesa supporting Professor No No as the boat lay over in the wind, and
+her mocking laughter was borne back to us. And we waited and waited and
+waited as it became a diminishing speck against the sky; and waited and
+waited and waited until it disappeared. Then, lo! there were explosions
+of thunder and lightning, and the rain descended in torrents, and the
+little children all threw off their clothes and ran about rejoicing in
+the wet, while the elders looked at one another, and said, "Lo, Uvea is
+delivered!"
+
+
+
+
+CAPTAIN ELIJAH COE
+
+
+Puna Punou lies in 14th South exactly, though the writer keeps back the
+longitood for reasons that will soon be understood by the gentle
+reader--if the gentle reader is patient and won't skip. Not that there
+is any buried treasure there, or any foolishness of that kind; it's
+girls mostly, and pearl shell and cocoanuts, that Puna Punou produces,
+and you don't need no chart with red crosses from my dying hands to find
+any of them. But Mrs. Tweedie is still alive, and likewise Elijah Coe,
+and I'd be acting like the son of a sea cook if I did a hand's turn to
+hurt either. Of course it's an old story now, going back to the days
+before the bottom had dropped out of copra, and there was still money to
+be made in beach-la-mar and fungus. Oh, my, yes! a long time ago, before
+steam ever got into the Group, before law and order and compulsory
+vaccination, and an hour and a half of Deputy Commissioner every nine
+months.
+
+It was always a mighty fine island to look at, rising sheer from the sea
+to basaltic cliffs, and high needlelike pinnacles, and forested solid
+from the water's edge to almost the top; and off the main settlement of
+Fale a Lupo there was good holding ground in six fathoms. A tidy little
+island, indeed, and I'd never raise it of a dawn, and all its palms and
+beaches and little basket-work houses peeping out of the deep shade, but
+I'd feel glad all over again that it was there, and breathe in the
+fragrant smell of it like a child happy at getting home from school. I
+guess the people there helped a lot, too, for they were the handsomest
+in the Pacific, and it was a regular port of call for the whalers to
+take in green stuff, girls, fresh water, and firewood.
+
+In the old days it was the Rev. John Geer who ran the missionary mill,
+and taught the heathen to put their pennies in the plate and wear
+pants--not that they ever did the last to any alarming extent, except in
+the annual reports that were sent back to be printed East; while Mrs.
+Geer she homeopathed the island and inculcurated the principles of
+female virtoo in the young. But after twenty-one years of it the Geers
+returned home to Connecticut, and the Tweedies were landed from the
+_Olive Branch_ barkentine, to take their places in that section of the
+world's vineyard.
+
+Tweedie was a hay-colored little man, narrer chested and tallowy, but if
+ever there was a copper-riveted Christian from Christianville I guess he
+was _it_! Meek! Why he was happy to get slapped, he was that pleased to
+turn the other cheek; and if you took away his cloak, he was the kind of
+fellar who wanted you to take his panjammers extra. Had no spirit at
+all, and the Kanakas walked over him scandalous. But it was his wife I
+wanted to tell about, Alethea Tweedie; for if ever there was an angel
+from heaven, with the prettiest blue eyes, and hair like streaming gold,
+and the cherriest lips you ever saw out of a chromo, and teeth whiter
+than--than--(it don't sound right to say a shark's) it was that peerless
+creature.
+
+How Tweedie could have captured such a bang-up stunner was hard to
+understand then, and harder afterwards. A king on his throne might have
+been glad to win Alethea Tweedie for his queen, and captains and
+supercargoes would have knifed each other for a single smile, if she had
+been the kind to lead them on--which, Lord bless me! was the last
+thought she had in her curly head. I suppose she came from one of them
+little places back East where it's all women for miles, and they rate
+anything a man that can raise a whisker! Thrown away, that's what the
+beach called it, and misdoubted whether Tweedie wasn't a girl, too, only
+with drill trousers instead of panties.
+
+In all them brown faces and tanned leathery white ones you can imagine
+what a pink rosebud she seemed to be; and it wasn't like that she
+stopped at that, for she could sing like a nightingale and talk to beat
+the band; and her laugh itself was like music, sounding long afterwards
+in your ears at sea. Hit? Jimini Christmas, I should say I was hit! Am
+still, for that matter, with just the memory of her, though twenty years
+have come and gone, and I loved the ground her little feet walked on.
+Not that there was anything out of the way in that. We all did, down to
+Portuguese Joe, and Billy Jones's cousin; and as for Elijah Coe, he
+simply give one yelp and keeled over!
+
+Coe was the captain and owner of the _Peep o' Day_ topsail schooner, and
+had been trading about the Group for a matter of eight years. In all my
+seafaring days I never saw his match for dare-deviltry or courage,
+though a quieter man to look at there never was. He was about forty
+years old, tall and lean, with a nose on him like a hawk; and to see him
+stripped you'd think he was a boy, he was that straight and well set up.
+A fine man to look at, very quick on his pins, and kind of proud and
+silent in company like he was mostly thinking of something else. I
+reckon perhaps he likely was, for he was splendidly educated, with rows
+on rows of books in his cabin, and a cyclopediar six feet long. The mate
+said he knew everything in it up to R, not to speak of working lunars in
+a saucer of quicksilver, and reckonizing squid by its Latin name.
+
+No one knew how he had got the money to buy his ship, which was a
+remarkable fine vessel and fitted up regardless. Some said there was
+once a name on the brass bell aft, which had been filed down careful and
+worked over with emery paper afterwards; but I never could see no sign
+of it myself, though I never went aboard but I took a good look; and
+others who said it was Labor. He certainly knew a lot about the
+Westward, and I heard him, one day, giving Captain Rick the directions
+to enter Port McGuire by. But you know what a place the beach is for
+talk, and, anyway, heaps of good men and highly respected have been
+Blackbirders in their time, and I never could see no harm in the trade
+myself. But the gossip was that he had flown the Peruvian flag and
+emptied whole islands, though I never believed a word of it myself. It
+was remarkable, too, how he kep his people, and how they looked up to
+him, which wouldn't have been the case if he had been like they
+represented. There was John Rau, the mate, a bullet-headed Belgian, who
+used to walk just like _he_ did and copy all his little ways slavish,
+reading the cyclopediar, too, and stopping at R from discipline. And
+Lum, the China cook, a freak of a fellar, with coal-black hair all round
+his head like a girl's, and who'd out-Coe Coe till you'd split. The rest
+of the crew was just the usual thing--Rotumah boys, an Highwayman or
+two, and some Nieues--sometimes the same, sometimes different--like on
+any island vessel.
+
+It was some time before Captain Coe got on to the Tweedies, or Alethea,
+as I suppose I ought to say, for nobody ever took no particular stock in
+the _he_-Tweedie. He ran acrost her first when he was ashore doctoring
+some of his native friends, and handing out pain-killer and salts
+unstinted. They walked home together to the Mission house, standing a
+long time at the door, and he talking with his hat off. He must have
+been well brought up and used to meeting ladies, for anybody could tell
+by her face that she was pleased. She didn't seem the least bit eager to
+let him go, and once she took his Tahiti hat and held it in both her
+hands like she would prevent him. And he didn't seem to want to go
+neither, though he wrastled for his hat, very perlite and gay, and I
+could see the glisten of her white teeth through the spyglass.
+
+The next day he called in state, with the skull of a shark in a silk
+handkerchief, and a man carrying a crate of onions. Oh, it may sound
+common to you, but it's like sending flowers to your lady-love in Puna
+Punou, and I've seen a year pass without the sight of one! I guess he
+walked in on velvet, and it is certain he stayed nigh two hours, for I
+timed him myself from the deck of the _Ransom_--the beach being a great
+place to take notice, as I have said already--and what was our feelings
+when next Sunday the captain marched into church--yes, sir--in crisp new
+panjammers and a polkadot neckerchief; and I'm blest if John Rau wasn't
+there, too, likewise polka-dotted; and that there Chinaman tagging along
+behind, rigged the same, only with earrings extra, and taking a back
+seat out of respeck! Afterwards they all went up to the Mission house in
+a body, Tweedie jumping in with an address, and everybody singing except
+the Chinaman, who was made to stop!
+
+You mustn't think for a minute that we traders knew the missionary or
+that he knew us, or that the beach took any part in this except at a
+distance. There's no love lost between missionaries and traders. That's
+what made it so strange to see Captain Coe going the way he did, and
+taking up with all that nigger-loving and "Johnny, how's your soul?" We
+could only see one reason, and that was Alethea Tweedie; and the betting
+was about even whether he'd pull it off or not. But if we didn't _talk_
+to the Tweedies, I guess there was mighty little that went on there we
+didn't know of--whether it was turtle steak for breakfast, or the tiff
+they had about her wearing too gauzy a dress at the party Coe gave
+aboard the _Peep o' Day_.
+
+He did it up in style, with bunting and Chinese lanterns and the king,
+and afterwards there was fireworks. Oh, my, yes! a regular blow-out,
+with the crew in new jumpers and two boatloads of flowers and _moso'oi_!
+We all asked one another where it was going to end, what with the picnic
+next day, and him always at the Mission house. But we might have saved
+our breath, as far as any scandal was concerned, for, instead of up
+stick and away, with the lady locked in his cabin, like some of the
+beach had fondly hoped, what did Coe do but turn missionary himself! Got
+religion, by God! till you couldn't have known him for the same master
+mariner; while John Rau and Lum, not to be behindhand neither, cavorted
+into the holy swim with a whoop and a bang! The captain went off
+terrific--like everything he did--making Billy Jones's cousin marry his
+wife, and Peter Extrum marry _his_; and there was more half-caste
+baptizing and squealing and certificating than I remember since the
+tidal wave of Eighty-one!
+
+Coe put it all down to conviction and a change of heart, but anybody
+could see it was Alethea Tweedie who was _his_ religion. When he prayed,
+which he used to do tremendous, it was all the time to Mrs. Tweedie; and
+when he said the kingdom of heaven, you knew mighty well that to him it
+was the coral Mission house on the hill. He put her on a pedestal a mile
+high, and kept her at the top by worshiping so hard at the bottom. I
+guess she couldn't have got off without stepping all over him, and was
+just forced to be a saint whether she wanted to or no. Not but what she
+was as good as gold, and a pattern for any young white woman to go by,
+but her eyes always kind of melted when she looked at Coe; which was no
+wonder, as he stood six feet high and straight as a dart, and every girl
+in the island was wild about him; and she had an imperious little way of
+treating him like he was a favorite dog who she was proud to show off
+being master of. She sent him her canary, which was all she had in the
+world except her clothes, and wrote a little piece how it would sing to
+him at sea and soothe his rugged bosom.
+
+This wasn't all he got neither, for she was a great one with her needle,
+and did texts better nor a Sailors' Home. Coe's cabin was more like a
+little Bethel than the inside of a trading ship, for there was six of
+them, and a red worsted dog extra, playing with a blue worsted ball, and
+"Jesus, Lover of my Soul" and "Where is my Wandering Boy To-night?" The
+biggest joke of all was in the trade room, where there was "Honesty is
+the Best Policy," and "God Sees You"; and the boys guyed Coe about it
+unmerciful till he laid out Tom Dawlish with a fancy lamp, and said a
+gentleman ought to know where to stop. He was an awful thin-skinned kind
+of Christian when it came to any remarks being passed on Mrs. Tweedie,
+and Tom has a scar there to this day, though Coe made it up to him
+afterwards with a melodian worth nine dollars.
+
+But Coe wasn't the only dog around the Mission house. Mrs. Tweedie
+started up another, a scamp of a chief named Afiola. In every community
+there's some fellar who's at the root of all the mischief that happens,
+so that if anybody gets speared of a dark night, or a girl is missing
+from home, you know just where to look for who done it. In Puna Punou
+you looked for Afiola, and the chances were you'd find him drunk on
+orange beer and laying for trouble with a gun. Oh, yes, indeed, there
+was two to his credit, to my certain knowledge, murders both, and I'll
+bet a ton of shell to an old hat besides that he had a hand in taking
+off the Chinaman at Oa Bay. A regular bad lot, and, like every big
+scalawag, every little scalawag had to tail along with him, too, for
+company and mutual protection; so his houses was the kind of Bowery of
+Puna Punou, with the whalers going to him to buy girls, and all that.
+
+There were higher chiefs than Afiola in the settlement--five or six of
+them, at least, not to speak of the king--but none of them seemed able
+to do a thing to stop him. They were all a slack lot at any time, and
+thought excommunicating him enough, and taking away his communion
+ticket. I guess he had been out of the church for a matter of six years,
+and, as I said before, he was the scandal of the place and a terror.
+They were all dead scared of him, that was the truth, and, though his
+following was small, they were ugly customers and well armed, and could
+line up a dozen rifles in the twinkling of an eye. We often talked it
+over among ourselves how to break the gang up, but, as he always left
+the whites alone, and was even a favorite with the worst, it ended like
+it begun--in smoke.
+
+This Afiola wasn't of any particular age, because the natives don't know
+when they are born, and have nothing to go by like dates and sich. I
+suppose Afiola was somewheres around thirty, for he had two children,
+about eight or nine each, a girl and a boy, who lived with him in his
+house, together with Talavao, his old mother, Sosofina, his aunt, Oloa,
+his uncle, his brother Filipo, and a raft of other blood relations whose
+names I disremember. Like all the chiefs of Puna Punou, Afiola was a
+tall, fine-looking man, very vigorous, lordly, and pleasant spoken, and
+if it weren't for his pock-marked face and the wickedest eyes I ever saw
+in a man's head, you would have said he was a perfect gentleman, and
+handsome, as Kanakas go. I had never had a bit of trouble with him
+myself, and whenever I put business in his way he had always come down
+prompt with pigs and mats and _masoa_.
+
+It was a long time before he took any notice of the Tweedies, not going
+to church, and always busy raising a little hell somewheres. But when it
+came, it came with a bang and no mistake, and, my stars, if he didn't
+pull in the slack! He made up to the Mission house like he was their
+long-lost brother; threw fits of reformation till they took him back
+into church membership again; and not a blessed day passed but it was
+pigs or chickens or sugar cane or pineapples at the Mission-house door,
+and please, might their servant Afiola approach their Excellencies! It
+was as good as a play to see the rascal winding them around his little
+finger and doing injured innocent on their front stoop. To hear him gas,
+you'd think there was a conspiracy to run him out of Fale a Lupo; and
+even when he owned up to some of his misdeeds, it was like a compliment
+to the Tweedies for having yanked in such a black sheep. I read
+somewheres that the road to success is to trade on people's weaknesses,
+and the soft spot with the Tweedies was their desire to make a
+thundering success and leave all their predecessors in the soup. After
+having captured the chief white sinner, Elijah Coe, they were now
+hauling in the boss brown one, Afiola, and I guess they felt as pleased
+as a fellar who's bought a ton of shell for a condemned army musket.
+
+My, but they were good to that man, forever inviting him to breakfast or
+that, and sending for him first thing if they were in a fix! It was all
+Afiola this, and Afiola that; and he got texts, too, from Mrs. Tweedie,
+and red worsted dogs, and "God Bless Our Home." By the time they had
+engineered him into shoes and pants, no one daring to laugh for fear
+he'd shoot them, they promoted him deacon, and put him on the committee
+for reroofing the church. Of all mutton-headed proceedings, I never saw
+the like, specially as he hoodwinked them right along, and acted worse,
+even, than before. You can imagine Captain Coe's feelings when, rounding
+up a three months' cruise, he found this six-foot-three of black devil
+and hypocrite snugged in the Mission house like a maggot in a
+breadfruit. They say he went on awful, speaking out the truth before
+them all, and daring Afiola to deny it. But Mrs. Tweedie she got him
+outside on the veranda, walking up and down with her arm through his,
+and pleading and going on and begging to beat the band. It shows the
+power she had over him, that at last he went in and asked Afiola's
+pardon, and the next day sent him a case of kerosene by way of
+reparation. I suppose if she had told him to go on his knees he would
+have done it, being that crazy to please her in everything.
+
+On second thoughts, however, and after hearing how Afiola had been
+kicking up, he went to the king and tried to stiffen him to take a stand
+against Afiola, volunteering to do the job himself, if supported, and
+proposing to exile the fellar to Makatea, and disperse the rest of the
+gang about the Group gratis in the _Peep o' Day_. He said otherwise he
+was afraid to leave Puna Punou with such a scoundrel loose, and
+threatened to write to Sydney for a man-of-war. But Maunga the king was
+a saphead and a coward, and he couldn't see it Coe's way at all; and not
+having the sense to keep his mouth shut, what does he do but traipse
+around the settlement, telling everybody what the captain said and
+wanted.
+
+After that the Mission-house door was shut in Coe's face, and when Mrs.
+Tweedie passed him on the road it was with her pretty head in the air,
+and not looking. This nearly broke the captain's heart, and if you've
+ever seen a dog as has been kicked out by his master, you can picture
+Coe for yourself. He got very down and miserable, and talked some of
+chucking the Group altogether and going back to the Kingsmills, or even
+further, and how Henderson and Macfarlane were going to put on a steamer
+and run us all out. He tied up the _Peep o' Day_ at a hundred and forty
+dollars a week and nothing coming in, making the excuse she was foul and
+the copper needing cleaning; and when you saw nothing doing and asked
+why, he flared up and said you could go to hell! And all this, if you
+please, for the privilege of seeing Afiola sailing up to the Mission
+house and being honored guest, and Mrs. Tweedie smiling her prettiest,
+_vice_ Elijah Coe, fired! We fully thought he'd backslide onto
+square-face and female society, but, if anything, he grew more
+missionary than ever, and nearly lammed the life out of Freddy Rice for
+speaking disrespectful of the Virgin Mary! You see, Coe's religion,
+being as it was Mrs. Tweedie, didn't make no proper distinction between
+sects, and he just stood up for anybody who had his name in the Bible!
+
+Then thinking, I dessay, that absence makes the heart grow fonder, he
+went to sea again and put in a spell of two months about the Group; and
+when he got back he dressed up in his best with a red silk handkerchief
+around his neck, sailor fashion, and a crimson sash and patent-leather
+shoes, and the rest of him white drill, and went a-calling on the
+Mission house to see if he couldn't break into society again. But there
+was a wicked streak in Mrs. Tweedie, for all her pretty face and golden
+hair, and being too good a woman to love anybody but her husband, she
+found a queer kind of satisfaction in hating Coe, or pretending like she
+did, and driving him half-mad with the things she said to him. She
+regularly led on the captain to admit he loved her, and then jumped on
+him with both her little feet for saying it, till the poor fellar
+stumbled out of the house feeling he had disgraced himself awful and was
+never to come back no more.
+
+She wrote him letters afterwards on scented pink paper, which made him
+spend days and days with his head leaning on the cabin table, wanting
+the worsted dog back, and the canary, and saying she would tell her
+husband; and then saying he might keep them and she wouldn't! If he had
+treated her just like a Kanaka girl who was dead stuck on him, I guess
+he would have found out that women are much the same, whether with
+golden hair or coal-black, and that there is much the same colored devil
+in every one of them. But to Coe, Alethea Tweedie wasn't no human being
+at all, but an angel straight from heaven, and to think the angel hated
+him was almost more than he could bear.
+
+He turned crankier than ever, working off steam on Rau and Ah Lum, with
+twenty-five cents for every swear, and nothing at night but hymns. But I
+guess Rau and the China boy would have gone on their knees and kowtowed
+to a sting ray if Coe had told them to, for they didn't have no more
+wills of their own than a child unborn, and everything he said, went. If
+he had turned pirate, they would have followed him just as meek, and
+would have scuttled ships and made passengers walk planks with the same
+devotion and zeal to please him!
+
+But all this was by the way, so far as it availed the captain with Mrs.
+Tweedie, who passed him on the road as cold as ever, and received the
+swear-money disdainful, and never said "thank you" for it, though there
+was eighteen dollars in the bag and the biggest share Coe's. Afiola
+himself had been getting out of favor for two months. He couldn't
+manage to be deacon of the church one day, and the next pirating along
+the coast mad drunk on orange beer; besides, the Tweedies were getting
+to talk native now, and got more the hang of what was going on around
+them. So they give Afiola a sort of drumhead court-martial, and bounced
+him unanimous, and all the pent-up deviltry of the man came out of him
+at one lick, like touching off a dynamite cartridge. Tweedie preached
+against him from the pulpit; the other chiefs, slow as they had been to
+move before, now waked up a bit, and there was a general feeling in the
+respectable part of the native community that he was pushing things too
+far. You see, he had named one of his pigs after the king, and there was
+more scandal over that than for all the crimes he had been guilty of;
+and there was a razor-backed yaller one for Tweedie, and an old sow for
+the queen, and porkers for the princes, and he passed insulting remarks
+on them till the Kanakas went wild--those that weren't of Afiola's own
+family, I mean; and Afiola would laugh and laugh till his great pocked
+face grew a dirty crimson, laying on a mat with a Winchester beside him,
+and sniggering as they'd bring him orange beer in a calabash.
+
+I guess he thought he'd wind up by pulling off the biggest thing yet,
+for he had a kind of pride of wickedness in him, and gloried in being
+the bad man of Puna Punou. He wanted to top it all now, and do something
+that tremendous that it would shake the whole island from Fale a Lupo to
+Diamond Rock. Anyway, whatever he thought or didn't think, what he did
+was to waylay Mrs. Tweedie one morning about ten, as she was going over
+to visit the native pastor's wife, who was sick; and, tying her hands
+and feet together with sinnet, he put her in a hammock and carried her
+off up the mountain; and this, if you please, in open daylight, with
+scores of people looking on, while she screamed and struggled and
+fought, and they helpless to do anything against the line of Afiola's
+rifles--and Tweedie himself not four hundred yards away, organizing a
+Y.M.C.A. for untattooed boys, and explaining how they was to play basket
+ball, and learn arithmetic nights!
+
+When I heard the news, which was right off and the moment after it
+happened, I had only one idea in my head, and that was to reach Captain
+Coe as fast as the paddles could race me off to the schooner. It is in
+them moments that the strong man looms up like a mountain and one's cry
+is for a leader. But it seemed for a spell like it was a knock-out blow
+for Coe, and that he couldn't grapple with the thing at all, moaning and
+grinding his teeth, and tearing the red-dotted handkerchief off his neck
+like it choked him. When I tried to talk, he swore at me terrible,
+saying he wanted to think, by God! and I was to shut my bloody face; and
+ordering the mate and the Chinaman into the lazarette to get out the
+arms. There was a big store of them, which the pair got out on their
+hands and knees, the place being cramped and low and the guns furthest
+in; and they broke open boxes of cartridges on the cabin floor till they
+ran all over. Then Coe ordered the whaleboat cleared and went ashore
+with nigh all hands, every one of them with a loaded rifle, and he with
+a twelve-bore gun; and if you ever saw the light of hell in a man's
+eyes, it was Coe as he formed us up on the beach and headed inland in a
+crowd. The whole settlement was buzzing like a hornet's nest, and they
+were beating a wooden drum in front of the king's house, and everybody
+was running every which way, telling the news, and how Mrs. Tweedie had
+been carried off by Afiola, and all screaming out at once, like natives
+do when excited.
+
+Finding Afiola would be about as easy as the needle in the haystack, and
+the crews of a hundred _Peep o' Days_, and all the warriors of Fale a
+Lupo besides, couldn't have tracked and cornered him up the mountain. I
+thought Coe was acting like a hot-headed crazy fool to try, for they
+were bound to see him first, and could always hide if we got too close,
+or fight if need be, with all the points of the game in their favor. But
+that wasn't what he meant to do, not he, but surrounded Afiola's two
+houses, and took out everybody in them--Talavao his aunt, Oloa his
+uncle, Filipo his brother (who was sick on a mat), and Afiola's two
+children, Mali and Popo, and a raft of men and women, to the number of
+twenty or more all told. They were scared blue at the sight of the
+cocked rifles, and held up their hands like lambs for the Chinaman to
+rope them, which he did like lashing a chest and about as tender, the
+tears streaming down the women's faces. But there wasn't a spark of
+compassion in Elijah Coe, and he never give them a thought.
+
+He was at a white heat, and his finger was just itching on the trigger
+of his gun, and he never started for the beach till all the Bowery was
+crackling in smoke and flame. Not that our eighteen or twenty was the
+whole of Afiola's family in the settlement. I guess there was several
+hundreds of them altogether, taking it fine and large, retainers,
+hangers-on, and connections of one kind and another; but Coe's boldness
+took them by surprise, and not being in the secret of Mrs. Tweedie's
+carrying off, they weren't prepared or anything. But even in the time we
+were tying up the prisoners they began to turn ugly and bunch together
+and hoot, and all the way back to the beach it was touch and go whether
+they wouldn't rush us.
+
+Not a soul durst ask Coe what he meant to do as we pitched into the
+water and shoved off, him sitting there so grim and fierce, with his
+eyes smoldering in his head like coals; but there was no sound but the
+straining of the rowlocks, and a whimper or two from the women, and the
+swish and gurgle of the water along the keel. I'll never forget that
+boat ride if I live to be a hundred; the drums rolling and re-rolling
+around the bay, and that strange humming of voices behind us like the
+wind in the rigging of a ship, and Coe and the Kanakas and the Chinaman
+and John Rau and the men pulling. But as for Coe's plan, we weren't long
+kept waiting for what it was. The prisoners were bundled into the ship's
+waist, with Lum to stand over them, while the mate got out the kedge and
+brought the schooner broadside on to the mountain. Then they bent a
+noose and ran up old Oloa between the masts. It was no fancy hanging
+with a drop calculated to his height, but just the old-fashioned kind,
+slow and awful, and if the steward hadn't come round with a tray of
+glasses and some square-face I guess I would have just sunk right down
+where I was. The crew made one panic-stricken gallop for the side, and
+popped over, nobody trying to stop them, though Rau asked, quite calm,
+was he to shoot, and the captain said No. The Nieue steward was the only
+one that didn't go, but crouched down in the scuppers with his teeth
+chattering.
+
+Then Coe leaned over the rail and talked to the prisoners in the waist;
+told them that he was going to string up one an hour, children and all,
+till Mrs. Tweedie was brought back safe; and he ordered Lum to cast
+loose one of the old women so that she might swim ashore and carry the
+news. My, if she wasn't over that rail like lightning, and striking out
+for home with her skinny arms! Coe knew mighty well that Afiola had a
+string of people up the mountain keeping him informed of everything that
+happened--the Kanaka telegraph, we used to call it. Then, besides, up
+there they could see for miles, and Coe had kedged the schooner acrost
+the fairway so that Afiola might reckonize his relations in the rigging.
+You might wonder that such an unmitigated black villain would care what
+Coe did, so long as he had his wicked way with Mrs. Tweedie, and a whole
+trackless mountain to lose himself in; but there's an awful soft streak
+in Kanakas for their own blood, and we had his whole family in our
+hands, not to speak of the two kids. It seemed almost like a waste of
+lives to look up and see not a speck, or the least sign whatever, that
+was hid under the tree tops, and it was hard to convince oneself that
+Coe was doing the right thing, and that from those rocky cliffs there
+was sharp Kanaka eyes taking us all in, with Alethea Tweedie tied hand
+and foot, and Afiola in a sweat about his children.
+
+The captain sat on a chair at the forrard end of the house, smoking a
+cigar, and occasionally searching the woods with his binoculars. There
+was a stack of loaded rifles beside him, and a keg of dynamite with a
+loose lid to it. Some of the sticks had touch-and-go fuses to them,
+ready to throw if they tried boarding; and sometimes he would take out
+his watch and look at it hard, and every time he looked the people in
+the waist would set up a kind of a wail. At one o'clock we ran up
+Filipo, Afiola's brother, and settled down to another spell of waiting.
+Somewheres along of three bells we saw them getting a boat out by Pita's
+house, and lo and behold! it was Tweedie, with the native pastor and a
+divinity student named Henry to pull him. When they were close enough to
+talk, he fell on his knees in the boat, though it was half full of bilge
+and slopped all over him; and he besought Captain Coe, by all that was
+holy, to stop murdering the innocent, and rattled on fast and scolding
+like he was in the pulpit. We was to leave it to God, he said, and went
+on like we was worse nor Afiola, the pitiful hound, like it wasn't his
+own wife we was doing our damnedest to save.
+
+Captain Coe let him have his say, and then he leaned over the ship's
+side, holding to the starboard shrouds with one hand and taking the
+cigar out of his mouth with the other, and told him, with a most
+deliberate spit, as how he was going on with one every hour till Mrs.
+Tweedie was brought back safe and sound, and when he used up them he had
+aboard, how he was going to land for more. He didn't speak it particular
+loud, and you might have thought he was talking what a hot day it was;
+but there was that in his voice I've never heard before or since, and
+you knew he'd live right up to every word he said. I guess the pastor
+and the student understood a little English, for when Coe finished they
+laid on to their oars like mad, and headed the old sieve for shore
+again, Tweedie in the bilge and still protesting.
+
+At two o'clock we turned off Sosofina, Afiola's aunt. We now had three
+aloft, and as we rolled gently broadside on to the swell they'd swing
+together and swing apart till you didn't care to look at them. That hour
+from two to three was the very longest I ever spent in my life. It was
+the hottest time of day and the sun beat down unmerciful, the pitch
+running in the seams, and the awnings being stripped off to better fight
+the ship, if need be. The steward passed round sardines and buttered
+biscuit, and I recollect the Chinaman wolfing his right out of the can
+and tipping it cornerwise to drink the ile. Bar Coe, he was the coolest
+customer of the lot, which was the more remarkable, as he was a
+mild-mannered man ordinarily, given to playing the China fiddle to
+himself, and very obliging if you wanted fresh yeast or the way he
+curried pigeon. Rau, the Belgian, with his hairy arms and stubby figure,
+struck one somehow as being more in his element in so wild a business,
+and you took his calm for granted, like a soldier serving a gun and
+doing what he's told. If Coe had ordered him to set off the dynamite and
+blow up the ship, he would have said "Aye, aye, sir!" and obeyed,
+respectful and willing, like the first-class seaman and navigator he
+was. He had served in the Belgian navy, and the habit had stuck to him.
+But in all of us, after all--me and Lum and John Rau and the Nieue
+steward--it was Coe's spirit that had raised us to this pitch, and he
+had blown a little of his own breath into every one of us. We were all
+Elijah Coe's that day, and it was only afterwards it came over us how
+different we had acted from our proper selves.
+
+Well, as I said, it was drawing toward six bells, and we were keyed up
+tremendous, as we might expect to see the result of our work now any
+minute; and it was a shuddering thing to think of sending up another,
+and him a child. We all watched Coe out of the corner of our eye as he
+went on smoking his cigar, and every time he took out his watch and
+looked at it it seemed like my heart stopped beating.
+
+"Three o'clock, boys!" he says, rising business-like from his chair,
+while Lum looked up expectant, and my gizzard seemed to shrink inside
+me. "Three o'clock, boys!"
+
+He hadn't no more nor got the words out of his mouth when Rau ripped out
+there was a canoe coming off, and we all ran pellmell for the rail. Sure
+enough, there was an outrigger aiming straight for us, and the fellar in
+it was bent double and paddling that fast that the water spurted at the
+bow like it was a race. When he got within a cable's length he stopped,
+and waved something he had in his hand, and shouted a lot of stuff we
+couldn't make head or tail of. Coe made motions to him to come nearer,
+and Rau and me did the same, till the fellar got back something of his
+nerve, paddling with one hand and holding the little board aloft in the
+other (like he might a flag of truce), and venturing toward us slower
+and slower, till at last Coe reached down and took the thing from him
+standing up.
+
+It was a slab of fresh-cut _fuafua_, about a foot long by three inches
+wide, and on it, written, as I heard afterwards, in blood and spit and
+gunpowder, was a message from Mrs. Tweedie herself--not many words on
+it, and them printed, for she only had a pointed stick by way of a pen,
+but saying as how she was unharmed and was being brought back fast, and
+please, he wasn't to trice up any more of Afiola's family.
+
+The captain read it aloud to us about a dozen times, and then, his face
+working so he couldn't speak no more, he gripped hands with me, and then
+with John Rau, and not forgetting the Nieue steward, and then he went
+down the forward ladder, and I'm blest if he didn't put his arm round
+the Chink, and burst out sobbing--yes, sir, like a great overwrought
+girl, sitting on the tool chest, limp as a rag, and wiping his eyes with
+the cuff of his blue-striped panjammers, the Chinaman, patting him like
+he might a dog, saying, "Poor captain! Never you mind, captain! She all
+lite now, captain," while the prisoners broke out in a big gabble of how
+they were saved, and piped up with a hymn.
+
+He wasn't the man to take anything for granted, however, and after he
+had sort of pulled himself together and got his second wind, so to
+speak, he cast loose a couple more with a message that he had to have a
+letter on paper from Mrs. Tweedie herself, countersigned by the king,
+that she was at home, safe, and no harm done. He might have saved
+himself the trouble, for they hadn't been gone ten minutes before she
+came off herself, queening it in the stern of the king's great _alia_,
+seventy feet long, with Tweedie and Maunga, and the princes, and eighty
+men chorusing to the paddles, with drums aft, and a young boy dancing in
+the bow and keeping time with a rifle. Except for her paleness, which
+was like marble, and the bloody marks of the sinnet on her pretty
+wrists, you wouldn't have taken her for much different than usual; and
+she skipped up the ladder as sprightly as you please, and made a bee
+line for Elijah Coe like a schoolgirl running to her pa for the
+holidays.
+
+She wanted to throw herself on her knees and kiss his hands; and when he
+forced her up, she flung her arms around his neck and kissed him, saying
+he was her preserver, and how he had saved her from worse than death,
+and so overflowing and grateful and outspoken that nobody knew where to
+look, least of all the captain, who turned all colors, and couldn't say
+anything but "You're welcome," like a ninny.
+
+We cleared a little space for Tweedie to pray in, which was his way of
+celebrating, and couldn't very well be prevented, and the king followed
+with a speech what he'd do to Afiola when he caught him--the tarnation
+liar! The crew came off, swimming in ones and twos to beg for pardon,
+and the prisoners were unbound and given three crates of biscuit and
+three barrels of pork and some boat sails to wrap the corpses in, and
+there was more hurrah-boys and good feeling and port wine in the cabin
+than you could ever have thought possible under the circumstances.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Was that all? Well, for a time it was, Coe slipping out at dawn on the
+ebb with a cargo of Afiola rapscallions he was to drop, one here, one
+there, all around the Group, we having no further use for them in Puna
+Punou.
+
+The measles struck us shortly afterwards in a Tahiti bark, and it
+carried off a sight of people, Afiola included, who was in a sort of
+armed hiding on the other side of the island. Tweedie, too, who had
+always been a complaining whelp, started up a cough about this time, and
+died. Of course, this wasn't right off, but spread over a matter of
+eighteen months or more, Coe coming and going regular in the _Peep o'
+Day_, and Mrs. Tweedie more blooming than ever.
+
+Coe turned up from Sydney, where he had gone for a general refitting and
+overhaul, just as Mrs. Tweedie was taking her passage in the _Olive
+Branch_, missionary auxiliary barkentine for Honolulu. None of the
+saints would have a word to say to him, calling him "the man of blood,"
+and ordering him off the ship, as he stood his ground and wouldn't budge
+even when the anchor was apeak and the barkentine under steerage way.
+But he kept singing out for her while they tried to hustle him over the
+side and into his boat, and the more they hustled the louder he shouted,
+"Mrs. Tweedie! Mrs. Tweedie!" till at last she heard him in her cabin
+below, and came running up, smiling, and arranging her hair with her
+hands.
+
+It was a tight place for Coe, having to do his courting while they were
+moving him on like the police; but, for all that, when he went down the
+ladder it was with Mrs. Tweedie with him, and they pulled ashore and
+were married by the Kanaka pastor, and went a-honeymooning in the _Peep
+o' Day_, bringing up in Papiete three weeks later, to buy her some
+clothes, for every stitch to her name was beating up to Honolulu in the
+_Olive Branch_.
+
+
+
+
+MR. BOB
+
+
+Far away in the western Pacific, in that labyrinth of coral reefs and
+low, palm-rimmed isles floating between the blue of heaven and the
+deeper blue of sea, known to the pajama-clad, ear-ringed traders as "the
+Group," and to the outer world as Micronesia--here, one burning morning
+there arrived a visitor from "Home," who descended, not from some tubby
+bark or slant-masted schooner, but Godlike from the glorious stars
+themselves--Christmas Day!
+
+The Rev. Walter Kirke looked out moodily from beneath the eaves of his
+basket-work house, and his heart sank as he gazed across the sweltering
+strip of water, twenty miles wide, that divided the island of Apiang
+from its neighbor, Tarawa. His brother in the Lord across the strait,
+the perpetually unfortunate Titcombe (the Rev. J. B. Tracy Titcombe,
+M.A., Cam.), had sent in a proa with a message of such urgency and need
+that delay, let alone refusal, was utterly out of the question.
+
+"The king has broken all his promises," wrote Titcombe, in a hand
+illegible from distress and agitation. "He threatens to burn the new
+church, flog the members, and spear personally the leading lights of
+our infant congregation. Yesterday, on my remonstrating with him, he
+gave me twenty-four hours to leave the island, calling me at the same
+time a sting ray, a detached jellyfish--a white squid, together with
+some other local expressions of a highly wounding and contemptuous
+nature. The tiny fold is terrorized, and Thomas Najibika, my deacon and
+right-hand man, is in hourly apprehension of a massacre. My wife and
+little Kenneth are down with fever, and this, together with my halting
+knowledge of the native language, has put me at such a disadvantage that
+I have no alternative but to appeal to you. For Heaven's sake, please
+come instantly and exert yourself on my behalf, or else we may lose
+Tarawa for good, and put back the good work by a dozen years."
+
+"We'll have to go, dear," said Kirke to his pretty wife.
+
+"Yes, we'll have to go," she assented sadly.
+
+She could not help feeling cross with the Titcombes for always muddling
+things--a little unjustly, perhaps--for her own missionary path had ever
+been so easy and untroubled. Mrs. Kirke was a woman of marked beauty,
+whose sweet imperiousness, sympathy, humor, and tact made her the adored
+of the islanders. She not only spoke native well, but with a zest and
+sparkle, a silver ripple of irony, ridicule, and good-fellowship that
+carried everything before it. No kings ever bothered Mrs. Kirke. Even
+the redoubtable Tembinok, with forty boats full of armed savages, had
+been stemmed in his Napoleonic career and turned back by her from his
+projected invasion of Apiang--presenting the missionary's wife, on his
+departure, with a gold-inlaid Winchester that was the apple of his eye.
+
+"I shall make Karaitch smart for this!" she said vindictively. "I
+sha'n't let him off with less than twenty tons of copra for my girls'
+school; and he'll have to apologize, too, and swear on a shark's head to
+behave for a year."
+
+"We can't all have such intrepid little wives," said Kirke, putting his
+arm fondly about her. Experience had shown him that in native questions
+she was always as good as her word, and it was with a kind of proud
+humility he conceded her the place he was so much less able himself to
+fill. He had not the faintest apprehensions about the Tarawa matter. Ada
+would bring the king to heel in fifteen minutes, and in twenty there
+would be the dawn of a new peace, with stately apologies, gifts of
+turtle and bonito hooks, endless and troublesomely idiomatic
+compliments, and incidentally a little friction with the Titcombes, who
+would certainly resent being saved so easily.
+
+No, Kirke wasn't afraid of Karaitch. Ada would settle Karaitch out of
+hand. What he dreaded was that twenty miles of water under the noonday
+sun, and the problem of Daisy--Daisy, their little girl of eight, who
+was playing so contentedly on the floor with the presents Santa Claus
+had just brought her.
+
+"Oh, Walter, I can't let Daisy go again!" cried Mrs. Kirke. "Last time
+she nearly died in the boat, and you know she wasn't really herself for
+weeks and weeks afterwards."
+
+Daisy heard her name being spoken, and looked up. Her sleek little head
+and round brown eyes gave her the look of a baby seal. Such a happy baby
+seal that morning, with a five-shilling magic lantern, twelve biblical
+slides, a dolly that could squeak in the most lifelike manner, and a
+darling little chair!
+
+"But leave her?" questioned Kirke, with a hopeless gesture of his hand.
+"And that with the island full of mutineers, and Heaven only knows
+to-day what deviltry and carousing?"
+
+Mrs. Kirke thought awhile.
+
+"Twenty miles over there--three hours," she said at last; "an hour to
+straighten out the king--four hours; three back, makes seven. That means
+being home by sundown. We can trust Nantok all right to take good care
+of her, and then I'll get Peter to send down an armed guard."
+
+Kirke acquiesced in silence. He was a tall, thin man, not over-clever,
+whose fervent Christianity was strangely at variance with a
+constitutional inclination to see the darker side of things. He
+distrusted Nantok, distrusted the king's guard, felt a profound
+apprehension of that jeering, boisterous mob of sailors, who pigged
+together in Rick's old boatshed, and were numerous enough to defy every
+law of the island. It was terrible to him to leave his little girl in
+such company. Yet he recalled his last trip across the strait, when she
+had fainted with the heat--fainted again and again--as they had
+attempted, with such distress and agony, to screen her from a glare as
+pitiless as a furnace. He remembered dipping her, naked, all but
+lifeless, into the milkwarm water, till up from the transparent depths
+the swift, bluish glimmer of a shark warned him to snatch her in.
+Remembered the hopelessness of it, the terror, the despair, he himself
+bending to an oar, and offering every inducement his mind could think of
+to incite his crew to pull their hearts out. No, all that was a
+nightmare to look back on--never, never to be repeated.
+
+Daisy was called over and the situation explained to her. Like all only
+children, living constantly in the society of her parents, and sharing
+their talk and plans, she was precociously old for her age, and more
+serious and thoughtful than a little tot ought to be. Though her lower
+lip trembled, and her eyes flooded with tears, she put on a brave face
+to it, and protested her willingness to remain with Nantok and be a good
+little girl.
+
+"And mamma and papa will be back at dusk; and if they are detained, you
+mustn't be the least bit worried about them; and you'll let Nantok put
+you to bed at eight; and if you wake up and feel frightened, you are to
+remember the army outside, guarding you in your sleep like a little
+princess!"
+
+"And Dod, too," added Daisy piously, though inwardly pleased to have the
+army as well.
+
+"Oh, my lamb!" cried Mrs. Kirke, clasping her to her breast. "It breaks
+mamma's heart to leave her little girl on Christmas Day!"
+
+Altogether it was a damp moment in the Kirke family, and even the
+missionary's eyes were suspiciously moist as he knelt beside his wife
+and talked hurriedly about the magic lantern, and the dolly, and what a
+jolly evening they'd all have when they got back from Tarawa.
+
+Preparations were soon made. The whaleboat was got ready, and manned by
+a stout crew of such recent Christians that the demons of the strait had
+first to be appeased by two tins of salmon and six biscuit, paid
+secretly in advance to Nebenua, the devil-priest. Then, when all was
+ready, even to the breaker of brackish water, a forty-pound tin of
+biscuit, two hundred fresh nuts, medicine chest, compass, and five
+pounds of niggerhead tobacco by way of petty cash, the whole expedition
+was tantalized and held back by the non-arrival of the guard, who were
+frenziedly searching for their boots. Why the army was so ruthlessly
+condemned to wear boots, is a question that was often asked and never
+properly answered. Nobody else wore boots--not even the king; but the
+military caste is proverbially dressy, and it is enough to say that the
+armed forces of Apiang set immense store by their boots.
+
+At last they arrived, boots and all, a straggling, hobbling party of
+seven, with cartridge belts and rifles. Little Daisy was formally put in
+their charge; solemn pledges were given and accepted; a keg of beef, to
+be subsequently presented, was hedged about with innumerable
+restrictions. That keg--like liberty--was to be at the price of eternal
+vigilance. And then, when everything had been said, and explained, and
+threatened, the whaleboat hoisted her anchor--a coral stone--and set a
+straight course for Tarawa.
+
+It was a long day--a very long day--quite the longest day in Daisy's
+tiny life. She successively exhausted the magic lantern, the dolly, and
+the chair. She went out and prattled with the army where they sprawled
+under the lee of the kitchen, smoking endless _pandanus_ cigarettes. She
+helped Nantok prepare lunch--a bowl of chocolate made with condensed
+milk, and hot buttered toast. After lunch she had a nap with Nantok on
+the mats, and after that again an exciting talk about the great massacre
+on Tapatuea, where all Nantok's people had been killed during that
+Kanaka Saint Bartholomew's. Then out to the army again, and checkers,
+which the army played amazingly well, beating her so often that even
+this pastime palled. Then----
+
+Oh, what a sigh!
+
+The sleek little seal was aweary, aweary. The house was so empty, so
+still, and there was such a void in that aching baby heart! She went
+into papa's room and cried on his bed. He would be drowned in the
+strait; savage old Karaitch would shoot him with a gun; he would be
+blown out to sea like Mr. Pettibone the beach-comber. The hot tears
+scalded her cheeks. She had always liked Mr. Pettibone. Papa called him
+a proff--proff--proff something, but he had always been so jolly, and
+his red face and funny little blue eyes rose before her out of the mist.
+She cried over the lost Pettibone; over Tansy the cat, that had died
+from eating a lizard; over Nosey, her pet chicken, that Nantok had
+killed by mistake one night for supper; cried over papa and mamma, far
+away in the whaler--totaled up all the little sadnesses of her little
+life, meting out tears to every one. And then, feeling greatly
+refreshed, she went out on the front porch, and wondered what she should
+do next.
+
+Down the shore, about a mile away, there were others who found time less
+heavy on their hands. At the Land We Live In, a one-roomed saloon which
+catered for a permanent white population of thirteen, and a transient
+one that varied from a cutter to a full-rigged ship--at the Land We Live
+In Christmas was being celebrated in a rousing fashion. To begin with,
+there were the mutineers of the _Lord Dundonald_, twenty-two strong,
+with plenty of money still to spend. Their revolt against authority had
+not been without some redeeming features, and an unbiased critic would
+have found it hard to blame them. After twenty-seven days and nights at
+the pumps of a four-masted sieve, the Lords had struck in a body, and
+forced the captain to abandon the ship and set out in three boats for
+Apiang. Here they double-dyed their crime by compelling the wrathful
+master to pay them their wages to date, from six hundred and thirty-nine
+pounds he had taken with him from a vessel he had fondly hoped to pump
+to China. Captain Latimer, with the three mates, the carpenter, and one
+of the hands, had sailed away south in the longboat, vowing yardarms and
+a man-of-war, and when last seen was sinking over the horizon in the
+direction of the Fiji Islands.
+
+Well, here they all were in the Land We Live In, together with Tom
+Holderson, Peter Extrum, Eddy Newnes, and Long Joe Kelly, all of Apiang;
+Papa Benson, of Tarawa; Jones and Peabody, of Big Muggin; and crazy old
+Jimmy Mathison, of nowhere in particular--unless it were the nearest gin
+bottle; and it was a rip-roaring Christmas, and no mistake, with
+bottled beer flowing like water, and songs and choruses and clog dances
+and hornpipes; and Papa Benson (in earrings and pink pajamas) a-blowing
+enough wind through his concertina to have sailed a ship. And there were
+girls, too, seven or eight of them, in bright trade-cotton Mother
+Hubbards--a bevy of black-eyed little heathen savages, who bore a hand
+with the trays, and added their saucy laughter to the general gayety,
+helping out Larry the barkeep as he drew unending corks or stopped to
+wipe the sweat off his forehead, saying, "Genelmen, the drinks is on
+Billy," or Tommy, or Long Joe, or whoever it was that was treating.
+
+Suddenly, at the door, which had been kept shut to prevent the natives
+from assembling and peering in--suddenly, at the door, there was heard a
+faint, faint knock. The concertina stopped. Fritz, the Dutchman, said
+"Hoosh!" and raised his pipe for silence. The knock was repeated. Quiet
+descended on the Land We Live In. Larry looked up from his bottles, and
+in a rough and belligerent voice called out, "Come in!"
+
+The invitation was hesitatingly obeyed, and there stood Daisy Kirke on
+the threshold, a sweet, faltering figure, with her guard, boots and all,
+lined up in the roadway. Hardly a soul in the room knew there was a
+little white girl on the island; and the sight of Daisy, with the red
+ribbon in her hair, her dimity frock, her long stockings and pinafore,
+was as startling as it was unexpected.
+
+"Howdy-do, evver'body?" said she.
+
+There was an embarrassed silence.
+
+"I know you better than you do me," went on Daisy confidentially,
+proving it with her forefinger. "That's Tommy, the cabin boy; and
+yonder's Mr. Mathison, the beach-comber; and you"--indicating a giant of
+a man with an aquiline nose and a square-cut beard--"you are Mr. Bob
+Fletcher, the ringleader!"
+
+A giggle of subdued merriment ran round the room. An instinctive respect
+kept it within bounds, or perhaps it was Bob Fletcher's fierce and
+warning look that cowed any incipient rowdyism. The brawny mutineer set
+her on his knee, and, in a voice harshened by thirty years' service
+before the mast, asked her deferentially if she fancied a glass of
+syrup?
+
+"No, thank you," said Daisy politely; and then, addressing everybody in
+general, "papa and mamma's gone to Tarawa!"
+
+"Now, if that ain't too bad!" put in Bob sympathetically.
+
+"And so it just occurred to me," went on Daisy, "to do something nice to
+surprise them when they came back."
+
+A profound silence greeted this remark. The devil's love of holy water
+is a craving compared to the amount of love lost between a South Sea
+missionary and the rough white element that mocks his labors at every
+turn. It was the custom of the Lord Dundonalds, moreover, to hoot the
+Rev. Walter Kirke whenever they met him. It was a recollection of this
+that made the present situation so piquant and humorous.
+
+"Besides, it seems too bad," continued Daisy, "that the natives should
+have such a fuss made over them, while all you white gentlemen are left
+out in the cold. It must look queer to Dod, and I don't believe He likes
+it!"
+
+"Everything for the niggers--that's right," muttered Tom Extrum
+bitterly, "and not even a six-months-old newspaper for the likes of us!"
+
+"You don't look so werry wicked," said Daisy, taking in the room with a
+comprehensive glance, and putting an arm around Mr. Bob's neck, as
+though confident of having at least one friend among the company. "I
+wonder if you wouldn't all like to come along to my house, and play with
+my magic lantern, and--and--organize a Band of Hope?"
+
+She was abashed by the roar of laughter that followed the proposal. Papa
+Benson flung himself on the floor and rolled over and over. Long Joe
+uttered whoops of delight. Even Mr. Bob shook with speechless mirth,
+till the veins on his forehead stood out like strings. Never in all its
+history was there such a hullabaloo in the Land We Live In. As the
+rumpus died down something very like remorse overwhelmed the roisterers
+as they saw Daisy's flushing, quivering little face, hot with
+mortification.
+
+It was Mr. Bob who sprang to the rescue before the brimming tears could
+fall.
+
+"I'm on!" he shouted, rising to his feet with unexpected enthusiasm.
+"Now, then, boys, who says 'Aye, aye' for the Band of 'Ope?"
+
+A good part of the crowd would have preferred to stay by their spree;
+but so contagious is example and so sheeplike the sailor nature, that
+the whole room fell in with Bob, and answered his call like one man.
+
+He swung Daisy up on his shoulder, where, from that dizzy perch, she
+looked back shyly at the noisy pack behind her. Secure in the conquest
+of the ringleader, whom intuitively she felt stronger than the rest, and
+kinder and more resolute, with a heart beneath his rough exterior as
+simple and childlike as her own, she managed to keep up her courage in
+spite of the loud, frightening laughter and the tipsy boisterousness and
+horseplay that marked the inception of the Band of Hope. Her
+satisfaction was suddenly checked, however, by the sight of the Kanaka
+girls joining the procession and making as though to follow.
+
+"No, they mustn't come!" she cried out jealously. "Please, Mr.
+Mathison, tell them they mustn't come! This is to be for men only!"
+
+"Turn them back!" thundered Bob. "Don't yer 'ear the little lady's
+_h_orders? Scamper, ye jades!"
+
+Papa Benson struck up a quickstep on the concertina, and, marching
+beside Bob Fletcher, helped to lead the van. The mutineers,
+beach-combers, and traders fell in two by two. The rear was brought up
+by the guard, loutish, hobbling, and out of step, bearing their rusty
+Springfields at all angles. In this fashion they made the missionary's
+house, swarmed into the neat bare inclosure of coral sand, and invaded
+the silent rooms.
+
+A terrible irresolution was stealing over Daisy. Twelve slides,
+representing the wanderings of Saint Paul, began to seem too trifling a
+means of holding the attention of this enormous and expectant crowd.
+Besides, it came over her with a shock that she was a little hazy about
+Saint Paul; and then there were disturbing questions of sheets and
+darkened windows, and how to make it work. It was with dismay, verging
+on despair, that she saw the serried ranks of her recruits crowding the
+room to bursting, and all regarding her with humorous anticipation. But
+good Mr. Bob, holding her in his lap, and stroking her hair with an
+enormous red hand, showed a most comforting disposition to himself take
+the breach. At any rate, he roared for silence; told Mr. Mathison he'd
+cut his liver out if he didn't belay with them there remarks, and
+assumed a tone of authority that calmed the tumult of Daisy's
+misgivings.
+
+"Friends," he said, "and mates, and respected genelmen _h_all, we are
+here, two and three gathered togetherlike, for the purpose of
+_h_organizing a Band of 'Ope."
+
+"Local Number One," interrupted Billy Dutton, the donkey-man, who had
+had some trades'-union experience.
+
+"Band of 'Ope, Local Number One," continued Mr. Bob, receiving the
+suggestion in an accommodating spirit. "And it is with great pleasure I
+propose the name of _h_our first president, Miss Daisy Kirke, of
+Apiang."
+
+Then, my stars, wasn't there a cheer! Daisy hung her head, nestled
+closer to Mr. Bob, and felt all the joy of good works promptly bearing
+fruit.
+
+"I don't see no reason," went on Mr. Bob, "why a false modesty, that 'as
+been my _h_unfailing 'andicap through life, should prevent me from
+nominating myself as your _h_esteemed vice president. I do not wish to
+seem a-soaring too 'igh, or reaching out for honors that belong to
+_h_abler 'eads nor mine; but I'll take the sense of the meeting in a
+kindly spirit, and will abide peaceable by a show of 'ands!"
+
+When the applause had subsided, Billy Dutton sprang up, and wanted to
+know "what about a recording seckitary?"
+
+"I don't see no 'arm in the honorable genelman _h_assuming the job
+'isself," said Mr. Bob, "if 'e thinks 'e's sufficient of a speller, and
+won't run the band into 'orrible extravagances for 'igh-priced wines and
+luxuries. The assessments of this band is going to be low, and the diet
+plain. Who says Brother Dutton ain't the man for the place? Is it you,
+Mr. Riley, I see raising your fist agin him? Oh, only to ax a question.
+Well, one thing at a time, Brother Riley. Does the meeting _h_endorse
+Mr. Willum Dutton for recording seckitary?"
+
+The meeting did, vociferously and with cheers. Daisy ran and got her
+slate for the recording seckitary, who thereupon (after first inscribing
+the names of the office bearers in a shaky print) began to draw a
+wonderful picture of a pirate ship.
+
+"Afore listening to the plans of our valued president," said Mr. Bob, "I
+propose myself to _h_offer up a few general remarks on 'Ope! Me and 'Ope
+is old friends, genelmen. We set sail together from the port of London,
+'Ope and I, when I was a bright-faced boy that 'igh! We've bunked in
+together, fair weather and foul, coming on this thirty year. We 'ave set
+in our time, me and 'Ope, on the bottom of a capsized schooner, ore
+laden out of Mazatlan, with our tongues 'anging out like the tails of
+some vallyble new kind of a black dorg. 'Ope and I took the Chainy
+coast once on a chicken coop. 'Ope and I, when we 'ad the dollars, blew
+them in right royal. 'Ope and I, when we 'adn't none, tightened our
+belts and cheered each other _h_up. Looking back over all them years, I
+want to stand _h_up and testify right 'ere to the best friend of the
+sailorman, bar none, and p'r'aps the _h_only one he ever truly 'ad--and
+that's 'Ope, God bless her!"
+
+Amid the ensuing uproar, which jarred the walls of that prim missionary
+residence like an explosion of dynamite, spilling plates off dressers
+and cock-billing texts, and arresting the astonished clock at four
+forty-six, little Daisy was trying to nerve herself to address the
+assembled company. The unforeseen docility of the band had put new ideas
+in that sleek, baby-seal head. Odds and ends of tracts and storybooks
+recurred to her. Infantile ambitions awoke and clamored. But it was
+daunting, just the same, to confront those rows of eyes, and those great
+big, unshaved, shaggy-looking faces, all keenly waiting for her to
+speak.
+
+"Now, then, little lady," said the vice president, "'ere's your Band of
+'Ope, a-panting to set its 'and to the plow!"
+
+Daisy cleared her throat. Pride and timidity struggled with each other
+in that eager little countenance. Had it not been for an encouraging
+squeeze from Mr. Bob, who knows but what she might have burst into
+tears, and disgraced herself before the whole band. But the squeeze,
+coming exactly at the right time, averted so mortifying a catastrophe.
+
+"My dear friends," began Daisy, catching with unconscious mimicry some
+of the rounded tones of her father's voice--"my dear, kind friends!"
+
+"Well, go on," cried Mr. Bob; "that's a swell start! That's the way to
+wake them up!"
+
+"Hear! hear!" (This from a dozen places.)
+
+"I have called you togevver," went on Daisy bravely, "so we might enjoy
+the travels of Saint Paul, which belongs to the magic lantern Santa
+Claus brought me this morning for Christmas, because I'm such a good
+little girl. Saint Paul was a kind of a sailor, too, and got
+shipwrecked, like Mr. Bob, in an awful storm. I used to know all about
+Saint Paul, but somehow I've got mixed up about him since. Perhaps one
+of our members will oblige, so we'll know what the slides are about when
+we get _w_ound to them?"
+
+There was a profound silence. No one volunteered. Billy Dutton, looking
+up from the pirate ship, to which he was adding some finishing touches,
+said he was afeared the president would find them a sad, ignorant lot of
+ignorpotammusses.
+
+"Then we'll just have to get along without Saint Paul," said Daisy
+regretfully. "Perhaps it is as well, too, for Bands of Hope isn't only
+for amoosement, but to do good, and help uvvers, and carry the glad
+tidings right and left into the darkest corners of the earth."
+
+"Gee-whilikins!" exclaimed Sammy Nesbit, "where's this we're fetching up
+to, mates?"
+
+"Silence! _H_order! Shut your face! Dry up, there, Sammy!" roared the
+Band of Hope.
+
+"I was finking," went on the president, confidentially and undisturbed,
+"why a nice little surprise for papa wouldn't be as good an idea as any.
+It's an awful long way to Tarawa and back, and papa's never been werry
+strong since the fever he got in New Guinea, before he married mamma
+with Mr. Chalmers."
+
+"Wot sort of a surprise _h_exactly?" asked the vice president with an
+expression of some doubt.
+
+"Putting up mottoes _w_ound the walls," returned Daisy, "and green
+branches and palm leaves and texes and Merry Christmas, like grandpapa's
+in Devonshire, when I was a little tiny winy girl. And papa will be so
+pleased and happy and surprised that I know he'll just love it, and
+won't never feel tired at all!"
+
+The Band of Hope, who seemed given to singular and inextinguishable fits
+of laughter, promptly went off into another paroxysm; and laughter with
+the Band of Hope was no drawing-room performance, no polite titter
+behind an upraised hand. When the Band of Hope laughed, it rolled on the
+floor, beat its clenched fists against neighboring backs, screamed,
+huzzaed, cat-called, kicked pajama legs in the air, and shook the
+pictures off the walls. Mr. Bob seemed to be the only one who knew how
+to behave, but even Mr. Bob grew crimson in the face, and choked, and
+opened his mouth till you could see way down his froat.
+
+"Genelmen," he said, when at last he had somewhat recovered, "you've
+listened to our _h_orders, and I'll _h_only remind you that them that
+_h_ain't with us is agin us, as Saint Paul says. Back-sliders and goats
+may return to the bar, but me and the fleecy sheep is agoing to see this
+thing through, and do our dooty _h_under the regilations by Board of
+Trade _h_appointed. Goats, as I said afore, will kindly rise and step
+out!"
+
+"We ain't no blooming quitters," spoke up Billy Dutton. "Goats, nothing,
+you wall-eyed old ram! You want to cinch all the texes for yesself, and
+make a running with our lovely president. But we are on to you, Bob
+Fletcher, and I voice the sentimomgs of the whole band when I says with
+Saint John, in the forty-first epistle to the Proosians, 'Wot you put
+your fist to, that do it with all yer might!'"
+
+"Aye, aye!" chorused the band with boisterous approval.
+
+"Then _h_up and work, you devils!" exclaimed the vice president. "Pull
+out that table, Mack; and you, there, bear a 'and to 'elp 'im, 'Enery.
+Set _h_up the little chair, Williams! Easy with Saint Paul, you, Tommy,
+or you'll crack him sure--and lay the whole caboodlum on the shelf,
+_h_out of 'arm's way! Lively, lads--lively!"
+
+Bob lifted Daisy in his arms, and carrying her to the table, installed
+her comfortably in the little chair.
+
+"Captain's bridge," he said; "and if anything ain't right, or just
+_h_according to your _h_idears, you sing out to the lower deck, loud and
+'earty; only mind you don't get _h_excited and spill orf!"
+
+Daisy's eyes danced, and her timidity all vanished as she saw the jovial
+and obedient band grouping together and hotly discussing the proposed
+decorations. Distances were measured with tarry thumbs. A party of six
+was told off to climb the cocoa palms across the road; while another,
+shouting and hallooing like schoolboys, was dispatched to Holderson's
+station to get sinnet. There was a noisy wrangle over spelling. "I never
+seed it like that," said one, squinting over Billy's slate, "and I don't
+believe nobody else ever did neither." "For the love of Mike," roared
+another, "let's stick to them words we're all agreed on, and keep off of
+that thorological grass!" "Man and boy, I've been to sea this thirty
+years," exclaimed Mr. Bob with crushing vehemence, "and there warn't no
+T in Christmas then, and there ain't now! C-R-I-S-S-M-A-S, you
+son of a sea cook, and I know _h_every letter of it like the palm of me
+'and!"
+
+In a corner, dispassionately aloof from all the bustle and argument,
+Papa Benson, that venerable dandy of the pink pajamas, pumped up the
+concertina, and drew melodiously on his ancient repertoire. To the
+inspiring strains of "In Her Hair She Wore a White Camellia," "Oh,
+Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out To-night?" and the "Mulligatawny
+Guards," the good work progressed with sailorlike speed and system. The
+bare, dreary room grew gay with greenery. Stitched to the matting walls
+with sinnet there appeared letters, words, and finally complete
+inscriptions: PEAS ON ERTH AND GOODWILL TOWARDS MAN; DAISY
+KIRKE, THE SEAMAN'S STAR; MERRY CRISSMAS, and GOD BLESS OUR HOM.
+
+Daisy clapped her hands with delight, and did not stint her praise or
+approval. Occasionally she would stand up on the "bridge" to anxiously
+point out a crooked letter, or call attention to a doubtful spelling;
+and her little heart overflowed with satisfaction at the brisk "Aye,
+aye, Miss!" that greeted her smallest criticism. Mr. Bob worked like a
+horse, and not only made things jump, but kept a sharp watch as well on
+the unguarded utterances of his mates. Once, at some remark of Mr.
+Tod's, he flared up like a lion, and stepping close to Mr. Tod, with
+his fist clenched, said, "Drop that, Toddy--d'ye 'ear--drop it!" and
+stared at him so fierce and splendid, that Mr. Tod fell back and mumbled
+something about "No offense," and "It kinder ripped out unbeknownst,
+Bob, old cock!"
+
+By the time it was all finished dusk was falling. The room had been
+beautifully swept out, and likewise the porch, and Mr. Bell was in the
+act of dancing a fascinating clog to Papa Benson's "Soldier's Joy" on
+the concertina, when Nantok rushed in, shouting that Mr. Kirke was
+coming. And, indeed, she had no sooner given the news than it was
+confirmed by the whaler's crew, whose voices could be heard far across
+the water, lustily singing at their paddles.
+
+A sort of consternation descended on the Band of Hope. "Hell!" exclaimed
+Mr. Dutton, and dropped his broom with a crash. There was a mad scurry
+to escape. The little president was forgotten in the pellmell rush, and
+from the height of her table she perceived her friends flying away
+without a word of farewell. No, not all. The faithful Mr. Bob, quiet and
+masterful even in that panicky moment of the missionary's return, came
+up to her, and taking her hand in both his own, nuzzled it long and
+lovingly against his cheek.
+
+"Little Daisy," he said, and his voice sounded kind of strange and
+different, "I want you to give a message to your pa--a message from me,
+you say to 'im--and that is, 'e'll never 'ave no more trouble with the
+boys down the shore. And if any of them gets fresh, or gives 'im any
+lip, or 'oots--you tell 'im this, Daisy--I'll break every bone of 'is
+body, so 'elp me, Moses. And it _h_ain't because of 'im, or anythink the
+like of that, but because he's the father of the darlingest little gal
+that _h_ever breathed, and the sweetest and the dearest."
+
+Daisy flung her arms around his neck and kissed him; and as her face
+pressed his, rough as mahogany and hairy as a mat, she felt it all wet
+with tears.
+
+Daisy was still wondering what it was that could make Mr. Bob cry, when
+he suddenly let her go, and walked out of the door in his funny, heavy,
+lurching sea walk, looking straight before him, and unheeding the "Happy
+Noo Year, Mr. Bob!" she called after him in a pitiful little voice.
+
+"Poor Mr. Bob!" said Daisy to herself; and then, happening to put her
+hand to her hair, she discovered that the red ribbon was gone!
+
+"He must have stole it for a keepsake when I was kissing him!" she
+exclaimed. "Oh, you bad, bad Mr. Bob!"
+
+But her eyes sparkled nevertheless, as she ran out to greet papa and
+mamma.
+
+
+
+
+OLD DIBS
+
+
+His beginnings was a mystery, where he come from a conjecture, and his
+business in Manihiki Island one of them things that bothered a fellow in
+his sleep and yapped at his heels when he was awake. Captain Corker had
+picked him up at Penrhyn, and the trader there said he had been landed
+from a barkentine, lumber laden, from Portland, and from there back
+there was a haze on his past thicker than Bobby Carter's. Leastways,
+with Bobby there was his forty-five different stories to account for the
+leg-iron scars on his ankles, but with Old Dibs you hadn't even that to
+chew on. Nothing but five large new trunks and the clothes he stood in.
+Remarkable clothes, too, they were, for a coral island in the mid
+Pacific, being invariably a stovepipe hat and a Prince Albert coat, with
+trousers changing from pearl gray to lead color, with stripes, till
+you'd think he'd melt!
+
+He was a fine man to look at, about sixty years of age, very portly and
+pleasant spoken, and everything he said sounded important, even if it
+was only about the weather or why cocoanut milk always gave him cramps.
+He said his name was Smith. People who change their names seem always
+to change it to Smith, till you wonder sometimes they don't choose
+Jones, or maybe Patterson, or Wilkins. But you'll notice it is Smith
+every time, though we always called him Old Dibs, because of the money
+that he had and threw around so regardless.
+
+My first sight of him was on the front porch, mopping his forehead, and
+asking whether he might have board and lodging by the week. I told him
+that we hardly carried style enough for a gentleman like him, but all we
+had he was welcome to--and if not too long--for nothing. He seemed
+pleased at this, and more pleased still when he looked over our big
+bedroom and noticed my wife's smiling, comely face. She's only a Kanaka
+girl, but I wouldn't trade her for a million. And he laid down a shining
+twenty-dollar gold piece and asked if that would do every Tuesday?
+
+Now I am as fond of money as any man, but I'm not a pirate, and so I
+said it was too much. But he wouldn't take no denial, and flung it down
+on the trade-room counter again, saying he counted it settled. Then I
+turned to with his trunks, told my wife to bundle out into the boatshed,
+and opened beer.
+
+"Making a long stay, sir?" said I.
+
+"I hardly know, Bill," he said. (I had told him my name was Bill.) "I
+hardly know, Bill," and with that he heaved a tremendous sigh.
+
+"We don't often have visitors here," I said. "The last was eighteen men
+of the British bark _Wolverine_, in boats, from French Frigate Shoals,
+where they were cast away."
+
+"I'm looking for a quiet place to end my days in," he says.
+
+"Well, I guess you've found it," I says.
+
+"It looks as though I had, Bill," he answers, gazing seaward where the
+palms was bending in the trade breeze and there was nothing but the
+speck of Captain Corker's schooner beating out. I could see he was
+pretty downhearted, and though I set the music box going to cheer him
+and asked if he fancied a nice mess of gulls' eggs for supper, it wasn't
+no good, and finally he went into his room and set out the rest of the
+day on one of the trunks.
+
+I went along the same evening to talk it over with Tom Riley, the other
+trader in Manihiki, who, in spite of our being in opposition and all
+that, was more like my own born brother than a rival in business. We
+never let down the price of shell or copra on each other, and lined up
+shoulder to shoulder if a third party tried to break in, and so we had
+enough for both of us and a tidy bit over. Tom was afire to hear all
+about Old Dibs, and had been getting bulletins the whole afternoon from
+the Kanakas, down to the twenty dollars and the five trunks, and even
+the way he sighed.
+
+Tom knew right away he was a defaulter, and said we were in powerful
+luck to have got him. It was fine of Tom to take it like that, for what
+luck there was was mine, and he said he'd help out with chickens and
+fresh fish and some extra superior canned stuff he had, so that Old Dibs
+would be comfortable and want to stay. Tom was a good deal like that
+professor who could make a prehistoric animal out of one prehistoric
+bone, and then, when later on they discovered the whole beast entire, it
+was head and tail with the one he had drawn on the blackboard. And by
+the time the square-face had made a second round, Tom's fancy had flown
+higher than a yellow-back novel, Old Dibs being dead, blessing me with
+his last breath and making me the heir of all his riches!
+
+Tom walked home with me, still talking, for we had now bought a
+ninety-ton schooner with my legacy, me captain and him supercargo, and
+we had taken out French naturalization papers so we might be free of the
+Paumotu and Tubuai groups. When we said good night, whispering so as not
+to disturb Old Dibs, who was snoring out serene, it had grown to be a
+fleet, with headquarters at Papiete, and a steam service to 'Frisco! We
+were a pair of boys, both of us, and could make squid taste like lamb
+chops just by telling ourselves it was so!
+
+I reckon Old Dibs was a little suspicious of me and Tom, and small blame
+to him for that, the Islands being pretty full of tough customers, with
+never no law nor order nor nobody to appeal to in trouble unless it was
+your gun. He made me put a stout bolt on his door and chicken wire over
+the windows, and always slept with the lamp burning in his room; and it
+was noticeable, too, that he never cared to wander far away from the
+house. He was given to playing the flute in the stern of an old
+whaleboat, which was drawn up near the station with a cocoanut shelter
+over it. He never went anywhere, except to the native pastor's (Iosefo
+his name was). I suppose he felt a kind of protection in him--Iosefo
+being the nearest thing to an official in the island--and he made
+himself very solid in that quarter, giving to the church lavish and
+going there every Sunday. He always come back from them visits with a
+ruminating look in his eye, and the first thing he did was to make a bee
+line for his room, like somebody might have been tampering with his
+trunks.
+
+Finally one day he took me aside and said: "Bill, that Iosefo is a very
+agreeable man, and if it would be the same to you, I'd like to have him
+a little about the house."
+
+"Why, Mr. Smith," I said, "you needn't have troubled to ask me that; any
+friend of yours is welcome, I am sure, and I never saw no harm in
+Iosefo, even if he is a missionary."
+
+I thought he meant to have the fellow in to talk with him or play
+checkers, to while away the time that hung so heavy on his hands. But it
+wasn't this at all--except for a halfway pretense at the beginning. No;
+he paid Iosefo ten dollars a week, for what do you think? To sit on one
+of his trunks (_the_ trunk, I reckon) from seven in the morning till six
+at night, barring service time Sundays. Yes, sir; nothing else than a
+squatting sentry, mounting guard over the boodle inside the trunk and
+protecting it from me! I wonder what the home missionary society would
+have said to see Brother Iosefo yawning all day on the top of a trunk,
+or writing his sermon on his knee, Saturdays!
+
+At first I felt pretty hot about it, for it smacked too much of setting
+a thief to catch a thief, or at least offsetting the pastor and me like
+the compensating idea of a ship's chronometer; but my wife liked the
+respectability it give us before the natives; and Tom said my resenting
+it would be like putting the cap on my head. So I acted like I didn't
+give a whoop, the one way or the other.
+
+And then it wasn't easy to be anything but fond of Old Dibs, for he was
+a nice man to live with, never turning up his nose at the poor food we
+give him, and always so kind and polite to Sarah, my wife, that she
+fairly idolized him. He was a real gentleman through and through, and if
+his money (he called it his "papers," his valuable "papers") weighed
+heavy on his mind, I guess I'd have been no better in his shoes, having
+to trust to strangers who might cut your throat. He had the whole island
+to roam over now, instead of being cooped up like a chicken in a coop,
+and we all noticed what a change in him it made for the better, throwing
+off flesh, and not panting so heavy between the spells of his flute, and
+walking with his head in the air like the island belonged to him.
+
+He wasn't much of a fluter, playing mostly from notes, and often picking
+them out so slow that you'd forget what the tune began like. He despised
+simple things like "Way Down Upon the Suwanee River," and the difficult
+things seemed to despise _him!_ But he stuck at it indefatiguable, and
+blew enough wind through his flute to have sailed a ship. After
+breakfast in the morning, which he took in his panjammers like me, he
+would dress himself up nice in his Prince Albert, give his topper a
+wipe, and start away with the flute and a roll of music in a natty
+little case, like he was off to the Bank for the day. The only thing
+that ruffled him any was the children, about eighty of them, who always
+went along, too, and set in a circle around him when he played. I told
+him they'd soon tire of tagging after him, which he said he was mighty
+glad to hear; but if it was flies, they couldn't have been more
+pertinacious. I spoke to the king about it, and Old Dibs he complained
+to Iosefo, but it only seemed to whoop it up and add to the procession.
+The king said if he'd just flute in one place, he would put a taboo
+around it which neither children nor grown-ups would cross; but Old Dibs
+said that the looking on, even from a distance, would be quite as
+disturbing as being sprawled all over; and so the children followed him
+unabated.
+
+Then I had a happy thought, and suggested the graveyard! This was a
+walled-in inclosure, perhaps a hundred feet each way, on the weather
+side of the island, and on a windy day, with the surf thundering in, it
+was the lonesomest spot where a man could find himself. The natives left
+it alone at all times, except to bury somebody, and none of them came
+nearer to it than they could help. The Kanakas have a powerful dread of
+spirits, and even in the daytime they'd give the place a wide berth. The
+walls, too, being about seven feet high, prevented the children from
+peeking in, except at the gateway, which was so narrow that it was easy
+to get out of view.
+
+Old Dibs perked up at this and cottoned to the idea tremendous; and the
+graveyard soon become his regular stamping ground, except when there was
+a funeral. He rigged up a little shelter for himself in the center, with
+a music stand I made for him out of scantling; and often he took his
+lunch in his pocket and spent the whole day. Not a child ventured to
+show himself, and he had it as much to himself as though he owned it;
+and he could lay his stovepipe down now without any fear of its being
+greased up or sat on. It led to his asking a raft of questions about the
+natives and their superstitions, and how none of them ventured to go
+near the place unless in a big party. He came back to that again and
+again, and always with the same interest. I ought to have suspected what
+was running in his head, but I didn't. In fack, we had all settled down
+now like we had always lived together, and I didn't bother any more
+about him, or what he said or did, than if he had been my wife's father!
+It was a good deal like having a rich uncle to stay with you, and after
+the first excitement you took it all as a matter of course.
+
+Even Iosefo, sitting on the trunk in the bedroom, became one of them
+things that ran into habit; and in some ways it was a good idea, too,
+for it brought custom to the store, what with the deacons coming over to
+talk about church affairs, and the Committee on Ways and Means meeting
+there regular. Even the gold twenty every week settled down in the same
+channel of routine, and I didn't bite it any more, as I used to do, nor
+hold it in my hand wondering where it come from. I just put it away with
+the rest and thought no more about it. The only concern of me and Sarah
+was to feed up the old fellow to the best of our ability and try and
+make him pleased.
+
+We had been running along like this for I don't know how long, when one
+night, toward the small hours, a singular thing happened. I was sleeping
+very light, and I woke up all of a sudden and saw Old Dibs standing in
+the doorway! He had a candle in his hand and bulked up enormous in his
+red silk dressing gown, and there was a wild look on his unshaved face.
+
+I held my breath and watched him through my half-shut eyes--watched him
+for quite a spell, till he softly tiptoed away again in his naked feet,
+and I heard the door close behind him in the house. I waited a long
+while wondering what to do, and what there could be in the boatshed to
+bring him out at such an unlikely hour. At first I was for getting my
+rifle and sitting up the balance of the night; but then, as I waked up
+more and tried to think it out, it seemed that he had a better right to
+be afraid of me than me of _him_. It couldn't be to do me no harm, I
+reckoned, but probably to assure himself that I was asleep.
+
+He was plainly up to something, and it was equally plain he didn't want
+me to know it. So I got out of bed--if you can call a stack of mats and
+a schooner's topsail a bed--and lit out to see what was doing. It was no
+good trying to get into the house, for Old Dibs had nailed the keys and
+handed them out every morning through the winder when I went to take him
+his shaving water. But the curtains of the bedroom weren't extra close,
+and if I could get up on the veranda without too much of a creaking I
+knew I could see in all right. There's a lot of cat in a sailor, even to
+the nine lives and the dislike of getting wet, and I was soon on my
+knees at the sill, taking in the performance.
+
+The room was lit up as usual, and all the big five trunks were open,
+with Old Dibs diving into them like he was packing for the morning
+train. Leastways, that was my first thought; the second was, that
+something stranger than that was up, and that people didn't usually go
+traveling with an outfit of pinkish paper cut into shavings. You've seen
+them, haven't you?--the kind of packing they put into music boxes, fine
+toys, and the like, flummoxy twisted paper ravelings that protect the
+varnish and have no weight to speak of. Well, that was what was in them
+trunks, and Old Dibs was pawing it out till it stuck up in the room,
+yards high, like a mountain. Occasionally he seemed to strike something
+harder than paper--something that would take both his hands to lift--and
+it was only a little clinking canvas bag that big.
+
+Money? Of course it was money! And he was stacking it in a leather
+dress-suit case laid on the floor next his bed.
+
+You could see he was nervous by the way he kept looking behind him; and
+once, when a rat ran across the attic, he jumped awful and the whole
+floor shook. It was a queer sensation to look right into a man's eyes
+and him not see you, which I did with Old Dibs again and again as he'd
+stop and listen. I ought to have said that one of the trunks was clothes
+all right, but even here there was three or four bags of coin, which he
+got out and added to the others.
+
+Then he counted the bags and tried to turn the top of the suit case on
+them, but couldn't manage it. He arranged them first this way and then
+that way, but there was always about a dozen outstanding. The canvas
+itself was very coarse, and there was lots to spare, the slack being
+turned over and over, and tied with heavy twine extra. Then he took them
+all out, and slitting them open, just let the stuff rip naked.
+
+Lord! but it was a dandy sight, a dazzle of double eagles cascading like
+a river, and so swift that you couldn't pretend to count them! He seemed
+satisfied to go on like that, cutting one open after the other, till the
+suit case brimmed up solid. There was fifty-eight bags in all, and the
+Lord only knows how much in each; but, as I said, it took both his hands
+to lift a single one. I reckon I didn't know there was so much money in
+all the world, and it came over me afresh how fond I was of Old Dibs,
+and how good I was going to be to him.
+
+When the last bag was emptied he thought he'd put back the suit case
+into one of the trunks, never recollecting that he might as well have
+tried to lift a locomotive. Then he laid hands on just the handle at one
+end, and he couldn't even shift it. You disremember how heavy gold is,
+seeing so little of it, and counting a hundred dollars a fortune. But he
+had there, considering the trunks weighed the usual amount, say about a
+hundred and fifty pounds each, and gold at nearly twenty dollars an
+ounce--well, the next day Tom worked it out to about two hundred and
+fifty thousand dollars.
+
+Think of it! With nothing between it and me but some chicken wire and an
+old gentleman in a dressing gown! It would have seemed a snap to some
+people, but I never made a dishonest dollar in my life--except in the
+way of trade, and then it was to natives (who water copra on you and
+square the difference); and he was in no more danger of harm than if it
+had been Lima beans.
+
+Then--to get along with my yarn--he took the comforter off the bed, and
+setting it down flat on the floor, begun to cover it with double
+handfuls ranged in rows, till he had worked down the suit case to where
+he could lift it. He carried it over to the nearest trunk, placed it
+snug in the bottom, and started to load it up again from the stacks on
+the quilt. I don't know how long he took to do it, but it was quite a
+time, and he looked pretty well tired out when it was over, and he sat
+back in the rocker and rocked--me still glued at the winder--and he
+reached out for his flute and put it to his lips (though he didn't blow
+into it), and worked his fingers like he was playing a piece. After a
+time he laid it down, and drawing his dressing gown closer around him,
+took another go at filling up the trunks again with the paper packing.
+
+This seemed a good time for me to skip, which I did more cautious than
+ever, my heart beating that loud I wonder he didn't hear me. I felt for
+my pipe in the dark, and went out under the stars to the edge of the
+lagoon, to think it all over. You might wonder what I had to do with it
+unless it was to make away with him and scoop the pool for me and Tom;
+but, as I said before, I wasn't that kind of a man, and millions
+wouldn't have made no difference. But I was in a sort of tremble for the
+old fellow himself, for what was he doing alone with it in the far
+Pacific, unless there were others after him, hotfoot?
+
+Wherever there's a carcass there's sharks to eat it, though you may have
+sailed a week and not seen a fin; and human sharks have the longest
+scent of any, especially when they have the law on their side and courts
+of justice behind them. I wanted to keep the money in the family, so to
+speak, and I was not only unwilling to harm Old Dibs myself, but I
+didn't want no others to harm him neither.
+
+I talked it over with Tom next morning, till the eyes nearly bulged out
+of his head. Tom was less of a pirate even than me, but he had to have
+his fling in fancy, being, as I said, one of them natural-born yarners,
+and he never got back to earth till we had poisoned Old Dibs (wavering
+between Rough on Rats and powdered glass), covered up all traces of the
+crime, divided the money equal, and sailed away West in his five-ton
+cutter, to bring up at last in one of the Line islands. After arranging
+it all to the last dot, even to the name of our ninety-ton schooner, and
+the very bank in Sydney where we'd lay the stuff in our joint names, he
+said there was only one thing to do, and that was to warn Old Dibs, and
+arrange some kind of a scheme to protect him.
+
+"They are bound to run him down," said Tom. "A man that skips out with
+nothing, and a man that skips out with a quarter of a million, are in
+two different classes; and it wouldn't surprise me the least bit if
+there was six ships aiming for Manihiki simultaneous."
+
+By the time I started back to find Old Dibs I was worked up to quite a
+fever, and I'd keep looking over my shoulder expecting every minute to
+see one of them six ships in the pass. He had finished breakfast and had
+gone, and so I followed him over to the weather side, where, as usual,
+he was sitting under his tarpaulin in the graveyard, tootling for all he
+was worth. He looked up, a little surprised to see me, and I guess ships
+were running through his head also, for that was his first question.
+
+I sat down on a near-by grave.
+
+"The fack is, Mr. Smith," I said, very meaningly, "you paid me a little
+visit last night and I paid you one."
+
+"Oh, my God!" he said, turning whiter than paper, and the voice coming
+out of him like an old man's.
+
+"There's no 'my God' about it," I said. "But me and Tom Riley's been
+talking it over, and we'd like to bear a hand to help you."
+
+"It's mine," he said, very defiant, and trembling. "It's mine, every
+penny of it, and honest come by."
+
+"No doubt," I said, "but would I be guessing wrong if there were others
+who didn't think so?"
+
+"There _are_ others," he said at last, seeing, I suppose, that my face
+looked friendly, and realizing that me and Tom would hardly take this
+tack if we meant to massacre him in his sleep.
+
+"Mr. Smith," I said, "you never had two better friends than Bill Hargus
+or Tom Riley."
+
+He laid down his flute.
+
+"I'd never feel in any danger with that good wife of yours about," he
+said. It didn't seem quite the right remark under the circumstance, but
+there was a power of truth back of it. That girl of mine was regularly
+struck on Old Dibs, and, being a Tongan, was full of the Old Nick, and
+would have bit my ear off if I had lifted my hand to him. The two of
+them had patched up an adoption arrangement, him being her father, and
+she used to play _suipi_ with him, and taught him to repeat Psalms in
+native. It's only another proof how women are the same everywhere, and
+how far it goes with them to be treated with a little respeck and
+consideration.
+
+"You have a plan?" he says. "Well, Bill, what is it?"
+
+"It's a plan to get a plan," I said. "What chance would you have as
+things are now?"
+
+"Chance?" he inquires.
+
+"You'd be in irons and aboard, before you'd know what had happened to
+you," I said.
+
+He looked at me a long time and then heaved a sigh.
+
+"I'd do for myself first," he said. "They'll never put me in the dock so
+long as I have a pistol and the will to use it on myself."
+
+"I think me and Tom could improve on that," said I.
+
+"This island's too small to hide in," he said. "No background," he said.
+"I was looking for a place where there was mountains and inland
+country--and maybe caves."
+
+"You never could make a success of it by yourself," I said. "You
+couldn't in an island made to order, with electric buttons and trapdoors
+let into the granite. But me and you and Tom might, and if you've the
+mind to, we will."
+
+He was kind of over his panic by this time, and I guess he saw the sense
+of it all.
+
+"Bill," he said, "it's a weight off my mind to have you know the truth.
+Fetch along Tom, and I'll do anything you two say, for I've nearly split
+my old head trying to find a way out; but what could I do single
+handed?"
+
+"Tom's a corker," I said. "He's got an imagination like a box factory.
+If I was in a tight place like yours, I'd sail the world around just to
+find Tom Riley."
+
+"Let's call him in, then," he says, "for, as things are now, if they
+should strike this island, I'm a dead man!" And with that he took up his
+flute again and fluted very thoughtful and low, while I made a line for
+Tom's station.
+
+Tom was as happy as a lawyer with his first case. He hurried along, with
+a bottle of beer in each pocket and a memorandum book to write in, and
+just gloried in the whole business. It was like one of his own yarns
+come true, and he had to pinch himself to make sure he wasn't dreaming.
+He took hold right off; and it was pleasant to watch Old Dibs setting
+back on a grave, with the comfortable air of a man that's being taken
+charge of by experts. I won't go into all that we arranged and didn't
+do, it being enough to say what we _did_, Tom beginning a bit wild about
+putting contact mines in the channel and importing a submarine boat from
+Sydney, and coming down gradual to what the poet calls human nature's
+daily food. This was, to rig a platform in a giant _fao_ tree that stood
+in the middle of the island, about three miles down the coast, and fix
+it up with food and things, for Old Dibs to camp in.
+
+The idea was to hide him till dark in the attic of my house, and then to
+put him up the tree for as long as the ship stayed by us. Tom said I
+could easily stand off my house being searched for a few hours, even if
+it was a man-of-war that come, telling them they might do it to-morrow.
+Then Tom said we'd have to take Iosefo, the native pastor, into it part
+way, making him preach from the pulpit and order the people to deny all
+knowledge of Old Dibs if they were asked questions about him by
+strangers. Tom said the important thing was to gain the first day's
+start; for though it wasn't in reason to expect the whole island, man,
+woman, and child, to keep the secret, we might be pretty sure it
+wouldn't leak out under twenty-four hours. Then, last of all, we were to
+make away with all Old Dibs's trunks, packing what clothes he had, and
+that into camphor-wood chests, which would occasion no remark, specially
+if they were covered over on the top with trade dresses and hats, and
+such like.
+
+Old Dibs liked it all tiptop, and, more than anything, Tom's honest,
+willing face; but he shied a bit when we walked along to the tree in
+question, and looked up sixty feet into the sky, where he was to hang
+out on his little raft.
+
+"Good heavens, Riley!" he says, "do you take me for a bird, or what?"
+
+But Tom talked him round, showing how we'd rig a boatswain's chair on a
+tackle, and a sort of rustic monkey-rail to keep him from being dizzy,
+and had an answer ready for every one of old Dibs's criticisms. Tom and
+me, having been seafaring men, couldn't see no trouble about it, and the
+only thing to consider serious was how much the platform might show
+through the trees, and whether or not the upper boughs were strong
+enough to hold. We went up to make sure, straddling out on them, and
+bobbing up and down, and choosing a couple of nice forks for where we'd
+lay the main cross-piece. Tom tied his handkerchief around a likely
+bough, to mark the place for the block and give us a clean hoist from
+below, and we both come down very cheerful with the prospect.
+
+Old Dibs seemed less gay about it, and had thought up a lot of fresh
+objections; but Tom said there was only one thing to worry about, and
+that was whether the whole concern wouldn't show plain against the sky.
+We got off a ways to take a look, and very unsatisfying it was, too. A
+big, leafy tree seems a mighty solid affair, till you stand off and look
+right through it; and Old Dibs was for giving up the idea and trying the
+cellar, which was Tom's other notion. But the tree business appealed to
+Tom more, and he explained how we'd paint the contraption green, and how
+people, when they were walking, never looked up, but ahead; and how
+unwholesome a cellar would be, and likely to give Old Dibs the
+rheumatics; not to speak of pigs rooting him out, and no air to speak
+of.
+
+"Then think of the view," said Tom, who was as happy as a sand boy and
+in a bully humor, "and so close to the stars, Mr. Smith, that you can
+pick them down for lights to your cigar!"
+
+Old Dibs smiled a sickly smile, like he was unbending to a pair of kids.
+
+"Have it your own way, then, Riley," says he, "but you're responsible
+for the thing being a success, and don't look for me to dance tight
+ropes or do monkey on a stick."
+
+"I'd engage to put a cow up there," said Tom, not overpolite, though he
+meant no harm, "or a parlor organ, with the young lady to play it."
+
+"Mr. Smith," said I, "you'll only need shut your eyes and trust to us,
+and take it all as it comes."
+
+"Boys," said Old Dibs, kind of solemn and helplesslike, "you'll do the
+square thing by me, won't you? You won't sell an old man for blood
+money? You won't get me up there and then strike a trade with them
+that's tracking me down?"
+
+You ought to have seen Tom Riley's face at that! I was afraid there
+would be a bust-up then and there. But all he did was to walk faster
+ahead, like he didn't care to talk to us any more, and gave us the broad
+of his back. Old Dibs ran after him and caught his arm, panting out he
+was sorry and all that, and how Tom was to put himself in his place,
+with the whole world banded against him. I felt sorry to see the old
+fellow eating dirt, and trotting along so fat and wheezy, with Tom
+almost pushing him off like a beggar, and it was like spring sunshine
+when Tom turned square around and said:
+
+"Hell! that's all right, Mr. Smith." And I guess it was Old Dibs's face
+that needed watching, it was beaming and happy, specially when they
+shook hands on it, and we all three walked along abreast, like a father
+and his two sons on the way to the bar.
+
+Tom didn't let grass grow under his feet, and he went at it all with a
+rush, beginning first of all with Iosefo, the Kanaka pastor. Natives
+are never so helpful and willing as when you're egging them on to do
+something they shouldn't, and he fell in with the preaching idea, and
+wanted to start right away. But they finally decided it had better be a
+monthly affair, so the natives shouldn't lose track of it, and Iosefo
+commenced the first Sunday. Anybody that gave away Old Dibs was to have
+his house burned in this world and his soul in the next; and Iosefo laid
+it on thick about our all loving him, and what a friend he has proved
+himself to the island; and when he reached the point where he announced
+that Old Dibs had contributed fifty dollars toward the fund for the new
+church, you could feel a rustle go through the whole congregation, and a
+general gasp of satisfaction. Iosefo drew a fancy picture of Judas
+hanging himself, and brought it up to date with Old Dibs, and what a
+scaly thing it was to do anyway. He let himself rip in all directions,
+even to the persecutions in what he called the White Country, which he
+said Old Dibs had endured for religion's sake, and how he had been
+thrown to the lions in the Colossium.
+
+Old Dibs sat there as smug as smug, little knowing how the agony was
+being piled on his bald head; and just when Iosefo was making him cow
+the lions with a glance, Old Dibs took the specs off his nose and wiped
+them, while everybody was worked up tremendous to know whether he had
+been eat or not. Iosefo was no slouch when he once got his hand in, and
+carried it over to the next number like a story in a magazine, the
+Kanakas all going out buzzing, wishing it was Sunday week, and eyeing
+Old Dibs with veneration.
+
+The platform was number two on the list, and me and Tom, with the
+measurements we had taken in the tree, made a very neat job of it, and
+painted it green topside and bottom. We laid it together in Tom's shed,
+and got in Old Dibs to see if it would fit him, which it did beautiful,
+being six foot six by two and a half. Tom explained we'd put a natty
+railing around it, likewise painted green, and carry a width of fine
+netting below, so that pillows or things shouldn't slip overboard. Tom
+was hurt at Old Dibs not being more enthusiastic, and finally said:
+"Hell! Mr. Smith, what are you sticking at?"
+
+"It'll never sustain the coin," said Old Dibs, jouncing up and down on
+it like a dancing hippopotamus.
+
+"You weren't meaning to take that up, too?" cries Tom.
+
+"I thought that was part of the scheme?" said Old Dibs. "Why, you said a
+whole cow yourself. Didn't he, Bill?"
+
+This was a facer for Tom, but all he asked was how much money there
+was.
+
+"It weighs hundreds of pounds," said Old Dibs, very sly, and not wanting
+to name figgers.
+
+We neither of us could very well blame the old gentleman for not wanting
+to trust us with a quarter of a million dollars while he was up a tree
+like a canary bird; and so Tom or I didn't say what was in our minds,
+which was to bury it somewheres. In fact, there was a longish silence,
+till I suggested using some two-inch iron pipe I had at home, instead of
+the light boat spars Tom had cut for the purpose.
+
+"And as for the money," said I, "why not have a locker for it at each
+end, with the weight resting against the forks, and maybe a little room
+extra for Mr. Smith's toothbrush and toilet tackle?" I minded the size
+of the suit case I had last seen the stuff in, and showed Tom about what
+was wanted.
+
+"But that'll cut him off at each end," objected Tom, looking at Old Dibs
+like he was measuring him for a coffin, "and you know yourself six foot
+six is the most we can allow."
+
+"Oh, I don't mind shortening up a bit," said Old Dibs, laying down to
+show how easy it might be done, and eager to be accommodating.
+
+"And I'd propose chicken wire instead of net," says I to Tom, noticing
+how the old gentleman bulked outboard. "He's putting a strain on that
+worse nor a live shark."
+
+Tom said he thought so, too, and him and I put in half a day making the
+platform over, while Old Dibs crossed over to the graveyard and fluted
+away the rest of the afternoon. We waited for the full moon before
+getting it into the tree, for daytime was out of the question, and Tom
+and I managed it very well, and to both our satisfaction. The tropic
+moon is a whale of a moon, and you can almost see to read by it, and it
+wasn't the want of light that bothered us any. The trouble was more to
+get it level and lash it proper with zinc wire. But we finished it up in
+style, with a second coat of green paint everywhere except the bottom,
+and, though I do say it myself, it was as snug a little crow's nest, and
+as comfortable and strong, as though it had been made by people
+regularly in the business. We rigged the tackle, too, and tried out the
+Manila rope with the boatswain's chair, and would have sent up Old Dibs
+on a trial trip if we hadn't feared he'd never make another. So we let
+it go at that, he paying us one hundred dollars for our trouble, and
+expressing himself mighty well pleased.
+
+I reckon perhaps he was, for we fixed up the attic, too, and had
+everything in train so that there wouldn't be no hitch when the time
+come. Tom got kind of sore waiting for it, for after having put so much
+work into the thing he naturally wanted to see it used, and it galled
+him to wait and wait, with nothing doing. But Old Dibs took it more
+cheerful, and minded a good deal less about its being wasted; and as the
+months run on, he seemed to think he was out of the woods, and perked up
+wonderful.
+
+Not that he wasn't careful, of course, or that Iosefo let down on the
+preaching; for nobody could be sure what day or what minute the pinch
+mightn't come. He grew quite familiar with the attic part of it,
+scooting up there whenever we raised a sail, and remaining for days at a
+time when a ship was in port. We had a fair number of them, off and
+on--the missionary bark, the _Equator_, Captain Reid; the _Lorelei_,
+Captain Saxe; the _Ransom_, Captain Mins; the _Belle Brandon_, Captain
+Cole; the brigantine _Trenton_, in ballast, calling in to set her
+rigging; the cutter _Ulysses_, with supplies for Washington Island, and
+the Seventh-Day Adventist schooner _Pitcairn_, with her mate dying of
+some kind of sickness. They buried him ashore, and then went out again,
+after giving us the precise date at which the world was coming to an
+end, and saying what a hell of a poor millennium it was going to be for
+anybody save _them_! Oh, yes, the usual straggle of vessels that
+happened our way, with months between; and, once, the smoke of a steamer
+on the horizon.
+
+Perhaps a matter of eighteen months altogether since Old Dibs first
+landed, and day followed day, like it might have gone on forever. One
+wouldn't have remarked any particular change in him, except that his rig
+was getting shabbier and the shine was coming off the stovepipe--and
+perhaps some improvement in the flute. This, an extra bulk, and a kind
+of contented look he hadn't wore before, was what life on the island had
+done for Old Dibs; and he branched out a bit in the line of household
+favorite, cutting kindling wood for Sarah, gutting fish, scraping
+cocoanut for the chickens; and the pair of them would sit and gossip for
+hours about the neighbors--how Taalolo had driven his wife out of doors,
+and the true inwardness of the king's quarrel with Ve'a, and why the
+Toto family was in ambush to cut off Tehea's nose. He could talk better
+native than I could, and he was made a pet of everywhere around the
+settlement, and there was seldom a pig killed but what they'd bring him
+the head out of respeck. Not that he wasn't as regular as ever at the
+graveyard; but he had kind of shook in, so to speak, and nobody gave a
+feast but what he sat at the right hand and divided honors with the
+pastor and the king.
+
+One afternoon, from the bench, I heard them raise a cry of "_Pahi,
+Pahi_," and I run out of the copra-shed, where I was weighing, to see a
+schooner heading in. She was a smart-looking little vessel of fifty or
+sixty tons, and she come up hand over hand, making a running mooring
+off the settlement. Tom and I was waiting for her in a canoe, Old Dibs
+meanwhile climbing into the attic and dropping the trapdoor, with "Under
+Two Flags" and a lamp to support the tedium. That was getting to be
+routine now, and his last words were to buy all the books and papers we
+could lay our hands on, and not forget Sarah's list of stores she was
+out of. Bless my soul! he was always mindful of them things, and it was
+always _carte blanche_ in the trade room for anything she fancied.
+
+Well, we climbed aboard, and they told us she was the Sydney pilot boat
+_Minnie_, under charter to two gentlemen aboard who had an option on one
+of Arundel's guano islands. They had struck a leak in their main water
+tank, and were in for repairs and filling up fresh.
+
+Tom and me got more of a welcome than seemed quite right, captains
+usually being shortish with traders till the gaskets are on; but in this
+case it was all so damn friendly that I nudged Tom and Tom nudged me. We
+all trooped below to have a drink in the cabin, and the two guano
+gentlemen were introduced to us, and likewise another they called their
+bookkeeper. All three of them were hulking big men, very breezy and well
+spoken, with more the manner of recruiting sergeants soft-sawdering you
+to enlist than the ways of people high up in business. Mr. Phelps, who
+took the lead, did several things to make me chew on, and he shivered
+over his "h's" like he had been brought up originally without any. He
+was so genial, that if you had any money in your pocket you would have
+held on tight to it, and taken the first opportunity to get out. And his
+big hearty laugh was altogether too ready and his manners too free, and
+when he clapped me on the back I felt glad to think Old Dibs was tight
+in his attic, and his tree in good running order.
+
+"Very little company hereabouts?" he asked, filling up our glasses for
+the second round.
+
+"Nothing but us two," says Tom.
+
+"My wife's father is somewhere down this way," volunteered Mr. Phelps.
+
+"You don't say!" says I, nudging Tom again under the cuddy table.
+
+"A fine old gent," went on Mr. Phelps, "but he met misfortunes in the
+produce commission business, and had to get out very quiet."
+
+"Too bad!" said I.
+
+"It grieves my wife not to know where he is," continued Mr. Phelps, "she
+being greatly attached to her father, and him disappearing like that;
+and she told me not to grudge the matter of fifty pounds to find him."
+
+"There's a lot of room in the South Seas to lose a produce commission
+merchant in," says I.
+
+"Here's a likeness of him," says Mr. Phelps, taking a photograph out of
+his pocket, while four pairs of eyes settled on Tom and me like gimlets,
+and there was the kind of pause when pins drop.
+
+"A very fine-appearing old gentleman," says I, starting in spite of
+myself when I saw it was a picture of Old Dibs.
+
+"Give us a squint, Bill," says Tom, taking it out of my hands as bold as
+brass. And then: "I've seen that face somewhere; I know I have. Lord
+bless me, wherever could it have been?" And he looked at it, puzzled and
+recollectful, me holding my breath, and the rest of them giving a little
+jump in their seats.
+
+Tom brought his fist down on the table with a blow that made the glasses
+ring.
+
+"It was on the _Belle Brandon_!" he cried out, very excited. "A stout
+old party, fair complected, who played the flute."
+
+"That's him!" cried Phelps, half-starting from his chair.
+
+"I reckon he must be up Jaluit way," said Tom coolly, "Captain Cole
+being bound for the Marshalls at the time."
+
+I could feel them shooting glances all around us.
+
+"It's remarkable your friend here doesn't remember him," says the one
+they called Nettleship, indicating me with the heel of his glass.
+
+"I didn't happen to get aboard the _Brandon_," says I. "What was I
+doing, Tom? I disremember."
+
+"That was when you was laid up with boils," says Tom, as ready as
+lightning.
+
+"So it was," says I.
+
+"You didn't happen to pass any talk with him?" asks Mr. Phelps of Tom.
+
+"Nothing particular," says Tom.
+
+"Even a little might help us," says Mr. Phelps. "See if you can't
+remember."
+
+"Oh! he said he was looking for a quiet place to end his days in,"
+answers Tom.
+
+"I wonder that this here island wasn't to his taste," says Mr.
+Nettleship, with a quick look.
+
+"Oh, it was," says Tom unabashed, "only Captain Cole broke in and said
+he knew a better."
+
+By this time nearly all our heads were touching over the table, except
+the one they called the bookkeeper, who had run for a chart.
+
+"Did he call the island by any particular name?" inquires Mr. Phelps.
+
+"I think he said Pleasant Island," says Tom, "because I mind the old
+gentleman saying it must be a pleasant place with such a name and I said
+I had been there, but the holding ground was poor."
+
+The bookkeeper laid the chart on the table, and the captain found
+Pleasant Island with his thumb.
+
+He was about to say it was a ten days' run leeward, when he broke off
+sudden with "ouch" instead, being kicked hard under the table, and
+pretending it was the beginning of a cough instead.
+
+"I'm looking for a change of weather at the full of the moon," remarks
+Tom, "and you'd be wise to take this good spell while it lasts."
+
+I guess Tom overdid it this time, and I gave him hell for it when we
+went ashore, for I saw the change on Phelps's face, and that he suddenly
+suspicioned Tom was playing double.
+
+"Business comes first," he says, rolling up the chart, "and though I
+would like to find him, just for my poor wife's satisfaction, I can't go
+wild-goose-chasing all over the Pacific for a woman's whim."
+
+Tom was beginning to feel that he had overdone it, too, and roused more
+suspicion than he had laid; so he thought to make it up by losing
+interest in Old Dibs, and what was Fitzsimmons doing now, and was it
+true that John L. had retired from the ring? But he didn't seem to
+recover the ground he had lost, and I judged it a bad sign when we went
+up the companion for Phelps to say, kind of absent-minded, that he'd go
+two hundred and fifty pounds for his father-in-law, alive or
+dead--raising it to five hundred as we dropped over the side.
+
+We pulled first to Tom's house, so as to divert suspicion, and from
+there I went along by myself to tip off the news to Old Dibs. When I had
+given the knocks agreed on, three sets of four, he drew back the trap,
+and asked very cheerful how I had made out with the books and papers.
+
+"Good God, man, they're here!" says I.
+
+"Who's here?" he asks, incredulous.
+
+"A whole schooner of detectives from Sydney," says I. "They say they're
+buying guano islands, but there's already five hundred pounds out for
+you, dead or alive."
+
+His great fat hand began to shake on the trap.
+
+"Never you mind, Mr. Smith," I says reassuring. "Tom will be due here at
+midnight, and then we'll run you up your tree."
+
+But that didn't seem to soothe him any, and he quavered out he would be
+better where he was. But I said they'd rummage the whole island upside
+down before they were done, and all he had to do was to lay low, not
+worry, and let me and Tom handle the thing for him.
+
+He reached down his hand through the trap, and I shook it, he saying,
+"God bless you, Bill--God bless you!" And then it went shut, and I heard
+him blow out the lamp.
+
+The next step was to take my old girl into the secret, she being a
+Tongan, as I've already said, and as true as steel. She didn't say much,
+but I guess it would have done Old Dibs good to have seen her eyes
+flash, and the way her teeth grit, and how quick she was to understand
+her part--which was, to pack his clothes in camphor-wood chests under a
+top dressing of trade. Old Dibs made no bones about giving her the keys,
+while I took it on myself to tell Iosefo the enemy had arrived, and he'd
+better move about the village warning everybody of the fack. It was well
+I did so, for Phelps and Nettleship and the rest come ashore soon
+afterwards with their pockets full of trifles for the children and the
+girls, and they strolled about the settlement, stopping to rest and
+drink cocoanuts in the different houses. Phelps had brought the
+photograph along and showed it right and left, asking if they had ever
+seen anybody like that. I guess some of them would have cried out if it
+hadn't been for the pastor joining the party, like he wanted to do the
+honors of the island, telling the natives beforehand about the
+photograph, and shooing off the children when they come too close to it.
+The whites probably thought he was talking what nice folks they were,
+for he had a kind of bland missionary way of talking, though he was
+really calling them the sons of Belial, and saying how the person who
+gave Old Dibs away would have his house burned and go to hell.
+
+The pastor did yeoman's service that day, and at sundown they all went
+back to their ship, very grumpy and dissatisfied, returning no wiser
+than when they'd come. Iosefo held a service afterwards to rub it in,
+and the king spoke at it, and likewise the chiefs, and so in our
+different ways we all pulled together for the common good. They had
+quite a jollification that night on the schooner, singing songs and
+playing some kind of a hurdy-gurdy on deck, and the sound of it come
+over the water very pleasant to hear. I sneaked off in a canoe toward
+ten o'clock, to make sure it wasn't a blind, but there was no
+misdoubting what they were up to. They were all drunk, and getting
+drunker, and I couldn't but think what a poor, tipsifying set of sleuths
+they were, and how different from Sherlock Holmes in the book. I lay for
+nearly an hour under their quarter, to hear what I could hear, and all I
+got was the odds and ends of some smutty stories, and once being very
+near spit on the head.
+
+When I got back to the station there was Tom to meet me, it being eleven
+now, and the village fast asleep. We overhauled the gear to make sure it
+was all in order, Sarah making up a basket of provisions for the old
+man, together with his toothbrush, comb, panjammers, blanket, a demijohn
+of water, and a bottle of gin. She said he had eaten no dinner, groaning
+and carrying on awful, wanting her to shoot him with his pistol and end
+it all. But he seemed to have pulled himself together by the time we
+were ready, for he let himself down from the attic quite spry, and made
+us all laugh by the remarks he passed. But one could see he just forced
+himself to do it, and his face looked powerful haggard and flabby in the
+lantern light, and he moved queer on his legs, like a push would have
+sent him over.
+
+I had a little two-wheeled truck that I used about the store to run bags
+of shell about in, and copra, and on this we put the treasure, eight
+bags of it, each one as heavy as could be lifted comfortably. Old Dibs
+insisted on cutting one open and serving us out a double handful each,
+not forgetting a share for Tom's wife as well as mine, and saying, "Take
+it, and God bless you, my dear, kind friends!" We dropped it into my
+tool chest, and threw the key on the floor of the bedroom, meaning to
+divide up equal later on.
+
+We rigged a sort of rope harness to the truck, giving Tom the handles to
+steer by, while Old Dibs, Sarah, and me did tandem in front. The
+boatswain's chair and the coil of Manila rope were lashed down on the
+load, as well as the basket of provisions, Sarah carrying the demijohn
+in her hand, Old Dibs the gin and "Under Two Flags," while I led the way
+with the lantern.
+
+My, but we must have made a queer sight as we plowed through the
+darkness, Tom bearing down on the handles and fighting to keep the truck
+on an even keel, Old Dibs grampussing along as wheeler, and Sarah and me
+tugging like battery mules! Of course everybody knows that gold is
+heavy, but when you run into the hundred thousands it becomes pig-iron
+heavy, cannon heavy, house-and-lot-and-barn heavy! It nearly pulled the
+hearts out of us to keep that truck moving, specially in the sand before
+we struck a harder going.
+
+I thought time and again it was going to prove the death of Old Dibs. He
+was always laying down in his harness like a done-up Eskimo dog in the
+pictures, and having to be fanned alive again. But when we'd propose to
+cut him out, he'd say No, and stagger to his feet, showing a splendid
+spirit and cart-horsing ahead till his poor old breath came in roars.
+
+It was a thankful moment when we got to the tree, where me and Tom,
+after a spell of rest, jumped in together with a will. It was no slouch
+of a job to get that tackle in position, the block being iron shod and
+heavy, the rope inch Manila, and the night as black as the pit of
+Tophet. Tom went aloft first, with a coil of light line, having to feel
+his way for the place we had marked with the handkerchief, and
+threatening more than once to come down quicker than he had gone up. The
+handkerchief had rotted off, or blown away long since, and it bothered
+Tom not a little to find where it had been. But at last he did so,
+dropping his line for the lantern, according to the plan we had arranged
+beforehand, so as to avoid all shouting and noise. When he had placed
+the lantern to his satisfaction, the line came straggling down again
+for the block and the gear to make it fast with, and when this was done
+the inch Manila went up, and everything was ready.
+
+It showed how well Tom and I had thought it out, that there wasn't a
+single hitch, except for the lantern blowing out and Tom having no
+matches, I going up to see what was delaying him, and having none
+neither. Then we changed places, Tom being a heavier man to pull, and I
+remaining aloft to handle the freight as it came along. They made the
+boatswain's chair fast below, and sent her up with the first load--two
+bags of coin--getting it on a level with the platform by the lantern
+marking the place. I stood on the platform and had no trouble in yanking
+the stuff in; and this went right along like a mail steamer, till it was
+all up, and it came old Dibs's turn.
+
+But he just took one look at the boatswain's chair, and said "Nit,"
+laying down on the ground when they tried to persuade him into it, and
+rolling over and over in desperation. We argufied over him for an hour,
+and it seemed all to no purpose, he refusing to budge an inch, saying he
+weighed two hundred and twenty pounds, and was better off in the attic.
+
+Time was running away on us, and me and Tom got tired of saying the same
+things over and over, and always getting the same answers, and finally
+we lost our tempers, and said we'd go home. Then he said he'd come
+home, too, and we said No, we had washed our hands of him. Then he said
+he was only a poor old man and would blow his brains out, and we said he
+might, if he wanted to. Then, when we had gone about twenty paces, he
+come lumbering after us, saying, "For God's sake, stop!" and swearing he
+would go up peaceful, and make no more trouble.
+
+We tied him in like a baby in a high chair, I going up to receive him,
+while my wife and Tom laid on to the rope with a yeo-heave-yeo under
+their breaths. All the fight had clean gone out of him, and the only
+thing he did was to squeal a little when he bumped against the trunk,
+and tried to fill up with air to make himself lighter. But he reached
+the top all right, and I landed him very careful, he squatting down on
+the floor and saying, "Oh, my God!" I was too busy clearing away, and
+letting the block down to Tom, for me to hear much else he said, but
+when I was through and went to take a last look at him, he seemed quite
+snug and contented, and glad he had come. He shook hands very grateful,
+looking for me to come back the following night and report, I to make an
+owl signal like we had agreed on previously.
+
+I wished him happy dreams, and come down, all three of us setting out
+for home with the truck and the gear, my wife in a tantrum at our having
+threatened to desert Old Dibs when he acted so cowardly. Tom made it
+worse by saying the Kanakas were losing all respeck for whites, and if
+_he_ was married to a Tongan, and was spoken to like that, he'd quit--by
+gum, that's what _he'd_ do! Then she said it would serve me right if she
+went away in the schooner with the white men, and I would never see her
+again. And I said, "Oh, dear, but I'd feel sorry for the white man that
+got you!" Then she said she'd give all the gold Old Dibs had made her a
+present of to be back home in Tonga; and then I said I'd gladly add mine
+to hers. And when Tom added his, I thought we were in for a race war.
+
+We all got back pretty cross and tired, but a little beer put heart in
+us; and I pulled her down on my knee and said she was the only girl in
+the world, and that I wouldn't trade her for a ten-ton cutter; while Tom
+counted out the money Old Dibs had given us previous, and said we were
+all a pack of fools, and that he was as fond of Sarah as anybody. So
+peace descended like a beautiful vision, and there was four hundred and
+forty dollars for each of us, with a twenty over that we tossed for, and
+engineered to let Sarah win. Tom said we might shake hands on a good
+night's work, and went home in high spirits, jingling his money in a
+bandanner.
+
+It wasn't long after breakfast the next morning when I heard a great
+stamping and tramping out in front, and there, if you please, was the
+whole schooner party, Phelps, Nettleship, the bookkeeper, and the
+captain. They had thrown off the mask now, and Phelps had a warrant a
+yard long for the apprehension of Runyon Rufe, which he read aloud to
+me, while the others listened with their hats off like it was church.
+
+"I thought you gentlemen were in the guano business," says I, when he
+had finished.
+
+"We're in the Runyon Rufe catching business," says Mr. Phelps, very
+genial, "and we trust you will not oppose the officers of the law in the
+exercise of their functions."
+
+"I don't want to oppose anybody when it's four to one," says I, equally
+genial, "though may I make so bold as to inquire who is Runyon Rufe and
+what's he done?"
+
+"Never heard of Runyon Rufe!" says Nettleship, like it was George
+Washington or Alfred the Great.
+
+"Here it is, better than I can tell it," said Mr. Phelps, handing me a
+printed proclamation:
+
+      TEN THOUSAND POUNDS REWARD.
+
+      RUNYON RUFE, Banker and Company Promoter, wanted
+      for gigantic frauds in connection with the Invincible
+      Building Society, the Greater London Finance Syndicate,
+      Suburbs Limited, and other undertakings. Fled to the United
+      States, where he had previously put by sums aggregating two
+      hundred thousand pounds; resisted extradition; forfeited his
+      bail; was traced to Portland, Oregon, and thence to Penrhyn
+      Island, South Pacific, where all clews as to his whereabouts
+      were lost.
+
+      Aged sixty-three; height, five feet nine inches; imposing
+      appearance; weight, fifteen stone and over; fair complexion;
+      brown eyes, with bushy, gray eyebrows; scanty gray hair; of
+      a plethoric habit, and with a noticeable hesitancy of
+      speech. When last seen was well supplied with money, and was
+      heard declaring his intention of making his way toward the
+      lesser-traveled islands of the Pacific Ocean.
+
+      The above reward, in whole or in part, will be paid by
+      Houghton & Cust, No. 318 George Street, Sydney, New South
+      Wales, on receiving information that will lead to the arrest
+      of the said Runyon Rufe.
+
+      Traders and others are cautioned against harboring the
+      fugitive, or aiding and abetting his escape from the
+      officers of justice.
+
+I read it three times and then handed it back.
+
+"Show me where to sign," says I.
+
+"We have to go through the disagreeable formality of searching these
+premises," said Mr. Phelps, disregarding my joke, "and if you have no
+objections we shall begin now!"
+
+"And suppose I _did_ have an objection?" I asked.
+
+"We'd search them just the same," said Mr. Phelps, grinning.
+
+I was in two minds what to do; but I noticed the bookkeeper's lip was
+cut, and there was dried blood on Mr. Nettleship's knuckles, and it
+didn't seem good enough. I saw they had begun on Tom first, and that
+decided me to take water with my formality.
+
+"Walk in," says I.
+
+They didn't wait for a second asking, and a minute later were poking and
+rummaging all through the place. They thought I might have hid him
+somewheres, and turned over everything to that end, not opening as much
+as a chest or pulling out a single drawer. It wasn't much pleasure to
+look on and see them doing it, but I had to take my medicine, and it was
+common sense to appear cheerful about it. They crawled into all kinds of
+places, and backed out of all kinds of others, and tapped the walls to
+see if any was hollow, and turned over sacks of pearl shell and copra,
+and sneezed and swore and burrowed and choked, till at last Mr. Phelps
+really found something, and that was a centipede that bit him. This
+brought them all out on the front veranda again, where I had to pretend
+I was sorry, which I was--for the centipede.
+
+I asked what they were going to do next, and they said, "Get aboard and
+bathe it with ammoniar"; and I said, "No, I meant about Runyon Rufe";
+and Mr. Phelps he give me a wicked look, and said that they'd lay him by
+the legs before long, together with a few white trading gentlemen,
+maybe, to keep him company; and I said, "Oh, dear, I hope that isn't any
+insinuation against present company!" and he said, "the present company
+might put the cap on if it fitted them"; and I said "if he couldn't keep
+a civil tongue in his head he had better get off my front stoop"; and
+he said "he wouldn't demean himself by bandying words with a
+beach-comber," and went off sucking his hand, with the others crowding
+around him, and asking him how it felt now.
+
+I suspicioned there had been a leak somewheres, and was surer than ever
+when Tom came around with his eye bunged up where Nettleship had hit
+him. And it certainly looked black that they made no appearance of
+moving, raising an awning over the quarter-deck, and bringing up tables
+and swinging hammocks like it was for a week. The pastor had told Tom
+that one of the children had reckonized Old Dibs's photograph, and
+clapped his hands before he could be stopped, crying out, "Ona! Ona!"
+the name Old Dibs went by among the Kanakas.
+
+We put in a pretty anxious day, for they began a systematic prowl all
+over the island, obviously dividing out the territory and doing it
+simultaneous. That night they set a watch on my house and Tom's, the
+news coming in from Iosefo, who had spies out watching them. It was
+regular wheels within wheels, and I couldn't but wonder how poor Old
+Dibs was faring up his tree, waiting and waiting for us to come!
+
+The next day they prowled harder than ever, this time the crew joining
+in, mate, cook, cabin boy, and four hands. Like was natural, they made
+me and Tom's first--the crew, I mean--and we both had the same happy
+thought, square-face. The mate went off with only three drinks in him,
+taking the cabin boy with two, but the rest of them sucked it in by the
+bucket, and the fartherest any of them got away was a hundred yards, and
+him with a bottle in his hand. They were a pretty ugly crowd by
+nightfall, refusing to go back to the ship when ordered, and roaring and
+yelling about the settlement to all hours. The afterguard still kept tab
+on me and Tom, however, and so yet another night passed without our
+daring to make our date with Old Dibs. But in the morning they lost all
+patience, rounding up the crew with handspikes, and all going off to the
+schooner with half of them in irons. Phelps and Nettleship helped to get
+up anchor themselves, and toward nine o'clock we had the blessed sight
+of their heels, beating out of the lagoon against a stiff trade.
+
+It was hard to have to wait the balance of the day doing nothing, for we
+might need the tree idea again, and it would have been a mug's game to
+have given away the secret to the Kanakas. Tom and me both felt
+considerable rocky, besides, from having drunk so much gin with the
+schooner's people; for though we had held back all we could, and had
+tipped our glasses on the sly, we couldn't seem too behindhand in
+whooping it up with them. But we were dead dogs now all right, and the
+main part of breakfast and dinner was the buckets of water we poured
+over each other's heads. It was what you might call a very long day, and
+it seemed like the sun would never set, for we were both of us in a
+sweat about Old Dibs, and more than anxious how he had made out.
+
+Then sundown came, and dusk, and night itself, and still another long
+spell for the Kanakas to go to sleep, which it seemed as though they
+never would. Yes, a long day, and a long, long evening, and it was like
+a whole week had passed before we stood under the tree and owly-owled to
+Old Dibs.
+
+It was a mighty faint answer he gave back, and when me and Tom had
+rigged up the chair again we found we had a sick man on our hands. The
+exposure had nearly done for him; that, and the fear of being caught,
+and all the water having leaked out of the demijohn, which he had stood
+on its side the better to hide it. He was that weak he could hardly sit
+up, and was partly off his nut, besides, wanting to telephone at once to
+Longhurst, and mixing up Tom with the Public Prosecutor.
+
+He would put his poor old trembling hand across his forehead like he was
+trying to wipe all this away, saying, "Is that you, Tom Riley?" and,
+"Bill, Bill," like that. It was no easy matter to get him down, for he
+almost needed to be lifted into the boatswain's chair, and couldn't as
+much as raise a little finger to help himself or hold on, and once we
+nearly spilled him out altogether. Fortunately, my old girl had brought
+some hot coffee in a beer bottle, and this was just like pouring new
+life down his throat. Our first business was to get him home and tuck
+him in, returning and making a second trip of the treasure, and winding
+up all serene about two in the morning, with Old Dibs sitting up in bed
+and eating fried eggs.
+
+When Iosefo reported next morning, Old Dibs paid him a hundred dollars
+and dispensed with his services, saying that though he'd always be glad
+to see him around as a friend, he had no more call to keep him sitting
+on the chest. This made Tom and me feel good, for it showed he trusted
+us now, which he had never quite done before. In a day or two he was
+almost as lively as ever, out in the graveyard playing on his flute, and
+attending to church work on committee nights the same as before.
+
+But there was a big change in him for all that, and me and Tom got it
+into our heads that he wasn't going to live very long, for he had that
+distressed look on his face that showed something wrong inside. He used
+to run on talking to himself half the night, and once he burst in to
+where I was asleep, saying he had seen me at the treasure chest, prizing
+off the lid, and what did I mean by it? After having lived together so
+long and comfortable, it wasn't very pleasant to see him going crazy on
+us--and going crazy that way--being suspicious we meant to rob and kill
+him, and all of us being in a conspiracy. He told the pastor he was
+afraid of his life of Tom and me, and if it wasn't for Iosefo he would
+be fearful to stay in my house a minute; and he told Tom _he_ was the
+only friend he had; and then said the same to me, warning me against Tom
+and Iosefo, saying they were at the winder every night trying to break
+in. And all this, maybe, on the very self-same day, the three of us
+comparing notes and wondering where it was all going to end.
+
+It ended sooner than any of us expected; for one morning, when Sarah
+went to take him his coffee, his door was locked, and for all our
+hammering we couldn't raise a sound. I broke it in at last, expecting
+that he'd rise up and shoot me, and dodging when it went inward with a
+crash. But there was nobody to shoot, the room being stark empty, and
+the only thing of Old Dibs his clothes on a chair. We were at a loss
+what to do, and waited for half an hour, thinking he might turn up.
+Then, real uneasy in our minds, we went out to look for him. He wasn't
+anywhere near the house or the beach, and as a last resort we went
+across the island to the graveyard, thinking perhaps he had taken it
+into his head to have a before-breakfast tootle on the flute. We found
+him, sure enough, in the middle of the graveyard, but laying forward in
+his old crimson dressing gown, dead.
+
+Yes, sir, cold to the touch like it had been for hours, and holding a
+blackened lantern in his poor old fist--dead as dead--face down in the
+coral sand. We rolled him over to do what we could for him, but he had
+passed to a place beyond help or hurt. I went back for Tom in a
+protuberation, saying, "My God! Tom, what do you think's happened?--Old
+Dibs's dead in the graveyard!" I guess the old man had never been so
+close to Tom as he had been to me, boarding in my house and almost a
+father to me and the wife, for Tom took it awful cool, and asked almost
+the first thing about the money.
+
+"You and me will divide on that," he says.
+
+"Sure," I says, "but that can stand over till afterwards, Tom."
+
+"Stand over, nothing!" he says, very sharp; and with that we both set
+off running for my house.
+
+It was a jumpy thing to enter that darkened room, with the feeling you
+couldn't shake off that Old Dibs was peering in at us, and that every
+minute we'd hear his footstep, everything laid out just as he had last
+touched them, and almost warm, even to his slippers and his collar and
+the old hat against the wall. But it made no more difference to Tom than
+if it had been his own hat, and he tramped in like a policeman, saying,
+"Where is it, Bill?"
+
+"In one of them two camphor-wood chests," says I.
+
+He lifted up one of them by the end and let it fall ker-bang!
+
+"Not here," says he.
+
+"Try the other," says I, with a sudden sinking.
+
+He let that crash, too, and turning around, looked me in the face.
+
+"Good God, Tom!" said I.
+
+"Just what I suspected all along," said Tom, as savage as a tiger. "He's
+made way with it!"
+
+We didn't stop to speak another word, but rummaged the whole room upside
+down.
+
+"He's buried it," says Tom, savager than ever, "and what kind of a
+bastard was you to let him?"
+
+"It was none of my business," says I.
+
+"None of your business!" he repeated, screaming out at me like a
+woman--"to have a quarter of a million by the tail and let it go? You
+might have been slack about your own half, but it was a swine's trick
+not to keep track of mine!"
+
+"He can't have taken it very far," I said.
+
+"Not far!" yelled Tom, making an insult of every word I said. "Why, what
+was to prevent him lugging away a little this day and that, till the
+whole caboodle was sunk in a solid block? What do you suppose he was
+doing with the lantern, you tom-fool? Planting it, of course--planting
+every dollar of it, night after night, while you were snoozing in your
+silly bed."
+
+"If it's anywhere it's in the Kanaka graveyard," says I. "I'll go bail
+it's within ten feet of where we found his dead body."
+
+"Did you stake the place?" says Tom.
+
+I was ashamed to tell him I hadn't even thought of the money, being
+struck all of a heap, and always powerful fond of Old Dibs.
+
+"It would serve you right if I made you dig up the whole graveyard,
+single-handed," said Tom; "and if you had a spark of proper feeling,
+Bill Hargus, you'd fall on your knees and beg my parding for having
+acted like such a damned ninny!"
+
+I would have answered him back in his own coin if I hadn't felt so bad
+about it all, and rattled, besides. I had punched Tom's head often and
+often, and he had punched mine; but I was staggered by the money being
+missing, and the loss of it just seemed to swallow up everything else.
+Somehow, it had never seemed _my_ money till then, and the more I felt
+it mine the more galling it was to give it up. Tom relented when he saw
+how cut up I was, withdrawing all the hard things he had said, and going
+on the other tack to cheer me up. He said he was just as big an ass as I
+was, and came out handsome about its being both our fault, and how it
+didn't matter a hill of beans anyway, for we'd soon get our spades on to
+it. It stood to reason it couldn't be far away or buried very deep, and
+a little fossicking with an iron ramrod would feel it out in no time.
+
+Well, we gave Old Dibs a good send off, Tom and me making the coffin,
+and we buried him in a likely place to windward of the Kanaka graveyard.
+Tom wouldn't have him _inside_, for fear the natives might chance on the
+treasure themselves, and we put a neat fence around the place, with a
+priming and two coats of white paint, and a natty gate to go in by with
+brass hinges. The whole settlement turned out, Iosefo outdoing himself,
+and the king butting in with an address, and everything shipshape and
+Bristol fashion, as sailors say. We didn't have no flowers, and the
+whole business was sort of home-made and amateur, but Sarah made up for
+the lack of them by pegging out the grave with little poles, and
+streamers which gave quite a gay look to it, and fluttered in the wind,
+very pretty to see.
+
+Then Tom and me started in our digging operations on a checkerboard
+plan, very systematic, with stakes where we left off, working by night
+so as not to rouse the natives' ill will. Or, I ought to have said, two
+nights, for I guess we didn't cover up our tracks sufficient, and they
+got on to it. We discovered this in the form of a depitation of chiefs
+and elders, who give us warning it had to stop ker-plunk! They said
+they wouldn't allow their graveyard torn up, and altogether acted very
+ugly and insulting. Tom and I had to sing small and put in a holiday
+neither of us wanted, for the Kanakas had the whip hand of us, and I
+never saw them so roused. Tom at first tried to carry it off with a high
+hand, informing them that he was a British subjeck, by God! and was they
+meaning to interfere with a British subjeck? But I couldn't see how that
+gave him any right to dig up Kanaka graveyards for money that didn't
+belong to him, and so I smoothed them down and out-talked Tom, saying it
+shouldn't happen again, and I was glad they had mentioned it!
+
+We waited a few weeks for the storm to blow over, and then begun again,
+this time more cautious than before by a darned sight. We thought we
+were managing beautifully, till the next day, when we went out fishing
+in Tom's boat and come back to find both our stations burned to the
+ground, and all our stuff stacked outside the smoking ruins,
+higgledy-piggledy!
+
+This was getting it in the neck, and we saw we were beat. We ran up a
+couple of little shacks and settled down to ordinary trading again, with
+what good spirits you can imagine. We didn't even dare walk on the
+weather side of the island, lest they'd carry out their next threat,
+which was to shoot us; and the only revenge we had was raising prices
+on them and monkeying with the scales, winning out in both ways. But it
+was a poor set off to a quarter of a million of cold coin where almost
+we could lay our hands on it, and if there was in the whole world a
+human being more blue and miserable than me, it was Tom Riley. Then, to
+make matters worse, the whole thing was common property now, the Kanakas
+knowing as much as we did, and more, and the news was passed along to
+every ship that came--all about Old Dibs and the money in the graveyard.
+You might be surprised the natives didn't take a leaf out of our book
+and dig it up for themselves; but you'll never really civilize a Kanaka
+if you try a thousand years, and they wouldn't have turned up their dead
+grandmothers and fathers and aunts for all the gold in the Bank of
+England--being sunk in superstition and slavishly afraid of spirits and
+the like.
+
+We had to sit with folded hands and pretend to be pleased, while every
+ship that called had to take its whack at the graveyard. First it was
+the _Lorelei_, getting off scot-free with only a taboo; then it was the
+_Tasmanian_, with a bullet through the captain's leg; then the cutter
+_Sprite_, with concussion of the brain. I never saw the Kanakas drove so
+wild, till at last, when there was a ship off the settlement, they'd set
+an anchor watch on the graveyard and do sentry go with loaded guns.
+
+Then one fine day a French schooner from Tahiti ran in, unloaded sixteen
+men armed with rifles and carrying pickaxes and spades, who marched
+across the island singing the "Marseillaise," and proceeded to take up
+the whole place. The natives rallied with everything they could lay
+their hands on, from Winchesters to fish spears, and my, if they didn't
+chase out them Frenchmen at the double! They got away, leaving one dead
+and carrying three, making a bee line for the beach, the schooner
+covering their retreat with a blazing Nordenfeldt. They were in such a
+hurry to be gone that they cut away their moorings with an ax, and I had
+the privilege, later on, of buying their anchor, second hand, for ten
+dollars in trade.
+
+The natives got wilder than ever after this, and were almost afraid to
+die, lest they'd be dug up again and their bones cast to the winds. From
+being the most orderly island in the Pacific, Manihiki slumped to be the
+worst; and it got such a name that ships were scared of coming near it;
+and once, when Tom and me went out in a whaleboat toward a becalmed
+German bark, hoping to raise a newspaper or a sack of potatoes, they
+opened fire on us and lowered two boats to tow away the ship. Tom and me
+got mixed up in the general opinion of the place, which was stinking bad
+and what they called a pirates' nest, and an English man-of-war came
+down special to deport Tom. I never was so glad in my life to be an
+American, for, though the captain gave Tom what he called the benefit of
+the doubt, they fined him two hundred and fifty dollars and slanged him
+like a nigger.
+
+The last straw was the visit of a French man-of-war, that opened
+broadsides on us without warning, and then landed and burned the
+settlement, including everything me and Tom owned in the world, except
+the clothes we stood in and the cash we snatched on the run. This was on
+account of the "outrage" on the Tahiti schooner.
+
+Tom said the island was becoming a regular human pigeon-shoot, and
+wondered where the lightning would strike next; and we both grew clean
+sick of it and in a fever to get away. There was not even the temptation
+of Old Dibs's treasure to keep us now, for the natives all got together
+and heaped up the graveyard solid with rock to the level of the outside
+walls, and floored the top with cement six inches deep, putting in a
+matter of a thousand tons. It was as solid as a fortification, and
+pounded down, besides, with pounders, like a city street; and if ever
+there was money in a safe place and likely to stay there undisturbed, I
+guess it was Old Dibs's.
+
+It was a happy day for Tom and me when the _Flink_ dropped anchor off
+the settlement, and we patched it up with the captain to give us a
+passage to the Kingsmills, to begin the world again. It had always lain
+sort of heavy on my wife that we hadn't put up a name over old Dibs's
+grave, and now that we were going away with that undone she reproached
+me awful. You see, I had promised her something nice in the marble line
+from Sydney, and kept putting her off and off in the hope she'd forget
+it. She had been remarkably fond of the old fellow, as, indeed, so was
+I, and she said it was a shame to go away forever with this unattended
+to. I didn't have no time for anything fancy, nor the ability neither,
+but as the ship lay over for a couple of days I made shift to please her
+with a wooden slab. We went over and set it up about an hour before we
+sailed, and for all I know it may be there yet. Some folks might kick at
+the inscription, but he had always been mighty good and kind and
+free-handed to us, and you must take a man as you find him. This was how
+it run:
+
+      SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF RUNYON RUFE BANKER AND
+      PHILANTHROPIST ERECTED BY HIS SORROWING FRIENDS
+
+
+
+
+THE LABOR CAPTAIN
+
+
+It was a wild March day, and the rising wind sang in the rigging of the
+ships. The weather horizon, dark and brilliant, in ominous alternations
+showed a sky of piled-up cloud interspersed with inky patches where
+squalls were bursting. To leeward, the broad lagoon, stretching for a
+dozen miles to the tree-topped rim of reef, smoked with the haze of an
+impending gale. Ashore, the palms bent like grass in the succeeding
+gusts, and the ocean beaches reverberated with a furious surf. The great
+atoll of Makin, no higher than a man, no wider than a couple of
+furlongs, but in circumference a sinuous giant of ninety miles or more,
+lay like a snake on the boisterous waters of the equator and defied the
+sea and storm.
+
+Within the lagoon, and not far off the settlement, two ships rocked at
+anchor. One, the _Northern Light_, was a powerful topsail schooner of a
+hundred tons; straight bowed, low in the water, built on fine lines and
+yet sparred for safety, the sort of vessel that does well under plain
+sail, and when pressed can fly. The other, the _Edelweiss_, was a
+miniature fore and after of about twenty tons, a toy of delicacy and
+grace, betraying at a glance that she had been designed a yacht, and,
+in spite of fallen fortunes, was still sailed as one. The man that laid
+her lee rail under would get danger as well as speed for his pains, and
+in time would be likely to satisfy a taste for both by making a swift
+trip to the bottom.
+
+The deck of the _Northern Light_ was empty save for the single tall
+figure of Gregory Cole, captain and owner, who was leaning over the rail
+gazing at the _Edelweiss_. He was a man of about thirty, his tanned,
+handsome face overcast and somber, his eyes, with their characteristic
+hunted look, fixed in an uneasy stare on his smaller neighbor.
+
+He had never known how passionately he had loved Madge Blanchard until
+he had lost her; until after that wild quarrel on Nonootch, when her
+father had called him a slaver to his face, and they had parted on
+either side in anger; until he had beaten up from westward to find her
+the month-old wife of Joe Horble. Somehow, in the course of those long,
+miserable months, he had never thought of her marrying; he felt so
+confident of that fierce love she had so often confessed for him; he had
+come back repentant, ashamed of the burning offense he had then taken,
+determined to let bygones be bygones, and to begin, if need be, a new
+and a more blameless way of life. It was natural for the girl to side
+with her father; to resent her lover's violence and temper; to show a
+face as cold as his own when he said he would up anchor and to sea.
+Fool that he had been to keep his word! fool that he had been to tear
+his heart to pieces out of pride! fool that he had been to let it stand
+between him and the woman he loved! His pride! with Madge now in Joe
+Horble's arms!
+
+He cursed the fate that had brought him into the same lagoon with the
+_Edelweiss_; that had laid his ship side by side with Joe's dainty
+schooner; that shamed and mocked him with the unceasing thought that
+Madge--his Madge--was aboard of her. He paced up and down the
+quarter-deck. He had more than a mind to get to sea, but the gloom to
+windward daunted him, and he ordered out the kedge instead and bade the
+mate strip the awnings off her. By Jove! if things grew blacker he'd
+house his topmasts. Then he looked again at the little _Edelweiss_, and
+tried to keep back the thought of Horble sitting there below with Madge.
+
+He had to see her. He was mad to see her. The thought of her tortured
+and tempted him without end. Suppose she, too, had learned that love is
+stronger than oneself; that the mouth can say Yes when the heart within
+is breaking; that she, like himself, had found the time to repent her
+folly? Was he the man to leave her thus; to acquiesce tamely in a
+decision that was doubtless already abhorrent to her; to remain with
+unlifted hand when she might be on fire for the sign to come to him?
+No, by God! he'd beg her forgiveness and offer her the choice. Yes or
+No! It was for her to choose.
+
+He jumped into the dinghy and pulled over to the schooner. Small at a
+distance, she seemed to shrink as he drew near her, so that when he
+stood up he was surprised to find his head above the rail. So this was
+Horble, this coarse, red-faced trader, with the pug nose, the fat hands,
+the faded blue eyes that met his own so sourly!
+
+"Captain Horble?" said Gregory Cole.
+
+"Glad to see you aboard," said Horble.
+
+They shook hands and sat side by side on the rail.
+
+"Where's Madge?" said Gregory.
+
+"Mrs. Horble's ashore," said the captain.
+
+"I'm afraid I can never call her anything but Madge," said Gregory,
+detecting the covert reproach in the other's voice.
+
+Horble was plainly ill at ease. His face turned a deeper red. He was on
+the edge of blurting out a disagreeable remark, and then hesitated,
+making an inarticulate sound in his throat. Like everybody else, he was
+afraid of the labor captain.
+
+"Crew's ashore, too," said Gregory, glancing about the empty deck.
+
+"There ain't no crew," muttered Horble.
+
+"Thunder!" cried Gregory. "Do you do it with electricity, or what?"
+
+"Me and Madge runs her," returned Horble.
+
+"Do you mean to say she pully-hauls your damn ropes?" exclaimed Gregory.
+
+"Yes," said Horble. "What's twenty tons between the two of us?"
+
+"And cooks?" said Gregory.
+
+"And cooks," said Horble.
+
+"You don't believe in lapping your wife in luxury!" exclaimed Gregory.
+
+"Madge and I talked it over," said Horble. "I was for trading ashore,
+but her heart was set on the schooner. I can make twice the money this
+way and please her in the bargain."
+
+"I know she can sail a boat against anybody," said Gregory, wincing at
+the remark.
+
+Horble spat in the water and said nothing. His fat, broad back said,
+plainer than words: "You're an intruder! Get out!"
+
+"I believe she's aboard this very minute," said Gregory with a strange
+smile.
+
+"She's ashore, I tell you," said Horble sullenly.
+
+"I'll just run below and make sure," said Gregory.
+
+He slipped down the little companion way, looked about the empty cabin
+and peered into the semi-darkness of the only stateroom.
+
+"Madge!" he cried. "Madge!"
+
+Horble had not lied to him. There was not a soul below. But on the cabin
+table he saw Madge's sewing machine and a half-made dress of cotton
+print. She had always been fond of books, and there, in the corner, was
+her little bookcase, taken bodily from her old home in Nonootch.
+Scattered about here and there were other things that brought her memory
+painfully back to him; that hurt him with their familiarity; that caused
+him to lift them up and hold them with a sort of despairing wonder: her
+guitar, her worn, lock-fast desk; the old gilt photograph album he
+remembered so well. He sat down at the table and buried his face in his
+hands. What a fool he had been! What a fool he had been!
+
+He was roused by the sound of Horble's footsteps down the ladder. With
+his head leaning on his hand, he looked at the big naked feet feeling
+for the steps, then at the uncouth clothes as they gradually appeared,
+then at the fat, weak, frightened face of the man himself. He grew sick
+at the sight of him. Would Horble strike him? Would Horble have the grit
+to order him off the ship? No; the infernal coward was getting out the
+gin--a bottle of square-face and two glasses.
+
+"Say when," said Horble.
+
+"When," said Gregory.
+
+Horble tipped the bottle into his own glass. A second mate's grog! One
+could see what the fellow drank.
+
+"Here's luck," said Gregory.
+
+"Drink hearty," said Horble.
+
+"Joe Horble," said Gregory, leaning both elbows on the table, "there's
+something you ought to know: I love Madge, and Madge loves me!"
+
+Horble gasped.
+
+"She's mine!" said Gregory.
+
+Horble helped himself to some more gin, and then slowly wiped his mouth
+with the back of his hand.
+
+"You're forgetting she's my wife," he said.
+
+"I'll give you a thousand pounds for her, cash and bills," said Gregory.
+
+"You can't sell white women," said Horble. "She ain't labor."
+
+"A thousand pounds!" repeated Gregory.
+
+"I won't sell my wife to no man," said Horble.
+
+The pair looked at each other. Horble's hand felt for the gin again. His
+speech had grown a little thick. He was angry and flustered, and a dull
+resentment was mantling his heavy face.
+
+"I'll go the schooner," cried Gregory. "The _Northern Light_ as she lies
+there this minute, not a dollar owing on her bottom, with two hundred
+pounds of specie in her safe. Lock, stock, and barrel, she's yours!"
+
+Horble shook his head.
+
+"Madge ain't for sale," he said.
+
+"Please yourself," said Gregory. "You'll end by losing her for
+nothing."
+
+"Captain Cole," said Horble, "Madge has told me how near it was a go
+between you and her, and how, if you hadn't cleared out so sudden the
+way you did, she would have married you in spite of old Blanchard. But
+when you went away like that you left the field clear, and you mustn't
+bear me no malice for having stepped in and taken your leavings. What's
+done's done, and it's a sorry game to come back too late and insult a
+man who never did you no harm."
+
+"Oh!" said Gregory.
+
+"If you choose," continued Horble in his tone of wounded reasonableness,
+"you can make a power of mischief between me and Madge. I don't think it
+comes very well from you to do it; I don't think anything that calls
+himself a man would do it; least of all a genelman like yourself, whom
+we all respeck and look up to. Captain Cole, if you've lost Madge, you
+know you can only blame yourself."
+
+"I don't call her lost," said Gregory.
+
+"Captain Cole," said Horble, calmly but with a quiver of his lip, "we'll
+take another drink and then we'll say good-by."
+
+"I'm not going till I see Madge," said Gregory.
+
+Horble began to tremble.
+
+"It's for Madge to decide," added Gregory.
+
+"Decide what?" demanded Horble in a husky stutter.
+
+"Between you and me, old fellow," said Gregory.
+
+"And you've the gall to say that on my ship, at my table, about my
+wife!" exclaimed Horble, punctuating the sentence with the possessive.
+
+"Yes," said Gregory.
+
+Horble sat awhile silent. He was obviously turning the matter over in
+his head. He said at last he would go on deck and take another look to
+windward.
+
+"There's a power of dirt to windward!" he said.
+
+Gregory, left to himself, edged closer against the bulkhead. He felt
+that something was about to happen, and he was in the sort of humor to
+never mind what. It did not even worry him to think he was unarmed.
+
+The companion way darkened with Horble's body, and the big naked feet
+again floundered for the steps. As they deliberately descended, Gregory
+changed his place, taking the corner by the lazarette door, where, at
+any rate, he could only be attacked in front. Horble's face plainly
+showed discomfiture at this move, and his right hand went hurriedly
+behind his back. Gregory was conscious of a belaying pin being whipped
+out of sight, and in an instant he was roused and tense, his nostrils
+vibrating with a sense of danger. The two men stared at each other, and
+then Horble backed into the stateroom, remarking with furtive
+insincerity, "There's a power of dirt to windward!" This said, the door
+went shut behind him. Gregory sprang to his feet and burst it open with
+his powerful shoulders, crushing Horble against the bunk, who, pistol in
+hand, fired at him point blank. The bullet went wide, and there was a
+sound of shattering glass. Gregory's hands clenched themselves on
+Horble's, and the revolver twisted this way and that under the double
+grasp. Horble was panting like a steam engine; his lower jaw hung open,
+and he cried as he fought, the tears streaking his red face; there was
+an agonized light in his eyes, for his forefinger was breaking in the
+trigger guard. A hair's breadth more and he could have driven a bullet
+through his opponent's body; a twist the other way--and he moaned and
+ground his teeth and frenziedly strove to regain what he had lost.
+Suddenly he let go, snatched his left hand clear, and throttled Gregory
+against the wall. Gregory, suffocating, his eyes starting from their
+sockets, his mouth dribbling blood and froth, struggled with supreme
+desperation for the pistol. Getting it in the very nick of time, and
+eluding Horble's right hand, he fired twice through the armpit down.
+
+Horble sank at the first shot, and received the second kneeling. Then he
+toppled backward, and lay in a twitching heap against the drawers below
+the bunk, groaning and coughing. Gregory, with averted face, gave him
+another shot behind the ear, and another through the mouth, and then
+went out, sick and faint, shutting the stateroom door behind him. He sat
+for a long time beside the table, absolutely spent, and still holding
+the revolver in his hand. He was shaking in a chill, though the
+temperature was over eighty, and the cabin, when he had first entered
+it, had seemed to him overpoweringly hot and stifling. He warmed himself
+with a nip of gin. He looked over his clothes for a trace of blood, and
+was thankful to find none. He took off his coat; he examined the soles
+of his shoes. No blood! Thank God, no blood!
+
+He went on deck and cast the revolver overboard, standing at the
+taffrail and watching it sink. Even in the time he had been below the
+wind had risen; it was blowing great guns to seaward, and the lagoon
+itself was white and broken as far as the eye could reach. Aboard his
+own schooner they were busy housing the topmasts, and the yeo-heave-yeo
+of straining voices warned him that Cracroft was hoisting in the boats
+and making everything snug.
+
+Gregory leaned against the wheel and tried to think. To throw Horble's
+body overboard would be to accomplish nothing. The blood, the shot
+holes, the disordered cabin, would all betray him. To scuttle the
+schooner with a stick of dynamite was a better plan, but that involved
+returning to the _Northern Light_, with the possibility of Madge coming
+off in the interval and discovering the murder for herself. No, the risk
+of that appalled him. Besides, whatever happened, he had another reason
+for keeping the truth from Madge. The fact of Horble's death, even if
+she thought it accidental, would shock her to the core. It was
+inconceivable that she would feel anything but horror stricken, whether
+she judged her former lover innocent or not. She might even undergo a
+terrible remorse. At such a moment how little likely she would be to
+give way to him! Of course she would refuse. Any woman would refuse.
+Every restraining influence would be massed against him. No, his only
+hope lay in getting her aboard his schooner and out of the lagoon before
+the least suspicion could dawn upon her. Once away, and it might be two
+years before she might even hear of Horble's death. Once away, and the
+empty seas would keep his secret. Once away----
+
+He studied the weather with a new and consuming anxiety. How could he
+manage to get out at all, or pick a course through the middle channel!
+It was thick with coral rocks, and in a day so overcast the keenest eye
+aloft would be at fault. And outside, what then? By God! it was working
+up to a hurricane. To run before it would be courting death. Hove to, he
+would be cramped for room, with three big islands on his lee. In his
+lawless and desperate past he had taken many a fall with fortune; he
+was accustomed to weigh the danger of perilous alternatives; he knew
+what it was to hazard everything on his own vigilance and skill, and to
+bear with a sailor's fatalism the throw of those dread dice on which his
+own life had been so often staked. But to stake Madge's life! Madge,
+whom he loved so dearly! Madge, for whom he would have died! And yet
+there was something sublime in the thought of taking her in his arms and
+driving before the gale, the storm sails treble reefed on the bending
+yards, the decks awash from end to end, Madge beside him, the pitchy
+night in front, the engulfing seas behind; to swim or sink, to ride or
+smother, accepting their fate together, and, if need be, drowning at the
+last in each other's arms.
+
+He looked toward the settlement and saw a crowd of natives pushing a
+whaleboat into the water; looked again, and saw old Maka taking his
+place in the stern sheets and assisting a woman in beside him. The
+woman! It needed no second glance to tell him it was Madge. He had never
+counted on her coming off in company. Fool that he was, he had taken it
+for granted that she would be alone. Everything, in fact, turned on her
+being alone. Then, with a start, he remembered his own dinghy, and how
+it would betray him. He had made it fast on the schooner's starboard
+quarter, near the little accommodation ladder. Going on his hands and
+knees, lest his head should be seen above the shallow rail, he unloosed
+the painter, worked the boat astern, and drew it in again to port. Then
+he crouched down in the alleyway and waited.
+
+A few minutes later and the whaler was bumping against the schooner's
+side. It might have been bumping against Gregory's heart, so agonizing
+was the suspense as he lay breathless and cramped between the coffinlike
+width of house and rail.
+
+"It was kind of you to bring me off, Maka," said Madge.
+
+The old Hawaiian laughed musically in denial. "No, no!" he cried.
+
+"You must come below and see the captain," said Madge.
+
+Gregory was in a cold sweat of apprehension.
+
+"Too much storm," said Maka doubtfully. "I go home now, and put rocks on
+the church roof."
+
+"Five minutes won't matter," said Madge.
+
+Again Gregory trembled.
+
+"More better I go home quick," said Maka. "No rocks, no roof!"
+
+The boat shoved off, the crew striking up a song. Madge seemed to remain
+standing at the gangway where they had left her. Gregory felt by
+instinct that she was gazing at the _Northern Light_, and that as she
+gazed she sighed; that she was lost in reverie and was loath to go
+below.
+
+He rose stiffly from his hiding place. Even as he did so it came over
+him that he was extraordinarily tired--so tired that he swayed as he
+stood and looked at her.
+
+"Madge!" he said in almost a whisper. "Madge!"
+
+She turned instantly, paling as she saw who confronted her.
+
+"Greg!" she cried.
+
+For a moment they stared at each other speechless. Then he leaped on the
+house and ran to her, she shrinking back from him as he tried to take
+her hands.
+
+"You must not!" she cried, as he would have kissed her. "Greg, you must
+not! I'm married. It's all different now."
+
+He tried to put his arms around her, but she pushed him fiercely back.
+Her eyes were flashing, and her bosom rose and fell.
+
+"I'm Joe's wife," she said.
+
+Then, from his face, she seemed to divine something.
+
+"What have you done to Joe?" she cried. She would have passed him, but
+he stopped her.
+
+"No, no!" he protested.
+
+"Let me go, or I shall call him," she broke out. "You sha'n't insult me!
+You sha'n't kiss me!"
+
+He was kissing her even as he held her back, even as she fought and
+struggled with him--on the lips, on the neck, on her black, loosened
+hair, now tangling and flying in the wind. He was so weak that she soon
+got the better of him--so weak and dizzy that he did not guard himself
+as she struck him on the mouth with her little doubled-up fist.
+
+He put his hand to his lip and found it bleeding. He showed her what she
+had done. She drew back, and regarded him with mingled pity and
+exultation.
+
+"Now will you let me go?" she cried.
+
+"Madge," he returned, "Joe's drunk in his berth. I made him drunk,
+Madge. I had to talk to you alone, and there was no other way."
+
+She was stung to the quick. Her husband's shame was hers, and it was
+somehow plain that Horble had been at fault before. She never thought to
+doubt Greg's word, though his callousness revolted her.
+
+"What is it you want to say?" she said at last in an altered voice.
+
+"To ask you to forgive me."
+
+"For what? for taking advantage of Joe's one failing?"
+
+"No; for leaving you the way I did."
+
+"I'll never do that, Greg--never, never, never!"
+
+"Your father----"
+
+"Don't try and blame my father, Greg."
+
+"I blame only myself."
+
+"Why have you come back to torture me?" she exclaimed. "You said it was
+forever. You cast me off, when I cried, and tried to keep you. You said
+I'd never see you again."
+
+"I was a fool, Madge."
+
+"Then accept the consequences, and leave me alone."
+
+"And if I can't----"
+
+She looked him squarely in the eyes. "I am Joe's wife," she said.
+
+"Madge," he said, "I am not trying to defend myself. I'm throwing myself
+on your mercy. I'm begging you, on my knees, for what I threw away.
+I----"
+
+"You've broken my heart," she said; "why should I mind if you break
+yours?"
+
+"Madge," he cried, "in ten minutes we can be aboard the _Northern Light_
+and under weigh; in an hour we can be outside the reef; in two, and this
+cursed island will sink forever behind us, and no one here will ever see
+us again or know whither we have gone. Let us follow the gale, and push
+into new seas, among new people--Tahiti, Marquesas, the Pearl
+Islands--where we shall win back our lost happiness, and find our love
+only the stronger for what we've suffered."
+
+She pointed to the windward sky. "I think I know the port we'd make,"
+she said.
+
+"Then make it," he cried, "and go down to it in each other's arms."
+
+For a moment she looked at him in a sort of exaltation. She seemed to
+hesitate no longer. Her hot hands reached for his, and he felt in her
+quick and tumultuous breath the first token of her surrender. Herself a
+child of the sea, brought up from infancy among boats and ships, her
+hand as true on the tiller, her sparkling eyes as keen to watch the luff
+of a sail as any man's, she knew as well as Gregory the hell that
+awaited them outside. To accept so terrible an ordeal seemed like a
+purification of her dishonor. If she died, she would die unstained; if
+she lived, it would be after such a bridal that would obliterate her tie
+to the sot below. Then, on the eve of her giving way, as every line in
+her body showed her longing, as her head drooped as though to find a
+resting place on the breast of the man she loved, she suddenly called up
+all her resolution and tore herself free.
+
+"I'm Joe's wife!" she said.
+
+Gregory faltered as he tried again to plead with her; but in his mind's
+eye he saw that stiffening corpse below, lying stark and bloody on the
+cabin floor.
+
+"You gave me to him," she burst out. "I'm his, Greg. I will not betray
+my husband for any man."
+
+Again he besought her to go with him. But the moment of her madness had
+passed. She listened unmoved, and when at last he stopped in despair,
+she bade him take his boat and go.
+
+He sat down on the rail instead, his eyes defying her.
+
+She stepped aft, and his heart stood still as she seemed on the point of
+descending the companion. But she had another purpose in mind. Throwing
+aside the gaskets, she stripped the sail covers off the mainsail and
+began, with practiced hands, to reef down to the third reef. Then she
+went forward and did the same to the forestaysail. A minute later,
+hardly knowing why or how, except that he was helping Madge, Gregory,
+like a man in a dream, was pulling with her on the halyards of both
+sails. The wind thundered in them as they rose; the main boom jerked
+violently at the sheet and lashed to and fro the width of the deck; the
+anchor chain fretted and sawed in the hawse hole; the whole schooner
+strained and creaked and shook to the keelson. Gregory, in amazement,
+asked Madge what she was doing.
+
+"Going to sea, Greg," she said.
+
+"Alone?" he cried. "Alone?"
+
+"Joe and I," she said.
+
+It was on his tongue to tell her Joe was dead; but, though he tried, he
+could not do so. It wasn't in flesh and blood to tell her he had killed
+her husband. He could only look at her helplessly, and say over and
+over again, "To sea!"
+
+"Greg," she said, "I mean to leave you while I am brave--while I am yet
+able to resist--while I can still remember I am Joe's wife!"
+
+"And drown," he said.
+
+"What do I care if I do?" she returned. "What do I care for anything?"
+
+"If it's to be one or the other," he said, "I'll go myself. With my big
+schooner I'd have twice the chance you'd have."
+
+She put her arms round his neck and kissed him. "You sweet traitor," she
+said, "you'd play me false!"
+
+He protested vehemently that he would not deceive her.
+
+"Besides," she said, "I could risk myself, but I couldn't bear to risk
+you, Greg."
+
+He tried a last shot. The words almost strangled in his throat.
+
+"And Joe?" he said. "Have you no thought of Joe?"
+
+"Joe loves me," she said--"loves me a thousand times better than you
+ever did. Joe's man enough to chance death rather than lose his wife."
+
+"But I won't let you go!" said Gregory.
+
+"You can't stop me," she returned.
+
+He caught her round the body and tried to hold her, but she fought
+herself free. His strength was gone; he was as feeble as a child; in
+the course of those short hours something seemed to have snapped within
+him. Even Madge was startled at his weakness.
+
+"Greg, you're ill!" she cried, as he staggered, and caught at a backstay
+to save himself from falling. He sat down on the house and tried to keep
+back a sob. Madge stooped, and looked anxiously into his face. She had
+known him for two years as a man of unusual sternness and self-control;
+obstinate, reserved, willful, and moody, yet one that gave always the
+impression of unflinching courage and resolution. It was inexplicable
+now to see him crying like a woman, his square shoulders bent and
+heaving, his sinewy hands opening and shutting convulsively.
+
+"You're ill," she repeated. "I'll go down and fetch you something."
+
+This pulled him together. "I'm all right, Madge," he said faintly. "I
+suppose it's just a touch of the old fever. See, it's passing already."
+
+She watched him in silence. Then she stepped forward, dropped down the
+forecastle hatchway, and reappeared with an ax. While he was wondering
+what she meant to do, she raised it in the air and crashed it down on
+the groaning anchor chain. It parted at the first blow, and the
+_Edelweiss_, now adrift, blundered broadside on to leeward.
+
+Madge ran aft, brought the schooner up in the wind, and cried out to
+Gregory to get into his boat.
+
+He said sullenly he wouldn't do anything of the kind.
+
+She lashed the wheel and came up to him.
+
+"I mean it, Greg," she said.
+
+"You are going to your death, Madge," he said.
+
+"Get into your boat!" she repeated.
+
+He rose, and slowly began to obey.
+
+"You may kiss me good-by, Greg," she said.
+
+She put up her face to his; their lips met. Then, with her arm around
+him, she half forced, half supported him to the port quarter, where his
+boat was slopping against the side. He wanted to resist; he wanted to
+cry out and tell her the truth, but a strange, leaden powerlessness
+benumbed him. He got into the dinghy, drew in the dripping painter she
+cast after him, and watched her ease the sheet and set the vessel
+scudding for the passage. With her black hair flying in the wind, her
+bare arms resting lightly on the wheel, her straight, girlish, supple
+figure bending with the heel of the deck, she never faltered nor looked
+back as the water whitened and boiled in the schooner's wake.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gregory came to himself in his own cabin. Cracroft, the mate, was
+bending over him with a bottle of whisky. The Malita steward was chafing
+his naked feet. Overhead the rush and roar of the gale broke pitilessly
+on his ears.
+
+"The _Edelweiss_!" he gasped; "the _Edelweiss_!"
+
+"Went down an hour ago, sir," said Cracroft grimly.
+
+
+
+
+A SON OF EMPIRE
+
+
+Raka-hanga is a dot of an island in the mid-Pacific, and so far from
+anywhere that it doesn't belong to a group--as most islands do--but is
+all by its lonesome in the heave and roll of the emptiest ocean in the
+world. In my time it was just big enough to support two traders, not
+counting old man Fosby, who had sort of retired and laid down life's
+burden in a Kanaka shack, where if he did anything at all it was making
+bonito hooks for his half-caste family or playing the accordion with his
+trembly old fingers.
+
+It was me and Stanley Hicks that divided the trade of the place, which
+was poor to middling, with maybe a couple of hundred tons of copra a
+year and as much pearl shell as the natives cared to get. It was deep
+shell, you understand, and sometimes a diver went down and never came
+up, and you could see him shimmering down below like the back of a
+shark, as dead as a doornail. Nobody would dive after that, and a whole
+year might pass with the Kanakas still holding back unless there was a
+church assessment or a call for something special like a sewing machine
+or a new boat. It averaged anywhere from five tons to sixty, and often,
+as I said, nothing at all.
+
+I had got rooted in Raka-hanga, and so had Stanley Hicks, and though we
+both had ideas of getting away and often talked of it, we never
+did--being like people half asleep in a feather bed, with life drifting
+on unnoticed, and the wind rustling in the palms, and one summer day so
+like another that you lost count of time altogether.
+
+You would have to go far to see a prettier island than Raka-hanga, or
+nicer, friendlier, finer-looking people; and when I say they never
+watered their copra on us, nor worked any of those heartbreaking
+boycotts to bring prices down, you can realize how much out of the
+beaten track it was and how little they had yet learned of civilization.
+They were too simple and easy-going for their own good and that's a
+fact, for they allowed David, the Tongan pastor, to walk all over them,
+which he did right royal with his great, fat, naked feet; and when
+anything didn't please this here David nor the deacons, they stuck him
+or her in the coral jail and locked the door on him--or her--as the case
+might be and usually was.
+
+We were what might be called a republic, having no king and being
+supposed to be ruled by the old men, who met from time to time in a
+wickerwork building that looked more like a giant clothes-basket than
+anything resembling a house. Yes, Raka-hanga was an independent country,
+and no flag floated over us but our own--or would have if we had had
+one, which we hadn't. Of course Stanley and I knew it could not last
+like this forever, and even the natives weren't unprepared for our being
+annexed some day by a passing man-of-war--though all hoped it would go
+on as it was, with nobody interfering with us nor pasting proclamations
+on trees. It is all very fine to see "GOD SAVE THE QUEEN" _or_
+"VIVE LA REPUBLIQUE" at the bottom of a proclamation, but
+Stanley and I knew it meant taxes and licenses and penal servitude if
+you did this or failed to do that, and all those other blessings that
+are served out to a Pacific island when one of the great powers suddenly
+discovers it on the map.
+
+Our republic was more in name than anything else, for old David, the
+missionary, ruled the island with a rod of iron, and was so crotchety
+and tyrannical that no Kanaka could call his soul his own. Every night
+at nine he stood out in front of his house and rang a hand bell, and
+then woe betide any one who didn't go to bed instanter and shut up, no
+matter if it were in the full of the moon and they in the middle of a
+game of cards or yarning sociable on an upturned boat.
+
+One had to get up just as military and autocratic--and as for dancing,
+why the word itself could hardly be said, let alone the actual thing,
+which meant the jail every time and a dose of the pastor's whip thrown
+in extra. It was a crime to miss church, and a crime to flirt or make
+love, and the biggest crime of all was not to come up handsome with
+church offerings when they were demanded. If you will believe me it was
+a crime to _grieve_ too much if somebody died--if the dead person were
+married that is, and if you were of the opposite sex and not closely
+related!
+
+As I said before, the natives were so easy-going that they took it all
+lying down, and allowed this here David to swell into a regular despot,
+though there must have been coming on two thousand of them, and him with
+nothing but his bell and his whip and his big roaring voice. Naturally
+he did not dare interfere with us white men, though Stanley and I toed
+the line more than we liked for the sake of business and keeping clear
+of his ill will. The only one who wasn't scared of the old Tartar, and
+stood right up to him, was a hulking big Fijian, named Peter Jones.
+Nobody knew how he came by that name for there wasn't a white drop in
+his body, he being unusually dark and powerful and full of the Old Nick,
+and with a mop of hair on him like you never saw, it was that thick and
+long and stood out on end all round his head which was the Fiji fashion
+of wearing it.
+
+Peter could lick his weight in wildcats, as the saying goes, and was
+always ready to do it at the fall of a hat. He was a bullying,
+overbearing individual and had terrorized his way into a family and
+married their daughter, helping himself promiscuous, besides, to
+anything he fancied, with nobody daring to cross him nor complain.
+Stanley and I were afraid of him and that's the truth, and gave him a
+little credit for peace and quietness' sake, which was well worth an
+occasional can of beef or a fathom or two of Turkey cotton.
+
+Once, when there was a ship in, he got most outrageously drunk, and
+rolled about the village, singing and yelling--swigging from the bottle
+he carried and stumbling after the girls, trying to hug them. If ever
+there was a scandal in Raka-hanga it was the sight of this
+six-foot-three of raving, roaring savage, rough-housing the place upside
+down and bellowing insults at the top of his lungs. But nothing was done
+to stop him till the liquor took its course, and then old David, he
+gathered the Parliament about him, and ran him into the jail with a
+one-two-three like a sack of oats.
+
+But Peter Jones was none of your stand-up-at-the-altar-and-repent-boys,
+being a white man by training, if not by blood, and after he had sobered
+up, what if his wife didn't smuggle him in a knife, and what if he
+didn't dig his way out! Yes, sir, that's what Peter Jones did--dug
+through the gravel floor and tunneled out, rising from the grave, so to
+speak, to the general uproar and hullabaloo of the entire settlement.
+Then--no one stopping him--he armed himself with an old Springfield
+rifle and an ax and a crowbar, and the cry went up he was going to
+murder the pastor, with the children running along in front and the
+women screaming.
+
+But Peter wasn't gunning for any missionary, which even in Raka-hanga
+might have had a nasty comeback--the natives being mild but not cowards,
+and beginning to buzz like hornets and reach for their shark-tooth
+spears. No, what Peter was inflamed against was the coral jail, which he
+set at most ferocious with crowbar and ax until it was nothing but a
+heap of rubbish. Then he shot holes through the galvanized roofing, and
+burned it in a blazing fire along of the iron-studded door and window
+framing. By this time the missionary was trying to raise the multitude
+against Peter, but they were none too fond of the coral jail themselves
+and did nothing but hoot and shout like a pack of boys at a circus,
+which indeed it was and enough to make you split your sides laughing.
+After that Peter was let alone and nobody dared cross him, no matter
+what he did.
+
+But this is all by the way to give you an idea of what Raka-hanga was
+like, and make the rest of the yarn the easier to understand. I shall
+always feel sorry all my life that Stanley and I were off fishing on the
+windward side of the island and thereby missed Clemm's arrival in the
+lagoon, which was well over before we got there, with the stern of a
+ten-oared boat heading for a man-of-war, and Clemm himself standing
+kind of helpless on the beach in the midst of all his chests and boxes
+and bedding.
+
+He made a splendid appearance in his white clothes and shirt and
+pipe-clayed shoes and pith-helmet, being a short, thick-set man with
+gray hair and a commanding look. When we came running up he spoke to us
+very grand, though genial, saying: "Gentlemen, I am the new Resident
+Deputy Commissioner, and I call on you to assist me raise the flag and
+annex this island in the name of her Royal and Imperial Majesty, Queen
+Victoria!"
+
+At this he took his hat off, and we did the same, though I am an
+American, and then went on to tell us that he had just been landed by
+H.M.S. _Ringarooma_ to take possession of the island, and would we
+kindly inform the natives and escort him to the king.
+
+On learning we were a republic and that it would take time to assemble
+the old men, he condescended to accept my hospitality for a spell, and
+was most pleased and gracious at the little we could do in his honor.
+Meanwhile messengers were sent to gather in the chiefs and tell them the
+great news, and how the Commissioner was soon coming to meet them in the
+"Speak-house," as the natives called the wickerwork. Mr. Clemm said the
+_Ringarooma_ had been sent under hurry orders to annex right and left in
+order to forestall the French, who had broken their international
+agreement and were hoisting their flag all over the place. He also
+explained that was the reason why the man-of-war could not stop, it
+being a neck-and-neck race between her and the French which could reach
+the Tokelaus first. Between drinks he likewise showed us his commission,
+which was written very big and imposing on crinkly paper, with seals,
+where he was called "Our well-beloved and right trusty James Howard
+Fitzroy Clemm, Esquire,"--as well as the flag he had brought with him,
+which was an eight-by-twelve ensign, with the halyards all ready to run
+it up.
+
+I can tell you Stanley and I were mighty proud to escort the Deputy
+Commissioner to the Parliament, which we did slow and stately in our
+best pajamas, with the natives reverencing him as he passed and eying us
+two most respectful. The old men were there in rows, and also David, the
+pastor, who took the interpreting out of my hands and as usual hogged
+the whole show. Perhaps it was as well he did, for he had a splendid
+voice and a booming way of speaking that suited the grandeur of the
+occasion.
+
+Then Mr. Clemm's commission was read aloud, first by him in English and
+then by David in Kanaka, and afterwards the Commissioner made a rousing
+speech, all about the loving English and the low, contemptible French,
+and at the end he asked everybody to hold up his right hand who wished
+to be a loyal, faithful, obedient subject of the Great Queen.
+
+Up shot every hand most grateful at the narrow escape they had had of
+being French; and then outside it was again repeated, even the children
+holding up their little paws, and the flag hoisted temporary to a
+coconut palm amid shouts of rejoicing led off by Stanley and me and
+Peter Jones who had followed along after us.
+
+The next question was where to lodge the Commissioner till a proper
+house could be built for him, and he showed he wasn't a gentleman to be
+trifled with by cutting short their jabber, and choosing Fono's, which
+was the finest in the settlement, and ordering him to clear out, bag and
+baggage--which Fono didn't want to do and objected very crossly till
+Peter Jones snatched up a rock and ran at him like he meant to pound his
+head in. This pleased Mr. Clemm so much that he right off appointed
+Peter marshal of his court at a salary of forty dollars a month, and put
+him in charge of shifting his things into his new quarters.
+
+I took the liberty of warning Mr. Clemm against the Fijian, but he only
+threw back his head and told me most cutting to kindly mind my own
+business. But any rancor I might have felt at this disappeared when he
+made me clerk of the court, and Stanley tax collector, each at a salary
+of sixty dollars a month, with David "Native Adviser and Official
+Interpreter" at the same figure.
+
+This was the beginning of the new government, with everything old done
+away with, and the first official sign of it was a brand-new,
+white-painted flagpole with crosstrees and ratlines in front of the fine
+big house that was next built for the Commissioner to live in. The
+natives had to do this for nothing, supplying forty men, turn and turn
+about, though the galvanized iron, hardware, paint, varnish and what not
+were bought of Stanley and me, and paid for in taxes. It was a very fine
+place when done, with a broad veranda in front and an inner court
+behind, where Mr. Clemm used to lie in a striped hammock, waited on hand
+and foot.
+
+But I fancy the wicked French couldn't have taxed the Kanakas any harder
+than Mr. Clemm did, which was the best thing in the world for them,
+considering how slack they were by nature and not given to doing
+anything they could help. It only needed a little attention to double
+the copra crop of the island, not to speak of shell--so that the taxes
+were a blessing in disguise, the natives being better off than they had
+ever been before. Of course they didn't like it and put up a great deal
+of opposition till Mr. Clemm raised a Native Constabulary of seven men,
+commanded by Peter Jones, and all of them armed any way he could,
+including Stanley's shotgun and my Winchester repeater, old man Fosby's
+Enfield and several rusty Springfields pounced on here and there as
+against the law to own them.
+
+They were tricked out very smart in red _lavalavas_ and white drill
+coats, and being all of them of the obstreperous, no-good class like
+Peter, they were soon the terror of the island. Not that Mr. Clemm
+didn't keep them tight in hand, but when it came to an order of court or
+any backwardness in taxes he never seemed to care much whom they
+plundered and beat, which was what they reveled in and thirsted for the
+chance of.
+
+Old David was the first to feel the weight of authority, and I believe
+his job of Native Adviser was merely a plan to keep him in good humor
+till Mr. Clemm was ready to squash him, which Mr. Clemm did three months
+later most emphatic. The Kanakas were forbidden to contribute to the
+church, and the pastor's private laws were abolished, and there was no
+more excommunicating nor jail for church members nor any curfew either.
+The natives went wild with joy--all except a few old soreheads that are
+always to be found in every community--and the only folks who were now
+forced to go to church were the Native Constabulary, who lined up
+regular to keep tab on what the missionary preached, and arrest him for
+sedition in case he let his tongue run away with him.
+
+In private, however, old David made all the trouble he dared, and tried
+to hearten up his followers by saying there would be a day of reckoning
+for Mr. Clemm when the missionary vessel arrived on her annual
+visit--at which the Commissioner pretended to laugh but couldn't hide he
+was worried. Leastways he asked a raft of questions about the _Evangel
+of Hope_, and that with a ruminating look, and about the character of
+the people in charge which were Captain Bins and the Reverend T. J.
+Simpkins. The _Evangel of Hope_ never stayed any longer than to land a
+few stores and hymn books for the pastor and take off what copra and
+shell he had acquired by way of church subscriptions. At that time she
+was about due in two months, and we all laughed at the empty larder she
+was going to find, though, as I said, Mr. Clemm seemed worried,
+remarking it was hard to be misrepresented and slandered when his only
+thought was for the good of the island.
+
+He was certainly upsetting things very lively and bossed the island like
+it belonged to him. If the natives could play all they wanted, now that
+David was deposed, they had bumped into something they had never known
+before and that was--work. The Commissioner couldn't abide laziness in a
+Kanaka, and went at them terrific, building a fine road around the
+island and another across it, with bridges and culverts, where he used
+to ride of a sundown in a buggy he had bought off Captain Sachs of the
+_H. L. Tiernan_, with men tugging him instead of horses, and the Native
+Constabulary trotting along in the rear like a Royal Progress.
+
+He built a fine-appearing wharf, too, and an improved jail with a cement
+floor, and heaven help anybody who threw fish-guts on the shore or
+didn't keep his land as clean as a new pin. There was a public well made
+in the middle of the settlement, with cement steps and a white-painted
+fence to keep away the pigs, and the natives, though they hated to work,
+were proud, too, of what they had done, and I doubt if they had ever
+been so prosperous or freer of sickness. I know Stanley and I doubled
+our trade, in spite of having to take out heavy licenses, which meant
+that not only we, but everybody else were that much better off. Petty
+thieving disappeared entirely, and likewise all violence, and one of the
+Commissioner's best reforms was a land court where titles were
+established and boundaries marked out, that stopping the only thing the
+Kanakas ever seriously quarreled about. Six months of the Commissioner
+had revolutionized the island, and few would have cared to go back to
+the old loose days when your only Supreme Court was the rifle hanging on
+your wall.
+
+Well, it grew nearer and nearer for the _Evangel of Hope_ to arrive, and
+Mr. Clemm he began to do a most extraordinary thing, which was nothing
+else than a large cemetery! Yes, sir, that's what Mr. Clemm did, tearing
+down five or six houses for the purpose on the lagoon side, nigh the
+wharf, and planting rows on rows of white headstones, with low mounds
+at each, representing graves. There must have been a couple of hundred
+of them, and often it was a whitewashed cross instead of a stone or
+maybe a pointed stake--the whole giving the impression of a calamity
+that had suddenly overtaken us.
+
+It was no good asking him what it was for; the Commissioner wasn't a man
+to be questioned when he didn't want to be; all he said was that Stanley
+and I were to stick inside our stores when the ship came and not budge
+an inch till we were told. With us orders were orders, but the Kanakas
+were panicky with terror, and that cemetery with nobody in it seemed to
+them like tempting Providence. It took all of Mr. Clemm's authority to
+keep them quiet, and it got out that the Commissioner was expecting the
+end of the world, and the graves were for those that wouldn't go to
+heaven! Kanakas are like that, you know--spreading the silliest rumors
+and making a lot out of nothing--though in this case they couldn't be
+blamed for being considerable scared. But Mr. Clemm knew how to turn
+everything to account, and on the principle that the church was the
+safest place to be found in on the Day of Judgment, ordered that
+everybody should go there the moment he fired three pistol shots from
+his veranda. I noticed, however, that the Native Constabulary seemed to
+be taking the end of the world mighty calm, which looked like they had
+been tipped off ahead for something quite different.
+
+But the meaning of the cemetery appeared later when one morning, along
+of ten or so, my little boy came running in to say the _Evangel_ was
+sighted in the pass. Of course, I stuck indoors, mindful of
+instructions, though that didn't prevent me from looking out of my upper
+window and taking in all that happened. The first was a tremendous
+yellow flag raised on the Commissioner's staff, and the second were
+those three pistol shots which were to announce the Day of Judgment.
+Then you ought to have seen the settlement scoot! There was a rush for
+the church like the animals at the Ark, though old David, the pastor,
+wasn't any Noah. Him and the deacons were led down to the jail and
+locked in, and then Peter Jones and his constables divided into two
+parties--three of them returning to the church, while the other three
+with Peter got a boat ready, with another yellow flag in the stern.
+
+By this time the missionary vessel was well up under a spanking spread
+of canvas, with the water hissing at her bows and parting white and
+sparkling in a way dandy to watch. You could almost feel her shiver at
+the sight of Peter's yellow flag rowing towards her, and through the
+glass I noticed a big commotion aboard, with half a dozen racing up the
+rigging and making signs at those below. It was plainer than words that
+they had seen the cemetery and were struck of a heap, which was no
+wonder considering how new and calamitous it looked, with them rows on
+rows of neat little headstones and nicely mounded graves.
+
+She never even dropped her anchor nor lowered her gangway, but hove to,
+short; and when Peter came up he was made to lay on his oars and keep
+his distance, yelling what he had to say with both hands at his face
+while the captain he yelled back with a speaking trumpet. Of course I
+didn't hear a word, but it was easy enough to put two and two together,
+remembering the sea meaning of a yellow flag which is seldom else than
+smallpox. Yes, that was why we had all took and died in the new
+cemetery, and that was why the settlement looked so lifeless and
+deserted! After no end of a powwow they hoisted out a boat, and when it
+was loaded to the gunwales with stores and cases, it was cast off for
+Peter to pick up and take in tow. It held half a ton of medical
+comforts, and I often had the pleasure of drinking some of them
+afterwards on Mr. Clemm's veranda, where we all agreed it was prime
+stuff and exactly suited to our complaints.
+
+What old David thought of it all through the bars of the coral jail can
+only be left to the imagination. He had been banking on the _Evangel_ to
+turn the scales against Mr. Clemm, and there she was heading out of the
+lagoon again, not to return for another year! We celebrated it that
+night with medical comforts unstinted, while the natives they
+celebrated, too, thankful to find the world still here and the Day of
+Judgment postponed. Old David wrote a red-hot protest, countersigned by
+the deacons, and not knowing what else to do with it, sealed it in a
+demijohn and threw it into the sea, where like enough it still is,
+bobbing around undelivered to the missionary society and still waiting
+for the angels to take charge of it.
+
+Mr. Clemm's next move was to start building a small cutter of twenty
+tons, which he named the _Felicity_ and charged to the government as an
+official yacht. Old man Fosby had been a shipwright in years gone by,
+and under his direction the Kanakas made a mighty fine job of the little
+vessel, which was fitted up regardless and proved to be remarkably fast
+and weatherly. She was the apple of the Commissioner's eye, with a crew
+of four in uniform, and a half-caste Chinaman named Henry for captain,
+whom he had persuaded to desert from a German schooner where he was
+mate. Mr. Clemm was so fond of taking short cruises in the _Felicity_
+that we never gave his coming and going much thought, till one day he
+went off and never came back! Yes, sir, clean disappeared over the
+horizon and was never seen again from that day to this, nor the party
+with him which included several very fine-looking young women!
+
+The natives took it like the loss of a father, which indeed it was, Mr.
+Clemm being a grand man and universally beloved--kindly yet strict, and
+always the soul of justice. After giving him up altogether for lost, we
+put seals on his private effects, and Peter Jones took charge of the
+government, advised by Stanley and me. It showed the splendid influence
+Mr. Clemm had had that Peter had become quite a model, and instead of
+breaking loose was all on the side of law and order. Our idea was to
+hold the fort until a new Commissioner might be sent, and the only
+slight change we made was to double our salaries. The natives had grown
+so used to civilized government that they made no trouble, and we three
+might have been governing the island yet if a man-of-war hadn't suddenly
+popped in.
+
+It was the _Ringarooma_, the self-same ship that had landed Mr. Clemm
+some eighteen months before, and Stanley and I were the first to board
+her, meeting the captain at the break of the poop, just when he had come
+down from the bridge.
+
+"I have the honor to report the disappearance of Deputy Commissioner
+James Howard Fitzroy Clemm," said I. "He sailed from here on March
+sixteenth in the government yacht _Felicity_, and has never been seen
+nor heard from since."
+
+The captain, who was a sharp, curt man, looked puzzled.
+
+"I don't know what you're talking about," he said, as abrupt as a
+thunderbolt.
+
+"Why, sir, you landed him yourself," said Stanley, "and the same day he
+took possession of the island and hoisted the British flag."
+
+"Annexed us," said I.
+
+The captain frowned very angry, like if we were making sport of him we
+should fast rue it.
+
+"I never landed anybody here but a fellow named Baker," he said. "I
+deported him from the Ellice Islands for sedition, bigamy, selling gin
+to the natives, suspected arson and receiving stolen goods. If he called
+himself a Deputy Commissioner he was a rank impostor, and had no more
+authority to annex this island than you have."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Months afterwards we learned that instead of being lost in the
+_Felicity_ like we all had thought, Clemm had turned pirate in a small
+way down to the Westward till the natives took and ate him at
+Guadalcanaar.
+
+
+
+
+CLOUD OF BUTTERFLIES
+
+
+Behind Apia, on the edge of the Taufusi swamp, was a small collection of
+huts, jumbled together in squalor and dirt, with pigs dozing in the ooze
+and slatternly women beating out _siapo_ in the shade. It was a dunghill
+of out-islanders, Nieues, Uveans, Tongans, Tapatueans, banded together
+in a common poverty; landless people of other archipelagoes, despised of
+the Samoans, and paying tribute to the lord of the soil--a few men in
+war; a grudging hog in times of peace.
+
+Here lived O'olo, a boy of twenty, whose chief-like face, and fine manly
+bearing marked him as one apart in that nest of outcasts. He was of
+Tongan blood, though all he knew of his parents was that they had
+escaped from Nukualofa at the time of the Persecution, and had died in
+Samoa when he was a child. Old Siosi, who had adopted him, could tell
+him no more than that; not that O'olo asked many questions, being
+content to drift on the ocean of life, and careless of anything save
+what belonged to the day. He weeded taro, occasionally worked for
+thirty-five cents a day at the unloading of ships; stole bread-fruit and
+bananas up the mountain, and slept peacefully at night on the stones of
+Siosi's floor.
+
+If ever he envied the Samoans, the mood was brief, and seldom darkened
+his spirits for long. To him the Samoans were a race above, with
+splendid houses, and spacious lands, and a haughty contempt for such an
+eat-bush at O'olo, the Tongan; and O'olo looked up at them mightily, and
+respected them as a dog does a man, though sometimes he said: "I wish
+God had made _me_ a Samoan"; and then the swamp appeared very dismal to
+O'olo, and the huts mean and noisome, and the mallets seemed to be
+pounding on his heart instead of the suddy bark.
+
+Now it happened that a new clergyman came to the coral church on the
+other side of the coconut grove, and what was more important to O'olo
+brought with him a lovely daughter. O'olo did not know how important it
+was till he first met Evanitalina in the path, and was so suddenly
+stricken with her beauty that he had hardly the sense to make way for
+her to pass. Slim and graceful, with her glossy hair gathered at the
+nape with a ribbon, and her bright _lavalava_ kilted to the knee, she
+gave O'olo a glance as sparkling as moonlight on a pool, all her young
+womanhood alive to his confusion, and quick to divine its cause. Though
+her eyes had scarcely dwelt on him an instant, she had seen enough for
+her heart to say: "_Panga!_ What a handsome youth"; and was filled with
+a strange elation in which there was a dart of pain.
+
+On her return O'olo was still where she had left him, though in his
+hand was a crimson _aute_ blossom that had not been there before; and
+when she drew close he held it out, saying: "Oh, lady, here is a little
+worthless gift!" She took it smiling, and put it behind her ear, and had
+it been a pig or a fine mat no sweeter could have been her words of
+gratitude, for Evanitalina had been well brought up, and courtesy was as
+natural to her as breathing.
+
+"I am named O'olo," said the young man, "and if you like _aute_
+blossoms, every day shall I bring you some."
+
+"I am Evanitalina, the daughter of Samuelu, the clergyman," she
+returned, "and I shall be glad of the blossoms, for as yet thy father
+has tabooed no lands for our garden."
+
+Then O'olo realized she had mistaken him for the son of Amatuanai, the
+chief, and while flattered he was also much cast down.
+
+"I am only a Tongan," he said, deprecatorily, shame halting his tongue,
+"and I live yonder where you see that nameless-animal rooting in the
+slough--though to God a Tongan is every bit as good as a Samoan, and the
+only chiefs are those who are strong in faith."
+
+Evanitalina hastened to agree with him, though she was very disappointed
+just the same, for he was so handsome, and had such pleasant manners,
+and an air so noble and winning that she had never doubted he was of
+rank. She herself was of the exalted I'i family, of Safotulafai, and
+her grandfather was Tu'imaleali'ifano, and her great-grandfather had
+been Tu-ia'ana. Yet as she went on, the memory of O'olo stayed with her
+like the scent of frangipani, and for all he was a Tongan and without
+land or position, she felt a great tenderness for him; and taking the
+crimson flower she pressed it to her bosom, trembling with joy as she
+did so, and saying to herself: "I love thee, I love thee, I love thee!"
+
+The next day they met again, and the next after that, and soon the
+village gossips were all of a chatter, though not a word of it reached
+the Reverend Samuelu nor his wife. But if Evanitalina dared not tell her
+parents of O'olo, in her conduct at least she was as good as gold, and
+every time she held a tryst with her sweetheart, she took her little
+brother with her as convention demands; and Polo, bribed with sugar
+cane, sucked and chewed at the pieces O'olo peeled for him, his shaven
+head untroubled by the woes of his elders. They, alas, were very
+wretched, for O'olo had saved up two dollars, which was what to get
+married costs, and was urging Evanitalina to run away with him to Atua;
+while she, with superior wisdom called his proposal that of a delirious
+person, for how were they to live afterwards except slavelike on the
+bounty of others? When he answered they could return to Siosi and the
+swamp, her lip curled scornfully, and she reminded him she was of the
+renowned I'i family, accustomed to dignity and ease, to whom the
+settlement of out-islanders was hardly better than a wallow of
+nameless-animals.
+
+Now, however true this might be, it was hurtful to O'olo's pride, and he
+was often goaded into sharp retorts which invited others even sharper,
+so that their passion might be compared to a mountain, up one side of
+which they climbed in joy and gladness, to descend on the other in
+alienation. Not that they loved each other any less; that, indeed, was
+the most cruel part of it; and when at last they separated it was with
+breaking hearts.
+
+The days that followed were heavy with sorrow, for each strove ardently
+to pain the other, and with every stab thus inflicted there were two
+wounds, one in the giver and one in the stricken person. O'olo spent his
+two dollars in riot and debauchery, and when released from prison fell
+into greater evil, so that his communion-ticket was withdrawn, and those
+who missed taro, or chickens, or run-wild daughters used to say
+darkeningly: "Lo, it is that Taufusi Tongan," and sought to waylay him
+with an ax.
+
+Evanitalina, in her turn, encouraged the wooing of Viliamu, a
+highly-connected young man, whose father was a Member of Parliament, and
+who earned a dollar and a half a day in the explosion-water manufactory.
+In this profession he was wondrous skilful, and could be seen daily
+under a shed, directing the apparatus, and giving orders to his helpers
+like a white man. A bottle of explosion-water held no more than half a
+coconut, yet it was sold for ten cents, and it was a perplexity that
+anybody liked it, for it shot up your nose like the rush of a bat, and
+made you choke and sneeze, as Evanitalina discovered when once Viliamu
+brought her some. But it was a fine thing to be able to make it, and
+earn a dollar and a half a day, and dress magnificently, and give costly
+presents; and though Evanitalina did not love Viliamu she admired him,
+and accepted his gifts, and thought wickedly how it must afflict O'olo
+to see her and Viliamu seated on the same mat, or with their heads side
+by side on the same bamboo pillow.
+
+Nor was Viliamu her only suitor, for there was also Carl, the German
+half-caste, who was captain of a schooner, and wore trousers and a black
+sash, and owned valuable property in Savaloalo; Carl who called for her
+almost every Sunday in a buggy, and took her driving like a white lady,
+to Vailele or Vaitele or Utumapu; Carl of the ringing laugh, and jolly,
+smiling face, and tattooed girl-fish on his arm, who could sing, and do
+tricks with cards, and invent the funniest forfeits when they all played
+games, and yet, who at leave-time never failed to say with seriousness:
+"Oh, my pigeon, am I to love uselessly forever?"
+
+Again and again was Evanitalina drawn to take Viliamu, and then to take
+Captain Carl, for Samuelu was always urging that a final decision be
+come to, knowing the folly of maids, and the lack and fewness of worthy
+men for husbands. But as she was on the brink, like a diver pausing
+before the plunge, her eyes would alight on O'olo, smolderingly
+regarding her from afar, and then her whole strength would turn to
+water, and not for anything would she have married Carl, though all
+Savalalo belonged to him, and all the ships of the sea; nor likewise
+would she have married Viliamu, even had he owned the explosion-water
+manufactory and been himself a Member of Parliament, for of her heart
+there was but one master, and that was the Tongan.
+
+But, alas, there was no coming together, for O'olo in his despair had
+put himself beyond all intercourse with those of honor, becoming a
+terror and a scourge, and inhabiting the jail more frequently than
+Siosi's roof-tree; and nightly, when he was free, he caroused with low
+companions, drinking gin, and cooking stolen pigs, and eating stolen
+taro, and saying in his infamy: "Why should I work for thirty-five cents
+a day when all the Tuamasanga is mine?"
+
+Yet the rich food had no flavor in his mouth, and though the gin
+maddened his spirit, it could not drown his wretchedness, for deep
+within him, like a maggot in a bread-fruit, was the torment of love.
+Sometimes in prison he would lower his head like a cow, and run at the
+wall, exclaiming: "I will die, I will die!" And then he would fall, with
+his beautiful hair all matted with blood, and his beautiful body next to
+lifeless, though with his purpose unattained, owing to the thickness of
+his skull. Surely no person in hell was ever more unhappy than O'olo,
+and it is with grief one tells of him, for he was like a child, who, on
+being refused a mango throws away his banana in wilfulness--and with
+him, his banana was right conduct, and the respect of others, and the
+laws of God, leaving him nothing save an aching spirit.
+
+Then the war came, with the Tuamasanga in an uproar from end to end,
+every young man being called to arms, and troops pouring in from Tutuila
+and the westward to join in the onslaught against Mataafa. The Taufusi
+people, as foreigners, were not liable to the levy except for two
+striplings by way of rent, both of whom were subscribed with
+unwillingness, though neither was O'olo. This Evanitalina learned with
+joy, for death was in the air and bloody fighting nigh at hand, and her
+tenderness for O'olo, lying secret in her bosom, like a red-hot coal,
+was fanned to the flame of agony. But no, he was fortunately in the
+lock-up, and it was reported he had said scornfully of the war: "A
+Tongan gentleman has no concern with the squabbles of dogs"; which, if
+insulting, was not without the balm of reassurance to Evanitalina,
+greatly dreading.
+
+One drowsy afternoon, however, as she was sewing under the eaves, alone
+except for Polo, who had made a Mataafa soldier of the dog, and was
+pretending, victoriously, to cut the animal's head off with a piece of
+wood, as so soon, in reality, would be happening to living men, pierced
+with wounds, and lying in their blood--one hot afternoon while nothing
+stirred except the flies, and even these buzzed sleepily, Evanitalina of
+a sudden was roused by the sound of steps, and looking up, beheld a
+warrior advancing towards the house. His face was blackened with
+charcoal, as is the custom, and about his hair was the scarlet scarf of
+the Government, and against his skin glistened a belt of cartridges; and
+his walk was fearless and proud, as befitted so handsome a man and one
+of such noble mien.
+
+"_Talofa_," he said, and then Evanitalina gave a cry, for it was O'olo;
+and with that cry, every thought vanished except her love, which rose
+tumultuously within her like a wave bursting between rocks, and foaming
+white over them, so that she could answer not a word to his greeting,
+but stared uselessly at him like a dead person.
+
+"I am going to the war," explained O'olo, bending down on his beautiful
+legs, and bringing his face so close to hers that his breath was on her
+cheek. "Doubtless I shall die, for with many so brave it will be
+difficult for me to excel them, though that is my intention at whatever
+cost."
+
+"But how is it you are not in prison?" inquired Evanitalina, recovering
+her voice, and speaking in a tremble. "The judge allotted you two
+months, and lo, here you are with only sixteen days of it expended."
+
+At this O'olo's heart warmed, for it showed him how assiduous had been
+Evanitalina's counting of his imprisonment, for it was exactly sixteen
+days, even as she said, she tallying it every morning with a little
+stone; and it spoke to him better than words of the endurance and
+strength of her love, which, like his own, was as fathomless as the sea.
+
+"I was made free on this condition," he said, touching his rifle, "and
+though to me the Government is nothing, nor the King, nor the quarrel
+more than that of gulls on a rock, or the squeals of nameless-animals
+over carrion, yet I consented for thy sake, Evanitalina."
+
+"My sake?" she exclaimed, astonished. "Were it to please me I would
+implore thee to remain behind, though I thought my name had long ceased
+to be anything to thee, and that I was utterly forgotten and cast
+aside."
+
+"So did I try to make it," he said, "for no shark could have been more
+cruel than thee to me, nor any bat more blind to worth, and because I
+had neither lands nor family thou drovest me forth with contempt."
+
+"It was the insufficiency of the two dollars, O'olo," she protested,
+"and not that of my love, which was unbounded; and if I merited
+punishment for what seemed right to me, have I not received it, and
+atoned a thousand times over for my fault? Did Viliamu gain me for all
+his wealth and position, or did Carl the half-caste take me to wife? I
+was truer to thee than ever thou wast to me, and nightly I wept, and
+held the memory of thee in my arms, like a mother whose babe is dead.
+And this I will do, if thou wilt return to jail, and break the covenant
+of thy freedom--I will marry thee, and go live with thee in Siosi's
+house, and forfeit rank and honor and the regard of all, reckoning them
+as naught in the comparison of thy love."
+
+At this O'olo could hardly keep back his tears, so greatly was he
+overcome; and his hand met Evanitalina's and clasped on hers, and his
+chest shook like one grief-stricken at the death of a near relation. He
+had learned many things since he had become bad, and knew better than
+before the gulf that lay between an eat-bush like himself and a member
+of the renowned I'i family. Our Lord in the desert was not more tempted
+by the kingdoms of the world than he at that moment by Evanitalina, who
+was offering herself in all her young beauty for his delight.
+
+But resolutely he put the devil behind him, saying: "I will not have
+thee stoop to me, so that persons shall mock at thy choice, and the
+parable of the pearl and the nameless-animal shall be repeated in the
+Taufusi swamp. No! I shall make of this war a ladder, and reach glory or
+die and to that I am determined as never was man before. If I come back
+it shall be as one famous for prowess, bearing heads that I have taken,
+and with chiefs eager to adopt me. Thus shall I return, an eat-bush no
+longer nor despised, but a David who has slain his Goliath, with the
+multitude applauding, and the greatest of the Tuamasanga vying to give
+me the title of their son. Or, if not that, then shall I claim the land
+God withholds not from every man, nay, not from the poorest or the
+lowest, and the name of that land is the grave."
+
+At this Evanitalina sobbed, and clung pitifully to O'olo, and pressed
+his head to her bosom, unmindful of decorum, and so consumed by misery
+she was like a person in a fit. O'olo, too, was suffocated with sadness,
+for it seemed a dreadful thing to die and be cast blood-stained into a
+pit, he that was so handsome, and in the flood of his youth, with
+perhaps his dissevered head tossing in the air amid shouts and triumph.
+Indeed, so lost was he in wretchedness that he was taken unawares by
+Samuelu on his way inland from a deacons' meeting, who, convulsed,
+seized a coconut branch, and ran at him, crying: "Let there be a going,
+thou worthless one! Fly, thou of the Belial family, and be quick with
+it, else I shall whip thee hence like a cur!" And with that he whipped
+and whipped at O'olo, departing, for the Tongan was too mannerly to
+strike a clergyman, and one so greatly his senior, though his spirit
+smarted worse than his body at the insult. Thus he passed from the sight
+of Evanitalina, like a horse being chased from a bread-fruit plantation,
+with no time to look back, or wave with his hand a last greeting.
+
+He marched the same day with the Vaiala contingent under the high-chief
+Asi, and that night, shivering on the wet ground, O'olo had his first
+taste of war. As to it he had many misconceptions, not reckoning on the
+severity of the rule, or the trifling importance attached to a Tongan,
+however lionlike his heart. He saw that he was one of many, a grain in a
+heap of sand, who might at an order be kept in the rear, and never hear
+the whistle of a bullet, or earn the chance of distinction. In the army,
+too, little thought was taken of food, so that one banana was given for
+breakfast, and for dinner a coconut, which O'olo found hard, he having
+always been a hearty eater, and accustomed to _palusami_ and luxuries.
+The monotony also, was unendurable, especially when the tobacco was
+gone, and one was forbidden to move, being condemned to sit hungry and
+distressed for a whole day at a time, sucking a white stone by way of
+alleviation. To O'olo a white stone was very insufficient for
+nourishment, and so he tried grass and weeds like Nebuchadnezzar, to
+the undoing of his stomach, which dissatisfied, was afflicted with
+cramps, so that he rolled and rolled in pain, and lamented loudly, till
+Asi cried out: "Make that Tongan to cease from bellowing, or else the
+enemy will surely discover us!"
+
+But let it not be said that O'olo was womanish or afraid, for on the
+contrary he thirsted for battle like King David, whom he took for his
+example, and his repining was due to the backwardness of his rulers and
+the tightness of their leash. When at last the advance was ordered on
+the Mataafa stronghold he was noticeable for his leaps of joy; and while
+others wore an anxious appearance and showed uncertainty in their walk,
+O'olo sang with exultation, and stepped out as though on his way to a
+feast.
+
+The stronghold was of stone, and had been used by the Germans for the
+retaining of cattle, and stood solitary on a hill with the land falling
+away on every side. As it flashed and sparkled with the Mataafa fire it
+was seen by O'olo to be a place not easy to capture, with much loss to
+be experienced before ax could cross ax, and knife meet knife, in the
+final charge; so that, with wisdom, he shot little in order not to tire
+himself, and hugged the ground in a manner suggestive of terror rather
+than boldness, for to be killed here was useless and foreign to his
+purpose, fame resting in the fort, and there the heads to be taken.
+Thus, when they sprang up at the call, he was unfatigued, with
+cartridges still in his gun, and wind in his body, and up the hill he
+raced with swiftness, so that scarcely two of his companions matched
+pace with him, and those who had cried: "Coward, coward!" panted in his
+rear, and perceived it was a hero they had mocked.
+
+Nor at the gateway was there any slackening of Tongan valor, and over it
+O'olo scrambled, undeterred by rifle and ax, so that it was a miracle
+that he stayed alive as he dropped within, even as Daniel into the
+lion's den, beset by twenty, and he alone. It was like a tempest and he
+in the center, and for lightning was the flame of the guns, and for
+thunder the roar of their explosion, and for the raging sea the crash of
+blows, given and taken, and the sobbing breath of men. Here the Tongan
+rock withheld the enemy, while the army of the Government rolled over
+the wall in a resistless torrent, and with tumult and fury beset the
+Mataafas until they fled. Now, O'olo, with coolness, had already marked
+an old chief of towering stature and magnificent appearance as the one
+whose head he would take, unwishful of a boy's, or that of a person of
+no importance, and him he pressed hard in the rout, and at last laid low
+with the butt of his weapon, straddling his body, and prepared to hack
+at his throat with his knife.
+
+The old chief, whose hurt had not bereft him of his senses, begged
+piteously for his life in a voice choked by the weight of O'olo on his
+chest, and troubled by the imminence of death; offering first ten cans
+of biscuit, and then twenty, and then property and fine mats in
+quantities unstinted. But O'olo, although it was like a beautiful dream
+come true, dallied with the killing, being squeamish in regard to it,
+and needing a space to confirm his resolution, he saying with derision:
+"Thou pig-faced person, thou hast not the property thou namest, and even
+wert thou the Lord of the earth, yet still would I take thy head!" To
+which the fallen warrior made answer: "I am Tangaloa, the high-chief of
+Leatatafili, in Savai'i, and the property I speak of is no myth, and all
+of it thine if thou wilt spare me." To which O'olo replied: "And when I
+should claim it, verily thou wouldst forget thy covenant, and order thy
+young men to chastise me forth, they laughing at the cheat, and I with
+neither head nor property, and the back of me lacerated with blows!"
+Then the old chief fell into a great tremble, repeating: "No, no," his
+flesh shrinking on his bones, and horror in his face; and as O'olo
+looked down at him, making motions with his knife, the Tongan's thought
+was suddenly moved into a new direction, and lo, it was like a burning
+torch in a cavern, so bright it was in the darkness of his previous
+purpose, he saying: "Oh, Tangaloa, there is a price, and that is my
+adoption as thy son, and to that wilt thou pledge thyself in an oath
+before God?" To which, overjoyed, the venerable warrior consented with
+impetuosity, crying out that he would do so, and seeing in the proposal
+the high-chief-hand of God, for had not his own son lately died?
+
+"And cherish me, and love me?" demanded O'olo with renewed motions of
+his knife, he undesirous of showing too great a willingness, and
+pretending indecision, besides doubting the chief's integrity.
+
+"As God sees me that I will perform," said Tangaloa, "and now in my
+extremity I perceive the worth of true dealing with every man, for all
+my past years stand in witness to my honor, and he who trusted me has
+never been deceived."
+
+At this O'olo was reassured, and he repeated the oath for Tangaloa to
+say after him, making it very full and exact, with nothing omitted; and
+then he kissed the old man, beginning to feel for him the tenderness of
+a son, he that had never had a father until this moment, and now having
+gained one of the loftiest rank; and he raised him lovingly, and bound
+his wound with a strip of cloth, and be-darlinged him, Tangaloa
+returning his love, and saying again and again: "Blessed be God that He
+has sent me a son for my protection."
+
+Nor were these words of empty import, for others of the victorious army
+were much displeased at O'olo's clemency, and would have torn away
+Tangaloa and killed him, had not O'olo resisted with lowered gun and a
+threatening expression, so that he dared not leave his father for an
+instant so greedy were the warriors for his head. All that day he
+crouched beside him, with neither water to drink nor food to eat,
+guarding Tangaloa preciously; and had it not been for the confusion that
+attends the finish of a battle, and the lessening of authority that
+follows, he would have been overpowered by a multitude, and all his
+bravery wasted. But those who assailed him were without cohesion or
+settled plan, and they were as dogs, rushing up to affright, and then
+losing courage at O'olo's demeanor, which was fierce and unshaken, with
+his rifle at the cock.
+
+It was a day terrible to remember in its heat and hunger and unbearable
+thirst, with about them the headless dead, festering in the sun and
+blackening, and over them the sky without a cloud, and always at their
+hearts the dread of Asi and the chiefs, returning to kill them both. At
+dusk it seemed as though O'olo could never get his father to his feet,
+so destroyed was the old man by weakness and disinclination, and he was
+as a sinking canoe, or a sting ray flopping on the reef, and abandoned
+by the tide. But O'olo persevered, dragging and supporting him until
+coconuts were reached, where he climbed a tree and threw down nui in
+abundance; and as they drank the water they were greatly refreshed, and
+with every bite of the rind, vigor returned, and with vigor, boldness.
+Then Tangaloa said: "Let us pray"; and with that they both went down on
+their knees, the old chief beseeching God for deliverance, and
+repeating again and again his thankfulness for O'olo, and for the nuts.
+
+But all was far from finished, and there was much for God to do yet if
+ever He destined them to gain the security of Savai'i; and O'olo
+proclaimed his intention of hiding in the mountains, and going eastward
+circuitously, and making no sign or stir until the close of the war, and
+the withdrawal of the Tuamasanga from A'ana. To this Tangaloa agreed
+without argument, resigning himself like a little child to O'olo's
+guidance, and making no demur when the Tongan said: "Let us rise and go,
+for by dawn we must be on the heights, and beyond pursuit."
+
+Thus determined, they took the plantation road upward, assisted by the
+moon which was near its full; and toilsomely attaining the limits of the
+cultivated land, buried themselves in the tomb of the forest. Here, with
+groping and hurt, and frequent misdirection, they struggled on and on,
+making of a watercourse their path, and at times so hidden in the defile
+of rocks that it was as though the earth had closed over them. In this
+manner were many hours spent until at last Tangaloa fell exhausted on a
+bank of ferns, saying: "More I cannot do." Then O'olo built a fire to
+warm his parent, who was perishing of cold, and rubbed his legs, and
+shaped a bough for his pillow, and kissed him lovingly; and when the old
+man said: "I am convinced we shall die"; he answered stoutly, "No, we
+shall live, for God has not brought us thus far to desert us now"; at
+which Tangaloa was comforted and went to sleep, while O'olo watched and
+watched beside him, his heart much troubled by the evil of their
+situation, and the frailty of the old chief, and the assailing doubts as
+to whether, after all, they should ever escape.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The news of O'olo's desertion was variously twisted by the returning
+troops, so that to Evanitalina, inquiring in anguish, there were as many
+tales as men. Some would have it that they had seen him die, giving
+details; others that he had run away from the battle, in wildness and
+panic; others praised him truthfully for a hero, and as the first to
+leap the fort. Of these there was a fewness, for the most preferred to
+laud themselves or their relations rather than another, and accordingly
+most of the chatter was scornful of O'olo, and to his discredit. But
+Evanitalina knew that O'olo was no coward, and her misgiving was that he
+was dead, which deepened with the passing of months, and no sign nor
+token coming to prove the contrary. Viliamu, too, was assiduous in
+declaring it, which he did with artfulness and pretended sorrow, urging
+all the while his own suit, like a squid of apparent harmlessness on the
+surface, but with its suckers enfolding venomously below.
+
+Never was a maid in sadder straits, widowed before she was a wife, and
+unceasingly plagued by Samuelu to marry either Viliamu or Carl. She grew
+thin, and when she walked it was like a sick person, staggeringly, and
+once of so passionate a temper she changed to a gentleness that nothing
+could disturb. The compassion of the other maids lavished itself upon
+her, for they saw that she was dying of grief for her beloved; and at
+night, when wooed under the stars, they spoke with tenderness of O'olo
+and Evanitalina, and of their love so cruelly ruptured; so that every
+one wept, even young men who previously had had neither consideration
+nor sense, to whom a maid was a maid, were only she pretty, and who
+would have hastened for another had the first died; which shows that
+true love is like a seed, growing and becoming a tree, from which others
+eat the fruit to their own improvement, and increased understanding.
+
+Every day Evanitalina grew more weak, yet unlike most sick persons, she
+was without fear at her condition, even welcoming it, and saying: "Soon
+I shall pass beyond the skies on my last _malanga_"; an once when she
+saw a wilted _aute_, she said: "Such am I, once blooming and now
+a-droop," and with that she plucked fiercely at the petals, and crushed
+them in her hand, as though she were hastening her own extinction.
+
+One morning, shortly after prayers, as she reclined on a mat, with her
+eyes raised to that far-away country of which she often spoke, while
+Samuelu sat at the table, writing his sermon, there appeared on the
+village green three old gentlemen of stately and impressive appearance,
+bearing staves, who, stopping at that distance, inquired loudly whether
+this was the house of Samuelu, the clergyman? Then being greeted, and
+answered, "Yes," the three old gentlemen ceremoniously advanced, and
+ranged themselves within the eaves, saying that they had come on a
+wooing-party of sixty boats with Cloud-of-Butterflies, the young chief
+of Leatatafili, who was seeking a wife. At this, marveling greatly,
+Samuelu informed them they were mistaken as to the house, since his
+highness Cloud-of-Butterflies was unknown to him, and he surely unknown
+to Cloud-of-Butterflies. But the old orators replied, No, they were not
+mistaken, and asked had he not a daughter named the Lady Evanitalina,
+for it was for her that Cloud-of-Butterflies, in sixty boats, was at
+hand to offer marriage.
+
+Then Samuelu's amazement redoubled, and even Evanitalina, previously
+languid, looked up surprised, and in her face was a strange expression
+like that of a startled pigeon; and on being asked in a becoming speech
+whether she would condescend to receive the visitor and his gifts, she
+answered with bewilderment that it was as her father wished, at which
+Samuelu said, "Yes," with no great willingness, desiring to continue
+his sermon, and dreading the outlay in _'ava_ for the reception of so
+vast a company. Then the three old gentlemen excused themselves in
+polished phrases, full of beauty and eloquence, and retired to inform
+Cloud-of-Butterflies that the Lady Evanitalina was desirous that he
+should come.
+
+Shortly afterwards there was the beat of drums, and the tramp of
+multitudes, and the screaming of innumerable pigs borne on poles, and a
+sound like that of an advancing army, thunderous and roaring. The eaves
+of every house was black with onlookers, and there were white people,
+galloping up on horses, astounded, and many others on foot, running.
+Then, shaking the ground with its progress the procession marched into
+view; and of pigs there seemed two hundred, and of men a number beyond
+counting; and at the head were youths, throwing their rifles in the air
+as they sang and danced. But of these things Evanitalina was scarcely
+heedful, for with breathless body and quivering heart her whole
+attention was on Cloud-of-Butterflies in the center of the pageant, who,
+girded in a priceless mat, and wearing at his throat a whale-tooth
+necklace, and surrounded with deference and honor, was not to her
+Cloud-of-Butterflies at all, but O'olo, arisen from the grave, and
+hastening to claim her for his bride.
+
+
+
+
+BEN
+
+
+I was in the bark Ransom, with twenty tons of trade aboard, and looking
+for a station up in the Westward, when I fixed it up with Tom Feltenshaw
+at Arorai Island to buy him out. It was a good little station, and far
+better than I could have hoped for at the money I had to offer, with a
+new tin roof and a water tank and a copra shed with a cement floor, and
+an imported banana in an imported ton of earth to give a natty effect to
+the back view--the front being all reef and dazzle and Pacific Ocean.
+
+Lonesome? Coffin-lid, nail-her-down, lonesome--why, of course! Was there
+ever a coral island that wasn't? But there was copra in plenty; only one
+other trader and him a boozer; quite a bit of pearl shell, and Tom's
+book showing how he had cleared thirty-three hundred dollars in a year.
+He had boils something awful, and for the last two years it had just
+been a fight to stick it out. I came along when the boils had won all
+along the line, with Tom ready to leave everything all standing in order
+to get away.
+
+There hadn't been a ship in five months, and he had come mighty near
+pegging out, having made his will and tacked it to the shed door,
+besides giving the natives receipts in advance that he had died a
+natural death, they being afraid some passing man-of-war might hold
+them responsible and shoot up the island.
+
+We had settled everything, counted out the money, and shook hands when
+Tom says, over a good-by nip of Square-face: "Oh, that girl of mine,
+Ben,--you'll take care her, won't you?"
+
+"Girl?" says I.
+
+"She's broke in to cooking and washing and white ways," explains Tom,
+"and it'd go against my conscience to feel I hadn't left her
+comfortable."
+
+"Let's see her," I said.
+
+He called her in, and one glance at her settled the matter. She was
+about eighteen, as slim and straight as a dart, and, by far and away,
+the prettiest woman I had seen in the group. She stood there mighty
+sullen as I sized her up, and admired her splendid black hair that was
+bound by a red ribbon at the nape of her neck, very coquettish and
+attractive. I've always liked that proud, to-hell-with-you look in a
+girl, and it seemed to make her better worth having, like there was
+something to master before you could have your will with her. Yes, it
+was bargain day for me all right, and the store wasn't the only thing I
+was getting cheap.
+
+"What she saying?" I asked, as she spoke something in Kanaka to Tom,
+showing real pretty teeth.
+
+"She won't stay if you whip her," grins Tom.
+
+"Bless her heart, I won't whip her," I says, thinking to break the ice
+by pulling her down on my knee. But she struggled like a wildcat, and
+Tom, he suddenly turns red-hot jealous.
+
+"Leave that till I'm gone," he says, kind of choking. "If it wasn't for
+these damn boils I should never have parted with her or the station."
+Then after another nip he takes his bag of money, and calls out to the
+Kanakas at the porch to carry his two chests down to the boat that was
+laying there ready to take him aboard. He ups as though to kiss the girl
+good-by, but she sprang back from him, as fierce as she had been with
+me--fiercer, I guess; and when he caught her she turned away her head
+like she hated him. Then he swore and stumbled out of the house without
+another word or anything, while me and the girl stood side by side, both
+of us in our different ways deserted, and slung together by the fate of
+things. She didn't fight this time when I made free with her again, but
+began to sob like her heart would break, while I squeezed and cuddled
+her and watched the sinking topsails of the Ransom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Women are always alike at bottom; it is only men that are different. A
+bit of finery would make Rosie happy for a week. Her hair was an
+everlasting job, so was her skin, which she kept out of the sun and
+rubbed down very careful with oil. She took walks to see how the other
+women wore the single bushy garment that they do in the Gilberts, the
+fashion varying from time to time: now it is swung very jaunty from side
+to side, now it's low and now it's high, and sometimes it's thick and
+sometimes it's thin, and sometimes the modest-and-quiet is the dressy
+way of it. She took care of the house very nice, and what few clothes
+and things we had were arranged most tidy in three chests with bell
+locks. I never hear a little bell ting-a-ling to-day but what it brings
+those days back to me, with her so busy at our funny housekeeping. When
+I coasted around the island, trading, she 'ud stay behind and guard the
+place like a bulldog, and never took a thing except a little soap or
+tobacco or maybe a tin of meat for her Pa, a nosing old gentleman
+dressed in a mat, who always bobbed up when I was out of the way, being
+discouraged at other times from living and dying with us.
+
+Yes, I got very fond of her--loved her, you might call it, for all she
+was a little savage, and ate squid, and carried a shark-tooth dagger
+against any of the girls that might show a fancy for me. In time I
+taught her to play cribbage and checkers and dominoes, so that at night
+we would sit very sociable under the lamp, she and I, with the surf
+groaning on the outer reef, and it was more like a home than I'd ever
+had in my wandering, lonely, up-and-down life. She was quick to learn,
+and loving to beat the band, yet ever kind of imperious and saucy like I
+belonged to her instead of its being the other way around. She had no
+idea of white people--used to say they looked like Kanakas who had been
+drowned for a week--and was most scornful how it was always copra,
+copra, copra with us. It was just her way to tease me and make me cross,
+for then she would snuggle up and ripple over with laughter and hold me
+tight in her soft, round girlish arms, and say that I was _her_ copra--a
+whole ship of it, and how she 'ud hang herself from a coconut tree if I
+were to die--and by God, she would have done it, too, them Gilbert women
+being great on love, and the thing happening often enough.
+
+Several years passed, and I can't recall a single word of disagreement
+between us. She was all the world to me in those days, and I doubt if in
+the whole group there was a pair so happy. Ben's Rosie, they called
+her--the captains and supercargoes and mates that came our way--and they
+all thought a lot of her, and brought her many a little present that
+made her eyes sparkle--such pretty eyes as they were, and so full of
+fun--gold fish, and rolls of silk, and music boxes or a trade hat. It
+was always a standing joke that she was tired of me, and was going to
+run away with them; and if they were quite old, like Captain Smith or
+Billy Baker, there wasn't any length she wouldn't go to, even to hugging
+them and playing with their whiskers right before me, and saying in her
+sweet, broken English: "Oh, you poor old captain, with nobody to love
+you--but never mind, I go with you this time, sure I go, and Bennie can
+get a girl from Big Muggin, oh, so pretty, who bite him like a dog!"
+
+Then little Ben came, and for a time it looked as though he was going to
+be quite a boy, and grow up. But at the end of twenty-one months, as he
+was nearing his second birthday, he sickened and died; and we dressed
+him up in his poor little best, and put him away forever in the coral.
+Rosie took on about it terrible--so terrible that I think something must
+have broken in her brain. She was never the same afterwards; not that
+she was always mourning, I don't mean that--but she grew cranky and
+queer and changed in every way. She would start into a fury at a word,
+and throw things about, and scream. She would tell the most awful lies
+about how I had treated her, and invent things that never took place.
+Even on a dot of a coral island there is gossip and slander and a Kanaka
+Mrs. Grundy, and Rosie was doing her best to ruin me, so that I was
+avoided, and the King and the other high muck-a-mucks went to Tyson's,
+the opposition trader, and tabooed my store till I didn't know which way
+to turn.
+
+I ought to have sold out and quit, and left Rosie on the other fellow
+like Feltenshaw had done me. But I loved her for what she had been to
+me, and for the poor mite moldering under ground, and so just took my
+medicine for a whole miserable year and let it go at that. Every
+misfortune I've had in life I seem to trace to what was good and
+generous in me. Certainly if I'd shaken her off then and there, I would
+have been a happier man, and been saved things that have since almost
+drove me mad.
+
+The upshot of it was that finally I did sell the station to a couple of
+Chinamen--brothers--and I would like to say right here there never was a
+whiter pair than these two, or any that stood up straighter to a
+bargain. Once the main price was fixed, there was no haggling over
+valuations, nor any backwardness or suspicion, though in the rush I was
+in not to hold the schooner over long, it would have been easy to beat
+me out of a hundred dollars or two. They pulled us off to the vessel--me
+and Rosie and them three camphor-wood chests with the bell locks and a
+big roll of mats and a keg of silver dollars--and an hour later six
+years of my life had sunk with the palms, as lost and disappeared as the
+schooner's wake in the sea behind us.
+
+After the Line Apia struck me as a wonderfully bustling, busy little
+place, and I took to it like a man does who's had nothing but coral and
+coconuts to look at till all the world seems nothing else. It came over
+me what a prisoner I'd been up there, and how much I had paid in
+unthought-of ways for that keg of Chile money. Rosie, too, brightened up
+considerable with the novelty of it all, and was so gay and laughing and
+like her old self that I was gladder than ever at having made the
+change.
+
+It didn't take me long to size up conditions; and the better part of
+that keg soon put me in possession of a two-story house and store in the
+center of the town on the main street, with a pretty good stock taken
+over from the widow of the man who had lately died there. I was hardly
+what could be called a trader any more, what with a place so big and
+fine, with a tramway running down to a shaky wharf, and a busted
+bookkeeper coming in every Tuesday night to post my books. I was a South
+Sea merchant now, and was reaping the fruit of all them lonely slaving
+days on the Line. No more pajamas neither, but a clean, white suit every
+day, and with Rosie perking up like she did, them were real good times
+for me, and pleasant to look back on; and though I do say it myself, my
+neighbors liked me and I was respected and looked up to, and I was
+called the Gilbert Island Consul from the way I was always ready to
+befriend anybody from there, whether white or native, even once going
+before the Supreme Court and being complimented by the Chief Justice on
+behalf of some Nonootch people whose wages were being held back.
+
+Then my ward run me for the Municipal Council, and I was elected by
+twenty-two votes to four over Grevsmuhl; and I can tell you it made me
+feel a mighty proud man to be honored like that and placed so high; and
+if my head didn't swell I guess my heart did, to almost bursting, at
+such a rise in life, and one so unexpected and undreamed of. It hardly
+seemed it could be me the police touched their caps to, or the consuls
+confabbed with about local affairs as they dropped in to buy a
+toothbrush or a pair of socks--me who had landed there so short a time
+before in my pajamas and kind of dazed at the size and noise of the
+place after the silence of the Line--just common old me, with earrings
+in my ears and gaping like a Rube.
+
+It meant a big uplift to me in every kind of a way, and I was a better
+man for all that confidence and trust, and wanted like hell to show I
+was worth it. The week after I was elected to the Council I married
+Rosie proper and right, thinking a Councillor ought to set an example in
+his community; and every one was very cordial to me about it, especially
+in my own ward, where two or three of them even followed my lead, saying
+that with the mail steamers now calling and the town generally on the up
+grade, it was time to let go on the old, wrong way of things, and get
+into line with civilization.
+
+Whether it was the change from the coral islands or the lavish new diet
+or what, Rosie had been laying on flesh for a long time in a quiet,
+unnoticed kind of way till finally she suddenly plumped up like a
+balloon. My, but she grew something awful, a waddling, monstrous
+mountain of a woman, with her eyes burying like a pig's, and the whole
+of her shaking as she walked. She was ashamed to go out any more except
+by night, sulking all day indoors, instead, and rocking in a hammock.
+As I said before, she'd never been right since Benny's death, and though
+she had pulled up for a time and acted very much improved she slumped at
+last, and slumped worse than she ever had been. Her old surly fits on
+the Line were nothing compared with the rampageous way she went on now,
+and if there was ever a she devil on earth or a man driven plumb
+distracted it was Rosie and me in our splendid house.
+
+When she was taken with those spells of hers she was nothing less than a
+cursing, snarling, foaming maniac, and stopped at nothing to make me a
+spectacle and a byword. Again and again she chased me out with an ax;
+she would fling into the store with nothing over her but a single dirty
+garment, and pull down whole shelves of stuff out of sheer devilment,
+screaming with rage. She slandered everybody, and reflected on every
+woman who was unfortunate enough to know us, so that I was sued twice
+for defamation--or rather she--with verdict and damages, all that I
+could do being to hold up my hands and tell the judge she wasn't
+answerable for her actions. Hell, that was what it was--straight,
+unadulterated hell--with no way out that I could see till I died or she.
+
+It was about this time I began to notice a fellow named Tyne on the
+beach--a thin, tall, hungry-looking man in a derby hat, very shabby
+black clothes, and no socks--who was said to be a busted doctor landed
+off of a French bark. His name came up before the Council, but as he had
+no papers or diplomas to show, and was hazy besides where he came from
+and how, we refused to let him practice, and were insulted besides at
+his daring to ask us.
+
+Well, one day this Tyne, he comes into my store, very hang-dog, and so
+famished and shaky that I couldn't but feel sorry for him, and he asks
+for the job of pushing my handcart around the beach, getting stuff out
+of Customs, and making deliveries--he having heard I had fired my Nieue
+boy for pilfering.
+
+"Fifty cents a day, Doc," I says. "It's hardly fit for a white man."
+
+"My God," he says, in a real gentleman's voice, "I'm starving. I'd push
+anything anywhere for a bite of bread and a corner of a shed to sleep
+in. Ain't there a spark of charity in this town for a white man who is
+down on his uppers?"
+
+I answered him with a can of sardines and some pilot break, which he
+went out and wolfed right there on the front stoop, and then came back
+wanting to know where was the cart and what was he to do? This was first
+how we got acquainted, Doc and me; and a remarkably finely educated man
+he was, too, and I don't doubt for a minute all that he represented
+himself. I fixed up a small shed for him with some mats, a tin basin and
+a lamp; and after a day or two, seeing how willing he worked and how
+faithful in spite of every one staring at a white man between the
+shafts, I let him take his meals regular with me and Rosie like one of
+the family.
+
+For all he was down and out, and trundled my things about the beach like
+a donkey, in knowledge and everything he was miles above me and I knew
+it--and he made it plain he knew it, too. He was not at all a genial
+man, but had a rasping, bitter way about him, and a tongue as sharp as a
+razor, and a line of talk as to how the world was made up of flats and
+sharpers, all of them hypocrites, and how there wasn't but one sin--and
+that was to be found out. He talked like the devil might be expected to
+talk, there being no goodness or honor anywhere; and in some ways he
+wasn't unlike him in looks as generally represented, being tall and
+thin, with keen gray eyes that seemed to bore right through you, and a
+wicked, sneering mouth like a slit across his face.
+
+Very soon he was doctoring natives on the sly for quarters and half
+dollars and bonito hooks and tappa, and quite a row of bottles and
+drug-store stuff began to accumulate along the ledges of the shed walls.
+I didn't think it was my business to interfere as long as he let white
+people alone, besides feeling sorry for him, and appreciating the way he
+paid no attention to Rosie's outbreaks, sitting there like he was air,
+and not passing a single remark--being, for all his faults, a gentleman
+through and through. At last he chucked the handcart altogether, though
+he went on messing with me and living in my shed, his Kanaka practice
+growing very extensive. It grew and grew till finally the regular doctor
+called a halt, and he was warned in an official letter, and told he
+would get three months' imprisonment if he persisted. At this I thought
+he would go back to the shafts again, though I didn't care to propose it
+lest it should hurt his feelings. But instead he bought an accordion and
+did nothing but play and play on it for days, beginning awful bad like
+he didn't know one end of it from another, but improving wonderful till
+it was dandy to hear him.
+
+I guess there was nothing Doc couldn't do if he tried, though why
+accordion was more than I could answer. But it wasn't loafing that kept
+him stuffed in a hot shed all day, wheezing polkas out of the
+hurdy-gurdy, but a real good idea of improving on the handcart. What if
+he didn't make a whole band out of himself, with a harness holding a
+comb across his mouth, and a bass drum for him to kick with one foot and
+a tambourine to frisk with the other. My, when he started off with "The
+Stars and Stripes Forever" you might have thought he was six, with a
+drum major prancing along in front! He give a demonstration that night
+in the Tivoli Hotel, and drew the town; and when he come home it was
+with a pocketful of silver and a couple of dates for a wedding and the
+Kaiser's birthday.
+
+After that Doc became an institution, with a pretty Kanaka girl to carry
+the drum and pass round the saucer; and every night when he hadn't a
+special engagement he would make the round of the bars, picking up what
+little he could. If there was a ship to be sold at auction, or a public
+meeting to protest against a high-handed something, it got to be the
+fashion to plaster the notice of it on Doc's back, him playing under a
+tree for all he was worth with the sweat pouring down his face, while
+all hands turned out to see what was the rumpus. He made money hand over
+fist, and would have paid for his keep only I wouldn't have it. We had
+grown to be sort of friends, him and me, from both having so much to
+bear--for he was too proud and highly educated a man to like making a
+monkey of himself, and it ground into him hard, and with me it was
+Rosie, Rosie, Rosie.
+
+Oh, God, what things I had to put up with! What endless mortifications!
+What everlasting, heartbreaking scenes and scandals! She got to
+following me to Council meetings, bellowing like a wildcat, and clawing
+the policeman who was ordered to put her out; and again and again I had
+to leave in the middle to try and get her home, half the beach tagging
+along with us, laughing and jeering till I could have died of shame.
+
+The day I resigned from the Council, being unable to stand it any
+longer, I was sitting in the front room, with my head in my hands, when
+Doc came in, and patted me on the back.
+
+"Too bad," he says, "too bad."
+
+"Oh, Doc," I says, "I'm the most miserable chap alive."
+
+"It's bound to end some time," he remarked.
+
+I shook my head. We had no means of taking care of lunatics, and that
+was about what Rosie was. The Colonies all had laws, barring out
+undesirables and such, even if a steamer would have taken her, which
+none of them would. "I'll tell you what I'd do," said Doc. "I'd give
+five hundred dollars to a labor-ship captain, put her aboard at night,
+and leave it to him to land her in one of those islands where they eat
+you for dinner."
+
+"I couldn't do that," I said.
+
+"Too fond of your money, eh?" he sneers.
+
+"Oh, Doc," I answered, "I'd give everything I possess, lock, stock and
+barrel--and ten years of my life thrown in--to be decently quit of her."
+
+He smiled a bit incredulous. "Suppose an angel came down from heaven and
+took you at your word," he says. "The next day you'd be beating Mr.
+Angel out of his price--you know you would, and screaming worse than she
+does at being held to your bargain."
+
+"Perhaps I would, Doc," I agreed, his manner of speaking somehow making
+it feel very real; "it's hard to begin without a dollar and nothing but
+the clothes you stand in. But downstairs in my safe I have two thousand
+dollars in hard cash, American money, which the angel could take and
+welcome."
+
+"That's a lot of money," he says, wondering like, "but it would be worth
+it to you, wouldn't it?"
+
+"My God, yes," I says, rather regretting I told him about the safe, for
+there was a shine in his eyes and a calculating look I didn't like.
+
+"And you wouldn't bilk the angel when he handed in his bill?" he went
+on.
+
+"Oh, hell, Doc," I said, "what's the use of talking of angels? I've just
+got to grin and bear it."
+
+"But you'd pay, wouldn't you?" he persisted.
+
+I said yes, just to stop his pestering; and after a couple of drinks off
+of the sideboard he went away. That evening I locked myself in the
+store, took the money out of the safe, and carried it up to the attic
+where I hid it under an old mattress. I smeared a little varnish around
+the combination lock with a rag, and next day I looked for finger marks,
+but there weren't none. Yet I was still suspicious, and the money stayed
+in the attic. Doc was too bright a man to have left home without a
+reason.
+
+Things went on as usual for a long time--business middling, Doc rounding
+up the bars, Rosie raising Cain occasionally, or snarling and muttering
+in the hammock just as the humor took her. It was the damnedest life for
+a man to lead, just pigging it and worse every day, with no order and
+anything--a can of meat for lunch, a can of meat for dinner, and the
+table left slovenly like it was. Then she fell kind of sick, and though
+I felt sorry to see her doubled up and groaning, it had a good side to
+it, for I got a Chinaman in to cook at forty dollars a month, and he
+straightened things out fine and cleaned up the dirt of ages. I called
+in Doctor Funk, the regular physician, and for a time Rosie improved,
+getting well enough to nearly bite the cook's finger off when he tried
+to stop her giving away a consignment of hams. But after a while she
+took sick again, the cramps coming back worse than ever, and I let Doc
+do what he could for her, which wasn't much, though better than Funk,
+whose stuff didn't seem any more good and had lost its effect.
+
+Finally, early one morning, she was taken most awful bad, vomiting
+blood, and twisting and twitching in a way horrible to see, she being so
+mountainous fat, and gibbering crazily in the Gilbert language--all
+about me and little Benny, and devils snapping at her toes, and a giant
+squid what was dragging her down to drown. Then of a sudden she grew
+very quiet, and Doc, looking close to her face, said, "Good God, she is
+dead!" Yes, dead, just as Doctor Funk hurried in, glaring to see Doc
+there, and saying something out loud about God damn quacks, and looking
+and smelling savagely at the different bottles. Doc slunk out of sight,
+and then Funk, he calmed down, and spoke to me very sympathetic and kind
+as to what I was to do, and how, after all, it was a merciful release.
+
+I buried her the same day, that being the rule in the tropics, and the
+better part of the town followed her to the grave in the foreign
+cemetery, that being a kind of rule or custom, too, in Apia, as well as
+everybody getting tight afterwards at the Tivoli bar.
+
+It was a strange feeling to come back to the house and to know that
+Rosie was gone out of it forever, and that I had passed another big
+landmark in my life. For all it was such a release, I was bluer than
+blue, yet I won't deny I was glad, too, but in a frightened kind of way,
+and half wishing again and again that she was back. Her running on about
+Benny and me before she died stuck in my throat, and seemed awful
+pitiful; and I remembered how pretty she once had been, and always such
+a good, true wife, and how me and the little store was all the world to
+her before sorrow broke her heart.
+
+I went upstairs, and sat looking out on the bay, thinking it all over,
+and how in time death comes to every one of us, high or low; thinking,
+too, that I was a free man now--a prosperous, respected, looked-up-to
+man, and an ex-Councillor with a home that many a woman would consider
+well worth sharing. I wondered if Miss Nelson up at the Mission would
+consider a man as unrefined as I was and thirty-seven years old, she so
+sweet and young and with such gentle, winning ways. She was a governess
+to their children, and that made me think she would, for no woman likes
+to be a dependent and at the beck and call of another. I sat there
+dreaming of her, and of the place nicely fixed up, and of us driving out
+of a Sunday to Vailele in a smart little buggy, with me reëlected to the
+Council, and people saying: "How d'ye do, won't you drop in a
+moment"--to me and Miss Nelson, married.
+
+If this sounds wrong, remember Rosie had been no wife to me for three
+years--only a torment and a disgrace--and I deserved some credit for
+having stood it like I did. I had never dared have such thoughts before,
+though I'd often remarked what a pretty creature Miss Nelson was, just
+like a man does without anything further in his head. Yet looking back
+on it, and the few times she had been in the store when we had spoken
+together, I kind of felt she liked me, and she had certainly never been
+in any hurry to leave; with this much to go on, and the fact that she
+always smiled at me most winsome the few times we passed each other on
+the street, I couldn't help thinking I had made a start without my
+knowing it, and that if I followed it up hard this dream of her and me
+might be made to come true.
+
+I was turning this over in my mind when a squall of rain came tearing
+along, the sky all black with it, and the roof hammering like a boiler
+factory. In Samoa you needn't look out of the window to see if it is
+raining. It comes down deafening, and the iron roars with the weight and
+smash of it. This was how I didn't notice Doc till he stood right there
+beside me. There was something awful strange and grave about him, and I
+give a little jump I was that taken by surprise.
+
+He lit a cigar, and waited very impatient for the squall to pass; and as
+he went to the window and beat a little tattoo on it with his finger
+nail, I noticed he was all dressed up like I'd never seen him before.
+Then he came back, looking at me very steadfast, and says: "Well, Ben,
+you're out of the woods at last."
+
+"Yes, thank the Lord!" says I.
+
+"Same here," he says, meaning himself. "When the mail comes in to-night,
+I'm off to San Francisco."
+
+"Why, Doc!" I cried out, utterly flabbergasted.
+
+"Yes," he says, "and for all I care, the whole damned island may sink in
+the sea, and stay there, with nothing but coconuts and my old accordion
+to mark the place and maybe one of the wheels of that bloody handcart."
+
+I was still knocked silly.
+
+"But, Doc," I says, "you can't have enough to pay your passage."
+
+Then he laughs.
+
+"A hundred and seventy-five ain't much out of two thousand," he says.
+
+"Two thousand?" I says, more mystified than ever.
+
+"Yes," he answers, facing me square. "The two thousand that you owe me,
+Mr. Ben."
+
+I was just going to answer I didn't owe him nothing when the words
+stopped midway on my tongue. I began to tremble instead--tremble till my
+hands could hardly hold to my chair, till I couldn't keep my mouth from
+dribbling.
+
+"It's a debt of honor," he went on. "You can repudiate it if you want
+to, and snap your fingers in my face, but I trusted you, I got you out
+of your mess, and now I ask you for my money."
+
+I couldn't answer anything, but looked at him speechless while he goes
+to the door, peeks outside of it very careful lest any one might be
+listening, and then comes tiptoeing back. It was so plain what he meant
+to tell me that I managed to cry out, "No, no," and shook worse nor
+ever.
+
+"You're a straight man, Ben," he says. "What you owe, you pay. I
+wouldn't have risked it if I had had any doubt about that."
+
+I stumbled to the sideboard, poured myself out a big drink, never
+minding what I spilled, and then went up to the attic where the bag of
+money was still lying under the old mattress. I brought it down and give
+it to him, only asking him not to count it as that was more than I could
+bear.
+
+He made a grab for it, never saying a word, and as he went out of the
+doorway that was the last I ever saw of him.
+
+Was I a fool to have paid him? Was it all a bluff, and just his hellish
+ingeniousness for turning everything to account? Funk never questioned
+she had died a natural death. Yet true or untrue, paying Doc that two
+thousand dollars made me a murderer. In the bottom of my heart I believe
+he did it, and there are nights when I wake up in a sweat of horror. But
+wouldn't it have been a dirty act to bilk him of his money, all the more
+as it would have been so easy? To this day I don't know whether I ought
+to have paid or not, though if I hadn't it would have lightened my
+conscience of a frightful load. But when I think that I always see him
+closing the door and tiptoeing back, ready to whisper the truth.
+
+If it was the truth.
+
+Well, what would you have done?
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+    +------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                            |
+    |                                                |
+    | Some inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in  |
+    | the original document have been preserved.     |
+    |                                                |
+    | Typographical errors corrected in the text:    |
+    |                                                |
+    | Page  19  counsul changed to consul            |
+    | Page  29  counsul changed to consul            |
+    | Page  64  pigeon changed to pidgin             |
+    | Page  71  break changed to brake               |
+    | Paqe  80  palisami changed to palusami         |
+    | Page  81  annoymous changed to anonymous       |
+    | Page 128  Colossium changed to Colosseum       |
+    | Page 169  kep changed to kept                  |
+    | Page 188  forrard changed to forward           |
+    | Page 190  Honolula changed to Honolulu         |
+    | Page 191  Honolula changed to Honolulu         |
+    | Page 199  beech-comber changed to beach-comber |
+    | Page 204  hullabulloo changed to hullabaloo    |
+    | Page 321  Savalolo changed to Savalalo         |
+    | Page 322  Savalolo changed to Savalalo         |
+    | Page 326  that changed to than                 |
+    | Page 335  venemously changed to venomously     |
+    | Page 346  Cousul changed to Consul             |
+    +------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas, by 
+Lloyd Osbourne
+
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Wild Justice, by Lloyd Osbourne.
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas, by 
+Lloyd Osbourne
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas
+
+Author: Lloyd Osbourne
+
+Release Date: August 6, 2009 [EBook #29621]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILD JUSTICE: STORIES OF SOUTH SEAS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bryan Ness, Barbara Kosker and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h1>WILD JUSTICE</h1>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<div class="img"><a name="frontis" id="frontis"></a>
+<a href="images/frontis.jpg">
+<img border="0" src="images/frontis.jpg" width="43%" alt="&quot;...you come with us.&quot;" /></a><br />
+<p class="cen" style="margin-top: .2em;">"'Jack,' she said suddenly, 'you come along with us.'"<span class="totoi"><a href="#toi">ToList</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h1>WILD JUSTICE</h1>
+
+<h3>STORIES OF THE SOUTH SEAS</h3>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4>BY</h4>
+
+<h2>LLOYD OSBOURNE</h2>
+
+<h4>AUTHOR OF "BABY BULLET"</h4>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<div class="img">
+<img border="0" src="images/deco.png" width="10%" alt="Publisher's Mark" />
+</div>
+
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4>D. APPLETON AND COMPANY<br />
+  NEW YORK  ::  MCMXXI</h4>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h5><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1906, 1921, by</span><br />
+D. APPLETON AND COMPANY</h5>
+<br />
+<br />
+<h5>PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</h5>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<hr /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span>
+<br />
+<h2>PREFACE</h2>
+
+
+<p>Deep in every heart there seems to be a longing for a more primitive
+existence; and though in practice it is often an illusion, the South
+Seas lend themselves better to such dreams than any other part of the
+world. There are fewer races more attractive than the Polynesians.
+Frank, winning, gay and extraordinarily well-mannered, the higher types
+are often remarkably good-looking, and scarcely darker than Southern
+Europeans. Some aspects of their life are truly poetic. Half naked, with
+flowers in their hair, and just sufficient work to keep them in superb
+physical condition, they have an almost unlimited leisure to share with
+the wayfarer in their midst. And dirt, that greatest of all human
+barriers, is nonexistent. No people are cleaner; none have so intense a
+personal self-respect. One wonders sometimes whether it is not the white
+man who is the savage, and these in some ways his superiors.</p>
+
+<p>I went to the Pacific when I was a boy of twenty, remaining there till I
+was twenty-eight. For two years I sailed in various ships, visiting not
+only all the principal groups, but stopping at many a lost little
+paradise like Manihiki, Nieue or Gente Hermosa, which lie so lonely and
+apart that the rare stranger is greeted with open arms. Then, settled
+in Samoa, I learned the language as only the very young can learn it,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span>
+and incidentally had a small part in the civil wars of that period. I
+was brought into intimate contact with many powerful chiefs, and became
+so wholly a Samoan that I once barely escaped assassination. I certainly
+have some claim to know South Sea life from the inside&mdash;from the
+native's side&mdash;and this must be my excuse for the present volume.</p>
+
+<p>That my stories should deal so often with the loves of white men and
+brown women is inevitable. The white man and the brown girl&mdash;that is the
+oldest story in the South Seas and the newest. The children of the sun
+are very easy-going; their standards are not our standards; they live
+for the moment, and love as lightly. It is often the white man who
+suffers, and not the maid with the sparkling eyes and radiant smile. He
+may take regrets away with him; perhaps one of those inner wounds that
+never heal, while she marries a native missionary and lives happily ever
+afterwards. Polynesians always live happily ever afterwards, no matter
+what happens.</p>
+
+<p>Yet do not think I am disparaging them. They probably have as much to
+teach us as we them. Courtesy, kindliness, good humor, a charming
+acceptance of life, and if the need comes for it an intrepid courage,
+all these, and more, are theirs. As I see the faces of my old friends
+through the mist I feel an undying affection for them. I shared their
+lives, their secrets, their happy days and their tragic days "in the
+diamond morning of long ago." <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span>I was the confidant in many a runaway
+match; was the writer of war epistles that the bearer was directed to
+eat if pursuit grew too hot; I had a little domain of my own where my
+word was law&mdash;an "out-island" village, living in a perpetual feud with
+its neighbors. Was this really myself&mdash;this tall youth in the
+whale-tooth necklace and girded tappa marching with his brother chiefs
+in stately procession? Incredible&mdash;yet it was. Was it I whose hand was
+kissed by this stalwart warrior whom I see flinging himself from his
+horse and running towards me with the sun glinting on his
+cartridge-belt? Incredible&mdash;yet it was. Was it really I, at the helm of
+that boat, the leader of twenty young men who were to play cricket by
+day and dance by night, halfway round Upolu? Incredible&mdash;yet it was.</p>
+
+<p>"Ina o mulumuluina o'u vae i le suasusu; na faapunaia mai foi e le papa
+tafe suauu mo a'u."</p>
+
+<p>My publishers have been encouraged to reissue the present volume,
+enlarged by the addition of several new tales. Whatever their demerits
+may be, my stories are at least true to a picturesque and little known
+life that is fast passing away.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Lloyd Osbourne</span></p>
+
+<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span>
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<hr /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span>
+<br />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class="centered">
+<table border="0" width="60%" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of Contents">
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl" width="85%">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdr" width="15%"><span style="font-size: 80%;">PAGE</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl smcap">The Renegade</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl smcap">The Security of the High Seas</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_55">55</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl smcap">Forty Years Between</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_86">86</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl smcap">O's Head</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_113">113</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl smcap">Professor No No</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_142">142</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl smcap">Captain Elijah Coe</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_162">162</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl smcap">Mr. Bob</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_192">192</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl smcap">Old Dibs</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_216">216</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl smcap">The Labor Captain</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_274">274</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl smcap">A Son of Empire</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_297">297</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl smcap">Cloud of Butterflies</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_316">316</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl smcap">Ben</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_339">339</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span>
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<a name="toi" id="toi"></a><hr /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span>
+<br />
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<div class="centered">
+<table border="0" width="80%" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Illustrations">
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl" width="75%">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdr" width="15%"><span style="font-size: 80%;">FACING PAGE</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl">"'Jack,' she said suddenly, 'you come along with us'"</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#frontis"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl">"In an instant she was tumbling backward"</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#imagep052">52</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl">"Jack leaped to his feet, white and speechless"</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#imagep098">98</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl">"'This is a black business, Silver Tongue,' I said"</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#imagep118">118</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span>
+<br />
+<br />
+<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span>
+
+<hr />
+<br />
+<h2>THE RENEGADE</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cen">I</p>
+
+<p>It was two o'clock in the afternoon, and from her uneasy anchorage in
+the pass the German man-of-war struck the time, four bells. Overhead the
+sun shone fiercely through a mist of fire; below, the bay gave back a
+dancing glare; on the outer reef the long breakers foamed and tumbled,
+white as far as the eye could reach. From his perch beneath the bows of
+the <i>Northern Light</i> a sailor, paint brush in hand, was slowly wearing
+out the day&mdash;a brown-bearded, straight-nosed, handsome man of thirty,
+his red shirt open to the waist, his bare arms stained with the
+drippings of his brush. Astride of his plank, which hung suspended in
+midair by a block and tackle at either end, the seaman faced the task
+that seemed to have no end. For a week he had been at it, patch by
+patch, working his way round the bark, while the bells had struck on the
+man-of-war and the sun had risen and set.</p>
+
+<p>As he swept his brush across the blistered wall in front of him, he
+wondered moodily whether fate had nothing more in store for him than
+this. Was he to finish as he had begun, a common sailor, doing <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>forever
+what others bade him?&mdash;painting other people's ships, pulling other
+people's ropes, clinging at night on other people's yards to take in
+other people's sails, facing tempests and squalls, reefs, lee shores,
+and all the vicissitudes of the deep&mdash;for others! He laid down the brush
+beside him, and in a somber reverie looked toward Apia. His eyes
+scarcely took in the bigger buildings that were dotted here and there
+round the circumference of the beach: the stone cathedral, the great
+yellow warehouses of the Firm, the two hotels, the consulates, churches,
+and stores. What attracted him, what held him in a sort of spell, were
+the lesser roofs showing through the green of trees and gardens, the
+tiny cottages on the outskirts of the town, or others still farther
+back, scattered and solitary on the wooded hills. Was he, then, never to
+possess a house of his own nor a yard of earth? Was the sea, the
+accursed sea, to claim him till he died? What had he done, he asked
+himself, that others drew all the prizes and left him but the
+blanks&mdash;that they should stay ashore and prosper&mdash;that they should marry
+and have children round them, while he drudged at sea alone? Those
+traders, clerks, saloon-keepers, those mechanics, carpenters,
+shipwrights, smiths, and stevedores, how he envied them! envied their
+houses, their wives, their children, their gardens, their soft and
+comfortable lives, everything that made them so different from <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>himself;
+he, the outcast, with no home but his musty bunk; they, the poorest,
+kings beside him.</p>
+
+<p>It was the sea, he said to himself&mdash;the sea, that took all and gave
+nothing; the sea, mother of all injustice and misery; the sea, whose
+service was to tie oneself to the devil's tail and whisk forever about
+the world, sweating in doldrums, freezing in snow squalls, hanging on to
+lashing yards, blinded, soaked, benumbed, the gale above, death below.
+And yet even here there were some, no better indeed than he, who grasped
+the meager prizes that even the sea itself could not withhold; prizes
+that he could never hope to touch&mdash;the command of ships, the right to
+tread the quarter-deck, the handle to one's name. How did they do it,
+these favored ones of fortune? How did Hansen, that stinking Dutchman,
+ever rise to be the master of the <i>Northern Light</i>?&mdash;and that swine
+Bates, the mate, who already had the promise of a ship?&mdash;and Knight, the
+second mate, a boy but twenty-two, yet whose foot was even now on the
+upward ladder.</p>
+
+<p>"Jack Wilson," said the sailor to himself, "Jack Wilson, you're a fool!"</p>
+
+<p>Having several times delivered himself of this sentiment, always with an
+increasing heartiness of self-contempt, he slapped on some more paint
+and began to whistle. But the whistle died away again, for a little
+house was peeping through the trees at him, and he remembered how he had
+seen it from <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>the road, embowered in flowers, with the river flowing at
+its foot, a cool, snug, inviting little house, with green blinds, a
+pigeon cote, and a flight of steps descending to the bathing pool. How
+happy, no doubt, that fellar that owned it&mdash;a fellar with a regular job;
+a wife, maybe, and kids to swing in that there contraption under the
+mango; a fellar, as like as not, no better than himself; and yet&mdash;&mdash;!</p>
+
+<p>"Jack," he said huskily to himself, "how the hell have you missed it
+all?"</p>
+
+<p>"Women and drink," came the answer. "Women and drink, Jack, my boy."</p>
+
+<p>In the course of his long and wandering life how often had he been paid
+off; how often had he felt his pockets heavy with the gold so arduously
+toiled for; how often had he vowed to himself that this time he would
+keep it! And had he kept it? Never!</p>
+
+<p>There had been windfalls, too; money that had come easily; double
+handfuls of money that he had tossed in the air like a child, to see it
+glitter. Sixteen hundred dollars from a lucky whaling cruise; seven
+hundred dollars, his share for salvaging the derelict steamer <i>Shore
+Ditch</i>; sixty-six pounds eight and fourpence that the passengers had
+raised for him when he saved the girl at Durban&mdash;that, and a gold medal,
+and a fancy certificate with the British and American flags intertwined.
+That medal! It had gone for a round of drinks and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>five dollars for a
+wench. And the fancy certificate! Thunder! he had left it on the
+<i>Huascar</i> when he had taken leg-bail of the Chilanean navy.</p>
+
+<p>"Women and drink, Jack Wilson!"</p>
+
+<p>That's where it has gone, every dollar of it. To the sharks and
+bloodsuckers of seaport towns; to the tawdry sisterhood that spun their
+nets for Jack ashore; to those women that wheedled the seaman's last
+cent, and laughed to see him starving in the streets. It was for these
+he worked, then! It was for these he was even this minute painting the
+bloody bark; for rumsellers and harlots! He repeated the words to
+himself as he looked at his torn nails and blackened hands. For
+these&mdash;by God, for these! He felt within himself the welling of a great
+resolution, of a great revolt. He would reform. He would save his money.
+He would live straight. When they were paid off at Portland there should
+be two hundred dollars coming to him&mdash;two hundred dollars, more or less.
+He would put it in the bank, and get a shakedown in one of them model
+lodging houses. He would turn in at night with "Jesus, lover of my soul"
+in worsted work above his blessed head, and in the morning he would
+plank down his fifteen cents and begin the day with gospel tea. He would
+be a man! Yes, sirree, a man! Not a hog!</p>
+
+<p>Then in his mind's eye he saw himself rolling down the street, a girl on
+either arm, the gaslights <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>dancing in his tipsy head. He would meet a
+shipmate and drop in somewhere for a drink; another shipmate and another
+drink; and then, the party growing as it went, a general adjournment to
+one of them hurdy-gurdies. Here they would dance and drink and sing and
+whoop it up like hell, till&mdash;till&mdash;Yes, that's what would happen. That's
+what always happened. Them good resolutions always ended that way&mdash;in
+smoke. He had made them, man and boy, these fourteen years. He would
+make them, he supposed, until the day he died. And keep them? No; he was
+a hog; he would go on like a hog; he would die a hog&mdash;a durned, low,
+dirty, contemptible hog!</p>
+
+<p>He spat in the water to emphasize his self-disgust, cursed the infernal
+sun, and then, dipping into the pot again, continued his job.</p>
+
+<p>Turning round to rest his arms, he perceived, beneath the deep shade of
+the Matautu shore, the first sign of animation in that sleepy
+settlement. A crowd of natives were straggling out to a whaleboat that
+was apparently being made ready for sea. Men and girls were wading to
+it, with baskets of food, kegs of beef, a tin of biscuit, and a
+capacious chest. A couple of children bailed frantically in the stern
+sheets, while a shrill old woman slid over the gunwale with a live pig
+in her arms. Strange packages of <i>tapa</i> cloth were carried out; bundles
+of mats, paddles, guns, a tin of kerosene, a huge <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>stone for an anchor,
+a water demijohn, more pigs, a baby, and a parrakeet in a bamboo cage.
+These were all thrown in, and stored with noisy good-humor and a dozen
+different readjustments. The baby, in turn, was given the bow, the
+stern, the center, as though nothing would satisfy it. A pig broke loose
+and was hilariously recaptured. A dejected, thin person, somewhat past
+middle years, in what seemed no costume but his native skin, retired
+shoreward with the parrakeet. An old chief, his head white with lime,
+after a prolonged nose-rubbing with those on shore, marched out to the
+boat, carrying an umbrella above his stately head. There were more
+farewells in shallow water, more running to and fro; a brief
+reappearance of the undecided parrakeet. The young men took their places
+at the thwarts, the old chief settled the tiller on the rudder head, the
+women, girls, and children crowded in wherever they could, and then,
+amid shouts and cheers, the paddles dipped and the boat moved slowly
+seaward.</p>
+
+<p>Wilson watched it all with sullen envy. How was it that these brown
+savages were free, and he barnacled to a slab-sided bark? Was he not a
+white man, and their superior? Did he not look down at them from the
+heights of the world's ruling race, kindly, tolerantly, contemptuously,
+as one does on children? And yet who had the best of it, by God? Listen
+to the dip of the paddles; hear the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>mellow chorus that times the
+rowers' strokes; not a care on board, not a face that was not smiling!
+His white superiority! They might have it! His lonely and toiling life!
+What fool among them would exchange with him? His wages? Look at <i>them</i>!
+They had none and wanted none; and as like as not they were putting to
+sea without a dollar among the crowd. Civilization&mdash;hell! He would give
+all his share of it for a place in that there boat, to drive a paddle
+with the rest of them; to be, what he wished to God he had been born, a
+durned Kanaka!</p>
+
+<p>The whaleboat drew swiftly toward him as though to go beneath the bark
+on her way to the pass. The paddles leaped to a rousing song and crashed
+in unison on the slopping gunwales. Dip, swish, bang! and then the
+accentuated thunder of forty voices, the men's hoarse and straining, the
+women's rich, falsetto, and musical. In the stern the old chief swayed
+with every rush of the boat, one sinewy hand clinched on the tiller, the
+other enfolding a little child. In the bow a handsome boy stood erect
+and graceful, throwing a rifle in the air and dancing to the song of his
+comrades. Dip, swish, bang! On they came with an increasing roar, the
+white water splashing under their bow.</p>
+
+<p>Wilson dropped his brush and looked on with open mouth. Great C&aelig;sar! he
+knew that old <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>fellar in the stern. He had smoked pipes with him in the
+Samoa house by the bridge. And that girl there, who was waving and
+shaking her hand to him, that was little Fetuao, the daughter, who used
+to look at him so shyly and laugh when she met his eyes; little Fetuao,
+that he had given the dominoes to, and that dress from the Dutch firm,
+and them beads! Fetuao! Wasn't she pretty as she stood there in the boat
+calling to him; so slim and straight, with her splendid hair flying in
+the wind, and her brown bosom open to the sun! Pretty! My God, she was a
+spanking beauty, that girl!</p>
+
+<p>The boat came to a stop beneath him; the paddles backed, and Wilson,
+with some embarrassment, received the stare of the whole party below.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor white mans work all time!" exclaimed Fetuao, standing on a thwart
+to raise her head to the level of his foot.</p>
+
+<p>"Like hell!" said Jack.</p>
+
+<p>"Kanaka more better," said the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"A damn sight!" agreed Jack.</p>
+
+<p>"Jack," said Fetuao, "I go home now, and never see you no more. Good-by,
+Jack!"</p>
+
+<p>She raised her little hand, which the sailor clasped in his big one. Her
+tender, troubled eyes met his own; her mouth quivered; her fingers
+tightened on his palm.</p>
+
+<p>"Jack," she said suddenly, "you come along us, Jack."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>"Do you mean it, puss?" he said eagerly. "Do you mean it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Jack, you come, too," she pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>"You come&mdash;that's good!" cried the old chief.</p>
+
+<p>Jack, in a dream, looked above him and met the sour glances of Hansen
+and Bates, whom the noise had brought to the ship's rail; then he looked
+below into the girlish face upraised to his. For better or worse, his
+resolution was taken. They might keep his chest; they might keep his
+wages; their stinking ship might sink or swim for all he cared. They
+were welcome to what Jack Wilson left behind him, for Jack Wilson at
+last was FREE! He dropped lightly into the boat beside Fetuao, and with
+one arm around her naked waist he shouted to the natives to shove off.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Fo'e!</i>" cried the chief, and the paddles moved again.</p>
+
+<p>Above their heads the astounded captain clutched the arm of the
+astounded mate, and pointed wildly after the deserter.</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash;!" exclaimed Hansen.</p>
+
+<p>"The &mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash;!" roared Bates.</p>
+<br />
+
+<p class="cen">II</p>
+
+<p>Jack landed in Oa Bay, the possessor, except for the clothes upon his
+back, of nothing but his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>rugged health, his stout heart, and a
+determination to make good his footing with his new friends. He
+remembered drawing apart from the others, as the welcoming throng came
+down to greet them in the dusk, forlornly struggling with his
+embarrassment and the penetrating sense of his own helplessness and
+isolation. Would he ever forget, standing there as he did, unremarked,
+solitary, shivering in his rags, the soft hand that felt through the
+darkness for his own, the voice so gentle, low, and sweet that whispered
+to him, "Come, Jack, you my white mans now!"</p>
+
+<p>This was the beginning of Jack's new life. He became a member of the
+chief's family, sleeping with the others at night on the outspread mats,
+and taking his share, by day, of all the work and play of the little
+Samoan village. He weeded <i>taro</i>, he carried stones for the building of
+the new church, he helped to lay out nets, he speared fish, he played
+cricket and <i>ta ti'a</i>. By nature neither an idler nor a shirk, he was
+consumed, besides, with a desire to repay the kindness and hospitality
+of his hosts; and the old chief, his friend from the start, now became
+his captain, to whom he rendered the unquestioning obedience of a
+seaman. And old Faalelei, whose loose authority was often disregarded by
+his own subjects, delighted in the possession of this stalwart white, so
+willing, so eager, so ingenious in the mending of boats and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>nets&mdash;a man
+to whom the mechanism of a gun had no secrets, and in whose hands a
+single hatchet became a tool chest.</p>
+
+<p>Living thus among the only mild, courteous, and refined people he had
+ever known, Jack insensibly altered and improved. His loud voice grew
+softer, his boisterous laugh less explosive, and his rough ways gave
+place to a clumsy imitation of Samoan good manners. Little by little the
+uncouth sailor patterned himself on the model of his new friends, and
+he, whose every second word had been an oath, whose only repartee a
+blow, now set himself to learn the most ceremonious language in the
+world, and the only one, perhaps, in which one cannot swear!</p>
+
+<p>And Fetuao? When he had first taken up his abode in Faalelei's house he
+had never doubted, seeing the girl's extravagant affection for him, and
+knowing the laxity of the native people, that it would not be long
+before he might form with her one of those irregular connections so
+common in the islands; and, indeed, it grew daily more plain to him that
+he had but to ask to have. But Jack, not a little to his own
+astonishment, and stirred by undreamed-of instincts and undreamed-of
+scruples, put the idea from him with a hesitation he could hardly
+explain to himself. In his wicked and lawless past he had known every
+kind of woman but a good woman; he had seen, in a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>thousand water-side
+dives, every variety of feminine degradation and feminine shame, and had
+sounded in his time all the squalid depths of sailor vice. With the
+memory of these unspeakable contrasts, Fetuao's freshness, purity, and
+beauty shone with a sort of angelic brightness. No, by God, she should
+never come to harm through him; and, clenching his huge hands together,
+he would repeat these words to himself when he sometimes felt his
+resolution falter. For the sailor, who never until then had known a
+modest woman, who had starved his whole life long for what his money
+could never buy, whose heart at thirty was as virgin as a boy's, now
+found himself moved by a sublime passion for the only creature that had
+ever loved him.</p>
+
+<p>For she did love him; of that, indeed, he had never the need to reassure
+himself; and in the knowledge of her love he became, almost in spite of
+himself, a better man. In her girlish self-abandonment Fetuao lacked the
+artifices which older women would have used; she never thought to guard
+herself, or to coquette with him. At night, as they walked hand in hand
+about the village, or sat close together on some log or boat, she would
+take his arm and draw it around her; she would lay her head against his
+breast; she would press herself so close to him that he could hear her
+beating heart. There was much of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>mother in her love for him. He was
+her great baby, to be caressed, kissed, crooned over, to be petted and
+encouraged. Her tender laughter was always in his ears; she corrected
+him as she might a child, with a sweet seriousness, and an implication
+that his shame was hers whenever he blundered in Samoan etiquette; she
+prompted him and pushed him through scenes of trying formality, and
+drilled him assiduously in politeness.</p>
+
+<p>In the moonlight, when they were alone together, she taught him how to
+receive the <i>'ava</i> cup; how to spill the libation to the gods; how to
+invoke a proper blessing on the company. She taught him how to say "<i>O
+susunga, lau susunga fo'i</i>," on entering a strange house; how to pull
+the mat over his knee to express his fictitious dependence; how to join
+in the chorus of "<i>Maliu mai, susu mai</i>" when others entered after him;
+how, indeed, to comport himself everywhere with the finished courtesy of
+a Samoan chief.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the bright days passed, and months melted into months, and still
+Jack remained an inmate of Faalelei's household. At first he had
+accepted this strange life as a sort of holiday, never doubting but
+that, in the end, he must turn his back on these pleasant people, and
+see, from a dizzy yardarm, their exquisite island sink forever behind
+him. The place thus possessed for him the charm of something he was
+destined soon to lose, and he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>clung to it as a man clings to his fading
+youth, with a sense that it is slipping from him. He sighed as he
+thought of the forecastle that he knew somewhere awaited him; how he
+would recall those still nights in Oa when he would be roused by the
+boatswain's handspike on the hatch, and the hoarse cry of "All hands on
+deck!"</p>
+
+<p>One day, when he was out in Faalelei's boat, an accident occurred that
+came very near to being the end of Jack. They were pursuing a school of
+bonito, and Pulu, the chief's brother, was standing in the bow with a
+stick of dynamite and was in the nick of letting it fly when it exploded
+prematurely in his hand. Pulu was killed, the rickety old boat parted
+and sank, and Jack, with his shoulder laid open to the bone, was towed
+in by a neighboring canoe, and carried up to the house. They laid him on
+the floor, pale and groaning, while the children ran out screaming for
+Fetuao. She came in like a whirlwind, still wet from the river, and
+threw herself on her knees beside him. With passionate imperiousness she
+made the rest of the household wait upon her bidding as she busied
+herself in stanching the flow of blood and in picking the splinters from
+the wound. Jack knew how wont she was, in common with all Samoans, to
+shrink from disagreeable sights. It touched him to see how love had
+conquered her repugnance; nor could he resist a smile when she began <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>to
+tear her little wardrobe into bandages, those chemises and <i>lavalavas</i>
+that she used to iron under the trees, and put away with such care into
+the camphor-wood chest with the bell lock.</p>
+
+<p>For the better part of a fortnight Jack lay where they had placed him on
+the mats, undergoing, with intermissions of fever and delirium, the
+tedious stages of convalescence. Fetuao seemed never to leave him,
+attending to his wants, brushing away the flies, feeding and washing him
+with an anxious solemnity that at times almost awed the sailor. Her
+brilliant eyes, as black and limpid as some wild animal's, watched him
+with an unceasing stare. He often wondered what was passing in her
+graceful head as he lay looking up at her, too weak to speak, the drowsy
+hours succeeding one another in an unbroken silence. Once, when he ran
+his hand over his face and recollected with a pang how old and ugly he
+must seem to her, she had understood the sigh that expressed his own
+self-disgust, and had bent over and kissed him on the lips. From that
+moment his love for her deepened into an emotion transcending anything
+he had ever felt before. He saw now that to separate himself from her
+would be to break both their hearts; that, for good or evil, he was hers
+and she his; that fate had indeed joined them forever.</p>
+
+<p>When at last he grew strong enough to walk, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>he went with her across to
+the native pastor's house, where together they stood up before the Rev.
+Tavita Singua and were married. This was the prelude to another and more
+binding ceremony before the American Consul in Apia, whither they both
+went in a canoe borrowed from Faalelei. The official books were
+withdrawn from the safe and the thirty-six Americans in Samoa were
+increased by two new names: "Jack Wilson, aged thirty-one, birthplace
+Bath, Me., occupation seaman, present residence Oa Bay; and Fetuao
+Wilson, supposed to be seventeen, daughter of Faalelei, chief of Oa Bay,
+his lawful wife." (See Consular Marriage Record, p. 18.)</p>
+
+<p>As he stood there before the consul, painfully conscious of his bare
+feet, of his unkempt and ragged appearance, of the contrast between
+himself and that benignant official, he timidly brought up the subject
+of the fee. No doubt there is some kind of damage, he said, and might he
+leave this ring&mdash;his mother's wedding ring&mdash;in pawn until he might earn
+a little money and square the matter? The consul took the ring, looked
+at it a moment without a word, and then in a rough, friendly way seized
+Fetuao's hand and slipped it on her finger.</p>
+
+<p>"I think it belongs here," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"But the fee," said Jack.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, damn the fee!" said the consul.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>With that he went into an inner office and returned with a sheepish air,
+as of a man about to do something he was ashamed of.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's ten dollars," he said. "Take it; it's a wedding present, you
+know. I never married anybody before."</p>
+
+<p>Jack refused the gift a little ungraciously, though his voice trembled
+in doing so.</p>
+
+<p>"Have a drink, then?" said the consul.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I thank you, sir," Jack blurted out.</p>
+
+<p>Embarrassment in a cloud descended on all three. The consul, like the
+worthy fellow he was, wished to do something for these waifs, and his
+eyes roved about the big, hot room in search of he knew not what. Jack
+and Fetuao, no less ill at ease, stood close together and waited
+submissively. Finally, noticing the new boat flag lying on his desk, the
+consul took it up in both his hands. "Wilson," he said oratorically,
+"this is my flag, and your flag, and it is now Mrs. Wilson's flag, for
+I've made her as good an American as the pair of us. Take it along with
+you, and if you have children, bring them up to love and honor Old Glory
+as we do, and teach them at your knee what it stands for&mdash;freedom,
+justice; and equal rights for every man born under it. And if there
+should ever be any trouble here&mdash;war, riot, or any little
+unpleasantness&mdash;just hoist it above your house, and its bright folds
+will protect you as though the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>whole U-nited States army lay in a
+mighty camp around you!"</p>
+
+<p>Jack took the flag respectfully, much impressed by the consul's speech,
+and tremendously pleased, besides, that Fetuao should see that an
+American, even a common, low-down American seaman like himself, counted
+for something in the official world. Would a Britisher, or one of those
+stinking Dutchmen, have acted like this consul did? <i>His</i> consul, by
+God!&mdash;and his breast heaved with gratitude and patriotic fervor.
+Afterwards, when Fetuao and he ate their lunch under a tree, he spread
+out the consul's gift on the ground beside him, and the words freedom,
+justice, and equal rights boomed sonorously in his ears. To Fetuao, in
+her simplicity, the bunting appeared a sort of sanction or certificate
+of their civil marriage; and when she returned home she explained that
+it was all settled, the <i>faamasino</i> having written their names in the
+book and given them the <i>fua Ameleke</i>!</p>
+<br />
+
+<p class="cen">III</p>
+
+<p>Three years passed. Jack rubbed his eyes and wondered what had become of
+them; and he read the answer to his question in his coffee bushes, now
+breast high and crimson with fruit, in his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>trellised vanilla already so
+exacting and so profitable, in his sturdy breadfruit trees thickening
+with every rain, in the patches of bananas, <i>taro</i>, yams, <i>'ava</i>,
+egg-plant, sweet potatoes, pineapples, and sour-sops that were set out
+so trimly in the plantation his ax had won from the primeval forest. His
+house, too, had drawn not a little on his capital&mdash;his capital of
+strength, skill, and perseverance&mdash;but he grudged neither time nor labor
+in making it the best in Oa. For a house is an important matter to a
+family man, even if it weren't a paying thing like vanillar, nor capable
+of helping a fellar along like a cow or a boat. It paid you back in its
+own way&mdash;a mighty good way, too&mdash;and it grew to be a part of you, like
+your wife, if you weren't a poor, lone, seafaring slob without one.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, it wasn't much of a house, being a sort of beehive-shaped
+concern with a thatched roof a foot thick and open all round the sides
+when the cocoanut curtains was hysted. But when these were pulled down
+at night, and you were a-setting in one of your own home-made chairs
+with your wife on your knee, the night breeze rustling overhead and the
+breakers moaning a mile away on the outer reef, it made you sort of feel
+like things had come right at last, and that for two cents you'd plank
+right down on your knees, then and there, and thank God, by God!</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>All this had not been accomplished without work, but then it was work
+for himself, and not for others. Jack had never known before what it was
+to enjoy the fruit of his own labor; he had always been a cog in the
+blind machinery of other people, exchanging so much toil for so much
+money. Now that he could see his little plantation grow and prosper
+beneath his hands, every hour repaid with nature's usury, he began to
+feel the elation that a man finds in independence. At first Fetuao had
+entered but half-heartedly into his plans; she would sit on a log and
+watch him with mirthful wonder as he swung his ax on the land Faalelei
+had given them; and when, for a spell, he took a place beside her she
+would tenderly wipe the sweat from his forehead and look at him with
+perplexity. Work, yes, that, as the preacher said, was the curse of
+Adam; but this daily persistency was not understandable. Had not
+Faalelei plenty for them both? And if one <i>taro</i> sufficed, why be at the
+pains to plant two?</p>
+
+<p>But little by little it began to dawn on her that there was another side
+to this feverish devotion to work. Jack took a load of yams to Apia, and
+came back with fifteen silver dollars and a bolt of print for a dress.
+He went again, and returned with a sewing machine, a pack of cards, and
+a bottle of trade scent; still another trip, and lo! he towed behind him
+a fine new boat with <i>Fetuao</i> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>painted on the stern. Then she at last
+succumbed to the fascination of the white way. <i>Paga!</i> There were
+dollars in the ground, and for the asking they could be made to grow.
+This lesson learned, Fetuao threw off her indifference and became as
+ardent a planter as her unwearied husband. Lying in his arms at night,
+her talk ran continually on the theme of which neither ever tired. Not a
+dollar was earned but was thus laid out in advance, with eager
+questioning and debate. The cow was bought, the horse, the chickens, the
+wire for fencing. It was a game in which each played a part with
+enduring zest; a game with a constant round of prizes and enjoyment; a
+game in which green nature was the board and every plant and tree a
+piece. At sundown they knew no pleasure like that of wandering hand in
+hand through the paths of their little estate, two poetic peasants,
+filled with love for each other and immeasurably content.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the days passed in increasing satisfaction and prosperity, days so
+rare in the life of any man when he says to himself, "I am happy." To
+Jack, these three words, never spoken, but somewhere within him
+articulate and peremptory, these three words almost overwhelmed him with
+their significance. He trembled for this treasure, so elusive, so
+transitory, perhaps, so surely ill deserved; he grew humble with the
+thought of his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>own unworthiness, and, though no believer in the
+ordinary sense, he began to feel the first stirring of religion. When
+Fetuao, with sweet shame, laid her head against his shoulder and told
+him of her impending motherhood, he kissed her, comforted her, and then,
+rising to his feet, he sought the solitude that at such a moment he felt
+he could not share even with her. In one of the unfrequented corners of
+the bay, a narrow beach shadowed by the forest and faced by the open
+sea, he threw himself upon his knees with a passionate thankfulness that
+seemed to find its expression in this act. Knowing no prayer, addressing
+no God, he simply gazed above him in the sky, in a rapt, dumb gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>As he walked home he thought of his own parents, long since dead; of
+their hopes, their cares, their humble unfulfilled ambitions, now dead
+with them. He perceived himself, now for the first time, a link between
+the past and the future, the heir of bygone generations, generations
+that had loved, and suffered, and struggled, to no other end than that
+he might live&mdash;he, and the sister he had neither seen nor heard from in
+fourteen years. Hell! he ought to write to Amandar. Families oughtn't to
+drift apart like that. It was a shame, a durned shame, and it came over
+him with a shock that she, too, might be dead. He took a sheet of paper
+and a pencil, and with heaving <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>breast and overflowing heart thus broke
+the silence of those long years:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Oa Bay, Samoa</span>, May 14, 1899.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Sis</span>, You will be surprised to get a letter
+from me after all this time. I am well and hope you are
+enjoying a simillar blessing. I am married now and left the
+sea. I suppose Joe is a man along in middle life now and you
+a handsome mattron with a family. This is a good country but
+hot.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span style="padding-right: 8em;">Ever your affectionate brother</span><br />
+<span style="padding-right: 4em;" class="smcap">Jack Wilson.</span></p>
+
+<p>P. S.&mdash;I often think of Pa and Ma and the old days.</p></div>
+<br />
+
+<p>Not long after, Jack sailed into Apia with a load of copra and his
+letter for the outgoing mail. The town was in an uproar, and cracking
+like the Fourth of July. Jack wondered what in thunder it was about, as
+he landed at Leicester's wharf and discovered the postmaster lying
+underneath the post office in a nest of sand bags. Crawling in after the
+functionary, Jack handed him the letter.</p>
+
+<p>"That's for America," said Jack.</p>
+
+<p>"Five cents," said Leicester.</p>
+
+<p>"What's all this corrobborree?" asked Jack.</p>
+
+<p>"It's war, that's what it is," said Leicester, weighing the letter in a
+tin scale.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>Jack's jaw fell. For a month past he had heard rumors of a native war,
+but he had resolutely closed his ears to all that Fetuao was so
+insistent to tell him. It was none of his business, he had said to her
+uneasily. He wasn't no politician, and all he asked of anybody was to be
+let alone; and with that he had tried to put the matter by as something
+imaginary and disquieting, which, if boldly ignored, would disappear of
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, Mr. Leicester, what in hell is it about?" he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"If you went to the bottom of it you would find Dutchmen," said
+Leicester grimly.</p>
+
+<p>Jack cursed the meddling scoundrels.</p>
+
+<p>"They want Mataafa for king, just because he has a majority of two
+thousand votes," said Leicester.</p>
+
+<p>"There sounds to be something in that," said Jack faintly.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing at all!" exclaimed Leicester. "Just speciousness, that's what I
+call it. The other fellow, Tanumafili, is a nice-appearing boy from the
+missionary college, and being above wire-pulling and promising
+everything to everybody, he hasn't any following to speak of. But he's a
+good, decent Protestant boy, and will make a fine king."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ho!" said Jack, beginning to see how the wind lay, "and so the
+other dodger's a Catholic?"</p>
+
+<p>"A rank, bigoted Catholic," said Leicester <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>hotly. "That's what makes
+the missionaries so wild against him, and likewise the British and
+American officials."</p>
+
+<p>"They won't let him be king, then?" asked Jack.</p>
+
+<p>"He's a rebel," said Leicester, "and they've posted proclamations
+against him on every cocoanut tree around the beach."</p>
+
+<p>"And the natives, they won't let Tanumafili be king neither?" said Jack.</p>
+
+<p>"That's him they're chasing into the sea this minute," explained
+Leicester.</p>
+
+<p>Jack looked perplexed. "I don't see why the Kanakas shouldn't have the
+king they fancy," he remarked.</p>
+
+<p>"To hear you talk, one would think you was a bloody Dutchman yourself,"
+said Leicester.</p>
+
+<p>"But the majority&mdash;" said Jack, "them two thousand&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The Chief Justice ruled them out on a technicality," said Leicester,
+"and if the Supreme Court ain't right, who is? Do you think he's going
+to give over this country to a papist? No, the only king here is
+Tanumafili, and the men-of-war will reinstate him at the muzzle of their
+guns. Then we'll see who's who in Samoar!"</p>
+
+<p>Jack made his way across the street to the store where he usually sold
+his copra. Bullets were pattering on the roof, and the trader himself, a
+portly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>German in gold spectacles, was palpitating in a bomb-proof.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope Mrs. Meyerfeld is well," said Jack, who in Samoa had grown
+punctilious.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, mein Gott!" exclaimed Meyerfeld.</p>
+
+<p>"And the children?&mdash;" inquired Jack, "Miss Hilda and Miss Theresa?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, mein Gott!" said Meyerfeld.</p>
+
+<p>"I have brought you forty bags of copra," said Jack.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, mein Gott!" said Meyerfeld.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you want it, then?" inquired Jack.</p>
+
+<p>"Hear the pullets," quavered Meyerfeld.</p>
+
+<p>"But forty bags," said Jack.</p>
+
+<p>"I've no man, no noding," groaned the trader.</p>
+
+<p>"Gome again negst week. Gome again after de war."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll put it in the shed myself," said Jack.</p>
+
+<p>He went out into the empty street and looked about him. The firing was
+going on as hotly as ever, but except for a single limp figure, face
+down in the dust, he failed to see the least sign of the contending
+parties. From the direction of the Mulivai bridge he heard bursts of
+cheering, with intermittent lulls and explosions as the battle rolled to
+and fro. War on so small a scale is startlingly like murder, and Jack
+shuddered as he went up to the corpse and turned it over. He returned to
+his boat, and in a fever of activity unloaded his forty <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>bags and
+trundled them in batches into Meyerfeld's copra shed across the road. It
+took half a dozen trips of the little flat-car to accomplish this task
+single-handed, and then there was the further delay in weighing each bag
+and checking off the contents on a bit of paper. Nor was this all, for
+he had to make a copy, besides, and tack it on the warehouse door with
+the inscription, "Taly and find correct John Wilson."</p>
+
+<p>This done, he dropped into his boat and hoisted the sails, weary,
+heartsick, and anxious for what the future might have in store for him.
+Passing to leeward of the British man-of-war, he saw her decks swarming
+with refugees, her crew grouped about the guns, and an officer in the
+fore-crosstrees sweeping the town with his glass. A gust of wind carried
+down to him the sound of children crying, and with it an
+indistinguishable humming, at once menacing and dejected, like the sigh
+of an impending gale. It echoed in his ears long afterwards, the most
+poignant note in war, the voice of the herded, helpless multitude.</p>
+
+<p>He reached Oa in the gray of the morning, and the grating of his boat's
+keel in the sand brought out Fetuao to meet him. She could not restrain
+her joy at the sight of him, kissing his hands and clinging to him as he
+took out the sails and oars and carried them up to the house. She never
+seemed so sweet to him, never so girlish and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>charming in her fresh
+young womanhood as in that dawn of his home-coming. To hear her laugh,
+to see her eyes sparkle, to feel her warm breath against his cheek, all
+transported him into a state of unreasoning security. Apia and its
+blood-stained streets faded into the immeasurable distance; the war, and
+all the attendant horrors that had haunted him, now seemed for a moment
+too remote to even think of. What had he to fear, here on his own
+hearthstone, with his dear wife beside him, in another world from that
+he had so lately quitted? If there was trouble, wouldn't the consuls
+settle it, them and the treaty officials whose job it was to run the
+blessed group? He had never been no politician himself, and he wasn't
+agoing to begin now. Let them worry as was paid to worry.</p>
+
+<p>"Fetuao," he said, "where is the flag the <i>faamasino</i> gave us when we
+were married in Apia?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>O i ai pea i le pusa</i>," she returned.</p>
+
+<p>"Get it out, my pigeon," he said, "for I mean to hoist it above the
+house for a protection. And tell me, Fetuao," he went on, "what before I
+have never asked thee: on what side are thy people in this misa of
+Mataafa and Tanumafili?"</p>
+
+<p>"For Mataafa," she returned. "Dost thou think that Samoa wants this
+untattooed boy from the missionary college? Why else did Faalelei and
+the young men go last month to Apia to be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>numbered for Mataafa, the
+whites promising that he who had most voices should be king? And when
+all Samoa cried out 'Mataafa!' at the numbering place (all except the
+little handful of the Tuamasanga), lo! the word was given that
+Tanumafili was appointed after all, and that the white manner of choice
+was to be disregarded!"</p>
+
+<p>Jack sighed as he took the flag and went out with it. He realized that
+his old life was at an end, and that a new one, full of uncertainty and
+danger, was to date from the time he hoisted this bit of bunting. He
+trimmed a straight piece of <i>fuafua</i> for a staff, and as he did so he
+cursed the missionaries for meddlers and the treaty officials for crazy
+fools. When the flag was at last in place, Fetuao and he drew away to
+get a better view of it from the beach. Standing there, in silence they
+watched the vivid colors flaunt and flutter against the wooded hills
+behind, while Jack, with a seaman's instinctive reverence for the flag,
+bared his head, and Fetuao clapped her hands with delight.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it not beautiful!&mdash;" she cried, "as starry as the nights before we
+were married, Jack, when we used to walk together, here and there, like
+uncaring children."</p>
+
+<p>Her husband did not answer; and as she turned and looked up into his
+face she saw that his eyes were wet with tears.</p>
+<br />
+
+<p class="cen"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>IV</p>
+
+<p>The two months that followed were the most terrible in the history of
+Samoa. A handful of exasperated whites&mdash;treaty officials, missionaries,
+and consuls&mdash;were determined to foist Tanumafili on the unwilling
+natives of the group, and backed by three men-of-war, they declared
+Mataafa a rebel and plunged the country into a disastrous and sanguinary
+war. England and America, in the person of their respective naval
+commanders, vied with one another in their self-appointed task; and
+while the Germans stood aloof, protesting and aghast, our ships ravaged
+the Samoan coast, burning, bombarding, and destroying with
+indiscriminate fury. In this savage conflict, so unjust in its
+inception, so frightful in its effects on an unoffending people, the
+Samoans showed an extraordinary spirit in defending what all men hold
+most dear. Driven from the shore by our guns, they massed their warriors
+behind Apia, and on ground of their own choosing gave obstinate battle
+to the invaders.</p>
+
+<p>It is not the writer's purpose to follow the varying stages of this
+ignoble quarrel, in which blood flowed like water in our vain attempts
+to force the unwilling Samoans to accept a Protestant divinity student
+for their king. This little war, so remote, so ill understood at home,
+so brief, violent, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>unjust, swept over the islands like a hurricane.
+Abruptly begun by headstrong naval officers and officials on the spot,
+it was as abruptly ended by peremptory orders from London and
+Washington; but the interval (necessarily a long one) before the news
+could go out and the orders return halfway round the world, was
+sufficient to reduce Samoa to the verge of ruin.</p>
+
+<p>In such a country, without roads, telegraphs, or newspapers, where rumor
+passes from mouth to mouth, and facts, in the process, get twisted out
+of all recognition, war brings with it a period of agonizing ignorance,
+when anything is told and anything believed. To Jack this waiting became
+almost intolerable; his suspense, and the uncertainty of those dreadful
+days, told on him with an augmented force, so that he grew thin and
+started at a sound. Through an unseen channel the news of fighting
+persistently trickled into Oa; more battles; more villages bombarded;
+such an one wounded, such an one killed, with stories of the increasing
+ruthlessness of the British and Americans. On some days the sound of
+cannon could be plainly heard from leeward, the signal for the women and
+children to crowd with their pastor into the church, and for the
+men&mdash;the scanty remnants that still remained&mdash;to grasp their rifles and
+melt into the forest.</p>
+
+<p>But as time passed, and one false alarm was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>succeeded by another, Jack
+plucked up a little heart. He began to make allowance for native
+exaggeration and laughed at his own former fears. If the men-of-war
+should come to Oa, were they likely to bombard an undefended village
+full of women and children, or burn, pillage, and destroy as mercilessly
+as he had been told? Bah! a pack of Kanaka lies, the gradual distortion
+of the truth as it passed along the line, until one burned house became
+a hundred and one village the whole coast of Atua! He went back to his
+neglected plantation, now overgrown with weeds, and set to work again
+with a determination not to borrow trouble. But, in spite of himself, he
+would find himself listening for the sound of cannon, laying down his ax
+or his bush knife in a panic and running back to the shore to make sure
+that nothing had happened in the hour he had been gone.</p>
+
+<p>It was during one of these mornings in the bush, a morning singularly
+free of the apprehensions which usually beset him, that Fetuao came
+rushing through the bananas where he was at work, crying out, "<i>Manuao,
+manuao!</i>" Together, without exchanging a single word, they flew headlong
+to the beach, never stopping until they took shelter beneath the eaves
+of their own house. Yes, there was the man-of-war, a Britisher with
+yellow funnels, well outside the reef, towing behind her a flotilla of
+boats chock-a-block with natives. The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>red head-dresses of their crews
+showed them to be the followers of Tanumafili, and a couple of
+unmistakable pith helmets in the stern of the biggest betrayed the
+presence of directing white men. At the tail of the boats was a large
+steam launch flying the stars and stripes, the American contribution to
+the little fleet.</p>
+
+<p>Jack breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of his own flag. Wherever
+that flew he knew that he and his were safe. By George! everybody in Oa
+Bay was safe so long as they didn't try to make a fight of it; and he
+could have laughed to see the terrified women scooting for the church,
+the children bawling at their heels. The fools, what had they to fear?
+American officers were not the kind to fire on women and children, nor
+were they likely to look on mum-chance, and let the lime-juicers do it
+neither. No, sirree!</p>
+
+<p>The man-of-war slowed down her engines and came almost to a standstill.
+There was a sudden flash from one of her sponsons, a puff of smoke, and
+then the roar of a six-inch gun. The shell struck a palm not a hundred
+yards from where Jack was standing, and with a loud explosion took off
+the entire top as neatly as though a knife had sliced it.</p>
+
+<p>"Good God!" cried the sailor; and the words were scarcely out of his
+mouth before he heard the venomous rush of another shell. Jack could
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>not believe his senses. What! no warning, no notice beforehand; not
+even ten minutes to allow the women and children to get out of danger!</p>
+
+<p>Bang! The church this time! He clutched Fetuao as he saw the shower of
+cement and rocks, and the frenzied flight of its occupants for safety.
+If that shell had gone through the window instead of striking the
+corner&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Bang!</p>
+
+<p>"Run! run!" cried Fetuao, and without even waiting for him to follow or
+turning round to see that he did so, she darted through the house and
+disappeared. But Jack, in a white heat of indignation, folded his arms
+and remained doggedly where he was. Let them shoot, the skunks! Let them
+shoot, the stinking cowards! This was his house, and he would remain
+beside it until the crack of doom, shells or no shells. He would stand
+off them fire-bugs and looters when they landed, and tell them officers
+what a plain American citizen thought of them. He wasn't afraid of the
+swine. By God! he would like to boot the raft of them. He shook his fist
+in their faces, he did; and as for that villainous launch rolling idly
+in the swell while the big bully fired on the defenseless town, he spat
+to express his disgust for it.</p>
+
+<p>The bombardment, like a salute, continued with regular intermissions
+between each gun. The marksmanship was poor, many of the shells falling
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>short or bursting prematurely in midair. Except for the church, which
+was twice struck, and the chief's house that was set on fire, the damage
+done was inappreciable; and Jack, whose heart at first had been in his
+mouth, now grinned with derision as he watched for the recurring
+flashes.</p>
+
+<p>"The Chilaneans could do better nor you!" he cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Jack," whispered a voice beside him, and there was Fetuao back again in
+a state of the sweetest contrition and remorse. He took her in his arms
+and kissed her; and then, like a pair of lovers, they held each other's
+hands and shrank close together as the shells burst over the village.</p>
+
+<p>The firing lasted for an hour, and then the flotilla of boats, preceded
+by the American launch, passed in procession through the break in the
+reef, and headed for Jack's house.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's the flag they see!" cried Fetuao, and she besought Jack, with
+tears in her eyes, to haul it down.</p>
+
+<p>"Never!" he said, grinding his teeth.</p>
+
+<p>There were some three or four hundred men in the boats, and as they
+raced in, cheering and yelling at the top of their voices, Jack quailed
+in spite of himself. But outwardly, at least, he showed no sign of
+agitation, standing like a rock before his house and facing the storm
+that was about to burst.</p>
+
+<p>It wasn't for himself that he was afraid, not so <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>long as that
+puffing-billy of a steamboat held the lead, and the grand old flag
+streamed out behind her. The jackies would see him through this
+business, whatever deviltry they might inflict on the rest of the
+unfortunate village, for blood's thicker than water every time, and
+Americans stand together all the world over. He wasn't no politician nor
+side-taker, and it was all the same to him whether he had a missionary
+king or a benighted papist. All he asked of anybody, by God! was to be
+let alone, though this broadsiding of defenseless people made him sick
+at the stummick, it did.</p>
+
+<p>The launch came bumping into shallow water, blowing off clouds of steam
+as her crew jumped out with their rifles and waded ashore, while the
+Tanumafili boats, dashing up in quick succession, amid a furious and
+ever-deepening uproar, discharged in their turn cargo upon cargo of
+shrieking warriors. In the indescribable commotion that followed there
+seemed to be no prearranged plan nor any settled order of operation. The
+Tanus scattered in a dozen noisy parties, looting and burning the
+houses, barking the breadfruit trees, shooting the pigs and horses,
+devastating with diabolical thoroughness the inland plantations that
+sustained the village. The Americans, fearful of ambuscades, stuck to
+the shore and systematically destroyed the boats, which for a mile or
+two were drawn up on the edge of the beach. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>These boats, in a country
+without roads, are as much a necessity to a man as the house which
+shelters him. They often represent the hoardings of years, and are not
+seldom the result of a stern frugality and self-denial; they constitute,
+indeed, the only wealth of Samoa, and in them is invested the united
+savings of the whole population. In Oa these boats numbered perhaps a
+hundred, or a hundred and twenty in all, which, under the direction of a
+red-faced boatswain with a package of dynamite sticks, were one by one
+blown to pieces, and the shattered boards drawn into heaps and fired.
+That day the whole of Oa went up in smoke and flame. Nothing was spared,
+not even the church, nor the school, nor the pastor's house; not a canoe
+nor a dugout; not a net, nor a fish trap, nor a float; not a pig, a
+horse, nor a chicken. The boundary walls, emerging black and desolate
+above the embers of the village, alone survived the universal waste.</p>
+
+<p>Jack's boat, being the nearest, was the first to be singled out; and as
+the blue-jackets began to bore it with auger holes in which to place the
+dynamite, he walked down to the petty officer and roughly bade him leave
+it alone. "Hold on, there!" he said. "That's my boat!"</p>
+
+<p>The boatswain looked him up and down. "You get out of this!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Jack twitched the auger from one of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>seamen and flung it into the
+lagoon. Then, seizing a rifle from the heap lying on the ground, he
+whirled it round his head like a club and advanced furiously on the
+boatswain, who pulled out a six-shooter and leveled it at his head. Even
+as he did so, one of the officers came running up, waving his sword and
+shouting; while Jack, confident that he had nothing now to apprehend,
+dropped the rifle and turned to meet him. He had scarcely got so far as,
+"Please, sir, this boat is my property," when a scream from Fetuao
+warned him that the natives were rushing his house. Abandoning the boat,
+he ran back to face this new danger, which, of the two, was so
+infinitely the worse. His first instinct was to snatch a hatchet and
+kill one of the half-naked plunderers, but Fetuao, catching his hands,
+held him back, and the impulse passed as he realized his utter
+helplessness. With smarting eyes and a heart that seemed to burst within
+his breast, he saw his house gutted of everything&mdash;his chests torn open,
+his tools taken, his wife's poor finery divided, and her twenty-dollar
+sewing machine the subject of a wrangle that ended in its being smashed
+under the butt of a gun. It was horrible to look on, impotent and
+raging, and see the fruit of three years the prey of these yelling
+savages; to realize that he must begin again from the bottom; that all
+his labor, and care, and thrift, had gone for nothing. Not daring to
+leave Fetuao <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>behind, he took her with him and started off to find the
+officer to whom he had at first complained. His protest had not
+apparently been very effective, to judge from the torn fragments of the
+boat now blazing in a bonfire, and he was hardly encouraged to make a
+second attempt. However, slim as the chance was, it was now the only
+thing left to do. Surely it was not possible that they would let his
+house be looted and fired with the others!</p>
+
+<p>The officer, a thin young man with a cigar, was standing in the shade of
+a palm.</p>
+
+<p>"Mister," said Jack timidly, for somehow all the fight had oozed out of
+him, "Mister, they're looting my house up there!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" said the officer.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm an American," said Jack.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" said the officer.</p>
+
+<p>Jack regarded him helplessly. "Can't you do nothing for an American?" he
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Not for a damned beach-comber," said the officer, turning on his heel.</p>
+
+<p>Jack did not attempt to follow or to pester him. He knew when he was
+beat. He sat down on the nearest log, and making room for Fetuao beside
+him, drew out his pipe, filled it and began to smoke. The girl tried to
+speak to him, but he would not answer. She whispered to him that their
+house was burning, and he never even turned his head to look. She took
+his hand, but he snatched it <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>impatiently away, refusing to be
+comforted. Thus he remained for hours, sullen and half-stupefied, until
+the returning Tanus embarked again, and the launch, with jubilant
+whistles, led the flotilla back to the man-of-war. It was only when the
+ship was out of sight that Jack rose, stretched himself, and breathed
+the profound sigh of a man who has endured and has survived the most
+terrible experience of a lifetime.</p>
+
+<p>With slow steps, and many expressions of anger and resentment, Fetuao
+and he walked through the village, gazing with bitter curiosity at the
+ruins that everywhere surrounded them. They made their way to their own
+little plantation, to find it devastated like the others, the breadfruit
+trees ringed, the coffee bushes torn up by the roots, the <i>taro</i>,
+bananas, and vanilla cut to pieces. In the paddock the cow and calf lay
+dead in a pool of blood; of the dairy, half-set in the stream, nothing
+remained but some stumps and smoking ashes; under a felled mango tree
+they saw the protruding hoofs of Fetuao's mare, Afiola.</p>
+
+<p>Returning with a few bananas they managed to find in the plantation,
+they built a fire and roasted them within a few feet of where, that
+morning, their house had stood. Though nothing now was left of it but
+some charred wood, the place was still home to them. As Fetuao moved
+forlornly about, picking up a few trifles that had been dropped or
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>thrown away by the invaders&mdash;a comb, a spool of thread, a flatiron, a
+book or two with the covers scorched off&mdash;she lifted up a grimy rag and
+tossed it, with a little gesture of disdain, at her husband's feet. He
+spread it out and saw that it was the consul's flag, the flag he had
+flown above his house with such confidence in its protection; the flag
+which, until then, he had always reverenced.</p>
+
+<p>Jack slowly tore it into pieces.</p>
+<br />
+
+<p class="cen">V</p>
+
+<p>Nothing is stranger than the effect of the same misfortune on different
+natures. To Jack, arrested in the full tide of his petty activities, it
+was absolutely overwhelming. When everything he possessed was swept
+away, and with it the routine that for three years had kept him busy and
+content, he knew not what to do nor which way to turn. Sunk in apathy,
+he spent whole days in dully mourning for what he had lost. He would
+have starved had not Fetuao forced him to follow her into the mountains,
+where, under her direction, he dug <i>tamu</i> and climbed the trees for wild
+chestnuts; while she, with deft hands and a little tangled bunch of
+weeds, caught prawns in the pools and streams. At her bidding he made a
+tiny hut of cocoanut branches, a clumsy canoe good enough <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>to fish with,
+and nets from the sinnet she taught him how to twist out of cocoanut
+husks. She even sent him back to work in the plantation, for the bananas
+at least could be saved, and there was a well of sprouting yams and some
+<i>tingapula</i> that had somehow escaped destruction. But Jack's spirit was
+broken; the old incentive was gone; he could not revive the energy, the
+zest, the interest that before had never failed him. He did what Fetuao
+bade him and no more, and the days, once so short, seemed now never to
+end.</p>
+
+<p>One morning early he was awakened by the murmur of voices in the dark,
+and on going to the door of the hut he was surprised to see Fetuao's
+brothers, Tua and Anapu, Mele her uncle, Lapongi the orator, and a dozen
+others, some of them boys not yet tattooed. In answer to his questions
+Tua told him that a messenger had come for them with orders to at once
+join the Mataafa forces behind Apia.</p>
+
+<p>"And thou also, Jack," said Lapongi the orator, "for every man now is
+needed to withstand the fury of the whites."</p>
+
+<p>Jack, as usual, turned to Fetuao.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall both of us go," said she, "I to carry water for the wounded,
+thou with the <i>muaau</i>, a rock of strength and terror."</p>
+
+<p>Jack made no protest. Hell! what did it matter where they went? Munching
+the food that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>was handed him, he looked across the bay, now silvering
+in the dawn, and wondered whether he was not seeing it for the last
+time.</p>
+
+<p>It was late at night when they passed the outposts and reached the
+Mataafa camp, which stood on a high plateau overlooking Apia. Below them
+the search-lights of the men-of-war moved restlessly about, shining at
+times with a bewildering brilliancy into their very faces; and from the
+little war-encompassed capital there rose a distant drumming and bugling
+as the missionary boy king, unsafe even under the guns of Britain and
+America, took his precautions against a night attack. After the
+stillness of Oa there was something confusing in the stir and bustle of
+Mataafa's big camp&mdash;in the constant passing of armed men, the change of
+guards, and the rousing choruses around the fires. There was, besides,
+an atmosphere of recklessness and gayety, engendered by excitement, by
+danger, by the very desperation of their cause, that could not long be
+resisted by even the most impassive recruit. Jack alone, of his whole
+party, remained indifferent and unmoved; but his wife, all of the savage
+in her rising to the surface, grew intoxicated almost to the point of
+delirium.</p>
+
+<p>Ordinarily so demure and quiet, she became from henceforward a creature
+of another clay. Whirling her ax and dancing almost naked at the head of
+the Oa contingent, she led it wherever <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>it was sent, daring bullets and
+shells with smiling intrepidity. In her wild beauty an artist might have
+taken her for the spirit of war itself, as she moved undaunted along the
+firing line, or with biting reproaches drove up skulkers from the rear.
+Like some untried actress bringing down her house, she was overborne
+with her own success; and the more she was praised the more
+extravagantly and unflinchingly she exposed herself. Under the stress of
+those fierce emotions her character in every way underwent a change for
+the worse. In war time, death, always in the air, seems to annihilate
+with its dark shadow all the bonds that bind society together. Life,
+hitherto so assured, of a sudden becomes the most transient of human
+gifts, to be enjoyed with a feverish heedlessness before it vanishes
+forever into the unknown. Thus Fetuao found and accepted a dozen lovers
+among her men, and while still according her husband the first place,
+she yet permitted them liberties and familiarities that they were not
+slow to take advantage of.</p>
+
+<p>Deep in every woman's heart there is a love for the men of her race, a
+love motherly and pitiful, that will bring the tears to her eyes at the
+sight of a passing regiment and cause her to passionately mourn the
+unknown soldier dead. This sentiment, this instinct, is a thousandfold
+intensified on the bloody field itself. The pang when those <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>brave
+fellows fall is inexpressible; her pride is strangely humbled, and in
+her mad exaltation she shrinks from nothing, and makes a virtue of her
+own abandonment.</p>
+
+<p>Jack followed Fetuao everywhere, a despondent, woe-begone figure, who,
+amid the hail of bullets and the yells of contending warriors, lay or
+ran or advanced with the others in a black preoccupation. He had not a
+spark of interest in the struggle; his thoughts were forty miles away in
+that ruined home, with his plants, and trees, and shrubs, his cow, and
+his chickens. What victory could give them back? What terror had a
+defeat for one who had already lost his all! He lived in the past, in
+those frugal, thrifty, laborious years; for the present he had but an
+indifference, an apathy, that he had not even the desire to shake off.</p>
+
+<p>He became the butt of the warriors, who brought him their rifles to mend
+and called him a coward for his pains. They envied him Fetuao, who, for
+all her flirtations, slept every night by his side and was not happy
+when he was out of her sight. They nicknamed him her "Paalangi dog," and
+would whistle to him derisively and shout, "Come 'ere!" secure in the
+chronic absent-mindedness that had become a joke to them all. When he
+answered, as he always answered, "Eh, what?" and raised his vacant,
+moody face, there would be an outburst of laughter, in which he himself
+joined with a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>mirthless geniality, like a man unbending to a lot of
+children. If a shell went off some one was sure to cry, "Eh, what?" and
+this phrase, together with a mimicry of Jack's slow, dejected utterance
+of it, became the stock pleasantry of the camp humorists, who brought it
+out on all occasions.</p>
+
+<p>The conflicts about Apia were mostly affairs of outposts, a pressing in
+and a pressing back of the pickets on either side. The naval commanders,
+in spite of repeated bombardments and the enormous havoc they wrought
+along the coasts, found themselves hardly able to do more than hold
+their own against the Mataafa army. The safety of Apia was constantly in
+jeopardy, though barricades were thrown up in the streets and three
+hundred men landed from the ships. A desperate night attack on the main
+guard at the Tivoli Hotel betrayed the weakness of the whites to friends
+and foes alike, and redoubled the anxiety of the admiral and captains.
+It was plain that no decisive blow could be struck pending the arrival
+of the re&euml;nforcements that had been urgently cabled for from New
+Zealand, unless a better use were made of the missionary levies on the
+spot. These loose native organizations were accordingly broken up,
+consolidated into a single compact force of eight hundred men, well
+armed and well drilled, and placed under the absolute command of a naval
+lieutenant.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>This fine force, supported by whites and Maxims, was counted on to
+retrieve the situation and drive Mataafa from his mountain stronghold.
+The plan for a joint attack was accordingly drawn up. A quota of seamen
+and marines, with a couple of machine guns, was to form the center of
+the little army, while the native brigade on either wing was to advance
+simultaneously, lap round and outflank the Mataafas. This operation,
+covered by a terrific bombardment from the three ships of war, was
+forthwith begun; on its success was staked the hopes of the little
+clique who had so lightly adopted the cause of a divinity student of
+seventeen, against the vote and wish of well-nigh all Samoa.</p>
+
+<p>On that day the Oa party held the center of the Mataafa line, a stone
+wall stretching across a wide clearing to the forest on either side. It
+was the post of honor, for it crossed the road up which the enemy were
+toiling with their guns, and guarded the headquarters of the patriot
+king, not a hundred yards behind. In the trampled grass two hundred men
+sat or lay with their rifles in their hands and listened to the measured
+periods of the orators exhorting them to remember their wrongs and die
+fighting. These old men, white-haired, scarred with the wounds of bygone
+battles, their wrinkled hands clasping the staves on which they leaned,
+never winced as the shells whistled above their heads, nor abated by a
+hair's breadth <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>their tone of strident warning and encouragement. At
+such a distance, and against a target six hundred feet above the sea
+level, the men-of-war made poor practice and did little more than waste
+their ammunition. But the shattering detonations of their guns, and the
+thundering echoes rolling and re-rolling round the bay, made pleasant
+music for their crews ashore. It seemed incredible that such
+earth-shaking explosions could be wholly without effect, and the tired
+seamen sweating up the hill were kindled by the thought that the rebels
+were already suffering heavily and likely to run at the first encounter.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting listlessly on a boulder, Jack scarcely took in the fact that
+anything out of the way was about to happen. His only concern was not to
+be too far from Fetuao, and so long as he had her in his sight he was
+dumbly content. He was as solitary among the thronging warriors as any
+castaway in mid-ocean, and his patient, stolid, inexpressive face, grown
+older in a month by a dozen years, was the only one which failed to
+reflect the coming conflict. Fetuao, on the contrary, was on fire from
+top to toe; her saucy tongue was loosened, and her bright eyes dancing
+in wild excitement. Joking and laughing in the roaring circle of her
+admirers, she matched her quick wit against them all in a victorious
+scream of banter and repartee.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly a shot rang out in the lower woods; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>then two, with a faltering
+third; then a scattered volley like a bunch of firecrackers going off at
+once. A score of men showed at the turn of the road doubling back for
+dear life, the pickets who had been dislodged and driven in by the
+advancing whites. They had hardly leaped the wall, panting, and
+crouching with the main body behind it, when the machine guns wheeled
+into the open and began to fire. In the first murderous crash it seemed
+as though nothing human could withstand them, and the blue-jackets,
+dotted here and there in the grass, raised an exultant yell, and some
+even sprang up in anticipation of the call to charge. But the men that
+worked the guns had to stand exposed and helpless before a fire more
+galling than their own. They began to drop, and those who were unhurt
+disconcertedly turned and ran. A couple of officers sprang out of the
+grass to take charge of the abandoned guns, managing in their flurry to
+jam them both. For a minute they tinkered and hammered at the choked
+mechanism, exposing themselves, as they did so, to the concentrated
+volleys of a hundred Samoan rifles. Of a sudden, one clapped his hand to
+his breast and sank on his knees; his comrade caught him round the body
+and dragged him back, leaving the guns, now silent and useless, to shine
+innocuously in the sun.</p>
+
+<p>All this while the woods on either hand reverberated with the volleys
+and the cheers of an <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>extended battle, and a haze of powder smoke
+drifted above the tree tops. No one knew how the day was going, and the
+most conflicting rumors ran like wildfire through the Mataafa lines
+together with the names of such an one killed and such an one wounded.
+Dodging the bullets, Fetuao flitted about with water for the parched
+fighters, passing the news and rolling cigarettes for such of the
+wounded as were not too far gone to care for them. Occasionally she
+ferreted out a trembling wretch in the rear and drove him to the front
+with taunts; or, if he were too panic-stricken to get up, she had no
+compunction in thrashing him with a stick until he did so. The little
+savage was beside herself as she danced and sang like a wanton child in
+the rain&mdash;a rain of Martini and Lee-Remington balls stinging the air all
+about her.</p>
+
+<p>After the machine guns were put out of action the fight became a rifle
+duel, which went on briskly for upward of an hour. Again and again the
+whites rose in the grass, blundered forward and took cover, each rush
+stemmed by the Oas, who, darting up from their wall, gave volley for
+volley at point-blank range. Standing in a slop of blood, their great
+naked feet trampling the dead and writhing bodies of their comrades,
+they rivaled the rocky wall itself in the unflinching obstinacy of their
+resistance. It was then the battle reached its deadliest stage, more
+falling in those terrible <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>minutes than during the whole previous course
+of the action. There was no shouting, no cheering, but with clenched
+teeth each man held his place and panted for the supreme moment that
+should spell either victory or rout. That moment came with the bugle
+call to charge, when the whites, rising for the last time, flung
+themselves forward with bayonets fixed. On they came, crimson-faced,
+mouths open, British and Americans in a pellmell rush like a rally of
+boys at football. Even as they did so, Fetuao leaped bolt upright on the
+wall, and swinging her carbine round her head, opposed her slender body
+to the whole attack. In an instant she was tumbling backward with a
+bullet through her throat, and as she lay coughing and strangling in the
+mire, Jack ran forward with a cry and caught her in his arms. There she
+died, amid the crash and roar of a hand-to-hand fight, jostled and
+stumbled on, her little hot hands clinging to his in the convulsive
+grasp of dissolution.</p>
+
+<p>Jack sprang up like a madman. He had no thought in his dizzy head but
+vengeance&mdash;vengeance, sudden, bloody, and swift. He plunged into the
+thickest of the fray, cursing and raving as he opened a path with his
+brawny shoulders. A seaman tried to drive him through with a bayonet,
+but he caught the fellow round the neck and throttled him; he wrenched
+away the weapon and stabbed out with it right and left, with a strength,
+skill, and ferocity that nothing could withstand. He was fired at
+again and again; his ashen face was twenty times a target, once at so
+close a range that the powder burned his very skin. As the line swayed
+to and fro in that desperate final struggle, there was a hoarse cry
+against him, constantly repeated, of, "Shoot that white man!" "Kill the
+renegade!" But Jack, seemingly proof against bullet and sword, stood his
+ground like a lion and clubbed the butt of his gun into the faces of his
+foes; and when the whites, at last losing heart, began to weaken and
+fall back, it was Jack that led the Samoan charge, waving a dripping
+bayonet, and bellowing like a maniac for the rest to follow him.</p>
+
+<div class="img"><a name="imagep052" id="imagep052"></a>
+<a href="images/imagep052.jpg">
+<img border="0" src="images/imagep052.jpg" width="45%" alt="In an instant she was tumbling backward." /></a><br />
+<p class="cen" style="margin-top: .2em;">"In an instant she was tumbling backward."<span class="totoi"><a href="#toi">ToList</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>He stopped beside the guns, laughing wildly to see the blue-jackets
+scattering like rabbits down the hill, and throwing away their rifles,
+water bottles, and accouterments in their precipitate flight. There were
+wounded men lying all about him, groaning, some of them, and calling out
+faintly for help; but, hell! what did he care! Let them groan, the
+skunks; let them remember the women and children they had bombarded, and
+the houses they had burned, and the honest hearts they had broken! To
+hell with them! Besides, for the matter of that, he was feeling sort of
+sick himself&mdash;sort of numb and shivery&mdash;and he staggered like a drunken
+man as he went slowly back up to the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>wall. It was all he could do to
+straddle the blamed thing, and then it was only with the help of a
+wounded Samoan who took his hand. The Kanaka, dizzily seen through a
+kind of mist, was no other than Tua; together, like men in a dream, they
+searched for Fetuao's body; and dragging it out of the shambles where it
+lay, they tried to clean away the blood with wisps of grass. Jack was
+sitting with the girl's head in his lap when he began to sway unsteadily
+backward and forward, feeling strangely sleepy and cold. He moaned. He
+gasped. Hell! they must have plugged him somewhere, after all. And then
+he rolled over&mdash;dead.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+<br />
+
+<hr />
+<br />
+<h2>THE SECURITY OF THE HIGH SEAS</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>Things had been dull in Apia before the arrival of Captain Satterlee in
+the <i>Southern Belle</i>. Not business alone&mdash;which was, of course, only to
+be expected, what with the civil war being just over and the Kanakas
+driven to eat their cocoanuts instead of selling them to traders in the
+form of copra&mdash;but, socially speaking, the little capital of the Samoan
+group had been next door to dead. Picnics had been few; a heavy dust had
+settled on the floor of the public hall&mdash;a galvanized iron barn which
+social leaders could rent for six Chile dollars a night, lights
+included; the butcher's wedding, contrary to all expectation, had been
+strictly private, and might almost have slipped by unnoticed had it not
+been for a friendly editorial in the <i>Samoa Weekly Times</i>; and with the
+exception of an auction, a funeral, and a billiard tournament at the
+International Hotel, a general lethargy had overtaken Apia and the
+handful of whites who made it their home.</p>
+
+<p>As Mr. Skiddy, the boyish American consul, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>expressed himself, "You
+can't get anybody to do anything these days."</p>
+
+<p>Possibly this long spell of monotony contributed to Captain Satterlee's
+pronounced and instant success. The topsails of the Southern Belle had
+hardly more than appeared over the horizon, when people began to wake up
+and realize that stagnation had too long held them in its thrall.
+Satterlee was not at all the ordinary kind of sea captain, to which the
+Beach (as Apia always alluded to itself) was more than well acquainted.
+Gin had no attractions for Captain Satterlee, nor did he surround
+himself with dusky impropriety. He played a straight social game, and
+lived up to the rules, even to party calls, and finger bowls on his
+cabin table. He was a tall, thin American of about forty-five, with
+floorwalker manners, grayish mutton-chop whiskers, and a roving eye. The
+general verdict of Apia was that he was "very superior." His superiority
+was apparent in his gentlemanly baldness, his openwork socks, his
+well-turned references to current events, his kindly and indulgent
+attitude toward all things Samoan. He deplored the rivalry of the three
+contending nationalities, German, English, and American, whose official
+representatives quarreled fiercely among themselves and mismanaged the
+affairs of this unfortunate little South Sea kingdom, and whose
+unofficial representatives sold guns and cartridges <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>indiscriminately to
+the warring native factions. Satterlee let it be inferred that the r&ocirc;le
+of peacemaker had informally settled upon himself.</p>
+
+<p>"In a little place everybody ought to pull together," he would say, his
+bland tolerance falling like balm from heaven, and he would clinch the
+remark by passing round forty-cent cigars.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Southern Belle</i> was a showy little vessel of about ninety tons,
+with the usual trade room in the after part of the ship, where the
+captain himself would wait on you behind a counter, and sell you
+anything from a bottle of trade scent to a keg of dynamite. He never was
+so charming as when engaged in this exchange of commodities for coin,
+and it accorded so piquantly with his evident superiority that the
+purchaser had a pleasant sense of doing business with a gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, I might run her as a yacht, and play the heavy swell," he
+would remark. "But, candidly, I like this kind of thing; it puts me on a
+level with the others, you know; and then it's handy for buying
+supplies, and keeping one in touch with the people." With this he would
+give you such a warming smile, and perhaps throw in free a handful of
+fishhooks, or a packet of safety matches, or a toothbrush. Indeed, apart
+from this invariable prodigality, his scale of prices was ridiculously
+low, and if you were a lady you could buy out the ship at half price. As
+for young Skiddy, the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>American consul, the bars in his case were
+lowered even more, and he was just asked to help himself; which young
+Skiddy did, though sparingly. Captain Satterlee took an immense fancy to
+this youthful representative of their common country, and treated him
+with an engaging mixture of respect and paternalism; and Skiddy, not to
+be behindhand, and dazzled, besides, by his elder's marked regard and
+friendship, threw wide the consular door, and constantly pressed on
+Satterlee the hospitality of a cot on the back veranda.</p>
+
+<p>The captain professed to find it remarkable&mdash;which, indeed, it was&mdash;that
+a boy of twenty-six should have been intrusted with the welfare of so
+considerable a section of Samoa's white population. The roll of the
+consulate bore the names of thirty-eight Americans, not to speak of a
+thirty-ninth who was soon expected, over whom the young consul possessed
+extraordinary powers withheld from far higher posts in far more
+important countries. Young Skiddy, on a modest salary of two hundred
+dollars a month and a house rent-free, was supposed, if need be, to
+marry you, divorce you, try you for crimes and misdemeanors, and in
+extreme cases might even dangle you from the flagstaff in his front
+yard.</p>
+
+<p>He had been very seldom called on, however, to use these extensive
+powers. In three years he had married as many couples, helped to baptize
+a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>half-caste baby, held an inquest on a dead sailor, bullied a Samoan
+army off his front grass, and had settled a disputed inheritance
+involving five acres of cocoanuts. This, of course, left him with some
+spare time on his hands, which, on the whole, he managed to get through
+with very tolerable enjoyment. But until the date of Captain Satterlee's
+arrival he had never had a friend, or at least so it seemed to him now
+in the retrospect. His official colleagues were out of the question&mdash;the
+standoffish Englishman, the sullen German, the grotesque Swede who held
+the highest judicial office. No, there was not the little finger of a
+friend in the whole galaxy. And elsewhere? Not a soul to whom one could
+give intimacy without the danger, almost the certainty, of its being
+abused. No wonder, then, that he turned to Satterlee, and grasped the
+hand of fellowship so warmly extended to him.</p>
+
+<p>The little consul had never known such a man; he had never heard such
+talk; he had never before realized the extent and splendor of the world.
+Sitting in the cabin of the <i>Southern Belle</i>, often far into the night,
+he would give a rapt attention to this extraordinary being who had done
+everything and seen everything. Paris, London, Constantinople, New York,
+all were as familiar to Satterlee as the palm of his hand, and he had
+the story-telling gift that can throw a glamour over the humblest
+incident. Not that his incidents were often <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>humble. On the contrary, in
+his mysterious suggestive fashion he let it be inferred that his bygone
+part had been a great one. He would offer dazzling little peeps, and
+then shut the slide; a chance reference that would make his hearer gasp;
+the adroit use of a mighty name, checked by a sudden, "Oh, hold on&mdash;I'm
+saying more than I ought to!" You felt, somehow, that to have roused the
+interest of this powerful personage was to insure your own career. With
+a turn of his hand he was capable of gratifying your wildest ambition.
+He had remarked your unusual capacity, and had quietly determined it
+should be given proper scope. When and where and how were to be settled
+later. These questions you left confidently to Satterlee. It was enough
+that you were informed, in those fine shades of which he was a master,
+that your day would surely come. On leaving Satterlee you walked on air
+without knowing exactly why; or rather Skiddy did, for by "you" I mean
+the little consul.</p>
+
+<p>It is a sad commentary on human nature that it is so easily deceived. A
+glib tongue, an attractive manner, a few hundred dollars thrown
+carelessly about, and presto! you have the counterfeit of a Cecil
+Rhodes. We are not only willing to take people at their own valuation,
+but are ever ready to multiply that valuation by ten. Obtrude
+romance&mdash;rich, stirring romance&mdash;into the lives of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>commonplace people,
+and they instantly lose their heads. Romance, more than cupidity, is
+what attracts the gold-brick investor.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, Satterlee was a poser, a fraud, a liar; the highest type of
+liar; the day-dreaming, well-read, genuinely inventive, highly
+imaginative, loving-it-for-its-own-sake liar. But to Skiddy every word
+he said was Gospel-true. He never doubted the captain for an instant.
+Life grew richer to him, stranger and more wonderful. It was like a
+personal distinction&mdash;a medal, or the thanks of Congress&mdash;that Satterlee
+should thus have singled him out. His gratitude was unbounded. He felt
+both humble and elated. His cup was brimming over.</p>
+
+<p>Let not his credulity be counted against him. After all, he was not the
+only admirer of the captain. Did he not see Satterlee lionized by the
+Chief Justice and the rest of his brother officials; publicly honored by
+the head of the great German company; called to the bosom of both the
+missionary denominations? Was not all Apia, in fact, regardless of sex,
+creed, or nationality, acclaiming Satterlee to the skies, and vying
+among themselves for the privilege of entertaining him? Never, indeed,
+were there so many picnics, so many parties, such a constant succession
+of dances at the public hall. Even the king was galvanized into action,
+and, to the surprise of everyone, gave a sort of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>At Home, where
+Satterlee was the guest of honor, and received the second <i>kava</i> cup. A
+half-caste couple, who before had barely held up their heads, sprang
+into social prominence by getting married under the direct patronage of
+the popular captain, and thus rallying to their visiting list all the
+rank, fashion, and beauty of Apia.</p>
+
+<p>It was a delirious month. There was an event for almost every night of
+it. The strain on the half-caste band was awful. Miss Potter's millinery
+establishment worked night and day. Of a morning you couldn't find a
+lady on a front veranda who wasn't stitching and sewing and basting and
+cutting out. And the men! Why, in the social whirl few of them had time
+to sober up, and the sale of Leonard's soda water was unprecedented.</p>
+
+<p>As the time began to draw near for the monthly mail from San Francisco,
+Satterlee got restless and talked regretfully of leaving. He gave a
+great P.P.C. bargain day on board the <i>Southern Belle</i>, where sandwiches
+and bottled beer were served to all comers, and goods changed hands at
+astonishing prices: coal oil at one seventy-five a case; hundred-pound
+kegs of beef at four dollars; turkey-red cotton at six cents a yard;
+square face at thirty cents a bottle; and similar cuts in all the
+standard commodities. There was no custom house in those days, and you
+were free to carry everything ashore unchallenged. A matter of eighty
+tons must have <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>been landed all round the beach; and the pandemonium at
+the gangway, the crush and jostle in the trade room, and the steady
+hoisting out of fresh merchandise from the main hold, made a very
+passable South Sea imitation of a New York department store. At any
+rate, there was the same loss of temper, the same harassed expression on
+the faces of the purchasers, and the same difficulty in getting change.
+As like as not you had to take it&mdash;the change&mdash;in the form of Jews'
+harps, screw eyes, or anything small and handy that happened to be near
+by. It was the most lightning performance Apia had ever witnessed, and
+the captain carried it off in a brisk, smiling way, as though it was the
+best joke in the world, and he was only doing it all for fun.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunate captain! Unhappy destiny that brought in the mail cutter two
+days ahead of schedule! Thrice unlucky popularity that found thee
+basking in the sunshine of woman's favor instead of on thy four-inch
+deck! The pilot signaled the mail; Skiddy put forth in his consular
+boat, intercepting the cutter in the pass, and receiving (on his head)
+his own especial Government bag. The proximity of the <i>Southern Belle</i>,
+and the likelihood of Satterlee being at home, caused Skiddy to board
+the ship and open the bag on her quarter-deck. One stout, blue, and
+important-looking letter at once caught his eye. He <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>opened the stout,
+blue, and important-looking letter, and&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>There were no white men in the crew of the <i>Southern Belle</i>. They were
+all Rotumah boys, with the exception of Ah Foy, the Chinese cook. This
+amiable individual was singing over his pots and pans when he was
+suddenly startled by the apparition of Skiddy at the galley door. The
+little consul was deathly pale, and there was something fierce and
+authoritative in his look.</p>
+
+<p>"Come out of here," he said abruptly, "I want to talk to you!"</p>
+
+<p>The Chinaman followed him aft. He had a pretty good idea of what was
+coming. That was why he was sewn up with two hundred dollars in hard
+cash, together with a twenty-dollar bill under his left heel. He began
+to cry, and in five minutes had blurted out the whole thing.
+Self-preservation is the first law, and he had, besides, some dim
+conception of State's evidence. Skiddy made the conception clearer, and
+promised him immunity if he would make a clean breast of it. This the
+Chinaman forthwith did in his laborious pidgin. A good part of it was
+incomprehensible, but he established certain main facts, and confirmed
+the stout, blue, important-looking letter. As Satterlee came off on a
+shore boat, pulling like mad, and then darted up the ladder in a sweat
+of apprehension, he was met at the top by Skiddy&mdash;not Skiddy <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>the
+friend, but Skiddy the arm of the law, Skiddy the retributive, Skiddy
+the world's avenger, with Seniko, his towering cox, standing square
+behind him.</p>
+
+<p>"John Forster," he said, "<i>alias</i> Satterlee, I arrest you in the name of
+the United States, on the charge of having committed the crime of
+barratry, and warn you that anything you say now may be hereafter used
+against you."</p>
+
+<p>It was a horrible thing to say&mdash;to be forced to say&mdash;and no sense of
+public duty could make it less than detestable. Skiddy almost whispered
+out the words. The brutality of them appalled him. Remember, this was
+his friend, his hero, the man whose intimacy an hour before had been
+everything to him. Satterlee gave him a quick, blank, panicky look, and
+then, with a pitiful bravado, took a step forward with an attempted
+return to his usual confident air. He professed to be dumfounded at the
+accusation; he was the victim of a dreadful mistake; he tried, with a
+ghastly smile, to reassert his old dominion, calling Skiddy "old man"
+and "old chap" in a shaky, fawning voice, and wanting to take him below
+"to talk it over." But the little consul was adamantine. The law must
+take its course. He was sorry, terribly sorry, but as an officer of the
+United States he had to do his duty.</p>
+
+<p>Satterlee preceded him into the boat. The consul followed and took the
+yoke lines. They were <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>both dejected, and neither dared to meet the
+other's eyes. It was a mournful pull ashore, and tragic in the
+retrospect. A silence lay between them as heavy as lead. The crew,
+conscious of the captain's humiliation, though they knew not the cause,
+felt also constrained to a deep solemnity. Yes, a funereal pull, and it
+was a relief to everyone when at last they grounded in the shingle off
+the consulate.</p>
+
+<p>Skiddy had a busy day of it. Leaving the captain at the consulate under
+guard, and sending off Asi, the chief of Vaiala, together with ten
+warriors armed with rifles and axes to take charge of the <i>Southern
+Belle</i> and her crew, he walked into Apia to make arrangements to meet
+the painful situation. Single-handed he had to rear the structure of a
+whole judicial system, including United States marshals, a clerk of
+court, four assessor judges, and a jail. His first steps were directed
+toward a little cottage on the Motootua Road, the residence of Mr.
+Scoville Purdy, a goaty, elderly, unwashed individual, who formed the
+more respectable half of the Samoan bar. Mr. Purdy was forthwith
+retained by the United States Government, and the papers of the case
+left in his hands. Skiddy next sought out Mr. Thacher, the other half of
+the bar, and directed him to defend the prisoner. Then he bent his mind
+to the consideration of jails, of which Samoa boasted two.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>The municipal jail was a two-roomed wooden shed, sparingly furnished
+with a couple of tin pails. Humanity forbidding the incarceration of
+Captain Satterlee in such a hovel, the little consul passed on to
+Mulinuu, where the general Samoan Government held sway. The jail here
+was on a more pretentious scale. It consisted of a rectangular
+inclosure, perhaps sixty feet by forty, formed by four eight-foot walls
+of galvanized iron, and containing within five or six small huts of the
+kind that shipwrecked seamen might build on a desert island. In fact
+that was just about what they were, and as foul and repulsive as the
+real article. Owing to financial stringency the Samoan Government was
+unable to house or feed its prisoners, who for both these reasons might
+well be described as castaways. These unfortunates were absent at the
+time of Skiddy's visit, employing a very languid leisure on the
+improvement of the roads; and the consul could not have penetrated the
+jail at all had it not been for the king, who, on being appealed to, was
+obliging enough to lend the diplomat his spare key.</p>
+
+<p>Skiddy stood and regarded the place with an immense depression. It would
+not do at all. It was no better than a cattle pen. He was about to turn
+away, when the two Scanlons appeared on the scene, their keen noses
+having scented out a job. The Scanlons were burly half-castes, of a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>muddy, sweaty complexion, whose trustworthiness and intelligence were
+distinctly above the average. The Scanlon brothers, to any one in a
+difficult position, could be relied upon as pillars of strength. There
+was nothing a Scanlon brother wouldn't do, and do well, for two dollars
+and fifty cents a day. Mind and muscle were both yours&mdash;Scanlon mind and
+muscle&mdash;for this paltry and insignificant sum; and the consul, in his
+quandary, welcomed the stout, bristly haired pair as though they were
+angels from heaven.</p>
+
+<p>In less time than it takes to write, Alfred Scanlon was appointed a
+United States marshal, Charles Scanlon an assistant United States
+marshal, and the arrangement was made with them to take full charge of
+Captain Satterlee during his trial. He was to live in their cottage,
+have his meals served from the International Hotel, and, while carefully
+guarded night and day, was to be treated "first class" throughout.</p>
+
+<p>"The law of the United States," boomed out little Skiddy, "assumes that
+a prisoner is innocent until he is actually convicted. I want both of
+you to remember that."</p>
+
+<p>The Scanlons didn't understand a word of what he said, but they saluted,
+and looked very much impressed. When you bought a Scanlon you got a lot
+for your money, including a profound gravity when you addressed him. It
+was the Scanlon way <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>of recognizing that you were paying, and the
+Scanlon receiving, two dollars and fifty cents a day!</p>
+
+<p>At the head of his two satellites, who kept pace respectfully behind
+him, Skiddy next directed himself to find Dillon. Dillon was a variety
+of white Scanlon, though of an infinitely lower human type, who kept a
+tiny store and cobbled shoes near the Mulivae bridge; and who, from some
+assumed knowledge of legal procedure, invariably acted as clerk of the
+court&mdash;any court&mdash;American, English, or the Samoan High. You associated
+his heavy, bloated, grog-blossomed face, and black-dyed whiskers, as an
+inevitable part of the course of justice. It was his custom to take
+longhand notes of all court proceedings, as, of course, stenographers
+were unknown in Apia; and at times it would seem as though all Samoan
+justice boiled down to dictating to Dillon. As a witness, you never
+looked at the judge; you looked at Dillon, and wondered whether he was
+taking you down right. A careful witness always went slowly, and used
+the words that Dillon was likely to understand.</p>
+
+<p>Dillon having been found and engaged, the next procedure was to appoint
+the assessor judges, of whom the consular instructions insisted on there
+being four. This weighty matter seemed to require the cooperation of the
+vice consul, Mr. Beaver, a highly respected quack doctor, whose
+principal nostrum was faith cure plus hot water. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>After arguing away
+your existence, which he always could do with extraordinary fluency, he
+would plunge you into a boiling bath till your imaginary skin turned a
+deep imaginary scarlet, and then send you home with some microscopic
+doses of aconite. The best that could be said of him was that he never
+really harmed anybody, scalded the poor for nothing, and was willing
+(and even pressing) to turn over serious cases to the regular
+practitioner, Dr. Funk.</p>
+
+<p>There were twenty-seven American citizens on the consular roll of male
+sex, sound mind, and above twenty-one years of age. Four of them lived
+far from Apia, and were therefore unavailable. Two more, as known
+deserters from the United States navy, were considered unworthy of the
+judgment seat. Forged or suspected naturalization papers threw out
+another five. This reduced the residuum to sixteen, whose names were
+written on slips of paper, thrown into a pith helmet, and tumbled
+together. The first four withdrawn constituted the assessor judges, who
+were at once warned by messenger to be in attendance at the consulate at
+ten the next morning, or be punished for contempt.</p>
+
+<p>What a stir was made in the little town as the news went round!
+Satterlee, the cherished, the entertained, the eagerly sought
+after&mdash;Satterlee, had been discovered to be a pirate! The <i>Southern</i>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span><i>Belle</i> was no <i>Southern Belle</i> at all, but the <i>James H. Peabody</i>! He
+had shipped as supercargo, putting in a thousand dollars of his own to
+lull Mr. Crawford's suspicions, and then had marooned the captain and
+mate on Ebon Island, and levanted with the ship! Heavens! what cackle,
+what excitement, what a furious flow of beer in every saloon along the
+beach! It was rumored that the great bargain-day sales might be
+canceled; that the goods might have to be returned; that not a penny of
+compensation would be paid to the unlucky purchasers. Then what a
+rubbing off of marks took place, what a breaking up of tell-tale cases,
+what a soaking off of tags! The whole eighty tons disappeared like
+magic, and you could not find a soul who would even confess to a packet
+of pins!</p>
+
+<p>The trial took place in the large office room of the consulate. The big
+front doors stood open to the sea, where a mile away the breakers tossed
+and tumbled on the barrier reef. The back door was kept shut, to keep
+out the meaner noises of domesticity, but at intervals in the course of
+the trial you could hear the deliberate grinding of the consular coffee;
+the chasing of consular chickens; the counting of the consular wash;
+shrill arguments over the price of fish&mdash;a grotesque juxtaposition that
+seemed to make a mock of the whole proceedings.</p>
+
+<p>The consul, in well-starched white clothes and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>pipe-clayed shoes, sat
+on a dais beneath the crossed flags of his country, giving the effect of
+an elegant and patriotic waxwork. Below him were the four assessors,
+sunburned, commonish, seafaring men, with enormous hands that they did
+not know what to do with, who moved uneasily in their chairs, and looked
+about for places to spit&mdash;and then didn't dare to! One, whose brawny
+arms far exceeded the shrunken sleeves of his jumper, unbared to view on
+his hairy skin the tattooed form of a naked mermaid. A table stood in
+the center of the uncarpeted room, with a lawyer on either side&mdash;Purdy,
+the goaty-haired, messy, elderly man, half-blind, sharp-voiced, rasping
+out his case; opposite him, Thacher, a slinky, mean-looking young man,
+who was reputed to have left New Zealand under a cloud. He looked what
+he was, a cheap lawyer's clerk, of the pinched, hungry variety one sees
+in gloomy anterooms. At the head of the table was Dillon, the
+everlasting dictatee, his dyed black whiskers drooping in the heat, who
+raised a fat hand from time to time as a brake on outstripping tongues.
+And there the captain, the cause of all this singular assembly, tilting
+back in his chair, or occasionally leaning over to whisper into his
+counsel's ear&mdash;spare, angular, careworn&mdash;with his grim mouth and
+resolute air, as though the soul within him refused to be cowed by such
+droning tomfoolery.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>Beside the front door was a shabby basket-work sofa, where members of
+the public were entitled to sit. They would tiptoe in, these members of
+the public, furtively, as though expecting to be shot on sight, the
+bolder ones perhaps exchanging a whisper, the weaker brethren silent,
+and trembling if they caught an official eye. Outside, on the steps of
+the broad veranda, the brothers Scanlon lolled and slumbered, with
+pewter stars on their sweaty breasts, enjoying the deep contentment that
+comes with two dollars and fifty cents a day.</p>
+
+<p>The trial lasted two days, but judgment was held over for the third. The
+case against Satterlee was complete. The San Francisco affidavits,
+properly made out by competent hands, were confirmed by the confession
+of Ah Foy, the cook, who (besides Satterlee) was the only present member
+of the original crew. Satterlee set up the lame defense that he had
+purchased the vessel from Crawford, and was therefore her actual owner.
+He was sworn, and gave evidence accordingly, but Purdy's
+cross-examination left him without a leg to stand on. He cut a pitiful
+figure as he floundered and lied and contradicted himself under the lash
+of that relentless tongue, miring himself ever deeper with explanations
+that did not explain, and agitated references to a "conspiracy" whose
+object it was to ruin him. No, the only thing to be considered <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>was the
+degree of punishment that would adequately offset his crime.</p>
+
+<p>On the reassembling of the Court on the morning of the third day, little
+Skiddy, from the majesty of the dais, summed up the case at length. It
+covered nine sheets of foolscap, and had cost him hours of agonizing
+toil. Beginning with a general rhetorical statement about the "policy of
+nations" and "the security of the high seas," he descended by degrees to
+the crime of barratry&mdash;or, in plainer English, the theft of ships. He
+looked at barratry from every side, and the more he looked the less he
+seemed to like it. It was the cradle of piracy; it destroyed the
+confidence of owners; barratry, if frequently repeated, would shake the
+whole commercial structure. A person who committed barratry would commit
+anything. In this manner he went on and on, reviewing the evidence of
+the case, destroying the whole fabric of the defense, dwelling at length
+on the enormity of the entire transaction. The <i>James H. Peabody</i> had
+been deliberately seized. The prisoner had lawlessly converted her, the
+property of another, to his own base uses. He had broken into the cargo
+and shamelessly sold it as his own. He could plead neither the
+extenuation of youth, nor ignorance, nor the urging of others. He had
+conceived the crime, and had carried it out single-handed. The Court
+could not accept the contention that Ah Foy, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>the Chinaman, had been in
+any sense a confederate or an accomplice. The Court dismissed the charge
+against Ah Foy. But, after mature deliberation, its unanimous judgment
+was that John Forster, <i>alias</i> Satterlee, was <i>guilty</i>. The Court
+sentenced John Forster, <i>alias</i> Satterlee, to <i>ten years' penal
+servitude</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Purdy popped up with some question as to the scale of court fees.
+Thacher winked at Dillon, and began to roll up his papers. Skiddy
+descended from the dais and became an ordinary human being again. The
+captain, leaning forward in his chair, gazed absently out to sea. The
+Scanlon brothers appeared, officiously wanting to know what they were to
+do next. Skiddy was unable to tell them, except that they were to stay
+by the prisoner until he could consult with the authorities. He put on
+his hat, lit a cigar, and forthwith departed.</p>
+
+<p>The President was kind, the Chief Justice urbane. The income of the
+kingdom barely sufficed for their two salaries, and they judged it
+incumbent (as they could do nothing else) to be as polite as possible to
+the American consul. But jails? Oh, no, they couldn't oblige Skiddy with
+a new jail! He was welcome to what they had, but it wasn't in reason
+that he could expect anything better. Skiddy said it was a hog-pen. The
+President retorted that the king's allowance was eight months in
+arrears, and that the western end of the island was still in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>rebellion.
+Jails cost money, and they had no money. Skiddy declared it was an
+outrage, and asked them if they approved of putting a white man into a
+bare stockade, with none of the commonest conveniences or decencies of
+life? They were both shocked at the suggestion. The pride of race is
+very strong in barbarous countries. A white man is still a white man
+even if he has committed all the crimes in the calendar. The Chief
+Justice very seriously pointed out that it would disgrace them all to
+confine Satterlee in the stockade, and force him to mix with the dregs
+of the native population. Surely Mr. Skiddy could not consider such a
+thing for a moment. Mr. Skiddy wanted to know, then, what the deuce he
+was to do? The Chief Justice benignantly shook his head. He had no
+answer to that question. The President murmured suavely, that perhaps
+next year, with an increased hut tax, and the suppression of the
+rebellion, the Government might see its way to&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Next year!" roared Skiddy. "I want to know what I'm to do
+<span class="smcap">NOW</span>!"</p>
+
+<p>The two high officials gazed at him sadly. It was a great peety, they
+observed (with an air of gentle complaint), that Mr. Skiddy should have
+embarrassed the government at a time when its whole position was so
+precarious. Had he not better refer the matter to Washington? Doubtless
+Washington, recognizing the fact that&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>Skiddy flung himself out, lest his anger should get the best of him. He
+went and had another look at the jail, and liked it even less than
+before. Faugh! it was disgusting! It would kill a white man in a week.
+It would be nothing less than murder to put Satterlee into it. He
+returned to the consulate to talk over the matter with the trusty
+Scanlons.</p>
+
+<p>Would they consider a monthly arrangement on a reduced charge, giving
+Satterlee the best room in their cottage, and pledging themselves that
+he should never quit the confines of their three-acre cocoanut patch?
+The half-caste brothers fell in joyfully with the suggestion, and their
+first wild proposals were beaten down to forty dollars a month for
+custodianship and fifteen dollars for the room and the transport of
+Satterlee's food from the International Hotel&mdash;fifty-five dollars in
+all. Thirty dollars a month for the hotel raised the grand total to
+eighty-five dollars. Skiddy wondered ruefully whether Washington would
+ever indorse this arrangement, but in his desperation he couldn't see
+that he had any other choice. He would simply <i>make</i> Washington indorse
+it. It was with great relief that he saw the captain's departure from a
+corner of his bedroom window, and felt that, for the moment, at least,
+he had a welcome respite from all his perplexities.</p>
+
+<p>He put a captain and crew on board the <i>James <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>H. Peabody</i>, and packed
+her back to San Francisco, at the same time apprising the State
+Department by mail, and begging that a telegraphic answer might be sent
+him in respect to Satterlee's imprisonment, and the expense it had
+necessarily entailed. He calculated that the telegram would catch an
+outgoing man-of-war that was shortly due. The consular salary was two
+hundred dollars a month, and if the eighty-five dollars for Satterlee
+was disallowed, the sum was indubitably bound to sink to one hundred and
+fifteen dollars. Deducting a further fifty, which little Skiddy was in
+the habit of remitting to his mother, a widow in narrow circumstances,
+and behold his income reduced to sixty-five a month! It was hardly
+surprising, therefore, that Skiddy waited on pins and needles for the
+Department's reply.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of weeks it came.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Skiddy U S consul apia samoa satterlee case the department
+authorizes charge for food, but none for custody or lodging,
+bronson assistant secretary.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>This was a staggering blow. It definitely placed his salary at
+ninety-five dollars. He sat down and wrote a stinging letter to the
+Department, inclosing snapshot pictures of the jail, the prisoners, the
+huts, and other things that cannot be described here. It evolved an
+acrimonious reply, in which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>he was bidden to be more respectful. He was
+at liberty (the dispatch continued), if he thought it advisable as an
+act of private charity, to maintain the convict Satterlee in a
+comfortable cottage, but the Department insisted that it should be at
+his (Skiddy's) expense. The Department itself advocated the jail. If the
+situation were as disgraceful as he described it, ought not the onus be
+put on the Samoan Government, and thus place the Department in a
+position "to make strong representations through the usual diplomatic
+channels"?</p>
+
+<p>"But in the meantime what would happen to Satterlee?" returned the
+consul in official language, across six thousand miles of sea and land.</p>
+
+<p>"You are referred to the previous dispatch," retorted the Department.</p>
+
+<p>"But it will kill him," said Skiddy, again crossing an ocean and a
+continent.</p>
+
+<p>"If the convict Satterlee should become ill, you are at liberty to send
+him to the hospital."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but there isn't any hospital," said Skiddy.</p>
+
+<p>"The Department cannot withdraw from the position it took up, nor the
+principle it laid down in Dispatch No. 214 B."</p>
+
+<p>Thus the duel went on, while Skiddy cut down his cigars, sold his riding
+horse, and generally economized. A regret stole over him that he hadn't
+sentenced Satterlee to a shorter term, and he looked up the Consular
+Instructions to see what <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>pardoning powers he possessed. On this point
+the little book was dumb. Not so the Department, however, to whom a hint
+on the subject provoked the reply, "that by so doing you would stultify
+your previous action and impugn the finding of the Consular Court. The
+Department would view with grave displeasure, etc.&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Satterlee soon made himself very much at home in the Scanlon prison. His
+winning personality never showed to better advantage than in those days
+of his eclipse. He dandled the Scanlon off-spring on his knee; helped
+the women with their household tasks; played checkers with the burly
+brothers. He was prodigiously respected. He gathered in the Scanlon
+hearts, even to uncles and second cousins. You would have taken him for
+a patriarch in the bosom of a family of which he was the joy and pride.
+He received the best half-caste society on his front porch, and
+dispensed Scanlon hospitality with a lavish hand. These untutored souls
+had no proper conception of barratry. They couldn't see any crime in
+running away with a schooner. They pitied the captain as a bold spirit
+who had met with undeserved misfortunes. The Samoan has ever a
+sympathetic hand for the fallen mighty, and the hand is never empty of a
+gift. Bananas, pineapples, <i>taro</i>, sugar cane, <i>palusami</i>, sucking pigs,
+chickens, eggs, <i>valo</i>&mdash;all descended on Satterlee in wholesale lots.
+Girls brought him <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span><i>leis</i> of flowers to wear round his neck; anonymous
+friends stole milk for his refreshment; pigeon hunters, returning
+singing from the mountains, deferentially laid their best at his feet.
+Nothing was too good for this unfortunate chief, who bore himself so
+nobly, and had a smile and a kind word for even the humblest of his
+admirers.</p>
+
+<p>On Sundays Skiddy paid the captain a periodical visit. He would bring
+the latest papers, if there were any, or a novel or two from his scanty
+stock. Their original friendship had died a violent death, but a new one
+had gradually risen on the ashes of the old. Skiddy had no more
+illusions in respect to this romantic-minded humbug and semi-pirate; but
+the man was likable, tremendously likable, and, in spite of himself, the
+little consul could not forbear suffering some of the pangs of remorse.
+The world was so big, so wide, with such a sufficiency of room for all
+(even romantic-minded humbugs and semi-pirates), and it was hard that
+Providence should have singled him out to clip this eagle's wings. There
+was something, too, very pathetic in Satterlee's contentment. He
+confided to Skiddy that he had never been so happy. With glistening eyes
+he would discourse on "these simple people," "these good hearts," "this
+lovely and uncontaminated paradise, where evil seems never to have set
+its hand," and expatiate generally on the beauty, charm, and
+tranquillity of Samoan life. He dreaded <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>the time, he said, when a
+ruthless civilization would sweep it all away.</p>
+
+<p>Satterlee and he took long walks into the mountains, invariably
+accompanied by a Scanlon brother to give an official aspect to the
+excursion. It maintained the fast-disappearing principle that Satterlee
+was a convict and under vigilant guard. It served to take away the
+appearance, besides (which they might otherwise have presented), of two
+friends spending a happy day together in the country. A Scanlon brother
+stood for the United States Government and the majesty of law, and
+propriety demanded his presence as peremptorily as a chaperon for a
+young lady. A Scanlon brother could be useful, too, in climbing cocoanut
+trees, rubbing sticks together when the matches were lost, and in
+guiding them to noble waterfalls far hidden in the forest.</p>
+
+<p>In this manner nearly a whole year passed, which, for the little consul,
+represented an unavoidable monthly outlay of fifty-five dollars. He got
+somewhat used to it, as everybody gets somewhat used to everything; but
+he could not resist certain recurring intervals of depression when he
+contrasted his present circumstances with his bygone glory. Fifty-five
+dollars a month made a big hole in a consular income, and he would gaze
+down that ten-year vista with a sinking heart. But relief was closer at
+hand than he had ever dared to hope. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>From the Department? No, but from
+Satterlee himself.</p>
+
+<p>The news was brought to little Skiddy early one morning. Alfred Scanlon,
+with an air of gloom, deprecatingly coughed his way into the bedroom,
+and handed the consul a letter. It was written on pale pink note-paper,
+of the kind Samoans like best, with two lavender love birds embossed in
+the corner. It was from Satterlee. The letter ran thus:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Dear Friend</span>: <i>When this reaches you I shall be far
+to sea. My excuse for so long subsisting on your bounty must
+be laid to my ignorance, which was only illuminated two days
+ago by accident. I had no idea that you were paying for me
+out of your own private purse, or that my ease and comfort
+were obtained at so heavy a cost to yourself. Regretfully I
+bring our pleasant relations to an end, impelled, I assure
+you, by the promptings of a heartfelt friendship. I loved
+the simple people among whom my lot was cast, and looked
+forward, at the termination of my sentence, to end the
+balance of my days peacefully among them. The world, seen
+from so great a distance, and from within so sweet a nest,
+frightened me, old stager that I am. God knows, I have never
+seen but its ugliest side, and return to it with profound
+depression. Kindly explain my abrupt departure to the
+Scanlons, and if you would do me a last favor, buy <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>a little
+rocking-horse that there is at Edward's store, price three
+dollars, and present it in my name to my infant goddaughter,
+Apeli Scanlon. To them all kindly express my warmest and
+sincerest gratitude; and for yourself, dear friend, the
+best, the truest, the kindest of men, accept the warm grasp
+of my hand at parting. Ever yours,</i></p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">John Satterlee</span>.</p></div>
+
+<p>"It must have been the Hamburg bark that sailed last night," quavered
+Scanlon.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, Skiddy blew that Scanlon up. He wiped the floor with him. He
+roared at him till the great hulking creature shook like jelly, and his
+round black eyes suffused with tears. He made him sit down then and
+there, swore him on the consular Bible, and made him dictate a
+statement, which was signed in the presence of the cook. This
+accomplished, Alfred was ingloriously dismissed, while the consul went
+out on the back veranda, and sat there in his pajamas, to think the
+matter over.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed a pity to rouse the Department. The Department's interest in
+Satterlee could at no time have been called brisk, and it had now ebbed
+to a negligible quantity. But it would be just like the Department to
+get suddenly galvanized, and hysterically head Satterlee off at Hamburg.
+This would mean his ultimate return to Samoa, and a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>perpetual further
+outlay of fifty-five dollars from a hard-earned salary. No, he wouldn't
+worry the Department.... Let sleeping dogs lie. There were better ways
+of spending fifty-five dollars a month.</p>
+
+<p>That night the consul had champagne at dinner, and drank a silent toast:</p>
+
+<p>"Good luck to him, poor old devil!"</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
+<br />
+
+<hr />
+<br />
+<h2>FORTY YEARS BETWEEN</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>"What am I to enter in the log, sir?" asked Mr. Francis, the first
+lieutenant.</p>
+
+<p>"There's an old-fashioned word for it," said Captain Hadow grimly.</p>
+
+<p>"Had it been my brother it couldn't have hurt me more," said Mr.
+Francis.</p>
+
+<p>"Everybody loved that boy."</p>
+
+<p>"It will break his father's heart, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"A deserter, by God!"</p>
+
+<p>"He had everything in the world," said Francis, in the tone of a man who
+himself had fought hard for every step. "He had influence, money of his
+own, brains, a splendid professional future, everything!"</p>
+
+<p>"All thrown away like that," said Captain Hadow, with a gesture of his
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"And the handsomest fellow I believe I ever saw," said Mr. Francis.</p>
+
+<p>"The pick of the basket," agreed Hadow.</p>
+
+<p>"And to think," continued Mr. Francis, "that I must sit down at my desk
+and write: 'Past Midshipman John de Vigne Garrard, Deserter.'"</p>
+
+<p>The pair were pacing the quarter-deck of H.M.S. <i>Dauntless</i> as she lay
+at anchor within the reef. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>It was at Borabora, one of the Society
+Islands, and the time forty years ago. The wonderful old rock, rising
+sheer naked and frowning from the bluest water in the world, seemed to
+those at its foot as though it were holding up the very sky itself.
+Precipice upon precipice dizzily scaled the basaltic heights, giving
+here and there, on little shelves and crannies, a foothold for a vivid
+vegetation. The peak itself, a landmark at sea for ninety miles around,
+was half-hidden in the gloom of squalls and scud, and sometimes, for a
+moment, it would be altogether lost to view in the fierce murkiness of
+driving rain. Below the mountain, on the flat shore of the lagoon, an
+uninterrupted belt of palms concealed the little villages of the
+islanders. Here, in idyllic peace, a population of extraordinary
+attractiveness, gentleness, and beauty led their life of secluded ease.
+Money was all but unknown; food could be had in abundance for the most
+trifling labor; clothes could be stripped from the bark of trees.
+Nature, giving with both hands, was repaid with an usury of poetry and
+song; and these happy people, children forever at heart, well mannered,
+gay, and instinct with an untamed nobility, bore themselves with the
+grace of those whom the gods loved.</p>
+
+<p>"As like as not he is watching us now from somewhere up there," said the
+captain, sweeping the summits with his glass.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>"I doubt it, sir," returned Mr. Francis. "It's my conviction he isn't a
+cable's length behind the village."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you offer the reward?" asked the captain.</p>
+
+<p>The first lieutenant looked embarrassed.</p>
+
+<p>"I told you to offer fifty pounds," said the captain tartly.</p>
+
+<p>"I ventured to raise it to a hundred, sir," said Mr. Francis. "We talked
+it over in the wardroom, and we thought we wouldn't risk the boy for a
+matter of a few pounds between us."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder if the mess would have done the same for <i>me</i>?" observed the
+captain.</p>
+
+<p>"We hardly look forward to your putting yourself in that position, sir,"
+said Mr. Francis.</p>
+
+<p>"No, by God!" said the captain. "When I quit her Majesty's service it
+will be neither for pique nor for love."</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed, sir," agreed the first lieutenant.</p>
+
+<p>"I've had my follies, too, Mr. Francis," said the captain. "Every man
+who is worth anything has some time or other made a fool of himself
+about a woman. I don't pretend to be better than my neighbors. I can't
+forget I was once young myself."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid even a hundred pounds isn't going to fetch him," said Mr.
+Francis. "I could see it in the king's eyes he meant to keep the boy."</p>
+
+<p>"The lady in the case is the king's sister, I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>suppose&mdash;" said the
+captain, "that tall slip of a girl who was always making such
+sheep's-eyes at Jack. Gad! I don't wonder he preferred a bower in Eden
+with her to the steerage of a man-of-war and a pack of young devils
+incarnate! Who knows what might not have happened if she had made
+sheep's-eyes at me, Mr. Francis!"</p>
+
+<p>"Very true, sir, very true," returned Mr. Francis, who had no sense of
+humor.</p>
+
+<p>"She's about the sweetest thing I ever saw," went on the captain.</p>
+
+<p>The two men laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope to goodness he'll be the only one," said Mr. Francis. "The fact
+is, the whole ship's in love; even the lower deck is off its feed; the
+boatswain says they're messing up the rigging with true-lovers' knots,
+and I'm told the marines are writing poetry."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, if it had been anyone but him!" exclaimed the captain.</p>
+
+<p>"It's horrible to call him a deserter," said Francis.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let's do it," said the captain.</p>
+
+<p>"We have to say something, sir," returned the first lieutenant
+helplessly.</p>
+
+<p>"One can always lie, I suppose," said Hadow.</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing I wouldn't do myself for Jack Garrard," volunteered Mr.
+Francis.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not say he was kidnapped here by the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>hill tribes?" said Hadow. "We
+aren't certain sure he wasn't, and no one can deny but what he might
+have been."</p>
+
+<p>"But the admiral would be bound to inquire into it," said Mr. Francis.
+"Sooner or later he'd send a ship."</p>
+
+<p>"Trust Jack to do his own lying when she gets here," said Hadow.
+"Besides, he'll be sick of the whole thing by that time and only too
+glad to step aboard."</p>
+
+<p>"But won't we be asked why <i>we</i> didn't rescue him?" asked Francis.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no&mdash;I have it!" cried the captain.</p>
+
+<p>"It's certainly a case for stretching a point, sir," said Mr. Francis.</p>
+
+<p>"Enter in the log," said the captain, speaking slowly and thoughtfully,
+"that Passed Midshipman John de Vigne Garrard, failing to report himself
+at the expiration of his leave, was afterwards discovered to have been
+kidnapped by the hill tribes of Borabora Island. On my threatening to
+land a party to recover him, I was dissuaded by King George, who cleared
+himself of any personal responsibility in the matter, and who promised,
+if only I would give him time, to recover the man without bloodshed or
+any cost to her Majesty's Government. The king urged that the use of
+force would imperil the officer's life, which otherwise he had every
+confidence would be spared."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>"Very good, sir," said Mr. Francis.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll give old George a flaming character," added Hadow.</p>
+
+<p>"Very good, sir," said Mr. Francis.</p>
+
+<p>"Pile it on about his reverence for the Queen, and the way he gave beef
+to the ship," said Hadow.</p>
+
+<p>"And what then, sir?" inquired Mr. Francis.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you know," went on Hadow, "my orders down here leave me a pretty
+wide latitude. You can't tie down a surveying ship in wild waters the
+way you can a simple patrol. By God, sir, I'll put the ship back here in
+nine months and retake Master Johnny Garrard."</p>
+
+<p>"If he has any realization of his position he will then go down on his
+knees and thank you, sir," said Mr. Francis.</p>
+
+<p>"He's more likely to come aboard whistling!" exclaimed the captain.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, it will involve a little&mdash;insincerity," said Mr. Francis.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean we'll have to lie like hell!" said the captain.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, yes," observed Mr. Francis.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope that's understood," said the captain. "But I can't bear to see a
+fine lad ruined for a bit of squeamishness. Were he thirty he might go
+hang; but nineteen&mdash;Good Lord! one must have a little mercy."</p>
+
+<p>"Where would any of us be now, sir," said Mr. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>Francis, "if we had each
+of us received full measure for a boyish error?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know I was a rotten bad egg myself," said Captain Hadow.</p>
+
+<p>"If I may say it without offense, sir," said Mr. Francis, "I think you
+are taking a very noble course in respect to this unfortunate lad."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, I don't want you to think I justify desertion," said Hadow
+quickly, not ill pleased at the compliment. "Gad, sir, it's a shocking
+thing; bar actual cowardice, I positively know nothing worse. Were Jack
+my son, I'd rather see him stretched dead at my feet. I tell you, Mr.
+Francis, that when I first heard the news I was stunned; I felt myself
+trembling; the dishonor, the infamy of it struck me here." Captain Hadow
+laid his hand on his heart.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Francis nodded a silent assent.</p>
+
+<p>"But we'll save him!" cried the captain. "We won't permit this ugly
+business to blast his life."</p>
+
+<p>"You may count, Captain Hadow, on our most loyal and hearty support,"
+said Mr. Francis.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said the captain; "and you will pass the word along that
+the subject is one not to be discussed."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite so, sir," said the first lieutenant.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a word!" exclaimed the captain; "and of course you will cancel the
+reward before we sail. You might even coach old George a bit about the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>hill tribes. But, of course, not a whisper that we're ever coming
+back."</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir," said Mr. Francis.</p>
+
+<p>"That must go no farther than you and me," said Hadow.</p>
+
+<p>"It shall not, sir," returned the first lieutenant.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall sail to-night at the turn of the tide," said the captain.</p>
+
+<p>"Very good, sir," said Mr. Francis.</p>
+
+<p>It was not nine months&mdash;it was fifteen, and some days to spare&mdash;before
+the <i>Dauntless</i> again raised the peak of Borabora and backed her
+mainyard off the settlement. In the course of that eventful year and a
+quarter she had zigzagged the whole chart of the eastern Pacific; and
+from French Frigate Shoals to Pitcairn, from Diamond Head to Little
+Rapa, she had sounded and plotted reefs innumerable, and had covered,
+with a searching persistency, vast areas of blue water dotted with e.
+d.'s and p. d.'s.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> She had twice taken the ground, once so hard and
+fast that she had shifted her guns and lightered a hundred tons of
+stores among the gulls and mews of a half-sunken reef; she had had an
+affair with the unruly natives of the Walker Group, and had blown a
+village to fragments, and not a few of the Walkers themselves into a
+land <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>as uncharted as their own; she had tried a beach-comber for
+murder, and had dangled him at the main yardarm, giving him later on a
+Church of England service, a hammock, and the use of a cannon ball at
+his feet; she had poked her nose into cannibal bays, where women of wild
+beauty and wilder license swam off to the ship in hundreds until the
+marines drove them back with muskets, and fired at their own comrades,
+who in their madness leaped into the water and were floated ashore in
+the arms of naked girls; she had lain for weeks in enormous atolls,
+where the only life was that of birds, and the silence was unbroken save
+for the long roll of the surf, and at night the ghostly scurrying of
+turtles over the sand; she had been everywhere in those labyrinthine
+seas, those haunts of romance and mystery, with love, danger, and death
+always close aboard.</p>
+
+<p>It was morning when Hadow raised the island, a fleecy speck of cloud
+against the sky line, and he shortened sail at once and lingered out the
+day so as to bring him up to it by dark. After supper every light on
+board was doused, and the great hull, gliding through the glass-smooth
+water, merged her steep sides and towering yards and canvas into the
+universal shadow. With whispering keel and a wind so fair and soft that
+one wondered to see the sails stiffen in the bolt ropes, the man-of-war
+stole steadily to leeward, with no sound <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>but the occasional creak of
+cordage, or the hoarse murmur of voices from the lower deck. Hadow
+himself, pacing the quarter-deck in his boat cloak, was lost in reverie,
+while the wardroom and the steerage in unredeemed darkness held nothing
+but dozing men.</p>
+
+<p>By ten the ship was hove to close ashore, and the lights of the little
+settlement glimmered through the palms. The warm night, laden with
+exotic fragrance and strangely exciting in the intensity of its
+stillness and beauty, hid beneath its far-reaching pall the various
+actors of an extraordinary drama. With pistols buckled to their hips,
+Brady, Winterslea, Hotham, and Stanbury-Jones, four officers of the
+ship, together with Hatch, a flinty-faced old seaman who could be
+trusted, all slipped down the ladder into the captain's gig and pulled
+with muffled oars for the break in the reef. Picking their way through
+the pass, with the surf on either hand roaring in their ears, they
+slowly penetrated the lagoon and headed for the king's house. The
+shelving beach brought them to a stop, and all jumping out to lighten
+the boat, they drew her over the shingle and made her painter fast to a
+<i>pandanus</i> tree. Then, acting in accordance with a preconcerted plan,
+Winterslea was sent forward to track down their prey, while the rest
+huddled together to await his return.</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes, twenty minutes passed in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>palpitating suspense. A girl drew
+by wreathed in flowers; she looked out to sea, then up at the stars, and
+shrank again into the shadow. From the neighboring houses there came the
+sound of mellow voices and of laughter. A pig rooted and rustled among a
+heap of cocoanut shells. Half an hour passed, and from far across the
+water, as faint and silvery as some elfin signal, the ship sent her
+message of the time: six bells.</p>
+
+<p>Panting and crouching, Winterslea groped his way among them.</p>
+
+<p>"Come," he said.</p>
+
+<p>They followed him in silence, unloosing their holsters and grimly ready.
+A pair of handcuffs clinked in Hatch's jumper. They inhaled the deep
+breath of tried and resolute men inured to danger, and accustomed to
+give and to receive an unflinching loyalty.</p>
+
+<p>Winterslea, with keen perception, led the way like a bloodhound,
+skirting lighted houses and following devious inland paths. The
+comparative openness of the village began to give way to the ranker
+undergrowth of the plantations behind it. The path sank into a choking
+vegetation that stood on either side and brushed their faces as they
+followed in single file. A fallen tree gave them the passage of a
+stream.</p>
+
+<p>"There!" said Winterslea.</p>
+
+<p>The path opened out on a little clearing among <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>the trees, and showed
+them, set on high, the out-lines of a native house. Like all Tahitian
+houses, it was on the model of a bird cage, and the oval wall of
+bamboos, set side by side, let through vertical streaks of light from
+the lamp or fire within. As the whole party drew nearer, they heard,
+deep below them on the other side, the pleasant sound of falling water,
+and realized the cliff they were mounting overlooked a little river at
+its foot. Here, in exquisite seclusion, Jack Garrard had chosen the spot
+for his moral suicide.</p>
+
+<p>Creeping up to the house and looking through the cracks of the bamboos,
+his comrades had view of him within. Dressed like a native in <i>tapa</i>
+cloth, with bare chest, and flowers in his tawny hair, the handsome boy
+was seated in a hammock. With her head against his knee, a beautiful
+girl was looking up into his face, one hand locked in his. In that land
+of pretty women she was the one that outshone them all&mdash;Tehea, the
+sister of the king, for whose sweet favor every man on board had sought
+in vain. And here she was, with her long hair loosened and her eyes
+swimming with love, looking up at the lad who had given name and honor
+to win her heart. The pair were hardly more than children; and Brady, a
+sentimentalist of forty, with red hair, sighed as he peeped through the
+eaves and thought of his own dear girl at home.</p>
+
+<p>Garrard laid down the pipe he had been smoking, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>and, in happy
+unconsciousness of any audience but the woman at his feet, began to
+sing. His voice had always been his greatest charm, and the means of
+gaining him the friendship of men much older than himself. It had won
+Hadow; it had won Francis. There was not a blue-jacket on board the
+<i>Dauntless</i> but whose eyes had moistened under the spell of Jack's clear
+tenor. No one could render with such delicacy, purity, and sentiment
+those ballads, now so old-fashioned, that used to solace our seafaring
+fathers in the fifties.</p>
+
+<p>Jack lay back in the hammock, and with wonderful tenderness and feeling
+sang "Afton Water," repeating the last verse several times over. It was
+plain that something in it, some phrase or line, had deeply moved him,
+for he suddenly bent over and laid his face in his hands, shaking with a
+strange emotion. Tehea rose, and throwing her arms round his neck and
+forcing away his hands, pressed her lips to his wet eyes. Even as she
+did so Brady gave the signal for the whole party to move round to the
+entrance. He passed through first, the others close behind him. Jack
+leaped to his feet, white and speechless, his wide-open eyes those of an
+animal at bay. Brady, Winterslea, Stanbury-Jones, Hotham, Hatch, the
+familiar faces, daunted him like the sight of ghosts. Friends no longer,
+they were now avengers, with the right to track him down and kill him.</p>
+
+<div class="img"><a name="imagep098" id="imagep098"></a>
+<a href="images/imagep098.jpg">
+<img border="0" src="images/imagep098.jpg" width="95%" alt="Jack leaped to his feet, white and speechless." /></a><br />
+<p class="cen" style="margin-top: .2em;">"Jack leaped to his feet, white and speechless."<span class="totoi"><a href="#toi">ToList</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>"Jack!" cried Brady in a stifled voice.</p>
+
+<p>The lad took a step back. The girl moaned, and tried to run between
+Hatch and Stanbury-Jones. The old seaman caught and shook her like a
+dog, tearing away the whistle she put to her lips and dashing it on the
+floor. Jack put up his hand and snatched a pistol hidden in the thatch
+of the roof. Brady, on the instant, leveled his own and thundered out:</p>
+
+<p>"Drop it, or I'll shoot!"</p>
+
+<p>"Shoot, and be damned!" returned Jack, and with that he turned his
+pistol on himself, and, placing the muzzle against his forehead, pulled
+the trigger.</p>
+
+<p>It missed fire.</p>
+
+<p>Before he could try again Brady had caught him round the neck, while
+Hatch, resigning the girl to Stanbury-Jones, ran in and snapped the
+handcuffs on his wrists.</p>
+
+<p>"Jack," cried Brady, "we aren't going to hurt you. We're rescuing you
+from the hill tribes. Man, you're saved!"</p>
+
+<p>"You never was no deserter," said Hatch.</p>
+
+<p>"Mind you back us up, old fellow," said Winterslea.</p>
+
+<p>"Give us your fin, boy," said Hotham.</p>
+
+<p>It was some time before Jack could pull himself together. When at last
+he did so, and began to appreciate the generosity of his captain and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>shipmates and their astounding concern to save him from the penalty of
+his crime, he underwent one of those reactions when despair gives way to
+the maddest gayety. He swore at Hatch, and made him take off the irons;
+he got out a bottle of white rum and forced them all to drink his
+health; he kept them in a roar with the story of his adventures, and
+laughed and cried in turn as he described his life ashore.</p>
+
+<p>"What does she want?" demanded Brady, as Tehea insistently repeated some
+words in native.</p>
+
+<p>"She says," said Jack, calmly picking up the whistle from the floor and
+touching it to his lips, "she says I've only to blow this and you will
+all be dead in five minutes."</p>
+
+<p>A hush fell upon the company.</p>
+
+<p>Jack, with an oath, flung the whistle from him.</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen," he said, "I am grateful. I am damned grateful! If I live I
+shall try and repay each one of you. I shall try and be a better man. I
+shall try to be worthy of your kindness."</p>
+
+<p>He went round and shook hands solemnly with every one of them. "Damned
+grateful!" he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's be off," said Brady.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, lad, your word of honor," said Winterslea. Jack looked about him
+helplessly.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I've no right to ask such a thing," he said. "I know how good
+you've been to me <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>already, and all that. But&mdash;but, gentlemen, she's my
+wife. I love her. I shall never see her again. May I not entreat a
+minute to myself?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Brady.</p>
+
+<p>Jack went over to Tehea and took her hand. He put his arms about her,
+and, unashamed before them all, pressed her comely head against his
+breast. He tried to explain the inexorable fate he was so powerless to
+resist; in incoherent whispers he told her he would break his chains and
+return to her, free in the years to come to devote his life to the woman
+he loved. He called her the dearest names, and begged her not to forget
+him. But she, with a perception greater than his own, swept away these
+despairing protestations with disdain. The daughter of one king, the
+sister of another, could she not meet force by force? These fierce
+intruders, with their rough voices and drawn pistols, who were they, to
+threaten a princess of the royal blood and carry away her lover before
+her eyes? If they were strong, she was stronger; and what ship cannon,
+she asked, however murderous or far-ranging, could penetrate those
+mountain recesses whither she would carry him before the morning? Ah,
+she said, it was for him to choose between her and them; between Britain
+and the island; between love and the service of the white Queen beyond
+the seas.</p>
+
+<p>"I have chosen," he said.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>Her eyes flashed as she freed herself from his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"I am hateful in my own sight for having loved you," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you not even wish me well, Tehea?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No," she cried, "I hope you will die!" He turned away.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Siati!</i>" she cried after him in agony.</p>
+
+<p>He turned back to her, downcast and silent.</p>
+
+<p>"Remember," she said with sweet relenting, "that wherever thou goest,
+however many the years that may divide us, however wide the waters or
+the land, I shall be here waiting for thee, here in this house of our
+happiness; and if I die before thou comest here thou wilt find my
+grave."</p>
+
+<p>"Tehea," he said, "as God sees me, some day I shall return!"</p>
+
+<p>She took his hands and looked up into his face with such poignant
+longing and tenderness, that Jack's comrades, already uncomfortable
+enough, were quite overborne by the scene. Tough old Hatch snuffled
+audibly, and Brady could hardly speak.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come, lad," he cried huskily, "you mustn't keep us longer!"</p>
+
+<p>Jack unclasped the girl's hands and suffered himself to be led away by
+his comrades. Stumbling and falling against one another in the dark,
+they <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>made shift to find the uncertain path, Winterslea, in the lead,
+coo-eeing like a bushfellow for them to follow. Little by little they
+gained the sleeping village, and pressed on to the beach beyond, where
+their boat was already afloat on the incoming tide. They took their
+places without a word and pulled out in the direction of the ship. In
+the pass, rising and falling in the heavy swell, they burned a blue
+light, which the <i>Dauntless</i> answered with another, and ran up a
+masthead lantern to guide them. A few minutes later they clambered up
+the ladder, the boat was hoisted in, and the boatswain's whistle was
+rousing the watch on deck:</p>
+
+<p>"Mainsail haul!"</p>
+
+<p>By morning the island had sunk behind them, and standing on the dizzy
+main-royal yard with one arm round the mast, Jack could make out nothing
+but a little cloud on the horizon.</p>
+
+<p>At sixty, John Garrard was a post captain, a Knight Commander of the
+Bath, and within a year of receiving flag rank and the command of a
+fleet. His career had been more than distinguished, and he had won his
+way to the front as much by his fine personal qualities as by his
+invariable good judgment and high professional attainments. He had
+earned the character of a man who could be trusted in situations
+involving tact, temper, and diplomatic skill; and no captain in the navy
+was more confidently ordered to those scenes of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>international tension,
+which, in spite of statesmen, so often arise in some distant place to
+menace the peace of the world.</p>
+
+<p>He had never married, and when rallied on the subject was wont to say
+with a laugh that the sea was his only mistress. No one had ever
+ventured to question him much further, though his friends were often
+piqued, especially the women, as to an implied romance in the captain's
+earlier life. It was known he supported two old-maid sisters, the Misses
+Hadow, the impoverished daughters of his first commander; but in view of
+his considerable private fortune this drain on his resources seemed
+scarcely the reason of his renunciation. Nor did it seem to his admirers
+that any woman could have had the heart to refuse him, for even at sixty
+he was a noticeably handsome man, and was endowed, besides, with more
+than the advantage of good looks, a charm of manner, a distinction, a
+captivating gallantry that made him everywhere a favorite.</p>
+
+<p>He was in command of the <i>Inflexible</i> battleship, one of the Australian
+squadron, when she developed some defects in her hydraulic turning gear
+and was ordered home to England by Admiral Lord George Howard for
+overhaul. The captain's heart beat a little faster as he realized his
+course would take him south of the Societies. He spread out the chart on
+his cabin table and sighed as he laid his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>finger on Borabora. He shut
+his eyes, and saw the basaltic cliffs, the white and foaming reefs, the
+green, still forests of that unforgotten island. He was a boy once more,
+with flowers in his hair, wandering beneath the palms with Tehea. How
+often had he thought of her during all these years; the years that had
+left him gray and old; the years that had carried him unscathed through
+so many dangers in every quarter of the world! For him she was still in
+her adorable girlhood, untouched by time, a radiant princess in her
+radiant isle, waiting by the shore for his return. It shocked him to
+remember she was not far short of sixty&mdash;a fat old woman, perhaps,
+married to some strapping chief, and, more than likely, with grown
+children of her own! How incredible it seemed!</p>
+
+<p>But a word, and he might land and see her. But a word, and the questions
+of forty years might yet be answered&mdash;answered, yes, to shatter, as like
+as not, with pitiless realities the tender figment of a dream. No, he
+said, he dared not expose himself to a possible disillusion, to play
+into the hands of sardonic nature, ever mocking at man. No; but he would
+carry his ship close inshore and watch from the bridge the unfolding
+bays and tiny settlements of that lost paradise, and then, dipping his
+flag to his vanished youth, he would sink over the horizon, his memory
+thrilled and his sentiment unimpaired, to set his face for England.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>Dawn was breaking as he slowed down to leeward of the island and watched
+the shadows melt away. It was Sunday, a day of heavenly calm, fresh yet
+windless, with a sea so smooth that the barrier reefs for once were
+silent, and one could hear, far across the hushed and shining water, the
+coo of pigeons in the forest. Under bare steerage way, with the leadsman
+droning in the fore chains, the ship hugged the shore and steamed at a
+snail's pace round the island. On the lofty bridge, high above the
+wondering faces of his command, the white-haired captain, impassive,
+supreme, and solitary, gave no sign of those inner emotions that were
+devouring him. Along the shore the sight of the battleship brought out
+here and there a startled figure or a group; a couple of laughing girls,
+astride on ponies, raced the <i>Inflexible</i> for a mile, and then, their
+road ending in a precipice, threw kisses with their saucy hands; little
+children ran out into the lagoon, shouting with joy; old men, in Sunday
+<i>parius</i> and with black Bibles under their arms, turned their solemn
+eyes to seaward and forgot for a moment the road to church. A white man,
+in striped pajamas, was surprised at morning coffee on the veranda of
+his little house. He darted inside, and reappeared with a magazine rifle
+which he emptied in the air, and followed up his courtesies by raising
+and lowering a Union Jack the size of a handkerchief. The battleship
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>dipped her stately white ensign in acknowledgment, as a swan might
+salute a fly, and swept on with majesty.</p>
+
+<p>With every mile the bays and wooded promontories grew increasingly
+familiar as Sir John was borne toward Lihua, the scene of his boyish
+folly. He looked ashore in wonder, surprised at the vividness and
+exactness of his recollection. He might have landed anywhere and found
+his way through those tangled, scented paths with no other guide but
+memory. There was Papaloloa with its roaring falls; there, the ti'a a
+Peau where he had shot his first goat; yonder, the misty heights of
+Tiarapu, where Tehea and he had camped a night in the clouds in an air
+of English cold. It was like a home-coming to see all these familiar
+scenes spreading out before him. He looked at his hands, his thin,
+veined, wrinkled hands, and it came over him with a sort of wonder that
+he was an old man.</p>
+
+<p>"That was forty years ago," he said to himself. "Forty years ago!"</p>
+
+<p>And yet, by God! it all seemed like yesterday.</p>
+
+<p>As Lihua opened out and he perceived, with an inexpressible pang, the
+thatched houses set deep in the shade of palms and breadfruit trees, he
+felt himself in the throes of a strange and painful indecision. He paced
+up and down the bridge; he lit a cigar and threw it away again; he twice
+approached Captain Stillwell as though to give an <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>order, and then,
+still in doubt, turned shamefacedly on his heel.</p>
+
+<p>"By the deep nine!" came the hoarse murmur of the leadsman.</p>
+
+<p>It lay with him to stop the ship or not; a word, and she would come
+shivering to a standstill; a word, and the boatswain would pipe away his
+gig and the crew would be running to their places. His heart ached with
+the desire to land, but something, he knew not what, withheld the order
+on his lips. Let him remain silent, and the opportunity would pass away
+forever; it was passing now with every turn of the propeller. Had he not
+told her he would return? Had he not whispered it that night when they
+were torn apart? Did he not owe it to her to keep the promise of forty
+years, a promise given in the flush of youth and hope, and sealed with
+scalding tears?</p>
+
+<p>His resolution was taken. He ordered Captain Stillwell to stop the ship
+and lower a boat.</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to treat myself to a run ashore," he said by way of
+explanation.</p>
+
+<p>The vessel slowly stopped. The covers were whipped off the gig. She was
+hoisted out and lowered, the crew dropping down the ladder into their
+places at the peep-peep-peep of the whistle.</p>
+
+<p>"I leave the ship," said Sir John, not to convey a fact patently
+obvious, but in obedience to a naval formula.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>He was landed at a little cove where in bygone days he had often whiled
+away an hour waiting in charge of Hadow's boat. It gave him a singular
+sensation to feel the keel grate against the shingle, and to find
+himself once more setting foot in Lihua. He drew a deep breath as he
+looked about and noticed how unchanged it all was. There were some new
+houses in new places, and grass on the sites of others that were
+endeared to him in recollection; but it was Lihua, after all, the Lihua
+of his boyhood, the Lihua of his dreams. For a while he strolled about
+at random, walking with the phantoms of the past, hearing their
+laughter, seeing their faces, recalling a thousand things he had
+forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>It came over him with a start that the village was empty. Then he
+remembered it was Sunday, and they were all in church. Thank God, there
+was none to watch him; no prying, curious eyes to disturb his thoughts.
+But they would soon be out again, and it behooved him to make the best
+use of his solitude while he might. He struck inland, his heart beating
+with a curious expectancy; at every sound he held his breath, and he
+would turn quickly and look back with a haunting sense that Tehea was
+near him; that perhaps she was gazing at him through the trees. He
+approached his old home through overgrown plantations. It awed him to
+part the branches and to feel himself drawing nearer at every step to
+the only house he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>had ever called his own. As he heard the splashing
+waterfall he stopped, not daring for the moment to go on. When at last
+he did so, and mounted the little hill, he found no house at all;
+nothing but ferns and weeds, man-high. He moved about here and there, up
+to the armpits in verdure, in a sort of consternation at discovering it
+gone.</p>
+
+<p>His foot struck against a boulder.</p>
+
+<p>He had forgotten there were any rocks on the hill. He moved along, and
+his foot struck again. He pressed the weeds back and looked down. He saw
+a tomb of crumbling cement, green with age and buried out of sight under
+the tangle.</p>
+
+<p>It had never occurred to him before that Tehea might be dead.</p>
+
+<p>He held back the undergrowth again and peered into the depths. Yes, it
+was the grave of a chief, or of a woman of rank, one of those artless
+mounds of cement and rock that the natives, with poetic fancy, used to
+call <i>falelauasi</i>, houses of sandalwood; <i>oliolisanga</i>, or the place
+where birds sing; or, in vulgar speech, simply <i>tuungamau</i>, or tombs.
+These words, unspoken, unthought of for forty years, lost, overlaid, and
+forgotten in some recess of his brain, now returned to him with
+tormenting recollection. He laid both hands on the thick stem of a shrub
+and tore it out of the ground. He seized another and dragged it out with
+the same ferocity. It was intolerable that she should suffocate under
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>all this warm, wet jungle; he would give her air and sunshine, she that
+had loved them both; he would uncover the poor stones that marked her
+last resting place; he would lay bare the earth that wrapped her dead
+beauty.</p>
+
+<p>He worked with desperation until his hands were bleeding, until his eyes
+were stung and blinded with the streaming sweat. Dizzy with the heat,
+parched with thirst, and sick with the steam that rose from the damp
+ground, he was forced again and again to desist and rest. He cut his
+waistcoat into slips and bound them round his bloody hands; he broke the
+blades of his penknife on recalcitrant roots that defied the strength of
+his arms; he labored with fury to complete the task he had set before
+him. Here he stood, within four walls of vegetation, the sky above him,
+the cracked and rotted tomb below, satisfied at last by the
+accomplishment of his duty. The gold on his sleeves was dirty and
+disordered; one of his shoulder-straps dangled loose from his sodden
+coat; his trousers were splashed with earth. But for the moment the post
+captain was forgotten in the man, as he mused on the tragedy of human
+life, on the mysteries of love and death and destiny, on his own
+irrevocable youth now so far behind him, when he had forfeited his honor
+for the dead woman at his feet. He called her aloud by name. He bent
+down and kissed her mossy bed. He whispered, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>with a strange conviction
+that she could hear him, that he had kept his promise to return.</p>
+
+<p>Then, rising to his feet, he turned toward the sea and retraced his
+steps. The people were still in church, and the village was deserted as
+before. He walked swiftly lest they might come flocking out before he
+could reach his boat, to torture him with recognition, with the
+questions they would ask, with their story of Tehea's death. Then he
+laughed at his own fears, remembering his white hair and the intervening
+generation. Time had passed over Borabora, too. The world, he
+remembered, was older by forty years&mdash;older and sadder and emptier.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>He swung himself up the ladder, mounted the bridge, and put the vessel
+on her course. The telegraph rang, the engineers repeated back the
+signal, and the great battleship, vibrating with her mighty engines,
+resumed once more her ponderous way.</p>
+
+<h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> "Existence doubtful; position doubtful," familiar
+contractions still on any Pacific chart.</p></div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
+<br />
+
+<hr />
+<br />
+<h2>O'S HEAD</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>Silver Tongue loved Rosalie, and Rosalie loved Silver Tongue, and ever
+since they had first met at the Taufusi Club dance their friends had
+seen the inevitable finish of their acquaintance. They were invited
+everywhere together, and the affair had progressed from the first or
+furtive stage to the secondary or solemn Sunday drive about the Eleele
+Sa. The third, that of carpenters adding a story to the bakery and
+dressmakers hard at work in Miss Potter's little establishment, was
+looming up close in view.</p>
+
+<p>Never was a match in Apia that gave a rosier promise of success. Silver
+Tongue, so called by the Samoans on account of his beautiful voice (but
+who in ordinary life answered to the homelier appellation of
+Oppenstedt), had been making a very good thing out of the Southern Cross
+Bakery, and was regarded throughout Apia as a man of responsibility and
+substance. He was a tall, spare German of about forty, who, like the
+most of us, had followed the sea before fate had brought him to the
+islands, there in years gone by to marry a Samoan maid and settle down.
+The little Samoan <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>had died, leaving behind her nothing but a memory in
+Silver Tongue's heart, a tangled grave in the foreign cemetery, and a
+host of relations who lived in tumble-down quarters in the rear of the
+bakery. In one way and another these hungry mouths must have been a
+considerable drain on Silver Tongue's resources; and though they feebly
+responded to his bounty&mdash;one by driving a natty cart and delivering hot
+morning rolls, and another by pilfering firewood for the furnace&mdash;the
+account (if one had been made) was far from even. But to any objection
+to this Quixotic generosity Silver Tongue had a reply ever ready on his
+lips. "I lofe dem like my fader," he would say in his deep, fluty voice,
+and the conversation was seldom carried further. When it was&mdash;by some
+one ill advised enough to do so&mdash;Silver Tongue would flare up, and
+recall with flashing eyes and a face crimson with indignation the
+ten-year debt of gratitude he owed his dead wife's <i>ainga</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, if Silver Tongue had a fault it was a certain moroseness and
+fierceness of temper, a readiness and even an apparent pleasure in
+taking offense, that made him somewhat of a solitary in our midst and
+threw him more than ever on the companionship of his own Kanakas; so
+that at night, when one had occasion to seek him out, he was usually to
+be found on the mats of his native house, smoking his pipe or playing
+<i>sweepy</i> with his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>bulky father-in-law, Papalangi Mativa. I doubt if he
+had another intimate in Apia besides myself, and though I must confess
+we often disagreed, and once or twice approached the verge of
+estrangement, I was too much his friend and too mindful of the old days
+on the <i>Ransom</i> to let such trifles come between us.</p>
+
+<p>I was, besides, Rosalie's friend as well, for old Clyde, her father, had
+died in my arms at Nonootch, and with his last breath had consigned her
+to my care. This obligation, rendered sacred by an association that
+extended back to the days of Steinberg and Bully Hayes, when in the
+<i>Moroa</i> and the <i>Eugenie</i> we had slept under the same mats and had
+played our part together in the stirring times of Stewart and the great
+Atuona Plantation&mdash;this obligation, I say, I met easily enough so long
+as Rosalie was a child and safe in the convent at Savalalo. But when she
+grew to womanhood and went to live with her relations in their shanty
+near the Firm, I began to experience some anxiety in regard to her. Her
+relations, to begin with, were not at all the kind of natives I liked.
+They had been too long the hangers-on of the Firm, and had seen too much
+of a low class of whites to be the proper guardians of a very pretty
+half-caste of eighteen. They had an ugly name, besides&mdash;but I won't be
+censorious&mdash;and it may have been all beach talk. But they were certainly
+a whining, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>begging lot, the girls bold and the men impudent and saucy,
+and I never saw Rosalie in their midst but it made me heartsick for her
+future.</p>
+
+<p>I did the little I could, and let it be pretty well understood about the
+beach that the man who played fast and loose with her would have to
+reckon with old Captain Branscombe. And then I got the missionary ladies
+to take her up, and as I never stinted a bit of money for her dresses
+and what not (as though Clyde's daughter wasn't worthy of the best in
+the land), she made good headway in what little gayeties took place in
+the town. Of course, I went about to keep an eye on her&mdash;that is, when
+they asked me to their parties, which wasn't always; and I remember once
+making very short work of one fellow, a labor captain from the Westward,
+who seemed bent on mischief till I took him out in the starlight and
+showed him the business end of my gun. To tell the truth, I never had a
+peaceful moment till he up anchor and cleared, for he was a good deal
+the kind of man I was at thirty, and he hung on in spite of me, keeping
+half the family in his pay while I kept the other, and he even landed
+the last night with muffled oars, when, instead of finding Rosalie on
+the beach to fly with him, he ran into <i>me</i>, laying for him under an
+umbrella!</p>
+
+<p>There were many who said I was in love with the girl myself, which, as
+like as not, was true; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>for she was one of those tall, queenly women,
+with a wonderful grace to anything she did, and magnificent dark eyes,
+and a way of smiling,&mdash;brilliant, arch, and tender&mdash;that made even an
+old stager of sixty remember he still wore a heart under his jumper.
+Yes, I had a pretty soft spot for Rosalie, though I had sense enough to
+know that God had never meant her for an old sea horse like myself. And
+lacking me&mdash;whom the weight of three-score years had put out of the ring
+(not but what I'm a pretty game old devil yet)&mdash;I could see nobody in
+sight I preferred half so much as Silver Tongue.</p>
+
+<p>So there was the situation till the war of Ninety-three came along to
+jumble us all up and knock everything to spillikins. Oppenstedt in love
+with Rosalie; Rosalie in love with Oppenstedt; Bahn and old Taylor
+working on the second story of the Southern Cross Bakery; Miss Potter
+doing double tides at the trousseau, and I, the friend of both, with a
+six-hundred-dollar piano on the way from Bremen for their wedding
+present. A fair wind, port in sight, and (say you) everything drawing
+nicely alow and aloft. So it was till that wretched fight at Vaitele,
+when the Vaimaunga came pouring in at dusk, bearing wounded, chorusing
+their songs, and tossing in the air above them the heads of their dead
+enemies. It made me feel bad to see it all, for to me these people were
+children, and it seemed horrible they should kill one another; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>and it
+made me sicker still to watch the wounded carried into the Mission and
+stretched out in rows on the blood-stained boards. Though not a drinking
+man, I braced up at Peter's bar and then went on to pass the time of day
+with Oppenstedt.</p>
+
+<p>I found him, as usual, on the mats of the native house, glumly smoking a
+pipe and talking politics with Papalangi Mativa. His lean, dark,
+handsome face was overcast, his eyes uneasy, and had I not known him for
+a brave man I should have thought that he was frightened. He was
+certainly very curt and short in greeting me, and I had a dim perception
+that my visit was unwelcome.</p>
+
+<p>"This is a black business, Silver Tongue," I said; though, to be exact,
+I called him Leoalio, which means the same thing in native.</p>
+
+<p>"Plack!" he exclaimed. "It's horrible! It's disgusting! They have been
+cutting off beople's heads!"</p>
+
+<p>"Fourteen by one count," I said; "twenty-two by another."</p>
+
+<p>"Gabtain," said he with a look of extraordinary gravity, "dere's worse
+nor that!"</p>
+
+<p>"Worse?" I said.</p>
+
+<p>"I have it straight from Papalangi Mativa himself."</p>
+
+<p>"Have what?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Excellency," said Papalangi Mativa, "perhaps it is not high-chief-known
+to thee that I and mine come from a noble Savai'i stock, and that the
+son of my mother's sister, a stripling named O, numbered himself among
+the enemy and was to-day killed and his head taken on the field of
+Vaitele."</p>
+
+<div class="img"><a name="imagep118" id="imagep118"></a>
+<a href="images/imagep118.jpg">
+<img border="0" src="images/imagep118.jpg" width="95%" alt="This is a black business, Silver Tongue" /></a><br />
+<p class="cen" style="margin-top: .2em;">"'This is a black business, Silver Tongue,' I said."<span class="totoi"><a href="#toi">ToList</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>"<i>Aue!</i>" I said, which in Kanaka is being sympathetic.</p>
+
+<p>"Dat is not all," said Silver Tongue. "Listen, gabtain!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm listening," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"The warrior that killed O was To'oto'o, the <i>matai</i>," continued
+Papalangi Mativa with the air of one announcing the end of the world.</p>
+
+<p>"To'oto'o!" I said in all innocence.</p>
+
+<p>"To'oto'o," cried Silver Tongue; "why, Rosalie's uncle, the <i>faipule</i>,
+in whose house this very minute the head of my murdered relation lies!"</p>
+
+<p>"'Pon my soul," I exclaimed, "this is really unfortunate!"</p>
+
+<p>"Unfordunate!" cried Silver Tongue; "is it with such a word you describe
+two hearts broken, two lives plasted, the fairest prospect with suddenly
+crash the curdain led down!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what you're talking about," I said. "It's disagreeable, I
+admit, but I can't see what difference it can make to you and Rosalie."</p>
+
+<p>"An Oppenstedt," said Silver Tongue, "could never indermarry with the
+family of a murderer, and least of all with a family that had the head
+of my dead wife's relation cut off and carried with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>gapers and cries of
+joy down the main street of Apia and past my place of peeziness!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to say it's all off with you and Rosalie?" I demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Silver Tongue nodded grimly. "All off," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"And you're going to break my girl's heart," I cried with what I think,
+under the circumstances, was a very justifiable indignation, "because
+the son of the aunt of your father-in-law has had his head cut off by
+poor Rosalie's adopted uncle?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," said Silver Tongue.</p>
+
+<p>"Old friend," I said, "let me go before I say something I might regret."
+I got up without waiting for any answer and strode into the street, too
+consumed with anger to utter another word. I walked along the beach,
+stopping here and there to discuss the news of the battle with those of
+my friends I happened to meet, until at last I passed Savalalo and drew
+near To'oto'o's house at Songi. Rosalie was standing at the gate, and
+when she saw me she ran up, threw her arms round my neck and kissed me.
+I had never known her so excited or so gay, and even in the dark I could
+see that her beautiful eyes were shining.</p>
+
+<p>"Captain," she said, giving me a hug, "nobody will ever say a word
+against To'oto'o again, or try to belittle him as they used to, just
+because he's poor and lives on Seu's land, for to-day he fought like a
+lion and covered himself with glory!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>"Took a head, or something?" I said.</p>
+
+<p>"A hero!" she exclaimed. "They are composing a song in his honor; all
+Songi is ringing with his name; and he was complimented for his valor by
+the President and Chief Justice! You must come in and see it at once."</p>
+
+<p>"See what?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"The head!" she cried.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>I haven't the heart to write how the news was broken to Rosalie, who
+steadfastly refused to believe the truth until she had heard it from
+Silver Tongue himself. I had hoped he might relent, with a night to
+think it over and a letter from myself in the morning pointing out his
+injustice and folly. Perhaps, now I remember it, that letter was a
+mistake. It was a trifle warm in spots, and I dare say I let a natural
+irritation get the better of me. Be that as it may, Oppenstedt was deaf
+to reason and protested with undiminished vehemence that he refused to
+ally himself with the family of a murderer. Indeed, so ridiculous did he
+get on the subject that he sent to Sydney for a tombstone (I daren't
+write headstone, though it was one, about the size of a silk hat) and
+put it behind the bakery above the spot where O's head was buried in a
+gin case.</p>
+
+<p>When a girl has gone a certain length she seems less able than a man to
+withstand a disappointment <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>in love. Silver Tongue simply clenched his
+teeth, withdrew from the Concordia Club and the Wednesday night bowls at
+Conrad's, and went on baking bread and rolls much as usual. Poor Rosalie
+drooped like a flower in the sun, and though she had pride enough to act
+a part and show a becoming spirit before the world, she had received a
+wound that I sometimes feared might prove mortal. I sent her to Tonga
+Taboo for a month, and she came back no better, her eyes black ringed
+and her cheeks hollow, and her smile (always to me the most beautiful
+smile in the world), with a curious, haunting pathos that I remember so
+well in the old slaving days among the Line women in their chains.</p>
+
+<p>You must not think I tamely acquiesced in this state of affairs, or
+allowed my old friend an undisturbed possession of the Kanaka quarters
+behind the bakery. Late or early I gave him no peace, and plagued him, I
+dare say, to the very verge of distraction. But I might as well have
+tried to argue with his bread or soften his brick furnace for any
+impression I succeeded in making upon him. In his crazy obstinacy he
+would listen to nothing, and I would find myself, after one of these
+interviews, in a state of indescribable exasperation and determined
+never to go near him again.</p>
+
+<p>One night, when I was up at Malifa calling on a dear good friend of
+mine, Sasa French, a charming <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>and most accomplished young native lady,
+our talk happened to run for the thousandth time on this vexing matter
+of Rosalie and Silver Tongue. All of a sudden an idea came into Sasa's
+pretty head&mdash;one of those brilliant, clever, feminine ideas&mdash;that seemed
+to us, in that triumphant moment, to be the means of untangling all our
+difficulties. Though it was eight o'clock, and there was the risk of
+gossip in my driving Sasa French alone about the Municipality at such an
+hour, I put her into my buggy, whipped up my horse, and set a straight
+course for Seumanutafa, the high chief of Apia. He laughed a good deal,
+demurred somewhat, and was finally persuaded to squeeze his Herculean
+dimensions into the trap and start off with us for To'oto'o's house at
+Songi. Here, after the usual ceremonious exchanges, the womenfolk and
+children melted away and left us alone with To'oto'o, whose ferretty
+eyes betrayed no small degree of curiosity and alarm. This man was one
+of the few Samoans I never liked. He was a gaunt, dangerous,
+crafty-looking customer of about fifty, and I never had had any use for
+him since he had stolen my tethering rope one evening when I was calling
+on the king. Well, to get on with my story, we talked about the weather,
+and the war, and what an ass the Ta'ita'ifono was, and finally got round
+to the matter in hand.</p>
+
+<p>Seumanutafa began mild, for he was a past <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>master in the art of
+graduation, and thought to go slow at first. To'oto'o was informed that
+he had to make <i>ifonga</i> for the death of O and be carried on the morrow
+by the <i>taulelea</i> to Papalangi Mativa's house behind the bakery. This
+<i>ifonga</i>, as they call it, is a sort of public humiliation to expiate a
+fault, and nobody's very keen about doing it unless they have to&mdash;for it
+involves rubbing dirt in your hair, and singing small, and suffering a
+sort of social eclipse for a week or two afterwards. To'oto'o's face
+grew several shades darker at the suggestion, and though I promised him
+twenty dollars out of hand for himself and two kegs of beef and three
+tins of biscuit by way of peace offering to Papalangi Mativa, he hemmed
+and hawed and finally said no.</p>
+
+<p>Then Sasa bore a hand and spoke beautifully of Rosalie, and how this
+unfortunate business of O's head had divided her from Silver Tongue.</p>
+
+<p>"If thou makest peace with his <i>ainga</i>," said Sasa, "lo, what is there
+left for the white man to say? His bond is that of marriage; theirs,
+that of blood; and if the last be satisfied, what room is there for the
+former to complain?"</p>
+
+<p>"But to be carried like a pig through the public street!" cried
+To'oto'o. "Preferable far would be death itself than that the son of
+chiefs should be thus degraded, and his name become a mock throughout
+the Tuamasanga!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>"O To'oto'o," said Seumanutafa, "we know thee for a brave man, and that
+thou tookst this head in open battle, even as David did that of Goliath,
+and I swear thee thy honor shall remain undimmed for all the seeming
+appearance of humiliation. Besides, is it not written in the Holy Book
+that thou shouldst turn the other cheek to the smiter? Is it not said
+also that blessed is the peacemaker, and that the meek shall inherit the
+earth?"</p>
+
+<p>"Weighty is my grief and pain," said To'oto'o, "but what your Highness
+asks of me is impossible!"</p>
+
+<p>"O To'oto'o," said Seumanutafa, "this house is mine; this land is mine;
+the plantation <i>i uta</i> is mine also. Thou livest under the shadow of my
+power, and it is meet thou shouldst pay in service for the bounty thou
+hast so long enjoyed. First I spoke to thee as one brave man to another;
+then as a Christian to a fellow-Christian; now I command thee as thy
+chief, and verily thou shalt obey!"</p>
+
+<p>"And I will add to that twenty, making it twenty-five," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"And Rosalie shall marry her Silver Tongue after all," said Sasa.</p>
+
+<p>To'oto'o argued a little more for form's sake, and blustered somewhat
+about the Chief Justice, and how he would fight the matter out in the
+courts; but Seumanutafa's tone grew peremptory, and the old fellow
+finally gave way all round. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>Then <i>'ava</i> was brought in, the
+arrangements made for the morrow, and we at length said <i>tofa</i> on the
+threshold, well pleased with our night's work.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>I wish you could have seen us next day going through the town in a
+little procession, headed by To'oto'o lashed to a pole and borne by a
+crowd of retainers. There was a flavor of the burial of Sir John Moore
+about the whole business&mdash;especially the hush&mdash;and not a funeral note
+being heard; we marching with measured tread, the municipal police
+bringing up the rear, and Seumanutafa in the center, nearly seven feet
+high, and bearing a white umbrella above his stately head.</p>
+
+<p>Silver Tongue was standing in the front of his shop having an
+altercation with the Chief Justice about a ham (for he did a little in
+groceries as well as baked) as we hove in sight and began to file down
+the lane to Papalangi Mativa's quarters behind the Southern Cross
+Bakery. I suppose Silver Tongue thought our man was hurt, or something,
+for he came running after us with a bottle of square-face and a packet
+of first aid to the wounded, elbowing his way excitedly through the
+crowd to where we had deposited To'oto'o at the feet of Papalangi
+Mativa. He was the most astonished baker in the South Seas as he saw who
+lay there in the jumble of beef and biscuit, and for a moment was too
+stupefied to let out a word.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>I don't mean to go into the speech-making part of the performance, for
+what between Seumanutafa and Papalangi Mativa, and the talking-man Sasa
+had lent me for the occasion, and a divinity student who happened along,
+and somebody who said he was Fale Upolu and spoke for the entire Group,
+and an aged <i>faipule</i> from the Union Islands who seemed to have some
+kind of a grievance about his father's head, and the Chief Justice who
+had to butt in with the capitation tax&mdash;we were kept there a matter of
+three hours or more, until at last the principals officially made it up,
+To'oto'o was forgiven, and everything ended happily.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Silver Tongue," I said as the meeting dispersed, "we'll consider
+that head affair canceled, and if you'll come over to my house to-night
+I dare say you'll find Rosalie sitting on the front veranda!"</p>
+
+<p>"And do you for a moment think," he said with a strange, writhen smile,
+"dat all dis talk and domfoolery will a gruel murder undo, and the young
+man cut off in his brime restore? Weel those lips, so gold in death,
+stir, think you, in the box where we laid him? Will my dead wife's
+family be less bereaved because of two kegs of peef and three tins of
+biscuit, or Rosalie's family less disgraced because her uncle was triced
+through the streets like a big? No, Gaptain Branscombe, I'm only a poor
+paker, but I'd count myself a traidor <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>to my family were I to dake a
+murderess for my pride!"</p>
+
+<p>"Rosalie isn't a murderess," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"I meant niece of a murderer," he returned.</p>
+
+<p>I was too speechless with indignation to utter another word. In the
+course of sixty years on this planet I've seen many kinds of men, and
+I've learned to detect in some a certain look about the eyes&mdash;a curious
+light and a far-away dreaminess of expression&mdash;that seems always the
+sign or mark of an unflinching obstinacy. I remember that self-same look
+on Brand's face as we lay all flattened on the water tanks of the
+<i>Moroa</i>, and he blew the main deck off the ship together with three
+hundred human beings; and I guess the Christian martyrs had it, too,
+when lions tore them to pieces and bulls kited them on their horns in
+the Colosseum. Anyway, it was as plain as daylight that I had lost my
+time and money in bothering about Oppenstedt, and that I might as well
+give him up as the most incorrigible, stiff-necked, self-opinionated,
+blunder-headed ass and lunatic this side of Muggin.</p>
+
+<p>I gave him a wide berth after this, and took the other side of the
+street when I saw him coming; while he, for his part, would have
+cheerfully run a mile for the chance of avoiding me. I had cares of my
+own, too, about this time, what with the loss of the <i>Daisy Walker</i>, and
+my libel suit with Grevsmuhl, and other things to think about than <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>that
+of bringing twin souls together. So the days drifted on and months came
+and went, and it seemed all over for good between Rosalie and Silver
+Tongue. Then that labor captain turned up again, him I had had trouble
+with before, a black-eyed, fierce, handsome little fellow, who was
+hotter than ever after my girl. Rosalie was just in the humor to do
+something awful, for she was desperately unhappy, with spells of wild
+gayety between, and a recklessness about herself that frightened me more
+than I can tell. She laughed in my face when I warned her about the
+labor captain, and told me straight out she was only a half-caste and it
+didn't matter what became of her. And from the way she carried on and
+got herself talked about from one end of the beach to the other, it
+began to look as though she meant what she said. Altogether I felt
+pretty blue about her, and savage enough against Silver Tongue to
+have&mdash;Well, what on earth could I do? What could anybody do? Why had God
+ever made such a silly ass of a baker?</p>
+
+<p>One day I got a note from Sasa French that took me up to Malifa at a
+tearing run. Scanlon, the half-caste policeman, was there, and when I
+had listened to his story I threw my hat in the air and shouted like a
+boy, and Sasa and I waltzed up and down the veranda to the petrifaction
+of two missionary ladies who happened to be passing in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>tow of some
+square-toes from the Home Society. Sasa and I plumped into a buggy, and
+with Scanlon on horseback pounding behind us we made all sail for
+Seumanutafa's. Bidding him follow, we then raced off to Mulinu'u, where,
+sure enough, we found a young man named Tautala in one of the houses,
+who brought out the music box and very soon satisfied me as to the truth
+of what Scanlon had said. Then at a slower pace, so that Tautala might
+keep up with us, we walked to To'oto'o's house and taxed him with the
+whole business!</p>
+
+<p>At first he made some show of denying it, but what could he say with
+Scanlon and Tautala in risen witness against him? He tried to refuse to
+come with us (which would have spoiled everything), until Scanlon took a
+hand in the fray and let his imagination run riot about the law, which,
+as he was the official representative of it and wore a pewter star on
+his breast, soon settled To'oto'o's half-hearted objections. If anything
+else were wanted, it was the arrival at this juncture of Seumanutafa at
+the head of a dozen retainers, who added the finishing stroke to the
+little resistance To'oto'o had left. Then we all started off for the
+Southern Cross Bakery, and, as we walked slowly and naturally, attracted
+a good deal of attention; and as we told every one we met where we were
+going to, and why, we grew and grew until, as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>I looked down the
+procession, I couldn't see the end of it. The Chief Justice was sucked
+in. Likewise the President. Marquardt, the chief of police, joined us;
+Haggard, the land commissioner; some Mormon missionaries; two lay
+brothers from the school; a lot of passengers from the mail boat, with
+handkerchiefs stuck into their sweaty collars; Captain Hufnagel on
+horseback, with a small army of Guadalcanaar laborers; half the synod of
+the Wesleyan church in white <i>lavalavas</i> and hymn-books; a picnic party
+that had just returned (not wholly sober) from the Papase'ea;
+blue-jackets from the <i>Sperber</i>; blue-jackets from the <i>Walleroo</i>; three
+survivors of the British bark <i>Windsor Castle</i>, burned at sea; a German
+scientist in Jaeger costume, with blue spectacles and a butterfly net;
+six whole boatloads of an <i>aumoenga</i> party from Manu'a; a lot of
+political prisoners on parole; two lepers, and Charley Taylor!</p>
+
+<p>It was well we had brought Marquardt with us, for he and his police
+caught the humor of the thing, and on reaching the bakery formed us up
+in a great hollow square with one side blank for Silver Tongue, who
+stood and gazed at us transfixed from the shade of his veranda. Then
+Seumanutafa, Sasa, Scanlon, Tautala, To'oto'o, and I broke ranks and
+marched up to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Old man," I said, "if you were to think a year you'd never guess what
+brought us here to-day!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>"It's O's head again," he said, grinding his teeth and casting a
+vitriolic glance at To'oto'o, "and if there was any law or order in this
+Godforsaken land"&mdash;he looked daggers at the Chief Justice as he said
+this&mdash;"that fellar would have got short jift for murdering my
+fader-in-law's aunt's son!"</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't murder him," I said.</p>
+
+<p>Silver Tongue's jaw fell. He looked at us quite overcome. For a minute
+he couldn't say a word.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but he deed!" he said at last.</p>
+
+<p>"It was Tautala that killed him," I said, indicating the young man we
+had brought from Mulinu'u, "and it turns out he sold your relation's
+head to To'oto'o for seven dollars and a music box." At this, smiling
+from ear to ear, Tautala held up the music box to public view, and would
+have set it going had not something fortunately caught in the works.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a lie!" gasped Silver Tongue. "It's a lie!"</p>
+
+<p>"Scanlon himself was at the battle," I went on, "and he saw the whole
+thing and was a witness to Tautala getting the seven dollars, and he
+made To'oto'o pony up four dollars more as the price of his own
+secrecy."</p>
+
+<p>"Four dollars," ejaculated Scanlon. "That's right, Captain Branscombe.
+Four dollars!"</p>
+
+<p>"So, if you are angry with anybody," I said, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>"you ought to be angry
+with Tautala. All To'oto'o did was to buy a little cheap notoriety for
+eleven dollars and a music box."</p>
+
+<p>I never saw a man so stung in all my life as Oppenstedt. The eyes seemed
+to start from his head, and he glared at To'oto'o as though he could
+have strangled him. Tautala was quite forgotten in the intensity of his
+indignation toward Rosalie's uncle. You see, he had been hating To'oto'o
+ferociously for six months, and couldn't switch off at a moment's notice
+on an absolute stranger like Tautala. Besides, his hatred for To'oto'o
+had become a kind of monomania with him, and now here I was telling him
+what a fool he had made of himself, and proving it with two witnesses
+and a music box. No wonder that he was staggered.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, old fellow," I said, "we'll call bygones bygones, and maybe you'll
+let us see a little more of you than we've been doing lately."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean Rosalie, of gourse," he said, snapping the words like a mad
+dog.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Rosalie," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"Gaptain Branscombe," he said, his face convulsed with passion, "that
+gossumate liar and hybocrite has made such a thing impossible. Far rader
+would I lay me in the grave&mdash;far rader would I have wild horses on me
+trample&mdash;than that I should indermarry with a family and bossibly
+betaint my innocent kinder with the plood of so shogging and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>unprincibled a liar. A man so lost to shame, so beplunged in cowardice
+and deceit that he couldn't his own heads cut off, but must buy dem of
+others, and faunt himself a hero while honest worth bassed unnoticed and
+bushed aside."</p>
+
+<p>"It was honest worth that chopped off the head of your father-in-law's
+aunt's son!" I said.</p>
+
+<p>"Gaptain," he returned, "there are oggasions when in condrast to a
+liar&mdash;to a golossal liar&mdash;to one who has made a peeziness of systematic
+deception&mdash;a murderer is a shentlemans!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you villain baker!" cried Sasa, joining in. "You make <i>tongafiti</i>.
+You never want marry the girl at all. All the time you say something
+different. Oh, you bad mans, you break girls' hearts&mdash;and serve you
+right somebody cut your head off!"</p>
+
+<p>"Wish they would," I said, out of all patience with the fellow. "First
+he can't marry Rosalie because her uncle's a murderer. Now he can't
+marry her because her uncle's a liar. Disprove that, and he'd dig up
+some fresh objection!"</p>
+
+<p>"I lofe her! I lofe her!" protested Silver Tongue.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come," I said, "you aren't marrying the girl's adopted uncle."</p>
+
+<p>"A traidor to my family? No, gaptain, dat is what I can never be," said
+Silver Tongue.</p>
+
+<p>"Traitor&mdash;nothing!" I said.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the silly baker!" said Sasa.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>"He speaks like a delirious person," said Seumanutafa.</p>
+
+<p>"Now about that ham," said the Chief Justice, belligerently coming
+forward and speaking in rich Swedish accents, "when I send my servant
+for a ham, Mr. Oppenstedt, I want a good ham&mdash;not a great, coarse, fat,
+stinking lump of dog meat&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Let's go," I said to Sasa; "Captain Morse is holding back the <i>Alameda</i>
+for a talk, and I know there's an iced bucket of something in the corner
+of his cabin."</p>
+
+<p>"Wish the dear old captain would land and punch his head off!" said Sasa
+vindictively.</p>
+
+<p>"Whose head?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Silver Tongue's," she returned.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Sasa had always plagued me to get up a moonlight sailing party on the
+<i>Nukanono</i>, a little fifteen-ton schooner of mine that plied about the
+Group. From one reason and another the thing had never come off, though
+we had talked and arranged it all time and time again. Now that I had
+remasted her and overhauled her copper and painted her inside and out,
+the subject had bobbed up again; and as I couldn't make any objection,
+and as the moon for the first time in seven years had happened to be
+full at the same moment when the vessel happened to be free, Sasa
+informed me (in the autocratic manner of lovely woman dealing with an
+old <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>sea horse) that the invitations were out, the music engaged, and
+that my part was to plank down fifty dollars, keep my mouth shut, and do
+what I was told.</p>
+
+<p>I perceived from the beginning that there was something queer about the
+trip, for Sasa, usually so communicative, could scarcely be induced to
+speak of it at all; and then when she did it was with such a parade of
+mystery and reserve that I felt myself completely baffled. However, like
+the jossers in the poem, it wasn't for me to reason why, and so I
+obediently ran about the beach, did what I was bidden, and discreetly
+asked no questions. I confess, though, that on the day itself my
+curiosity began to reach the breaking point, when I was told, with
+gentle impressiveness, that I was to remain in my house till the minute
+of nine forty-five, pull off quietly to the <i>Nukanono</i>, board her by the
+fore chains, and crouch there in the bow till I was told to get up!</p>
+
+<p>It was a glorious moonlight night as I got into Joe's boat and saw the
+<i>Nukanono</i> across the bay, her loosened sails flapping in the first
+faint breath of the land breeze, and her booms sparkling from end to end
+with Chinese lanterns. The water was like black glass, the outer reefs
+were silent, and the downpouring air from the mountains was fragrant
+with <i>moso'oi</i>, and so warm and scented against the cheek that I doubt
+not but what you could have <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>smelled Upolu ninety miles to leeward. As
+we drew nearer, the sound of girls' laughter, the tuning of musical
+instruments, the hum and talk and gayety of a large company, floated
+over to us from the schooner's deck, wonderfully mellowed by the
+intervening water and (as it seemed to me) softened into a sort of
+harmony with the night itself.</p>
+
+<p>However, I did not allow these reflections to put me off my duty or make
+me forgetful of the strict commands I had previously received from Sasa.
+I came up softly under the bow of the <i>Nukanono</i>, dismissed Joe in a
+whisper, and climbed silently to my appointed station. I had not been
+there a minute when I felt Sasa's hand on my shoulder and heard her say
+softly in my ear, "<i>Malie</i>," which in Samoan means good or well done.
+Then she slipped away, and I heard her with sweet imperiousness ordering
+about the crew and bidding them slip the moorings. We had hardly got
+steerage-way when I heard a commotion aft, a choking, angry voice, that
+sounded through the hubbub like Silver Tongue's, a quick, fierce,
+violent struggle, and then suddenly the companion hatch went shut with a
+bang. Even as it did so the fore-hatch followed with a crash, and
+everybody began to cheer. From below there rose the sound of thumping,
+smothered Teutonic protests, and a long, poignant, and unmistakably
+feminine wail.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>"All finish, captain," said Sasa, coming up to me cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you mind telling me what it's all about?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Just a little <i>tongafiti</i> to bring loving hearts together," said Sasa.
+"They threw Silver Tongue down the after hatchway, while me and the
+girls we pushed Rosalie down the forehold. There they are, all alone in
+the dark, with five hours to make it up!"</p>
+
+<p>I could not help laughing at Sasa's plan, especially when under my feet
+I began to hear more frenzied thumping and more feminine wails. Then I
+recollected there wasn't five feet of headroom below, and that the
+place, even with the hatches off, was hot enough to boil water in.</p>
+
+<p>"They'll die down there, Sasa," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"No fear," said Sasa. "Rosalie is half Samoa, and as for Silver
+Tongue&mdash;if he get roast like his own bread nobody care a banana."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Sasa&mdash;" I protested.</p>
+
+<p>"Now you go flirt with some my girls," she said, "and don't bother your
+old head about nothings!"</p>
+
+<p>"But, my dear girl&mdash;" I protested.</p>
+
+<p>"They'll do very nicely, thank you," said Sasa, interrupting me, "and if
+they're hungry, isn't there ham sandwich? And if they're thirsty, isn't
+there claret punch in a milk can? And as for lights&mdash;true lovers don't
+want no lights!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>"Well, Sasa," I said, "I dare say it's a bright idea, and that you
+deserve the greatest credit for arranging it all; but for the lord's
+sake, let me off the ship before you remove the hatches."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no," said Sasa, "everybody stay and see the fun!"</p>
+
+<p>Fun, indeed, I thought, as I heard a terrific pounding below, and an
+uproar that would have been creditable to a sinking liner. The deck
+shook with sledge-hammer blows, and a lot of glasses tumbled off one of
+our improvised tables. Then we heard what was obviously a revengeful
+wrecking of the whole ship's interior&mdash;the smashing of crockery and
+lamps, a tramping and a kicking and a throwing down of everything that
+was loose or could be wrenched off, together with a hollow,
+reverberatory boom of German profan&mdash;&mdash; No, I won't be unjust, and one
+really couldn't hear well. Sasa stamped on the deck with her little foot
+and cried out: "Be quiet, you silly baker!" But the silly baker only
+roused himself to a renewed ferocity, and, instead of calming down, went
+off again like twenty-five bunches of firecrackers under a barrel&mdash;and
+large firecrackers, too.</p>
+
+<p>Off and on he must have kept this up for more than an hour; then at
+length he subsided, finding, I suppose, that one German baker, however
+infuriated, was unable to make an impression on a three-inch deck. By
+the end of the second hour <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>we had forgotten all about him, for heeling
+over in the pleasant breeze, and what with singing and telling stories
+and flirting in the moonlight we were all too happy and too busy to take
+thought of the stifling lovers below our feet. Occasionally I had a
+haunting sense of a day of reckoning, but I held my peace and forebore
+to disquiet my pretty hostess, who was the life and soul of the whole
+party aboard, and whose silvery laughter chimed in so sweetly with the
+tropic night and the rippling gurgle of water along our keel.</p>
+
+<p>It was past three o'clock when we picked up the Mission light and ran
+back to our moorings off the Firm. Then the question arose as to who
+would uncage our love-birds and bear the first brunt of Silver Tongue's
+explosion. I confess I was very little eager for the job, and felt a
+peculiar sinking in the region of my watch pocket as we unlocked the
+after-hatch and rolled it softly back, Sasa, with a bull's-eye lantern
+penetrating the gloom with a dazzling circle of light. It fell on the
+figures of Rosalie and Silver Tongue seated on a settee and locked in
+each other's arms. Rosalie was asleep, with her graceful head lying on
+Silver Tongue's breast and her long lashes still wet with tears. The
+baker, his face crimson with heat and streaked with rivulets of
+perspiration, looked up at us grimly through a sort of mist. I waited
+for him to spring to his feet and throw himself <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>like a lion on my
+shrinking form; but, instead of doing so, he pressed his arms closer
+round Rosalie and smiled&mdash;yes, by Jove, smiled&mdash;and, if you'll take the
+word of a retired master mariner, winked, with a peculiar, tender and
+calfish expression that in anybody else would have been called skittish.</p>
+
+<p>"How goes it, old man?" I said.</p>
+
+<p>"Gaptain," he returned in the tone of a clarionet tootling a love
+passage in grand opera, "me and Rosalie invites you all to the Bublic
+Hall Thursday night to dance at our wedding!"</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>
+<br />
+
+<hr />
+<br />
+<h2>PROFESSOR NO NO</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>It was years ago that he came to Uvea (said little Nofo, as we sat side
+by side on a derelict spar and watched the sun go down into the
+lagoon)&mdash;years and years and years ago, when I was an unthinking child
+and knew naught of men nor their crooked hearts. He was a chief, of wild
+and strange appearance, with a black beard half covering his piglike
+face; a thin, bent, elderly chief, with hairy hands, and a head on which
+there was nothing at all, and teeth so loose in his mouth that at night
+he laid them in a cup beside him. He was landed from a ship that
+forthwith sailed and was never seen again&mdash;he and three tents, and a
+boat and innumerable boxes, all numbered from one to a thousand, and a
+nigger named Billy Hindoo to care for him and cook.</p>
+
+<p>The Government gave him a piece of land next the lagoon, where he
+pitched his tents and lived; and they put a taboo round the land so that
+none might cross, and also a notice on a board, saying, "Be careful of
+the white man." Here he unpacked his things, and arranged a place for
+Billy Hindoo, and another place, open at the sides, where at a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>table he
+was daily served with sardines and bottled beer. He was named Professor,
+and his occupation, unlike that of all other white men, was to look at
+dead fish through bits of glass. He was a man of no kindness nor
+accomplishments, meanly solitary, and, in spite of two pairs of
+spectacles worn the one on the other, he was almost blind besides. Were
+you to come near him, he would scream out, "No, no!" Were you even to
+touch his bits of glass, or finger his sticky shadow pictures in the
+pool, he would run at you, crying, "No, no!" Were you to approach him as
+he bathed in the lagoon, marveling at his unsightliness, he would beat
+the water like one delirious, and scream again, "No, no!" So, in time,
+his name became changed from Professor into No No, or, as many called
+him in one word, Professor No No; and we all grew to hate him, as did
+also Billy Hindoo, who was generous and loving, and gave away
+unstintedly sardines and biscuit to those he favored.</p>
+
+<p>But Professor No No, unexpectedly returning in his boat with a new dead
+fish no bigger than that (a fish, too, of so little worth that one
+couldn't eat it without feeling ill for the succeeding week), discovered
+Billy Hindoo dividing a tin of biscuit among the girls with whom he had
+made friends. The rage of Professor No No was without limit, and he ran
+at Billy Hindoo and choked him with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>his hairy hands, and beat him over
+the body with a stick, and drove him away with execrations. Then he sat
+down at the table and drank bottled beer, and held up the fish to his
+blind eyes, and at intervals shouted out, "No, no; No, no," as we all
+crowded about the taboo line, watching and wondering.</p>
+
+<p>The next day Billy Hindoo came back, but Professor No No repelled him
+with a stick, having counted the beer and the sardines and the biscuit,
+and found many missing. Then Billy Hindoo sought a place in the house of
+Tamua, and being a man of subtle mind, though without paper on which to
+write, carved the date of his rejection on a tree, together with the
+names of witnesses who had seen him struck. He would fain have brought
+suit against his master before the ancients, but they were afraid of
+men-of-war, and thought it ill to interfere. But the anger of Billy
+Hindoo surpassed that of a woman whose man has cast her off; and,
+baffled in one direction, he redoubled his efforts in another, telling
+tales about Professor No No that made the strongest shudder to hear
+them; how, indeed, he was Antichrist, and that his coming to Uvea had
+been foretold in Revelations. Whether this was true or false, it was
+evident that Professor No No believed not in God; for it was seen he
+went never to church, and remembered (when strangers asked him if he
+were a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>missionary) that he would grow beside himself and roar, "No,
+no!" snorting like a suffocating person.</p>
+
+<p>Now there lived in the village a chief named Malamalama, a young man who
+owned a fine house and much land, and was withal so handsome and gay
+that there was scarce a woman but whose eyes shone at the sight of him.
+And Malamalama's wife was named Salesa, and the strange thing about
+Salesa was that she was white. Her father had been a <i>papalangi</i>, and
+her mother (who came from another island to the southward) a half-white;
+and Salesa, the child of the two, was fairer than either, and a girl,
+besides, of wonderful beauty. It was this that found her favor in
+Malamalama's sight, for she was without family, and what Kanaka blood
+she possessed was that of slaves; but the chief must needs have his way,
+being a man of imperious temper and willful under advice; and so the
+little out-islander was married to him and elevated to the rank of
+chieftainess.</p>
+
+<p>Then her arrogance and pride, previously concealed by the humbleness of
+her station, broke out with the fierceness of consuming flames. Were you
+to pass her on the road and say, "<i>Talofa, Salesa</i>," she often deigned
+not to return your greeting; and when people came to her house she did
+not like, she would say to them, "Go away," like that, so that everyone
+was insulted and retired with darkened faces. Of course, she was not
+utterly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>without friends, women of contemptible spirit who fawned on her
+like dogs, saying, "Lo, is she not beautiful?" But they were only a
+handful, and by degrees grew less and less, for she was as mean with her
+property as Professor No No, and made the most trifling returns for pigs
+or costly presents. So in time she was left alone in her fine house, and
+though she had a sewing machine and a musical box, and goldfish in a
+glass jar, and an umbrella with a glittering handle, she spent her days
+in yawning, and her nights in telling Malamalama what a fool she had
+been to marry him.</p>
+
+<p>After the manner of men, Malamalama's love increased in the proportion
+of her disdain, and there was nothing he would not do to try and please
+her. He took her on board every succeeding ship, and remained for hours
+in the trade room while she spent the price of many tons of copra and
+pearl shell in filling a chest with purchases, saying, in her
+presumptuous way, "Give me twenty fathoms of this; give me forty fathoms
+of the other. This silk is good, lo! I will take a bolt." And
+Malamalama, who perhaps wanted an anchor for his boat, or a little,
+tiny, trifling pea-soupo of paint, had perforce to do without either,
+and paddle ashore again, poorer, indeed, than many of his serfs and
+dependents.</p>
+
+<p>On these occasions also Salesa showed a lawless deportment among the
+whites that put her good <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>name in jeopardy and caused many to wonder and
+gossip. She would sit at the cabin table and drink beer and eat
+sardines, saying saucily, "Me white mans, too," as she joked and laughed
+with the captains and supercargoes. Or, if some one put his head down
+the hatchway, she would call out, "Oh, the Kanaka dog! Go 'way, you
+peeping Kanaka dog!" Whereat the whites would slap her on the back, and
+it was said they even placed her on their knees and kissed her. Be that
+true or false, Malamalama grew to hate the sight of a ship; and
+sometimes, when he and Salesa went on board together, he showed her a
+sharp knife, and said, "Be careful, you wicked white woman, or I shall
+kill you."</p>
+
+<p>She was as changeable as a little child, and had humors, too, of
+tenderness and contrition, when she would put her arms round her
+husband's neck and be-darling him, saying, "I love you! I love you!" and
+bemoan her contrariness and the fact that she was white. For though she
+was born and bred with us, she felt she was not of our race; and
+sometimes she would say to Malamalama when he reproached her, "Sell me
+to one of the captains for a whaleboat and let me go." But Malamalama
+only loved her the more, and his handsome face grew sullen and angry as
+he threatened again to kill her if she misbehaved.</p>
+
+<p>Now when Professor No No came to live with us on the lagoon, Salesa was
+beside herself with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>curiosity, and heaped presents on Billy Hindoo in
+order to learn about his master. But Billy Hindoo knew nothing but his
+own stutter, and though he took the presents and came constantly to
+Salesa's house, very little in the way of information was accomplished.
+At last, greatly daring, Salesa arrayed herself in her finest clothes,
+and with servants carrying gifts of pigs and chickens, went down to the
+lagoon to pay a visit to the stranger. She found Professor No No sitting
+at his table, looking at dead fish through bits of glass, and he never
+turned round as the party halted at the taboo line and coughed
+deprecatorily in order to attract his attention. Then Salesa, who feared
+neither devil nor man, took the baskets in her arms and stepped across
+the taboo, saying in a voice of sweetness, "Professor No No! Professor
+No No!"</p>
+
+<p>He sprang from the table and rushed at her, waving his arms, and
+screaming as was his wont, "No, no! No, no!" while she, overcome with
+terror, dropped the gifts and fled like a sea mew on the wings of the
+wind. That night all Uvea joked about her discomfiture, while she sat in
+her house and cried, and Billy Hindoo was invited everywhere to tell the
+story in the antics that served him in the place of a tongue. But once
+Salesa had set her heart on a thing she never faltered nor turned aside;
+and though she waited and waited, it was not as one conquered or
+resigned. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>When the quarrel came between Billy Hindoo and his master,
+she saw the means, in Professor No No's desolation and abandonment, of
+obtaining the satisfaction of her purpose. For the white man, thus left
+to himself, grew increasingly dirty and uncared for; and his camp, once
+so clean under the care of Billy Hindoo, became as a pigsty of empty
+cans and bottles. Nothing therein was washed, and the savor of Professor
+No No and his camp blew noisomely across the taboo line as one walked to
+leeward.</p>
+
+<p>One day, after spying out that he had already sailed out for more fish
+to look at through bits of glass, Salesa crept into the settlement and
+began to make it clean again. She carried away all the tins and bottles;
+she swept the disordered grass; she entered the professor's tent,
+filling his water-bottles, making his bed and decorating it with flowers
+and <i>laumaile</i>. Then, as she had so often watched Billy Hindoo from a
+distance, she spread the table with a clean cloth, and on it she placed
+a bottle of beer and a tin of sardines under a wire netting and three
+ship's biscuits in a row. Then she went back and hid in the undergrowth,
+waiting and waiting, like a warrior in an ambush.</p>
+
+<p>But Professor No No made no sign as he landed from his boat, nor did he
+seem to perceive that anything unusual had taken place in the time he
+had been gone. He drank the bottle of beer and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>ate the sardines and
+biscuit, never troubling himself whence they had come; and while Salesa
+waited and waited with a suffocating heart, he looked at dead fish
+through bits of glass. But day by day she returned to his camp with the
+assiduity of a mother to her nursing child; and by degrees growing
+bolder with custom, she no longer watched until Professor No No had
+departed, but moved here and there about his land, secure by reason of
+his blindness and preoccupation. Like a wild animal to whom one
+approaches with gentleness and precaution, thus it was with Professor No
+No in the hands of Salesa. First he saw her only at a distance as she
+cleaned and swept; then a little closer as she spread his table and laid
+out his bottle of beer and the sardines and biscuit; then it came about
+that she even touched him with impunity, and sat beside him in a chair
+as he continued to look at dead fish through bits of glass. At last she
+dared to speak, telling him softly the names of the dead fish, which he
+wrote down in a little book, and informing him also that her name was
+Salesa, and that she loved him.</p>
+
+<p>And she, so defiant and proud, became as another person; so that she was
+kind not only to Professor No No, but to others whom she had previously
+treated with contumely. She carried the white man's packages when he
+went abroad, his photograph box and all manner of apparatus and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>tools,
+and the bottle of beer and the sardines for his well-being, never
+heeding the sun nor the fiery sand. She sat with him daily in his boat,
+baiting his hooks and catching fish likewise, and grew wise also in
+looking at them through bits of glass, so that he no longer ran at her
+and cried, "No, no!" when she touched his things. On the contrary, her
+wisdom increased in such matters, becoming in time even as his own, so
+that she also took photographs, and hammered off pieces of coral from
+the reef, and grew excited over little, common, worthless fish that
+stung you if you touched them.</p>
+
+<p>It is not to be supposed that Malamalama watched with any equanimity
+this increasing friendship between Professor No No and his wife, or that
+the constant tale of scandal and evil-doing fell on heedless ears. He
+beat Salesa repeatedly with a stick, and she bit him in return all over
+his beautiful body; and their fine house, once the envy of all Uvea,
+reechoed distressfully with screams and blows. But the madness of a
+woman for a man is not thus to be set aside, and the more Malamalama
+beat her with a stick, the more ardent grew her love for Professor No
+No; and when he talked with her and argued, she would answer unabashed
+that whites were whites and Kanakas were Kanakas, and that it was ill to
+mix the oil and water of the races.</p>
+
+<p>"But he is overgrown with hair like a dog," <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>said Malamalama, "except on
+his head, which glistens like a sting ray in the sun, and he is
+altogether hideous and frightening. It is not reasonable that anyone
+should prefer him to me."</p>
+
+<p>"But there is that in his head which makes him beautiful," said Salesa.</p>
+
+<p>"Lo! I have things in my head also," said Malamalama, "and I pass my
+life, besides, like a man, diving for shell, and cutting copra on my
+property, and attending to the affairs of the church where I am deacon,
+and finding everywhere a better employment than that of looking at dead
+fish through bits of glass."</p>
+
+<p>"Malamalama," said Salesa, "divorce me and let me go, and take thy
+choice of all the maids of Uvea in my stead. Professor No No loves me
+not, but I am his bondslave in love, and care for no other man but him."</p>
+
+<p>Now this was very good advice, and the chief would have done well to
+follow it. But there is in men a pride about their women that blinds
+their eyes to sense, and Malamalama, instead of heeding, grew, on the
+contrary, morose and willful. He listened more greedily than ever to
+Billy Hindoo, and to the tales the nigger brought him constantly of
+Salesa's misdoing; for Billy Hindoo was crazed with anger against his
+master, and against the woman who had so successfully supplanted him,
+and was eager to revenge himself on both. And <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>one day he brought not
+only a new tale, but a bottle of gin he had managed to pilfer from the
+camp of Professor No No.</p>
+
+<p>Malamalama began to drink the gin, and the more he drank the more he
+began to feel the aching of his spirit. He stopped the passers-by and
+told them of his wrongs; he rolled over in the road, so that he was all
+dirty, calling out curses on his wife and Professor No No. He cried and
+cried, and staggered about and shouted, and rushed hither and thither,
+exclaiming, "I will kill them! I will kill them!" And all the while he
+drank of the gin with an increasing fury, so that he went at last and
+got his rifle and four boxes of cartridges and walked unsteadily toward
+the lagoon, weeping and laughing and beating the air with his loaded
+gun. And I, then only a little child, followed him at a distance,
+wondering and mocking with the others.</p>
+
+<p>Now on this occasion it happened that Salesa was away in the boat, and
+Professor No No, all alone, was sitting at his table and looking at dead
+fish through bits of glass. Malamalama stopped at the taboo line, not
+daring to cross it, and withheld, besides, by the notice on the tree;
+and he was so tipsy with the gin that he could barely shout, nor hold
+the gun up to his shoulder. But he fired, as straight as he could, in
+the direction of Professor No No, and shattered a glass barrel of dead
+fish at his elbow. Professor No No leaped in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>air, so that at first
+we thought, erroneously, that he had been hurt; and he ran this way and
+that, dodging the bullets from Malamalama's gun. He seemed to believe
+that the taboo gave him protection, for, instead of bolting into the
+undergrowth, he raced around and around in a circle, and then inside
+this tent and that, so that it was laughable to watch him popping in and
+out like a terrified rat. And Malamalama, so overcome with gin that he
+could barely see, fired and fired and fired from the four boxes of his
+cartridges. Then, when all was finished, he rose and went home, while
+the children crowded the line and shouted, "Professor No No, art thou
+dead?"</p>
+
+<p>That night there was a meeting of the ancients in the speak-house, and
+all the culprits were there under guard to receive a judgment.
+Malamalama was fined one dollar for being drunk and fifteen dollars for
+firing unwarrantably at Professor No No; and Professor No No was fined
+fifteen dollars for having won Salesa from her husband; and Billy Hindoo
+was fined fifteen dollars for having given the gin to Malamalama and for
+the mischief he had caused with his lying tongue; and Salesa was
+surrendered to the matrons of the village to receive a lashing for her
+misconduct. Then Tanielu, the pastor, prayed that God's wrath might be
+averted from so wicked a village, and made a beautiful parable about the
+Garden of Eden and the serpent.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>One might have thought that this would have healed the matter, and that
+a punishment so nearly equal would have been submitted to with humility
+and grace. But, on the contrary, the quarrel went from bad to worse, so
+that Tanielu, the pastor, would say sorrowfully from the pulpit that
+Uvea was like another hell, but with four devils instead of one.
+Malamalama, once a pillar of the church, was degraded from the rank of
+deacon and expelled, becoming speedily dissolute and abandoned, opening
+his house for forbidden dances, and taking new wives in shameless
+succession; and Salesa, her pretty body red with stripes, found no
+consolation whatever in her white darling, who ran at her repellingly,
+shouting "No, no!" like a lion; and Billy Hindoo, of whom everyone had
+tired on account of his light fingers and calumniating tongue, grew
+increasingly burdensome to his adopted family, and spent most of his
+time in stoning Professor No No from a safe distance and demanding his
+wages even to that day, together with a passage at once to the white
+country.</p>
+
+<p>During this season no ship at all came to Uvea, though Professor No No
+watched unceasingly for one, and likewise Billy Hindoo, and likewise
+Malamalama, the chief; and Tanielu prayed and prayed and prayed without
+end, "Lord, send Thou speedily a vessel and rid us of these intruders."
+The white man, for all his wisdom, was cowardly beyond belief, and so
+fearful of Malamalama that the sight of Salesa made him tremble
+forthwith with apprehension. And she, repelled by <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>her husband and
+dependent on the bounty of those that despised her, became as one lost
+to all propriety, and would run at Professor No No and clasp him in her
+arms and cherish him, he fighting and resisting with all his might,
+crying "No, no!" in a terrible voice. Were he to unmoor his boat, lo!
+she was there swimming in its wake and demanding to be taken in, lest
+she drown; were he to sit down and quietly look at dead fish through
+bits of glass, lo! there also was she beside him in a chair; were he to
+slumber in a shady place during the afternoon, he would awake with his
+head in her lap or with her kisses against his lips.</p>
+
+<p>So weak, indeed, was his heart, that he was not even grateful for her
+assistance against Billy Hindoo, who came constantly, this day and that,
+with unfailing regularity, to throw stones at his former master and cry
+threateningly, "Hi, yi! give me wages even to this day, and return me to
+the white country according to thy covenant." Then it was that Salesa
+would throw stones back again, or would hide in the bushes and try to
+strike the nigger with a knife, saying in mockery as she sprang at him,
+"Hi, yi! take that!" And once she came to him so close that she slashed
+him across the breast, and he hastened bleeding before the ancients and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>vociferously complained. Then she was whipped again by the matrons, and
+Billy Hindoo was fined for throwing stones, and Professor No No was
+fined yet a second time for stealing away Malamalama's wife, and
+Malamalama was fined for leading a life of infamy and riot, and Tanielu
+said again from the pulpit, "Hasten, Lord, or Thy servants perish!"</p>
+
+<p>Thus the days passed in unending strife and bitterness, terrible now to
+be recalled. When Malamalama took a new wife, the former wife's family
+would lie in wait and try to kill him; and other husbands, before
+exemplary and well conducted, growing restive to see him so successful
+in his unbridled wickedness, took in their turn the pick of the village
+maids, propagating hatred and disorder the like of which had never
+before been known in Uvea. Then the drought came, and the young nuts
+shriveled on the trees, and the sky, as far as one's eye could reach,
+remained like shining copper, without a breath. It was plainly seen that
+God, in anger, was laying His hand heavily on Uvea; and lo! He spoke
+through the pastor Tanielu, saying, "Repent, repent, or else ye perish!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a great meeting of the ancients in the speak-house; and one
+ancient spoke for Malamalama, and another ancient spoke for Salesa, and
+another ancient spoke for Professor No No, and still another ancient
+spoke for Billy Hindoo; and the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>whole matter was inquired into from the
+first day and debated in turn by all the ancients, and a final judgment
+at length arrived at. Malamalama was confirmed in his latest marriage,
+swearing with his hand on the Holy Book that in future he would cease
+his evil and cling to her, giving a fine mat by way of reparation to
+each of her predecessors; and Salesa was declared divorced from
+Malamalama, and she and Professor No No were ordered to marry themselves
+forthwith before the pastor Tanielu; and Billy Hindoo was commanded to
+go back to his master and remain within the taboo line under pain of
+death, and an ancient was appointed to visit him daily to lash him if he
+misbehaved even in the smallest matter; and then the whole meeting
+prayed first for rain, and then that God might send a ship.</p>
+
+<p>When the new arrangement was with difficulty explained to the white man,
+he was as one crazed, waving his arms and screaming out "No, no!"
+without cessation; and he persisted thus, to the scandal of everyone,
+until Tanielu, losing patience, struck him like that on the head and
+married him immediately to Salesa, whose face shone with contentment and
+happiness. In this manner Professor No No and Salesa and Billy Hindoo
+were escorted homeward to their camp; and then everyone breathed with
+relief and congratulated one another on so peaceful and satisfactory a
+settlement.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>But the ancients were still in their places when Salesa returned, saying
+that Professor No No had repulsed her; and behind her was Billy Hindoo,
+equally repulsed, who said his master refused to pay him his wages to
+that day or to send him back at once to the white country according to
+the covenant; and behind them both was Professor No No with his head
+tied in a towel, where the pastor had hurt him, cursing and reviling
+like a maniac.</p>
+
+<p>Then the ancients held another meeting; and lo! it was a secret meeting;
+and Tanielu spoke for God, and everyone made speeches in turn; and it
+was recalled, with eloquent outbursts, how peaceful and happy Uvea had
+been in the days preceding Professor No No's arrival. There were some
+who wanted to have him killed as a punishment; and others who voted
+against Salesa, saying it was she who was at fault; and still others who
+burned with resentment against Billy Hindoo, declaring that he was the
+worst of all. Thus, like a battle rolling to and fro, Salesa, Professor
+No No, and Billy Hindoo were each in turn imperiled; and when day broke,
+their fate, though they knew it not, had been finally settled by the
+ancients.</p>
+
+<p>Professor No No's boat was carried by twenty men from the lagoon shore,
+where it lay, over to the ocean beach; and with it was borne sardines
+and biscuit and beer from the white man's store; and the glass barrels
+were emptied, many of them, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>of their dead fish, being washed and
+refilled with fresh water from the spring, and their glass tops fastened
+tightly with cocoanut sinnet. Then, when everything had been made ready,
+Billy Hindoo was forced to seat himself in the bow of the boat; and in
+the stern were put Salesa and Professor No No, side by side, the center
+being filled with the cargo of provisions and water.</p>
+
+<p>And Salesa laughed and joked with the men, begging them to take out
+Billy Hindoo, or to give him a boat of his own; and saying wildly, when
+denied, that she was going where none might whip her now, to find a
+beautiful island whereon to live with her husband. But the white man was
+convulsed with fear, and said nothing in the making ready of the boat,
+not even "No, no" when Salesa put her arms round him and kissed him
+again and again on the lips; and Billy Hindoo shook like a wet dog in
+the bow, whimpering, "Hi, yi! me British subject! me no likey!" babbling
+deliriously besides of his wages even to that day, and of the
+unfulfilled covenant with its passage to the white country in a ship.</p>
+
+<p>Then the sail was hoisted and the sheet put into Salesa's hand; and in
+this wise the boat was shoved into deep water, and her bow headed
+straight to seaward. Then Tanielu fell on his knees and prayed that Uvea
+might be delivered forever and ever of such an infliction; and the young
+men <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>formed a line with their rifles, ready to shoot if the voyagers
+showed the least sign of coming back; and across the waves one could see
+Salesa supporting Professor No No as the boat lay over in the wind, and
+her mocking laughter was borne back to us. And we waited and waited and
+waited as it became a diminishing speck against the sky; and waited and
+waited and waited until it disappeared. Then, lo! there were explosions
+of thunder and lightning, and the rain descended in torrents, and the
+little children all threw off their clothes and ran about rejoicing in
+the wet, while the elders looked at one another, and said, "Lo, Uvea is
+delivered!"</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>
+<br />
+
+<hr />
+<br />
+<h2>CAPTAIN ELIJAH COE</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>Puna Punou lies in 14th South exactly, though the writer keeps back the
+longitood for reasons that will soon be understood by the gentle
+reader&mdash;if the gentle reader is patient and won't skip. Not that there
+is any buried treasure there, or any foolishness of that kind; it's
+girls mostly, and pearl shell and cocoanuts, that Puna Punou produces,
+and you don't need no chart with red crosses from my dying hands to find
+any of them. But Mrs. Tweedie is still alive, and likewise Elijah Coe,
+and I'd be acting like the son of a sea cook if I did a hand's turn to
+hurt either. Of course it's an old story now, going back to the days
+before the bottom had dropped out of copra, and there was still money to
+be made in beach-la-mar and fungus. Oh, my, yes! a long time ago, before
+steam ever got into the Group, before law and order and compulsory
+vaccination, and an hour and a half of Deputy Commissioner every nine
+months.</p>
+
+<p>It was always a mighty fine island to look at, rising sheer from the sea
+to basaltic cliffs, and high needlelike pinnacles, and forested solid
+from the water's edge to almost the top; and off the main <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>settlement of
+Fale a Lupo there was good holding ground in six fathoms. A tidy little
+island, indeed, and I'd never raise it of a dawn, and all its palms and
+beaches and little basket-work houses peeping out of the deep shade, but
+I'd feel glad all over again that it was there, and breathe in the
+fragrant smell of it like a child happy at getting home from school. I
+guess the people there helped a lot, too, for they were the handsomest
+in the Pacific, and it was a regular port of call for the whalers to
+take in green stuff, girls, fresh water, and firewood.</p>
+
+<p>In the old days it was the Rev. John Geer who ran the missionary mill,
+and taught the heathen to put their pennies in the plate and wear
+pants&mdash;not that they ever did the last to any alarming extent, except in
+the annual reports that were sent back to be printed East; while Mrs.
+Geer she homeopathed the island and inculcurated the principles of
+female virtoo in the young. But after twenty-one years of it the Geers
+returned home to Connecticut, and the Tweedies were landed from the
+<i>Olive Branch</i> barkentine, to take their places in that section of the
+world's vineyard.</p>
+
+<p>Tweedie was a hay-colored little man, narrer chested and tallowy, but if
+ever there was a copper-riveted Christian from Christianville I guess he
+was <i>it</i>! Meek! Why he was happy to get slapped, he was that pleased to
+turn the other cheek; and if you took away his cloak, he was the kind of
+fellar <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>who wanted you to take his panjammers extra. Had no spirit at
+all, and the Kanakas walked over him scandalous. But it was his wife I
+wanted to tell about, Alethea Tweedie; for if ever there was an angel
+from heaven, with the prettiest blue eyes, and hair like streaming gold,
+and the cherriest lips you ever saw out of a chromo, and teeth whiter
+than&mdash;than&mdash;(it don't sound right to say a shark's) it was that peerless
+creature.</p>
+
+<p>How Tweedie could have captured such a bang-up stunner was hard to
+understand then, and harder afterwards. A king on his throne might have
+been glad to win Alethea Tweedie for his queen, and captains and
+supercargoes would have knifed each other for a single smile, if she had
+been the kind to lead them on&mdash;which, Lord bless me! was the last
+thought she had in her curly head. I suppose she came from one of them
+little places back East where it's all women for miles, and they rate
+anything a man that can raise a whisker! Thrown away, that's what the
+beach called it, and misdoubted whether Tweedie wasn't a girl, too, only
+with drill trousers instead of panties.</p>
+
+<p>In all them brown faces and tanned leathery white ones you can imagine
+what a pink rosebud she seemed to be; and it wasn't like that she
+stopped at that, for she could sing like a nightingale and talk to beat
+the band; and her laugh itself was like music, sounding long afterwards
+in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>your ears at sea. Hit? Jimini Christmas, I should say I was hit! Am
+still, for that matter, with just the memory of her, though twenty years
+have come and gone, and I loved the ground her little feet walked on.
+Not that there was anything out of the way in that. We all did, down to
+Portuguese Joe, and Billy Jones's cousin; and as for Elijah Coe, he
+simply give one yelp and keeled over!</p>
+
+<p>Coe was the captain and owner of the <i>Peep o' Day</i> topsail schooner, and
+had been trading about the Group for a matter of eight years. In all my
+seafaring days I never saw his match for dare-deviltry or courage,
+though a quieter man to look at there never was. He was about forty
+years old, tall and lean, with a nose on him like a hawk; and to see him
+stripped you'd think he was a boy, he was that straight and well set up.
+A fine man to look at, very quick on his pins, and kind of proud and
+silent in company like he was mostly thinking of something else. I
+reckon perhaps he likely was, for he was splendidly educated, with rows
+on rows of books in his cabin, and a cyclopediar six feet long. The mate
+said he knew everything in it up to R, not to speak of working lunars in
+a saucer of quicksilver, and reckonizing squid by its Latin name.</p>
+
+<p>No one knew how he had got the money to buy his ship, which was a
+remarkable fine vessel and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>fitted up regardless. Some said there was
+once a name on the brass bell aft, which had been filed down careful and
+worked over with emery paper afterwards; but I never could see no sign
+of it myself, though I never went aboard but I took a good look; and
+others who said it was Labor. He certainly knew a lot about the
+Westward, and I heard him, one day, giving Captain Rick the directions
+to enter Port McGuire by. But you know what a place the beach is for
+talk, and, anyway, heaps of good men and highly respected have been
+Blackbirders in their time, and I never could see no harm in the trade
+myself. But the gossip was that he had flown the Peruvian flag and
+emptied whole islands, though I never believed a word of it myself. It
+was remarkable, too, how he kep his people, and how they looked up to
+him, which wouldn't have been the case if he had been like they
+represented. There was John Rau, the mate, a bullet-headed Belgian, who
+used to walk just like <i>he</i> did and copy all his little ways slavish,
+reading the cyclopediar, too, and stopping at R from discipline. And
+Lum, the China cook, a freak of a fellar, with coal-black hair all round
+his head like a girl's, and who'd out-Coe Coe till you'd split. The rest
+of the crew was just the usual thing&mdash;Rotumah boys, an Highwayman or
+two, and some Nieues&mdash;sometimes the same, sometimes different&mdash;like on
+any island vessel.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>It was some time before Captain Coe got on to the Tweedies, or Alethea,
+as I suppose I ought to say, for nobody ever took no particular stock in
+the <i>he</i>-Tweedie. He ran acrost her first when he was ashore doctoring
+some of his native friends, and handing out pain-killer and salts
+unstinted. They walked home together to the Mission house, standing a
+long time at the door, and he talking with his hat off. He must have
+been well brought up and used to meeting ladies, for anybody could tell
+by her face that she was pleased. She didn't seem the least bit eager to
+let him go, and once she took his Tahiti hat and held it in both her
+hands like she would prevent him. And he didn't seem to want to go
+neither, though he wrastled for his hat, very perlite and gay, and I
+could see the glisten of her white teeth through the spyglass.</p>
+
+<p>The next day he called in state, with the skull of a shark in a silk
+handkerchief, and a man carrying a crate of onions. Oh, it may sound
+common to you, but it's like sending flowers to your lady-love in Puna
+Punou, and I've seen a year pass without the sight of one! I guess he
+walked in on velvet, and it is certain he stayed nigh two hours, for I
+timed him myself from the deck of the <i>Ransom</i>&mdash;the beach being a great
+place to take notice, as I have said already&mdash;and what was our feelings
+when next Sunday the captain marched into church&mdash;yes, sir&mdash;in crisp new
+panjammers and a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>polka-dot neckerchief; and I'm blest if John Rau wasn't
+there, too, likewise polka-dotted; and that there Chinaman tagging along
+behind, rigged the same, only with earrings extra, and taking a back
+seat out of respeck! Afterwards they all went up to the Mission house in
+a body, Tweedie jumping in with an address, and everybody singing except
+the Chinaman, who was made to stop!</p>
+
+<p>You mustn't think for a minute that we traders knew the missionary or
+that he knew us, or that the beach took any part in this except at a
+distance. There's no love lost between missionaries and traders. That's
+what made it so strange to see Captain Coe going the way he did, and
+taking up with all that nigger-loving and "Johnny, how's your soul?" We
+could only see one reason, and that was Alethea Tweedie; and the betting
+was about even whether he'd pull it off or not. But if we didn't <i>talk</i>
+to the Tweedies, I guess there was mighty little that went on there we
+didn't know of&mdash;whether it was turtle steak for breakfast, or the tiff
+they had about her wearing too gauzy a dress at the party Coe gave
+aboard the <i>Peep o' Day</i>.</p>
+
+<p>He did it up in style, with bunting and Chinese lanterns and the king,
+and afterwards there was fireworks. Oh, my, yes! a regular blow-out,
+with the crew in new jumpers and two boatloads of flowers and <i>moso'oi</i>!
+We all asked one another where it was going to end, what with the picnic
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>next day, and him always at the Mission house. But we might have saved
+our breath, as far as any scandal was concerned, for, instead of up
+stick and away, with the lady locked in his cabin, like some of the
+beach had fondly hoped, what did Coe do but turn missionary himself! Got
+religion, by God! till you couldn't have known him for the same master
+mariner; while John Rau and Lum, not to be behindhand neither, cavorted
+into the holy swim with a whoop and a bang! The captain went off
+terrific&mdash;like everything he did&mdash;making Billy Jones's cousin marry his
+wife, and Peter Extrum marry <i>his</i>; and there was more half-caste
+baptizing and squealing and certificating than I remember since the
+tidal wave of Eighty-one!</p>
+
+<p>Coe put it all down to conviction and a change of heart, but anybody
+could see it was Alethea Tweedie who was <i>his</i> religion. When he prayed,
+which he used to do tremendous, it was all the time to Mrs. Tweedie; and
+when he said the kingdom of heaven, you knew mighty well that to him it
+was the coral Mission house on the hill. He put her on a pedestal a mile
+high, and kept her at the top by worshiping so hard at the bottom. I
+guess she couldn't have got off without stepping all over him, and was
+just forced to be a saint whether she wanted to or no. Not but what she
+was as good as gold, and a pattern for any young white woman to go by,
+but her eyes always kind of melted <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>when she looked at Coe; which was no
+wonder, as he stood six feet high and straight as a dart, and every girl
+in the island was wild about him; and she had an imperious little way of
+treating him like he was a favorite dog who she was proud to show off
+being master of. She sent him her canary, which was all she had in the
+world except her clothes, and wrote a little piece how it would sing to
+him at sea and soothe his rugged bosom.</p>
+
+<p>This wasn't all he got neither, for she was a great one with her needle,
+and did texts better nor a Sailors' Home. Coe's cabin was more like a
+little Bethel than the inside of a trading ship, for there was six of
+them, and a red worsted dog extra, playing with a blue worsted ball, and
+"Jesus, Lover of my Soul" and "Where is my Wandering Boy To-night?" The
+biggest joke of all was in the trade room, where there was "Honesty is
+the Best Policy," and "God Sees You"; and the boys guyed Coe about it
+unmerciful till he laid out Tom Dawlish with a fancy lamp, and said a
+gentleman ought to know where to stop. He was an awful thin-skinned kind
+of Christian when it came to any remarks being passed on Mrs. Tweedie,
+and Tom has a scar there to this day, though Coe made it up to him
+afterwards with a melodian worth nine dollars.</p>
+
+<p>But Coe wasn't the only dog around the Mission house. Mrs. Tweedie
+started up another, a scamp <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>of a chief named Afiola. In every community
+there's some fellar who's at the root of all the mischief that happens,
+so that if anybody gets speared of a dark night, or a girl is missing
+from home, you know just where to look for who done it. In Puna Punou
+you looked for Afiola, and the chances were you'd find him drunk on
+orange beer and laying for trouble with a gun. Oh, yes, indeed, there
+was two to his credit, to my certain knowledge, murders both, and I'll
+bet a ton of shell to an old hat besides that he had a hand in taking
+off the Chinaman at Oa Bay. A regular bad lot, and, like every big
+scalawag, every little scalawag had to tail along with him, too, for
+company and mutual protection; so his houses was the kind of Bowery of
+Puna Punou, with the whalers going to him to buy girls, and all that.</p>
+
+<p>There were higher chiefs than Afiola in the settlement&mdash;five or six of
+them, at least, not to speak of the king&mdash;but none of them seemed able
+to do a thing to stop him. They were all a slack lot at any time, and
+thought excommunicating him enough, and taking away his communion
+ticket. I guess he had been out of the church for a matter of six years,
+and, as I said before, he was the scandal of the place and a terror.
+They were all dead scared of him, that was the truth, and, though his
+following was small, they were ugly customers and well armed, and could
+line up a dozen rifles in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>twinkling of an eye. We often talked it
+over among ourselves how to break the gang up, but, as he always left
+the whites alone, and was even a favorite with the worst, it ended like
+it begun&mdash;in smoke.</p>
+
+<p>This Afiola wasn't of any particular age, because the natives don't know
+when they are born, and have nothing to go by like dates and sich. I
+suppose Afiola was somewheres around thirty, for he had two children,
+about eight or nine each, a girl and a boy, who lived with him in his
+house, together with Talavao, his old mother, Sosofina, his aunt, Oloa,
+his uncle, his brother Filipo, and a raft of other blood relations whose
+names I disremember. Like all the chiefs of Puna Punou, Afiola was a
+tall, fine-looking man, very vigorous, lordly, and pleasant spoken, and
+if it weren't for his pock-marked face and the wickedest eyes I ever saw
+in a man's head, you would have said he was a perfect gentleman, and
+handsome, as Kanakas go. I had never had a bit of trouble with him
+myself, and whenever I put business in his way he had always come down
+prompt with pigs and mats and <i>masoa</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It was a long time before he took any notice of the Tweedies, not going
+to church, and always busy raising a little hell somewheres. But when it
+came, it came with a bang and no mistake, and, my stars, if he didn't
+pull in the slack! He made up to the Mission house like he was their
+long-lost <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>brother; threw fits of reformation till they took him back
+into church membership again; and not a blessed day passed but it was
+pigs or chickens or sugar cane or pineapples at the Mission-house door,
+and please, might their servant Afiola approach their Excellencies! It
+was as good as a play to see the rascal winding them around his little
+finger and doing injured innocent on their front stoop. To hear him gas,
+you'd think there was a conspiracy to run him out of Fale a Lupo; and
+even when he owned up to some of his misdeeds, it was like a compliment
+to the Tweedies for having yanked in such a black sheep. I read
+somewheres that the road to success is to trade on people's weaknesses,
+and the soft spot with the Tweedies was their desire to make a
+thundering success and leave all their predecessors in the soup. After
+having captured the chief white sinner, Elijah Coe, they were now
+hauling in the boss brown one, Afiola, and I guess they felt as pleased
+as a fellar who's bought a ton of shell for a condemned army musket.</p>
+
+<p>My, but they were good to that man, forever inviting him to breakfast or
+that, and sending for him first thing if they were in a fix! It was all
+Afiola this, and Afiola that; and he got texts, too, from Mrs. Tweedie,
+and red worsted dogs, and "God Bless Our Home." By the time they had
+engineered him into shoes and pants, no one daring <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>to laugh for fear
+he'd shoot them, they promoted him deacon, and put him on the committee
+for reroofing the church. Of all mutton-headed proceedings, I never saw
+the like, specially as he hoodwinked them right along, and acted worse,
+even, than before. You can imagine Captain Coe's feelings when, rounding
+up a three months' cruise, he found this six-foot-three of black devil
+and hypocrite snugged in the Mission house like a maggot in a
+breadfruit. They say he went on awful, speaking out the truth before
+them all, and daring Afiola to deny it. But Mrs. Tweedie she got him
+outside on the veranda, walking up and down with her arm through his,
+and pleading and going on and begging to beat the band. It shows the
+power she had over him, that at last he went in and asked Afiola's
+pardon, and the next day sent him a case of kerosene by way of
+reparation. I suppose if she had told him to go on his knees he would
+have done it, being that crazy to please her in everything.</p>
+
+<p>On second thoughts, however, and after hearing how Afiola had been
+kicking up, he went to the king and tried to stiffen him to take a stand
+against Afiola, volunteering to do the job himself, if supported, and
+proposing to exile the fellar to Makatea, and disperse the rest of the
+gang about the Group gratis in the <i>Peep o' Day</i>. He said otherwise he
+was afraid to leave Puna Punou with such <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>a scoundrel loose, and
+threatened to write to Sydney for a man-of-war. But Maunga the king was
+a saphead and a coward, and he couldn't see it Coe's way at all; and not
+having the sense to keep his mouth shut, what does he do but traipse
+around the settlement, telling everybody what the captain said and
+wanted.</p>
+
+<p>After that the Mission-house door was shut in Coe's face, and when Mrs.
+Tweedie passed him on the road it was with her pretty head in the air,
+and not looking. This nearly broke the captain's heart, and if you've
+ever seen a dog as has been kicked out by his master, you can picture
+Coe for yourself. He got very down and miserable, and talked some of
+chucking the Group altogether and going back to the Kingsmills, or even
+further, and how Henderson and Macfarlane were going to put on a steamer
+and run us all out. He tied up the <i>Peep o' Day</i> at a hundred and forty
+dollars a week and nothing coming in, making the excuse she was foul and
+the copper needing cleaning; and when you saw nothing doing and asked
+why, he flared up and said you could go to hell! And all this, if you
+please, for the privilege of seeing Afiola sailing up to the Mission
+house and being honored guest, and Mrs. Tweedie smiling her prettiest,
+<i>vice</i> Elijah Coe, fired! We fully thought he'd backslide onto
+square-face and female society, but, if anything, he grew more
+missionary than ever, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>nearly lammed the life out of Freddy Rice for
+speaking disrespectful of the Virgin Mary! You see, Coe's religion,
+being as it was Mrs. Tweedie, didn't make no proper distinction between
+sects, and he just stood up for anybody who had his name in the Bible!</p>
+
+<p>Then thinking, I dessay, that absence makes the heart grow fonder, he
+went to sea again and put in a spell of two months about the Group; and
+when he got back he dressed up in his best with a red silk handkerchief
+around his neck, sailor fashion, and a crimson sash and patent-leather
+shoes, and the rest of him white drill, and went a-calling on the
+Mission house to see if he couldn't break into society again. But there
+was a wicked streak in Mrs. Tweedie, for all her pretty face and golden
+hair, and being too good a woman to love anybody but her husband, she
+found a queer kind of satisfaction in hating Coe, or pretending like she
+did, and driving him half-mad with the things she said to him. She
+regularly led on the captain to admit he loved her, and then jumped on
+him with both her little feet for saying it, till the poor fellar
+stumbled out of the house feeling he had disgraced himself awful and was
+never to come back no more.</p>
+
+<p>She wrote him letters afterwards on scented pink paper, which made him
+spend days and days with his head leaning on the cabin table, wanting
+the worsted dog back, and the canary, and saying she <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>would tell her
+husband; and then saying he might keep them and she wouldn't! If he had
+treated her just like a Kanaka girl who was dead stuck on him, I guess
+he would have found out that women are much the same, whether with
+golden hair or coal-black, and that there is much the same colored devil
+in every one of them. But to Coe, Alethea Tweedie wasn't no human being
+at all, but an angel straight from heaven, and to think the angel hated
+him was almost more than he could bear.</p>
+
+<p>He turned crankier than ever, working off steam on Rau and Ah Lum, with
+twenty-five cents for every swear, and nothing at night but hymns. But I
+guess Rau and the China boy would have gone on their knees and kowtowed
+to a sting ray if Coe had told them to, for they didn't have no more
+wills of their own than a child unborn, and everything he said, went. If
+he had turned pirate, they would have followed him just as meek, and
+would have scuttled ships and made passengers walk planks with the same
+devotion and zeal to please him!</p>
+
+<p>But all this was by the way, so far as it availed the captain with Mrs.
+Tweedie, who passed him on the road as cold as ever, and received the
+swear-money disdainful, and never said "thank you" for it, though there
+was eighteen dollars in the bag and the biggest share Coe's. Afiola
+himself <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>had been getting out of favor for two months. He couldn't
+manage to be deacon of the church one day, and the next pirating along
+the coast mad drunk on orange beer; besides, the Tweedies were getting
+to talk native now, and got more the hang of what was going on around
+them. So they give Afiola a sort of drumhead court-martial, and bounced
+him unanimous, and all the pent-up deviltry of the man came out of him
+at one lick, like touching off a dynamite cartridge. Tweedie preached
+against him from the pulpit; the other chiefs, slow as they had been to
+move before, now waked up a bit, and there was a general feeling in the
+respectable part of the native community that he was pushing things too
+far. You see, he had named one of his pigs after the king, and there was
+more scandal over that than for all the crimes he had been guilty of;
+and there was a razor-backed yaller one for Tweedie, and an old sow for
+the queen, and porkers for the princes, and he passed insulting remarks
+on them till the Kanakas went wild&mdash;those that weren't of Afiola's own
+family, I mean; and Afiola would laugh and laugh till his great pocked
+face grew a dirty crimson, laying on a mat with a Winchester beside him,
+and sniggering as they'd bring him orange beer in a calabash.</p>
+
+<p>I guess he thought he'd wind up by pulling off the biggest thing yet,
+for he had a kind of pride <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>of wickedness in him, and gloried in being
+the bad man of Puna Punou. He wanted to top it all now, and do something
+that tremendous that it would shake the whole island from Fale a Lupo to
+Diamond Rock. Anyway, whatever he thought or didn't think, what he did
+was to waylay Mrs. Tweedie one morning about ten, as she was going over
+to visit the native pastor's wife, who was sick; and, tying her hands
+and feet together with sinnet, he put her in a hammock and carried her
+off up the mountain; and this, if you please, in open daylight, with
+scores of people looking on, while she screamed and struggled and
+fought, and they helpless to do anything against the line of Afiola's
+rifles&mdash;and Tweedie himself not four hundred yards away, organizing a
+Y.M.C.A. for untattooed boys, and explaining how they was to play basket
+ball, and learn arithmetic nights!</p>
+
+<p>When I heard the news, which was right off and the moment after it
+happened, I had only one idea in my head, and that was to reach Captain
+Coe as fast as the paddles could race me off to the schooner. It is in
+them moments that the strong man looms up like a mountain and one's cry
+is for a leader. But it seemed for a spell like it was a knock-out blow
+for Coe, and that he couldn't grapple with the thing at all, moaning and
+grinding his teeth, and tearing the red-dotted handkerchief off his neck
+like it choked him. When I tried to talk, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>he swore at me terrible,
+saying he wanted to think, by God! and I was to shut my bloody face; and
+ordering the mate and the Chinaman into the lazarette to get out the
+arms. There was a big store of them, which the pair got out on their
+hands and knees, the place being cramped and low and the guns furthest
+in; and they broke open boxes of cartridges on the cabin floor till they
+ran all over. Then Coe ordered the whaleboat cleared and went ashore
+with nigh all hands, every one of them with a loaded rifle, and he with
+a twelve-bore gun; and if you ever saw the light of hell in a man's
+eyes, it was Coe as he formed us up on the beach and headed inland in a
+crowd. The whole settlement was buzzing like a hornet's nest, and they
+were beating a wooden drum in front of the king's house, and everybody
+was running every which way, telling the news, and how Mrs. Tweedie had
+been carried off by Afiola, and all screaming out at once, like natives
+do when excited.</p>
+
+<p>Finding Afiola would be about as easy as the needle in the haystack, and
+the crews of a hundred <i>Peep o' Days</i>, and all the warriors of Fale a
+Lupo besides, couldn't have tracked and cornered him up the mountain. I
+thought Coe was acting like a hot-headed crazy fool to try, for they
+were bound to see him first, and could always hide if we got too close,
+or fight if need be, with all the points of the game in their favor. But
+that wasn't what <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>he meant to do, not he, but surrounded Afiola's two
+houses, and took out everybody in them&mdash;Talavao his aunt, Oloa his
+uncle, Filipo his brother (who was sick on a mat), and Afiola's two
+children, Mali and Popo, and a raft of men and women, to the number of
+twenty or more all told. They were scared blue at the sight of the
+cocked rifles, and held up their hands like lambs for the Chinaman to
+rope them, which he did like lashing a chest and about as tender, the
+tears streaming down the women's faces. But there wasn't a spark of
+compassion in Elijah Coe, and he never give them a thought.</p>
+
+<p>He was at a white heat, and his finger was just itching on the trigger
+of his gun, and he never started for the beach till all the Bowery was
+crackling in smoke and flame. Not that our eighteen or twenty was the
+whole of Afiola's family in the settlement. I guess there was several
+hundreds of them altogether, taking it fine and large, retainers,
+hangers-on, and connections of one kind and another; but Coe's boldness
+took them by surprise, and not being in the secret of Mrs. Tweedie's
+carrying off, they weren't prepared or anything. But even in the time we
+were tying up the prisoners they began to turn ugly and bunch together
+and hoot, and all the way back to the beach it was touch and go whether
+they wouldn't rush us.</p>
+
+<p>Not a soul durst ask Coe what he meant to do <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>as we pitched into the
+water and shoved off, him sitting there so grim and fierce, with his
+eyes smoldering in his head like coals; but there was no sound but the
+straining of the rowlocks, and a whimper or two from the women, and the
+swish and gurgle of the water along the keel. I'll never forget that
+boat ride if I live to be a hundred; the drums rolling and re-rolling
+around the bay, and that strange humming of voices behind us like the
+wind in the rigging of a ship, and Coe and the Kanakas and the Chinaman
+and John Rau and the men pulling. But as for Coe's plan, we weren't long
+kept waiting for what it was. The prisoners were bundled into the ship's
+waist, with Lum to stand over them, while the mate got out the kedge and
+brought the schooner broadside on to the mountain. Then they bent a
+noose and ran up old Oloa between the masts. It was no fancy hanging
+with a drop calculated to his height, but just the old-fashioned kind,
+slow and awful, and if the steward hadn't come round with a tray of
+glasses and some square-face I guess I would have just sunk right down
+where I was. The crew made one panic-stricken gallop for the side, and
+popped over, nobody trying to stop them, though Rau asked, quite calm,
+was he to shoot, and the captain said No. The Nieue steward was the only
+one that didn't go, but crouched down in the scuppers with his teeth
+chattering.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>Then Coe leaned over the rail and talked to the prisoners in the waist;
+told them that he was going to string up one an hour, children and all,
+till Mrs. Tweedie was brought back safe; and he ordered Lum to cast
+loose one of the old women so that she might swim ashore and carry the
+news. My, if she wasn't over that rail like lightning, and striking out
+for home with her skinny arms! Coe knew mighty well that Afiola had a
+string of people up the mountain keeping him informed of everything that
+happened&mdash;the Kanaka telegraph, we used to call it. Then, besides, up
+there they could see for miles, and Coe had kedged the schooner acrost
+the fairway so that Afiola might reckonize his relations in the rigging.
+You might wonder that such an unmitigated black villain would care what
+Coe did, so long as he had his wicked way with Mrs. Tweedie, and a whole
+trackless mountain to lose himself in; but there's an awful soft streak
+in Kanakas for their own blood, and we had his whole family in our
+hands, not to speak of the two kids. It seemed almost like a waste of
+lives to look up and see not a speck, or the least sign whatever, that
+was hid under the tree tops, and it was hard to convince oneself that
+Coe was doing the right thing, and that from those rocky cliffs there
+was sharp Kanaka eyes taking us all in, with Alethea Tweedie tied hand
+and foot, and Afiola in a sweat about his children.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>The captain sat on a chair at the forrard end of the house, smoking a
+cigar, and occasionally searching the woods with his binoculars. There
+was a stack of loaded rifles beside him, and a keg of dynamite with a
+loose lid to it. Some of the sticks had touch-and-go fuses to them,
+ready to throw if they tried boarding; and sometimes he would take out
+his watch and look at it hard, and every time he looked the people in
+the waist would set up a kind of a wail. At one o'clock we ran up
+Filipo, Afiola's brother, and settled down to another spell of waiting.
+Somewheres along of three bells we saw them getting a boat out by Pita's
+house, and lo and behold! it was Tweedie, with the native pastor and a
+divinity student named Henry to pull him. When they were close enough to
+talk, he fell on his knees in the boat, though it was half full of bilge
+and slopped all over him; and he besought Captain Coe, by all that was
+holy, to stop murdering the innocent, and rattled on fast and scolding
+like he was in the pulpit. We was to leave it to God, he said, and went
+on like we was worse nor Afiola, the pitiful hound, like it wasn't his
+own wife we was doing our damnedest to save.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Coe let him have his say, and then he leaned over the ship's
+side, holding to the starboard shrouds with one hand and taking the
+cigar out of his mouth with the other, and told him, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>with a most
+deliberate spit, as how he was going on with one every hour till Mrs.
+Tweedie was brought back safe and sound, and when he used up them he had
+aboard, how he was going to land for more. He didn't speak it particular
+loud, and you might have thought he was talking what a hot day it was;
+but there was that in his voice I've never heard before or since, and
+you knew he'd live right up to every word he said. I guess the pastor
+and the student understood a little English, for when Coe finished they
+laid on to their oars like mad, and headed the old sieve for shore
+again, Tweedie in the bilge and still protesting.</p>
+
+<p>At two o'clock we turned off Sosofina, Afiola's aunt. We now had three
+aloft, and as we rolled gently broadside on to the swell they'd swing
+together and swing apart till you didn't care to look at them. That hour
+from two to three was the very longest I ever spent in my life. It was
+the hottest time of day and the sun beat down unmerciful, the pitch
+running in the seams, and the awnings being stripped off to better fight
+the ship, if need be. The steward passed round sardines and buttered
+biscuit, and I recollect the Chinaman wolfing his right out of the can
+and tipping it cornerwise to drink the ile. Bar Coe, he was the coolest
+customer of the lot, which was the more remarkable, as he was a
+mild-mannered man ordinarily, given to playing the China fiddle to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>himself, and very obliging if you wanted fresh yeast or the way he
+curried pigeon. Rau, the Belgian, with his hairy arms and stubby figure,
+struck one somehow as being more in his element in so wild a business,
+and you took his calm for granted, like a soldier serving a gun and
+doing what he's told. If Coe had ordered him to set off the dynamite and
+blow up the ship, he would have said "Aye, aye, sir!" and obeyed,
+respectful and willing, like the first-class seaman and navigator he
+was. He had served in the Belgian navy, and the habit had stuck to him.
+But in all of us, after all&mdash;me and Lum and John Rau and the Nieue
+steward&mdash;it was Coe's spirit that had raised us to this pitch, and he
+had blown a little of his own breath into every one of us. We were all
+Elijah Coe's that day, and it was only afterwards it came over us how
+different we had acted from our proper selves.</p>
+
+<p>Well, as I said, it was drawing toward six bells, and we were keyed up
+tremendous, as we might expect to see the result of our work now any
+minute; and it was a shuddering thing to think of sending up another,
+and him a child. We all watched Coe out of the corner of our eye as he
+went on smoking his cigar, and every time he took out his watch and
+looked at it it seemed like my heart stopped beating.</p>
+
+<p>"Three o'clock, boys!" he says, rising business-like from his chair,
+while Lum looked up <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>expectant, and my gizzard seemed to shrink inside
+me. "Three o'clock, boys!"</p>
+
+<p>He hadn't no more nor got the words out of his mouth when Rau ripped out
+there was a canoe coming off, and we all ran pellmell for the rail. Sure
+enough, there was an outrigger aiming straight for us, and the fellar in
+it was bent double and paddling that fast that the water spurted at the
+bow like it was a race. When he got within a cable's length he stopped,
+and waved something he had in his hand, and shouted a lot of stuff we
+couldn't make head or tail of. Coe made motions to him to come nearer,
+and Rau and me did the same, till the fellar got back something of his
+nerve, paddling with one hand and holding the little board aloft in the
+other (like he might a flag of truce), and venturing toward us slower
+and slower, till at last Coe reached down and took the thing from him
+standing up.</p>
+
+<p>It was a slab of fresh-cut <i>fuafua</i>, about a foot long by three inches
+wide, and on it, written, as I heard afterwards, in blood and spit and
+gunpowder, was a message from Mrs. Tweedie herself&mdash;not many words on
+it, and them printed, for she only had a pointed stick by way of a pen,
+but saying as how she was unharmed and was being brought back fast, and
+please, he wasn't to trice up any more of Afiola's family.</p>
+
+<p>The captain read it aloud to us about a dozen <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>times, and then, his face
+working so he couldn't speak no more, he gripped hands with me, and then
+with John Rau, and not forgetting the Nieue steward, and then he went
+down the forward ladder, and I'm blest if he didn't put his arm round
+the Chink, and burst out sobbing&mdash;yes, sir, like a great overwrought
+girl, sitting on the tool chest, limp as a rag, and wiping his eyes with
+the cuff of his blue-striped panjammers, the Chinaman, patting him like
+he might a dog, saying, "Poor captain! Never you mind, captain! She all
+lite now, captain," while the prisoners broke out in a big gabble of how
+they were saved, and piped up with a hymn.</p>
+
+<p>He wasn't the man to take anything for granted, however, and after he
+had sort of pulled himself together and got his second wind, so to
+speak, he cast loose a couple more with a message that he had to have a
+letter on paper from Mrs. Tweedie herself, countersigned by the king,
+that she was at home, safe, and no harm done. He might have saved
+himself the trouble, for they hadn't been gone ten minutes before she
+came off herself, queening it in the stern of the king's great <i>alia</i>,
+seventy feet long, with Tweedie and Maunga, and the princes, and eighty
+men chorusing to the paddles, with drums aft, and a young boy dancing in
+the bow and keeping time with a rifle. Except for her paleness, which
+was like marble, and the bloody marks of the sinnet on her pretty
+wrists, you <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>wouldn't have taken her for much different than usual; and
+she skipped up the ladder as sprightly as you please, and made a bee
+line for Elijah Coe like a schoolgirl running to her pa for the
+holidays.</p>
+
+<p>She wanted to throw herself on her knees and kiss his hands; and when he
+forced her up, she flung her arms around his neck and kissed him, saying
+he was her preserver, and how he had saved her from worse than death,
+and so overflowing and grateful and outspoken that nobody knew where to
+look, least of all the captain, who turned all colors, and couldn't say
+anything but "You're welcome," like a ninny.</p>
+
+<p>We cleared a little space for Tweedie to pray in, which was his way of
+celebrating, and couldn't very well be prevented, and the king followed
+with a speech what he'd do to Afiola when he caught him&mdash;the tarnation
+liar! The crew came off, swimming in ones and twos to beg for pardon,
+and the prisoners were unbound and given three crates of biscuit and
+three barrels of pork and some boat sails to wrap the corpses in, and
+there was more hurrah-boys and good feeling and port wine in the cabin
+than you could ever have thought possible under the circumstances.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Was that all? Well, for a time it was, Coe slipping out at dawn on the
+ebb with a cargo of Afiola <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>rapscallions he was to drop, one here, one
+there, all around the Group, we having no further use for them in Puna
+Punou.</p>
+
+<p>The measles struck us shortly afterwards in a Tahiti bark, and it
+carried off a sight of people, Afiola included, who was in a sort of
+armed hiding on the other side of the island. Tweedie, too, who had
+always been a complaining whelp, started up a cough about this time, and
+died. Of course, this wasn't right off, but spread over a matter of
+eighteen months or more, Coe coming and going regular in the <i>Peep o'
+Day</i>, and Mrs. Tweedie more blooming than ever.</p>
+
+<p>Coe turned up from Sydney, where he had gone for a general refitting and
+overhaul, just as Mrs. Tweedie was taking her passage in the <i>Olive
+Branch</i>, missionary auxiliary barkentine for Honolulu. None of the
+saints would have a word to say to him, calling him "the man of blood,"
+and ordering him off the ship, as he stood his ground and wouldn't budge
+even when the anchor was apeak and the barkentine under steerage way.
+But he kept singing out for her while they tried to hustle him over the
+side and into his boat, and the more they hustled the louder he shouted,
+"Mrs. Tweedie! Mrs. Tweedie!" till at last she heard him in her cabin
+below, and came running up, smiling, and arranging her hair with her
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>It was a tight place for Coe, having to do his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>courting while they were
+moving him on like the police; but, for all that, when he went down the
+ladder it was with Mrs. Tweedie with him, and they pulled ashore and
+were married by the Kanaka pastor, and went a-honeymooning in the <i>Peep
+o' Day</i>, bringing up in Papiete three weeks later, to buy her some
+clothes, for every stitch to her name was beating up to Honolulu in the
+<i>Olive Branch</i>.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>
+<br />
+
+<hr />
+<br />
+<h2>MR. BOB</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>Far away in the western Pacific, in that labyrinth of coral reefs and
+low, palm-rimmed isles floating between the blue of heaven and the
+deeper blue of sea, known to the pajama-clad, ear-ringed traders as "the
+Group," and to the outer world as Micronesia&mdash;here, one burning morning
+there arrived a visitor from "Home," who descended, not from some tubby
+bark or slant-masted schooner, but Godlike from the glorious stars
+themselves&mdash;Christmas Day!</p>
+
+<p>The Rev. Walter Kirke looked out moodily from beneath the eaves of his
+basket-work house, and his heart sank as he gazed across the sweltering
+strip of water, twenty miles wide, that divided the island of Apiang
+from its neighbor, Tarawa. His brother in the Lord across the strait,
+the perpetually unfortunate Titcombe (the Rev. J. B. Tracy Titcombe,
+M.A., Cam.), had sent in a proa with a message of such urgency and need
+that delay, let alone refusal, was utterly out of the question.</p>
+
+<p>"The king has broken all his promises," wrote Titcombe, in a hand
+illegible from distress and agitation. "He threatens to burn the new
+church, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>flog the members, and spear personally the leading lights of
+our infant congregation. Yesterday, on my remonstrating with him, he
+gave me twenty-four hours to leave the island, calling me at the same
+time a sting ray, a detached jellyfish&mdash;a white squid, together with
+some other local expressions of a highly wounding and contemptuous
+nature. The tiny fold is terrorized, and Thomas Najibika, my deacon and
+right-hand man, is in hourly apprehension of a massacre. My wife and
+little Kenneth are down with fever, and this, together with my halting
+knowledge of the native language, has put me at such a disadvantage that
+I have no alternative but to appeal to you. For Heaven's sake, please
+come instantly and exert yourself on my behalf, or else we may lose
+Tarawa for good, and put back the good work by a dozen years."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll have to go, dear," said Kirke to his pretty wife.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we'll have to go," she assented sadly.</p>
+
+<p>She could not help feeling cross with the Titcombes for always muddling
+things&mdash;a little unjustly, perhaps&mdash;for her own missionary path had ever
+been so easy and untroubled. Mrs. Kirke was a woman of marked beauty,
+whose sweet imperiousness, sympathy, humor, and tact made her the adored
+of the islanders. She not only spoke native well, but with a zest and
+sparkle, a silver ripple of irony, ridicule, and good-fellowship that
+carried <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>everything before it. No kings ever bothered Mrs. Kirke. Even
+the redoubtable Tembinok, with forty boats full of armed savages, had
+been stemmed in his Napoleonic career and turned back by her from his
+projected invasion of Apiang&mdash;presenting the missionary's wife, on his
+departure, with a gold-inlaid Winchester that was the apple of his eye.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall make Karaitch smart for this!" she said vindictively. "I
+sha'n't let him off with less than twenty tons of copra for my girls'
+school; and he'll have to apologize, too, and swear on a shark's head to
+behave for a year."</p>
+
+<p>"We can't all have such intrepid little wives," said Kirke, putting his
+arm fondly about her. Experience had shown him that in native questions
+she was always as good as her word, and it was with a kind of proud
+humility he conceded her the place he was so much less able himself to
+fill. He had not the faintest apprehensions about the Tarawa matter. Ada
+would bring the king to heel in fifteen minutes, and in twenty there
+would be the dawn of a new peace, with stately apologies, gifts of
+turtle and bonito hooks, endless and troublesomely idiomatic
+compliments, and incidentally a little friction with the Titcombes, who
+would certainly resent being saved so easily.</p>
+
+<p>No, Kirke wasn't afraid of Karaitch. Ada would settle Karaitch out of
+hand. What he dreaded was that twenty miles of water under the noonday
+sun, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>and the problem of Daisy&mdash;Daisy, their little girl of eight, who
+was playing so contentedly on the floor with the presents Santa Claus
+had just brought her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Walter, I can't let Daisy go again!" cried Mrs. Kirke. "Last time
+she nearly died in the boat, and you know she wasn't really herself for
+weeks and weeks afterwards."</p>
+
+<p>Daisy heard her name being spoken, and looked up. Her sleek little head
+and round brown eyes gave her the look of a baby seal. Such a happy baby
+seal that morning, with a five-shilling magic lantern, twelve biblical
+slides, a dolly that could squeak in the most lifelike manner, and a
+darling little chair!</p>
+
+<p>"But leave her?" questioned Kirke, with a hopeless gesture of his hand.
+"And that with the island full of mutineers, and Heaven only knows
+to-day what deviltry and carousing?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kirke thought awhile.</p>
+
+<p>"Twenty miles over there&mdash;three hours," she said at last; "an hour to
+straighten out the king&mdash;four hours; three back, makes seven. That means
+being home by sundown. We can trust Nantok all right to take good care
+of her, and then I'll get Peter to send down an armed guard."</p>
+
+<p>Kirke acquiesced in silence. He was a tall, thin man, not over-clever,
+whose fervent Christianity was strangely at variance with a
+constitutional <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>inclination to see the darker side of things. He
+distrusted Nantok, distrusted the king's guard, felt a profound
+apprehension of that jeering, boisterous mob of sailors, who pigged
+together in Rick's old boatshed, and were numerous enough to defy every
+law of the island. It was terrible to him to leave his little girl in
+such company. Yet he recalled his last trip across the strait, when she
+had fainted with the heat&mdash;fainted again and again&mdash;as they had
+attempted, with such distress and agony, to screen her from a glare as
+pitiless as a furnace. He remembered dipping her, naked, all but
+lifeless, into the milkwarm water, till up from the transparent depths
+the swift, bluish glimmer of a shark warned him to snatch her in.
+Remembered the hopelessness of it, the terror, the despair, he himself
+bending to an oar, and offering every inducement his mind could think of
+to incite his crew to pull their hearts out. No, all that was a
+nightmare to look back on&mdash;never, never to be repeated.</p>
+
+<p>Daisy was called over and the situation explained to her. Like all only
+children, living constantly in the society of her parents, and sharing
+their talk and plans, she was precociously old for her age, and more
+serious and thoughtful than a little tot ought to be. Though her lower
+lip trembled, and her eyes flooded with tears, she put on a brave face
+to it, and protested her willingness to remain with Nantok and be a good
+little girl.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>"And mamma and papa will be back at dusk; and if they are detained, you
+mustn't be the least bit worried about them; and you'll let Nantok put
+you to bed at eight; and if you wake up and feel frightened, you are to
+remember the army outside, guarding you in your sleep like a little
+princess!"</p>
+
+<p>"And Dod, too," added Daisy piously, though inwardly pleased to have the
+army as well.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my lamb!" cried Mrs. Kirke, clasping her to her breast. "It breaks
+mamma's heart to leave her little girl on Christmas Day!"</p>
+
+<p>Altogether it was a damp moment in the Kirke family, and even the
+missionary's eyes were suspiciously moist as he knelt beside his wife
+and talked hurriedly about the magic lantern, and the dolly, and what a
+jolly evening they'd all have when they got back from Tarawa.</p>
+
+<p>Preparations were soon made. The whaleboat was got ready, and manned by
+a stout crew of such recent Christians that the demons of the strait had
+first to be appeased by two tins of salmon and six biscuit, paid
+secretly in advance to Nebenua, the devil-priest. Then, when all was
+ready, even to the breaker of brackish water, a forty-pound tin of
+biscuit, two hundred fresh nuts, medicine chest, compass, and five
+pounds of niggerhead tobacco by way of petty cash, the whole expedition
+was tantalized and held back by the non-arrival of the guard, who were
+frenziedly searching for their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>boots. Why the army was so ruthlessly
+condemned to wear boots, is a question that was often asked and never
+properly answered. Nobody else wore boots&mdash;not even the king; but the
+military caste is proverbially dressy, and it is enough to say that the
+armed forces of Apiang set immense store by their boots.</p>
+
+<p>At last they arrived, boots and all, a straggling, hobbling party of
+seven, with cartridge belts and rifles. Little Daisy was formally put in
+their charge; solemn pledges were given and accepted; a keg of beef, to
+be subsequently presented, was hedged about with innumerable
+restrictions. That keg&mdash;like liberty&mdash;was to be at the price of eternal
+vigilance. And then, when everything had been said, and explained, and
+threatened, the whaleboat hoisted her anchor&mdash;a coral stone&mdash;and set a
+straight course for Tarawa.</p>
+
+<p>It was a long day&mdash;a very long day&mdash;quite the longest day in Daisy's
+tiny life. She successively exhausted the magic lantern, the dolly, and
+the chair. She went out and prattled with the army where they sprawled
+under the lee of the kitchen, smoking endless <i>pandanus</i> cigarettes. She
+helped Nantok prepare lunch&mdash;a bowl of chocolate made with condensed
+milk, and hot buttered toast. After lunch she had a nap with Nantok on
+the mats, and after that again an exciting talk about the great massacre
+on Tapatuea, where all Nantok's people <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>had been killed during that
+Kanaka Saint Bartholomew's. Then out to the army again, and checkers,
+which the army played amazingly well, beating her so often that even
+this pastime palled. Then&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Oh, what a sigh!</p>
+
+<p>The sleek little seal was aweary, aweary. The house was so empty, so
+still, and there was such a void in that aching baby heart! She went
+into papa's room and cried on his bed. He would be drowned in the
+strait; savage old Karaitch would shoot him with a gun; he would be
+blown out to sea like Mr. Pettibone the beach-comber. The hot tears
+scalded her cheeks. She had always liked Mr. Pettibone. Papa called him
+a proff&mdash;proff&mdash;proff something, but he had always been so jolly, and
+his red face and funny little blue eyes rose before her out of the mist.
+She cried over the lost Pettibone; over Tansy the cat, that had died
+from eating a lizard; over Nosey, her pet chicken, that Nantok had
+killed by mistake one night for supper; cried over papa and mamma, far
+away in the whaler&mdash;totaled up all the little sadnesses of her little
+life, meting out tears to every one. And then, feeling greatly
+refreshed, she went out on the front porch, and wondered what she should
+do next.</p>
+
+<p>Down the shore, about a mile away, there were others who found time less
+heavy on their hands. At the Land We Live In, a one-roomed saloon <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>which
+catered for a permanent white population of thirteen, and a transient
+one that varied from a cutter to a full-rigged ship&mdash;at the Land We Live
+In Christmas was being celebrated in a rousing fashion. To begin with,
+there were the mutineers of the <i>Lord Dundonald</i>, twenty-two strong,
+with plenty of money still to spend. Their revolt against authority had
+not been without some redeeming features, and an unbiased critic would
+have found it hard to blame them. After twenty-seven days and nights at
+the pumps of a four-masted sieve, the Lords had struck in a body, and
+forced the captain to abandon the ship and set out in three boats for
+Apiang. Here they double-dyed their crime by compelling the wrathful
+master to pay them their wages to date, from six hundred and thirty-nine
+pounds he had taken with him from a vessel he had fondly hoped to pump
+to China. Captain Latimer, with the three mates, the carpenter, and one
+of the hands, had sailed away south in the longboat, vowing yardarms and
+a man-of-war, and when last seen was sinking over the horizon in the
+direction of the Fiji Islands.</p>
+
+<p>Well, here they all were in the Land We Live In, together with Tom
+Holderson, Peter Extrum, Eddy Newnes, and Long Joe Kelly, all of Apiang;
+Papa Benson, of Tarawa; Jones and Peabody, of Big Muggin; and crazy old
+Jimmy Mathison, of nowhere in particular&mdash;unless it were the nearest gin
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>bottle; and it was a rip-roaring Christmas, and no mistake, with
+bottled beer flowing like water, and songs and choruses and clog dances
+and hornpipes; and Papa Benson (in earrings and pink pajamas) a-blowing
+enough wind through his concertina to have sailed a ship. And there were
+girls, too, seven or eight of them, in bright trade-cotton Mother
+Hubbards&mdash;a bevy of black-eyed little heathen savages, who bore a hand
+with the trays, and added their saucy laughter to the general gayety,
+helping out Larry the barkeep as he drew unending corks or stopped to
+wipe the sweat off his forehead, saying, "Genelmen, the drinks is on
+Billy," or Tommy, or Long Joe, or whoever it was that was treating.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, at the door, which had been kept shut to prevent the natives
+from assembling and peering in&mdash;suddenly, at the door, there was heard a
+faint, faint knock. The concertina stopped. Fritz, the Dutchman, said
+"Hoosh!" and raised his pipe for silence. The knock was repeated. Quiet
+descended on the Land We Live In. Larry looked up from his bottles, and
+in a rough and belligerent voice called out, "Come in!"</p>
+
+<p>The invitation was hesitatingly obeyed, and there stood Daisy Kirke on
+the threshold, a sweet, faltering figure, with her guard, boots and all,
+lined up in the roadway. Hardly a soul in the room knew there was a
+little white girl on the island; and the sight of Daisy, with the red
+ribbon in her hair, her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>dimity frock, her long stockings and pinafore,
+was as startling as it was unexpected.</p>
+
+<p>"Howdy-do, evver'body?" said she.</p>
+
+<p>There was an embarrassed silence.</p>
+
+<p>"I know you better than you do me," went on Daisy confidentially,
+proving it with her forefinger. "That's Tommy, the cabin boy; and
+yonder's Mr. Mathison, the beach-comber; and you"&mdash;indicating a giant of
+a man with an aquiline nose and a square-cut beard&mdash;"you are Mr. Bob
+Fletcher, the ringleader!"</p>
+
+<p>A giggle of subdued merriment ran round the room. An instinctive respect
+kept it within bounds, or perhaps it was Bob Fletcher's fierce and
+warning look that cowed any incipient rowdyism. The brawny mutineer set
+her on his knee, and, in a voice harshened by thirty years' service
+before the mast, asked her deferentially if she fancied a glass of
+syrup?</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you," said Daisy politely; and then, addressing everybody in
+general, "papa and mamma's gone to Tarawa!"</p>
+
+<p>"Now, if that ain't too bad!" put in Bob sympathetically.</p>
+
+<p>"And so it just occurred to me," went on Daisy, "to do something nice to
+surprise them when they came back."</p>
+
+<p>A profound silence greeted this remark. The devil's love of holy water
+is a craving compared <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>to the amount of love lost between a South Sea
+missionary and the rough white element that mocks his labors at every
+turn. It was the custom of the Lord Dundonalds, moreover, to hoot the
+Rev. Walter Kirke whenever they met him. It was a recollection of this
+that made the present situation so piquant and humorous.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides, it seems too bad," continued Daisy, "that the natives should
+have such a fuss made over them, while all you white gentlemen are left
+out in the cold. It must look queer to Dod, and I don't believe He likes
+it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Everything for the niggers&mdash;that's right," muttered Tom Extrum
+bitterly, "and not even a six-months-old newspaper for the likes of us!"</p>
+
+<p>"You don't look so werry wicked," said Daisy, taking in the room with a
+comprehensive glance, and putting an arm around Mr. Bob's neck, as
+though confident of having at least one friend among the company. "I
+wonder if you wouldn't all like to come along to my house, and play with
+my magic lantern, and&mdash;and&mdash;organize a Band of Hope?"</p>
+
+<p>She was abashed by the roar of laughter that followed the proposal. Papa
+Benson flung himself on the floor and rolled over and over. Long Joe
+uttered whoops of delight. Even Mr. Bob shook with speechless mirth,
+till the veins on his forehead stood out like strings. Never in all its
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>history was there such a hullabaloo in the Land We Live In. As the
+rumpus died down something very like remorse overwhelmed the roisterers
+as they saw Daisy's flushing, quivering little face, hot with
+mortification.</p>
+
+<p>It was Mr. Bob who sprang to the rescue before the brimming tears could
+fall.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm on!" he shouted, rising to his feet with unexpected enthusiasm.
+"Now, then, boys, who says 'Aye, aye' for the Band of 'Ope?"</p>
+
+<p>A good part of the crowd would have preferred to stay by their spree;
+but so contagious is example and so sheeplike the sailor nature, that
+the whole room fell in with Bob, and answered his call like one man.</p>
+
+<p>He swung Daisy up on his shoulder, where, from that dizzy perch, she
+looked back shyly at the noisy pack behind her. Secure in the conquest
+of the ringleader, whom intuitively she felt stronger than the rest, and
+kinder and more resolute, with a heart beneath his rough exterior as
+simple and childlike as her own, she managed to keep up her courage in
+spite of the loud, frightening laughter and the tipsy boisterousness and
+horseplay that marked the inception of the Band of Hope. Her
+satisfaction was suddenly checked, however, by the sight of the Kanaka
+girls joining the procession and making as though to follow.</p>
+
+<p>"No, they mustn't come!" she cried out <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>jealously. "Please, Mr.
+Mathison, tell them they mustn't come! This is to be for men only!"</p>
+
+<p>"Turn them back!" thundered Bob. "Don't yer 'ear the little lady's
+<i>h</i>orders? Scamper, ye jades!"</p>
+
+<p>Papa Benson struck up a quickstep on the concertina, and, marching
+beside Bob Fletcher, helped to lead the van. The mutineers,
+beach-combers, and traders fell in two by two. The rear was brought up
+by the guard, loutish, hobbling, and out of step, bearing their rusty
+Springfields at all angles. In this fashion they made the missionary's
+house, swarmed into the neat bare inclosure of coral sand, and invaded
+the silent rooms.</p>
+
+<p>A terrible irresolution was stealing over Daisy. Twelve slides,
+representing the wanderings of Saint Paul, began to seem too trifling a
+means of holding the attention of this enormous and expectant crowd.
+Besides, it came over her with a shock that she was a little hazy about
+Saint Paul; and then there were disturbing questions of sheets and
+darkened windows, and how to make it work. It was with dismay, verging
+on despair, that she saw the serried ranks of her recruits crowding the
+room to bursting, and all regarding her with humorous anticipation. But
+good Mr. Bob, holding her in his lap, and stroking her hair with an
+enormous red hand, showed a most comforting disposition to himself take
+the breach. At any rate, he roared <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>for silence; told Mr. Mathison he'd
+cut his liver out if he didn't belay with them there remarks, and
+assumed a tone of authority that calmed the tumult of Daisy's
+misgivings.</p>
+
+<p>"Friends," he said, "and mates, and respected genelmen <i>h</i>all, we are
+here, two and three gathered togetherlike, for the purpose of
+<i>h</i>organizing a Band of 'Ope."</p>
+
+<p>"Local Number One," interrupted Billy Dutton, the donkey-man, who had
+had some trades'-union experience.</p>
+
+<p>"Band of 'Ope, Local Number One," continued Mr. Bob, receiving the
+suggestion in an accommodating spirit. "And it is with great pleasure I
+propose the name of <i>h</i>our first president, Miss Daisy Kirke, of
+Apiang."</p>
+
+<p>Then, my stars, wasn't there a cheer! Daisy hung her head, nestled
+closer to Mr. Bob, and felt all the joy of good works promptly bearing
+fruit.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see no reason," went on Mr. Bob, "why a false modesty, that 'as
+been my <i>h</i>unfailing 'andicap through life, should prevent me from
+nominating myself as your <i>h</i>esteemed vice president. I do not wish to
+seem a-soaring too 'igh, or reaching out for honors that belong to
+<i>h</i>abler 'eads nor mine; but I'll take the sense of the meeting in a
+kindly spirit, and will abide peaceable by a show of 'ands!"</p>
+
+<p>When the applause had subsided, Billy Dutton <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>sprang up, and wanted to
+know "what about a recording seckitary?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see no 'arm in the honorable genelman <i>h</i>assuming the job
+'isself," said Mr. Bob, "if 'e thinks 'e's sufficient of a speller, and
+won't run the band into 'orrible extravagances for 'igh-priced wines and
+luxuries. The assessments of this band is going to be low, and the diet
+plain. Who says Brother Dutton ain't the man for the place? Is it you,
+Mr. Riley, I see raising your fist agin him? Oh, only to ax a question.
+Well, one thing at a time, Brother Riley. Does the meeting <i>h</i>endorse
+Mr. Willum Dutton for recording seckitary?"</p>
+
+<p>The meeting did, vociferously and with cheers. Daisy ran and got her
+slate for the recording seckitary, who thereupon (after first inscribing
+the names of the office bearers in a shaky print) began to draw a
+wonderful picture of a pirate ship.</p>
+
+<p>"Afore listening to the plans of our valued president," said Mr. Bob, "I
+propose myself to <i>h</i>offer up a few general remarks on 'Ope! Me and 'Ope
+is old friends, genelmen. We set sail together from the port of London,
+'Ope and I, when I was a bright-faced boy that 'igh! We've bunked in
+together, fair weather and foul, coming on this thirty year. We 'ave set
+in our time, me and 'Ope, on the bottom of a capsized schooner, ore
+laden out of Mazatlan, with our tongues 'anging out like the tails of
+some vallyble new kind of a black dorg. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>'Ope and I took the Chainy
+coast once on a chicken coop. 'Ope and I, when we 'ad the dollars, blew
+them in right royal. 'Ope and I, when we 'adn't none, tightened our
+belts and cheered each other <i>h</i>up. Looking back over all them years, I
+want to stand <i>h</i>up and testify right 'ere to the best friend of the
+sailorman, bar none, and p'r'aps the <i>h</i>only one he ever truly 'ad&mdash;and
+that's 'Ope, God bless her!"</p>
+
+<p>Amid the ensuing uproar, which jarred the walls of that prim missionary
+residence like an explosion of dynamite, spilling plates off dressers
+and cock-billing texts, and arresting the astonished clock at four
+forty-six, little Daisy was trying to nerve herself to address the
+assembled company. The unforeseen docility of the band had put new ideas
+in that sleek, baby-seal head. Odds and ends of tracts and storybooks
+recurred to her. Infantile ambitions awoke and clamored. But it was
+daunting, just the same, to confront those rows of eyes, and those great
+big, unshaved, shaggy-looking faces, all keenly waiting for her to
+speak.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, then, little lady," said the vice president, "'ere's your Band of
+'Ope, a-panting to set its 'and to the plow!"</p>
+
+<p>Daisy cleared her throat. Pride and timidity struggled with each other
+in that eager little countenance. Had it not been for an encouraging
+squeeze from Mr. Bob, who knows but what she <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>might have burst into
+tears, and disgraced herself before the whole band. But the squeeze,
+coming exactly at the right time, averted so mortifying a catastrophe.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear friends," began Daisy, catching with unconscious mimicry some
+of the rounded tones of her father's voice&mdash;"my dear, kind friends!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, go on," cried Mr. Bob; "that's a swell start! That's the way to
+wake them up!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hear! hear!" (This from a dozen places.)</p>
+
+<p>"I have called you togevver," went on Daisy bravely, "so we might enjoy
+the travels of Saint Paul, which belongs to the magic lantern Santa
+Claus brought me this morning for Christmas, because I'm such a good
+little girl. Saint Paul was a kind of a sailor, too, and got
+shipwrecked, like Mr. Bob, in an awful storm. I used to know all about
+Saint Paul, but somehow I've got mixed up about him since. Perhaps one
+of our members will oblige, so we'll know what the slides are about when
+we get <i>w</i>ound to them?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a profound silence. No one volunteered. Billy Dutton, looking
+up from the pirate ship, to which he was adding some finishing touches,
+said he was afeared the president would find them a sad, ignorant lot of
+ignorpotammusses.</p>
+
+<p>"Then we'll just have to get along without Saint Paul," said Daisy
+regretfully. "Perhaps it is as well, too, for Bands of Hope isn't only
+for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>amoosement, but to do good, and help uvvers, and carry the glad
+tidings right and left into the darkest corners of the earth."</p>
+
+<p>"Gee-whilikins!" exclaimed Sammy Nesbit, "where's this we're fetching up
+to, mates?"</p>
+
+<p>"Silence! <i>H</i>order! Shut your face! Dry up, there, Sammy!" roared the
+Band of Hope.</p>
+
+<p>"I was finking," went on the president, confidentially and undisturbed,
+"why a nice little surprise for papa wouldn't be as good an idea as any.
+It's an awful long way to Tarawa and back, and papa's never been werry
+strong since the fever he got in New Guinea, before he married mamma
+with Mr. Chalmers."</p>
+
+<p>"Wot sort of a surprise <i>h</i>exactly?" asked the vice president with an
+expression of some doubt.</p>
+
+<p>"Putting up mottoes <i>w</i>ound the walls," returned Daisy, "and green
+branches and palm leaves and texes and Merry Christmas, like grandpapa's
+in Devonshire, when I was a little tiny winy girl. And papa will be so
+pleased and happy and surprised that I know he'll just love it, and
+won't never feel tired at all!"</p>
+
+<p>The Band of Hope, who seemed given to singular and inextinguishable fits
+of laughter, promptly went off into another paroxysm; and laughter with
+the Band of Hope was no drawing-room performance, no polite titter
+behind an upraised hand. When the Band of Hope laughed, it rolled on the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>floor, beat its clenched fists against neighboring backs, screamed,
+huzzaed, cat-called, kicked pajama legs in the air, and shook the
+pictures off the walls. Mr. Bob seemed to be the only one who knew how
+to behave, but even Mr. Bob grew crimson in the face, and choked, and
+opened his mouth till you could see way down his froat.</p>
+
+<p>"Genelmen," he said, when at last he had somewhat recovered, "you've
+listened to our <i>h</i>orders, and I'll <i>h</i>only remind you that them that
+<i>h</i>ain't with us is agin us, as Saint Paul says. Back-sliders and goats
+may return to the bar, but me and the fleecy sheep is agoing to see this
+thing through, and do our dooty <i>h</i>under the regilations by Board of
+Trade <i>h</i>appointed. Goats, as I said afore, will kindly rise and step
+out!"</p>
+
+<p>"We ain't no blooming quitters," spoke up Billy Dutton. "Goats, nothing,
+you wall-eyed old ram! You want to cinch all the texes for yesself, and
+make a running with our lovely president. But we are on to you, Bob
+Fletcher, and I voice the sentimomgs of the whole band when I says with
+Saint John, in the forty-first epistle to the Proosians, 'Wot you put
+your fist to, that do it with all yer might!'"</p>
+
+<p>"Aye, aye!" chorused the band with boisterous approval.</p>
+
+<p>"Then <i>h</i>up and work, you devils!" exclaimed the vice president. "Pull
+out that table, Mack; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>and you, there, bear a 'and to 'elp 'im, 'Enery.
+Set <i>h</i>up the little chair, Williams! Easy with Saint Paul, you, Tommy,
+or you'll crack him sure&mdash;and lay the whole caboodlum on the shelf,
+<i>h</i>out of 'arm's way! Lively, lads&mdash;lively!"</p>
+
+<p>Bob lifted Daisy in his arms, and carrying her to the table, installed
+her comfortably in the little chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Captain's bridge," he said; "and if anything ain't right, or just
+<i>h</i>according to your <i>h</i>idears, you sing out to the lower deck, loud and
+'earty; only mind you don't get <i>h</i>excited and spill orf!"</p>
+
+<p>Daisy's eyes danced, and her timidity all vanished as she saw the jovial
+and obedient band grouping together and hotly discussing the proposed
+decorations. Distances were measured with tarry thumbs. A party of six
+was told off to climb the cocoa palms across the road; while another,
+shouting and hallooing like schoolboys, was dispatched to Holderson's
+station to get sinnet. There was a noisy wrangle over spelling. "I never
+seed it like that," said one, squinting over Billy's slate, "and I don't
+believe nobody else ever did neither." "For the love of Mike," roared
+another, "let's stick to them words we're all agreed on, and keep off of
+that thorological grass!" "Man and boy, I've been to sea this thirty
+years," exclaimed Mr. Bob with crushing vehemence, "and there warn't no
+T in Christmas then, and there <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>ain't now! <span class="smcap">C-r-i-s-s-m-a-s</span>, you
+son of a sea cook, and I know <i>h</i>every letter of it like the palm of me
+'and!"</p>
+
+<p>In a corner, dispassionately aloof from all the bustle and argument,
+Papa Benson, that venerable dandy of the pink pajamas, pumped up the
+concertina, and drew melodiously on his ancient repertoire. To the
+inspiring strains of "In Her Hair She Wore a White Camellia," "Oh,
+Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out To-night?" and the "Mulligatawny
+Guards," the good work progressed with sailorlike speed and system. The
+bare, dreary room grew gay with greenery. Stitched to the matting walls
+with sinnet there appeared letters, words, and finally complete
+inscriptions: <span class="smcap">Peas On Erth And Goodwill Towards Man</span>; <span class="smcap">Daisy
+Kirke, The Seaman's Star</span>; <span class="smcap">Merry Crissmas</span>, and <span class="smcap">God
+Bless Our Hom</span>.</p>
+
+<p>Daisy clapped her hands with delight, and did not stint her praise or
+approval. Occasionally she would stand up on the "bridge" to anxiously
+point out a crooked letter, or call attention to a doubtful spelling;
+and her little heart overflowed with satisfaction at the brisk "Aye,
+aye, Miss!" that greeted her smallest criticism. Mr. Bob worked like a
+horse, and not only made things jump, but kept a sharp watch as well on
+the unguarded utterances of his mates. Once, at some remark of Mr.
+Tod's, he flared up like a lion, and stepping close to Mr. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>Tod, with
+his fist clenched, said, "Drop that, Toddy&mdash;d'ye 'ear&mdash;drop it!" and
+stared at him so fierce and splendid, that Mr. Tod fell back and mumbled
+something about "No offense," and "It kinder ripped out unbeknownst,
+Bob, old cock!"</p>
+
+<p>By the time it was all finished dusk was falling. The room had been
+beautifully swept out, and likewise the porch, and Mr. Bell was in the
+act of dancing a fascinating clog to Papa Benson's "Soldier's Joy" on
+the concertina, when Nantok rushed in, shouting that Mr. Kirke was
+coming. And, indeed, she had no sooner given the news than it was
+confirmed by the whaler's crew, whose voices could be heard far across
+the water, lustily singing at their paddles.</p>
+
+<p>A sort of consternation descended on the Band of Hope. "Hell!" exclaimed
+Mr. Dutton, and dropped his broom with a crash. There was a mad scurry
+to escape. The little president was forgotten in the pellmell rush, and
+from the height of her table she perceived her friends flying away
+without a word of farewell. No, not all. The faithful Mr. Bob, quiet and
+masterful even in that panicky moment of the missionary's return, came
+up to her, and taking her hand in both his own, nuzzled it long and
+lovingly against his cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"Little Daisy," he said, and his voice sounded kind of strange and
+different, "I want you to give a message to your pa&mdash;a message from me,
+you say <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>to 'im&mdash;and that is, 'e'll never 'ave no more trouble with the
+boys down the shore. And if any of them gets fresh, or gives 'im any
+lip, or 'oots&mdash;you tell 'im this, Daisy&mdash;I'll break every bone of 'is
+body, so 'elp me, Moses. And it <i>h</i>ain't because of 'im, or anythink the
+like of that, but because he's the father of the darlingest little gal
+that <i>h</i>ever breathed, and the sweetest and the dearest."</p>
+
+<p>Daisy flung her arms around his neck and kissed him; and as her face
+pressed his, rough as mahogany and hairy as a mat, she felt it all wet
+with tears.</p>
+
+<p>Daisy was still wondering what it was that could make Mr. Bob cry, when
+he suddenly let her go, and walked out of the door in his funny, heavy,
+lurching sea walk, looking straight before him, and unheeding the "Happy
+Noo Year, Mr. Bob!" she called after him in a pitiful little voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Mr. Bob!" said Daisy to herself; and then, happening to put her
+hand to her hair, she discovered that the red ribbon was gone!</p>
+
+<p>"He must have stole it for a keepsake when I was kissing him!" she
+exclaimed. "Oh, you bad, bad Mr. Bob!"</p>
+
+<p>But her eyes sparkled nevertheless, as she ran out to greet papa and
+mamma.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>
+<br />
+
+<hr />
+<br />
+<h2>OLD DIBS</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>His beginnings was a mystery, where he come from a conjecture, and his
+business in Manihiki Island one of them things that bothered a fellow in
+his sleep and yapped at his heels when he was awake. Captain Corker had
+picked him up at Penrhyn, and the trader there said he had been landed
+from a barkentine, lumber laden, from Portland, and from there back
+there was a haze on his past thicker than Bobby Carter's. Leastways,
+with Bobby there was his forty-five different stories to account for the
+leg-iron scars on his ankles, but with Old Dibs you hadn't even that to
+chew on. Nothing but five large new trunks and the clothes he stood in.
+Remarkable clothes, too, they were, for a coral island in the mid
+Pacific, being invariably a stovepipe hat and a Prince Albert coat, with
+trousers changing from pearl gray to lead color, with stripes, till
+you'd think he'd melt!</p>
+
+<p>He was a fine man to look at, about sixty years of age, very portly and
+pleasant spoken, and everything he said sounded important, even if it
+was only about the weather or why cocoanut milk always gave him cramps.
+He said his name was Smith. People who change their names seem <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>always
+to change it to Smith, till you wonder sometimes they don't choose
+Jones, or maybe Patterson, or Wilkins. But you'll notice it is Smith
+every time, though we always called him Old Dibs, because of the money
+that he had and threw around so regardless.</p>
+
+<p>My first sight of him was on the front porch, mopping his forehead, and
+asking whether he might have board and lodging by the week. I told him
+that we hardly carried style enough for a gentleman like him, but all we
+had he was welcome to&mdash;and if not too long&mdash;for nothing. He seemed
+pleased at this, and more pleased still when he looked over our big
+bedroom and noticed my wife's smiling, comely face. She's only a Kanaka
+girl, but I wouldn't trade her for a million. And he laid down a shining
+twenty-dollar gold piece and asked if that would do every Tuesday?</p>
+
+<p>Now I am as fond of money as any man, but I'm not a pirate, and so I
+said it was too much. But he wouldn't take no denial, and flung it down
+on the trade-room counter again, saying he counted it settled. Then I
+turned to with his trunks, told my wife to bundle out into the boatshed,
+and opened beer.</p>
+
+<p>"Making a long stay, sir?" said I.</p>
+
+<p>"I hardly know, Bill," he said. (I had told him my name was Bill.) "I
+hardly know, Bill," and with that he heaved a tremendous sigh.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>"We don't often have visitors here," I said. "The last was eighteen men
+of the British bark <i>Wolverine</i>, in boats, from French Frigate Shoals,
+where they were cast away."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm looking for a quiet place to end my days in," he says.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I guess you've found it," I says.</p>
+
+<p>"It looks as though I had, Bill," he answers, gazing seaward where the
+palms was bending in the trade breeze and there was nothing but the
+speck of Captain Corker's schooner beating out. I could see he was
+pretty downhearted, and though I set the music box going to cheer him
+and asked if he fancied a nice mess of gulls' eggs for supper, it wasn't
+no good, and finally he went into his room and set out the rest of the
+day on one of the trunks.</p>
+
+<p>I went along the same evening to talk it over with Tom Riley, the other
+trader in Manihiki, who, in spite of our being in opposition and all
+that, was more like my own born brother than a rival in business. We
+never let down the price of shell or copra on each other, and lined up
+shoulder to shoulder if a third party tried to break in, and so we had
+enough for both of us and a tidy bit over. Tom was afire to hear all
+about Old Dibs, and had been getting bulletins the whole afternoon from
+the Kanakas, down to the twenty dollars and the five trunks, and even
+the way he sighed.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>Tom knew right away he was a defaulter, and said we were in powerful
+luck to have got him. It was fine of Tom to take it like that, for what
+luck there was was mine, and he said he'd help out with chickens and
+fresh fish and some extra superior canned stuff he had, so that Old Dibs
+would be comfortable and want to stay. Tom was a good deal like that
+professor who could make a prehistoric animal out of one prehistoric
+bone, and then, when later on they discovered the whole beast entire, it
+was head and tail with the one he had drawn on the blackboard. And by
+the time the square-face had made a second round, Tom's fancy had flown
+higher than a yellow-back novel, Old Dibs being dead, blessing me with
+his last breath and making me the heir of all his riches!</p>
+
+<p>Tom walked home with me, still talking, for we had now bought a
+ninety-ton schooner with my legacy, me captain and him supercargo, and
+we had taken out French naturalization papers so we might be free of the
+Paumotu and Tubuai groups. When we said good night, whispering so as not
+to disturb Old Dibs, who was snoring out serene, it had grown to be a
+fleet, with headquarters at Papiete, and a steam service to 'Frisco! We
+were a pair of boys, both of us, and could make squid taste like lamb
+chops just by telling ourselves it was so!</p>
+
+<p>I reckon Old Dibs was a little suspicious of me and Tom, and small blame
+to him for that, the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>Islands being pretty full of tough customers, with
+never no law nor order nor nobody to appeal to in trouble unless it was
+your gun. He made me put a stout bolt on his door and chicken wire over
+the windows, and always slept with the lamp burning in his room; and it
+was noticeable, too, that he never cared to wander far away from the
+house. He was given to playing the flute in the stern of an old
+whaleboat, which was drawn up near the station with a cocoanut shelter
+over it. He never went anywhere, except to the native pastor's (Iosefo
+his name was). I suppose he felt a kind of protection in him&mdash;Iosefo
+being the nearest thing to an official in the island&mdash;and he made
+himself very solid in that quarter, giving to the church lavish and
+going there every Sunday. He always come back from them visits with a
+ruminating look in his eye, and the first thing he did was to make a bee
+line for his room, like somebody might have been tampering with his
+trunks.</p>
+
+<p>Finally one day he took me aside and said: "Bill, that Iosefo is a very
+agreeable man, and if it would be the same to you, I'd like to have him
+a little about the house."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Mr. Smith," I said, "you needn't have troubled to ask me that; any
+friend of yours is welcome, I am sure, and I never saw no harm in
+Iosefo, even if he is a missionary."</p>
+
+<p>I thought he meant to have the fellow in to talk <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>with him or play
+checkers, to while away the time that hung so heavy on his hands. But it
+wasn't this at all&mdash;except for a halfway pretense at the beginning. No;
+he paid Iosefo ten dollars a week, for what do you think? To sit on one
+of his trunks (<i>the</i> trunk, I reckon) from seven in the morning till six
+at night, barring service time Sundays. Yes, sir; nothing else than a
+squatting sentry, mounting guard over the boodle inside the trunk and
+protecting it from me! I wonder what the home missionary society would
+have said to see Brother Iosefo yawning all day on the top of a trunk,
+or writing his sermon on his knee, Saturdays!</p>
+
+<p>At first I felt pretty hot about it, for it smacked too much of setting
+a thief to catch a thief, or at least offsetting the pastor and me like
+the compensating idea of a ship's chronometer; but my wife liked the
+respectability it give us before the natives; and Tom said my resenting
+it would be like putting the cap on my head. So I acted like I didn't
+give a whoop, the one way or the other.</p>
+
+<p>And then it wasn't easy to be anything but fond of Old Dibs, for he was
+a nice man to live with, never turning up his nose at the poor food we
+give him, and always so kind and polite to Sarah, my wife, that she
+fairly idolized him. He was a real gentleman through and through, and if
+his money (he called it his "papers," his valuable <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>"papers") weighed
+heavy on his mind, I guess I'd have been no better in his shoes, having
+to trust to strangers who might cut your throat. He had the whole island
+to roam over now, instead of being cooped up like a chicken in a coop,
+and we all noticed what a change in him it made for the better, throwing
+off flesh, and not panting so heavy between the spells of his flute, and
+walking with his head in the air like the island belonged to him.</p>
+
+<p>He wasn't much of a fluter, playing mostly from notes, and often picking
+them out so slow that you'd forget what the tune began like. He despised
+simple things like "Way Down Upon the Suwanee River," and the difficult
+things seemed to despise <i>him!</i> But he stuck at it indefatiguable, and
+blew enough wind through his flute to have sailed a ship. After
+breakfast in the morning, which he took in his panjammers like me, he
+would dress himself up nice in his Prince Albert, give his topper a
+wipe, and start away with the flute and a roll of music in a natty
+little case, like he was off to the Bank for the day. The only thing
+that ruffled him any was the children, about eighty of them, who always
+went along, too, and set in a circle around him when he played. I told
+him they'd soon tire of tagging after him, which he said he was mighty
+glad to hear; but if it was flies, they couldn't have been more
+pertinacious. I spoke to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>the king about it, and Old Dibs he complained
+to Iosefo, but it only seemed to whoop it up and add to the procession.
+The king said if he'd just flute in one place, he would put a taboo
+around it which neither children nor grown-ups would cross; but Old Dibs
+said that the looking on, even from a distance, would be quite as
+disturbing as being sprawled all over; and so the children followed him
+unabated.</p>
+
+<p>Then I had a happy thought, and suggested the graveyard! This was a
+walled-in inclosure, perhaps a hundred feet each way, on the weather
+side of the island, and on a windy day, with the surf thundering in, it
+was the lonesomest spot where a man could find himself. The natives left
+it alone at all times, except to bury somebody, and none of them came
+nearer to it than they could help. The Kanakas have a powerful dread of
+spirits, and even in the daytime they'd give the place a wide berth. The
+walls, too, being about seven feet high, prevented the children from
+peeking in, except at the gateway, which was so narrow that it was easy
+to get out of view.</p>
+
+<p>Old Dibs perked up at this and cottoned to the idea tremendous; and the
+graveyard soon become his regular stamping ground, except when there was
+a funeral. He rigged up a little shelter for himself in the center, with
+a music stand I made for him out of scantling; and often he took his
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>lunch in his pocket and spent the whole day. Not a child ventured to
+show himself, and he had it as much to himself as though he owned it;
+and he could lay his stovepipe down now without any fear of its being
+greased up or sat on. It led to his asking a raft of questions about the
+natives and their superstitions, and how none of them ventured to go
+near the place unless in a big party. He came back to that again and
+again, and always with the same interest. I ought to have suspected what
+was running in his head, but I didn't. In fack, we had all settled down
+now like we had always lived together, and I didn't bother any more
+about him, or what he said or did, than if he had been my wife's father!
+It was a good deal like having a rich uncle to stay with you, and after
+the first excitement you took it all as a matter of course.</p>
+
+<p>Even Iosefo, sitting on the trunk in the bedroom, became one of them
+things that ran into habit; and in some ways it was a good idea, too,
+for it brought custom to the store, what with the deacons coming over to
+talk about church affairs, and the Committee on Ways and Means meeting
+there regular. Even the gold twenty every week settled down in the same
+channel of routine, and I didn't bite it any more, as I used to do, nor
+hold it in my hand wondering where it come from. I just put it away with
+the rest and thought no more about it. The only concern of me and Sarah
+was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>to feed up the old fellow to the best of our ability and try and
+make him pleased.</p>
+
+<p>We had been running along like this for I don't know how long, when one
+night, toward the small hours, a singular thing happened. I was sleeping
+very light, and I woke up all of a sudden and saw Old Dibs standing in
+the doorway! He had a candle in his hand and bulked up enormous in his
+red silk dressing gown, and there was a wild look on his unshaved face.</p>
+
+<p>I held my breath and watched him through my half-shut eyes&mdash;watched him
+for quite a spell, till he softly tiptoed away again in his naked feet,
+and I heard the door close behind him in the house. I waited a long
+while wondering what to do, and what there could be in the boatshed to
+bring him out at such an unlikely hour. At first I was for getting my
+rifle and sitting up the balance of the night; but then, as I waked up
+more and tried to think it out, it seemed that he had a better right to
+be afraid of me than me of <i>him</i>. It couldn't be to do me no harm, I
+reckoned, but probably to assure himself that I was asleep.</p>
+
+<p>He was plainly up to something, and it was equally plain he didn't want
+me to know it. So I got out of bed&mdash;if you can call a stack of mats and
+a schooner's topsail a bed&mdash;and lit out to see what was doing. It was no
+good trying to get into the house, for Old Dibs had nailed the keys <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>and
+handed them out every morning through the winder when I went to take him
+his shaving water. But the curtains of the bedroom weren't extra close,
+and if I could get up on the veranda without too much of a creaking I
+knew I could see in all right. There's a lot of cat in a sailor, even to
+the nine lives and the dislike of getting wet, and I was soon on my
+knees at the sill, taking in the performance.</p>
+
+<p>The room was lit up as usual, and all the big five trunks were open,
+with Old Dibs diving into them like he was packing for the morning
+train. Leastways, that was my first thought; the second was, that
+something stranger than that was up, and that people didn't usually go
+traveling with an outfit of pinkish paper cut into shavings. You've seen
+them, haven't you?&mdash;the kind of packing they put into music boxes, fine
+toys, and the like, flummoxy twisted paper ravelings that protect the
+varnish and have no weight to speak of. Well, that was what was in them
+trunks, and Old Dibs was pawing it out till it stuck up in the room,
+yards high, like a mountain. Occasionally he seemed to strike something
+harder than paper&mdash;something that would take both his hands to lift&mdash;and
+it was only a little clinking canvas bag that big.</p>
+
+<p>Money? Of course it was money! And he was stacking it in a leather
+dress-suit case laid on the floor next his bed.</p>
+
+<p>You could see he was nervous by the way he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>kept looking behind him; and
+once, when a rat ran across the attic, he jumped awful and the whole
+floor shook. It was a queer sensation to look right into a man's eyes
+and him not see you, which I did with Old Dibs again and again as he'd
+stop and listen. I ought to have said that one of the trunks was clothes
+all right, but even here there was three or four bags of coin, which he
+got out and added to the others.</p>
+
+<p>Then he counted the bags and tried to turn the top of the suit case on
+them, but couldn't manage it. He arranged them first this way and then
+that way, but there was always about a dozen outstanding. The canvas
+itself was very coarse, and there was lots to spare, the slack being
+turned over and over, and tied with heavy twine extra. Then he took them
+all out, and slitting them open, just let the stuff rip naked.</p>
+
+<p>Lord! but it was a dandy sight, a dazzle of double eagles cascading like
+a river, and so swift that you couldn't pretend to count them! He seemed
+satisfied to go on like that, cutting one open after the other, till the
+suit case brimmed up solid. There was fifty-eight bags in all, and the
+Lord only knows how much in each; but, as I said, it took both his hands
+to lift a single one. I reckon I didn't know there was so much money in
+all the world, and it came over me afresh how fond I was of Old Dibs,
+and how good I was going to be to him.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>When the last bag was emptied he thought he'd put back the suit case
+into one of the trunks, never recollecting that he might as well have
+tried to lift a locomotive. Then he laid hands on just the handle at one
+end, and he couldn't even shift it. You disremember how heavy gold is,
+seeing so little of it, and counting a hundred dollars a fortune. But he
+had there, considering the trunks weighed the usual amount, say about a
+hundred and fifty pounds each, and gold at nearly twenty dollars an
+ounce&mdash;well, the next day Tom worked it out to about two hundred and
+fifty thousand dollars.</p>
+
+<p>Think of it! With nothing between it and me but some chicken wire and an
+old gentleman in a dressing gown! It would have seemed a snap to some
+people, but I never made a dishonest dollar in my life&mdash;except in the
+way of trade, and then it was to natives (who water copra on you and
+square the difference); and he was in no more danger of harm than if it
+had been Lima beans.</p>
+
+<p>Then&mdash;to get along with my yarn&mdash;he took the comforter off the bed, and
+setting it down flat on the floor, begun to cover it with double
+handfuls ranged in rows, till he had worked down the suit case to where
+he could lift it. He carried it over to the nearest trunk, placed it
+snug in the bottom, and started to load it up again from the stacks on
+the quilt. I don't know how long he took to do it, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>but it was quite a
+time, and he looked pretty well tired out when it was over, and he sat
+back in the rocker and rocked&mdash;me still glued at the winder&mdash;and he
+reached out for his flute and put it to his lips (though he didn't blow
+into it), and worked his fingers like he was playing a piece. After a
+time he laid it down, and drawing his dressing gown closer around him,
+took another go at filling up the trunks again with the paper packing.</p>
+
+<p>This seemed a good time for me to skip, which I did more cautious than
+ever, my heart beating that loud I wonder he didn't hear me. I felt for
+my pipe in the dark, and went out under the stars to the edge of the
+lagoon, to think it all over. You might wonder what I had to do with it
+unless it was to make away with him and scoop the pool for me and Tom;
+but, as I said before, I wasn't that kind of a man, and millions
+wouldn't have made no difference. But I was in a sort of tremble for the
+old fellow himself, for what was he doing alone with it in the far
+Pacific, unless there were others after him, hotfoot?</p>
+
+<p>Wherever there's a carcass there's sharks to eat it, though you may have
+sailed a week and not seen a fin; and human sharks have the longest
+scent of any, especially when they have the law on their side and courts
+of justice behind them. I wanted to keep the money in the family, so to
+speak, and I was not only unwilling to harm Old <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>Dibs myself, but I
+didn't want no others to harm him neither.</p>
+
+<p>I talked it over with Tom next morning, till the eyes nearly bulged out
+of his head. Tom was less of a pirate even than me, but he had to have
+his fling in fancy, being, as I said, one of them natural-born yarners,
+and he never got back to earth till we had poisoned Old Dibs (wavering
+between Rough on Rats and powdered glass), covered up all traces of the
+crime, divided the money equal, and sailed away West in his five-ton
+cutter, to bring up at last in one of the Line islands. After arranging
+it all to the last dot, even to the name of our ninety-ton schooner, and
+the very bank in Sydney where we'd lay the stuff in our joint names, he
+said there was only one thing to do, and that was to warn Old Dibs, and
+arrange some kind of a scheme to protect him.</p>
+
+<p>"They are bound to run him down," said Tom. "A man that skips out with
+nothing, and a man that skips out with a quarter of a million, are in
+two different classes; and it wouldn't surprise me the least bit if
+there was six ships aiming for Manihiki simultaneous."</p>
+
+<p>By the time I started back to find Old Dibs I was worked up to quite a
+fever, and I'd keep looking over my shoulder expecting every minute to
+see one of them six ships in the pass. He had finished breakfast and had
+gone, and so I followed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>him over to the weather side, where, as usual,
+he was sitting under his tarpaulin in the graveyard, tootling for all he
+was worth. He looked up, a little surprised to see me, and I guess ships
+were running through his head also, for that was his first question.</p>
+
+<p>I sat down on a near-by grave.</p>
+
+<p>"The fack is, Mr. Smith," I said, very meaningly, "you paid me a little
+visit last night and I paid you one."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my God!" he said, turning whiter than paper, and the voice coming
+out of him like an old man's.</p>
+
+<p>"There's no 'my God' about it," I said. "But me and Tom Riley's been
+talking it over, and we'd like to bear a hand to help you."</p>
+
+<p>"It's mine," he said, very defiant, and trembling. "It's mine, every
+penny of it, and honest come by."</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt," I said, "but would I be guessing wrong if there were others
+who didn't think so?"</p>
+
+<p>"There <i>are</i> others," he said at last, seeing, I suppose, that my face
+looked friendly, and realizing that me and Tom would hardly take this
+tack if we meant to massacre him in his sleep.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Smith," I said, "you never had two better friends than Bill Hargus
+or Tom Riley."</p>
+
+<p>He laid down his flute.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd never feel in any danger with that good <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>wife of yours about," he
+said. It didn't seem quite the right remark under the circumstance, but
+there was a power of truth back of it. That girl of mine was regularly
+struck on Old Dibs, and, being a Tongan, was full of the Old Nick, and
+would have bit my ear off if I had lifted my hand to him. The two of
+them had patched up an adoption arrangement, him being her father, and
+she used to play <i>suipi</i> with him, and taught him to repeat Psalms in
+native. It's only another proof how women are the same everywhere, and
+how far it goes with them to be treated with a little respeck and
+consideration.</p>
+
+<p>"You have a plan?" he says. "Well, Bill, what is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's a plan to get a plan," I said. "What chance would you have as
+things are now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Chance?" he inquires.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd be in irons and aboard, before you'd know what had happened to
+you," I said.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me a long time and then heaved a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd do for myself first," he said. "They'll never put me in the dock so
+long as I have a pistol and the will to use it on myself."</p>
+
+<p>"I think me and Tom could improve on that," said I.</p>
+
+<p>"This island's too small to hide in," he said. "No background," he said.
+"I was looking for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>a place where there was mountains and inland
+country&mdash;and maybe caves."</p>
+
+<p>"You never could make a success of it by yourself," I said. "You
+couldn't in an island made to order, with electric buttons and trapdoors
+let into the granite. But me and you and Tom might, and if you've the
+mind to, we will."</p>
+
+<p>He was kind of over his panic by this time, and I guess he saw the sense
+of it all.</p>
+
+<p>"Bill," he said, "it's a weight off my mind to have you know the truth.
+Fetch along Tom, and I'll do anything you two say, for I've nearly split
+my old head trying to find a way out; but what could I do single
+handed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tom's a corker," I said. "He's got an imagination like a box factory.
+If I was in a tight place like yours, I'd sail the world around just to
+find Tom Riley."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's call him in, then," he says, "for, as things are now, if they
+should strike this island, I'm a dead man!" And with that he took up his
+flute again and fluted very thoughtful and low, while I made a line for
+Tom's station.</p>
+
+<p>Tom was as happy as a lawyer with his first case. He hurried along, with
+a bottle of beer in each pocket and a memorandum book to write in, and
+just gloried in the whole business. It was like one of his own yarns
+come true, and he had to pinch himself to make sure he wasn't dreaming.
+He took <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>hold right off; and it was pleasant to watch Old Dibs setting
+back on a grave, with the comfortable air of a man that's being taken
+charge of by experts. I won't go into all that we arranged and didn't
+do, it being enough to say what we <i>did</i>, Tom beginning a bit wild about
+putting contact mines in the channel and importing a submarine boat from
+Sydney, and coming down gradual to what the poet calls human nature's
+daily food. This was, to rig a platform in a giant <i>fao</i> tree that stood
+in the middle of the island, about three miles down the coast, and fix
+it up with food and things, for Old Dibs to camp in.</p>
+
+<p>The idea was to hide him till dark in the attic of my house, and then to
+put him up the tree for as long as the ship stayed by us. Tom said I
+could easily stand off my house being searched for a few hours, even if
+it was a man-of-war that come, telling them they might do it to-morrow.
+Then Tom said we'd have to take Iosefo, the native pastor, into it part
+way, making him preach from the pulpit and order the people to deny all
+knowledge of Old Dibs if they were asked questions about him by
+strangers. Tom said the important thing was to gain the first day's
+start; for though it wasn't in reason to expect the whole island, man,
+woman, and child, to keep the secret, we might be pretty sure it
+wouldn't leak out under twenty-four hours. Then, last of all, we were to
+make away with all <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>Old Dibs's trunks, packing what clothes he had, and
+that into camphor-wood chests, which would occasion no remark, specially
+if they were covered over on the top with trade dresses and hats, and
+such like.</p>
+
+<p>Old Dibs liked it all tiptop, and, more than anything, Tom's honest,
+willing face; but he shied a bit when we walked along to the tree in
+question, and looked up sixty feet into the sky, where he was to hang
+out on his little raft.</p>
+
+<p>"Good heavens, Riley!" he says, "do you take me for a bird, or what?"</p>
+
+<p>But Tom talked him round, showing how we'd rig a boatswain's chair on a
+tackle, and a sort of rustic monkey-rail to keep him from being dizzy,
+and had an answer ready for every one of old Dibs's criticisms. Tom and
+me, having been seafaring men, couldn't see no trouble about it, and the
+only thing to consider serious was how much the platform might show
+through the trees, and whether or not the upper boughs were strong
+enough to hold. We went up to make sure, straddling out on them, and
+bobbing up and down, and choosing a couple of nice forks for where we'd
+lay the main cross-piece. Tom tied his handkerchief around a likely
+bough, to mark the place for the block and give us a clean hoist from
+below, and we both come down very cheerful with the prospect.</p>
+
+<p>Old Dibs seemed less gay about it, and had <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>thought up a lot of fresh
+objections; but Tom said there was only one thing to worry about, and
+that was whether the whole concern wouldn't show plain against the sky.
+We got off a ways to take a look, and very unsatisfying it was, too. A
+big, leafy tree seems a mighty solid affair, till you stand off and look
+right through it; and Old Dibs was for giving up the idea and trying the
+cellar, which was Tom's other notion. But the tree business appealed to
+Tom more, and he explained how we'd paint the contraption green, and how
+people, when they were walking, never looked up, but ahead; and how
+unwholesome a cellar would be, and likely to give Old Dibs the
+rheumatics; not to speak of pigs rooting him out, and no air to speak
+of.</p>
+
+<p>"Then think of the view," said Tom, who was as happy as a sand boy and
+in a bully humor, "and so close to the stars, Mr. Smith, that you can
+pick them down for lights to your cigar!"</p>
+
+<p>Old Dibs smiled a sickly smile, like he was unbending to a pair of kids.</p>
+
+<p>"Have it your own way, then, Riley," says he, "but you're responsible
+for the thing being a success, and don't look for me to dance tight
+ropes or do monkey on a stick."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd engage to put a cow up there," said Tom, not overpolite, though he
+meant no harm, "or a parlor organ, with the young lady to play it."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>"Mr. Smith," said I, "you'll only need shut your eyes and trust to us,
+and take it all as it comes."</p>
+
+<p>"Boys," said Old Dibs, kind of solemn and helplesslike, "you'll do the
+square thing by me, won't you? You won't sell an old man for blood
+money? You won't get me up there and then strike a trade with them
+that's tracking me down?"</p>
+
+<p>You ought to have seen Tom Riley's face at that! I was afraid there
+would be a bust-up then and there. But all he did was to walk faster
+ahead, like he didn't care to talk to us any more, and gave us the broad
+of his back. Old Dibs ran after him and caught his arm, panting out he
+was sorry and all that, and how Tom was to put himself in his place,
+with the whole world banded against him. I felt sorry to see the old
+fellow eating dirt, and trotting along so fat and wheezy, with Tom
+almost pushing him off like a beggar, and it was like spring sunshine
+when Tom turned square around and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Hell! that's all right, Mr. Smith." And I guess it was Old Dibs's face
+that needed watching, it was beaming and happy, specially when they
+shook hands on it, and we all three walked along abreast, like a father
+and his two sons on the way to the bar.</p>
+
+<p>Tom didn't let grass grow under his feet, and he went at it all with a
+rush, beginning first of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>all with Iosefo, the Kanaka pastor. Natives
+are never so helpful and willing as when you're egging them on to do
+something they shouldn't, and he fell in with the preaching idea, and
+wanted to start right away. But they finally decided it had better be a
+monthly affair, so the natives shouldn't lose track of it, and Iosefo
+commenced the first Sunday. Anybody that gave away Old Dibs was to have
+his house burned in this world and his soul in the next; and Iosefo laid
+it on thick about our all loving him, and what a friend he has proved
+himself to the island; and when he reached the point where he announced
+that Old Dibs had contributed fifty dollars toward the fund for the new
+church, you could feel a rustle go through the whole congregation, and a
+general gasp of satisfaction. Iosefo drew a fancy picture of Judas
+hanging himself, and brought it up to date with Old Dibs, and what a
+scaly thing it was to do anyway. He let himself rip in all directions,
+even to the persecutions in what he called the White Country, which he
+said Old Dibs had endured for religion's sake, and how he had been
+thrown to the lions in the Colossium.</p>
+
+<p>Old Dibs sat there as smug as smug, little knowing how the agony was
+being piled on his bald head; and just when Iosefo was making him cow
+the lions with a glance, Old Dibs took the specs off his nose and wiped
+them, while everybody was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>worked up tremendous to know whether he had
+been eat or not. Iosefo was no slouch when he once got his hand in, and
+carried it over to the next number like a story in a magazine, the
+Kanakas all going out buzzing, wishing it was Sunday week, and eyeing
+Old Dibs with veneration.</p>
+
+<p>The platform was number two on the list, and me and Tom, with the
+measurements we had taken in the tree, made a very neat job of it, and
+painted it green topside and bottom. We laid it together in Tom's shed,
+and got in Old Dibs to see if it would fit him, which it did beautiful,
+being six foot six by two and a half. Tom explained we'd put a natty
+railing around it, likewise painted green, and carry a width of fine
+netting below, so that pillows or things shouldn't slip overboard. Tom
+was hurt at Old Dibs not being more enthusiastic, and finally said:
+"Hell! Mr. Smith, what are you sticking at?"</p>
+
+<p>"It'll never sustain the coin," said Old Dibs, jouncing up and down on
+it like a dancing hippopotamus.</p>
+
+<p>"You weren't meaning to take that up, too?" cries Tom.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought that was part of the scheme?" said Old Dibs. "Why, you said a
+whole cow yourself. Didn't he, Bill?"</p>
+
+<p>This was a facer for Tom, but all he asked was how much money there
+was.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>"It weighs hundreds of pounds," said Old Dibs, very sly, and not wanting
+to name figgers.</p>
+
+<p>We neither of us could very well blame the old gentleman for not wanting
+to trust us with a quarter of a million dollars while he was up a tree
+like a canary bird; and so Tom or I didn't say what was in our minds,
+which was to bury it somewheres. In fact, there was a longish silence,
+till I suggested using some two-inch iron pipe I had at home, instead of
+the light boat spars Tom had cut for the purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"And as for the money," said I, "why not have a locker for it at each
+end, with the weight resting against the forks, and maybe a little room
+extra for Mr. Smith's toothbrush and toilet tackle?" I minded the size
+of the suit case I had last seen the stuff in, and showed Tom about what
+was wanted.</p>
+
+<p>"But that'll cut him off at each end," objected Tom, looking at Old Dibs
+like he was measuring him for a coffin, "and you know yourself six foot
+six is the most we can allow."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't mind shortening up a bit," said Old Dibs, laying down to
+show how easy it might be done, and eager to be accommodating.</p>
+
+<p>"And I'd propose chicken wire instead of net," says I to Tom, noticing
+how the old gentleman bulked outboard. "He's putting a strain on that
+worse nor a live shark."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>Tom said he thought so, too, and him and I put in half a day making the
+platform over, while Old Dibs crossed over to the graveyard and fluted
+away the rest of the afternoon. We waited for the full moon before
+getting it into the tree, for daytime was out of the question, and Tom
+and I managed it very well, and to both our satisfaction. The tropic
+moon is a whale of a moon, and you can almost see to read by it, and it
+wasn't the want of light that bothered us any. The trouble was more to
+get it level and lash it proper with zinc wire. But we finished it up in
+style, with a second coat of green paint everywhere except the bottom,
+and, though I do say it myself, it was as snug a little crow's nest, and
+as comfortable and strong, as though it had been made by people
+regularly in the business. We rigged the tackle, too, and tried out the
+Manila rope with the boatswain's chair, and would have sent up Old Dibs
+on a trial trip if we hadn't feared he'd never make another. So we let
+it go at that, he paying us one hundred dollars for our trouble, and
+expressing himself mighty well pleased.</p>
+
+<p>I reckon perhaps he was, for we fixed up the attic, too, and had
+everything in train so that there wouldn't be no hitch when the time
+come. Tom got kind of sore waiting for it, for after having put so much
+work into the thing he naturally wanted to see it used, and it galled
+him to wait <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>and wait, with nothing doing. But Old Dibs took it more
+cheerful, and minded a good deal less about its being wasted; and as the
+months run on, he seemed to think he was out of the woods, and perked up
+wonderful.</p>
+
+<p>Not that he wasn't careful, of course, or that Iosefo let down on the
+preaching; for nobody could be sure what day or what minute the pinch
+mightn't come. He grew quite familiar with the attic part of it,
+scooting up there whenever we raised a sail, and remaining for days at a
+time when a ship was in port. We had a fair number of them, off and
+on&mdash;the missionary bark, the <i>Equator</i>, Captain Reid; the <i>Lorelei</i>,
+Captain Saxe; the <i>Ransom</i>, Captain Mins; the <i>Belle Brandon</i>, Captain
+Cole; the brigantine <i>Trenton</i>, in ballast, calling in to set her
+rigging; the cutter <i>Ulysses</i>, with supplies for Washington Island, and
+the Seventh-Day Adventist schooner <i>Pitcairn</i>, with her mate dying of
+some kind of sickness. They buried him ashore, and then went out again,
+after giving us the precise date at which the world was coming to an
+end, and saying what a hell of a poor millennium it was going to be for
+anybody save <i>them</i>! Oh, yes, the usual straggle of vessels that
+happened our way, with months between; and, once, the smoke of a steamer
+on the horizon.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps a matter of eighteen months altogether since Old Dibs first
+landed, and day followed day, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>like it might have gone on forever. One
+wouldn't have remarked any particular change in him, except that his rig
+was getting shabbier and the shine was coming off the stovepipe&mdash;and
+perhaps some improvement in the flute. This, an extra bulk, and a kind
+of contented look he hadn't wore before, was what life on the island had
+done for Old Dibs; and he branched out a bit in the line of household
+favorite, cutting kindling wood for Sarah, gutting fish, scraping
+cocoanut for the chickens; and the pair of them would sit and gossip for
+hours about the neighbors&mdash;how Taalolo had driven his wife out of doors,
+and the true inwardness of the king's quarrel with Ve'a, and why the
+Toto family was in ambush to cut off Tehea's nose. He could talk better
+native than I could, and he was made a pet of everywhere around the
+settlement, and there was seldom a pig killed but what they'd bring him
+the head out of respeck. Not that he wasn't as regular as ever at the
+graveyard; but he had kind of shook in, so to speak, and nobody gave a
+feast but what he sat at the right hand and divided honors with the
+pastor and the king.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon, from the bench, I heard them raise a cry of "<i>Pahi,
+Pahi</i>," and I run out of the copra-shed, where I was weighing, to see a
+schooner heading in. She was a smart-looking little vessel of fifty or
+sixty tons, and she come <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>up hand over hand, making a running mooring
+off the settlement. Tom and I was waiting for her in a canoe, Old Dibs
+meanwhile climbing into the attic and dropping the trapdoor, with "Under
+Two Flags" and a lamp to support the tedium. That was getting to be
+routine now, and his last words were to buy all the books and papers we
+could lay our hands on, and not forget Sarah's list of stores she was
+out of. Bless my soul! he was always mindful of them things, and it was
+always <i>carte blanche</i> in the trade room for anything she fancied.</p>
+
+<p>Well, we climbed aboard, and they told us she was the Sydney pilot boat
+<i>Minnie</i>, under charter to two gentlemen aboard who had an option on one
+of Arundel's guano islands. They had struck a leak in their main water
+tank, and were in for repairs and filling up fresh.</p>
+
+<p>Tom and me got more of a welcome than seemed quite right, captains
+usually being shortish with traders till the gaskets are on; but in this
+case it was all so damn friendly that I nudged Tom and Tom nudged me. We
+all trooped below to have a drink in the cabin, and the two guano
+gentlemen were introduced to us, and likewise another they called their
+bookkeeper. All three of them were hulking big men, very breezy and well
+spoken, with more the manner of recruiting sergeants soft-sawdering you
+to enlist than the ways of people <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>high up in business. Mr. Phelps, who
+took the lead, did several things to make me chew on, and he shivered
+over his "h's" like he had been brought up originally without any. He
+was so genial, that if you had any money in your pocket you would have
+held on tight to it, and taken the first opportunity to get out. And his
+big hearty laugh was altogether too ready and his manners too free, and
+when he clapped me on the back I felt glad to think Old Dibs was tight
+in his attic, and his tree in good running order.</p>
+
+<p>"Very little company hereabouts?" he asked, filling up our glasses for
+the second round.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing but us two," says Tom.</p>
+
+<p>"My wife's father is somewhere down this way," volunteered Mr. Phelps.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't say!" says I, nudging Tom again under the cuddy table.</p>
+
+<p>"A fine old gent," went on Mr. Phelps, "but he met misfortunes in the
+produce commission business, and had to get out very quiet."</p>
+
+<p>"Too bad!" said I.</p>
+
+<p>"It grieves my wife not to know where he is," continued Mr. Phelps, "she
+being greatly attached to her father, and him disappearing like that;
+and she told me not to grudge the matter of fifty pounds to find him."</p>
+
+<p>"There's a lot of room in the South Seas to lose a produce commission
+merchant in," says I.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>"Here's a likeness of him," says Mr. Phelps, taking a photograph out of
+his pocket, while four pairs of eyes settled on Tom and me like gimlets,
+and there was the kind of pause when pins drop.</p>
+
+<p>"A very fine-appearing old gentleman," says I, starting in spite of
+myself when I saw it was a picture of Old Dibs.</p>
+
+<p>"Give us a squint, Bill," says Tom, taking it out of my hands as bold as
+brass. And then: "I've seen that face somewhere; I know I have. Lord
+bless me, wherever could it have been?" And he looked at it, puzzled and
+recollectful, me holding my breath, and the rest of them giving a little
+jump in their seats.</p>
+
+<p>Tom brought his fist down on the table with a blow that made the glasses
+ring.</p>
+
+<p>"It was on the <i>Belle Brandon</i>!" he cried out, very excited. "A stout
+old party, fair complected, who played the flute."</p>
+
+<p>"That's him!" cried Phelps, half-starting from his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon he must be up Jaluit way," said Tom coolly, "Captain Cole
+being bound for the Marshalls at the time."</p>
+
+<p>I could feel them shooting glances all around us.</p>
+
+<p>"It's remarkable your friend here doesn't remember him," says the one
+they called Nettleship, indicating me with the heel of his glass.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't happen to get aboard the <i>Brandon</i>," <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>says I. "What was I
+doing, Tom? I disremember."</p>
+
+<p>"That was when you was laid up with boils," says Tom, as ready as
+lightning.</p>
+
+<p>"So it was," says I.</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't happen to pass any talk with him?" asks Mr. Phelps of Tom.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing particular," says Tom.</p>
+
+<p>"Even a little might help us," says Mr. Phelps. "See if you can't
+remember."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! he said he was looking for a quiet place to end his days in,"
+answers Tom.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder that this here island wasn't to his taste," says Mr.
+Nettleship, with a quick look.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it was," says Tom unabashed, "only Captain Cole broke in and said
+he knew a better."</p>
+
+<p>By this time nearly all our heads were touching over the table, except
+the one they called the bookkeeper, who had run for a chart.</p>
+
+<p>"Did he call the island by any particular name?" inquires Mr. Phelps.</p>
+
+<p>"I think he said Pleasant Island," says Tom, "because I mind the old
+gentleman saying it must be a pleasant place with such a name and I said
+I had been there, but the holding ground was poor."</p>
+
+<p>The bookkeeper laid the chart on the table, and the captain found
+Pleasant Island with his thumb.</p>
+
+<p>He was about to say it was a ten days' run leeward, when he broke off
+sudden with "ouch" <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>instead, being kicked hard under the table, and
+pretending it was the beginning of a cough instead.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm looking for a change of weather at the full of the moon," remarks
+Tom, "and you'd be wise to take this good spell while it lasts."</p>
+
+<p>I guess Tom overdid it this time, and I gave him hell for it when we
+went ashore, for I saw the change on Phelps's face, and that he suddenly
+suspicioned Tom was playing double.</p>
+
+<p>"Business comes first," he says, rolling up the chart, "and though I
+would like to find him, just for my poor wife's satisfaction, I can't go
+wild-goose-chasing all over the Pacific for a woman's whim."</p>
+
+<p>Tom was beginning to feel that he had overdone it, too, and roused more
+suspicion than he had laid; so he thought to make it up by losing
+interest in Old Dibs, and what was Fitzsimmons doing now, and was it
+true that John L. had retired from the ring? But he didn't seem to
+recover the ground he had lost, and I judged it a bad sign when we went
+up the companion for Phelps to say, kind of absent-minded, that he'd go
+two hundred and fifty pounds for his father-in-law, alive or
+dead&mdash;raising it to five hundred as we dropped over the side.</p>
+
+<p>We pulled first to Tom's house, so as to divert suspicion, and from
+there I went along by myself to tip off the news to Old Dibs. When I had
+given the knocks agreed on, three sets of four, he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>drew back the trap,
+and asked very cheerful how I had made out with the books and papers.</p>
+
+<p>"Good God, man, they're here!" says I.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's here?" he asks, incredulous.</p>
+
+<p>"A whole schooner of detectives from Sydney," says I. "They say they're
+buying guano islands, but there's already five hundred pounds out for
+you, dead or alive."</p>
+
+<p>His great fat hand began to shake on the trap.</p>
+
+<p>"Never you mind, Mr. Smith," I says reassuring. "Tom will be due here at
+midnight, and then we'll run you up your tree."</p>
+
+<p>But that didn't seem to soothe him any, and he quavered out he would be
+better where he was. But I said they'd rummage the whole island upside
+down before they were done, and all he had to do was to lay low, not
+worry, and let me and Tom handle the thing for him.</p>
+
+<p>He reached down his hand through the trap, and I shook it, he saying,
+"God bless you, Bill&mdash;God bless you!" And then it went shut, and I heard
+him blow out the lamp.</p>
+
+<p>The next step was to take my old girl into the secret, she being a
+Tongan, as I've already said, and as true as steel. She didn't say much,
+but I guess it would have done Old Dibs good to have seen her eyes
+flash, and the way her teeth grit, and how quick she was to understand
+her part&mdash;which was, to pack his clothes in camphor-wood <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>chests under a
+top dressing of trade. Old Dibs made no bones about giving her the keys,
+while I took it on myself to tell Iosefo the enemy had arrived, and he'd
+better move about the village warning everybody of the fack. It was well
+I did so, for Phelps and Nettleship and the rest come ashore soon
+afterwards with their pockets full of trifles for the children and the
+girls, and they strolled about the settlement, stopping to rest and
+drink cocoanuts in the different houses. Phelps had brought the
+photograph along and showed it right and left, asking if they had ever
+seen anybody like that. I guess some of them would have cried out if it
+hadn't been for the pastor joining the party, like he wanted to do the
+honors of the island, telling the natives beforehand about the
+photograph, and shooing off the children when they come too close to it.
+The whites probably thought he was talking what nice folks they were,
+for he had a kind of bland missionary way of talking, though he was
+really calling them the sons of Belial, and saying how the person who
+gave Old Dibs away would have his house burned and go to hell.</p>
+
+<p>The pastor did yeoman's service that day, and at sundown they all went
+back to their ship, very grumpy and dissatisfied, returning no wiser
+than when they'd come. Iosefo held a service afterwards to rub it in,
+and the king spoke at it, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>likewise the chiefs, and so in our
+different ways we all pulled together for the common good. They had
+quite a jollification that night on the schooner, singing songs and
+playing some kind of a hurdy-gurdy on deck, and the sound of it come
+over the water very pleasant to hear. I sneaked off in a canoe toward
+ten o'clock, to make sure it wasn't a blind, but there was no
+misdoubting what they were up to. They were all drunk, and getting
+drunker, and I couldn't but think what a poor, tipsifying set of sleuths
+they were, and how different from Sherlock Holmes in the book. I lay for
+nearly an hour under their quarter, to hear what I could hear, and all I
+got was the odds and ends of some smutty stories, and once being very
+near spit on the head.</p>
+
+<p>When I got back to the station there was Tom to meet me, it being eleven
+now, and the village fast asleep. We overhauled the gear to make sure it
+was all in order, Sarah making up a basket of provisions for the old
+man, together with his toothbrush, comb, panjammers, blanket, a demijohn
+of water, and a bottle of gin. She said he had eaten no dinner, groaning
+and carrying on awful, wanting her to shoot him with his pistol and end
+it all. But he seemed to have pulled himself together by the time we
+were ready, for he let himself down from the attic quite spry, and made
+us all laugh by the remarks he passed. But one could see he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>just forced
+himself to do it, and his face looked powerful haggard and flabby in the
+lantern light, and he moved queer on his legs, like a push would have
+sent him over.</p>
+
+<p>I had a little two-wheeled truck that I used about the store to run bags
+of shell about in, and copra, and on this we put the treasure, eight
+bags of it, each one as heavy as could be lifted comfortably. Old Dibs
+insisted on cutting one open and serving us out a double handful each,
+not forgetting a share for Tom's wife as well as mine, and saying, "Take
+it, and God bless you, my dear, kind friends!" We dropped it into my
+tool chest, and threw the key on the floor of the bedroom, meaning to
+divide up equal later on.</p>
+
+<p>We rigged a sort of rope harness to the truck, giving Tom the handles to
+steer by, while Old Dibs, Sarah, and me did tandem in front. The
+boatswain's chair and the coil of Manila rope were lashed down on the
+load, as well as the basket of provisions, Sarah carrying the demijohn
+in her hand, Old Dibs the gin and "Under Two Flags," while I led the way
+with the lantern.</p>
+
+<p>My, but we must have made a queer sight as we plowed through the
+darkness, Tom bearing down on the handles and fighting to keep the truck
+on an even keel, Old Dibs grampussing along as wheeler, and Sarah and me
+tugging like battery mules! Of course everybody knows that gold is
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>heavy, but when you run into the hundred thousands it becomes pig-iron
+heavy, cannon heavy, house-and-lot-and-barn heavy! It nearly pulled the
+hearts out of us to keep that truck moving, specially in the sand before
+we struck a harder going.</p>
+
+<p>I thought time and again it was going to prove the death of Old Dibs. He
+was always laying down in his harness like a done-up Eskimo dog in the
+pictures, and having to be fanned alive again. But when we'd propose to
+cut him out, he'd say No, and stagger to his feet, showing a splendid
+spirit and cart-horsing ahead till his poor old breath came in roars.</p>
+
+<p>It was a thankful moment when we got to the tree, where me and Tom,
+after a spell of rest, jumped in together with a will. It was no slouch
+of a job to get that tackle in position, the block being iron shod and
+heavy, the rope inch Manila, and the night as black as the pit of
+Tophet. Tom went aloft first, with a coil of light line, having to feel
+his way for the place we had marked with the handkerchief, and
+threatening more than once to come down quicker than he had gone up. The
+handkerchief had rotted off, or blown away long since, and it bothered
+Tom not a little to find where it had been. But at last he did so,
+dropping his line for the lantern, according to the plan we had arranged
+beforehand, so as to avoid all shouting and noise. When he had placed
+the lantern to his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>satisfaction, the line came straggling down again
+for the block and the gear to make it fast with, and when this was done
+the inch Manila went up, and everything was ready.</p>
+
+<p>It showed how well Tom and I had thought it out, that there wasn't a
+single hitch, except for the lantern blowing out and Tom having no
+matches, I going up to see what was delaying him, and having none
+neither. Then we changed places, Tom being a heavier man to pull, and I
+remaining aloft to handle the freight as it came along. They made the
+boatswain's chair fast below, and sent her up with the first load&mdash;two
+bags of coin&mdash;getting it on a level with the platform by the lantern
+marking the place. I stood on the platform and had no trouble in yanking
+the stuff in; and this went right along like a mail steamer, till it was
+all up, and it came old Dibs's turn.</p>
+
+<p>But he just took one look at the boatswain's chair, and said "Nit,"
+laying down on the ground when they tried to persuade him into it, and
+rolling over and over in desperation. We argufied over him for an hour,
+and it seemed all to no purpose, he refusing to budge an inch, saying he
+weighed two hundred and twenty pounds, and was better off in the attic.</p>
+
+<p>Time was running away on us, and me and Tom got tired of saying the same
+things over and over, and always getting the same answers, and finally
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>we lost our tempers, and said we'd go home. Then he said he'd come
+home, too, and we said No, we had washed our hands of him. Then he said
+he was only a poor old man and would blow his brains out, and we said he
+might, if he wanted to. Then, when we had gone about twenty paces, he
+come lumbering after us, saying, "For God's sake, stop!" and swearing he
+would go up peaceful, and make no more trouble.</p>
+
+<p>We tied him in like a baby in a high chair, I going up to receive him,
+while my wife and Tom laid on to the rope with a yeo-heave-yeo under
+their breaths. All the fight had clean gone out of him, and the only
+thing he did was to squeal a little when he bumped against the trunk,
+and tried to fill up with air to make himself lighter. But he reached
+the top all right, and I landed him very careful, he squatting down on
+the floor and saying, "Oh, my God!" I was too busy clearing away, and
+letting the block down to Tom, for me to hear much else he said, but
+when I was through and went to take a last look at him, he seemed quite
+snug and contented, and glad he had come. He shook hands very grateful,
+looking for me to come back the following night and report, I to make an
+owl signal like we had agreed on previously.</p>
+
+<p>I wished him happy dreams, and come down, all three of us setting out
+for home with the truck and the gear, my wife in a tantrum at our having
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>threatened to desert Old Dibs when he acted so cowardly. Tom made it
+worse by saying the Kanakas were losing all respeck for whites, and if
+<i>he</i> was married to a Tongan, and was spoken to like that, he'd quit&mdash;by
+gum, that's what <i>he'd</i> do! Then she said it would serve me right if she
+went away in the schooner with the white men, and I would never see her
+again. And I said, "Oh, dear, but I'd feel sorry for the white man that
+got you!" Then she said she'd give all the gold Old Dibs had made her a
+present of to be back home in Tonga; and then I said I'd gladly add mine
+to hers. And when Tom added his, I thought we were in for a race war.</p>
+
+<p>We all got back pretty cross and tired, but a little beer put heart in
+us; and I pulled her down on my knee and said she was the only girl in
+the world, and that I wouldn't trade her for a ten-ton cutter; while Tom
+counted out the money Old Dibs had given us previous, and said we were
+all a pack of fools, and that he was as fond of Sarah as anybody. So
+peace descended like a beautiful vision, and there was four hundred and
+forty dollars for each of us, with a twenty over that we tossed for, and
+engineered to let Sarah win. Tom said we might shake hands on a good
+night's work, and went home in high spirits, jingling his money in a
+bandanner.</p>
+
+<p>It wasn't long after breakfast the next morning when I heard a great
+stamping and tramping out <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>in front, and there, if you please, was the
+whole schooner party, Phelps, Nettleship, the bookkeeper, and the
+captain. They had thrown off the mask now, and Phelps had a warrant a
+yard long for the apprehension of Runyon Rufe, which he read aloud to
+me, while the others listened with their hats off like it was church.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you gentlemen were in the guano business," says I, when he
+had finished.</p>
+
+<p>"We're in the Runyon Rufe catching business," says Mr. Phelps, very
+genial, "and we trust you will not oppose the officers of the law in the
+exercise of their functions."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to oppose anybody when it's four to one," says I, equally
+genial, "though may I make so bold as to inquire who is Runyon Rufe and
+what's he done?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never heard of Runyon Rufe!" says Nettleship, like it was George
+Washington or Alfred the Great.</p>
+
+<p>"Here it is, better than I can tell it," said Mr. Phelps, handing me a
+printed proclamation:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="cen">TEN THOUSAND POUNDS REWARD.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Runyon Rufe</span>, Banker and Company Promoter, wanted
+for gigantic frauds in connection with the Invincible
+Building Society, the Greater London Finance Syndicate,
+Suburbs Limited, and other undertakings. Fled to the United
+States, where he had previously put by sums aggregating two
+hundred thousand pounds; resisted extradition; forfeited his
+bail; was traced to Portland, Oregon, and thence <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>to Penrhyn
+Island, South Pacific, where all clews as to his whereabouts
+were lost.</p>
+
+<p>Aged sixty-three; height, five feet nine inches; imposing
+appearance; weight, fifteen stone and over; fair complexion;
+brown eyes, with bushy, gray eyebrows; scanty gray hair; of
+a plethoric habit, and with a noticeable hesitancy of
+speech. When last seen was well supplied with money, and was
+heard declaring his intention of making his way toward the
+lesser-traveled islands of the Pacific Ocean.</p>
+
+<p>The above reward, in whole or in part, will be paid by
+Houghton &amp; Cust, No. 318 George Street, Sydney, New South
+Wales, on receiving information that will lead to the arrest
+of the said Runyon Rufe.</p>
+
+<p>Traders and others are cautioned against harboring the
+fugitive, or aiding and abetting his escape from the
+officers of justice.</p></div>
+
+<p>I read it three times and then handed it back.</p>
+
+<p>"Show me where to sign," says I.</p>
+
+<p>"We have to go through the disagreeable formality of searching these
+premises," said Mr. Phelps, disregarding my joke, "and if you have no
+objections we shall begin now!"</p>
+
+<p>"And suppose I <i>did</i> have an objection?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"We'd search them just the same," said Mr. Phelps, grinning.</p>
+
+<p>I was in two minds what to do; but I noticed the bookkeeper's lip was
+cut, and there was dried blood on Mr. Nettleship's knuckles, and it
+didn't seem good enough. I saw they had begun on Tom first, and that
+decided me to take water with my formality.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>"Walk in," says I.</p>
+
+<p>They didn't wait for a second asking, and a minute later were poking and
+rummaging all through the place. They thought I might have hid him
+somewheres, and turned over everything to that end, not opening as much
+as a chest or pulling out a single drawer. It wasn't much pleasure to
+look on and see them doing it, but I had to take my medicine, and it was
+common sense to appear cheerful about it. They crawled into all kinds of
+places, and backed out of all kinds of others, and tapped the walls to
+see if any was hollow, and turned over sacks of pearl shell and copra,
+and sneezed and swore and burrowed and choked, till at last Mr. Phelps
+really found something, and that was a centipede that bit him. This
+brought them all out on the front veranda again, where I had to pretend
+I was sorry, which I was&mdash;for the centipede.</p>
+
+<p>I asked what they were going to do next, and they said, "Get aboard and
+bathe it with ammoniar"; and I said, "No, I meant about Runyon Rufe";
+and Mr. Phelps he give me a wicked look, and said that they'd lay him by
+the legs before long, together with a few white trading gentlemen,
+maybe, to keep him company; and I said, "Oh, dear, I hope that isn't any
+insinuation against present company!" and he said, "the present company
+might put the cap on if it fitted them"; and I said "if he couldn't keep
+a civil tongue in his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>head he had better get off my front stoop"; and
+he said "he wouldn't demean himself by bandying words with a
+beach-comber," and went off sucking his hand, with the others crowding
+around him, and asking him how it felt now.</p>
+
+<p>I suspicioned there had been a leak somewheres, and was surer than ever
+when Tom came around with his eye bunged up where Nettleship had hit
+him. And it certainly looked black that they made no appearance of
+moving, raising an awning over the quarter-deck, and bringing up tables
+and swinging hammocks like it was for a week. The pastor had told Tom
+that one of the children had reckonized Old Dibs's photograph, and
+clapped his hands before he could be stopped, crying out, "Ona! Ona!"
+the name Old Dibs went by among the Kanakas.</p>
+
+<p>We put in a pretty anxious day, for they began a systematic prowl all
+over the island, obviously dividing out the territory and doing it
+simultaneous. That night they set a watch on my house and Tom's, the
+news coming in from Iosefo, who had spies out watching them. It was
+regular wheels within wheels, and I couldn't but wonder how poor Old
+Dibs was faring up his tree, waiting and waiting for us to come!</p>
+
+<p>The next day they prowled harder than ever, this time the crew joining
+in, mate, cook, cabin boy, and four hands. Like was natural, they made
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>me and Tom's first&mdash;the crew, I mean&mdash;and we both had the same happy
+thought, square-face. The mate went off with only three drinks in him,
+taking the cabin boy with two, but the rest of them sucked it in by the
+bucket, and the fartherest any of them got away was a hundred yards, and
+him with a bottle in his hand. They were a pretty ugly crowd by
+nightfall, refusing to go back to the ship when ordered, and roaring and
+yelling about the settlement to all hours. The afterguard still kept tab
+on me and Tom, however, and so yet another night passed without our
+daring to make our date with Old Dibs. But in the morning they lost all
+patience, rounding up the crew with handspikes, and all going off to the
+schooner with half of them in irons. Phelps and Nettleship helped to get
+up anchor themselves, and toward nine o'clock we had the blessed sight
+of their heels, beating out of the lagoon against a stiff trade.</p>
+
+<p>It was hard to have to wait the balance of the day doing nothing, for we
+might need the tree idea again, and it would have been a mug's game to
+have given away the secret to the Kanakas. Tom and me both felt
+considerable rocky, besides, from having drunk so much gin with the
+schooner's people; for though we had held back all we could, and had
+tipped our glasses on the sly, we couldn't seem too behindhand in
+whooping it up with them. But we were dead dogs now all right, and the
+main <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>part of breakfast and dinner was the buckets of water we poured
+over each other's heads. It was what you might call a very long day, and
+it seemed like the sun would never set, for we were both of us in a
+sweat about Old Dibs, and more than anxious how he had made out.</p>
+
+<p>Then sundown came, and dusk, and night itself, and still another long
+spell for the Kanakas to go to sleep, which it seemed as though they
+never would. Yes, a long day, and a long, long evening, and it was like
+a whole week had passed before we stood under the tree and owly-owled to
+Old Dibs.</p>
+
+<p>It was a mighty faint answer he gave back, and when me and Tom had
+rigged up the chair again we found we had a sick man on our hands. The
+exposure had nearly done for him; that, and the fear of being caught,
+and all the water having leaked out of the demijohn, which he had stood
+on its side the better to hide it. He was that weak he could hardly sit
+up, and was partly off his nut, besides, wanting to telephone at once to
+Longhurst, and mixing up Tom with the Public Prosecutor.</p>
+
+<p>He would put his poor old trembling hand across his forehead like he was
+trying to wipe all this away, saying, "Is that you, Tom Riley?" and,
+"Bill, Bill," like that. It was no easy matter to get him down, for he
+almost needed to be lifted into the boatswain's chair, and couldn't as
+much as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>raise a little finger to help himself or hold on, and once we
+nearly spilled him out altogether. Fortunately, my old girl had brought
+some hot coffee in a beer bottle, and this was just like pouring new
+life down his throat. Our first business was to get him home and tuck
+him in, returning and making a second trip of the treasure, and winding
+up all serene about two in the morning, with Old Dibs sitting up in bed
+and eating fried eggs.</p>
+
+<p>When Iosefo reported next morning, Old Dibs paid him a hundred dollars
+and dispensed with his services, saying that though he'd always be glad
+to see him around as a friend, he had no more call to keep him sitting
+on the chest. This made Tom and me feel good, for it showed he trusted
+us now, which he had never quite done before. In a day or two he was
+almost as lively as ever, out in the graveyard playing on his flute, and
+attending to church work on committee nights the same as before.</p>
+
+<p>But there was a big change in him for all that, and me and Tom got it
+into our heads that he wasn't going to live very long, for he had that
+distressed look on his face that showed something wrong inside. He used
+to run on talking to himself half the night, and once he burst in to
+where I was asleep, saying he had seen me at the treasure chest, prizing
+off the lid, and what did I mean by it? After having lived together so
+long and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>comfortable, it wasn't very pleasant to see him going crazy on
+us&mdash;and going crazy that way&mdash;being suspicious we meant to rob and kill
+him, and all of us being in a conspiracy. He told the pastor he was
+afraid of his life of Tom and me, and if it wasn't for Iosefo he would
+be fearful to stay in my house a minute; and he told Tom <i>he</i> was the
+only friend he had; and then said the same to me, warning me against Tom
+and Iosefo, saying they were at the winder every night trying to break
+in. And all this, maybe, on the very self-same day, the three of us
+comparing notes and wondering where it was all going to end.</p>
+
+<p>It ended sooner than any of us expected; for one morning, when Sarah
+went to take him his coffee, his door was locked, and for all our
+hammering we couldn't raise a sound. I broke it in at last, expecting
+that he'd rise up and shoot me, and dodging when it went inward with a
+crash. But there was nobody to shoot, the room being stark empty, and
+the only thing of Old Dibs his clothes on a chair. We were at a loss
+what to do, and waited for half an hour, thinking he might turn up.
+Then, real uneasy in our minds, we went out to look for him. He wasn't
+anywhere near the house or the beach, and as a last resort we went
+across the island to the graveyard, thinking perhaps he had taken it
+into his head to have a before-breakfast tootle on the flute. We found
+him, sure enough, in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>middle of the graveyard, but laying forward in
+his old crimson dressing gown, dead.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, sir, cold to the touch like it had been for hours, and holding a
+blackened lantern in his poor old fist&mdash;dead as dead&mdash;face down in the
+coral sand. We rolled him over to do what we could for him, but he had
+passed to a place beyond help or hurt. I went back for Tom in a
+protuberation, saying, "My God! Tom, what do you think's happened?&mdash;Old
+Dibs's dead in the graveyard!" I guess the old man had never been so
+close to Tom as he had been to me, boarding in my house and almost a
+father to me and the wife, for Tom took it awful cool, and asked almost
+the first thing about the money.</p>
+
+<p>"You and me will divide on that," he says.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure," I says, "but that can stand over till afterwards, Tom."</p>
+
+<p>"Stand over, nothing!" he says, very sharp; and with that we both set
+off running for my house.</p>
+
+<p>It was a jumpy thing to enter that darkened room, with the feeling you
+couldn't shake off that Old Dibs was peering in at us, and that every
+minute we'd hear his footstep, everything laid out just as he had last
+touched them, and almost warm, even to his slippers and his collar and
+the old hat against the wall. But it made no more difference to Tom than
+if it had been his own hat, and he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>tramped in like a policeman, saying,
+"Where is it, Bill?"</p>
+
+<p>"In one of them two camphor-wood chests," says I.</p>
+
+<p>He lifted up one of them by the end and let it fall ker-bang!</p>
+
+<p>"Not here," says he.</p>
+
+<p>"Try the other," says I, with a sudden sinking.</p>
+
+<p>He let that crash, too, and turning around, looked me in the face.</p>
+
+<p>"Good God, Tom!" said I.</p>
+
+<p>"Just what I suspected all along," said Tom, as savage as a tiger. "He's
+made way with it!"</p>
+
+<p>We didn't stop to speak another word, but rummaged the whole room upside
+down.</p>
+
+<p>"He's buried it," says Tom, savager than ever, "and what kind of a
+bastard was you to let him?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was none of my business," says I.</p>
+
+<p>"None of your business!" he repeated, screaming out at me like a
+woman&mdash;"to have a quarter of a million by the tail and let it go? You
+might have been slack about your own half, but it was a swine's trick
+not to keep track of mine!"</p>
+
+<p>"He can't have taken it very far," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"Not far!" yelled Tom, making an insult of every word I said. "Why, what
+was to prevent him lugging away a little this day and that, till the
+whole caboodle was sunk in a solid block? What do you suppose he was
+doing with the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>lantern, you tom-fool? Planting it, of course&mdash;planting
+every dollar of it, night after night, while you were snoozing in your
+silly bed."</p>
+
+<p>"If it's anywhere it's in the Kanaka graveyard," says I. "I'll go bail
+it's within ten feet of where we found his dead body."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you stake the place?" says Tom.</p>
+
+<p>I was ashamed to tell him I hadn't even thought of the money, being
+struck all of a heap, and always powerful fond of Old Dibs.</p>
+
+<p>"It would serve you right if I made you dig up the whole graveyard,
+single-handed," said Tom; "and if you had a spark of proper feeling,
+Bill Hargus, you'd fall on your knees and beg my parding for having
+acted like such a damned ninny!"</p>
+
+<p>I would have answered him back in his own coin if I hadn't felt so bad
+about it all, and rattled, besides. I had punched Tom's head often and
+often, and he had punched mine; but I was staggered by the money being
+missing, and the loss of it just seemed to swallow up everything else.
+Somehow, it had never seemed <i>my</i> money till then, and the more I felt
+it mine the more galling it was to give it up. Tom relented when he saw
+how cut up I was, withdrawing all the hard things he had said, and going
+on the other tack to cheer me up. He said he was just as big an ass as I
+was, and came out handsome about its being both our fault, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>and how it
+didn't matter a hill of beans anyway, for we'd soon get our spades on to
+it. It stood to reason it couldn't be far away or buried very deep, and
+a little fossicking with an iron ramrod would feel it out in no time.</p>
+
+<p>Well, we gave Old Dibs a good send off, Tom and me making the coffin,
+and we buried him in a likely place to windward of the Kanaka graveyard.
+Tom wouldn't have him <i>inside</i>, for fear the natives might chance on the
+treasure themselves, and we put a neat fence around the place, with a
+priming and two coats of white paint, and a natty gate to go in by with
+brass hinges. The whole settlement turned out, Iosefo outdoing himself,
+and the king butting in with an address, and everything shipshape and
+Bristol fashion, as sailors say. We didn't have no flowers, and the
+whole business was sort of home-made and amateur, but Sarah made up for
+the lack of them by pegging out the grave with little poles, and
+streamers which gave quite a gay look to it, and fluttered in the wind,
+very pretty to see.</p>
+
+<p>Then Tom and me started in our digging operations on a checkerboard
+plan, very systematic, with stakes where we left off, working by night
+so as not to rouse the natives' ill will. Or, I ought to have said, two
+nights, for I guess we didn't cover up our tracks sufficient, and they
+got on to it. We discovered this in the form of a depitation of chiefs
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>and elders, who give us warning it had to stop ker-plunk! They said
+they wouldn't allow their graveyard torn up, and altogether acted very
+ugly and insulting. Tom and I had to sing small and put in a holiday
+neither of us wanted, for the Kanakas had the whip hand of us, and I
+never saw them so roused. Tom at first tried to carry it off with a high
+hand, informing them that he was a British subjeck, by God! and was they
+meaning to interfere with a British subjeck? But I couldn't see how that
+gave him any right to dig up Kanaka graveyards for money that didn't
+belong to him, and so I smoothed them down and out-talked Tom, saying it
+shouldn't happen again, and I was glad they had mentioned it!</p>
+
+<p>We waited a few weeks for the storm to blow over, and then begun again,
+this time more cautious than before by a darned sight. We thought we
+were managing beautifully, till the next day, when we went out fishing
+in Tom's boat and come back to find both our stations burned to the
+ground, and all our stuff stacked outside the smoking ruins,
+higgledy-piggledy!</p>
+
+<p>This was getting it in the neck, and we saw we were beat. We ran up a
+couple of little shacks and settled down to ordinary trading again, with
+what good spirits you can imagine. We didn't even dare walk on the
+weather side of the island, lest they'd carry out their next threat,
+which was to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>shoot us; and the only revenge we had was raising prices
+on them and monkeying with the scales, winning out in both ways. But it
+was a poor set off to a quarter of a million of cold coin where almost
+we could lay our hands on it, and if there was in the whole world a
+human being more blue and miserable than me, it was Tom Riley. Then, to
+make matters worse, the whole thing was common property now, the Kanakas
+knowing as much as we did, and more, and the news was passed along to
+every ship that came&mdash;all about Old Dibs and the money in the graveyard.
+You might be surprised the natives didn't take a leaf out of our book
+and dig it up for themselves; but you'll never really civilize a Kanaka
+if you try a thousand years, and they wouldn't have turned up their dead
+grandmothers and fathers and aunts for all the gold in the Bank of
+England&mdash;being sunk in superstition and slavishly afraid of spirits and
+the like.</p>
+
+<p>We had to sit with folded hands and pretend to be pleased, while every
+ship that called had to take its whack at the graveyard. First it was
+the <i>Lorelei</i>, getting off scot-free with only a taboo; then it was the
+<i>Tasmanian</i>, with a bullet through the captain's leg; then the cutter
+<i>Sprite</i>, with concussion of the brain. I never saw the Kanakas drove so
+wild, till at last, when there was a ship off the settlement, they'd set
+an anchor watch on the graveyard and do sentry go with loaded guns.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>Then one fine day a French schooner from Tahiti ran in, unloaded sixteen
+men armed with rifles and carrying pickaxes and spades, who marched
+across the island singing the "Marseillaise," and proceeded to take up
+the whole place. The natives rallied with everything they could lay
+their hands on, from Winchesters to fish spears, and my, if they didn't
+chase out them Frenchmen at the double! They got away, leaving one dead
+and carrying three, making a bee line for the beach, the schooner
+covering their retreat with a blazing Nordenfeldt. They were in such a
+hurry to be gone that they cut away their moorings with an ax, and I had
+the privilege, later on, of buying their anchor, second hand, for ten
+dollars in trade.</p>
+
+<p>The natives got wilder than ever after this, and were almost afraid to
+die, lest they'd be dug up again and their bones cast to the winds. From
+being the most orderly island in the Pacific, Manihiki slumped to be the
+worst; and it got such a name that ships were scared of coming near it;
+and once, when Tom and me went out in a whaleboat toward a becalmed
+German bark, hoping to raise a newspaper or a sack of potatoes, they
+opened fire on us and lowered two boats to tow away the ship. Tom and me
+got mixed up in the general opinion of the place, which was stinking bad
+and what they called a pirates' nest, and an English man-of-war came
+down special to deport Tom. I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>never was so glad in my life to be an
+American, for, though the captain gave Tom what he called the benefit of
+the doubt, they fined him two hundred and fifty dollars and slanged him
+like a nigger.</p>
+
+<p>The last straw was the visit of a French man-of-war, that opened
+broadsides on us without warning, and then landed and burned the
+settlement, including everything me and Tom owned in the world, except
+the clothes we stood in and the cash we snatched on the run. This was on
+account of the "outrage" on the Tahiti schooner.</p>
+
+<p>Tom said the island was becoming a regular human pigeon-shoot, and
+wondered where the lightning would strike next; and we both grew clean
+sick of it and in a fever to get away. There was not even the temptation
+of Old Dibs's treasure to keep us now, for the natives all got together
+and heaped up the graveyard solid with rock to the level of the outside
+walls, and floored the top with cement six inches deep, putting in a
+matter of a thousand tons. It was as solid as a fortification, and
+pounded down, besides, with pounders, like a city street; and if ever
+there was money in a safe place and likely to stay there undisturbed, I
+guess it was Old Dibs's.</p>
+
+<p>It was a happy day for Tom and me when the <i>Flink</i> dropped anchor off
+the settlement, and we patched it up with the captain to give us a
+passage to the Kingsmills, to begin the world again. It <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>had always lain
+sort of heavy on my wife that we hadn't put up a name over old Dibs's
+grave, and now that we were going away with that undone she reproached
+me awful. You see, I had promised her something nice in the marble line
+from Sydney, and kept putting her off and off in the hope she'd forget
+it. She had been remarkably fond of the old fellow, as, indeed, so was
+I, and she said it was a shame to go away forever with this unattended
+to. I didn't have no time for anything fancy, nor the ability neither,
+but as the ship lay over for a couple of days I made shift to please her
+with a wooden slab. We went over and set it up about an hour before we
+sailed, and for all I know it may be there yet. Some folks might kick at
+the inscription, but he had always been mighty good and kind and
+free-handed to us, and you must take a man as you find him. This was how
+it run:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="cen">SACRED<br />TO<br />THE MEMORY<br />OF<br />RUNYON RUFE<br />
+BANKER AND PHILANTHROPIST<br />ERECTED<br />BY<br />HIS SORROWING FRIENDS</p></div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>
+<br />
+
+<hr />
+<br />
+<h2>THE LABOR CAPTAIN</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>It was a wild March day, and the rising wind sang in the rigging of the
+ships. The weather horizon, dark and brilliant, in ominous alternations
+showed a sky of piled-up cloud interspersed with inky patches where
+squalls were bursting. To leeward, the broad lagoon, stretching for a
+dozen miles to the tree-topped rim of reef, smoked with the haze of an
+impending gale. Ashore, the palms bent like grass in the succeeding
+gusts, and the ocean beaches reverberated with a furious surf. The great
+atoll of Makin, no higher than a man, no wider than a couple of
+furlongs, but in circumference a sinuous giant of ninety miles or more,
+lay like a snake on the boisterous waters of the equator and defied the
+sea and storm.</p>
+
+<p>Within the lagoon, and not far off the settlement, two ships rocked at
+anchor. One, the <i>Northern Light</i>, was a powerful topsail schooner of a
+hundred tons; straight bowed, low in the water, built on fine lines and
+yet sparred for safety, the sort of vessel that does well under plain
+sail, and when pressed can fly. The other, the <i>Edelweiss</i>, was a
+miniature fore and after of about twenty tons, a toy of delicacy and
+grace, betraying at a glance <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>that she had been designed a yacht, and,
+in spite of fallen fortunes, was still sailed as one. The man that laid
+her lee rail under would get danger as well as speed for his pains, and
+in time would be likely to satisfy a taste for both by making a swift
+trip to the bottom.</p>
+
+<p>The deck of the <i>Northern Light</i> was empty save for the single tall
+figure of Gregory Cole, captain and owner, who was leaning over the rail
+gazing at the <i>Edelweiss</i>. He was a man of about thirty, his tanned,
+handsome face overcast and somber, his eyes, with their characteristic
+hunted look, fixed in an uneasy stare on his smaller neighbor.</p>
+
+<p>He had never known how passionately he had loved Madge Blanchard until
+he had lost her; until after that wild quarrel on Nonootch, when her
+father had called him a slaver to his face, and they had parted on
+either side in anger; until he had beaten up from westward to find her
+the month-old wife of Joe Horble. Somehow, in the course of those long,
+miserable months, he had never thought of her marrying; he felt so
+confident of that fierce love she had so often confessed for him; he had
+come back repentant, ashamed of the burning offense he had then taken,
+determined to let bygones be bygones, and to begin, if need be, a new
+and a more blameless way of life. It was natural for the girl to side
+with her father; to resent her lover's violence and temper; to show a
+face as cold <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>as his own when he said he would up anchor and to sea.
+Fool that he had been to keep his word! fool that he had been to tear
+his heart to pieces out of pride! fool that he had been to let it stand
+between him and the woman he loved! His pride! with Madge now in Joe
+Horble's arms!</p>
+
+<p>He cursed the fate that had brought him into the same lagoon with the
+<i>Edelweiss</i>; that had laid his ship side by side with Joe's dainty
+schooner; that shamed and mocked him with the unceasing thought that
+Madge&mdash;his Madge&mdash;was aboard of her. He paced up and down the
+quarter-deck. He had more than a mind to get to sea, but the gloom to
+windward daunted him, and he ordered out the kedge instead and bade the
+mate strip the awnings off her. By Jove! if things grew blacker he'd
+house his topmasts. Then he looked again at the little <i>Edelweiss</i>, and
+tried to keep back the thought of Horble sitting there below with Madge.</p>
+
+<p>He had to see her. He was mad to see her. The thought of her tortured
+and tempted him without end. Suppose she, too, had learned that love is
+stronger than oneself; that the mouth can say Yes when the heart within
+is breaking; that she, like himself, had found the time to repent her
+folly? Was he the man to leave her thus; to acquiesce tamely in a
+decision that was doubtless already abhorrent to her; to remain with
+unlifted hand when she might be on fire for the sign to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>come to him?
+No, by God! he'd beg her forgiveness and offer her the choice. Yes or
+No! It was for her to choose.</p>
+
+<p>He jumped into the dinghy and pulled over to the schooner. Small at a
+distance, she seemed to shrink as he drew near her, so that when he
+stood up he was surprised to find his head above the rail. So this was
+Horble, this coarse, red-faced trader, with the pug nose, the fat hands,
+the faded blue eyes that met his own so sourly!</p>
+
+<p>"Captain Horble?" said Gregory Cole.</p>
+
+<p>"Glad to see you aboard," said Horble.</p>
+
+<p>They shook hands and sat side by side on the rail.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Madge?" said Gregory.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Horble's ashore," said the captain.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I can never call her anything but Madge," said Gregory,
+detecting the covert reproach in the other's voice.</p>
+
+<p>Horble was plainly ill at ease. His face turned a deeper red. He was on
+the edge of blurting out a disagreeable remark, and then hesitated,
+making an inarticulate sound in his throat. Like everybody else, he was
+afraid of the labor captain.</p>
+
+<p>"Crew's ashore, too," said Gregory, glancing about the empty deck.</p>
+
+<p>"There ain't no crew," muttered Horble.</p>
+
+<p>"Thunder!" cried Gregory. "Do you do it with electricity, or what?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>"Me and Madge runs her," returned Horble.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to say she pully-hauls your damn ropes?" exclaimed Gregory.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Horble. "What's twenty tons between the two of us?"</p>
+
+<p>"And cooks?" said Gregory.</p>
+
+<p>"And cooks," said Horble.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't believe in lapping your wife in luxury!" exclaimed Gregory.</p>
+
+<p>"Madge and I talked it over," said Horble. "I was for trading ashore,
+but her heart was set on the schooner. I can make twice the money this
+way and please her in the bargain."</p>
+
+<p>"I know she can sail a boat against anybody," said Gregory, wincing at
+the remark.</p>
+
+<p>Horble spat in the water and said nothing. His fat, broad back said,
+plainer than words: "You're an intruder! Get out!"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe she's aboard this very minute," said Gregory with a strange
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>"She's ashore, I tell you," said Horble sullenly.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll just run below and make sure," said Gregory.</p>
+
+<p>He slipped down the little companion way, looked about the empty cabin
+and peered into the semi-darkness of the only stateroom.</p>
+
+<p>"Madge!" he cried. "Madge!"</p>
+
+<p>Horble had not lied to him. There was not a soul below. But on the cabin
+table he saw Madge's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>sewing machine and a half-made dress of cotton
+print. She had always been fond of books, and there, in the corner, was
+her little bookcase, taken bodily from her old home in Nonootch.
+Scattered about here and there were other things that brought her memory
+painfully back to him; that hurt him with their familiarity; that caused
+him to lift them up and hold them with a sort of despairing wonder: her
+guitar, her worn, lock-fast desk; the old gilt photograph album he
+remembered so well. He sat down at the table and buried his face in his
+hands. What a fool he had been! What a fool he had been!</p>
+
+<p>He was roused by the sound of Horble's footsteps down the ladder. With
+his head leaning on his hand, he looked at the big naked feet feeling
+for the steps, then at the uncouth clothes as they gradually appeared,
+then at the fat, weak, frightened face of the man himself. He grew sick
+at the sight of him. Would Horble strike him? Would Horble have the grit
+to order him off the ship? No; the infernal coward was getting out the
+gin&mdash;a bottle of square-face and two glasses.</p>
+
+<p>"Say when," said Horble.</p>
+
+<p>"When," said Gregory.</p>
+
+<p>Horble tipped the bottle into his own glass. A second mate's grog! One
+could see what the fellow drank.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's luck," said Gregory.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>"Drink hearty," said Horble.</p>
+
+<p>"Joe Horble," said Gregory, leaning both elbows on the table, "there's
+something you ought to know: I love Madge, and Madge loves me!"</p>
+
+<p>Horble gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"She's mine!" said Gregory.</p>
+
+<p>Horble helped himself to some more gin, and then slowly wiped his mouth
+with the back of his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"You're forgetting she's my wife," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll give you a thousand pounds for her, cash and bills," said Gregory.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't sell white women," said Horble. "She ain't labor."</p>
+
+<p>"A thousand pounds!" repeated Gregory.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't sell my wife to no man," said Horble.</p>
+
+<p>The pair looked at each other. Horble's hand felt for the gin again. His
+speech had grown a little thick. He was angry and flustered, and a dull
+resentment was mantling his heavy face.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go the schooner," cried Gregory. "The <i>Northern Light</i> as she lies
+there this minute, not a dollar owing on her bottom, with two hundred
+pounds of specie in her safe. Lock, stock, and barrel, she's yours!"</p>
+
+<p>Horble shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Madge ain't for sale," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Please yourself," said Gregory. "You'll end by losing her for
+nothing."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>"Captain Cole," said Horble, "Madge has told me how near it was a go
+between you and her, and how, if you hadn't cleared out so sudden the
+way you did, she would have married you in spite of old Blanchard. But
+when you went away like that you left the field clear, and you mustn't
+bear me no malice for having stepped in and taken your leavings. What's
+done's done, and it's a sorry game to come back too late and insult a
+man who never did you no harm."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" said Gregory.</p>
+
+<p>"If you choose," continued Horble in his tone of wounded reasonableness,
+"you can make a power of mischief between me and Madge. I don't think it
+comes very well from you to do it; I don't think anything that calls
+himself a man would do it; least of all a genelman like yourself, whom
+we all respeck and look up to. Captain Cole, if you've lost Madge, you
+know you can only blame yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't call her lost," said Gregory.</p>
+
+<p>"Captain Cole," said Horble, calmly but with a quiver of his lip, "we'll
+take another drink and then we'll say good-by."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not going till I see Madge," said Gregory.</p>
+
+<p>Horble began to tremble.</p>
+
+<p>"It's for Madge to decide," added Gregory.</p>
+
+<p>"Decide what?" demanded Horble in a husky stutter.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>"Between you and me, old fellow," said Gregory.</p>
+
+<p>"And you've the gall to say that on my ship, at my table, about my
+wife!" exclaimed Horble, punctuating the sentence with the possessive.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Gregory.</p>
+
+<p>Horble sat awhile silent. He was obviously turning the matter over in
+his head. He said at last he would go on deck and take another look to
+windward.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a power of dirt to windward!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Gregory, left to himself, edged closer against the bulkhead. He felt
+that something was about to happen, and he was in the sort of humor to
+never mind what. It did not even worry him to think he was unarmed.</p>
+
+<p>The companion way darkened with Horble's body, and the big naked feet
+again floundered for the steps. As they deliberately descended, Gregory
+changed his place, taking the corner by the lazarette door, where, at
+any rate, he could only be attacked in front. Horble's face plainly
+showed discomfiture at this move, and his right hand went hurriedly
+behind his back. Gregory was conscious of a belaying pin being whipped
+out of sight, and in an instant he was roused and tense, his nostrils
+vibrating with a sense of danger. The two men stared at each other, and
+then Horble backed into the stateroom, remarking with furtive
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>insincerity, "There's a power of dirt to windward!" This said, the door
+went shut behind him. Gregory sprang to his feet and burst it open with
+his powerful shoulders, crushing Horble against the bunk, who, pistol in
+hand, fired at him point blank. The bullet went wide, and there was a
+sound of shattering glass. Gregory's hands clenched themselves on
+Horble's, and the revolver twisted this way and that under the double
+grasp. Horble was panting like a steam engine; his lower jaw hung open,
+and he cried as he fought, the tears streaking his red face; there was
+an agonized light in his eyes, for his forefinger was breaking in the
+trigger guard. A hair's breadth more and he could have driven a bullet
+through his opponent's body; a twist the other way&mdash;and he moaned and
+ground his teeth and frenziedly strove to regain what he had lost.
+Suddenly he let go, snatched his left hand clear, and throttled Gregory
+against the wall. Gregory, suffocating, his eyes starting from their
+sockets, his mouth dribbling blood and froth, struggled with supreme
+desperation for the pistol. Getting it in the very nick of time, and
+eluding Horble's right hand, he fired twice through the armpit down.</p>
+
+<p>Horble sank at the first shot, and received the second kneeling. Then he
+toppled backward, and lay in a twitching heap against the drawers below
+the bunk, groaning and coughing. Gregory, with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>averted face, gave him
+another shot behind the ear, and another through the mouth, and then
+went out, sick and faint, shutting the stateroom door behind him. He sat
+for a long time beside the table, absolutely spent, and still holding
+the revolver in his hand. He was shaking in a chill, though the
+temperature was over eighty, and the cabin, when he had first entered
+it, had seemed to him overpoweringly hot and stifling. He warmed himself
+with a nip of gin. He looked over his clothes for a trace of blood, and
+was thankful to find none. He took off his coat; he examined the soles
+of his shoes. No blood! Thank God, no blood!</p>
+
+<p>He went on deck and cast the revolver overboard, standing at the
+taffrail and watching it sink. Even in the time he had been below the
+wind had risen; it was blowing great guns to seaward, and the lagoon
+itself was white and broken as far as the eye could reach. Aboard his
+own schooner they were busy housing the topmasts, and the yeo-heave-yeo
+of straining voices warned him that Cracroft was hoisting in the boats
+and making everything snug.</p>
+
+<p>Gregory leaned against the wheel and tried to think. To throw Horble's
+body overboard would be to accomplish nothing. The blood, the shot
+holes, the disordered cabin, would all betray him. To scuttle the
+schooner with a stick of dynamite was a better plan, but that involved
+returning to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>the <i>Northern Light</i>, with the possibility of Madge coming
+off in the interval and discovering the murder for herself. No, the risk
+of that appalled him. Besides, whatever happened, he had another reason
+for keeping the truth from Madge. The fact of Horble's death, even if
+she thought it accidental, would shock her to the core. It was
+inconceivable that she would feel anything but horror stricken, whether
+she judged her former lover innocent or not. She might even undergo a
+terrible remorse. At such a moment how little likely she would be to
+give way to him! Of course she would refuse. Any woman would refuse.
+Every restraining influence would be massed against him. No, his only
+hope lay in getting her aboard his schooner and out of the lagoon before
+the least suspicion could dawn upon her. Once away, and it might be two
+years before she might even hear of Horble's death. Once away, and the
+empty seas would keep his secret. Once away&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>He studied the weather with a new and consuming anxiety. How could he
+manage to get out at all, or pick a course through the middle channel!
+It was thick with coral rocks, and in a day so overcast the keenest eye
+aloft would be at fault. And outside, what then? By God! it was working
+up to a hurricane. To run before it would be courting death. Hove to, he
+would be cramped for room, with three big islands on his lee. In his
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span>lawless and desperate past he had taken many a fall with fortune; he
+was accustomed to weigh the danger of perilous alternatives; he knew
+what it was to hazard everything on his own vigilance and skill, and to
+bear with a sailor's fatalism the throw of those dread dice on which his
+own life had been so often staked. But to stake Madge's life! Madge,
+whom he loved so dearly! Madge, for whom he would have died! And yet
+there was something sublime in the thought of taking her in his arms and
+driving before the gale, the storm sails treble reefed on the bending
+yards, the decks awash from end to end, Madge beside him, the pitchy
+night in front, the engulfing seas behind; to swim or sink, to ride or
+smother, accepting their fate together, and, if need be, drowning at the
+last in each other's arms.</p>
+
+<p>He looked toward the settlement and saw a crowd of natives pushing a
+whaleboat into the water; looked again, and saw old Maka taking his
+place in the stern sheets and assisting a woman in beside him. The
+woman! It needed no second glance to tell him it was Madge. He had never
+counted on her coming off in company. Fool that he was, he had taken it
+for granted that she would be alone. Everything, in fact, turned on her
+being alone. Then, with a start, he remembered his own dinghy, and how
+it would betray him. He had made it fast on the schooner's starboard
+quarter, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>near the little accommodation ladder. Going on his hands and
+knees, lest his head should be seen above the shallow rail, he unloosed
+the painter, worked the boat astern, and drew it in again to port. Then
+he crouched down in the alleyway and waited.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes later and the whaler was bumping against the schooner's
+side. It might have been bumping against Gregory's heart, so agonizing
+was the suspense as he lay breathless and cramped between the coffinlike
+width of house and rail.</p>
+
+<p>"It was kind of you to bring me off, Maka," said Madge.</p>
+
+<p>The old Hawaiian laughed musically in denial. "No, no!" he cried.</p>
+
+<p>"You must come below and see the captain," said Madge.</p>
+
+<p>Gregory was in a cold sweat of apprehension.</p>
+
+<p>"Too much storm," said Maka doubtfully. "I go home now, and put rocks on
+the church roof."</p>
+
+<p>"Five minutes won't matter," said Madge.</p>
+
+<p>Again Gregory trembled.</p>
+
+<p>"More better I go home quick," said Maka. "No rocks, no roof!"</p>
+
+<p>The boat shoved off, the crew striking up a song. Madge seemed to remain
+standing at the gangway where they had left her. Gregory felt by
+instinct that she was gazing at the <i>Northern Light</i>, and that as she
+gazed she sighed; that she was lost in reverie and was loath to go
+below.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>He rose stiffly from his hiding place. Even as he did so it came over
+him that he was extraordinarily tired&mdash;so tired that he swayed as he
+stood and looked at her.</p>
+
+<p>"Madge!" he said in almost a whisper. "Madge!"</p>
+
+<p>She turned instantly, paling as she saw who confronted her.</p>
+
+<p>"Greg!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment they stared at each other speechless. Then he leaped on the
+house and ran to her, she shrinking back from him as he tried to take
+her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"You must not!" she cried, as he would have kissed her. "Greg, you must
+not! I'm married. It's all different now."</p>
+
+<p>He tried to put his arms around her, but she pushed him fiercely back.
+Her eyes were flashing, and her bosom rose and fell.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm Joe's wife," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Then, from his face, she seemed to divine something.</p>
+
+<p>"What have you done to Joe?" she cried. She would have passed him, but
+he stopped her.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no!" he protested.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go, or I shall call him," she broke out. "You sha'n't insult me!
+You sha'n't kiss me!"</p>
+
+<p>He was kissing her even as he held her back, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>even as she fought and
+struggled with him&mdash;on the lips, on the neck, on her black, loosened
+hair, now tangling and flying in the wind. He was so weak that she soon
+got the better of him&mdash;so weak and dizzy that he did not guard himself
+as she struck him on the mouth with her little doubled-up fist.</p>
+
+<p>He put his hand to his lip and found it bleeding. He showed her what she
+had done. She drew back, and regarded him with mingled pity and
+exultation.</p>
+
+<p>"Now will you let me go?" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Madge," he returned, "Joe's drunk in his berth. I made him drunk,
+Madge. I had to talk to you alone, and there was no other way."</p>
+
+<p>She was stung to the quick. Her husband's shame was hers, and it was
+somehow plain that Horble had been at fault before. She never thought to
+doubt Greg's word, though his callousness revolted her.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it you want to say?" she said at last in an altered voice.</p>
+
+<p>"To ask you to forgive me."</p>
+
+<p>"For what? for taking advantage of Joe's one failing?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; for leaving you the way I did."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll never do that, Greg&mdash;never, never, never!"</p>
+
+<p>"Your father&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't try and blame my father, Greg."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>"I blame only myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Why have you come back to torture me?" she exclaimed. "You said it was
+forever. You cast me off, when I cried, and tried to keep you. You said
+I'd never see you again."</p>
+
+<p>"I was a fool, Madge."</p>
+
+<p>"Then accept the consequences, and leave me alone."</p>
+
+<p>"And if I can't&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She looked him squarely in the eyes. "I am Joe's wife," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Madge," he said, "I am not trying to defend myself. I'm throwing myself
+on your mercy. I'm begging you, on my knees, for what I threw away.
+I&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You've broken my heart," she said; "why should I mind if you break
+yours?"</p>
+
+<p>"Madge," he cried, "in ten minutes we can be aboard the <i>Northern Light</i>
+and under weigh; in an hour we can be outside the reef; in two, and this
+cursed island will sink forever behind us, and no one here will ever see
+us again or know whither we have gone. Let us follow the gale, and push
+into new seas, among new people&mdash;Tahiti, Marquesas, the Pearl
+Islands&mdash;where we shall win back our lost happiness, and find our love
+only the stronger for what we've suffered."</p>
+
+<p>She pointed to the windward sky. "I think I know the port we'd make,"
+she said.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>"Then make it," he cried, "and go down to it in each other's arms."</p>
+
+<p>For a moment she looked at him in a sort of exaltation. She seemed to
+hesitate no longer. Her hot hands reached for his, and he felt in her
+quick and tumultuous breath the first token of her surrender. Herself a
+child of the sea, brought up from infancy among boats and ships, her
+hand as true on the tiller, her sparkling eyes as keen to watch the luff
+of a sail as any man's, she knew as well as Gregory the hell that
+awaited them outside. To accept so terrible an ordeal seemed like a
+purification of her dishonor. If she died, she would die unstained; if
+she lived, it would be after such a bridal that would obliterate her tie
+to the sot below. Then, on the eve of her giving way, as every line in
+her body showed her longing, as her head drooped as though to find a
+resting place on the breast of the man she loved, she suddenly called up
+all her resolution and tore herself free.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm Joe's wife!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>Gregory faltered as he tried again to plead with her; but in his mind's
+eye he saw that stiffening corpse below, lying stark and bloody on the
+cabin floor.</p>
+
+<p>"You gave me to him," she burst out. "I'm his, Greg. I will not betray
+my husband for any man."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>Again he besought her to go with him. But the moment of her madness had
+passed. She listened unmoved, and when at last he stopped in despair,
+she bade him take his boat and go.</p>
+
+<p>He sat down on the rail instead, his eyes defying her.</p>
+
+<p>She stepped aft, and his heart stood still as she seemed on the point of
+descending the companion. But she had another purpose in mind. Throwing
+aside the gaskets, she stripped the sail covers off the mainsail and
+began, with practiced hands, to reef down to the third reef. Then she
+went forward and did the same to the forestaysail. A minute later,
+hardly knowing why or how, except that he was helping Madge, Gregory,
+like a man in a dream, was pulling with her on the halyards of both
+sails. The wind thundered in them as they rose; the main boom jerked
+violently at the sheet and lashed to and fro the width of the deck; the
+anchor chain fretted and sawed in the hawse hole; the whole schooner
+strained and creaked and shook to the keelson. Gregory, in amazement,
+asked Madge what she was doing.</p>
+
+<p>"Going to sea, Greg," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Alone?" he cried. "Alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Joe and I," she said.</p>
+
+<p>It was on his tongue to tell her Joe was dead; but, though he tried, he
+could not do so. It wasn't in flesh and blood to tell her he had killed
+her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span>husband. He could only look at her helplessly, and say over and
+over again, "To sea!"</p>
+
+<p>"Greg," she said, "I mean to leave you while I am brave&mdash;while I am yet
+able to resist&mdash;while I can still remember I am Joe's wife!"</p>
+
+<p>"And drown," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"What do I care if I do?" she returned. "What do I care for anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"If it's to be one or the other," he said, "I'll go myself. With my big
+schooner I'd have twice the chance you'd have."</p>
+
+<p>She put her arms round his neck and kissed him. "You sweet traitor," she
+said, "you'd play me false!"</p>
+
+<p>He protested vehemently that he would not deceive her.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides," she said, "I could risk myself, but I couldn't bear to risk
+you, Greg."</p>
+
+<p>He tried a last shot. The words almost strangled in his throat.</p>
+
+<p>"And Joe?" he said. "Have you no thought of Joe?"</p>
+
+<p>"Joe loves me," she said&mdash;"loves me a thousand times better than you
+ever did. Joe's man enough to chance death rather than lose his wife."</p>
+
+<p>"But I won't let you go!" said Gregory.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't stop me," she returned.</p>
+
+<p>He caught her round the body and tried to hold her, but she fought
+herself free. His strength was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span>gone; he was as feeble as a child; in
+the course of those short hours something seemed to have snapped within
+him. Even Madge was startled at his weakness.</p>
+
+<p>"Greg, you're ill!" she cried, as he staggered, and caught at a backstay
+to save himself from falling. He sat down on the house and tried to keep
+back a sob. Madge stooped, and looked anxiously into his face. She had
+known him for two years as a man of unusual sternness and self-control;
+obstinate, reserved, willful, and moody, yet one that gave always the
+impression of unflinching courage and resolution. It was inexplicable
+now to see him crying like a woman, his square shoulders bent and
+heaving, his sinewy hands opening and shutting convulsively.</p>
+
+<p>"You're ill," she repeated. "I'll go down and fetch you something."</p>
+
+<p>This pulled him together. "I'm all right, Madge," he said faintly. "I
+suppose it's just a touch of the old fever. See, it's passing already."</p>
+
+<p>She watched him in silence. Then she stepped forward, dropped down the
+forecastle hatchway, and reappeared with an ax. While he was wondering
+what she meant to do, she raised it in the air and crashed it down on
+the groaning anchor chain. It parted at the first blow, and the
+<i>Edelweiss</i>, now adrift, blundered broadside on to leeward.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>Madge ran aft, brought the schooner up in the wind, and cried out to
+Gregory to get into his boat.</p>
+
+<p>He said sullenly he wouldn't do anything of the kind.</p>
+
+<p>She lashed the wheel and came up to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean it, Greg," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"You are going to your death, Madge," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Get into your boat!" she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>He rose, and slowly began to obey.</p>
+
+<p>"You may kiss me good-by, Greg," she said.</p>
+
+<p>She put up her face to his; their lips met. Then, with her arm around
+him, she half forced, half supported him to the port quarter, where his
+boat was slopping against the side. He wanted to resist; he wanted to
+cry out and tell her the truth, but a strange, leaden powerlessness
+benumbed him. He got into the dinghy, drew in the dripping painter she
+cast after him, and watched her ease the sheet and set the vessel
+scudding for the passage. With her black hair flying in the wind, her
+bare arms resting lightly on the wheel, her straight, girlish, supple
+figure bending with the heel of the deck, she never faltered nor looked
+back as the water whitened and boiled in the schooner's wake.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Gregory came to himself in his own cabin. Cracroft, the mate, was
+bending over him with a bottle of whisky. The Malita steward was chafing
+his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>naked feet. Overhead the rush and roar of the gale broke pitilessly
+on his ears.</p>
+
+<p>"The <i>Edelweiss</i>!" he gasped; "the <i>Edelweiss</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"Went down an hour ago, sir," said Cracroft grimly.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>
+<br />
+
+<hr />
+<br />
+<h2>A SON OF EMPIRE</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>Raka-hanga is a dot of an island in the mid-Pacific, and so far from
+anywhere that it doesn't belong to a group&mdash;as most islands do&mdash;but is
+all by its lonesome in the heave and roll of the emptiest ocean in the
+world. In my time it was just big enough to support two traders, not
+counting old man Fosby, who had sort of retired and laid down life's
+burden in a Kanaka shack, where if he did anything at all it was making
+bonito hooks for his half-caste family or playing the accordion with his
+trembly old fingers.</p>
+
+<p>It was me and Stanley Hicks that divided the trade of the place, which
+was poor to middling, with maybe a couple of hundred tons of copra a
+year and as much pearl shell as the natives cared to get. It was deep
+shell, you understand, and sometimes a diver went down and never came
+up, and you could see him shimmering down below like the back of a
+shark, as dead as a doornail. Nobody would dive after that, and a whole
+year might pass with the Kanakas still holding back unless there was a
+church assessment or a call for something special like a sewing machine
+or a new boat. It averaged <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>anywhere from five tons to sixty, and often,
+as I said, nothing at all.</p>
+
+<p>I had got rooted in Raka-hanga, and so had Stanley Hicks, and though we
+both had ideas of getting away and often talked of it, we never
+did&mdash;being like people half asleep in a feather bed, with life drifting
+on unnoticed, and the wind rustling in the palms, and one summer day so
+like another that you lost count of time altogether.</p>
+
+<p>You would have to go far to see a prettier island than Raka-hanga, or
+nicer, friendlier, finer-looking people; and when I say they never
+watered their copra on us, nor worked any of those heartbreaking
+boycotts to bring prices down, you can realize how much out of the
+beaten track it was and how little they had yet learned of civilization.
+They were too simple and easy-going for their own good and that's a
+fact, for they allowed David, the Tongan pastor, to walk all over them,
+which he did right royal with his great, fat, naked feet; and when
+anything didn't please this here David nor the deacons, they stuck him
+or her in the coral jail and locked the door on him&mdash;or her&mdash;as the case
+might be and usually was.</p>
+
+<p>We were what might be called a republic, having no king and being
+supposed to be ruled by the old men, who met from time to time in a
+wickerwork building that looked more like a giant clothes-basket than
+anything resembling a house. Yes, Raka-hanga was an independent country,
+and no flag floated over <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>us but our own&mdash;or would have if we had had
+one, which we hadn't. Of course Stanley and I knew it could not last
+like this forever, and even the natives weren't unprepared for our being
+annexed some day by a passing man-of-war&mdash;though all hoped it would go
+on as it was, with nobody interfering with us nor pasting proclamations
+on trees. It is all very fine to see "<span class="smcap">God Save the Queen</span>" <i>or</i>
+"<span class="smcap">Vive la Republique</span>" at the bottom of a proclamation, but
+Stanley and I knew it meant taxes and licenses and penal servitude if
+you did this or failed to do that, and all those other blessings that
+are served out to a Pacific island when one of the great powers suddenly
+discovers it on the map.</p>
+
+<p>Our republic was more in name than anything else, for old David, the
+missionary, ruled the island with a rod of iron, and was so crotchety
+and tyrannical that no Kanaka could call his soul his own. Every night
+at nine he stood out in front of his house and rang a hand bell, and
+then woe betide any one who didn't go to bed instanter and shut up, no
+matter if it were in the full of the moon and they in the middle of a
+game of cards or yarning sociable on an upturned boat.</p>
+
+<p>One had to get up just as military and autocratic&mdash;and as for dancing,
+why the word itself could hardly be said, let alone the actual thing,
+which meant the jail every time and a dose of the pastor's whip thrown
+in extra. It was a crime to miss <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>church, and a crime to flirt or make
+love, and the biggest crime of all was not to come up handsome with
+church offerings when they were demanded. If you will believe me it was
+a crime to <i>grieve</i> too much if somebody died&mdash;if the dead person were
+married that is, and if you were of the opposite sex and not closely
+related!</p>
+
+<p>As I said before, the natives were so easy-going that they took it all
+lying down, and allowed this here David to swell into a regular despot,
+though there must have been coming on two thousand of them, and him with
+nothing but his bell and his whip and his big roaring voice. Naturally
+he did not dare interfere with us white men, though Stanley and I toed
+the line more than we liked for the sake of business and keeping clear
+of his ill will. The only one who wasn't scared of the old Tartar, and
+stood right up to him, was a hulking big Fijian, named Peter Jones.
+Nobody knew how he came by that name for there wasn't a white drop in
+his body, he being unusually dark and powerful and full of the Old Nick,
+and with a mop of hair on him like you never saw, it was that thick and
+long and stood out on end all round his head which was the Fiji fashion
+of wearing it.</p>
+
+<p>Peter could lick his weight in wildcats, as the saying goes, and was
+always ready to do it at the fall of a hat. He was a bullying,
+overbearing individual and had terrorized his way into a family and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>married their daughter, helping himself promiscuous, besides, to
+anything he fancied, with nobody daring to cross him nor complain.
+Stanley and I were afraid of him and that's the truth, and gave him a
+little credit for peace and quietness' sake, which was well worth an
+occasional can of beef or a fathom or two of Turkey cotton.</p>
+
+<p>Once, when there was a ship in, he got most outrageously drunk, and
+rolled about the village, singing and yelling&mdash;swigging from the bottle
+he carried and stumbling after the girls, trying to hug them. If ever
+there was a scandal in Raka-hanga it was the sight of this
+six-foot-three of raving, roaring savage, rough-housing the place upside
+down and bellowing insults at the top of his lungs. But nothing was done
+to stop him till the liquor took its course, and then old David, he
+gathered the Parliament about him, and ran him into the jail with a
+one-two-three like a sack of oats.</p>
+
+<p>But Peter Jones was none of your stand-up-at-the-altar-and-repent-boys,
+being a white man by training, if not by blood, and after he had sobered
+up, what if his wife didn't smuggle him in a knife, and what if he
+didn't dig his way out! Yes, sir, that's what Peter Jones did&mdash;dug
+through the gravel floor and tunneled out, rising from the grave, so to
+speak, to the general uproar and hullabaloo of the entire settlement.
+Then&mdash;no one stopping him&mdash;he armed himself with an old Springfield
+rifle and an <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>ax and a crowbar, and the cry went up he was going to
+murder the pastor, with the children running along in front and the
+women screaming.</p>
+
+<p>But Peter wasn't gunning for any missionary, which even in Raka-hanga
+might have had a nasty comeback&mdash;the natives being mild but not cowards,
+and beginning to buzz like hornets and reach for their shark-tooth
+spears. No, what Peter was inflamed against was the coral jail, which he
+set at most ferocious with crowbar and ax until it was nothing but a
+heap of rubbish. Then he shot holes through the galvanized roofing, and
+burned it in a blazing fire along of the iron-studded door and window
+framing. By this time the missionary was trying to raise the multitude
+against Peter, but they were none too fond of the coral jail themselves
+and did nothing but hoot and shout like a pack of boys at a circus,
+which indeed it was and enough to make you split your sides laughing.
+After that Peter was let alone and nobody dared cross him, no matter
+what he did.</p>
+
+<p>But this is all by the way to give you an idea of what Raka-hanga was
+like, and make the rest of the yarn the easier to understand. I shall
+always feel sorry all my life that Stanley and I were off fishing on the
+windward side of the island and thereby missed Clemm's arrival in the
+lagoon, which was well over before we got there, with the stern of a
+ten-oared boat heading for a man-of-war, and Clemm <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>himself standing
+kind of helpless on the beach in the midst of all his chests and boxes
+and bedding.</p>
+
+<p>He made a splendid appearance in his white clothes and shirt and
+pipe-clayed shoes and pith-helmet, being a short, thick-set man with
+gray hair and a commanding look. When we came running up he spoke to us
+very grand, though genial, saying: "Gentlemen, I am the new Resident
+Deputy Commissioner, and I call on you to assist me raise the flag and
+annex this island in the name of her Royal and Imperial Majesty, Queen
+Victoria!"</p>
+
+<p>At this he took his hat off, and we did the same, though I am an
+American, and then went on to tell us that he had just been landed by
+H.M.S. <i>Ringarooma</i> to take possession of the island, and would we
+kindly inform the natives and escort him to the king.</p>
+
+<p>On learning we were a republic and that it would take time to assemble
+the old men, he condescended to accept my hospitality for a spell, and
+was most pleased and gracious at the little we could do in his honor.
+Meanwhile messengers were sent to gather in the chiefs and tell them the
+great news, and how the Commissioner was soon coming to meet them in the
+"Speak-house," as the natives called the wickerwork. Mr. Clemm said the
+<i>Ringarooma</i> had been sent under hurry orders to annex right and left in
+order to forestall the French, who had broken their international
+agreement and were hoisting <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>their flag all over the place. He also
+explained that was the reason why the man-of-war could not stop, it
+being a neck-and-neck race between her and the French which could reach
+the Tokelaus first. Between drinks he likewise showed us his commission,
+which was written very big and imposing on crinkly paper, with seals,
+where he was called "Our well-beloved and right trusty James Howard
+Fitzroy Clemm, Esquire,"&mdash;as well as the flag he had brought with him,
+which was an eight-by-twelve ensign, with the halyards all ready to run
+it up.</p>
+
+<p>I can tell you Stanley and I were mighty proud to escort the Deputy
+Commissioner to the Parliament, which we did slow and stately in our
+best pajamas, with the natives reverencing him as he passed and eying us
+two most respectful. The old men were there in rows, and also David, the
+pastor, who took the interpreting out of my hands and as usual hogged
+the whole show. Perhaps it was as well he did, for he had a splendid
+voice and a booming way of speaking that suited the grandeur of the
+occasion.</p>
+
+<p>Then Mr. Clemm's commission was read aloud, first by him in English and
+then by David in Kanaka, and afterwards the Commissioner made a rousing
+speech, all about the loving English and the low, contemptible French,
+and at the end he asked everybody to hold up his right hand who wished
+to be a loyal, faithful, obedient subject of the Great Queen.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>Up shot every hand most grateful at the narrow escape they had had of
+being French; and then outside it was again repeated, even the children
+holding up their little paws, and the flag hoisted temporary to a
+coconut palm amid shouts of rejoicing led off by Stanley and me and
+Peter Jones who had followed along after us.</p>
+
+<p>The next question was where to lodge the Commissioner till a proper
+house could be built for him, and he showed he wasn't a gentleman to be
+trifled with by cutting short their jabber, and choosing Fono's, which
+was the finest in the settlement, and ordering him to clear out, bag and
+baggage&mdash;which Fono didn't want to do and objected very crossly till
+Peter Jones snatched up a rock and ran at him like he meant to pound his
+head in. This pleased Mr. Clemm so much that he right off appointed
+Peter marshal of his court at a salary of forty dollars a month, and put
+him in charge of shifting his things into his new quarters.</p>
+
+<p>I took the liberty of warning Mr. Clemm against the Fijian, but he only
+threw back his head and told me most cutting to kindly mind my own
+business. But any rancor I might have felt at this disappeared when he
+made me clerk of the court, and Stanley tax collector, each at a salary
+of sixty dollars a month, with David "Native Adviser and Official
+Interpreter" at the same figure.</p>
+
+<p>This was the beginning of the new government, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>with everything old done
+away with, and the first official sign of it was a brand-new,
+white-painted flagpole with crosstrees and ratlines in front of the fine
+big house that was next built for the Commissioner to live in. The
+natives had to do this for nothing, supplying forty men, turn and turn
+about, though the galvanized iron, hardware, paint, varnish and what not
+were bought of Stanley and me, and paid for in taxes. It was a very fine
+place when done, with a broad veranda in front and an inner court
+behind, where Mr. Clemm used to lie in a striped hammock, waited on hand
+and foot.</p>
+
+<p>But I fancy the wicked French couldn't have taxed the Kanakas any harder
+than Mr. Clemm did, which was the best thing in the world for them,
+considering how slack they were by nature and not given to doing
+anything they could help. It only needed a little attention to double
+the copra crop of the island, not to speak of shell&mdash;so that the taxes
+were a blessing in disguise, the natives being better off than they had
+ever been before. Of course they didn't like it and put up a great deal
+of opposition till Mr. Clemm raised a Native Constabulary of seven men,
+commanded by Peter Jones, and all of them armed any way he could,
+including Stanley's shotgun and my Winchester repeater, old man Fosby's
+Enfield and several rusty Springfields pounced on here and there as
+against the law to own them.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>They were tricked out very smart in red <i>lavalavas</i> and white drill
+coats, and being all of them of the obstreperous, no-good class like
+Peter, they were soon the terror of the island. Not that Mr. Clemm
+didn't keep them tight in hand, but when it came to an order of court or
+any backwardness in taxes he never seemed to care much whom they
+plundered and beat, which was what they reveled in and thirsted for the
+chance of.</p>
+
+<p>Old David was the first to feel the weight of authority, and I believe
+his job of Native Adviser was merely a plan to keep him in good humor
+till Mr. Clemm was ready to squash him, which Mr. Clemm did three months
+later most emphatic. The Kanakas were forbidden to contribute to the
+church, and the pastor's private laws were abolished, and there was no
+more excommunicating nor jail for church members nor any curfew either.
+The natives went wild with joy&mdash;all except a few old soreheads that are
+always to be found in every community&mdash;and the only folks who were now
+forced to go to church were the Native Constabulary, who lined up
+regular to keep tab on what the missionary preached, and arrest him for
+sedition in case he let his tongue run away with him.</p>
+
+<p>In private, however, old David made all the trouble he dared, and tried
+to hearten up his followers by saying there would be a day of reckoning
+for Mr. Clemm when the missionary vessel arrived <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>on her annual
+visit&mdash;at which the Commissioner pretended to laugh but couldn't hide he
+was worried. Leastways he asked a raft of questions about the <i>Evangel
+of Hope</i>, and that with a ruminating look, and about the character of
+the people in charge which were Captain Bins and the Reverend T. J.
+Simpkins. The <i>Evangel of Hope</i> never stayed any longer than to land a
+few stores and hymn books for the pastor and take off what copra and
+shell he had acquired by way of church subscriptions. At that time she
+was about due in two months, and we all laughed at the empty larder she
+was going to find, though, as I said, Mr. Clemm seemed worried,
+remarking it was hard to be misrepresented and slandered when his only
+thought was for the good of the island.</p>
+
+<p>He was certainly upsetting things very lively and bossed the island like
+it belonged to him. If the natives could play all they wanted, now that
+David was deposed, they had bumped into something they had never known
+before and that was&mdash;work. The Commissioner couldn't abide laziness in a
+Kanaka, and went at them terrific, building a fine road around the
+island and another across it, with bridges and culverts, where he used
+to ride of a sundown in a buggy he had bought off Captain Sachs of the
+<i>H. L. Tiernan</i>, with men tugging him instead of horses, and the Native
+Constabulary trotting along in the rear like a Royal Progress.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>He built a fine-appearing wharf, too, and an improved jail with a cement
+floor, and heaven help anybody who threw fish-guts on the shore or
+didn't keep his land as clean as a new pin. There was a public well made
+in the middle of the settlement, with cement steps and a white-painted
+fence to keep away the pigs, and the natives, though they hated to work,
+were proud, too, of what they had done, and I doubt if they had ever
+been so prosperous or freer of sickness. I know Stanley and I doubled
+our trade, in spite of having to take out heavy licenses, which meant
+that not only we, but everybody else were that much better off. Petty
+thieving disappeared entirely, and likewise all violence, and one of the
+Commissioner's best reforms was a land court where titles were
+established and boundaries marked out, that stopping the only thing the
+Kanakas ever seriously quarreled about. Six months of the Commissioner
+had revolutionized the island, and few would have cared to go back to
+the old loose days when your only Supreme Court was the rifle hanging on
+your wall.</p>
+
+<p>Well, it grew nearer and nearer for the <i>Evangel of Hope</i> to arrive, and
+Mr. Clemm he began to do a most extraordinary thing, which was nothing
+else than a large cemetery! Yes, sir, that's what Mr. Clemm did, tearing
+down five or six houses for the purpose on the lagoon side, nigh the
+wharf, and planting rows on rows of white headstones, with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>low mounds
+at each, representing graves. There must have been a couple of hundred
+of them, and often it was a whitewashed cross instead of a stone or
+maybe a pointed stake&mdash;the whole giving the impression of a calamity
+that had suddenly overtaken us.</p>
+
+<p>It was no good asking him what it was for; the Commissioner wasn't a man
+to be questioned when he didn't want to be; all he said was that Stanley
+and I were to stick inside our stores when the ship came and not budge
+an inch till we were told. With us orders were orders, but the Kanakas
+were panicky with terror, and that cemetery with nobody in it seemed to
+them like tempting Providence. It took all of Mr. Clemm's authority to
+keep them quiet, and it got out that the Commissioner was expecting the
+end of the world, and the graves were for those that wouldn't go to
+heaven! Kanakas are like that, you know&mdash;spreading the silliest rumors
+and making a lot out of nothing&mdash;though in this case they couldn't be
+blamed for being considerable scared. But Mr. Clemm knew how to turn
+everything to account, and on the principle that the church was the
+safest place to be found in on the Day of Judgment, ordered that
+everybody should go there the moment he fired three pistol shots from
+his veranda. I noticed, however, that the Native Constabulary seemed to
+be taking the end of the world mighty calm, which looked like they had
+been tipped off ahead for something quite different.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>But the meaning of the cemetery appeared later when one morning, along
+of ten or so, my little boy came running in to say the <i>Evangel</i> was
+sighted in the pass. Of course, I stuck indoors, mindful of
+instructions, though that didn't prevent me from looking out of my upper
+window and taking in all that happened. The first was a tremendous
+yellow flag raised on the Commissioner's staff, and the second were
+those three pistol shots which were to announce the Day of Judgment.
+Then you ought to have seen the settlement scoot! There was a rush for
+the church like the animals at the Ark, though old David, the pastor,
+wasn't any Noah. Him and the deacons were led down to the jail and
+locked in, and then Peter Jones and his constables divided into two
+parties&mdash;three of them returning to the church, while the other three
+with Peter got a boat ready, with another yellow flag in the stern.</p>
+
+<p>By this time the missionary vessel was well up under a spanking spread
+of canvas, with the water hissing at her bows and parting white and
+sparkling in a way dandy to watch. You could almost feel her shiver at
+the sight of Peter's yellow flag rowing towards her, and through the
+glass I noticed a big commotion aboard, with half a dozen racing up the
+rigging and making signs at those below. It was plainer than words that
+they had seen the cemetery and were struck of a heap, which was no
+wonder <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>considering how new and calamitous it looked, with them rows on
+rows of neat little headstones and nicely mounded graves.</p>
+
+<p>She never even dropped her anchor nor lowered her gangway, but hove to,
+short; and when Peter came up he was made to lay on his oars and keep
+his distance, yelling what he had to say with both hands at his face
+while the captain he yelled back with a speaking trumpet. Of course I
+didn't hear a word, but it was easy enough to put two and two together,
+remembering the sea meaning of a yellow flag which is seldom else than
+smallpox. Yes, that was why we had all took and died in the new
+cemetery, and that was why the settlement looked so lifeless and
+deserted! After no end of a powwow they hoisted out a boat, and when it
+was loaded to the gunwales with stores and cases, it was cast off for
+Peter to pick up and take in tow. It held half a ton of medical
+comforts, and I often had the pleasure of drinking some of them
+afterwards on Mr. Clemm's veranda, where we all agreed it was prime
+stuff and exactly suited to our complaints.</p>
+
+<p>What old David thought of it all through the bars of the coral jail can
+only be left to the imagination. He had been banking on the <i>Evangel</i> to
+turn the scales against Mr. Clemm, and there she was heading out of the
+lagoon again, not to return for another year! We celebrated it that
+night with medical comforts unstinted, while the natives they
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span>celebrated, too, thankful to find the world still here and the Day of
+Judgment postponed. Old David wrote a red-hot protest, countersigned by
+the deacons, and not knowing what else to do with it, sealed it in a
+demijohn and threw it into the sea, where like enough it still is,
+bobbing around undelivered to the missionary society and still waiting
+for the angels to take charge of it.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Clemm's next move was to start building a small cutter of twenty
+tons, which he named the <i>Felicity</i> and charged to the government as an
+official yacht. Old man Fosby had been a shipwright in years gone by,
+and under his direction the Kanakas made a mighty fine job of the little
+vessel, which was fitted up regardless and proved to be remarkably fast
+and weatherly. She was the apple of the Commissioner's eye, with a crew
+of four in uniform, and a half-caste Chinaman named Henry for captain,
+whom he had persuaded to desert from a German schooner where he was
+mate. Mr. Clemm was so fond of taking short cruises in the <i>Felicity</i>
+that we never gave his coming and going much thought, till one day he
+went off and never came back! Yes, sir, clean disappeared over the
+horizon and was never seen again from that day to this, nor the party
+with him which included several very fine-looking young women!</p>
+
+<p>The natives took it like the loss of a father, which indeed it was, Mr.
+Clemm being a grand man and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>universally beloved&mdash;kindly yet strict, and
+always the soul of justice. After giving him up altogether for lost, we
+put seals on his private effects, and Peter Jones took charge of the
+government, advised by Stanley and me. It showed the splendid influence
+Mr. Clemm had had that Peter had become quite a model, and instead of
+breaking loose was all on the side of law and order. Our idea was to
+hold the fort until a new Commissioner might be sent, and the only
+slight change we made was to double our salaries. The natives had grown
+so used to civilized government that they made no trouble, and we three
+might have been governing the island yet if a man-of-war hadn't suddenly
+popped in.</p>
+
+<p>It was the <i>Ringarooma</i>, the self-same ship that had landed Mr. Clemm
+some eighteen months before, and Stanley and I were the first to board
+her, meeting the captain at the break of the poop, just when he had come
+down from the bridge.</p>
+
+<p>"I have the honor to report the disappearance of Deputy Commissioner
+James Howard Fitzroy Clemm," said I. "He sailed from here on March
+sixteenth in the government yacht <i>Felicity</i>, and has never been seen
+nor heard from since."</p>
+
+<p>The captain, who was a sharp, curt man, looked puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what you're talking about," he said, as abrupt as a
+thunderbolt.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, sir, you landed him yourself," said <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span>Stanley, "and the same day he
+took possession of the island and hoisted the British flag."</p>
+
+<p>"Annexed us," said I.</p>
+
+<p>The captain frowned very angry, like if we were making sport of him we
+should fast rue it.</p>
+
+<p>"I never landed anybody here but a fellow named Baker," he said. "I
+deported him from the Ellice Islands for sedition, bigamy, selling gin
+to the natives, suspected arson and receiving stolen goods. If he called
+himself a Deputy Commissioner he was a rank impostor, and had no more
+authority to annex this island than you have."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Months afterwards we learned that instead of being lost in the
+<i>Felicity</i> like we all had thought, Clemm had turned pirate in a small
+way down to the Westward till the natives took and ate him at
+Guadalcanaar.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>
+<br />
+
+<hr />
+<br />
+<h2>CLOUD OF BUTTERFLIES</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>Behind Apia, on the edge of the Taufusi swamp, was a small collection of
+huts, jumbled together in squalor and dirt, with pigs dozing in the ooze
+and slatternly women beating out <i>siapo</i> in the shade. It was a dunghill
+of out-islanders, Nieues, Uveans, Tongans, Tapatueans, banded together
+in a common poverty; landless people of other archipelagoes, despised of
+the Samoans, and paying tribute to the lord of the soil&mdash;a few men in
+war; a grudging hog in times of peace.</p>
+
+<p>Here lived O'olo, a boy of twenty, whose chief-like face, and fine manly
+bearing marked him as one apart in that nest of outcasts. He was of
+Tongan blood, though all he knew of his parents was that they had
+escaped from Nukualofa at the time of the Persecution, and had died in
+Samoa when he was a child. Old Siosi, who had adopted him, could tell
+him no more than that; not that O'olo asked many questions, being
+content to drift on the ocean of life, and careless of anything save
+what belonged to the day. He weeded taro, occasionally worked for
+thirty-five cents a day at the unloading of ships; stole bread-fruit and
+bananas up the mountain, and slept peacefully at night on the stones of
+Siosi's floor.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span>If ever he envied the Samoans, the mood was brief, and seldom darkened
+his spirits for long. To him the Samoans were a race above, with
+splendid houses, and spacious lands, and a haughty contempt for such an
+eat-bush at O'olo, the Tongan; and O'olo looked up at them mightily, and
+respected them as a dog does a man, though sometimes he said: "I wish
+God had made <i>me</i> a Samoan"; and then the swamp appeared very dismal to
+O'olo, and the huts mean and noisome, and the mallets seemed to be
+pounding on his heart instead of the suddy bark.</p>
+
+<p>Now it happened that a new clergyman came to the coral church on the
+other side of the coconut grove, and what was more important to O'olo
+brought with him a lovely daughter. O'olo did not know how important it
+was till he first met Evanitalina in the path, and was so suddenly
+stricken with her beauty that he had hardly the sense to make way for
+her to pass. Slim and graceful, with her glossy hair gathered at the
+nape with a ribbon, and her bright <i>lavalava</i> kilted to the knee, she
+gave O'olo a glance as sparkling as moonlight on a pool, all her young
+womanhood alive to his confusion, and quick to divine its cause. Though
+her eyes had scarcely dwelt on him an instant, she had seen enough for
+her heart to say: "<i>Panga!</i> What a handsome youth"; and was filled with
+a strange elation in which there was a dart of pain.</p>
+
+<p>On her return O'olo was still where she had left <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span>him, though in his
+hand was a crimson <i>aute</i> blossom that had not been there before; and
+when she drew close he held it out, saying: "Oh, lady, here is a little
+worthless gift!" She took it smiling, and put it behind her ear, and had
+it been a pig or a fine mat no sweeter could have been her words of
+gratitude, for Evanitalina had been well brought up, and courtesy was as
+natural to her as breathing.</p>
+
+<p>"I am named O'olo," said the young man, "and if you like <i>aute</i>
+blossoms, every day shall I bring you some."</p>
+
+<p>"I am Evanitalina, the daughter of Samuelu, the clergyman," she
+returned, "and I shall be glad of the blossoms, for as yet thy father
+has tabooed no lands for our garden."</p>
+
+<p>Then O'olo realized she had mistaken him for the son of Amatuanai, the
+chief, and while flattered he was also much cast down.</p>
+
+<p>"I am only a Tongan," he said, deprecatorily, shame halting his tongue,
+"and I live yonder where you see that nameless-animal rooting in the
+slough&mdash;though to God a Tongan is every bit as good as a Samoan, and the
+only chiefs are those who are strong in faith."</p>
+
+<p>Evanitalina hastened to agree with him, though she was very disappointed
+just the same, for he was so handsome, and had such pleasant manners,
+and an air so noble and winning that she had never doubted he was of
+rank. She herself was of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span>exalted I'i family, of Safotulafai, and
+her grandfather was Tu'imaleali'ifano, and her great-grandfather had
+been Tu-ia'ana. Yet as she went on, the memory of O'olo stayed with her
+like the scent of frangipani, and for all he was a Tongan and without
+land or position, she felt a great tenderness for him; and taking the
+crimson flower she pressed it to her bosom, trembling with joy as she
+did so, and saying to herself: "I love thee, I love thee, I love thee!"</p>
+
+<p>The next day they met again, and the next after that, and soon the
+village gossips were all of a chatter, though not a word of it reached
+the Reverend Samuelu nor his wife. But if Evanitalina dared not tell her
+parents of O'olo, in her conduct at least she was as good as gold, and
+every time she held a tryst with her sweetheart, she took her little
+brother with her as convention demands; and Polo, bribed with sugar
+cane, sucked and chewed at the pieces O'olo peeled for him, his shaven
+head untroubled by the woes of his elders. They, alas, were very
+wretched, for O'olo had saved up two dollars, which was what to get
+married costs, and was urging Evanitalina to run away with him to Atua;
+while she, with superior wisdom called his proposal that of a delirious
+person, for how were they to live afterwards except slavelike on the
+bounty of others? When he answered they could return to Siosi and the
+swamp, her lip curled scornfully, and she reminded <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>him she was of the
+renowned I'i family, accustomed to dignity and ease, to whom the
+settlement of out-islanders was hardly better than a wallow of
+nameless-animals.</p>
+
+<p>Now, however true this might be, it was hurtful to O'olo's pride, and he
+was often goaded into sharp retorts which invited others even sharper,
+so that their passion might be compared to a mountain, up one side of
+which they climbed in joy and gladness, to descend on the other in
+alienation. Not that they loved each other any less; that, indeed, was
+the most cruel part of it; and when at last they separated it was with
+breaking hearts.</p>
+
+<p>The days that followed were heavy with sorrow, for each strove ardently
+to pain the other, and with every stab thus inflicted there were two
+wounds, one in the giver and one in the stricken person. O'olo spent his
+two dollars in riot and debauchery, and when released from prison fell
+into greater evil, so that his communion-ticket was withdrawn, and those
+who missed taro, or chickens, or run-wild daughters used to say
+darkeningly: "Lo, it is that Taufusi Tongan," and sought to waylay him
+with an ax.</p>
+
+<p>Evanitalina, in her turn, encouraged the wooing of Viliamu, a
+highly-connected young man, whose father was a Member of Parliament, and
+who earned a dollar and a half a day in the explosion-water manufactory.
+In this profession he was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span>wondrous skilful, and could be seen daily
+under a shed, directing the apparatus, and giving orders to his helpers
+like a white man. A bottle of explosion-water held no more than half a
+coconut, yet it was sold for ten cents, and it was a perplexity that
+anybody liked it, for it shot up your nose like the rush of a bat, and
+made you choke and sneeze, as Evanitalina discovered when once Viliamu
+brought her some. But it was a fine thing to be able to make it, and
+earn a dollar and a half a day, and dress magnificently, and give costly
+presents; and though Evanitalina did not love Viliamu she admired him,
+and accepted his gifts, and thought wickedly how it must afflict O'olo
+to see her and Viliamu seated on the same mat, or with their heads side
+by side on the same bamboo pillow.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was Viliamu her only suitor, for there was also Carl, the German
+half-caste, who was captain of a schooner, and wore trousers and a black
+sash, and owned valuable property in Savaloalo; Carl who called for her
+almost every Sunday in a buggy, and took her driving like a white lady,
+to Vailele or Vaitele or Utumapu; Carl of the ringing laugh, and jolly,
+smiling face, and tattooed girl-fish on his arm, who could sing, and do
+tricks with cards, and invent the funniest forfeits when they all played
+games, and yet, who at leave-time never failed to say with seriousness:
+"Oh, my pigeon, am I to love uselessly forever?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span>Again and again was Evanitalina drawn to take Viliamu, and then to take
+Captain Carl, for Samuelu was always urging that a final decision be
+come to, knowing the folly of maids, and the lack and fewness of worthy
+men for husbands. But as she was on the brink, like a diver pausing
+before the plunge, her eyes would alight on O'olo, smolderingly
+regarding her from afar, and then her whole strength would turn to
+water, and not for anything would she have married Carl, though all
+Savalalo belonged to him, and all the ships of the sea; nor likewise
+would she have married Viliamu, even had he owned the explosion-water
+manufactory and been himself a Member of Parliament, for of her heart
+there was but one master, and that was the Tongan.</p>
+
+<p>But, alas, there was no coming together, for O'olo in his despair had
+put himself beyond all intercourse with those of honor, becoming a
+terror and a scourge, and inhabiting the jail more frequently than
+Siosi's roof-tree; and nightly, when he was free, he caroused with low
+companions, drinking gin, and cooking stolen pigs, and eating stolen
+taro, and saying in his infamy: "Why should I work for thirty-five cents
+a day when all the Tuamasanga is mine?"</p>
+
+<p>Yet the rich food had no flavor in his mouth, and though the gin
+maddened his spirit, it could not drown his wretchedness, for deep
+within him, like a maggot in a bread-fruit, was the torment of love.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span>Sometimes in prison he would lower his head like a cow, and run at the
+wall, exclaiming: "I will die, I will die!" And then he would fall, with
+his beautiful hair all matted with blood, and his beautiful body next to
+lifeless, though with his purpose unattained, owing to the thickness of
+his skull. Surely no person in hell was ever more unhappy than O'olo,
+and it is with grief one tells of him, for he was like a child, who, on
+being refused a mango throws away his banana in wilfulness&mdash;and with
+him, his banana was right conduct, and the respect of others, and the
+laws of God, leaving him nothing save an aching spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Then the war came, with the Tuamasanga in an uproar from end to end,
+every young man being called to arms, and troops pouring in from Tutuila
+and the westward to join in the onslaught against Mataafa. The Taufusi
+people, as foreigners, were not liable to the levy except for two
+striplings by way of rent, both of whom were subscribed with
+unwillingness, though neither was O'olo. This Evanitalina learned with
+joy, for death was in the air and bloody fighting nigh at hand, and her
+tenderness for O'olo, lying secret in her bosom, like a red-hot coal,
+was fanned to the flame of agony. But no, he was fortunately in the
+lock-up, and it was reported he had said scornfully of the war: "A
+Tongan gentleman has no concern with the squabbles of dogs"; which, if
+insulting, was not without the balm of reassurance to Evanitalina,
+greatly dreading.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span>One drowsy afternoon, however, as she was sewing under the eaves, alone
+except for Polo, who had made a Mataafa soldier of the dog, and was
+pretending, victoriously, to cut the animal's head off with a piece of
+wood, as so soon, in reality, would be happening to living men, pierced
+with wounds, and lying in their blood&mdash;one hot afternoon while nothing
+stirred except the flies, and even these buzzed sleepily, Evanitalina of
+a sudden was roused by the sound of steps, and looking up, beheld a
+warrior advancing towards the house. His face was blackened with
+charcoal, as is the custom, and about his hair was the scarlet scarf of
+the Government, and against his skin glistened a belt of cartridges; and
+his walk was fearless and proud, as befitted so handsome a man and one
+of such noble mien.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Talofa</i>," he said, and then Evanitalina gave a cry, for it was O'olo;
+and with that cry, every thought vanished except her love, which rose
+tumultuously within her like a wave bursting between rocks, and foaming
+white over them, so that she could answer not a word to his greeting,
+but stared uselessly at him like a dead person.</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to the war," explained O'olo, bending down on his beautiful
+legs, and bringing his face so close to hers that his breath was on her
+cheek. "Doubtless I shall die, for with many so brave it will be
+difficult for me to excel them, though that is my intention at whatever
+cost."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span>"But how is it you are not in prison?" inquired Evanitalina, recovering
+her voice, and speaking in a tremble. "The judge allotted you two
+months, and lo, here you are with only sixteen days of it expended."</p>
+
+<p>At this O'olo's heart warmed, for it showed him how assiduous had been
+Evanitalina's counting of his imprisonment, for it was exactly sixteen
+days, even as she said, she tallying it every morning with a little
+stone; and it spoke to him better than words of the endurance and
+strength of her love, which, like his own, was as fathomless as the sea.</p>
+
+<p>"I was made free on this condition," he said, touching his rifle, "and
+though to me the Government is nothing, nor the King, nor the quarrel
+more than that of gulls on a rock, or the squeals of nameless-animals
+over carrion, yet I consented for thy sake, Evanitalina."</p>
+
+<p>"My sake?" she exclaimed, astonished. "Were it to please me I would
+implore thee to remain behind, though I thought my name had long ceased
+to be anything to thee, and that I was utterly forgotten and cast
+aside."</p>
+
+<p>"So did I try to make it," he said, "for no shark could have been more
+cruel than thee to me, nor any bat more blind to worth, and because I
+had neither lands nor family thou drovest me forth with contempt."</p>
+
+<p>"It was the insufficiency of the two dollars, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span>O'olo," she protested,
+"and not that of my love, which was unbounded; and if I merited
+punishment for what seemed right to me, have I not received it, and
+atoned a thousand times over for my fault? Did Viliamu gain me for all
+his wealth and position, or did Carl the half-caste take me to wife? I
+was truer to thee than ever thou wast to me, and nightly I wept, and
+held the memory of thee in my arms, like a mother whose babe is dead.
+And this I will do, if thou wilt return to jail, and break the covenant
+of thy freedom&mdash;I will marry thee, and go live with thee in Siosi's
+house, and forfeit rank and honor and the regard of all, reckoning them
+as naught in the comparison of thy love."</p>
+
+<p>At this O'olo could hardly keep back his tears, so greatly was he
+overcome; and his hand met Evanitalina's and clasped on hers, and his
+chest shook like one grief-stricken at the death of a near relation. He
+had learned many things since he had become bad, and knew better than
+before the gulf that lay between an eat-bush like himself and a member
+of the renowned I'i family. Our Lord in the desert was not more tempted
+by the kingdoms of the world than he at that moment by Evanitalina, who
+was offering herself in all her young beauty for his delight.</p>
+
+<p>But resolutely he put the devil behind him, saying: "I will not have
+thee stoop to me, so that persons shall mock at thy choice, and the
+parable of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span>the pearl and the nameless-animal shall be repeated in the
+Taufusi swamp. No! I shall make of this war a ladder, and reach glory or
+die and to that I am determined as never was man before. If I come back
+it shall be as one famous for prowess, bearing heads that I have taken,
+and with chiefs eager to adopt me. Thus shall I return, an eat-bush no
+longer nor despised, but a David who has slain his Goliath, with the
+multitude applauding, and the greatest of the Tuamasanga vying to give
+me the title of their son. Or, if not that, then shall I claim the land
+God withholds not from every man, nay, not from the poorest or the
+lowest, and the name of that land is the grave."</p>
+
+<p>At this Evanitalina sobbed, and clung pitifully to O'olo, and pressed
+his head to her bosom, unmindful of decorum, and so consumed by misery
+she was like a person in a fit. O'olo, too, was suffocated with sadness,
+for it seemed a dreadful thing to die and be cast blood-stained into a
+pit, he that was so handsome, and in the flood of his youth, with
+perhaps his dissevered head tossing in the air amid shouts and triumph.
+Indeed, so lost was he in wretchedness that he was taken unawares by
+Samuelu on his way inland from a deacons' meeting, who, convulsed,
+seized a coconut branch, and ran at him, crying: "Let there be a going,
+thou worthless one! Fly, thou of the Belial family, and be quick with
+it, else I shall whip thee hence like a cur!" <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span>And with that he whipped
+and whipped at O'olo, departing, for the Tongan was too mannerly to
+strike a clergyman, and one so greatly his senior, though his spirit
+smarted worse than his body at the insult. Thus he passed from the sight
+of Evanitalina, like a horse being chased from a bread-fruit plantation,
+with no time to look back, or wave with his hand a last greeting.</p>
+
+<p>He marched the same day with the Vaiala contingent under the high-chief
+Asi, and that night, shivering on the wet ground, O'olo had his first
+taste of war. As to it he had many misconceptions, not reckoning on the
+severity of the rule, or the trifling importance attached to a Tongan,
+however lionlike his heart. He saw that he was one of many, a grain in a
+heap of sand, who might at an order be kept in the rear, and never hear
+the whistle of a bullet, or earn the chance of distinction. In the army,
+too, little thought was taken of food, so that one banana was given for
+breakfast, and for dinner a coconut, which O'olo found hard, he having
+always been a hearty eater, and accustomed to <i>palusami</i> and luxuries.
+The monotony also, was unendurable, especially when the tobacco was
+gone, and one was forbidden to move, being condemned to sit hungry and
+distressed for a whole day at a time, sucking a white stone by way of
+alleviation. To O'olo a white stone was very insufficient for
+nourishment, and so he tried grass and weeds like <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span>Nebuchadnezzar, to
+the undoing of his stomach, which dissatisfied, was afflicted with
+cramps, so that he rolled and rolled in pain, and lamented loudly, till
+Asi cried out: "Make that Tongan to cease from bellowing, or else the
+enemy will surely discover us!"</p>
+
+<p>But let it not be said that O'olo was womanish or afraid, for on the
+contrary he thirsted for battle like King David, whom he took for his
+example, and his repining was due to the backwardness of his rulers and
+the tightness of their leash. When at last the advance was ordered on
+the Mataafa stronghold he was noticeable for his leaps of joy; and while
+others wore an anxious appearance and showed uncertainty in their walk,
+O'olo sang with exultation, and stepped out as though on his way to a
+feast.</p>
+
+<p>The stronghold was of stone, and had been used by the Germans for the
+retaining of cattle, and stood solitary on a hill with the land falling
+away on every side. As it flashed and sparkled with the Mataafa fire it
+was seen by O'olo to be a place not easy to capture, with much loss to
+be experienced before ax could cross ax, and knife meet knife, in the
+final charge; so that, with wisdom, he shot little in order not to tire
+himself, and hugged the ground in a manner suggestive of terror rather
+than boldness, for to be killed here was useless and foreign to his
+purpose, fame resting in the fort, and there the heads to be taken.
+Thus, when they sprang up at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span>the call, he was unfatigued, with
+cartridges still in his gun, and wind in his body, and up the hill he
+raced with swiftness, so that scarcely two of his companions matched
+pace with him, and those who had cried: "Coward, coward!" panted in his
+rear, and perceived it was a hero they had mocked.</p>
+
+<p>Nor at the gateway was there any slackening of Tongan valor, and over it
+O'olo scrambled, undeterred by rifle and ax, so that it was a miracle
+that he stayed alive as he dropped within, even as Daniel into the
+lion's den, beset by twenty, and he alone. It was like a tempest and he
+in the center, and for lightning was the flame of the guns, and for
+thunder the roar of their explosion, and for the raging sea the crash of
+blows, given and taken, and the sobbing breath of men. Here the Tongan
+rock withheld the enemy, while the army of the Government rolled over
+the wall in a resistless torrent, and with tumult and fury beset the
+Mataafas until they fled. Now, O'olo, with coolness, had already marked
+an old chief of towering stature and magnificent appearance as the one
+whose head he would take, unwishful of a boy's, or that of a person of
+no importance, and him he pressed hard in the rout, and at last laid low
+with the butt of his weapon, straddling his body, and prepared to hack
+at his throat with his knife.</p>
+
+<p>The old chief, whose hurt had not bereft him of his senses, begged
+piteously for his life in a voice choked by the weight of O'olo on his
+chest, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span>troubled by the imminence of death; offering first ten cans
+of biscuit, and then twenty, and then property and fine mats in
+quantities unstinted. But O'olo, although it was like a beautiful dream
+come true, dallied with the killing, being squeamish in regard to it,
+and needing a space to confirm his resolution, he saying with derision:
+"Thou pig-faced person, thou hast not the property thou namest, and even
+wert thou the Lord of the earth, yet still would I take thy head!" To
+which the fallen warrior made answer: "I am Tangaloa, the high-chief of
+Leatatafili, in Savai'i, and the property I speak of is no myth, and all
+of it thine if thou wilt spare me." To which O'olo replied: "And when I
+should claim it, verily thou wouldst forget thy covenant, and order thy
+young men to chastise me forth, they laughing at the cheat, and I with
+neither head nor property, and the back of me lacerated with blows!"
+Then the old chief fell into a great tremble, repeating: "No, no," his
+flesh shrinking on his bones, and horror in his face; and as O'olo
+looked down at him, making motions with his knife, the Tongan's thought
+was suddenly moved into a new direction, and lo, it was like a burning
+torch in a cavern, so bright it was in the darkness of his previous
+purpose, he saying: "Oh, Tangaloa, there is a price, and that is my
+adoption as thy son, and to that wilt thou pledge thyself in an oath
+before God?" To which, overjoyed, the venerable warrior consented with
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span>impetuosity, crying out that he would do so, and seeing in the proposal
+the high-chief-hand of God, for had not his own son lately died?</p>
+
+<p>"And cherish me, and love me?" demanded O'olo with renewed motions of
+his knife, he undesirous of showing too great a willingness, and
+pretending indecision, besides doubting the chief's integrity.</p>
+
+<p>"As God sees me that I will perform," said Tangaloa, "and now in my
+extremity I perceive the worth of true dealing with every man, for all
+my past years stand in witness to my honor, and he who trusted me has
+never been deceived."</p>
+
+<p>At this O'olo was reassured, and he repeated the oath for Tangaloa to
+say after him, making it very full and exact, with nothing omitted; and
+then he kissed the old man, beginning to feel for him the tenderness of
+a son, he that had never had a father until this moment, and now having
+gained one of the loftiest rank; and he raised him lovingly, and bound
+his wound with a strip of cloth, and be-darlinged him, Tangaloa
+returning his love, and saying again and again: "Blessed be God that He
+has sent me a son for my protection."</p>
+
+<p>Nor were these words of empty import, for others of the victorious army
+were much displeased at O'olo's clemency, and would have torn away
+Tangaloa and killed him, had not O'olo resisted with lowered gun and a
+threatening expression, so that he dared not leave his father for an
+instant so <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span>greedy were the warriors for his head. All that day he
+crouched beside him, with neither water to drink nor food to eat,
+guarding Tangaloa preciously; and had it not been for the confusion that
+attends the finish of a battle, and the lessening of authority that
+follows, he would have been overpowered by a multitude, and all his
+bravery wasted. But those who assailed him were without cohesion or
+settled plan, and they were as dogs, rushing up to affright, and then
+losing courage at O'olo's demeanor, which was fierce and unshaken, with
+his rifle at the cock.</p>
+
+<p>It was a day terrible to remember in its heat and hunger and unbearable
+thirst, with about them the headless dead, festering in the sun and
+blackening, and over them the sky without a cloud, and always at their
+hearts the dread of Asi and the chiefs, returning to kill them both. At
+dusk it seemed as though O'olo could never get his father to his feet,
+so destroyed was the old man by weakness and disinclination, and he was
+as a sinking canoe, or a sting ray flopping on the reef, and abandoned
+by the tide. But O'olo persevered, dragging and supporting him until
+coconuts were reached, where he climbed a tree and threw down nui in
+abundance; and as they drank the water they were greatly refreshed, and
+with every bite of the rind, vigor returned, and with vigor, boldness.
+Then Tangaloa said: "Let us pray"; and with that they both went down on
+their knees, the old chief beseeching God <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span>for deliverance, and
+repeating again and again his thankfulness for O'olo, and for the nuts.</p>
+
+<p>But all was far from finished, and there was much for God to do yet if
+ever He destined them to gain the security of Savai'i; and O'olo
+proclaimed his intention of hiding in the mountains, and going eastward
+circuitously, and making no sign or stir until the close of the war, and
+the withdrawal of the Tuamasanga from A'ana. To this Tangaloa agreed
+without argument, resigning himself like a little child to O'olo's
+guidance, and making no demur when the Tongan said: "Let us rise and go,
+for by dawn we must be on the heights, and beyond pursuit."</p>
+
+<p>Thus determined, they took the plantation road upward, assisted by the
+moon which was near its full; and toilsomely attaining the limits of the
+cultivated land, buried themselves in the tomb of the forest. Here, with
+groping and hurt, and frequent misdirection, they struggled on and on,
+making of a watercourse their path, and at times so hidden in the defile
+of rocks that it was as though the earth had closed over them. In this
+manner were many hours spent until at last Tangaloa fell exhausted on a
+bank of ferns, saying: "More I cannot do." Then O'olo built a fire to
+warm his parent, who was perishing of cold, and rubbed his legs, and
+shaped a bough for his pillow, and kissed him lovingly; and when the old
+man said: "I am convinced we <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span>shall die"; he answered stoutly, "No, we
+shall live, for God has not brought us thus far to desert us now"; at
+which Tangaloa was comforted and went to sleep, while O'olo watched and
+watched beside him, his heart much troubled by the evil of their
+situation, and the frailty of the old chief, and the assailing doubts as
+to whether, after all, they should ever escape.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The news of O'olo's desertion was variously twisted by the returning
+troops, so that to Evanitalina, inquiring in anguish, there were as many
+tales as men. Some would have it that they had seen him die, giving
+details; others that he had run away from the battle, in wildness and
+panic; others praised him truthfully for a hero, and as the first to
+leap the fort. Of these there was a fewness, for the most preferred to
+laud themselves or their relations rather than another, and accordingly
+most of the chatter was scornful of O'olo, and to his discredit. But
+Evanitalina knew that O'olo was no coward, and her misgiving was that he
+was dead, which deepened with the passing of months, and no sign nor
+token coming to prove the contrary. Viliamu, too, was assiduous in
+declaring it, which he did with artfulness and pretended sorrow, urging
+all the while his own suit, like a squid of apparent harmlessness on the
+surface, but with its suckers enfolding venomously below.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span>Never was a maid in sadder straits, widowed before she was a wife, and
+unceasingly plagued by Samuelu to marry either Viliamu or Carl. She grew
+thin, and when she walked it was like a sick person, staggeringly, and
+once of so passionate a temper she changed to a gentleness that nothing
+could disturb. The compassion of the other maids lavished itself upon
+her, for they saw that she was dying of grief for her beloved; and at
+night, when wooed under the stars, they spoke with tenderness of O'olo
+and Evanitalina, and of their love so cruelly ruptured; so that every
+one wept, even young men who previously had had neither consideration
+nor sense, to whom a maid was a maid, were only she pretty, and who
+would have hastened for another had the first died; which shows that
+true love is like a seed, growing and becoming a tree, from which others
+eat the fruit to their own improvement, and increased understanding.</p>
+
+<p>Every day Evanitalina grew more weak, yet unlike most sick persons, she
+was without fear at her condition, even welcoming it, and saying: "Soon
+I shall pass beyond the skies on my last <i>malanga</i>"; an once when she
+saw a wilted <i>aute</i>, she said: "Such am I, once blooming and now
+a-droop," and with that she plucked fiercely at the petals, and crushed
+them in her hand, as though she were hastening her own extinction.</p>
+
+<p>One morning, shortly after prayers, as she <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span>reclined on a mat, with her
+eyes raised to that far-away country of which she often spoke, while
+Samuelu sat at the table, writing his sermon, there appeared on the
+village green three old gentlemen of stately and impressive appearance,
+bearing staves, who, stopping at that distance, inquired loudly whether
+this was the house of Samuelu, the clergyman? Then being greeted, and
+answered, "Yes," the three old gentlemen ceremoniously advanced, and
+ranged themselves within the eaves, saying that they had come on a
+wooing-party of sixty boats with Cloud-of-Butterflies, the young chief
+of Leatatafili, who was seeking a wife. At this, marveling greatly,
+Samuelu informed them they were mistaken as to the house, since his
+highness Cloud-of-Butterflies was unknown to him, and he surely unknown
+to Cloud-of-Butterflies. But the old orators replied, No, they were not
+mistaken, and asked had he not a daughter named the Lady Evanitalina,
+for it was for her that Cloud-of-Butterflies, in sixty boats, was at
+hand to offer marriage.</p>
+
+<p>Then Samuelu's amazement redoubled, and even Evanitalina, previously
+languid, looked up surprised, and in her face was a strange expression
+like that of a startled pigeon; and on being asked in a becoming speech
+whether she would condescend to receive the visitor and his gifts, she
+answered with bewilderment that it was as her father wished, at which
+Samuelu said, "Yes," with no great willingness, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span>desiring to continue
+his sermon, and dreading the outlay in <i>'ava</i> for the reception of so
+vast a company. Then the three old gentlemen excused themselves in
+polished phrases, full of beauty and eloquence, and retired to inform
+Cloud-of-Butterflies that the Lady Evanitalina was desirous that he
+should come.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly afterwards there was the beat of drums, and the tramp of
+multitudes, and the screaming of innumerable pigs borne on poles, and a
+sound like that of an advancing army, thunderous and roaring. The eaves
+of every house was black with onlookers, and there were white people,
+galloping up on horses, astounded, and many others on foot, running.
+Then, shaking the ground with its progress the procession marched into
+view; and of pigs there seemed two hundred, and of men a number beyond
+counting; and at the head were youths, throwing their rifles in the air
+as they sang and danced. But of these things Evanitalina was scarcely
+heedful, for with breathless body and quivering heart her whole
+attention was on Cloud-of-Butterflies in the center of the pageant, who,
+girded in a priceless mat, and wearing at his throat a whale-tooth
+necklace, and surrounded with deference and honor, was not to her
+Cloud-of-Butterflies at all, but O'olo, arisen from the grave, and
+hastening to claim her for his bride.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span>
+<br />
+
+<hr />
+<br />
+<h2>BEN</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>I was in the bark Ransom, with twenty tons of trade aboard, and looking
+for a station up in the Westward, when I fixed it up with Tom Feltenshaw
+at Arorai Island to buy him out. It was a good little station, and far
+better than I could have hoped for at the money I had to offer, with a
+new tin roof and a water tank and a copra shed with a cement floor, and
+an imported banana in an imported ton of earth to give a natty effect to
+the back view&mdash;the front being all reef and dazzle and Pacific Ocean.</p>
+
+<p>Lonesome? Coffin-lid, nail-her-down, lonesome&mdash;why, of course! Was there
+ever a coral island that wasn't? But there was copra in plenty; only one
+other trader and him a boozer; quite a bit of pearl shell, and Tom's
+book showing how he had cleared thirty-three hundred dollars in a year.
+He had boils something awful, and for the last two years it had just
+been a fight to stick it out. I came along when the boils had won all
+along the line, with Tom ready to leave everything all standing in order
+to get away.</p>
+
+<p>There hadn't been a ship in five months, and he had come mighty near
+pegging out, having made his will and tacked it to the shed door,
+besides giving the natives receipts in advance that he had died a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span>natural death, they being afraid some passing man-of-war might hold
+them responsible and shoot up the island.</p>
+
+<p>We had settled everything, counted out the money, and shook hands when
+Tom says, over a good-by nip of Square-face: "Oh, that girl of mine,
+Ben,&mdash;you'll take care her, won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Girl?" says I.</p>
+
+<p>"She's broke in to cooking and washing and white ways," explains Tom,
+"and it'd go against my conscience to feel I hadn't left her
+comfortable."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's see her," I said.</p>
+
+<p>He called her in, and one glance at her settled the matter. She was
+about eighteen, as slim and straight as a dart, and, by far and away,
+the prettiest woman I had seen in the group. She stood there mighty
+sullen as I sized her up, and admired her splendid black hair that was
+bound by a red ribbon at the nape of her neck, very coquettish and
+attractive. I've always liked that proud, to-hell-with-you look in a
+girl, and it seemed to make her better worth having, like there was
+something to master before you could have your will with her. Yes, it
+was bargain day for me all right, and the store wasn't the only thing I
+was getting cheap.</p>
+
+<p>"What she saying?" I asked, as she spoke something in Kanaka to Tom,
+showing real pretty teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"She won't stay if you whip her," grins Tom.</p>
+
+<p>"Bless her heart, I won't whip her," I says, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span>thinking to break the ice
+by pulling her down on my knee. But she struggled like a wildcat, and
+Tom, he suddenly turns red-hot jealous.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave that till I'm gone," he says, kind of choking. "If it wasn't for
+these damn boils I should never have parted with her or the station."
+Then after another nip he takes his bag of money, and calls out to the
+Kanakas at the porch to carry his two chests down to the boat that was
+laying there ready to take him aboard. He ups as though to kiss the girl
+good-by, but she sprang back from him, as fierce as she had been with
+me&mdash;fiercer, I guess; and when he caught her she turned away her head
+like she hated him. Then he swore and stumbled out of the house without
+another word or anything, while me and the girl stood side by side, both
+of us in our different ways deserted, and slung together by the fate of
+things. She didn't fight this time when I made free with her again, but
+began to sob like her heart would break, while I squeezed and cuddled
+her and watched the sinking topsails of the Ransom.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Women are always alike at bottom; it is only men that are different. A
+bit of finery would make Rosie happy for a week. Her hair was an
+everlasting job, so was her skin, which she kept out of the sun and
+rubbed down very careful with oil. She took walks to see how the other
+women wore the single bushy garment that they do in the Gilberts, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span>the
+fashion varying from time to time: now it is swung very jaunty from side
+to side, now it's low and now it's high, and sometimes it's thick and
+sometimes it's thin, and sometimes the modest-and-quiet is the dressy
+way of it. She took care of the house very nice, and what few clothes
+and things we had were arranged most tidy in three chests with bell
+locks. I never hear a little bell ting-a-ling to-day but what it brings
+those days back to me, with her so busy at our funny housekeeping. When
+I coasted around the island, trading, she 'ud stay behind and guard the
+place like a bulldog, and never took a thing except a little soap or
+tobacco or maybe a tin of meat for her Pa, a nosing old gentleman
+dressed in a mat, who always bobbed up when I was out of the way, being
+discouraged at other times from living and dying with us.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, I got very fond of her&mdash;loved her, you might call it, for all she
+was a little savage, and ate squid, and carried a shark-tooth dagger
+against any of the girls that might show a fancy for me. In time I
+taught her to play cribbage and checkers and dominoes, so that at night
+we would sit very sociable under the lamp, she and I, with the surf
+groaning on the outer reef, and it was more like a home than I'd ever
+had in my wandering, lonely, up-and-down life. She was quick to learn,
+and loving to beat the band, yet ever kind of imperious and saucy like I
+belonged to her instead of its being the other way around. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span>She had no
+idea of white people&mdash;used to say they looked like Kanakas who had been
+drowned for a week&mdash;and was most scornful how it was always copra,
+copra, copra with us. It was just her way to tease me and make me cross,
+for then she would snuggle up and ripple over with laughter and hold me
+tight in her soft, round girlish arms, and say that I was <i>her</i> copra&mdash;a
+whole ship of it, and how she 'ud hang herself from a coconut tree if I
+were to die&mdash;and by God, she would have done it, too, them Gilbert women
+being great on love, and the thing happening often enough.</p>
+
+<p>Several years passed, and I can't recall a single word of disagreement
+between us. She was all the world to me in those days, and I doubt if in
+the whole group there was a pair so happy. Ben's Rosie, they called
+her&mdash;the captains and supercargoes and mates that came our way&mdash;and they
+all thought a lot of her, and brought her many a little present that
+made her eyes sparkle&mdash;such pretty eyes as they were, and so full of
+fun&mdash;gold fish, and rolls of silk, and music boxes or a trade hat. It
+was always a standing joke that she was tired of me, and was going to
+run away with them; and if they were quite old, like Captain Smith or
+Billy Baker, there wasn't any length she wouldn't go to, even to hugging
+them and playing with their whiskers right before me, and saying in her
+sweet, broken English: "Oh, you poor old captain, with nobody to love
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span>you&mdash;but never mind, I go with you this time, sure I go, and Bennie can
+get a girl from Big Muggin, oh, so pretty, who bite him like a dog!"</p>
+
+<p>Then little Ben came, and for a time it looked as though he was going to
+be quite a boy, and grow up. But at the end of twenty-one months, as he
+was nearing his second birthday, he sickened and died; and we dressed
+him up in his poor little best, and put him away forever in the coral.
+Rosie took on about it terrible&mdash;so terrible that I think something must
+have broken in her brain. She was never the same afterwards; not that
+she was always mourning, I don't mean that&mdash;but she grew cranky and
+queer and changed in every way. She would start into a fury at a word,
+and throw things about, and scream. She would tell the most awful lies
+about how I had treated her, and invent things that never took place.
+Even on a dot of a coral island there is gossip and slander and a Kanaka
+Mrs. Grundy, and Rosie was doing her best to ruin me, so that I was
+avoided, and the King and the other high muck-a-mucks went to Tyson's,
+the opposition trader, and tabooed my store till I didn't know which way
+to turn.</p>
+
+<p>I ought to have sold out and quit, and left Rosie on the other fellow
+like Feltenshaw had done me. But I loved her for what she had been to
+me, and for the poor mite moldering under ground, and so just took my
+medicine for a whole miserable year and let it go at that. Every
+misfortune I've had in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span>life I seem to trace to what was good and
+generous in me. Certainly if I'd shaken her off then and there, I would
+have been a happier man, and been saved things that have since almost
+drove me mad.</p>
+
+<p>The upshot of it was that finally I did sell the station to a couple of
+Chinamen&mdash;brothers&mdash;and I would like to say right here there never was a
+whiter pair than these two, or any that stood up straighter to a
+bargain. Once the main price was fixed, there was no haggling over
+valuations, nor any backwardness or suspicion, though in the rush I was
+in not to hold the schooner over long, it would have been easy to beat
+me out of a hundred dollars or two. They pulled us off to the vessel&mdash;me
+and Rosie and them three camphor-wood chests with the bell locks and a
+big roll of mats and a keg of silver dollars&mdash;and an hour later six
+years of my life had sunk with the palms, as lost and disappeared as the
+schooner's wake in the sea behind us.</p>
+
+<p>After the Line Apia struck me as a wonderfully bustling, busy little
+place, and I took to it like a man does who's had nothing but coral and
+coconuts to look at till all the world seems nothing else. It came over
+me what a prisoner I'd been up there, and how much I had paid in
+unthought-of ways for that keg of Chile money. Rosie, too, brightened up
+considerable with the novelty of it all, and was so gay and laughing and
+like her old self that I was gladder than ever at having made the
+change.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span>It didn't take me long to size up conditions; and the better part of
+that keg soon put me in possession of a two-story house and store in the
+center of the town on the main street, with a pretty good stock taken
+over from the widow of the man who had lately died there. I was hardly
+what could be called a trader any more, what with a place so big and
+fine, with a tramway running down to a shaky wharf, and a busted
+bookkeeper coming in every Tuesday night to post my books. I was a South
+Sea merchant now, and was reaping the fruit of all them lonely slaving
+days on the Line. No more pajamas neither, but a clean, white suit every
+day, and with Rosie perking up like she did, them were real good times
+for me, and pleasant to look back on; and though I do say it myself, my
+neighbors liked me and I was respected and looked up to, and I was
+called the Gilbert Island Consul from the way I was always ready to
+befriend anybody from there, whether white or native, even once going
+before the Supreme Court and being complimented by the Chief Justice on
+behalf of some Nonootch people whose wages were being held back.</p>
+
+<p>Then my ward run me for the Municipal Council, and I was elected by
+twenty-two votes to four over Grevsmuhl; and I can tell you it made me
+feel a mighty proud man to be honored like that and placed so high; and
+if my head didn't swell I guess my heart did, to almost bursting, at
+such a rise in life, and one so unexpected and undreamed of. It <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span>hardly
+seemed it could be me the police touched their caps to, or the consuls
+confabbed with about local affairs as they dropped in to buy a
+toothbrush or a pair of socks&mdash;me who had landed there so short a time
+before in my pajamas and kind of dazed at the size and noise of the
+place after the silence of the Line&mdash;just common old me, with earrings
+in my ears and gaping like a Rube.</p>
+
+<p>It meant a big uplift to me in every kind of a way, and I was a better
+man for all that confidence and trust, and wanted like hell to show I
+was worth it. The week after I was elected to the Council I married
+Rosie proper and right, thinking a Councillor ought to set an example in
+his community; and every one was very cordial to me about it, especially
+in my own ward, where two or three of them even followed my lead, saying
+that with the mail steamers now calling and the town generally on the up
+grade, it was time to let go on the old, wrong way of things, and get
+into line with civilization.</p>
+
+<p>Whether it was the change from the coral islands or the lavish new diet
+or what, Rosie had been laying on flesh for a long time in a quiet,
+unnoticed kind of way till finally she suddenly plumped up like a
+balloon. My, but she grew something awful, a waddling, monstrous
+mountain of a woman, with her eyes burying like a pig's, and the whole
+of her shaking as she walked. She was ashamed to go out any more except
+by night, sulking all day <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span>indoors, instead, and rocking in a hammock.
+As I said before, she'd never been right since Benny's death, and though
+she had pulled up for a time and acted very much improved she slumped at
+last, and slumped worse than she ever had been. Her old surly fits on
+the Line were nothing compared with the rampageous way she went on now,
+and if there was ever a she devil on earth or a man driven plumb
+distracted it was Rosie and me in our splendid house.</p>
+
+<p>When she was taken with those spells of hers she was nothing less than a
+cursing, snarling, foaming maniac, and stopped at nothing to make me a
+spectacle and a byword. Again and again she chased me out with an ax;
+she would fling into the store with nothing over her but a single dirty
+garment, and pull down whole shelves of stuff out of sheer devilment,
+screaming with rage. She slandered everybody, and reflected on every
+woman who was unfortunate enough to know us, so that I was sued twice
+for defamation&mdash;or rather she&mdash;with verdict and damages, all that I
+could do being to hold up my hands and tell the judge she wasn't
+answerable for her actions. Hell, that was what it was&mdash;straight,
+unadulterated hell&mdash;with no way out that I could see till I died or she.</p>
+
+<p>It was about this time I began to notice a fellow named Tyne on the
+beach&mdash;a thin, tall, hungry-looking man in a derby hat, very shabby
+black clothes, and no socks&mdash;who was said to be a busted <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span>doctor landed
+off of a French bark. His name came up before the Council, but as he had
+no papers or diplomas to show, and was hazy besides where he came from
+and how, we refused to let him practice, and were insulted besides at
+his daring to ask us.</p>
+
+<p>Well, one day this Tyne, he comes into my store, very hang-dog, and so
+famished and shaky that I couldn't but feel sorry for him, and he asks
+for the job of pushing my handcart around the beach, getting stuff out
+of Customs, and making deliveries&mdash;he having heard I had fired my Nieue
+boy for pilfering.</p>
+
+<p>"Fifty cents a day, Doc," I says. "It's hardly fit for a white man."</p>
+
+<p>"My God," he says, in a real gentleman's voice, "I'm starving. I'd push
+anything anywhere for a bite of bread and a corner of a shed to sleep
+in. Ain't there a spark of charity in this town for a white man who is
+down on his uppers?"</p>
+
+<p>I answered him with a can of sardines and some pilot break, which he
+went out and wolfed right there on the front stoop, and then came back
+wanting to know where was the cart and what was he to do? This was first
+how we got acquainted, Doc and me; and a remarkably finely educated man
+he was, too, and I don't doubt for a minute all that he represented
+himself. I fixed up a small shed for him with some mats, a tin basin and
+a lamp; and after a day or two, seeing how willing he worked and how
+faithful in spite of every one staring at a white man between <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span>the
+shafts, I let him take his meals regular with me and Rosie like one of
+the family.</p>
+
+<p>For all he was down and out, and trundled my things about the beach like
+a donkey, in knowledge and everything he was miles above me and I knew
+it&mdash;and he made it plain he knew it, too. He was not at all a genial
+man, but had a rasping, bitter way about him, and a tongue as sharp as a
+razor, and a line of talk as to how the world was made up of flats and
+sharpers, all of them hypocrites, and how there wasn't but one sin&mdash;and
+that was to be found out. He talked like the devil might be expected to
+talk, there being no goodness or honor anywhere; and in some ways he
+wasn't unlike him in looks as generally represented, being tall and
+thin, with keen gray eyes that seemed to bore right through you, and a
+wicked, sneering mouth like a slit across his face.</p>
+
+<p>Very soon he was doctoring natives on the sly for quarters and half
+dollars and bonito hooks and tappa, and quite a row of bottles and
+drug-store stuff began to accumulate along the ledges of the shed walls.
+I didn't think it was my business to interfere as long as he let white
+people alone, besides feeling sorry for him, and appreciating the way he
+paid no attention to Rosie's outbreaks, sitting there like he was air,
+and not passing a single remark&mdash;being, for all his faults, a gentleman
+through and through. At last he chucked the handcart altogether, though
+he went on messing with me and living in my shed, his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span>Kanaka practice
+growing very extensive. It grew and grew till finally the regular doctor
+called a halt, and he was warned in an official letter, and told he
+would get three months' imprisonment if he persisted. At this I thought
+he would go back to the shafts again, though I didn't care to propose it
+lest it should hurt his feelings. But instead he bought an accordion and
+did nothing but play and play on it for days, beginning awful bad like
+he didn't know one end of it from another, but improving wonderful till
+it was dandy to hear him.</p>
+
+<p>I guess there was nothing Doc couldn't do if he tried, though why
+accordion was more than I could answer. But it wasn't loafing that kept
+him stuffed in a hot shed all day, wheezing polkas out of the
+hurdy-gurdy, but a real good idea of improving on the handcart. What if
+he didn't make a whole band out of himself, with a harness holding a
+comb across his mouth, and a bass drum for him to kick with one foot and
+a tambourine to frisk with the other. My, when he started off with "The
+Stars and Stripes Forever" you might have thought he was six, with a
+drum major prancing along in front! He give a demonstration that night
+in the Tivoli Hotel, and drew the town; and when he come home it was
+with a pocketful of silver and a couple of dates for a wedding and the
+Kaiser's birthday.</p>
+
+<p>After that Doc became an institution, with a pretty Kanaka girl to carry
+the drum and pass round <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span>the saucer; and every night when he hadn't a
+special engagement he would make the round of the bars, picking up what
+little he could. If there was a ship to be sold at auction, or a public
+meeting to protest against a high-handed something, it got to be the
+fashion to plaster the notice of it on Doc's back, him playing under a
+tree for all he was worth with the sweat pouring down his face, while
+all hands turned out to see what was the rumpus. He made money hand over
+fist, and would have paid for his keep only I wouldn't have it. We had
+grown to be sort of friends, him and me, from both having so much to
+bear&mdash;for he was too proud and highly educated a man to like making a
+monkey of himself, and it ground into him hard, and with me it was
+Rosie, Rosie, Rosie.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, God, what things I had to put up with! What endless mortifications!
+What everlasting, heartbreaking scenes and scandals! She got to
+following me to Council meetings, bellowing like a wildcat, and clawing
+the policeman who was ordered to put her out; and again and again I had
+to leave in the middle to try and get her home, half the beach tagging
+along with us, laughing and jeering till I could have died of shame.</p>
+
+<p>The day I resigned from the Council, being unable to stand it any
+longer, I was sitting in the front room, with my head in my hands, when
+Doc came in, and patted me on the back.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span>"Too bad," he says, "too bad."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Doc," I says, "I'm the most miserable chap alive."</p>
+
+<p>"It's bound to end some time," he remarked.</p>
+
+<p>I shook my head. We had no means of taking care of lunatics, and that
+was about what Rosie was. The Colonies all had laws, barring out
+undesirables and such, even if a steamer would have taken her, which
+none of them would. "I'll tell you what I'd do," said Doc. "I'd give
+five hundred dollars to a labor-ship captain, put her aboard at night,
+and leave it to him to land her in one of those islands where they eat
+you for dinner."</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't do that," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"Too fond of your money, eh?" he sneers.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Doc," I answered, "I'd give everything I possess, lock, stock and
+barrel&mdash;and ten years of my life thrown in&mdash;to be decently quit of her."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled a bit incredulous. "Suppose an angel came down from heaven and
+took you at your word," he says. "The next day you'd be beating Mr.
+Angel out of his price&mdash;you know you would, and screaming worse than she
+does at being held to your bargain."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I would, Doc," I agreed, his manner of speaking somehow making
+it feel very real; "it's hard to begin without a dollar and nothing but
+the clothes you stand in. But downstairs in my safe I have two thousand
+dollars in hard cash, American <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span>money, which the angel could take and
+welcome."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a lot of money," he says, wondering like, "but it would be worth
+it to you, wouldn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"My God, yes," I says, rather regretting I told him about the safe, for
+there was a shine in his eyes and a calculating look I didn't like.</p>
+
+<p>"And you wouldn't bilk the angel when he handed in his bill?" he went
+on.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, hell, Doc," I said, "what's the use of talking of angels? I've just
+got to grin and bear it."</p>
+
+<p>"But you'd pay, wouldn't you?" he persisted.</p>
+
+<p>I said yes, just to stop his pestering; and after a couple of drinks off
+of the sideboard he went away. That evening I locked myself in the
+store, took the money out of the safe, and carried it up to the attic
+where I hid it under an old mattress. I smeared a little varnish around
+the combination lock with a rag, and next day I looked for finger marks,
+but there weren't none. Yet I was still suspicious, and the money stayed
+in the attic. Doc was too bright a man to have left home without a
+reason.</p>
+
+<p>Things went on as usual for a long time&mdash;business middling, Doc rounding
+up the bars, Rosie raising Cain occasionally, or snarling and muttering
+in the hammock just as the humor took her. It was the damnedest life for
+a man to lead, just pigging it and worse every day, with no order and
+anything&mdash;a can of meat for lunch, a can of meat for dinner, and the
+table left slovenly like it was. Then she fell <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span>kind of sick, and though
+I felt sorry to see her doubled up and groaning, it had a good side to
+it, for I got a Chinaman in to cook at forty dollars a month, and he
+straightened things out fine and cleaned up the dirt of ages. I called
+in Doctor Funk, the regular physician, and for a time Rosie improved,
+getting well enough to nearly bite the cook's finger off when he tried
+to stop her giving away a consignment of hams. But after a while she
+took sick again, the cramps coming back worse than ever, and I let Doc
+do what he could for her, which wasn't much, though better than Funk,
+whose stuff didn't seem any more good and had lost its effect.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, early one morning, she was taken most awful bad, vomiting
+blood, and twisting and twitching in a way horrible to see, she being so
+mountainous fat, and gibbering crazily in the Gilbert language&mdash;all
+about me and little Benny, and devils snapping at her toes, and a giant
+squid what was dragging her down to drown. Then of a sudden she grew
+very quiet, and Doc, looking close to her face, said, "Good God, she is
+dead!" Yes, dead, just as Doctor Funk hurried in, glaring to see Doc
+there, and saying something out loud about God damn quacks, and looking
+and smelling savagely at the different bottles. Doc slunk out of sight,
+and then Funk, he calmed down, and spoke to me very sympathetic and kind
+as to what I was to do, and how, after all, it was a merciful release.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span>I buried her the same day, that being the rule in the tropics, and the
+better part of the town followed her to the grave in the foreign
+cemetery, that being a kind of rule or custom, too, in Apia, as well as
+everybody getting tight afterwards at the Tivoli bar.</p>
+
+<p>It was a strange feeling to come back to the house and to know that
+Rosie was gone out of it forever, and that I had passed another big
+landmark in my life. For all it was such a release, I was bluer than
+blue, yet I won't deny I was glad, too, but in a frightened kind of way,
+and half wishing again and again that she was back. Her running on about
+Benny and me before she died stuck in my throat, and seemed awful
+pitiful; and I remembered how pretty she once had been, and always such
+a good, true wife, and how me and the little store was all the world to
+her before sorrow broke her heart.</p>
+
+<p>I went upstairs, and sat looking out on the bay, thinking it all over,
+and how in time death comes to every one of us, high or low; thinking,
+too, that I was a free man now&mdash;a prosperous, respected, looked-up-to
+man, and an ex-Councillor with a home that many a woman would consider
+well worth sharing. I wondered if Miss Nelson up at the Mission would
+consider a man as unrefined as I was and thirty-seven years old, she so
+sweet and young and with such gentle, winning ways. She was a governess
+to their children, and that made me think she <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span>would, for no woman likes
+to be a dependent and at the beck and call of another. I sat there
+dreaming of her, and of the place nicely fixed up, and of us driving out
+of a Sunday to Vailele in a smart little buggy, with me re&euml;lected to the
+Council, and people saying: "How d'ye do, won't you drop in a
+moment"&mdash;to me and Miss Nelson, married.</p>
+
+<p>If this sounds wrong, remember Rosie had been no wife to me for three
+years&mdash;only a torment and a disgrace&mdash;and I deserved some credit for
+having stood it like I did. I had never dared have such thoughts before,
+though I'd often remarked what a pretty creature Miss Nelson was, just
+like a man does without anything further in his head. Yet looking back
+on it, and the few times she had been in the store when we had spoken
+together, I kind of felt she liked me, and she had certainly never been
+in any hurry to leave; with this much to go on, and the fact that she
+always smiled at me most winsome the few times we passed each other on
+the street, I couldn't help thinking I had made a start without my
+knowing it, and that if I followed it up hard this dream of her and me
+might be made to come true.</p>
+
+<p>I was turning this over in my mind when a squall of rain came tearing
+along, the sky all black with it, and the roof hammering like a boiler
+factory. In Samoa you needn't look out of the window to see if it is
+raining. It comes down deafening, and the iron roars with the weight and
+smash of it. This <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span>was how I didn't notice Doc till he stood right there
+beside me. There was something awful strange and grave about him, and I
+give a little jump I was that taken by surprise.</p>
+
+<p>He lit a cigar, and waited very impatient for the squall to pass; and as
+he went to the window and beat a little tattoo on it with his finger
+nail, I noticed he was all dressed up like I'd never seen him before.
+Then he came back, looking at me very steadfast, and says: "Well, Ben,
+you're out of the woods at last."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, thank the Lord!" says I.</p>
+
+<p>"Same here," he says, meaning himself. "When the mail comes in to-night,
+I'm off to San Francisco."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Doc!" I cried out, utterly flabbergasted.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he says, "and for all I care, the whole damned island may sink in
+the sea, and stay there, with nothing but coconuts and my old accordion
+to mark the place and maybe one of the wheels of that bloody handcart."</p>
+
+<p>I was still knocked silly.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Doc," I says, "you can't have enough to pay your passage."</p>
+
+<p>Then he laughs.</p>
+
+<p>"A hundred and seventy-five ain't much out of two thousand," he says.</p>
+
+<p>"Two thousand?" I says, more mystified than ever.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he answers, facing me square. "The two thousand that you owe me,
+Mr. Ben."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span>I was just going to answer I didn't owe him nothing when the words
+stopped midway on my tongue. I began to tremble instead&mdash;tremble till my
+hands could hardly hold to my chair, till I couldn't keep my mouth from
+dribbling.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a debt of honor," he went on. "You can repudiate it if you want
+to, and snap your fingers in my face, but I trusted you, I got you out
+of your mess, and now I ask you for my money."</p>
+
+<p>I couldn't answer anything, but looked at him speechless while he goes
+to the door, peeks outside of it very careful lest any one might be
+listening, and then comes tiptoeing back. It was so plain what he meant
+to tell me that I managed to cry out, "No, no," and shook worse nor
+ever.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a straight man, Ben," he says. "What you owe, you pay. I
+wouldn't have risked it if I had had any doubt about that."</p>
+
+<p>I stumbled to the sideboard, poured myself out a big drink, never
+minding what I spilled, and then went up to the attic where the bag of
+money was still lying under the old mattress. I brought it down and give
+it to him, only asking him not to count it as that was more than I could
+bear.</p>
+
+<p>He made a grab for it, never saying a word, and as he went out of the
+doorway that was the last I ever saw of him.</p>
+
+<p>Was I a fool to have paid him? Was it all a bluff, and just his hellish
+ingeniousness for turning <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span>everything to account? Funk never questioned
+she had died a natural death. Yet true or untrue, paying Doc that two
+thousand dollars made me a murderer. In the bottom of my heart I believe
+he did it, and there are nights when I wake up in a sweat of horror. But
+wouldn't it have been a dirty act to bilk him of his money, all the more
+as it would have been so easy? To this day I don't know whether I ought
+to have paid or not, though if I hadn't it would have lightened my
+conscience of a frightful load. But when I think that I always see him
+closing the door and tiptoeing back, ready to whisper the truth.</p>
+
+<p>If it was the truth.</p>
+
+<p>Well, what would you have done?</p>
+<br />
+
+<p class="cen">THE END</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<div class="tr">
+<p class="cen"><a name="TN" id="TN"></a>Transcriber's Note</p>
+<br />
+
+Some inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in
+the original document has been preserved.<br />
+<br />
+Typographical errors corrected in the text:<br />
+<br />
+Page&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  19&nbsp;  counsul changed to consul<br />
+Page&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  29&nbsp;  counsul changed to consul<br />
+Page&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  64&nbsp;  pigeon changed to pidgin<br />
+Page&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  71&nbsp;  break changed to brake<br />
+Paqe&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  80&nbsp;  palisami changed to palusami<br />
+Page&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  81&nbsp;  annoymous changed to anonymous<br />
+Page&nbsp; 128&nbsp;  Colossium changed to Colosseum<br />
+Page&nbsp; 169&nbsp;  kep changed to kept<br />
+Page&nbsp; 188&nbsp;  forrard changed to forward<br />
+Page&nbsp; 190&nbsp;  Honolula changed to Honolulu<br />
+Page&nbsp; 191&nbsp;  Honolula changed to Honolulu<br />
+Page&nbsp; 199&nbsp;  beech-comber changed to beach-comber<br />
+Page&nbsp; 204&nbsp;  hullabulloo changed to hullabaloo<br />
+Page&nbsp; 321&nbsp;  Savalolo changed to Savalalo<br />
+Page&nbsp; 322&nbsp;  Savalolo changed to Savalalo<br />
+Page&nbsp; 326&nbsp;  that changed to than<br />
+Page&nbsp; 335&nbsp;  venemously changed to venomously<br />
+Page&nbsp; 346&nbsp;  Cousul changed to Consul<br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas, by 
+Lloyd Osbourne
+
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+</body>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas, by
+Lloyd Osbourne
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas
+
+Author: Lloyd Osbourne
+
+Release Date: August 6, 2009 [EBook #29621]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILD JUSTICE: STORIES OF SOUTH SEAS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bryan Ness, Barbara Kosker and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+WILD JUSTICE
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "'Jack,' she said suddenly, 'you come along with us.'"]
+
+
+
+
+  WILD JUSTICE
+
+  STORIES OF THE SOUTH SEAS
+
+
+
+
+  BY
+
+  LLOYD OSBOURNE
+
+  AUTHOR OF "BABY BULLET"
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+  D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
+  NEW YORK  ::  MCMXXI
+
+
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1906, 1921, BY
+  D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
+
+
+  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+Deep in every heart there seems to be a longing for a more primitive
+existence; and though in practice it is often an illusion, the South
+Seas lend themselves better to such dreams than any other part of the
+world. There are fewer races more attractive than the Polynesians.
+Frank, winning, gay and extraordinarily well-mannered, the higher types
+are often remarkably good-looking, and scarcely darker than Southern
+Europeans. Some aspects of their life are truly poetic. Half naked, with
+flowers in their hair, and just sufficient work to keep them in superb
+physical condition, they have an almost unlimited leisure to share with
+the wayfarer in their midst. And dirt, that greatest of all human
+barriers, is nonexistent. No people are cleaner; none have so intense a
+personal self-respect. One wonders sometimes whether it is not the white
+man who is the savage, and these in some ways his superiors.
+
+I went to the Pacific when I was a boy of twenty, remaining there till I
+was twenty-eight. For two years I sailed in various ships, visiting not
+only all the principal groups, but stopping at many a lost little
+paradise like Manihiki, Nieue or Gente Hermosa, which lie so lonely and
+apart that the rare stranger is greeted with open arms. Then, settled
+in Samoa, I learned the language as only the very young can learn it,
+and incidentally had a small part in the civil wars of that period. I
+was brought into intimate contact with many powerful chiefs, and became
+so wholly a Samoan that I once barely escaped assassination. I certainly
+have some claim to know South Sea life from the inside--from the
+native's side--and this must be my excuse for the present volume.
+
+That my stories should deal so often with the loves of white men and
+brown women is inevitable. The white man and the brown girl--that is the
+oldest story in the South Seas and the newest. The children of the sun
+are very easy-going; their standards are not our standards; they live
+for the moment, and love as lightly. It is often the white man who
+suffers, and not the maid with the sparkling eyes and radiant smile. He
+may take regrets away with him; perhaps one of those inner wounds that
+never heal, while she marries a native missionary and lives happily ever
+afterwards. Polynesians always live happily ever afterwards, no matter
+what happens.
+
+Yet do not think I am disparaging them. They probably have as much to
+teach us as we them. Courtesy, kindliness, good humor, a charming
+acceptance of life, and if the need comes for it an intrepid courage,
+all these, and more, are theirs. As I see the faces of my old friends
+through the mist I feel an undying affection for them. I shared their
+lives, their secrets, their happy days and their tragic days "in the
+diamond morning of long ago." I was the confidant in many a runaway
+match; was the writer of war epistles that the bearer was directed to
+eat if pursuit grew too hot; I had a little domain of my own where my
+word was law--an "out-island" village, living in a perpetual feud with
+its neighbors. Was this really myself--this tall youth in the
+whale-tooth necklace and girded tappa marching with his brother chiefs
+in stately procession? Incredible--yet it was. Was it I whose hand was
+kissed by this stalwart warrior whom I see flinging himself from his
+horse and running towards me with the sun glinting on his
+cartridge-belt? Incredible--yet it was. Was it really I, at the helm of
+that boat, the leader of twenty young men who were to play cricket by
+day and dance by night, halfway round Upolu? Incredible--yet it was.
+
+"Ina o mulumuluina o'u vae i le suasusu; na faapunaia mai foi e le papa
+tafe suauu mo a'u."
+
+My publishers have been encouraged to reissue the present volume,
+enlarged by the addition of several new tales. Whatever their demerits
+may be, my stories are at least true to a picturesque and little known
+life that is fast passing away.
+
+  LLOYD OSBOURNE
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+                                             PAGE
+
+  THE RENEGADE                                  1
+
+  THE SECURITY OF THE HIGH SEAS                55
+
+  FORTY YEARS BETWEEN                          86
+
+  O'S HEAD                                    113
+
+  PROFESSOR NO NO                             142
+
+  CAPTAIN ELIJAH COE                          162
+
+  MR. BOB                                     192
+
+  OLD DIBS                                    216
+
+  THE LABOR CAPTAIN                           274
+
+  A SON OF EMPIRE                             297
+
+  CLOUD OF BUTTERFLIES                        316
+
+  BEN                                         339
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                               FACING PAGE
+
+  "'Jack,' she said suddenly, 'you come along with us'"     _Frontispiece_
+
+  "In an instant she was tumbling backward"                             52
+
+  "Jack leaped to his feet, white and speechless"                       98
+
+  "'This is a black business, Silver Tongue,' I said"                  118
+
+
+
+
+THE RENEGADE
+
+
+I
+
+It was two o'clock in the afternoon, and from her uneasy anchorage in
+the pass the German man-of-war struck the time, four bells. Overhead the
+sun shone fiercely through a mist of fire; below, the bay gave back a
+dancing glare; on the outer reef the long breakers foamed and tumbled,
+white as far as the eye could reach. From his perch beneath the bows of
+the _Northern Light_ a sailor, paint brush in hand, was slowly wearing
+out the day--a brown-bearded, straight-nosed, handsome man of thirty,
+his red shirt open to the waist, his bare arms stained with the
+drippings of his brush. Astride of his plank, which hung suspended in
+midair by a block and tackle at either end, the seaman faced the task
+that seemed to have no end. For a week he had been at it, patch by
+patch, working his way round the bark, while the bells had struck on the
+man-of-war and the sun had risen and set.
+
+As he swept his brush across the blistered wall in front of him, he
+wondered moodily whether fate had nothing more in store for him than
+this. Was he to finish as he had begun, a common sailor, doing forever
+what others bade him?--painting other people's ships, pulling other
+people's ropes, clinging at night on other people's yards to take in
+other people's sails, facing tempests and squalls, reefs, lee shores,
+and all the vicissitudes of the deep--for others! He laid down the brush
+beside him, and in a somber reverie looked toward Apia. His eyes
+scarcely took in the bigger buildings that were dotted here and there
+round the circumference of the beach: the stone cathedral, the great
+yellow warehouses of the Firm, the two hotels, the consulates, churches,
+and stores. What attracted him, what held him in a sort of spell, were
+the lesser roofs showing through the green of trees and gardens, the
+tiny cottages on the outskirts of the town, or others still farther
+back, scattered and solitary on the wooded hills. Was he, then, never to
+possess a house of his own nor a yard of earth? Was the sea, the
+accursed sea, to claim him till he died? What had he done, he asked
+himself, that others drew all the prizes and left him but the
+blanks--that they should stay ashore and prosper--that they should marry
+and have children round them, while he drudged at sea alone? Those
+traders, clerks, saloon-keepers, those mechanics, carpenters,
+shipwrights, smiths, and stevedores, how he envied them! envied their
+houses, their wives, their children, their gardens, their soft and
+comfortable lives, everything that made them so different from himself;
+he, the outcast, with no home but his musty bunk; they, the poorest,
+kings beside him.
+
+It was the sea, he said to himself--the sea, that took all and gave
+nothing; the sea, mother of all injustice and misery; the sea, whose
+service was to tie oneself to the devil's tail and whisk forever about
+the world, sweating in doldrums, freezing in snow squalls, hanging on to
+lashing yards, blinded, soaked, benumbed, the gale above, death below.
+And yet even here there were some, no better indeed than he, who grasped
+the meager prizes that even the sea itself could not withhold; prizes
+that he could never hope to touch--the command of ships, the right to
+tread the quarter-deck, the handle to one's name. How did they do it,
+these favored ones of fortune? How did Hansen, that stinking Dutchman,
+ever rise to be the master of the _Northern Light_?--and that swine
+Bates, the mate, who already had the promise of a ship?--and Knight, the
+second mate, a boy but twenty-two, yet whose foot was even now on the
+upward ladder.
+
+"Jack Wilson," said the sailor to himself, "Jack Wilson, you're a fool!"
+
+Having several times delivered himself of this sentiment, always with an
+increasing heartiness of self-contempt, he slapped on some more paint
+and began to whistle. But the whistle died away again, for a little
+house was peeping through the trees at him, and he remembered how he had
+seen it from the road, embowered in flowers, with the river flowing at
+its foot, a cool, snug, inviting little house, with green blinds, a
+pigeon cote, and a flight of steps descending to the bathing pool. How
+happy, no doubt, that fellar that owned it--a fellar with a regular job;
+a wife, maybe, and kids to swing in that there contraption under the
+mango; a fellar, as like as not, no better than himself; and yet----!
+
+"Jack," he said huskily to himself, "how the hell have you missed it
+all?"
+
+"Women and drink," came the answer. "Women and drink, Jack, my boy."
+
+In the course of his long and wandering life how often had he been paid
+off; how often had he felt his pockets heavy with the gold so arduously
+toiled for; how often had he vowed to himself that this time he would
+keep it! And had he kept it? Never!
+
+There had been windfalls, too; money that had come easily; double
+handfuls of money that he had tossed in the air like a child, to see it
+glitter. Sixteen hundred dollars from a lucky whaling cruise; seven
+hundred dollars, his share for salvaging the derelict steamer _Shore
+Ditch_; sixty-six pounds eight and fourpence that the passengers had
+raised for him when he saved the girl at Durban--that, and a gold medal,
+and a fancy certificate with the British and American flags intertwined.
+That medal! It had gone for a round of drinks and five dollars for a
+wench. And the fancy certificate! Thunder! he had left it on the
+_Huascar_ when he had taken leg-bail of the Chilanean navy.
+
+"Women and drink, Jack Wilson!"
+
+That's where it has gone, every dollar of it. To the sharks and
+bloodsuckers of seaport towns; to the tawdry sisterhood that spun their
+nets for Jack ashore; to those women that wheedled the seaman's last
+cent, and laughed to see him starving in the streets. It was for these
+he worked, then! It was for these he was even this minute painting the
+bloody bark; for rumsellers and harlots! He repeated the words to
+himself as he looked at his torn nails and blackened hands. For
+these--by God, for these! He felt within himself the welling of a great
+resolution, of a great revolt. He would reform. He would save his money.
+He would live straight. When they were paid off at Portland there should
+be two hundred dollars coming to him--two hundred dollars, more or less.
+He would put it in the bank, and get a shakedown in one of them model
+lodging houses. He would turn in at night with "Jesus, lover of my soul"
+in worsted work above his blessed head, and in the morning he would
+plank down his fifteen cents and begin the day with gospel tea. He would
+be a man! Yes, sirree, a man! Not a hog!
+
+Then in his mind's eye he saw himself rolling down the street, a girl on
+either arm, the gaslights dancing in his tipsy head. He would meet a
+shipmate and drop in somewhere for a drink; another shipmate and another
+drink; and then, the party growing as it went, a general adjournment to
+one of them hurdy-gurdies. Here they would dance and drink and sing and
+whoop it up like hell, till--till--Yes, that's what would happen. That's
+what always happened. Them good resolutions always ended that way--in
+smoke. He had made them, man and boy, these fourteen years. He would
+make them, he supposed, until the day he died. And keep them? No; he was
+a hog; he would go on like a hog; he would die a hog--a durned, low,
+dirty, contemptible hog!
+
+He spat in the water to emphasize his self-disgust, cursed the infernal
+sun, and then, dipping into the pot again, continued his job.
+
+Turning round to rest his arms, he perceived, beneath the deep shade of
+the Matautu shore, the first sign of animation in that sleepy
+settlement. A crowd of natives were straggling out to a whaleboat that
+was apparently being made ready for sea. Men and girls were wading to
+it, with baskets of food, kegs of beef, a tin of biscuit, and a
+capacious chest. A couple of children bailed frantically in the stern
+sheets, while a shrill old woman slid over the gunwale with a live pig
+in her arms. Strange packages of _tapa_ cloth were carried out; bundles
+of mats, paddles, guns, a tin of kerosene, a huge stone for an anchor,
+a water demijohn, more pigs, a baby, and a parrakeet in a bamboo cage.
+These were all thrown in, and stored with noisy good-humor and a dozen
+different readjustments. The baby, in turn, was given the bow, the
+stern, the center, as though nothing would satisfy it. A pig broke loose
+and was hilariously recaptured. A dejected, thin person, somewhat past
+middle years, in what seemed no costume but his native skin, retired
+shoreward with the parrakeet. An old chief, his head white with lime,
+after a prolonged nose-rubbing with those on shore, marched out to the
+boat, carrying an umbrella above his stately head. There were more
+farewells in shallow water, more running to and fro; a brief
+reappearance of the undecided parrakeet. The young men took their places
+at the thwarts, the old chief settled the tiller on the rudder head, the
+women, girls, and children crowded in wherever they could, and then,
+amid shouts and cheers, the paddles dipped and the boat moved slowly
+seaward.
+
+Wilson watched it all with sullen envy. How was it that these brown
+savages were free, and he barnacled to a slab-sided bark? Was he not a
+white man, and their superior? Did he not look down at them from the
+heights of the world's ruling race, kindly, tolerantly, contemptuously,
+as one does on children? And yet who had the best of it, by God? Listen
+to the dip of the paddles; hear the mellow chorus that times the
+rowers' strokes; not a care on board, not a face that was not smiling!
+His white superiority! They might have it! His lonely and toiling life!
+What fool among them would exchange with him? His wages? Look at _them_!
+They had none and wanted none; and as like as not they were putting to
+sea without a dollar among the crowd. Civilization--hell! He would give
+all his share of it for a place in that there boat, to drive a paddle
+with the rest of them; to be, what he wished to God he had been born, a
+durned Kanaka!
+
+The whaleboat drew swiftly toward him as though to go beneath the bark
+on her way to the pass. The paddles leaped to a rousing song and crashed
+in unison on the slopping gunwales. Dip, swish, bang! and then the
+accentuated thunder of forty voices, the men's hoarse and straining, the
+women's rich, falsetto, and musical. In the stern the old chief swayed
+with every rush of the boat, one sinewy hand clinched on the tiller, the
+other enfolding a little child. In the bow a handsome boy stood erect
+and graceful, throwing a rifle in the air and dancing to the song of his
+comrades. Dip, swish, bang! On they came with an increasing roar, the
+white water splashing under their bow.
+
+Wilson dropped his brush and looked on with open mouth. Great Caesar! he
+knew that old fellar in the stern. He had smoked pipes with him in the
+Samoa house by the bridge. And that girl there, who was waving and
+shaking her hand to him, that was little Fetuao, the daughter, who used
+to look at him so shyly and laugh when she met his eyes; little Fetuao,
+that he had given the dominoes to, and that dress from the Dutch firm,
+and them beads! Fetuao! Wasn't she pretty as she stood there in the boat
+calling to him; so slim and straight, with her splendid hair flying in
+the wind, and her brown bosom open to the sun! Pretty! My God, she was a
+spanking beauty, that girl!
+
+The boat came to a stop beneath him; the paddles backed, and Wilson,
+with some embarrassment, received the stare of the whole party below.
+
+"Poor white mans work all time!" exclaimed Fetuao, standing on a thwart
+to raise her head to the level of his foot.
+
+"Like hell!" said Jack.
+
+"Kanaka more better," said the girl.
+
+"A damn sight!" agreed Jack.
+
+"Jack," said Fetuao, "I go home now, and never see you no more. Good-by,
+Jack!"
+
+She raised her little hand, which the sailor clasped in his big one. Her
+tender, troubled eyes met his own; her mouth quivered; her fingers
+tightened on his palm.
+
+"Jack," she said suddenly, "you come along us, Jack."
+
+"Do you mean it, puss?" he said eagerly. "Do you mean it?"
+
+"Oh, Jack, you come, too," she pleaded.
+
+"You come--that's good!" cried the old chief.
+
+Jack, in a dream, looked above him and met the sour glances of Hansen
+and Bates, whom the noise had brought to the ship's rail; then he looked
+below into the girlish face upraised to his. For better or worse, his
+resolution was taken. They might keep his chest; they might keep his
+wages; their stinking ship might sink or swim for all he cared. They
+were welcome to what Jack Wilson left behind him, for Jack Wilson at
+last was FREE! He dropped lightly into the boat beside Fetuao, and with
+one arm around her naked waist he shouted to the natives to shove off.
+
+"_Fo'e!_" cried the chief, and the paddles moved again.
+
+Above their heads the astounded captain clutched the arm of the
+astounded mate, and pointed wildly after the deserter.
+
+"---- ----!" exclaimed Hansen.
+
+"The ---- ---- ---- ----!" roared Bates.
+
+
+II
+
+Jack landed in Oa Bay, the possessor, except for the clothes upon his
+back, of nothing but his rugged health, his stout heart, and a
+determination to make good his footing with his new friends. He
+remembered drawing apart from the others, as the welcoming throng came
+down to greet them in the dusk, forlornly struggling with his
+embarrassment and the penetrating sense of his own helplessness and
+isolation. Would he ever forget, standing there as he did, unremarked,
+solitary, shivering in his rags, the soft hand that felt through the
+darkness for his own, the voice so gentle, low, and sweet that whispered
+to him, "Come, Jack, you my white mans now!"
+
+This was the beginning of Jack's new life. He became a member of the
+chief's family, sleeping with the others at night on the outspread mats,
+and taking his share, by day, of all the work and play of the little
+Samoan village. He weeded _taro_, he carried stones for the building of
+the new church, he helped to lay out nets, he speared fish, he played
+cricket and _ta ti'a_. By nature neither an idler nor a shirk, he was
+consumed, besides, with a desire to repay the kindness and hospitality
+of his hosts; and the old chief, his friend from the start, now became
+his captain, to whom he rendered the unquestioning obedience of a
+seaman. And old Faalelei, whose loose authority was often disregarded by
+his own subjects, delighted in the possession of this stalwart white, so
+willing, so eager, so ingenious in the mending of boats and nets--a man
+to whom the mechanism of a gun had no secrets, and in whose hands a
+single hatchet became a tool chest.
+
+Living thus among the only mild, courteous, and refined people he had
+ever known, Jack insensibly altered and improved. His loud voice grew
+softer, his boisterous laugh less explosive, and his rough ways gave
+place to a clumsy imitation of Samoan good manners. Little by little the
+uncouth sailor patterned himself on the model of his new friends, and
+he, whose every second word had been an oath, whose only repartee a
+blow, now set himself to learn the most ceremonious language in the
+world, and the only one, perhaps, in which one cannot swear!
+
+And Fetuao? When he had first taken up his abode in Faalelei's house he
+had never doubted, seeing the girl's extravagant affection for him, and
+knowing the laxity of the native people, that it would not be long
+before he might form with her one of those irregular connections so
+common in the islands; and, indeed, it grew daily more plain to him that
+he had but to ask to have. But Jack, not a little to his own
+astonishment, and stirred by undreamed-of instincts and undreamed-of
+scruples, put the idea from him with a hesitation he could hardly
+explain to himself. In his wicked and lawless past he had known every
+kind of woman but a good woman; he had seen, in a thousand water-side
+dives, every variety of feminine degradation and feminine shame, and had
+sounded in his time all the squalid depths of sailor vice. With the
+memory of these unspeakable contrasts, Fetuao's freshness, purity, and
+beauty shone with a sort of angelic brightness. No, by God, she should
+never come to harm through him; and, clenching his huge hands together,
+he would repeat these words to himself when he sometimes felt his
+resolution falter. For the sailor, who never until then had known a
+modest woman, who had starved his whole life long for what his money
+could never buy, whose heart at thirty was as virgin as a boy's, now
+found himself moved by a sublime passion for the only creature that had
+ever loved him.
+
+For she did love him; of that, indeed, he had never the need to reassure
+himself; and in the knowledge of her love he became, almost in spite of
+himself, a better man. In her girlish self-abandonment Fetuao lacked the
+artifices which older women would have used; she never thought to guard
+herself, or to coquette with him. At night, as they walked hand in hand
+about the village, or sat close together on some log or boat, she would
+take his arm and draw it around her; she would lay her head against his
+breast; she would press herself so close to him that he could hear her
+beating heart. There was much of the mother in her love for him. He was
+her great baby, to be caressed, kissed, crooned over, to be petted and
+encouraged. Her tender laughter was always in his ears; she corrected
+him as she might a child, with a sweet seriousness, and an implication
+that his shame was hers whenever he blundered in Samoan etiquette; she
+prompted him and pushed him through scenes of trying formality, and
+drilled him assiduously in politeness.
+
+In the moonlight, when they were alone together, she taught him how to
+receive the _'ava_ cup; how to spill the libation to the gods; how to
+invoke a proper blessing on the company. She taught him how to say "_O
+susunga, lau susunga fo'i_," on entering a strange house; how to pull
+the mat over his knee to express his fictitious dependence; how to join
+in the chorus of "_Maliu mai, susu mai_" when others entered after him;
+how, indeed, to comport himself everywhere with the finished courtesy of
+a Samoan chief.
+
+Thus the bright days passed, and months melted into months, and still
+Jack remained an inmate of Faalelei's household. At first he had
+accepted this strange life as a sort of holiday, never doubting but
+that, in the end, he must turn his back on these pleasant people, and
+see, from a dizzy yardarm, their exquisite island sink forever behind
+him. The place thus possessed for him the charm of something he was
+destined soon to lose, and he clung to it as a man clings to his fading
+youth, with a sense that it is slipping from him. He sighed as he
+thought of the forecastle that he knew somewhere awaited him; how he
+would recall those still nights in Oa when he would be roused by the
+boatswain's handspike on the hatch, and the hoarse cry of "All hands on
+deck!"
+
+One day, when he was out in Faalelei's boat, an accident occurred that
+came very near to being the end of Jack. They were pursuing a school of
+bonito, and Pulu, the chief's brother, was standing in the bow with a
+stick of dynamite and was in the nick of letting it fly when it exploded
+prematurely in his hand. Pulu was killed, the rickety old boat parted
+and sank, and Jack, with his shoulder laid open to the bone, was towed
+in by a neighboring canoe, and carried up to the house. They laid him on
+the floor, pale and groaning, while the children ran out screaming for
+Fetuao. She came in like a whirlwind, still wet from the river, and
+threw herself on her knees beside him. With passionate imperiousness she
+made the rest of the household wait upon her bidding as she busied
+herself in stanching the flow of blood and in picking the splinters from
+the wound. Jack knew how wont she was, in common with all Samoans, to
+shrink from disagreeable sights. It touched him to see how love had
+conquered her repugnance; nor could he resist a smile when she began to
+tear her little wardrobe into bandages, those chemises and _lavalavas_
+that she used to iron under the trees, and put away with such care into
+the camphor-wood chest with the bell lock.
+
+For the better part of a fortnight Jack lay where they had placed him on
+the mats, undergoing, with intermissions of fever and delirium, the
+tedious stages of convalescence. Fetuao seemed never to leave him,
+attending to his wants, brushing away the flies, feeding and washing him
+with an anxious solemnity that at times almost awed the sailor. Her
+brilliant eyes, as black and limpid as some wild animal's, watched him
+with an unceasing stare. He often wondered what was passing in her
+graceful head as he lay looking up at her, too weak to speak, the drowsy
+hours succeeding one another in an unbroken silence. Once, when he ran
+his hand over his face and recollected with a pang how old and ugly he
+must seem to her, she had understood the sigh that expressed his own
+self-disgust, and had bent over and kissed him on the lips. From that
+moment his love for her deepened into an emotion transcending anything
+he had ever felt before. He saw now that to separate himself from her
+would be to break both their hearts; that, for good or evil, he was hers
+and she his; that fate had indeed joined them forever.
+
+When at last he grew strong enough to walk, he went with her across to
+the native pastor's house, where together they stood up before the Rev.
+Tavita Singua and were married. This was the prelude to another and more
+binding ceremony before the American Consul in Apia, whither they both
+went in a canoe borrowed from Faalelei. The official books were
+withdrawn from the safe and the thirty-six Americans in Samoa were
+increased by two new names: "Jack Wilson, aged thirty-one, birthplace
+Bath, Me., occupation seaman, present residence Oa Bay; and Fetuao
+Wilson, supposed to be seventeen, daughter of Faalelei, chief of Oa Bay,
+his lawful wife." (See Consular Marriage Record, p. 18.)
+
+As he stood there before the consul, painfully conscious of his bare
+feet, of his unkempt and ragged appearance, of the contrast between
+himself and that benignant official, he timidly brought up the subject
+of the fee. No doubt there is some kind of damage, he said, and might he
+leave this ring--his mother's wedding ring--in pawn until he might earn
+a little money and square the matter? The consul took the ring, looked
+at it a moment without a word, and then in a rough, friendly way seized
+Fetuao's hand and slipped it on her finger.
+
+"I think it belongs here," he said.
+
+"But the fee," said Jack.
+
+"Oh, damn the fee!" said the consul.
+
+With that he went into an inner office and returned with a sheepish air,
+as of a man about to do something he was ashamed of.
+
+"Here's ten dollars," he said. "Take it; it's a wedding present, you
+know. I never married anybody before."
+
+Jack refused the gift a little ungraciously, though his voice trembled
+in doing so.
+
+"Have a drink, then?" said the consul.
+
+"No, I thank you, sir," Jack blurted out.
+
+Embarrassment in a cloud descended on all three. The consul, like the
+worthy fellow he was, wished to do something for these waifs, and his
+eyes roved about the big, hot room in search of he knew not what. Jack
+and Fetuao, no less ill at ease, stood close together and waited
+submissively. Finally, noticing the new boat flag lying on his desk, the
+consul took it up in both his hands. "Wilson," he said oratorically,
+"this is my flag, and your flag, and it is now Mrs. Wilson's flag, for
+I've made her as good an American as the pair of us. Take it along with
+you, and if you have children, bring them up to love and honor Old Glory
+as we do, and teach them at your knee what it stands for--freedom,
+justice; and equal rights for every man born under it. And if there
+should ever be any trouble here--war, riot, or any little
+unpleasantness--just hoist it above your house, and its bright folds
+will protect you as though the whole U-nited States army lay in a
+mighty camp around you!"
+
+Jack took the flag respectfully, much impressed by the consul's speech,
+and tremendously pleased, besides, that Fetuao should see that an
+American, even a common, low-down American seaman like himself, counted
+for something in the official world. Would a Britisher, or one of those
+stinking Dutchmen, have acted like this consul did? _His_ consul, by
+God!--and his breast heaved with gratitude and patriotic fervor.
+Afterwards, when Fetuao and he ate their lunch under a tree, he spread
+out the consul's gift on the ground beside him, and the words freedom,
+justice, and equal rights boomed sonorously in his ears. To Fetuao, in
+her simplicity, the bunting appeared a sort of sanction or certificate
+of their civil marriage; and when she returned home she explained that
+it was all settled, the _faamasino_ having written their names in the
+book and given them the _fua Ameleke_!
+
+
+III
+
+Three years passed. Jack rubbed his eyes and wondered what had become of
+them; and he read the answer to his question in his coffee bushes, now
+breast high and crimson with fruit, in his trellised vanilla already so
+exacting and so profitable, in his sturdy breadfruit trees thickening
+with every rain, in the patches of bananas, _taro_, yams, _'ava_,
+egg-plant, sweet potatoes, pineapples, and sour-sops that were set out
+so trimly in the plantation his ax had won from the primeval forest. His
+house, too, had drawn not a little on his capital--his capital of
+strength, skill, and perseverance--but he grudged neither time nor labor
+in making it the best in Oa. For a house is an important matter to a
+family man, even if it weren't a paying thing like vanillar, nor capable
+of helping a fellar along like a cow or a boat. It paid you back in its
+own way--a mighty good way, too--and it grew to be a part of you, like
+your wife, if you weren't a poor, lone, seafaring slob without one.
+
+Of course, it wasn't much of a house, being a sort of beehive-shaped
+concern with a thatched roof a foot thick and open all round the sides
+when the cocoanut curtains was hysted. But when these were pulled down
+at night, and you were a-setting in one of your own home-made chairs
+with your wife on your knee, the night breeze rustling overhead and the
+breakers moaning a mile away on the outer reef, it made you sort of feel
+like things had come right at last, and that for two cents you'd plank
+right down on your knees, then and there, and thank God, by God!
+
+All this had not been accomplished without work, but then it was work
+for himself, and not for others. Jack had never known before what it was
+to enjoy the fruit of his own labor; he had always been a cog in the
+blind machinery of other people, exchanging so much toil for so much
+money. Now that he could see his little plantation grow and prosper
+beneath his hands, every hour repaid with nature's usury, he began to
+feel the elation that a man finds in independence. At first Fetuao had
+entered but half-heartedly into his plans; she would sit on a log and
+watch him with mirthful wonder as he swung his ax on the land Faalelei
+had given them; and when, for a spell, he took a place beside her she
+would tenderly wipe the sweat from his forehead and look at him with
+perplexity. Work, yes, that, as the preacher said, was the curse of
+Adam; but this daily persistency was not understandable. Had not
+Faalelei plenty for them both? And if one _taro_ sufficed, why be at the
+pains to plant two?
+
+But little by little it began to dawn on her that there was another side
+to this feverish devotion to work. Jack took a load of yams to Apia, and
+came back with fifteen silver dollars and a bolt of print for a dress.
+He went again, and returned with a sewing machine, a pack of cards, and
+a bottle of trade scent; still another trip, and lo! he towed behind him
+a fine new boat with _Fetuao_ painted on the stern. Then she at last
+succumbed to the fascination of the white way. _Paga!_ There were
+dollars in the ground, and for the asking they could be made to grow.
+This lesson learned, Fetuao threw off her indifference and became as
+ardent a planter as her unwearied husband. Lying in his arms at night,
+her talk ran continually on the theme of which neither ever tired. Not a
+dollar was earned but was thus laid out in advance, with eager
+questioning and debate. The cow was bought, the horse, the chickens, the
+wire for fencing. It was a game in which each played a part with
+enduring zest; a game with a constant round of prizes and enjoyment; a
+game in which green nature was the board and every plant and tree a
+piece. At sundown they knew no pleasure like that of wandering hand in
+hand through the paths of their little estate, two poetic peasants,
+filled with love for each other and immeasurably content.
+
+Thus the days passed in increasing satisfaction and prosperity, days so
+rare in the life of any man when he says to himself, "I am happy." To
+Jack, these three words, never spoken, but somewhere within him
+articulate and peremptory, these three words almost overwhelmed him with
+their significance. He trembled for this treasure, so elusive, so
+transitory, perhaps, so surely ill deserved; he grew humble with the
+thought of his own unworthiness, and, though no believer in the
+ordinary sense, he began to feel the first stirring of religion. When
+Fetuao, with sweet shame, laid her head against his shoulder and told
+him of her impending motherhood, he kissed her, comforted her, and then,
+rising to his feet, he sought the solitude that at such a moment he felt
+he could not share even with her. In one of the unfrequented corners of
+the bay, a narrow beach shadowed by the forest and faced by the open
+sea, he threw himself upon his knees with a passionate thankfulness that
+seemed to find its expression in this act. Knowing no prayer, addressing
+no God, he simply gazed above him in the sky, in a rapt, dumb gratitude.
+
+As he walked home he thought of his own parents, long since dead; of
+their hopes, their cares, their humble unfulfilled ambitions, now dead
+with them. He perceived himself, now for the first time, a link between
+the past and the future, the heir of bygone generations, generations
+that had loved, and suffered, and struggled, to no other end than that
+he might live--he, and the sister he had neither seen nor heard from in
+fourteen years. Hell! he ought to write to Amandar. Families oughtn't to
+drift apart like that. It was a shame, a durned shame, and it came over
+him with a shock that she, too, might be dead. He took a sheet of paper
+and a pencil, and with heaving breast and overflowing heart thus broke
+the silence of those long years:
+
+      OA BAY, SAMOA, May 14, 1899.
+
+      DEAR SIS, You will be surprised to get a letter
+      from me after all this time. I am well and hope you are
+      enjoying a simillar blessing. I am married now and left the
+      sea. I suppose Joe is a man along in middle life now and you
+      a handsome mattron with a family. This is a good country but
+      hot.
+
+      Ever your affectionate brother JACK WILSON.
+
+      P. S.--I often think of Pa and Ma and the old days.
+
+Not long after, Jack sailed into Apia with a load of copra and his
+letter for the outgoing mail. The town was in an uproar, and cracking
+like the Fourth of July. Jack wondered what in thunder it was about, as
+he landed at Leicester's wharf and discovered the postmaster lying
+underneath the post office in a nest of sand bags. Crawling in after the
+functionary, Jack handed him the letter.
+
+"That's for America," said Jack.
+
+"Five cents," said Leicester.
+
+"What's all this corrobborree?" asked Jack.
+
+"It's war, that's what it is," said Leicester, weighing the letter in a
+tin scale.
+
+Jack's jaw fell. For a month past he had heard rumors of a native war,
+but he had resolutely closed his ears to all that Fetuao was so
+insistent to tell him. It was none of his business, he had said to her
+uneasily. He wasn't no politician, and all he asked of anybody was to be
+let alone; and with that he had tried to put the matter by as something
+imaginary and disquieting, which, if boldly ignored, would disappear of
+itself.
+
+"Say, Mr. Leicester, what in hell is it about?" he inquired.
+
+"If you went to the bottom of it you would find Dutchmen," said
+Leicester grimly.
+
+Jack cursed the meddling scoundrels.
+
+"They want Mataafa for king, just because he has a majority of two
+thousand votes," said Leicester.
+
+"There sounds to be something in that," said Jack faintly.
+
+"Nothing at all!" exclaimed Leicester. "Just speciousness, that's what I
+call it. The other fellow, Tanumafili, is a nice-appearing boy from the
+missionary college, and being above wire-pulling and promising
+everything to everybody, he hasn't any following to speak of. But he's a
+good, decent Protestant boy, and will make a fine king."
+
+"Oh, ho!" said Jack, beginning to see how the wind lay, "and so the
+other dodger's a Catholic?"
+
+"A rank, bigoted Catholic," said Leicester hotly. "That's what makes
+the missionaries so wild against him, and likewise the British and
+American officials."
+
+"They won't let him be king, then?" asked Jack.
+
+"He's a rebel," said Leicester, "and they've posted proclamations
+against him on every cocoanut tree around the beach."
+
+"And the natives, they won't let Tanumafili be king neither?" said Jack.
+
+"That's him they're chasing into the sea this minute," explained
+Leicester.
+
+Jack looked perplexed. "I don't see why the Kanakas shouldn't have the
+king they fancy," he remarked.
+
+"To hear you talk, one would think you was a bloody Dutchman yourself,"
+said Leicester.
+
+"But the majority--" said Jack, "them two thousand----"
+
+"The Chief Justice ruled them out on a technicality," said Leicester,
+"and if the Supreme Court ain't right, who is? Do you think he's going
+to give over this country to a papist? No, the only king here is
+Tanumafili, and the men-of-war will reinstate him at the muzzle of their
+guns. Then we'll see who's who in Samoar!"
+
+Jack made his way across the street to the store where he usually sold
+his copra. Bullets were pattering on the roof, and the trader himself, a
+portly German in gold spectacles, was palpitating in a bomb-proof.
+
+"I hope Mrs. Meyerfeld is well," said Jack, who in Samoa had grown
+punctilious.
+
+"Oh, mein Gott!" exclaimed Meyerfeld.
+
+"And the children?--" inquired Jack, "Miss Hilda and Miss Theresa?"
+
+"Oh, mein Gott!" said Meyerfeld.
+
+"I have brought you forty bags of copra," said Jack.
+
+"Oh, mein Gott!" said Meyerfeld.
+
+"Don't you want it, then?" inquired Jack.
+
+"Hear the pullets," quavered Meyerfeld.
+
+"But forty bags," said Jack.
+
+"I've no man, no noding," groaned the trader.
+
+"Gome again negst week. Gome again after de war."
+
+"I'll put it in the shed myself," said Jack.
+
+He went out into the empty street and looked about him. The firing was
+going on as hotly as ever, but except for a single limp figure, face
+down in the dust, he failed to see the least sign of the contending
+parties. From the direction of the Mulivai bridge he heard bursts of
+cheering, with intermittent lulls and explosions as the battle rolled to
+and fro. War on so small a scale is startlingly like murder, and Jack
+shuddered as he went up to the corpse and turned it over. He returned to
+his boat, and in a fever of activity unloaded his forty bags and
+trundled them in batches into Meyerfeld's copra shed across the road. It
+took half a dozen trips of the little flat-car to accomplish this task
+single-handed, and then there was the further delay in weighing each bag
+and checking off the contents on a bit of paper. Nor was this all, for
+he had to make a copy, besides, and tack it on the warehouse door with
+the inscription, "Taly and find correct John Wilson."
+
+This done, he dropped into his boat and hoisted the sails, weary,
+heartsick, and anxious for what the future might have in store for him.
+Passing to leeward of the British man-of-war, he saw her decks swarming
+with refugees, her crew grouped about the guns, and an officer in the
+fore-crosstrees sweeping the town with his glass. A gust of wind carried
+down to him the sound of children crying, and with it an
+indistinguishable humming, at once menacing and dejected, like the sigh
+of an impending gale. It echoed in his ears long afterwards, the most
+poignant note in war, the voice of the herded, helpless multitude.
+
+He reached Oa in the gray of the morning, and the grating of his boat's
+keel in the sand brought out Fetuao to meet him. She could not restrain
+her joy at the sight of him, kissing his hands and clinging to him as he
+took out the sails and oars and carried them up to the house. She never
+seemed so sweet to him, never so girlish and charming in her fresh
+young womanhood as in that dawn of his home-coming. To hear her laugh,
+to see her eyes sparkle, to feel her warm breath against his cheek, all
+transported him into a state of unreasoning security. Apia and its
+blood-stained streets faded into the immeasurable distance; the war, and
+all the attendant horrors that had haunted him, now seemed for a moment
+too remote to even think of. What had he to fear, here on his own
+hearthstone, with his dear wife beside him, in another world from that
+he had so lately quitted? If there was trouble, wouldn't the consuls
+settle it, them and the treaty officials whose job it was to run the
+blessed group? He had never been no politician himself, and he wasn't
+agoing to begin now. Let them worry as was paid to worry.
+
+"Fetuao," he said, "where is the flag the _faamasino_ gave us when we
+were married in Apia?"
+
+"_O i ai pea i le pusa_," she returned.
+
+"Get it out, my pigeon," he said, "for I mean to hoist it above the
+house for a protection. And tell me, Fetuao," he went on, "what before I
+have never asked thee: on what side are thy people in this misa of
+Mataafa and Tanumafili?"
+
+"For Mataafa," she returned. "Dost thou think that Samoa wants this
+untattooed boy from the missionary college? Why else did Faalelei and
+the young men go last month to Apia to be numbered for Mataafa, the
+whites promising that he who had most voices should be king? And when
+all Samoa cried out 'Mataafa!' at the numbering place (all except the
+little handful of the Tuamasanga), lo! the word was given that
+Tanumafili was appointed after all, and that the white manner of choice
+was to be disregarded!"
+
+Jack sighed as he took the flag and went out with it. He realized that
+his old life was at an end, and that a new one, full of uncertainty and
+danger, was to date from the time he hoisted this bit of bunting. He
+trimmed a straight piece of _fuafua_ for a staff, and as he did so he
+cursed the missionaries for meddlers and the treaty officials for crazy
+fools. When the flag was at last in place, Fetuao and he drew away to
+get a better view of it from the beach. Standing there, in silence they
+watched the vivid colors flaunt and flutter against the wooded hills
+behind, while Jack, with a seaman's instinctive reverence for the flag,
+bared his head, and Fetuao clapped her hands with delight.
+
+"Is it not beautiful!--" she cried, "as starry as the nights before we
+were married, Jack, when we used to walk together, here and there, like
+uncaring children."
+
+Her husband did not answer; and as she turned and looked up into his
+face she saw that his eyes were wet with tears.
+
+
+IV
+
+The two months that followed were the most terrible in the history of
+Samoa. A handful of exasperated whites--treaty officials, missionaries,
+and consuls--were determined to foist Tanumafili on the unwilling
+natives of the group, and backed by three men-of-war, they declared
+Mataafa a rebel and plunged the country into a disastrous and sanguinary
+war. England and America, in the person of their respective naval
+commanders, vied with one another in their self-appointed task; and
+while the Germans stood aloof, protesting and aghast, our ships ravaged
+the Samoan coast, burning, bombarding, and destroying with
+indiscriminate fury. In this savage conflict, so unjust in its
+inception, so frightful in its effects on an unoffending people, the
+Samoans showed an extraordinary spirit in defending what all men hold
+most dear. Driven from the shore by our guns, they massed their warriors
+behind Apia, and on ground of their own choosing gave obstinate battle
+to the invaders.
+
+It is not the writer's purpose to follow the varying stages of this
+ignoble quarrel, in which blood flowed like water in our vain attempts
+to force the unwilling Samoans to accept a Protestant divinity student
+for their king. This little war, so remote, so ill understood at home,
+so brief, violent, and unjust, swept over the islands like a hurricane.
+Abruptly begun by headstrong naval officers and officials on the spot,
+it was as abruptly ended by peremptory orders from London and
+Washington; but the interval (necessarily a long one) before the news
+could go out and the orders return halfway round the world, was
+sufficient to reduce Samoa to the verge of ruin.
+
+In such a country, without roads, telegraphs, or newspapers, where rumor
+passes from mouth to mouth, and facts, in the process, get twisted out
+of all recognition, war brings with it a period of agonizing ignorance,
+when anything is told and anything believed. To Jack this waiting became
+almost intolerable; his suspense, and the uncertainty of those dreadful
+days, told on him with an augmented force, so that he grew thin and
+started at a sound. Through an unseen channel the news of fighting
+persistently trickled into Oa; more battles; more villages bombarded;
+such an one wounded, such an one killed, with stories of the increasing
+ruthlessness of the British and Americans. On some days the sound of
+cannon could be plainly heard from leeward, the signal for the women and
+children to crowd with their pastor into the church, and for the
+men--the scanty remnants that still remained--to grasp their rifles and
+melt into the forest.
+
+But as time passed, and one false alarm was succeeded by another, Jack
+plucked up a little heart. He began to make allowance for native
+exaggeration and laughed at his own former fears. If the men-of-war
+should come to Oa, were they likely to bombard an undefended village
+full of women and children, or burn, pillage, and destroy as mercilessly
+as he had been told? Bah! a pack of Kanaka lies, the gradual distortion
+of the truth as it passed along the line, until one burned house became
+a hundred and one village the whole coast of Atua! He went back to his
+neglected plantation, now overgrown with weeds, and set to work again
+with a determination not to borrow trouble. But, in spite of himself, he
+would find himself listening for the sound of cannon, laying down his ax
+or his bush knife in a panic and running back to the shore to make sure
+that nothing had happened in the hour he had been gone.
+
+It was during one of these mornings in the bush, a morning singularly
+free of the apprehensions which usually beset him, that Fetuao came
+rushing through the bananas where he was at work, crying out, "_Manuao,
+manuao!_" Together, without exchanging a single word, they flew headlong
+to the beach, never stopping until they took shelter beneath the eaves
+of their own house. Yes, there was the man-of-war, a Britisher with
+yellow funnels, well outside the reef, towing behind her a flotilla of
+boats chock-a-block with natives. The red head-dresses of their crews
+showed them to be the followers of Tanumafili, and a couple of
+unmistakable pith helmets in the stern of the biggest betrayed the
+presence of directing white men. At the tail of the boats was a large
+steam launch flying the stars and stripes, the American contribution to
+the little fleet.
+
+Jack breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of his own flag. Wherever
+that flew he knew that he and his were safe. By George! everybody in Oa
+Bay was safe so long as they didn't try to make a fight of it; and he
+could have laughed to see the terrified women scooting for the church,
+the children bawling at their heels. The fools, what had they to fear?
+American officers were not the kind to fire on women and children, nor
+were they likely to look on mum-chance, and let the lime-juicers do it
+neither. No, sirree!
+
+The man-of-war slowed down her engines and came almost to a standstill.
+There was a sudden flash from one of her sponsons, a puff of smoke, and
+then the roar of a six-inch gun. The shell struck a palm not a hundred
+yards from where Jack was standing, and with a loud explosion took off
+the entire top as neatly as though a knife had sliced it.
+
+"Good God!" cried the sailor; and the words were scarcely out of his
+mouth before he heard the venomous rush of another shell. Jack could
+not believe his senses. What! no warning, no notice beforehand; not
+even ten minutes to allow the women and children to get out of danger!
+
+Bang! The church this time! He clutched Fetuao as he saw the shower of
+cement and rocks, and the frenzied flight of its occupants for safety.
+If that shell had gone through the window instead of striking the
+corner----
+
+Bang!
+
+"Run! run!" cried Fetuao, and without even waiting for him to follow or
+turning round to see that he did so, she darted through the house and
+disappeared. But Jack, in a white heat of indignation, folded his arms
+and remained doggedly where he was. Let them shoot, the skunks! Let them
+shoot, the stinking cowards! This was his house, and he would remain
+beside it until the crack of doom, shells or no shells. He would stand
+off them fire-bugs and looters when they landed, and tell them officers
+what a plain American citizen thought of them. He wasn't afraid of the
+swine. By God! he would like to boot the raft of them. He shook his fist
+in their faces, he did; and as for that villainous launch rolling idly
+in the swell while the big bully fired on the defenseless town, he spat
+to express his disgust for it.
+
+The bombardment, like a salute, continued with regular intermissions
+between each gun. The marksmanship was poor, many of the shells falling
+short or bursting prematurely in midair. Except for the church, which
+was twice struck, and the chief's house that was set on fire, the damage
+done was inappreciable; and Jack, whose heart at first had been in his
+mouth, now grinned with derision as he watched for the recurring
+flashes.
+
+"The Chilaneans could do better nor you!" he cried.
+
+"Jack," whispered a voice beside him, and there was Fetuao back again in
+a state of the sweetest contrition and remorse. He took her in his arms
+and kissed her; and then, like a pair of lovers, they held each other's
+hands and shrank close together as the shells burst over the village.
+
+The firing lasted for an hour, and then the flotilla of boats, preceded
+by the American launch, passed in procession through the break in the
+reef, and headed for Jack's house.
+
+"Oh, it's the flag they see!" cried Fetuao, and she besought Jack, with
+tears in her eyes, to haul it down.
+
+"Never!" he said, grinding his teeth.
+
+There were some three or four hundred men in the boats, and as they
+raced in, cheering and yelling at the top of their voices, Jack quailed
+in spite of himself. But outwardly, at least, he showed no sign of
+agitation, standing like a rock before his house and facing the storm
+that was about to burst.
+
+It wasn't for himself that he was afraid, not so long as that
+puffing-billy of a steamboat held the lead, and the grand old flag
+streamed out behind her. The jackies would see him through this
+business, whatever deviltry they might inflict on the rest of the
+unfortunate village, for blood's thicker than water every time, and
+Americans stand together all the world over. He wasn't no politician nor
+side-taker, and it was all the same to him whether he had a missionary
+king or a benighted papist. All he asked of anybody, by God! was to be
+let alone, though this broadsiding of defenseless people made him sick
+at the stummick, it did.
+
+The launch came bumping into shallow water, blowing off clouds of steam
+as her crew jumped out with their rifles and waded ashore, while the
+Tanumafili boats, dashing up in quick succession, amid a furious and
+ever-deepening uproar, discharged in their turn cargo upon cargo of
+shrieking warriors. In the indescribable commotion that followed there
+seemed to be no prearranged plan nor any settled order of operation. The
+Tanus scattered in a dozen noisy parties, looting and burning the
+houses, barking the breadfruit trees, shooting the pigs and horses,
+devastating with diabolical thoroughness the inland plantations that
+sustained the village. The Americans, fearful of ambuscades, stuck to
+the shore and systematically destroyed the boats, which for a mile or
+two were drawn up on the edge of the beach. These boats, in a country
+without roads, are as much a necessity to a man as the house which
+shelters him. They often represent the hoardings of years, and are not
+seldom the result of a stern frugality and self-denial; they constitute,
+indeed, the only wealth of Samoa, and in them is invested the united
+savings of the whole population. In Oa these boats numbered perhaps a
+hundred, or a hundred and twenty in all, which, under the direction of a
+red-faced boatswain with a package of dynamite sticks, were one by one
+blown to pieces, and the shattered boards drawn into heaps and fired.
+That day the whole of Oa went up in smoke and flame. Nothing was spared,
+not even the church, nor the school, nor the pastor's house; not a canoe
+nor a dugout; not a net, nor a fish trap, nor a float; not a pig, a
+horse, nor a chicken. The boundary walls, emerging black and desolate
+above the embers of the village, alone survived the universal waste.
+
+Jack's boat, being the nearest, was the first to be singled out; and as
+the blue-jackets began to bore it with auger holes in which to place the
+dynamite, he walked down to the petty officer and roughly bade him leave
+it alone. "Hold on, there!" he said. "That's my boat!"
+
+The boatswain looked him up and down. "You get out of this!" he said.
+
+Jack twitched the auger from one of the seamen and flung it into the
+lagoon. Then, seizing a rifle from the heap lying on the ground, he
+whirled it round his head like a club and advanced furiously on the
+boatswain, who pulled out a six-shooter and leveled it at his head. Even
+as he did so, one of the officers came running up, waving his sword and
+shouting; while Jack, confident that he had nothing now to apprehend,
+dropped the rifle and turned to meet him. He had scarcely got so far as,
+"Please, sir, this boat is my property," when a scream from Fetuao
+warned him that the natives were rushing his house. Abandoning the boat,
+he ran back to face this new danger, which, of the two, was so
+infinitely the worse. His first instinct was to snatch a hatchet and
+kill one of the half-naked plunderers, but Fetuao, catching his hands,
+held him back, and the impulse passed as he realized his utter
+helplessness. With smarting eyes and a heart that seemed to burst within
+his breast, he saw his house gutted of everything--his chests torn open,
+his tools taken, his wife's poor finery divided, and her twenty-dollar
+sewing machine the subject of a wrangle that ended in its being smashed
+under the butt of a gun. It was horrible to look on, impotent and
+raging, and see the fruit of three years the prey of these yelling
+savages; to realize that he must begin again from the bottom; that all
+his labor, and care, and thrift, had gone for nothing. Not daring to
+leave Fetuao behind, he took her with him and started off to find the
+officer to whom he had at first complained. His protest had not
+apparently been very effective, to judge from the torn fragments of the
+boat now blazing in a bonfire, and he was hardly encouraged to make a
+second attempt. However, slim as the chance was, it was now the only
+thing left to do. Surely it was not possible that they would let his
+house be looted and fired with the others!
+
+The officer, a thin young man with a cigar, was standing in the shade of
+a palm.
+
+"Mister," said Jack timidly, for somehow all the fight had oozed out of
+him, "Mister, they're looting my house up there!"
+
+"Well?" said the officer.
+
+"I'm an American," said Jack.
+
+"Well?" said the officer.
+
+Jack regarded him helplessly. "Can't you do nothing for an American?" he
+asked.
+
+"Not for a damned beach-comber," said the officer, turning on his heel.
+
+Jack did not attempt to follow or to pester him. He knew when he was
+beat. He sat down on the nearest log, and making room for Fetuao beside
+him, drew out his pipe, filled it and began to smoke. The girl tried to
+speak to him, but he would not answer. She whispered to him that their
+house was burning, and he never even turned his head to look. She took
+his hand, but he snatched it impatiently away, refusing to be
+comforted. Thus he remained for hours, sullen and half-stupefied, until
+the returning Tanus embarked again, and the launch, with jubilant
+whistles, led the flotilla back to the man-of-war. It was only when the
+ship was out of sight that Jack rose, stretched himself, and breathed
+the profound sigh of a man who has endured and has survived the most
+terrible experience of a lifetime.
+
+With slow steps, and many expressions of anger and resentment, Fetuao
+and he walked through the village, gazing with bitter curiosity at the
+ruins that everywhere surrounded them. They made their way to their own
+little plantation, to find it devastated like the others, the breadfruit
+trees ringed, the coffee bushes torn up by the roots, the _taro_,
+bananas, and vanilla cut to pieces. In the paddock the cow and calf lay
+dead in a pool of blood; of the dairy, half-set in the stream, nothing
+remained but some stumps and smoking ashes; under a felled mango tree
+they saw the protruding hoofs of Fetuao's mare, Afiola.
+
+Returning with a few bananas they managed to find in the plantation,
+they built a fire and roasted them within a few feet of where, that
+morning, their house had stood. Though nothing now was left of it but
+some charred wood, the place was still home to them. As Fetuao moved
+forlornly about, picking up a few trifles that had been dropped or
+thrown away by the invaders--a comb, a spool of thread, a flatiron, a
+book or two with the covers scorched off--she lifted up a grimy rag and
+tossed it, with a little gesture of disdain, at her husband's feet. He
+spread it out and saw that it was the consul's flag, the flag he had
+flown above his house with such confidence in its protection; the flag
+which, until then, he had always reverenced.
+
+Jack slowly tore it into pieces.
+
+
+V
+
+Nothing is stranger than the effect of the same misfortune on different
+natures. To Jack, arrested in the full tide of his petty activities, it
+was absolutely overwhelming. When everything he possessed was swept
+away, and with it the routine that for three years had kept him busy and
+content, he knew not what to do nor which way to turn. Sunk in apathy,
+he spent whole days in dully mourning for what he had lost. He would
+have starved had not Fetuao forced him to follow her into the mountains,
+where, under her direction, he dug _tamu_ and climbed the trees for wild
+chestnuts; while she, with deft hands and a little tangled bunch of
+weeds, caught prawns in the pools and streams. At her bidding he made a
+tiny hut of cocoanut branches, a clumsy canoe good enough to fish with,
+and nets from the sinnet she taught him how to twist out of cocoanut
+husks. She even sent him back to work in the plantation, for the bananas
+at least could be saved, and there was a well of sprouting yams and some
+_tingapula_ that had somehow escaped destruction. But Jack's spirit was
+broken; the old incentive was gone; he could not revive the energy, the
+zest, the interest that before had never failed him. He did what Fetuao
+bade him and no more, and the days, once so short, seemed now never to
+end.
+
+One morning early he was awakened by the murmur of voices in the dark,
+and on going to the door of the hut he was surprised to see Fetuao's
+brothers, Tua and Anapu, Mele her uncle, Lapongi the orator, and a dozen
+others, some of them boys not yet tattooed. In answer to his questions
+Tua told him that a messenger had come for them with orders to at once
+join the Mataafa forces behind Apia.
+
+"And thou also, Jack," said Lapongi the orator, "for every man now is
+needed to withstand the fury of the whites."
+
+Jack, as usual, turned to Fetuao.
+
+"We shall both of us go," said she, "I to carry water for the wounded,
+thou with the _muaau_, a rock of strength and terror."
+
+Jack made no protest. Hell! what did it matter where they went? Munching
+the food that was handed him, he looked across the bay, now silvering
+in the dawn, and wondered whether he was not seeing it for the last
+time.
+
+It was late at night when they passed the outposts and reached the
+Mataafa camp, which stood on a high plateau overlooking Apia. Below them
+the search-lights of the men-of-war moved restlessly about, shining at
+times with a bewildering brilliancy into their very faces; and from the
+little war-encompassed capital there rose a distant drumming and bugling
+as the missionary boy king, unsafe even under the guns of Britain and
+America, took his precautions against a night attack. After the
+stillness of Oa there was something confusing in the stir and bustle of
+Mataafa's big camp--in the constant passing of armed men, the change of
+guards, and the rousing choruses around the fires. There was, besides,
+an atmosphere of recklessness and gayety, engendered by excitement, by
+danger, by the very desperation of their cause, that could not long be
+resisted by even the most impassive recruit. Jack alone, of his whole
+party, remained indifferent and unmoved; but his wife, all of the savage
+in her rising to the surface, grew intoxicated almost to the point of
+delirium.
+
+Ordinarily so demure and quiet, she became from henceforward a creature
+of another clay. Whirling her ax and dancing almost naked at the head of
+the Oa contingent, she led it wherever it was sent, daring bullets and
+shells with smiling intrepidity. In her wild beauty an artist might have
+taken her for the spirit of war itself, as she moved undaunted along the
+firing line, or with biting reproaches drove up skulkers from the rear.
+Like some untried actress bringing down her house, she was overborne
+with her own success; and the more she was praised the more
+extravagantly and unflinchingly she exposed herself. Under the stress of
+those fierce emotions her character in every way underwent a change for
+the worse. In war time, death, always in the air, seems to annihilate
+with its dark shadow all the bonds that bind society together. Life,
+hitherto so assured, of a sudden becomes the most transient of human
+gifts, to be enjoyed with a feverish heedlessness before it vanishes
+forever into the unknown. Thus Fetuao found and accepted a dozen lovers
+among her men, and while still according her husband the first place,
+she yet permitted them liberties and familiarities that they were not
+slow to take advantage of.
+
+Deep in every woman's heart there is a love for the men of her race, a
+love motherly and pitiful, that will bring the tears to her eyes at the
+sight of a passing regiment and cause her to passionately mourn the
+unknown soldier dead. This sentiment, this instinct, is a thousandfold
+intensified on the bloody field itself. The pang when those brave
+fellows fall is inexpressible; her pride is strangely humbled, and in
+her mad exaltation she shrinks from nothing, and makes a virtue of her
+own abandonment.
+
+Jack followed Fetuao everywhere, a despondent, woe-begone figure, who,
+amid the hail of bullets and the yells of contending warriors, lay or
+ran or advanced with the others in a black preoccupation. He had not a
+spark of interest in the struggle; his thoughts were forty miles away in
+that ruined home, with his plants, and trees, and shrubs, his cow, and
+his chickens. What victory could give them back? What terror had a
+defeat for one who had already lost his all! He lived in the past, in
+those frugal, thrifty, laborious years; for the present he had but an
+indifference, an apathy, that he had not even the desire to shake off.
+
+He became the butt of the warriors, who brought him their rifles to mend
+and called him a coward for his pains. They envied him Fetuao, who, for
+all her flirtations, slept every night by his side and was not happy
+when he was out of her sight. They nicknamed him her "Paalangi dog," and
+would whistle to him derisively and shout, "Come 'ere!" secure in the
+chronic absent-mindedness that had become a joke to them all. When he
+answered, as he always answered, "Eh, what?" and raised his vacant,
+moody face, there would be an outburst of laughter, in which he himself
+joined with a mirthless geniality, like a man unbending to a lot of
+children. If a shell went off some one was sure to cry, "Eh, what?" and
+this phrase, together with a mimicry of Jack's slow, dejected utterance
+of it, became the stock pleasantry of the camp humorists, who brought it
+out on all occasions.
+
+The conflicts about Apia were mostly affairs of outposts, a pressing in
+and a pressing back of the pickets on either side. The naval commanders,
+in spite of repeated bombardments and the enormous havoc they wrought
+along the coasts, found themselves hardly able to do more than hold
+their own against the Mataafa army. The safety of Apia was constantly in
+jeopardy, though barricades were thrown up in the streets and three
+hundred men landed from the ships. A desperate night attack on the main
+guard at the Tivoli Hotel betrayed the weakness of the whites to friends
+and foes alike, and redoubled the anxiety of the admiral and captains.
+It was plain that no decisive blow could be struck pending the arrival
+of the reenforcements that had been urgently cabled for from New
+Zealand, unless a better use were made of the missionary levies on the
+spot. These loose native organizations were accordingly broken up,
+consolidated into a single compact force of eight hundred men, well
+armed and well drilled, and placed under the absolute command of a naval
+lieutenant.
+
+This fine force, supported by whites and Maxims, was counted on to
+retrieve the situation and drive Mataafa from his mountain stronghold.
+The plan for a joint attack was accordingly drawn up. A quota of seamen
+and marines, with a couple of machine guns, was to form the center of
+the little army, while the native brigade on either wing was to advance
+simultaneously, lap round and outflank the Mataafas. This operation,
+covered by a terrific bombardment from the three ships of war, was
+forthwith begun; on its success was staked the hopes of the little
+clique who had so lightly adopted the cause of a divinity student of
+seventeen, against the vote and wish of well-nigh all Samoa.
+
+On that day the Oa party held the center of the Mataafa line, a stone
+wall stretching across a wide clearing to the forest on either side. It
+was the post of honor, for it crossed the road up which the enemy were
+toiling with their guns, and guarded the headquarters of the patriot
+king, not a hundred yards behind. In the trampled grass two hundred men
+sat or lay with their rifles in their hands and listened to the measured
+periods of the orators exhorting them to remember their wrongs and die
+fighting. These old men, white-haired, scarred with the wounds of bygone
+battles, their wrinkled hands clasping the staves on which they leaned,
+never winced as the shells whistled above their heads, nor abated by a
+hair's breadth their tone of strident warning and encouragement. At
+such a distance, and against a target six hundred feet above the sea
+level, the men-of-war made poor practice and did little more than waste
+their ammunition. But the shattering detonations of their guns, and the
+thundering echoes rolling and re-rolling round the bay, made pleasant
+music for their crews ashore. It seemed incredible that such
+earth-shaking explosions could be wholly without effect, and the tired
+seamen sweating up the hill were kindled by the thought that the rebels
+were already suffering heavily and likely to run at the first encounter.
+
+Sitting listlessly on a boulder, Jack scarcely took in the fact that
+anything out of the way was about to happen. His only concern was not to
+be too far from Fetuao, and so long as he had her in his sight he was
+dumbly content. He was as solitary among the thronging warriors as any
+castaway in mid-ocean, and his patient, stolid, inexpressive face, grown
+older in a month by a dozen years, was the only one which failed to
+reflect the coming conflict. Fetuao, on the contrary, was on fire from
+top to toe; her saucy tongue was loosened, and her bright eyes dancing
+in wild excitement. Joking and laughing in the roaring circle of her
+admirers, she matched her quick wit against them all in a victorious
+scream of banter and repartee.
+
+Suddenly a shot rang out in the lower woods; then two, with a faltering
+third; then a scattered volley like a bunch of firecrackers going off at
+once. A score of men showed at the turn of the road doubling back for
+dear life, the pickets who had been dislodged and driven in by the
+advancing whites. They had hardly leaped the wall, panting, and
+crouching with the main body behind it, when the machine guns wheeled
+into the open and began to fire. In the first murderous crash it seemed
+as though nothing human could withstand them, and the blue-jackets,
+dotted here and there in the grass, raised an exultant yell, and some
+even sprang up in anticipation of the call to charge. But the men that
+worked the guns had to stand exposed and helpless before a fire more
+galling than their own. They began to drop, and those who were unhurt
+disconcertedly turned and ran. A couple of officers sprang out of the
+grass to take charge of the abandoned guns, managing in their flurry to
+jam them both. For a minute they tinkered and hammered at the choked
+mechanism, exposing themselves, as they did so, to the concentrated
+volleys of a hundred Samoan rifles. Of a sudden, one clapped his hand to
+his breast and sank on his knees; his comrade caught him round the body
+and dragged him back, leaving the guns, now silent and useless, to shine
+innocuously in the sun.
+
+All this while the woods on either hand reverberated with the volleys
+and the cheers of an extended battle, and a haze of powder smoke
+drifted above the tree tops. No one knew how the day was going, and the
+most conflicting rumors ran like wildfire through the Mataafa lines
+together with the names of such an one killed and such an one wounded.
+Dodging the bullets, Fetuao flitted about with water for the parched
+fighters, passing the news and rolling cigarettes for such of the
+wounded as were not too far gone to care for them. Occasionally she
+ferreted out a trembling wretch in the rear and drove him to the front
+with taunts; or, if he were too panic-stricken to get up, she had no
+compunction in thrashing him with a stick until he did so. The little
+savage was beside herself as she danced and sang like a wanton child in
+the rain--a rain of Martini and Lee-Remington balls stinging the air all
+about her.
+
+After the machine guns were put out of action the fight became a rifle
+duel, which went on briskly for upward of an hour. Again and again the
+whites rose in the grass, blundered forward and took cover, each rush
+stemmed by the Oas, who, darting up from their wall, gave volley for
+volley at point-blank range. Standing in a slop of blood, their great
+naked feet trampling the dead and writhing bodies of their comrades,
+they rivaled the rocky wall itself in the unflinching obstinacy of their
+resistance. It was then the battle reached its deadliest stage, more
+falling in those terrible minutes than during the whole previous course
+of the action. There was no shouting, no cheering, but with clenched
+teeth each man held his place and panted for the supreme moment that
+should spell either victory or rout. That moment came with the bugle
+call to charge, when the whites, rising for the last time, flung
+themselves forward with bayonets fixed. On they came, crimson-faced,
+mouths open, British and Americans in a pellmell rush like a rally of
+boys at football. Even as they did so, Fetuao leaped bolt upright on the
+wall, and swinging her carbine round her head, opposed her slender body
+to the whole attack. In an instant she was tumbling backward with a
+bullet through her throat, and as she lay coughing and strangling in the
+mire, Jack ran forward with a cry and caught her in his arms. There she
+died, amid the crash and roar of a hand-to-hand fight, jostled and
+stumbled on, her little hot hands clinging to his in the convulsive
+grasp of dissolution.
+
+Jack sprang up like a madman. He had no thought in his dizzy head but
+vengeance--vengeance, sudden, bloody, and swift. He plunged into the
+thickest of the fray, cursing and raving as he opened a path with his
+brawny shoulders. A seaman tried to drive him through with a bayonet,
+but he caught the fellow round the neck and throttled him; he wrenched
+away the weapon and stabbed out with it right and left, with a strength,
+skill, and ferocity that nothing could withstand. He was fired at
+again and again; his ashen face was twenty times a target, once at so
+close a range that the powder burned his very skin. As the line swayed
+to and fro in that desperate final struggle, there was a hoarse cry
+against him, constantly repeated, of, "Shoot that white man!" "Kill the
+renegade!" But Jack, seemingly proof against bullet and sword, stood his
+ground like a lion and clubbed the butt of his gun into the faces of his
+foes; and when the whites, at last losing heart, began to weaken and
+fall back, it was Jack that led the Samoan charge, waving a dripping
+bayonet, and bellowing like a maniac for the rest to follow him.
+
+[Illustration: "In an instant she was tumbling backward."]
+
+He stopped beside the guns, laughing wildly to see the blue-jackets
+scattering like rabbits down the hill, and throwing away their rifles,
+water bottles, and accouterments in their precipitate flight. There were
+wounded men lying all about him, groaning, some of them, and calling out
+faintly for help; but, hell! what did he care! Let them groan, the
+skunks; let them remember the women and children they had bombarded, and
+the houses they had burned, and the honest hearts they had broken! To
+hell with them! Besides, for the matter of that, he was feeling sort of
+sick himself--sort of numb and shivery--and he staggered like a drunken
+man as he went slowly back up to the wall. It was all he could do to
+straddle the blamed thing, and then it was only with the help of a
+wounded Samoan who took his hand. The Kanaka, dizzily seen through a
+kind of mist, was no other than Tua; together, like men in a dream, they
+searched for Fetuao's body; and dragging it out of the shambles where it
+lay, they tried to clean away the blood with wisps of grass. Jack was
+sitting with the girl's head in his lap when he began to sway unsteadily
+backward and forward, feeling strangely sleepy and cold. He moaned. He
+gasped. Hell! they must have plugged him somewhere, after all. And then
+he rolled over--dead.
+
+
+
+
+THE SECURITY OF THE HIGH SEAS
+
+
+Things had been dull in Apia before the arrival of Captain Satterlee in
+the _Southern Belle_. Not business alone--which was, of course, only to
+be expected, what with the civil war being just over and the Kanakas
+driven to eat their cocoanuts instead of selling them to traders in the
+form of copra--but, socially speaking, the little capital of the Samoan
+group had been next door to dead. Picnics had been few; a heavy dust had
+settled on the floor of the public hall--a galvanized iron barn which
+social leaders could rent for six Chile dollars a night, lights
+included; the butcher's wedding, contrary to all expectation, had been
+strictly private, and might almost have slipped by unnoticed had it not
+been for a friendly editorial in the _Samoa Weekly Times_; and with the
+exception of an auction, a funeral, and a billiard tournament at the
+International Hotel, a general lethargy had overtaken Apia and the
+handful of whites who made it their home.
+
+As Mr. Skiddy, the boyish American consul, expressed himself, "You
+can't get anybody to do anything these days."
+
+Possibly this long spell of monotony contributed to Captain Satterlee's
+pronounced and instant success. The topsails of the Southern Belle had
+hardly more than appeared over the horizon, when people began to wake up
+and realize that stagnation had too long held them in its thrall.
+Satterlee was not at all the ordinary kind of sea captain, to which the
+Beach (as Apia always alluded to itself) was more than well acquainted.
+Gin had no attractions for Captain Satterlee, nor did he surround
+himself with dusky impropriety. He played a straight social game, and
+lived up to the rules, even to party calls, and finger bowls on his
+cabin table. He was a tall, thin American of about forty-five, with
+floorwalker manners, grayish mutton-chop whiskers, and a roving eye. The
+general verdict of Apia was that he was "very superior." His superiority
+was apparent in his gentlemanly baldness, his openwork socks, his
+well-turned references to current events, his kindly and indulgent
+attitude toward all things Samoan. He deplored the rivalry of the three
+contending nationalities, German, English, and American, whose official
+representatives quarreled fiercely among themselves and mismanaged the
+affairs of this unfortunate little South Sea kingdom, and whose
+unofficial representatives sold guns and cartridges indiscriminately to
+the warring native factions. Satterlee let it be inferred that the role
+of peacemaker had informally settled upon himself.
+
+"In a little place everybody ought to pull together," he would say, his
+bland tolerance falling like balm from heaven, and he would clinch the
+remark by passing round forty-cent cigars.
+
+The _Southern Belle_ was a showy little vessel of about ninety tons,
+with the usual trade room in the after part of the ship, where the
+captain himself would wait on you behind a counter, and sell you
+anything from a bottle of trade scent to a keg of dynamite. He never was
+so charming as when engaged in this exchange of commodities for coin,
+and it accorded so piquantly with his evident superiority that the
+purchaser had a pleasant sense of doing business with a gentleman.
+
+"Of course, I might run her as a yacht, and play the heavy swell," he
+would remark. "But, candidly, I like this kind of thing; it puts me on a
+level with the others, you know; and then it's handy for buying
+supplies, and keeping one in touch with the people." With this he would
+give you such a warming smile, and perhaps throw in free a handful of
+fishhooks, or a packet of safety matches, or a toothbrush. Indeed, apart
+from this invariable prodigality, his scale of prices was ridiculously
+low, and if you were a lady you could buy out the ship at half price. As
+for young Skiddy, the American consul, the bars in his case were
+lowered even more, and he was just asked to help himself; which young
+Skiddy did, though sparingly. Captain Satterlee took an immense fancy to
+this youthful representative of their common country, and treated him
+with an engaging mixture of respect and paternalism; and Skiddy, not to
+be behindhand, and dazzled, besides, by his elder's marked regard and
+friendship, threw wide the consular door, and constantly pressed on
+Satterlee the hospitality of a cot on the back veranda.
+
+The captain professed to find it remarkable--which, indeed, it was--that
+a boy of twenty-six should have been intrusted with the welfare of so
+considerable a section of Samoa's white population. The roll of the
+consulate bore the names of thirty-eight Americans, not to speak of a
+thirty-ninth who was soon expected, over whom the young consul possessed
+extraordinary powers withheld from far higher posts in far more
+important countries. Young Skiddy, on a modest salary of two hundred
+dollars a month and a house rent-free, was supposed, if need be, to
+marry you, divorce you, try you for crimes and misdemeanors, and in
+extreme cases might even dangle you from the flagstaff in his front
+yard.
+
+He had been very seldom called on, however, to use these extensive
+powers. In three years he had married as many couples, helped to baptize
+a half-caste baby, held an inquest on a dead sailor, bullied a Samoan
+army off his front grass, and had settled a disputed inheritance
+involving five acres of cocoanuts. This, of course, left him with some
+spare time on his hands, which, on the whole, he managed to get through
+with very tolerable enjoyment. But until the date of Captain Satterlee's
+arrival he had never had a friend, or at least so it seemed to him now
+in the retrospect. His official colleagues were out of the question--the
+standoffish Englishman, the sullen German, the grotesque Swede who held
+the highest judicial office. No, there was not the little finger of a
+friend in the whole galaxy. And elsewhere? Not a soul to whom one could
+give intimacy without the danger, almost the certainty, of its being
+abused. No wonder, then, that he turned to Satterlee, and grasped the
+hand of fellowship so warmly extended to him.
+
+The little consul had never known such a man; he had never heard such
+talk; he had never before realized the extent and splendor of the world.
+Sitting in the cabin of the _Southern Belle_, often far into the night,
+he would give a rapt attention to this extraordinary being who had done
+everything and seen everything. Paris, London, Constantinople, New York,
+all were as familiar to Satterlee as the palm of his hand, and he had
+the story-telling gift that can throw a glamour over the humblest
+incident. Not that his incidents were often humble. On the contrary, in
+his mysterious suggestive fashion he let it be inferred that his bygone
+part had been a great one. He would offer dazzling little peeps, and
+then shut the slide; a chance reference that would make his hearer gasp;
+the adroit use of a mighty name, checked by a sudden, "Oh, hold on--I'm
+saying more than I ought to!" You felt, somehow, that to have roused the
+interest of this powerful personage was to insure your own career. With
+a turn of his hand he was capable of gratifying your wildest ambition.
+He had remarked your unusual capacity, and had quietly determined it
+should be given proper scope. When and where and how were to be settled
+later. These questions you left confidently to Satterlee. It was enough
+that you were informed, in those fine shades of which he was a master,
+that your day would surely come. On leaving Satterlee you walked on air
+without knowing exactly why; or rather Skiddy did, for by "you" I mean
+the little consul.
+
+It is a sad commentary on human nature that it is so easily deceived. A
+glib tongue, an attractive manner, a few hundred dollars thrown
+carelessly about, and presto! you have the counterfeit of a Cecil
+Rhodes. We are not only willing to take people at their own valuation,
+but are ever ready to multiply that valuation by ten. Obtrude
+romance--rich, stirring romance--into the lives of commonplace people,
+and they instantly lose their heads. Romance, more than cupidity, is
+what attracts the gold-brick investor.
+
+Of course, Satterlee was a poser, a fraud, a liar; the highest type of
+liar; the day-dreaming, well-read, genuinely inventive, highly
+imaginative, loving-it-for-its-own-sake liar. But to Skiddy every word
+he said was Gospel-true. He never doubted the captain for an instant.
+Life grew richer to him, stranger and more wonderful. It was like a
+personal distinction--a medal, or the thanks of Congress--that Satterlee
+should thus have singled him out. His gratitude was unbounded. He felt
+both humble and elated. His cup was brimming over.
+
+Let not his credulity be counted against him. After all, he was not the
+only admirer of the captain. Did he not see Satterlee lionized by the
+Chief Justice and the rest of his brother officials; publicly honored by
+the head of the great German company; called to the bosom of both the
+missionary denominations? Was not all Apia, in fact, regardless of sex,
+creed, or nationality, acclaiming Satterlee to the skies, and vying
+among themselves for the privilege of entertaining him? Never, indeed,
+were there so many picnics, so many parties, such a constant succession
+of dances at the public hall. Even the king was galvanized into action,
+and, to the surprise of everyone, gave a sort of At Home, where
+Satterlee was the guest of honor, and received the second _kava_ cup. A
+half-caste couple, who before had barely held up their heads, sprang
+into social prominence by getting married under the direct patronage of
+the popular captain, and thus rallying to their visiting list all the
+rank, fashion, and beauty of Apia.
+
+It was a delirious month. There was an event for almost every night of
+it. The strain on the half-caste band was awful. Miss Potter's millinery
+establishment worked night and day. Of a morning you couldn't find a
+lady on a front veranda who wasn't stitching and sewing and basting and
+cutting out. And the men! Why, in the social whirl few of them had time
+to sober up, and the sale of Leonard's soda water was unprecedented.
+
+As the time began to draw near for the monthly mail from San Francisco,
+Satterlee got restless and talked regretfully of leaving. He gave a
+great P.P.C. bargain day on board the _Southern Belle_, where sandwiches
+and bottled beer were served to all comers, and goods changed hands at
+astonishing prices: coal oil at one seventy-five a case; hundred-pound
+kegs of beef at four dollars; turkey-red cotton at six cents a yard;
+square face at thirty cents a bottle; and similar cuts in all the
+standard commodities. There was no custom house in those days, and you
+were free to carry everything ashore unchallenged. A matter of eighty
+tons must have been landed all round the beach; and the pandemonium at
+the gangway, the crush and jostle in the trade room, and the steady
+hoisting out of fresh merchandise from the main hold, made a very
+passable South Sea imitation of a New York department store. At any
+rate, there was the same loss of temper, the same harassed expression on
+the faces of the purchasers, and the same difficulty in getting change.
+As like as not you had to take it--the change--in the form of Jews'
+harps, screw eyes, or anything small and handy that happened to be near
+by. It was the most lightning performance Apia had ever witnessed, and
+the captain carried it off in a brisk, smiling way, as though it was the
+best joke in the world, and he was only doing it all for fun.
+
+Unfortunate captain! Unhappy destiny that brought in the mail cutter two
+days ahead of schedule! Thrice unlucky popularity that found thee
+basking in the sunshine of woman's favor instead of on thy four-inch
+deck! The pilot signaled the mail; Skiddy put forth in his consular
+boat, intercepting the cutter in the pass, and receiving (on his head)
+his own especial Government bag. The proximity of the _Southern Belle_,
+and the likelihood of Satterlee being at home, caused Skiddy to board
+the ship and open the bag on her quarter-deck. One stout, blue, and
+important-looking letter at once caught his eye. He opened the stout,
+blue, and important-looking letter, and----
+
+There were no white men in the crew of the _Southern Belle_. They were
+all Rotumah boys, with the exception of Ah Foy, the Chinese cook. This
+amiable individual was singing over his pots and pans when he was
+suddenly startled by the apparition of Skiddy at the galley door. The
+little consul was deathly pale, and there was something fierce and
+authoritative in his look.
+
+"Come out of here," he said abruptly, "I want to talk to you!"
+
+The Chinaman followed him aft. He had a pretty good idea of what was
+coming. That was why he was sewn up with two hundred dollars in hard
+cash, together with a twenty-dollar bill under his left heel. He began
+to cry, and in five minutes had blurted out the whole thing.
+Self-preservation is the first law, and he had, besides, some dim
+conception of State's evidence. Skiddy made the conception clearer, and
+promised him immunity if he would make a clean breast of it. This the
+Chinaman forthwith did in his laborious pidgin. A good part of it was
+incomprehensible, but he established certain main facts, and confirmed
+the stout, blue, important-looking letter. As Satterlee came off on a
+shore boat, pulling like mad, and then darted up the ladder in a sweat
+of apprehension, he was met at the top by Skiddy--not Skiddy the
+friend, but Skiddy the arm of the law, Skiddy the retributive, Skiddy
+the world's avenger, with Seniko, his towering cox, standing square
+behind him.
+
+"John Forster," he said, "_alias_ Satterlee, I arrest you in the name of
+the United States, on the charge of having committed the crime of
+barratry, and warn you that anything you say now may be hereafter used
+against you."
+
+It was a horrible thing to say--to be forced to say--and no sense of
+public duty could make it less than detestable. Skiddy almost whispered
+out the words. The brutality of them appalled him. Remember, this was
+his friend, his hero, the man whose intimacy an hour before had been
+everything to him. Satterlee gave him a quick, blank, panicky look, and
+then, with a pitiful bravado, took a step forward with an attempted
+return to his usual confident air. He professed to be dumfounded at the
+accusation; he was the victim of a dreadful mistake; he tried, with a
+ghastly smile, to reassert his old dominion, calling Skiddy "old man"
+and "old chap" in a shaky, fawning voice, and wanting to take him below
+"to talk it over." But the little consul was adamantine. The law must
+take its course. He was sorry, terribly sorry, but as an officer of the
+United States he had to do his duty.
+
+Satterlee preceded him into the boat. The consul followed and took the
+yoke lines. They were both dejected, and neither dared to meet the
+other's eyes. It was a mournful pull ashore, and tragic in the
+retrospect. A silence lay between them as heavy as lead. The crew,
+conscious of the captain's humiliation, though they knew not the cause,
+felt also constrained to a deep solemnity. Yes, a funereal pull, and it
+was a relief to everyone when at last they grounded in the shingle off
+the consulate.
+
+Skiddy had a busy day of it. Leaving the captain at the consulate under
+guard, and sending off Asi, the chief of Vaiala, together with ten
+warriors armed with rifles and axes to take charge of the _Southern
+Belle_ and her crew, he walked into Apia to make arrangements to meet
+the painful situation. Single-handed he had to rear the structure of a
+whole judicial system, including United States marshals, a clerk of
+court, four assessor judges, and a jail. His first steps were directed
+toward a little cottage on the Motootua Road, the residence of Mr.
+Scoville Purdy, a goaty, elderly, unwashed individual, who formed the
+more respectable half of the Samoan bar. Mr. Purdy was forthwith
+retained by the United States Government, and the papers of the case
+left in his hands. Skiddy next sought out Mr. Thacher, the other half of
+the bar, and directed him to defend the prisoner. Then he bent his mind
+to the consideration of jails, of which Samoa boasted two.
+
+The municipal jail was a two-roomed wooden shed, sparingly furnished
+with a couple of tin pails. Humanity forbidding the incarceration of
+Captain Satterlee in such a hovel, the little consul passed on to
+Mulinuu, where the general Samoan Government held sway. The jail here
+was on a more pretentious scale. It consisted of a rectangular
+inclosure, perhaps sixty feet by forty, formed by four eight-foot walls
+of galvanized iron, and containing within five or six small huts of the
+kind that shipwrecked seamen might build on a desert island. In fact
+that was just about what they were, and as foul and repulsive as the
+real article. Owing to financial stringency the Samoan Government was
+unable to house or feed its prisoners, who for both these reasons might
+well be described as castaways. These unfortunates were absent at the
+time of Skiddy's visit, employing a very languid leisure on the
+improvement of the roads; and the consul could not have penetrated the
+jail at all had it not been for the king, who, on being appealed to, was
+obliging enough to lend the diplomat his spare key.
+
+Skiddy stood and regarded the place with an immense depression. It would
+not do at all. It was no better than a cattle pen. He was about to turn
+away, when the two Scanlons appeared on the scene, their keen noses
+having scented out a job. The Scanlons were burly half-castes, of a
+muddy, sweaty complexion, whose trustworthiness and intelligence were
+distinctly above the average. The Scanlon brothers, to any one in a
+difficult position, could be relied upon as pillars of strength. There
+was nothing a Scanlon brother wouldn't do, and do well, for two dollars
+and fifty cents a day. Mind and muscle were both yours--Scanlon mind and
+muscle--for this paltry and insignificant sum; and the consul, in his
+quandary, welcomed the stout, bristly haired pair as though they were
+angels from heaven.
+
+In less time than it takes to write, Alfred Scanlon was appointed a
+United States marshal, Charles Scanlon an assistant United States
+marshal, and the arrangement was made with them to take full charge of
+Captain Satterlee during his trial. He was to live in their cottage,
+have his meals served from the International Hotel, and, while carefully
+guarded night and day, was to be treated "first class" throughout.
+
+"The law of the United States," boomed out little Skiddy, "assumes that
+a prisoner is innocent until he is actually convicted. I want both of
+you to remember that."
+
+The Scanlons didn't understand a word of what he said, but they saluted,
+and looked very much impressed. When you bought a Scanlon you got a lot
+for your money, including a profound gravity when you addressed him. It
+was the Scanlon way of recognizing that you were paying, and the
+Scanlon receiving, two dollars and fifty cents a day!
+
+At the head of his two satellites, who kept pace respectfully behind
+him, Skiddy next directed himself to find Dillon. Dillon was a variety
+of white Scanlon, though of an infinitely lower human type, who kept a
+tiny store and cobbled shoes near the Mulivae bridge; and who, from some
+assumed knowledge of legal procedure, invariably acted as clerk of the
+court--any court--American, English, or the Samoan High. You associated
+his heavy, bloated, grog-blossomed face, and black-dyed whiskers, as an
+inevitable part of the course of justice. It was his custom to take
+longhand notes of all court proceedings, as, of course, stenographers
+were unknown in Apia; and at times it would seem as though all Samoan
+justice boiled down to dictating to Dillon. As a witness, you never
+looked at the judge; you looked at Dillon, and wondered whether he was
+taking you down right. A careful witness always went slowly, and used
+the words that Dillon was likely to understand.
+
+Dillon having been found and engaged, the next procedure was to appoint
+the assessor judges, of whom the consular instructions insisted on there
+being four. This weighty matter seemed to require the cooperation of the
+vice consul, Mr. Beaver, a highly respected quack doctor, whose
+principal nostrum was faith cure plus hot water. After arguing away
+your existence, which he always could do with extraordinary fluency, he
+would plunge you into a boiling bath till your imaginary skin turned a
+deep imaginary scarlet, and then send you home with some microscopic
+doses of aconite. The best that could be said of him was that he never
+really harmed anybody, scalded the poor for nothing, and was willing
+(and even pressing) to turn over serious cases to the regular
+practitioner, Dr. Funk.
+
+There were twenty-seven American citizens on the consular roll of male
+sex, sound mind, and above twenty-one years of age. Four of them lived
+far from Apia, and were therefore unavailable. Two more, as known
+deserters from the United States navy, were considered unworthy of the
+judgment seat. Forged or suspected naturalization papers threw out
+another five. This reduced the residuum to sixteen, whose names were
+written on slips of paper, thrown into a pith helmet, and tumbled
+together. The first four withdrawn constituted the assessor judges, who
+were at once warned by messenger to be in attendance at the consulate at
+ten the next morning, or be punished for contempt.
+
+What a stir was made in the little town as the news went round!
+Satterlee, the cherished, the entertained, the eagerly sought
+after--Satterlee, had been discovered to be a pirate! The _Southern_
+_Belle_ was no _Southern Belle_ at all, but the _James H. Peabody_! He
+had shipped as supercargo, putting in a thousand dollars of his own to
+lull Mr. Crawford's suspicions, and then had marooned the captain and
+mate on Ebon Island, and levanted with the ship! Heavens! what cackle,
+what excitement, what a furious flow of beer in every saloon along the
+beach! It was rumored that the great bargain-day sales might be
+canceled; that the goods might have to be returned; that not a penny of
+compensation would be paid to the unlucky purchasers. Then what a
+rubbing off of marks took place, what a breaking up of tell-tale cases,
+what a soaking off of tags! The whole eighty tons disappeared like
+magic, and you could not find a soul who would even confess to a packet
+of pins!
+
+The trial took place in the large office room of the consulate. The big
+front doors stood open to the sea, where a mile away the breakers tossed
+and tumbled on the barrier reef. The back door was kept shut, to keep
+out the meaner noises of domesticity, but at intervals in the course of
+the trial you could hear the deliberate grinding of the consular coffee;
+the chasing of consular chickens; the counting of the consular wash;
+shrill arguments over the price of fish--a grotesque juxtaposition that
+seemed to make a mock of the whole proceedings.
+
+The consul, in well-starched white clothes and pipe-clayed shoes, sat
+on a dais beneath the crossed flags of his country, giving the effect of
+an elegant and patriotic waxwork. Below him were the four assessors,
+sunburned, commonish, seafaring men, with enormous hands that they did
+not know what to do with, who moved uneasily in their chairs, and looked
+about for places to spit--and then didn't dare to! One, whose brawny
+arms far exceeded the shrunken sleeves of his jumper, unbared to view on
+his hairy skin the tattooed form of a naked mermaid. A table stood in
+the center of the uncarpeted room, with a lawyer on either side--Purdy,
+the goaty-haired, messy, elderly man, half-blind, sharp-voiced, rasping
+out his case; opposite him, Thacher, a slinky, mean-looking young man,
+who was reputed to have left New Zealand under a cloud. He looked what
+he was, a cheap lawyer's clerk, of the pinched, hungry variety one sees
+in gloomy anterooms. At the head of the table was Dillon, the
+everlasting dictatee, his dyed black whiskers drooping in the heat, who
+raised a fat hand from time to time as a brake on outstripping tongues.
+And there the captain, the cause of all this singular assembly, tilting
+back in his chair, or occasionally leaning over to whisper into his
+counsel's ear--spare, angular, careworn--with his grim mouth and
+resolute air, as though the soul within him refused to be cowed by such
+droning tomfoolery.
+
+Beside the front door was a shabby basket-work sofa, where members of
+the public were entitled to sit. They would tiptoe in, these members of
+the public, furtively, as though expecting to be shot on sight, the
+bolder ones perhaps exchanging a whisper, the weaker brethren silent,
+and trembling if they caught an official eye. Outside, on the steps of
+the broad veranda, the brothers Scanlon lolled and slumbered, with
+pewter stars on their sweaty breasts, enjoying the deep contentment that
+comes with two dollars and fifty cents a day.
+
+The trial lasted two days, but judgment was held over for the third. The
+case against Satterlee was complete. The San Francisco affidavits,
+properly made out by competent hands, were confirmed by the confession
+of Ah Foy, the cook, who (besides Satterlee) was the only present member
+of the original crew. Satterlee set up the lame defense that he had
+purchased the vessel from Crawford, and was therefore her actual owner.
+He was sworn, and gave evidence accordingly, but Purdy's
+cross-examination left him without a leg to stand on. He cut a pitiful
+figure as he floundered and lied and contradicted himself under the lash
+of that relentless tongue, miring himself ever deeper with explanations
+that did not explain, and agitated references to a "conspiracy" whose
+object it was to ruin him. No, the only thing to be considered was the
+degree of punishment that would adequately offset his crime.
+
+On the reassembling of the Court on the morning of the third day, little
+Skiddy, from the majesty of the dais, summed up the case at length. It
+covered nine sheets of foolscap, and had cost him hours of agonizing
+toil. Beginning with a general rhetorical statement about the "policy of
+nations" and "the security of the high seas," he descended by degrees to
+the crime of barratry--or, in plainer English, the theft of ships. He
+looked at barratry from every side, and the more he looked the less he
+seemed to like it. It was the cradle of piracy; it destroyed the
+confidence of owners; barratry, if frequently repeated, would shake the
+whole commercial structure. A person who committed barratry would commit
+anything. In this manner he went on and on, reviewing the evidence of
+the case, destroying the whole fabric of the defense, dwelling at length
+on the enormity of the entire transaction. The _James H. Peabody_ had
+been deliberately seized. The prisoner had lawlessly converted her, the
+property of another, to his own base uses. He had broken into the cargo
+and shamelessly sold it as his own. He could plead neither the
+extenuation of youth, nor ignorance, nor the urging of others. He had
+conceived the crime, and had carried it out single-handed. The Court
+could not accept the contention that Ah Foy, the Chinaman, had been in
+any sense a confederate or an accomplice. The Court dismissed the charge
+against Ah Foy. But, after mature deliberation, its unanimous judgment
+was that John Forster, _alias_ Satterlee, was _guilty_. The Court
+sentenced John Forster, _alias_ Satterlee, to _ten years' penal
+servitude_.
+
+Purdy popped up with some question as to the scale of court fees.
+Thacher winked at Dillon, and began to roll up his papers. Skiddy
+descended from the dais and became an ordinary human being again. The
+captain, leaning forward in his chair, gazed absently out to sea. The
+Scanlon brothers appeared, officiously wanting to know what they were to
+do next. Skiddy was unable to tell them, except that they were to stay
+by the prisoner until he could consult with the authorities. He put on
+his hat, lit a cigar, and forthwith departed.
+
+The President was kind, the Chief Justice urbane. The income of the
+kingdom barely sufficed for their two salaries, and they judged it
+incumbent (as they could do nothing else) to be as polite as possible to
+the American consul. But jails? Oh, no, they couldn't oblige Skiddy with
+a new jail! He was welcome to what they had, but it wasn't in reason
+that he could expect anything better. Skiddy said it was a hog-pen. The
+President retorted that the king's allowance was eight months in
+arrears, and that the western end of the island was still in rebellion.
+Jails cost money, and they had no money. Skiddy declared it was an
+outrage, and asked them if they approved of putting a white man into a
+bare stockade, with none of the commonest conveniences or decencies of
+life? They were both shocked at the suggestion. The pride of race is
+very strong in barbarous countries. A white man is still a white man
+even if he has committed all the crimes in the calendar. The Chief
+Justice very seriously pointed out that it would disgrace them all to
+confine Satterlee in the stockade, and force him to mix with the dregs
+of the native population. Surely Mr. Skiddy could not consider such a
+thing for a moment. Mr. Skiddy wanted to know, then, what the deuce he
+was to do? The Chief Justice benignantly shook his head. He had no
+answer to that question. The President murmured suavely, that perhaps
+next year, with an increased hut tax, and the suppression of the
+rebellion, the Government might see its way to----
+
+"Next year!" roared Skiddy. "I want to know what I'm to do
+NOW!"
+
+The two high officials gazed at him sadly. It was a great peety, they
+observed (with an air of gentle complaint), that Mr. Skiddy should have
+embarrassed the government at a time when its whole position was so
+precarious. Had he not better refer the matter to Washington? Doubtless
+Washington, recognizing the fact that----
+
+Skiddy flung himself out, lest his anger should get the best of him. He
+went and had another look at the jail, and liked it even less than
+before. Faugh! it was disgusting! It would kill a white man in a week.
+It would be nothing less than murder to put Satterlee into it. He
+returned to the consulate to talk over the matter with the trusty
+Scanlons.
+
+Would they consider a monthly arrangement on a reduced charge, giving
+Satterlee the best room in their cottage, and pledging themselves that
+he should never quit the confines of their three-acre cocoanut patch?
+The half-caste brothers fell in joyfully with the suggestion, and their
+first wild proposals were beaten down to forty dollars a month for
+custodianship and fifteen dollars for the room and the transport of
+Satterlee's food from the International Hotel--fifty-five dollars in
+all. Thirty dollars a month for the hotel raised the grand total to
+eighty-five dollars. Skiddy wondered ruefully whether Washington would
+ever indorse this arrangement, but in his desperation he couldn't see
+that he had any other choice. He would simply _make_ Washington indorse
+it. It was with great relief that he saw the captain's departure from a
+corner of his bedroom window, and felt that, for the moment, at least,
+he had a welcome respite from all his perplexities.
+
+He put a captain and crew on board the _James H. Peabody_, and packed
+her back to San Francisco, at the same time apprising the State
+Department by mail, and begging that a telegraphic answer might be sent
+him in respect to Satterlee's imprisonment, and the expense it had
+necessarily entailed. He calculated that the telegram would catch an
+outgoing man-of-war that was shortly due. The consular salary was two
+hundred dollars a month, and if the eighty-five dollars for Satterlee
+was disallowed, the sum was indubitably bound to sink to one hundred and
+fifteen dollars. Deducting a further fifty, which little Skiddy was in
+the habit of remitting to his mother, a widow in narrow circumstances,
+and behold his income reduced to sixty-five a month! It was hardly
+surprising, therefore, that Skiddy waited on pins and needles for the
+Department's reply.
+
+In the course of weeks it came.
+
+      _Skiddy U S consul apia samoa satterlee case the department
+      authorizes charge for food, but none for custody or lodging,
+      bronson assistant secretary._
+
+This was a staggering blow. It definitely placed his salary at
+ninety-five dollars. He sat down and wrote a stinging letter to the
+Department, inclosing snapshot pictures of the jail, the prisoners, the
+huts, and other things that cannot be described here. It evolved an
+acrimonious reply, in which he was bidden to be more respectful. He was
+at liberty (the dispatch continued), if he thought it advisable as an
+act of private charity, to maintain the convict Satterlee in a
+comfortable cottage, but the Department insisted that it should be at
+his (Skiddy's) expense. The Department itself advocated the jail. If the
+situation were as disgraceful as he described it, ought not the onus be
+put on the Samoan Government, and thus place the Department in a
+position "to make strong representations through the usual diplomatic
+channels"?
+
+"But in the meantime what would happen to Satterlee?" returned the
+consul in official language, across six thousand miles of sea and land.
+
+"You are referred to the previous dispatch," retorted the Department.
+
+"But it will kill him," said Skiddy, again crossing an ocean and a
+continent.
+
+"If the convict Satterlee should become ill, you are at liberty to send
+him to the hospital."
+
+"Yes, but there isn't any hospital," said Skiddy.
+
+"The Department cannot withdraw from the position it took up, nor the
+principle it laid down in Dispatch No. 214 B."
+
+Thus the duel went on, while Skiddy cut down his cigars, sold his riding
+horse, and generally economized. A regret stole over him that he hadn't
+sentenced Satterlee to a shorter term, and he looked up the Consular
+Instructions to see what pardoning powers he possessed. On this point
+the little book was dumb. Not so the Department, however, to whom a hint
+on the subject provoked the reply, "that by so doing you would stultify
+your previous action and impugn the finding of the Consular Court. The
+Department would view with grave displeasure, etc.----"
+
+Satterlee soon made himself very much at home in the Scanlon prison. His
+winning personality never showed to better advantage than in those days
+of his eclipse. He dandled the Scanlon off-spring on his knee; helped
+the women with their household tasks; played checkers with the burly
+brothers. He was prodigiously respected. He gathered in the Scanlon
+hearts, even to uncles and second cousins. You would have taken him for
+a patriarch in the bosom of a family of which he was the joy and pride.
+He received the best half-caste society on his front porch, and
+dispensed Scanlon hospitality with a lavish hand. These untutored souls
+had no proper conception of barratry. They couldn't see any crime in
+running away with a schooner. They pitied the captain as a bold spirit
+who had met with undeserved misfortunes. The Samoan has ever a
+sympathetic hand for the fallen mighty, and the hand is never empty of a
+gift. Bananas, pineapples, _taro_, sugar cane, _palusami_, sucking pigs,
+chickens, eggs, _valo_--all descended on Satterlee in wholesale lots.
+Girls brought him _leis_ of flowers to wear round his neck; anonymous
+friends stole milk for his refreshment; pigeon hunters, returning
+singing from the mountains, deferentially laid their best at his feet.
+Nothing was too good for this unfortunate chief, who bore himself so
+nobly, and had a smile and a kind word for even the humblest of his
+admirers.
+
+On Sundays Skiddy paid the captain a periodical visit. He would bring
+the latest papers, if there were any, or a novel or two from his scanty
+stock. Their original friendship had died a violent death, but a new one
+had gradually risen on the ashes of the old. Skiddy had no more
+illusions in respect to this romantic-minded humbug and semi-pirate; but
+the man was likable, tremendously likable, and, in spite of himself, the
+little consul could not forbear suffering some of the pangs of remorse.
+The world was so big, so wide, with such a sufficiency of room for all
+(even romantic-minded humbugs and semi-pirates), and it was hard that
+Providence should have singled him out to clip this eagle's wings. There
+was something, too, very pathetic in Satterlee's contentment. He
+confided to Skiddy that he had never been so happy. With glistening eyes
+he would discourse on "these simple people," "these good hearts," "this
+lovely and uncontaminated paradise, where evil seems never to have set
+its hand," and expatiate generally on the beauty, charm, and
+tranquillity of Samoan life. He dreaded the time, he said, when a
+ruthless civilization would sweep it all away.
+
+Satterlee and he took long walks into the mountains, invariably
+accompanied by a Scanlon brother to give an official aspect to the
+excursion. It maintained the fast-disappearing principle that Satterlee
+was a convict and under vigilant guard. It served to take away the
+appearance, besides (which they might otherwise have presented), of two
+friends spending a happy day together in the country. A Scanlon brother
+stood for the United States Government and the majesty of law, and
+propriety demanded his presence as peremptorily as a chaperon for a
+young lady. A Scanlon brother could be useful, too, in climbing cocoanut
+trees, rubbing sticks together when the matches were lost, and in
+guiding them to noble waterfalls far hidden in the forest.
+
+In this manner nearly a whole year passed, which, for the little consul,
+represented an unavoidable monthly outlay of fifty-five dollars. He got
+somewhat used to it, as everybody gets somewhat used to everything; but
+he could not resist certain recurring intervals of depression when he
+contrasted his present circumstances with his bygone glory. Fifty-five
+dollars a month made a big hole in a consular income, and he would gaze
+down that ten-year vista with a sinking heart. But relief was closer at
+hand than he had ever dared to hope. From the Department? No, but from
+Satterlee himself.
+
+The news was brought to little Skiddy early one morning. Alfred Scanlon,
+with an air of gloom, deprecatingly coughed his way into the bedroom,
+and handed the consul a letter. It was written on pale pink note-paper,
+of the kind Samoans like best, with two lavender love birds embossed in
+the corner. It was from Satterlee. The letter ran thus:
+
+      DEAR FRIEND: _When this reaches you I shall be far
+      to sea. My excuse for so long subsisting on your bounty must
+      be laid to my ignorance, which was only illuminated two days
+      ago by accident. I had no idea that you were paying for me
+      out of your own private purse, or that my ease and comfort
+      were obtained at so heavy a cost to yourself. Regretfully I
+      bring our pleasant relations to an end, impelled, I assure
+      you, by the promptings of a heartfelt friendship. I loved
+      the simple people among whom my lot was cast, and looked
+      forward, at the termination of my sentence, to end the
+      balance of my days peacefully among them. The world, seen
+      from so great a distance, and from within so sweet a nest,
+      frightened me, old stager that I am. God knows, I have never
+      seen but its ugliest side, and return to it with profound
+      depression. Kindly explain my abrupt departure to the
+      Scanlons, and if you would do me a last favor, buy a little
+      rocking-horse that there is at Edward's store, price three
+      dollars, and present it in my name to my infant goddaughter,
+      Apeli Scanlon. To them all kindly express my warmest and
+      sincerest gratitude; and for yourself, dear friend, the
+      best, the truest, the kindest of men, accept the warm grasp
+      of my hand at parting. Ever yours,_
+
+      JOHN SATTERLEE.
+
+"It must have been the Hamburg bark that sailed last night," quavered
+Scanlon.
+
+Of course, Skiddy blew that Scanlon up. He wiped the floor with him. He
+roared at him till the great hulking creature shook like jelly, and his
+round black eyes suffused with tears. He made him sit down then and
+there, swore him on the consular Bible, and made him dictate a
+statement, which was signed in the presence of the cook. This
+accomplished, Alfred was ingloriously dismissed, while the consul went
+out on the back veranda, and sat there in his pajamas, to think the
+matter over.
+
+It seemed a pity to rouse the Department. The Department's interest in
+Satterlee could at no time have been called brisk, and it had now ebbed
+to a negligible quantity. But it would be just like the Department to
+get suddenly galvanized, and hysterically head Satterlee off at Hamburg.
+This would mean his ultimate return to Samoa, and a perpetual further
+outlay of fifty-five dollars from a hard-earned salary. No, he wouldn't
+worry the Department.... Let sleeping dogs lie. There were better ways
+of spending fifty-five dollars a month.
+
+That night the consul had champagne at dinner, and drank a silent toast:
+
+"Good luck to him, poor old devil!"
+
+
+
+
+FORTY YEARS BETWEEN
+
+
+"What am I to enter in the log, sir?" asked Mr. Francis, the first
+lieutenant.
+
+"There's an old-fashioned word for it," said Captain Hadow grimly.
+
+"Had it been my brother it couldn't have hurt me more," said Mr.
+Francis.
+
+"Everybody loved that boy."
+
+"It will break his father's heart, sir."
+
+"A deserter, by God!"
+
+"He had everything in the world," said Francis, in the tone of a man who
+himself had fought hard for every step. "He had influence, money of his
+own, brains, a splendid professional future, everything!"
+
+"All thrown away like that," said Captain Hadow, with a gesture of his
+hand.
+
+"And the handsomest fellow I believe I ever saw," said Mr. Francis.
+
+"The pick of the basket," agreed Hadow.
+
+"And to think," continued Mr. Francis, "that I must sit down at my desk
+and write: 'Past Midshipman John de Vigne Garrard, Deserter.'"
+
+The pair were pacing the quarter-deck of H.M.S. _Dauntless_ as she lay
+at anchor within the reef. It was at Borabora, one of the Society
+Islands, and the time forty years ago. The wonderful old rock, rising
+sheer naked and frowning from the bluest water in the world, seemed to
+those at its foot as though it were holding up the very sky itself.
+Precipice upon precipice dizzily scaled the basaltic heights, giving
+here and there, on little shelves and crannies, a foothold for a vivid
+vegetation. The peak itself, a landmark at sea for ninety miles around,
+was half-hidden in the gloom of squalls and scud, and sometimes, for a
+moment, it would be altogether lost to view in the fierce murkiness of
+driving rain. Below the mountain, on the flat shore of the lagoon, an
+uninterrupted belt of palms concealed the little villages of the
+islanders. Here, in idyllic peace, a population of extraordinary
+attractiveness, gentleness, and beauty led their life of secluded ease.
+Money was all but unknown; food could be had in abundance for the most
+trifling labor; clothes could be stripped from the bark of trees.
+Nature, giving with both hands, was repaid with an usury of poetry and
+song; and these happy people, children forever at heart, well mannered,
+gay, and instinct with an untamed nobility, bore themselves with the
+grace of those whom the gods loved.
+
+"As like as not he is watching us now from somewhere up there," said the
+captain, sweeping the summits with his glass.
+
+"I doubt it, sir," returned Mr. Francis. "It's my conviction he isn't a
+cable's length behind the village."
+
+"Did you offer the reward?" asked the captain.
+
+The first lieutenant looked embarrassed.
+
+"I told you to offer fifty pounds," said the captain tartly.
+
+"I ventured to raise it to a hundred, sir," said Mr. Francis. "We talked
+it over in the wardroom, and we thought we wouldn't risk the boy for a
+matter of a few pounds between us."
+
+"I wonder if the mess would have done the same for _me_?" observed the
+captain.
+
+"We hardly look forward to your putting yourself in that position, sir,"
+said Mr. Francis.
+
+"No, by God!" said the captain. "When I quit her Majesty's service it
+will be neither for pique nor for love."
+
+"No, indeed, sir," agreed the first lieutenant.
+
+"I've had my follies, too, Mr. Francis," said the captain. "Every man
+who is worth anything has some time or other made a fool of himself
+about a woman. I don't pretend to be better than my neighbors. I can't
+forget I was once young myself."
+
+"I'm afraid even a hundred pounds isn't going to fetch him," said Mr.
+Francis. "I could see it in the king's eyes he meant to keep the boy."
+
+"The lady in the case is the king's sister, I suppose--" said the
+captain, "that tall slip of a girl who was always making such
+sheep's-eyes at Jack. Gad! I don't wonder he preferred a bower in Eden
+with her to the steerage of a man-of-war and a pack of young devils
+incarnate! Who knows what might not have happened if she had made
+sheep's-eyes at me, Mr. Francis!"
+
+"Very true, sir, very true," returned Mr. Francis, who had no sense of
+humor.
+
+"She's about the sweetest thing I ever saw," went on the captain.
+
+The two men laughed.
+
+"I hope to goodness he'll be the only one," said Mr. Francis. "The fact
+is, the whole ship's in love; even the lower deck is off its feed; the
+boatswain says they're messing up the rigging with true-lovers' knots,
+and I'm told the marines are writing poetry."
+
+"Ah, if it had been anyone but him!" exclaimed the captain.
+
+"It's horrible to call him a deserter," said Francis.
+
+"Don't let's do it," said the captain.
+
+"We have to say something, sir," returned the first lieutenant
+helplessly.
+
+"One can always lie, I suppose," said Hadow.
+
+"There's nothing I wouldn't do myself for Jack Garrard," volunteered Mr.
+Francis.
+
+"Why not say he was kidnapped here by the hill tribes?" said Hadow. "We
+aren't certain sure he wasn't, and no one can deny but what he might
+have been."
+
+"But the admiral would be bound to inquire into it," said Mr. Francis.
+"Sooner or later he'd send a ship."
+
+"Trust Jack to do his own lying when she gets here," said Hadow.
+"Besides, he'll be sick of the whole thing by that time and only too
+glad to step aboard."
+
+"But won't we be asked why _we_ didn't rescue him?" asked Francis.
+
+"No, no--I have it!" cried the captain.
+
+"It's certainly a case for stretching a point, sir," said Mr. Francis.
+
+"Enter in the log," said the captain, speaking slowly and thoughtfully,
+"that Passed Midshipman John de Vigne Garrard, failing to report himself
+at the expiration of his leave, was afterwards discovered to have been
+kidnapped by the hill tribes of Borabora Island. On my threatening to
+land a party to recover him, I was dissuaded by King George, who cleared
+himself of any personal responsibility in the matter, and who promised,
+if only I would give him time, to recover the man without bloodshed or
+any cost to her Majesty's Government. The king urged that the use of
+force would imperil the officer's life, which otherwise he had every
+confidence would be spared."
+
+"Very good, sir," said Mr. Francis.
+
+"You'll give old George a flaming character," added Hadow.
+
+"Very good, sir," said Mr. Francis.
+
+"Pile it on about his reverence for the Queen, and the way he gave beef
+to the ship," said Hadow.
+
+"And what then, sir?" inquired Mr. Francis.
+
+"Well, you know," went on Hadow, "my orders down here leave me a pretty
+wide latitude. You can't tie down a surveying ship in wild waters the
+way you can a simple patrol. By God, sir, I'll put the ship back here in
+nine months and retake Master Johnny Garrard."
+
+"If he has any realization of his position he will then go down on his
+knees and thank you, sir," said Mr. Francis.
+
+"He's more likely to come aboard whistling!" exclaimed the captain.
+
+"Of course, it will involve a little--insincerity," said Mr. Francis.
+
+"You mean we'll have to lie like hell!" said the captain.
+
+"Well, yes," observed Mr. Francis.
+
+"I hope that's understood," said the captain. "But I can't bear to see a
+fine lad ruined for a bit of squeamishness. Were he thirty he might go
+hang; but nineteen--Good Lord! one must have a little mercy."
+
+"Where would any of us be now, sir," said Mr. Francis, "if we had each
+of us received full measure for a boyish error?"
+
+"I know I was a rotten bad egg myself," said Captain Hadow.
+
+"If I may say it without offense, sir," said Mr. Francis, "I think you
+are taking a very noble course in respect to this unfortunate lad."
+
+"Of course, I don't want you to think I justify desertion," said Hadow
+quickly, not ill pleased at the compliment. "Gad, sir, it's a shocking
+thing; bar actual cowardice, I positively know nothing worse. Were Jack
+my son, I'd rather see him stretched dead at my feet. I tell you, Mr.
+Francis, that when I first heard the news I was stunned; I felt myself
+trembling; the dishonor, the infamy of it struck me here." Captain Hadow
+laid his hand on his heart.
+
+Mr. Francis nodded a silent assent.
+
+"But we'll save him!" cried the captain. "We won't permit this ugly
+business to blast his life."
+
+"You may count, Captain Hadow, on our most loyal and hearty support,"
+said Mr. Francis.
+
+"Thank you," said the captain; "and you will pass the word along that
+the subject is one not to be discussed."
+
+"Quite so, sir," said the first lieutenant.
+
+"Not a word!" exclaimed the captain; "and of course you will cancel the
+reward before we sail. You might even coach old George a bit about the
+hill tribes. But, of course, not a whisper that we're ever coming
+back."
+
+"No, sir," said Mr. Francis.
+
+"That must go no farther than you and me," said Hadow.
+
+"It shall not, sir," returned the first lieutenant.
+
+"We shall sail to-night at the turn of the tide," said the captain.
+
+"Very good, sir," said Mr. Francis.
+
+It was not nine months--it was fifteen, and some days to spare--before
+the _Dauntless_ again raised the peak of Borabora and backed her
+mainyard off the settlement. In the course of that eventful year and a
+quarter she had zigzagged the whole chart of the eastern Pacific; and
+from French Frigate Shoals to Pitcairn, from Diamond Head to Little
+Rapa, she had sounded and plotted reefs innumerable, and had covered,
+with a searching persistency, vast areas of blue water dotted with e.
+d.'s and p. d.'s.[1] She had twice taken the ground, once so hard and
+fast that she had shifted her guns and lightered a hundred tons of
+stores among the gulls and mews of a half-sunken reef; she had had an
+affair with the unruly natives of the Walker Group, and had blown a
+village to fragments, and not a few of the Walkers themselves into a
+land as uncharted as their own; she had tried a beach-comber for
+murder, and had dangled him at the main yardarm, giving him later on a
+Church of England service, a hammock, and the use of a cannon ball at
+his feet; she had poked her nose into cannibal bays, where women of wild
+beauty and wilder license swam off to the ship in hundreds until the
+marines drove them back with muskets, and fired at their own comrades,
+who in their madness leaped into the water and were floated ashore in
+the arms of naked girls; she had lain for weeks in enormous atolls,
+where the only life was that of birds, and the silence was unbroken save
+for the long roll of the surf, and at night the ghostly scurrying of
+turtles over the sand; she had been everywhere in those labyrinthine
+seas, those haunts of romance and mystery, with love, danger, and death
+always close aboard.
+
+It was morning when Hadow raised the island, a fleecy speck of cloud
+against the sky line, and he shortened sail at once and lingered out the
+day so as to bring him up to it by dark. After supper every light on
+board was doused, and the great hull, gliding through the glass-smooth
+water, merged her steep sides and towering yards and canvas into the
+universal shadow. With whispering keel and a wind so fair and soft that
+one wondered to see the sails stiffen in the bolt ropes, the man-of-war
+stole steadily to leeward, with no sound but the occasional creak of
+cordage, or the hoarse murmur of voices from the lower deck. Hadow
+himself, pacing the quarter-deck in his boat cloak, was lost in reverie,
+while the wardroom and the steerage in unredeemed darkness held nothing
+but dozing men.
+
+By ten the ship was hove to close ashore, and the lights of the little
+settlement glimmered through the palms. The warm night, laden with
+exotic fragrance and strangely exciting in the intensity of its
+stillness and beauty, hid beneath its far-reaching pall the various
+actors of an extraordinary drama. With pistols buckled to their hips,
+Brady, Winterslea, Hotham, and Stanbury-Jones, four officers of the
+ship, together with Hatch, a flinty-faced old seaman who could be
+trusted, all slipped down the ladder into the captain's gig and pulled
+with muffled oars for the break in the reef. Picking their way through
+the pass, with the surf on either hand roaring in their ears, they
+slowly penetrated the lagoon and headed for the king's house. The
+shelving beach brought them to a stop, and all jumping out to lighten
+the boat, they drew her over the shingle and made her painter fast to a
+_pandanus_ tree. Then, acting in accordance with a preconcerted plan,
+Winterslea was sent forward to track down their prey, while the rest
+huddled together to await his return.
+
+Ten minutes, twenty minutes passed in palpitating suspense. A girl drew
+by wreathed in flowers; she looked out to sea, then up at the stars, and
+shrank again into the shadow. From the neighboring houses there came the
+sound of mellow voices and of laughter. A pig rooted and rustled among a
+heap of cocoanut shells. Half an hour passed, and from far across the
+water, as faint and silvery as some elfin signal, the ship sent her
+message of the time: six bells.
+
+Panting and crouching, Winterslea groped his way among them.
+
+"Come," he said.
+
+They followed him in silence, unloosing their holsters and grimly ready.
+A pair of handcuffs clinked in Hatch's jumper. They inhaled the deep
+breath of tried and resolute men inured to danger, and accustomed to
+give and to receive an unflinching loyalty.
+
+Winterslea, with keen perception, led the way like a bloodhound,
+skirting lighted houses and following devious inland paths. The
+comparative openness of the village began to give way to the ranker
+undergrowth of the plantations behind it. The path sank into a choking
+vegetation that stood on either side and brushed their faces as they
+followed in single file. A fallen tree gave them the passage of a
+stream.
+
+"There!" said Winterslea.
+
+The path opened out on a little clearing among the trees, and showed
+them, set on high, the out-lines of a native house. Like all Tahitian
+houses, it was on the model of a bird cage, and the oval wall of
+bamboos, set side by side, let through vertical streaks of light from
+the lamp or fire within. As the whole party drew nearer, they heard,
+deep below them on the other side, the pleasant sound of falling water,
+and realized the cliff they were mounting overlooked a little river at
+its foot. Here, in exquisite seclusion, Jack Garrard had chosen the spot
+for his moral suicide.
+
+Creeping up to the house and looking through the cracks of the bamboos,
+his comrades had view of him within. Dressed like a native in _tapa_
+cloth, with bare chest, and flowers in his tawny hair, the handsome boy
+was seated in a hammock. With her head against his knee, a beautiful
+girl was looking up into his face, one hand locked in his. In that land
+of pretty women she was the one that outshone them all--Tehea, the
+sister of the king, for whose sweet favor every man on board had sought
+in vain. And here she was, with her long hair loosened and her eyes
+swimming with love, looking up at the lad who had given name and honor
+to win her heart. The pair were hardly more than children; and Brady, a
+sentimentalist of forty, with red hair, sighed as he peeped through the
+eaves and thought of his own dear girl at home.
+
+Garrard laid down the pipe he had been smoking, and, in happy
+unconsciousness of any audience but the woman at his feet, began to
+sing. His voice had always been his greatest charm, and the means of
+gaining him the friendship of men much older than himself. It had won
+Hadow; it had won Francis. There was not a blue-jacket on board the
+_Dauntless_ but whose eyes had moistened under the spell of Jack's clear
+tenor. No one could render with such delicacy, purity, and sentiment
+those ballads, now so old-fashioned, that used to solace our seafaring
+fathers in the fifties.
+
+Jack lay back in the hammock, and with wonderful tenderness and feeling
+sang "Afton Water," repeating the last verse several times over. It was
+plain that something in it, some phrase or line, had deeply moved him,
+for he suddenly bent over and laid his face in his hands, shaking with a
+strange emotion. Tehea rose, and throwing her arms round his neck and
+forcing away his hands, pressed her lips to his wet eyes. Even as she
+did so Brady gave the signal for the whole party to move round to the
+entrance. He passed through first, the others close behind him. Jack
+leaped to his feet, white and speechless, his wide-open eyes those of an
+animal at bay. Brady, Winterslea, Stanbury-Jones, Hotham, Hatch, the
+familiar faces, daunted him like the sight of ghosts. Friends no longer,
+they were now avengers, with the right to track him down and kill him.
+
+[Illustration: "Jack leaped to his feet, white and speechless."]
+
+"Jack!" cried Brady in a stifled voice.
+
+The lad took a step back. The girl moaned, and tried to run between
+Hatch and Stanbury-Jones. The old seaman caught and shook her like a
+dog, tearing away the whistle she put to her lips and dashing it on the
+floor. Jack put up his hand and snatched a pistol hidden in the thatch
+of the roof. Brady, on the instant, leveled his own and thundered out:
+
+"Drop it, or I'll shoot!"
+
+"Shoot, and be damned!" returned Jack, and with that he turned his
+pistol on himself, and, placing the muzzle against his forehead, pulled
+the trigger.
+
+It missed fire.
+
+Before he could try again Brady had caught him round the neck, while
+Hatch, resigning the girl to Stanbury-Jones, ran in and snapped the
+handcuffs on his wrists.
+
+"Jack," cried Brady, "we aren't going to hurt you. We're rescuing you
+from the hill tribes. Man, you're saved!"
+
+"You never was no deserter," said Hatch.
+
+"Mind you back us up, old fellow," said Winterslea.
+
+"Give us your fin, boy," said Hotham.
+
+It was some time before Jack could pull himself together. When at last
+he did so, and began to appreciate the generosity of his captain and
+shipmates and their astounding concern to save him from the penalty of
+his crime, he underwent one of those reactions when despair gives way to
+the maddest gayety. He swore at Hatch, and made him take off the irons;
+he got out a bottle of white rum and forced them all to drink his
+health; he kept them in a roar with the story of his adventures, and
+laughed and cried in turn as he described his life ashore.
+
+"What does she want?" demanded Brady, as Tehea insistently repeated some
+words in native.
+
+"She says," said Jack, calmly picking up the whistle from the floor and
+touching it to his lips, "she says I've only to blow this and you will
+all be dead in five minutes."
+
+A hush fell upon the company.
+
+Jack, with an oath, flung the whistle from him.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, "I am grateful. I am damned grateful! If I live I
+shall try and repay each one of you. I shall try and be a better man. I
+shall try to be worthy of your kindness."
+
+He went round and shook hands solemnly with every one of them. "Damned
+grateful!" he repeated.
+
+"Let's be off," said Brady.
+
+"Now, lad, your word of honor," said Winterslea. Jack looked about him
+helplessly.
+
+"I suppose I've no right to ask such a thing," he said. "I know how good
+you've been to me already, and all that. But--but, gentlemen, she's my
+wife. I love her. I shall never see her again. May I not entreat a
+minute to myself?"
+
+"No," said Brady.
+
+Jack went over to Tehea and took her hand. He put his arms about her,
+and, unashamed before them all, pressed her comely head against his
+breast. He tried to explain the inexorable fate he was so powerless to
+resist; in incoherent whispers he told her he would break his chains and
+return to her, free in the years to come to devote his life to the woman
+he loved. He called her the dearest names, and begged her not to forget
+him. But she, with a perception greater than his own, swept away these
+despairing protestations with disdain. The daughter of one king, the
+sister of another, could she not meet force by force? These fierce
+intruders, with their rough voices and drawn pistols, who were they, to
+threaten a princess of the royal blood and carry away her lover before
+her eyes? If they were strong, she was stronger; and what ship cannon,
+she asked, however murderous or far-ranging, could penetrate those
+mountain recesses whither she would carry him before the morning? Ah,
+she said, it was for him to choose between her and them; between Britain
+and the island; between love and the service of the white Queen beyond
+the seas.
+
+"I have chosen," he said.
+
+Her eyes flashed as she freed herself from his arms.
+
+"I am hateful in my own sight for having loved you," she said.
+
+"Will you not even wish me well, Tehea?" he asked.
+
+"No," she cried, "I hope you will die!" He turned away.
+
+"_Siati!_" she cried after him in agony.
+
+He turned back to her, downcast and silent.
+
+"Remember," she said with sweet relenting, "that wherever thou goest,
+however many the years that may divide us, however wide the waters or
+the land, I shall be here waiting for thee, here in this house of our
+happiness; and if I die before thou comest here thou wilt find my
+grave."
+
+"Tehea," he said, "as God sees me, some day I shall return!"
+
+She took his hands and looked up into his face with such poignant
+longing and tenderness, that Jack's comrades, already uncomfortable
+enough, were quite overborne by the scene. Tough old Hatch snuffled
+audibly, and Brady could hardly speak.
+
+"Come, come, lad," he cried huskily, "you mustn't keep us longer!"
+
+Jack unclasped the girl's hands and suffered himself to be led away by
+his comrades. Stumbling and falling against one another in the dark,
+they made shift to find the uncertain path, Winterslea, in the lead,
+coo-eeing like a bushfellow for them to follow. Little by little they
+gained the sleeping village, and pressed on to the beach beyond, where
+their boat was already afloat on the incoming tide. They took their
+places without a word and pulled out in the direction of the ship. In
+the pass, rising and falling in the heavy swell, they burned a blue
+light, which the _Dauntless_ answered with another, and ran up a
+masthead lantern to guide them. A few minutes later they clambered up
+the ladder, the boat was hoisted in, and the boatswain's whistle was
+rousing the watch on deck:
+
+"Mainsail haul!"
+
+By morning the island had sunk behind them, and standing on the dizzy
+main-royal yard with one arm round the mast, Jack could make out nothing
+but a little cloud on the horizon.
+
+At sixty, John Garrard was a post captain, a Knight Commander of the
+Bath, and within a year of receiving flag rank and the command of a
+fleet. His career had been more than distinguished, and he had won his
+way to the front as much by his fine personal qualities as by his
+invariable good judgment and high professional attainments. He had
+earned the character of a man who could be trusted in situations
+involving tact, temper, and diplomatic skill; and no captain in the navy
+was more confidently ordered to those scenes of international tension,
+which, in spite of statesmen, so often arise in some distant place to
+menace the peace of the world.
+
+He had never married, and when rallied on the subject was wont to say
+with a laugh that the sea was his only mistress. No one had ever
+ventured to question him much further, though his friends were often
+piqued, especially the women, as to an implied romance in the captain's
+earlier life. It was known he supported two old-maid sisters, the Misses
+Hadow, the impoverished daughters of his first commander; but in view of
+his considerable private fortune this drain on his resources seemed
+scarcely the reason of his renunciation. Nor did it seem to his admirers
+that any woman could have had the heart to refuse him, for even at sixty
+he was a noticeably handsome man, and was endowed, besides, with more
+than the advantage of good looks, a charm of manner, a distinction, a
+captivating gallantry that made him everywhere a favorite.
+
+He was in command of the _Inflexible_ battleship, one of the Australian
+squadron, when she developed some defects in her hydraulic turning gear
+and was ordered home to England by Admiral Lord George Howard for
+overhaul. The captain's heart beat a little faster as he realized his
+course would take him south of the Societies. He spread out the chart on
+his cabin table and sighed as he laid his finger on Borabora. He shut
+his eyes, and saw the basaltic cliffs, the white and foaming reefs, the
+green, still forests of that unforgotten island. He was a boy once more,
+with flowers in his hair, wandering beneath the palms with Tehea. How
+often had he thought of her during all these years; the years that had
+left him gray and old; the years that had carried him unscathed through
+so many dangers in every quarter of the world! For him she was still in
+her adorable girlhood, untouched by time, a radiant princess in her
+radiant isle, waiting by the shore for his return. It shocked him to
+remember she was not far short of sixty--a fat old woman, perhaps,
+married to some strapping chief, and, more than likely, with grown
+children of her own! How incredible it seemed!
+
+But a word, and he might land and see her. But a word, and the questions
+of forty years might yet be answered--answered, yes, to shatter, as like
+as not, with pitiless realities the tender figment of a dream. No, he
+said, he dared not expose himself to a possible disillusion, to play
+into the hands of sardonic nature, ever mocking at man. No; but he would
+carry his ship close inshore and watch from the bridge the unfolding
+bays and tiny settlements of that lost paradise, and then, dipping his
+flag to his vanished youth, he would sink over the horizon, his memory
+thrilled and his sentiment unimpaired, to set his face for England.
+
+Dawn was breaking as he slowed down to leeward of the island and watched
+the shadows melt away. It was Sunday, a day of heavenly calm, fresh yet
+windless, with a sea so smooth that the barrier reefs for once were
+silent, and one could hear, far across the hushed and shining water, the
+coo of pigeons in the forest. Under bare steerage way, with the leadsman
+droning in the fore chains, the ship hugged the shore and steamed at a
+snail's pace round the island. On the lofty bridge, high above the
+wondering faces of his command, the white-haired captain, impassive,
+supreme, and solitary, gave no sign of those inner emotions that were
+devouring him. Along the shore the sight of the battleship brought out
+here and there a startled figure or a group; a couple of laughing girls,
+astride on ponies, raced the _Inflexible_ for a mile, and then, their
+road ending in a precipice, threw kisses with their saucy hands; little
+children ran out into the lagoon, shouting with joy; old men, in Sunday
+_parius_ and with black Bibles under their arms, turned their solemn
+eyes to seaward and forgot for a moment the road to church. A white man,
+in striped pajamas, was surprised at morning coffee on the veranda of
+his little house. He darted inside, and reappeared with a magazine rifle
+which he emptied in the air, and followed up his courtesies by raising
+and lowering a Union Jack the size of a handkerchief. The battleship
+dipped her stately white ensign in acknowledgment, as a swan might
+salute a fly, and swept on with majesty.
+
+With every mile the bays and wooded promontories grew increasingly
+familiar as Sir John was borne toward Lihua, the scene of his boyish
+folly. He looked ashore in wonder, surprised at the vividness and
+exactness of his recollection. He might have landed anywhere and found
+his way through those tangled, scented paths with no other guide but
+memory. There was Papaloloa with its roaring falls; there, the ti'a a
+Peau where he had shot his first goat; yonder, the misty heights of
+Tiarapu, where Tehea and he had camped a night in the clouds in an air
+of English cold. It was like a home-coming to see all these familiar
+scenes spreading out before him. He looked at his hands, his thin,
+veined, wrinkled hands, and it came over him with a sort of wonder that
+he was an old man.
+
+"That was forty years ago," he said to himself. "Forty years ago!"
+
+And yet, by God! it all seemed like yesterday.
+
+As Lihua opened out and he perceived, with an inexpressible pang, the
+thatched houses set deep in the shade of palms and breadfruit trees, he
+felt himself in the throes of a strange and painful indecision. He paced
+up and down the bridge; he lit a cigar and threw it away again; he twice
+approached Captain Stillwell as though to give an order, and then,
+still in doubt, turned shamefacedly on his heel.
+
+"By the deep nine!" came the hoarse murmur of the leadsman.
+
+It lay with him to stop the ship or not; a word, and she would come
+shivering to a standstill; a word, and the boatswain would pipe away his
+gig and the crew would be running to their places. His heart ached with
+the desire to land, but something, he knew not what, withheld the order
+on his lips. Let him remain silent, and the opportunity would pass away
+forever; it was passing now with every turn of the propeller. Had he not
+told her he would return? Had he not whispered it that night when they
+were torn apart? Did he not owe it to her to keep the promise of forty
+years, a promise given in the flush of youth and hope, and sealed with
+scalding tears?
+
+His resolution was taken. He ordered Captain Stillwell to stop the ship
+and lower a boat.
+
+"I am going to treat myself to a run ashore," he said by way of
+explanation.
+
+The vessel slowly stopped. The covers were whipped off the gig. She was
+hoisted out and lowered, the crew dropping down the ladder into their
+places at the peep-peep-peep of the whistle.
+
+"I leave the ship," said Sir John, not to convey a fact patently
+obvious, but in obedience to a naval formula.
+
+He was landed at a little cove where in bygone days he had often whiled
+away an hour waiting in charge of Hadow's boat. It gave him a singular
+sensation to feel the keel grate against the shingle, and to find
+himself once more setting foot in Lihua. He drew a deep breath as he
+looked about and noticed how unchanged it all was. There were some new
+houses in new places, and grass on the sites of others that were
+endeared to him in recollection; but it was Lihua, after all, the Lihua
+of his boyhood, the Lihua of his dreams. For a while he strolled about
+at random, walking with the phantoms of the past, hearing their
+laughter, seeing their faces, recalling a thousand things he had
+forgotten.
+
+It came over him with a start that the village was empty. Then he
+remembered it was Sunday, and they were all in church. Thank God, there
+was none to watch him; no prying, curious eyes to disturb his thoughts.
+But they would soon be out again, and it behooved him to make the best
+use of his solitude while he might. He struck inland, his heart beating
+with a curious expectancy; at every sound he held his breath, and he
+would turn quickly and look back with a haunting sense that Tehea was
+near him; that perhaps she was gazing at him through the trees. He
+approached his old home through overgrown plantations. It awed him to
+part the branches and to feel himself drawing nearer at every step to
+the only house he had ever called his own. As he heard the splashing
+waterfall he stopped, not daring for the moment to go on. When at last
+he did so, and mounted the little hill, he found no house at all;
+nothing but ferns and weeds, man-high. He moved about here and there, up
+to the armpits in verdure, in a sort of consternation at discovering it
+gone.
+
+His foot struck against a boulder.
+
+He had forgotten there were any rocks on the hill. He moved along, and
+his foot struck again. He pressed the weeds back and looked down. He saw
+a tomb of crumbling cement, green with age and buried out of sight under
+the tangle.
+
+It had never occurred to him before that Tehea might be dead.
+
+He held back the undergrowth again and peered into the depths. Yes, it
+was the grave of a chief, or of a woman of rank, one of those artless
+mounds of cement and rock that the natives, with poetic fancy, used to
+call _falelauasi_, houses of sandalwood; _oliolisanga_, or the place
+where birds sing; or, in vulgar speech, simply _tuungamau_, or tombs.
+These words, unspoken, unthought of for forty years, lost, overlaid, and
+forgotten in some recess of his brain, now returned to him with
+tormenting recollection. He laid both hands on the thick stem of a shrub
+and tore it out of the ground. He seized another and dragged it out with
+the same ferocity. It was intolerable that she should suffocate under
+all this warm, wet jungle; he would give her air and sunshine, she that
+had loved them both; he would uncover the poor stones that marked her
+last resting place; he would lay bare the earth that wrapped her dead
+beauty.
+
+He worked with desperation until his hands were bleeding, until his eyes
+were stung and blinded with the streaming sweat. Dizzy with the heat,
+parched with thirst, and sick with the steam that rose from the damp
+ground, he was forced again and again to desist and rest. He cut his
+waistcoat into slips and bound them round his bloody hands; he broke the
+blades of his penknife on recalcitrant roots that defied the strength of
+his arms; he labored with fury to complete the task he had set before
+him. Here he stood, within four walls of vegetation, the sky above him,
+the cracked and rotted tomb below, satisfied at last by the
+accomplishment of his duty. The gold on his sleeves was dirty and
+disordered; one of his shoulder-straps dangled loose from his sodden
+coat; his trousers were splashed with earth. But for the moment the post
+captain was forgotten in the man, as he mused on the tragedy of human
+life, on the mysteries of love and death and destiny, on his own
+irrevocable youth now so far behind him, when he had forfeited his honor
+for the dead woman at his feet. He called her aloud by name. He bent
+down and kissed her mossy bed. He whispered, with a strange conviction
+that she could hear him, that he had kept his promise to return.
+
+Then, rising to his feet, he turned toward the sea and retraced his
+steps. The people were still in church, and the village was deserted as
+before. He walked swiftly lest they might come flocking out before he
+could reach his boat, to torture him with recognition, with the
+questions they would ask, with their story of Tehea's death. Then he
+laughed at his own fears, remembering his white hair and the intervening
+generation. Time had passed over Borabora, too. The world, he
+remembered, was older by forty years--older and sadder and emptier.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He swung himself up the ladder, mounted the bridge, and put the vessel
+on her course. The telegraph rang, the engineers repeated back the
+signal, and the great battleship, vibrating with her mighty engines,
+resumed once more her ponderous way.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: "Existence doubtful; position doubtful," familiar
+contractions still on any Pacific chart.]
+
+
+
+
+O'S HEAD
+
+
+Silver Tongue loved Rosalie, and Rosalie loved Silver Tongue, and ever
+since they had first met at the Taufusi Club dance their friends had
+seen the inevitable finish of their acquaintance. They were invited
+everywhere together, and the affair had progressed from the first or
+furtive stage to the secondary or solemn Sunday drive about the Eleele
+Sa. The third, that of carpenters adding a story to the bakery and
+dressmakers hard at work in Miss Potter's little establishment, was
+looming up close in view.
+
+Never was a match in Apia that gave a rosier promise of success. Silver
+Tongue, so called by the Samoans on account of his beautiful voice (but
+who in ordinary life answered to the homelier appellation of
+Oppenstedt), had been making a very good thing out of the Southern Cross
+Bakery, and was regarded throughout Apia as a man of responsibility and
+substance. He was a tall, spare German of about forty, who, like the
+most of us, had followed the sea before fate had brought him to the
+islands, there in years gone by to marry a Samoan maid and settle down.
+The little Samoan had died, leaving behind her nothing but a memory in
+Silver Tongue's heart, a tangled grave in the foreign cemetery, and a
+host of relations who lived in tumble-down quarters in the rear of the
+bakery. In one way and another these hungry mouths must have been a
+considerable drain on Silver Tongue's resources; and though they feebly
+responded to his bounty--one by driving a natty cart and delivering hot
+morning rolls, and another by pilfering firewood for the furnace--the
+account (if one had been made) was far from even. But to any objection
+to this Quixotic generosity Silver Tongue had a reply ever ready on his
+lips. "I lofe dem like my fader," he would say in his deep, fluty voice,
+and the conversation was seldom carried further. When it was--by some
+one ill advised enough to do so--Silver Tongue would flare up, and
+recall with flashing eyes and a face crimson with indignation the
+ten-year debt of gratitude he owed his dead wife's _ainga_.
+
+Indeed, if Silver Tongue had a fault it was a certain moroseness and
+fierceness of temper, a readiness and even an apparent pleasure in
+taking offense, that made him somewhat of a solitary in our midst and
+threw him more than ever on the companionship of his own Kanakas; so
+that at night, when one had occasion to seek him out, he was usually to
+be found on the mats of his native house, smoking his pipe or playing
+_sweepy_ with his bulky father-in-law, Papalangi Mativa. I doubt if he
+had another intimate in Apia besides myself, and though I must confess
+we often disagreed, and once or twice approached the verge of
+estrangement, I was too much his friend and too mindful of the old days
+on the _Ransom_ to let such trifles come between us.
+
+I was, besides, Rosalie's friend as well, for old Clyde, her father, had
+died in my arms at Nonootch, and with his last breath had consigned her
+to my care. This obligation, rendered sacred by an association that
+extended back to the days of Steinberg and Bully Hayes, when in the
+_Moroa_ and the _Eugenie_ we had slept under the same mats and had
+played our part together in the stirring times of Stewart and the great
+Atuona Plantation--this obligation, I say, I met easily enough so long
+as Rosalie was a child and safe in the convent at Savalalo. But when she
+grew to womanhood and went to live with her relations in their shanty
+near the Firm, I began to experience some anxiety in regard to her. Her
+relations, to begin with, were not at all the kind of natives I liked.
+They had been too long the hangers-on of the Firm, and had seen too much
+of a low class of whites to be the proper guardians of a very pretty
+half-caste of eighteen. They had an ugly name, besides--but I won't be
+censorious--and it may have been all beach talk. But they were certainly
+a whining, begging lot, the girls bold and the men impudent and saucy,
+and I never saw Rosalie in their midst but it made me heartsick for her
+future.
+
+I did the little I could, and let it be pretty well understood about the
+beach that the man who played fast and loose with her would have to
+reckon with old Captain Branscombe. And then I got the missionary ladies
+to take her up, and as I never stinted a bit of money for her dresses
+and what not (as though Clyde's daughter wasn't worthy of the best in
+the land), she made good headway in what little gayeties took place in
+the town. Of course, I went about to keep an eye on her--that is, when
+they asked me to their parties, which wasn't always; and I remember once
+making very short work of one fellow, a labor captain from the Westward,
+who seemed bent on mischief till I took him out in the starlight and
+showed him the business end of my gun. To tell the truth, I never had a
+peaceful moment till he up anchor and cleared, for he was a good deal
+the kind of man I was at thirty, and he hung on in spite of me, keeping
+half the family in his pay while I kept the other, and he even landed
+the last night with muffled oars, when, instead of finding Rosalie on
+the beach to fly with him, he ran into _me_, laying for him under an
+umbrella!
+
+There were many who said I was in love with the girl myself, which, as
+like as not, was true; for she was one of those tall, queenly women,
+with a wonderful grace to anything she did, and magnificent dark eyes,
+and a way of smiling,--brilliant, arch, and tender--that made even an
+old stager of sixty remember he still wore a heart under his jumper.
+Yes, I had a pretty soft spot for Rosalie, though I had sense enough to
+know that God had never meant her for an old sea horse like myself. And
+lacking me--whom the weight of three-score years had put out of the ring
+(not but what I'm a pretty game old devil yet)--I could see nobody in
+sight I preferred half so much as Silver Tongue.
+
+So there was the situation till the war of Ninety-three came along to
+jumble us all up and knock everything to spillikins. Oppenstedt in love
+with Rosalie; Rosalie in love with Oppenstedt; Bahn and old Taylor
+working on the second story of the Southern Cross Bakery; Miss Potter
+doing double tides at the trousseau, and I, the friend of both, with a
+six-hundred-dollar piano on the way from Bremen for their wedding
+present. A fair wind, port in sight, and (say you) everything drawing
+nicely alow and aloft. So it was till that wretched fight at Vaitele,
+when the Vaimaunga came pouring in at dusk, bearing wounded, chorusing
+their songs, and tossing in the air above them the heads of their dead
+enemies. It made me feel bad to see it all, for to me these people were
+children, and it seemed horrible they should kill one another; and it
+made me sicker still to watch the wounded carried into the Mission and
+stretched out in rows on the blood-stained boards. Though not a drinking
+man, I braced up at Peter's bar and then went on to pass the time of day
+with Oppenstedt.
+
+I found him, as usual, on the mats of the native house, glumly smoking a
+pipe and talking politics with Papalangi Mativa. His lean, dark,
+handsome face was overcast, his eyes uneasy, and had I not known him for
+a brave man I should have thought that he was frightened. He was
+certainly very curt and short in greeting me, and I had a dim perception
+that my visit was unwelcome.
+
+"This is a black business, Silver Tongue," I said; though, to be exact,
+I called him Leoalio, which means the same thing in native.
+
+"Plack!" he exclaimed. "It's horrible! It's disgusting! They have been
+cutting off beople's heads!"
+
+"Fourteen by one count," I said; "twenty-two by another."
+
+"Gabtain," said he with a look of extraordinary gravity, "dere's worse
+nor that!"
+
+"Worse?" I said.
+
+"I have it straight from Papalangi Mativa himself."
+
+"Have what?" I asked.
+
+"Excellency," said Papalangi Mativa, "perhaps it is not high-chief-known
+to thee that I and mine come from a noble Savai'i stock, and that the
+son of my mother's sister, a stripling named O, numbered himself among
+the enemy and was to-day killed and his head taken on the field of
+Vaitele."
+
+[Illustration: "'This is a black business, Silver Tongue,' I said."]
+
+"_Aue!_" I said, which in Kanaka is being sympathetic.
+
+"Dat is not all," said Silver Tongue. "Listen, gabtain!"
+
+"I'm listening," I said.
+
+"The warrior that killed O was To'oto'o, the _matai_," continued
+Papalangi Mativa with the air of one announcing the end of the world.
+
+"To'oto'o!" I said in all innocence.
+
+"To'oto'o," cried Silver Tongue; "why, Rosalie's uncle, the _faipule_,
+in whose house this very minute the head of my murdered relation lies!"
+
+"'Pon my soul," I exclaimed, "this is really unfortunate!"
+
+"Unfordunate!" cried Silver Tongue; "is it with such a word you describe
+two hearts broken, two lives plasted, the fairest prospect with suddenly
+crash the curdain led down!"
+
+"I don't know what you're talking about," I said. "It's disagreeable, I
+admit, but I can't see what difference it can make to you and Rosalie."
+
+"An Oppenstedt," said Silver Tongue, "could never indermarry with the
+family of a murderer, and least of all with a family that had the head
+of my dead wife's relation cut off and carried with gapers and cries of
+joy down the main street of Apia and past my place of peeziness!"
+
+"Do you mean to say it's all off with you and Rosalie?" I demanded.
+
+Silver Tongue nodded grimly. "All off," he said.
+
+"And you're going to break my girl's heart," I cried with what I think,
+under the circumstances, was a very justifiable indignation, "because
+the son of the aunt of your father-in-law has had his head cut off by
+poor Rosalie's adopted uncle?"
+
+"That's right," said Silver Tongue.
+
+"Old friend," I said, "let me go before I say something I might regret."
+I got up without waiting for any answer and strode into the street, too
+consumed with anger to utter another word. I walked along the beach,
+stopping here and there to discuss the news of the battle with those of
+my friends I happened to meet, until at last I passed Savalalo and drew
+near To'oto'o's house at Songi. Rosalie was standing at the gate, and
+when she saw me she ran up, threw her arms round my neck and kissed me.
+I had never known her so excited or so gay, and even in the dark I could
+see that her beautiful eyes were shining.
+
+"Captain," she said, giving me a hug, "nobody will ever say a word
+against To'oto'o again, or try to belittle him as they used to, just
+because he's poor and lives on Seu's land, for to-day he fought like a
+lion and covered himself with glory!"
+
+"Took a head, or something?" I said.
+
+"A hero!" she exclaimed. "They are composing a song in his honor; all
+Songi is ringing with his name; and he was complimented for his valor by
+the President and Chief Justice! You must come in and see it at once."
+
+"See what?" I asked.
+
+"The head!" she cried.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I haven't the heart to write how the news was broken to Rosalie, who
+steadfastly refused to believe the truth until she had heard it from
+Silver Tongue himself. I had hoped he might relent, with a night to
+think it over and a letter from myself in the morning pointing out his
+injustice and folly. Perhaps, now I remember it, that letter was a
+mistake. It was a trifle warm in spots, and I dare say I let a natural
+irritation get the better of me. Be that as it may, Oppenstedt was deaf
+to reason and protested with undiminished vehemence that he refused to
+ally himself with the family of a murderer. Indeed, so ridiculous did he
+get on the subject that he sent to Sydney for a tombstone (I daren't
+write headstone, though it was one, about the size of a silk hat) and
+put it behind the bakery above the spot where O's head was buried in a
+gin case.
+
+When a girl has gone a certain length she seems less able than a man to
+withstand a disappointment in love. Silver Tongue simply clenched his
+teeth, withdrew from the Concordia Club and the Wednesday night bowls at
+Conrad's, and went on baking bread and rolls much as usual. Poor Rosalie
+drooped like a flower in the sun, and though she had pride enough to act
+a part and show a becoming spirit before the world, she had received a
+wound that I sometimes feared might prove mortal. I sent her to Tonga
+Taboo for a month, and she came back no better, her eyes black ringed
+and her cheeks hollow, and her smile (always to me the most beautiful
+smile in the world), with a curious, haunting pathos that I remember so
+well in the old slaving days among the Line women in their chains.
+
+You must not think I tamely acquiesced in this state of affairs, or
+allowed my old friend an undisturbed possession of the Kanaka quarters
+behind the bakery. Late or early I gave him no peace, and plagued him, I
+dare say, to the very verge of distraction. But I might as well have
+tried to argue with his bread or soften his brick furnace for any
+impression I succeeded in making upon him. In his crazy obstinacy he
+would listen to nothing, and I would find myself, after one of these
+interviews, in a state of indescribable exasperation and determined
+never to go near him again.
+
+One night, when I was up at Malifa calling on a dear good friend of
+mine, Sasa French, a charming and most accomplished young native lady,
+our talk happened to run for the thousandth time on this vexing matter
+of Rosalie and Silver Tongue. All of a sudden an idea came into Sasa's
+pretty head--one of those brilliant, clever, feminine ideas--that seemed
+to us, in that triumphant moment, to be the means of untangling all our
+difficulties. Though it was eight o'clock, and there was the risk of
+gossip in my driving Sasa French alone about the Municipality at such an
+hour, I put her into my buggy, whipped up my horse, and set a straight
+course for Seumanutafa, the high chief of Apia. He laughed a good deal,
+demurred somewhat, and was finally persuaded to squeeze his Herculean
+dimensions into the trap and start off with us for To'oto'o's house at
+Songi. Here, after the usual ceremonious exchanges, the womenfolk and
+children melted away and left us alone with To'oto'o, whose ferretty
+eyes betrayed no small degree of curiosity and alarm. This man was one
+of the few Samoans I never liked. He was a gaunt, dangerous,
+crafty-looking customer of about fifty, and I never had had any use for
+him since he had stolen my tethering rope one evening when I was calling
+on the king. Well, to get on with my story, we talked about the weather,
+and the war, and what an ass the Ta'ita'ifono was, and finally got round
+to the matter in hand.
+
+Seumanutafa began mild, for he was a past master in the art of
+graduation, and thought to go slow at first. To'oto'o was informed that
+he had to make _ifonga_ for the death of O and be carried on the morrow
+by the _taulelea_ to Papalangi Mativa's house behind the bakery. This
+_ifonga_, as they call it, is a sort of public humiliation to expiate a
+fault, and nobody's very keen about doing it unless they have to--for it
+involves rubbing dirt in your hair, and singing small, and suffering a
+sort of social eclipse for a week or two afterwards. To'oto'o's face
+grew several shades darker at the suggestion, and though I promised him
+twenty dollars out of hand for himself and two kegs of beef and three
+tins of biscuit by way of peace offering to Papalangi Mativa, he hemmed
+and hawed and finally said no.
+
+Then Sasa bore a hand and spoke beautifully of Rosalie, and how this
+unfortunate business of O's head had divided her from Silver Tongue.
+
+"If thou makest peace with his _ainga_," said Sasa, "lo, what is there
+left for the white man to say? His bond is that of marriage; theirs,
+that of blood; and if the last be satisfied, what room is there for the
+former to complain?"
+
+"But to be carried like a pig through the public street!" cried
+To'oto'o. "Preferable far would be death itself than that the son of
+chiefs should be thus degraded, and his name become a mock throughout
+the Tuamasanga!"
+
+"O To'oto'o," said Seumanutafa, "we know thee for a brave man, and that
+thou tookst this head in open battle, even as David did that of Goliath,
+and I swear thee thy honor shall remain undimmed for all the seeming
+appearance of humiliation. Besides, is it not written in the Holy Book
+that thou shouldst turn the other cheek to the smiter? Is it not said
+also that blessed is the peacemaker, and that the meek shall inherit the
+earth?"
+
+"Weighty is my grief and pain," said To'oto'o, "but what your Highness
+asks of me is impossible!"
+
+"O To'oto'o," said Seumanutafa, "this house is mine; this land is mine;
+the plantation _i uta_ is mine also. Thou livest under the shadow of my
+power, and it is meet thou shouldst pay in service for the bounty thou
+hast so long enjoyed. First I spoke to thee as one brave man to another;
+then as a Christian to a fellow-Christian; now I command thee as thy
+chief, and verily thou shalt obey!"
+
+"And I will add to that twenty, making it twenty-five," I said.
+
+"And Rosalie shall marry her Silver Tongue after all," said Sasa.
+
+To'oto'o argued a little more for form's sake, and blustered somewhat
+about the Chief Justice, and how he would fight the matter out in the
+courts; but Seumanutafa's tone grew peremptory, and the old fellow
+finally gave way all round. Then _'ava_ was brought in, the
+arrangements made for the morrow, and we at length said _tofa_ on the
+threshold, well pleased with our night's work.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I wish you could have seen us next day going through the town in a
+little procession, headed by To'oto'o lashed to a pole and borne by a
+crowd of retainers. There was a flavor of the burial of Sir John Moore
+about the whole business--especially the hush--and not a funeral note
+being heard; we marching with measured tread, the municipal police
+bringing up the rear, and Seumanutafa in the center, nearly seven feet
+high, and bearing a white umbrella above his stately head.
+
+Silver Tongue was standing in the front of his shop having an
+altercation with the Chief Justice about a ham (for he did a little in
+groceries as well as baked) as we hove in sight and began to file down
+the lane to Papalangi Mativa's quarters behind the Southern Cross
+Bakery. I suppose Silver Tongue thought our man was hurt, or something,
+for he came running after us with a bottle of square-face and a packet
+of first aid to the wounded, elbowing his way excitedly through the
+crowd to where we had deposited To'oto'o at the feet of Papalangi
+Mativa. He was the most astonished baker in the South Seas as he saw who
+lay there in the jumble of beef and biscuit, and for a moment was too
+stupefied to let out a word.
+
+I don't mean to go into the speech-making part of the performance, for
+what between Seumanutafa and Papalangi Mativa, and the talking-man Sasa
+had lent me for the occasion, and a divinity student who happened along,
+and somebody who said he was Fale Upolu and spoke for the entire Group,
+and an aged _faipule_ from the Union Islands who seemed to have some
+kind of a grievance about his father's head, and the Chief Justice who
+had to butt in with the capitation tax--we were kept there a matter of
+three hours or more, until at last the principals officially made it up,
+To'oto'o was forgiven, and everything ended happily.
+
+"Now, Silver Tongue," I said as the meeting dispersed, "we'll consider
+that head affair canceled, and if you'll come over to my house to-night
+I dare say you'll find Rosalie sitting on the front veranda!"
+
+"And do you for a moment think," he said with a strange, writhen smile,
+"dat all dis talk and domfoolery will a gruel murder undo, and the young
+man cut off in his brime restore? Weel those lips, so gold in death,
+stir, think you, in the box where we laid him? Will my dead wife's
+family be less bereaved because of two kegs of peef and three tins of
+biscuit, or Rosalie's family less disgraced because her uncle was triced
+through the streets like a big? No, Gaptain Branscombe, I'm only a poor
+paker, but I'd count myself a traidor to my family were I to dake a
+murderess for my pride!"
+
+"Rosalie isn't a murderess," I said.
+
+"I meant niece of a murderer," he returned.
+
+I was too speechless with indignation to utter another word. In the
+course of sixty years on this planet I've seen many kinds of men, and
+I've learned to detect in some a certain look about the eyes--a curious
+light and a far-away dreaminess of expression--that seems always the
+sign or mark of an unflinching obstinacy. I remember that self-same look
+on Brand's face as we lay all flattened on the water tanks of the
+_Moroa_, and he blew the main deck off the ship together with three
+hundred human beings; and I guess the Christian martyrs had it, too,
+when lions tore them to pieces and bulls kited them on their horns in
+the Colosseum. Anyway, it was as plain as daylight that I had lost my
+time and money in bothering about Oppenstedt, and that I might as well
+give him up as the most incorrigible, stiff-necked, self-opinionated,
+blunder-headed ass and lunatic this side of Muggin.
+
+I gave him a wide berth after this, and took the other side of the
+street when I saw him coming; while he, for his part, would have
+cheerfully run a mile for the chance of avoiding me. I had cares of my
+own, too, about this time, what with the loss of the _Daisy Walker_, and
+my libel suit with Grevsmuhl, and other things to think about than that
+of bringing twin souls together. So the days drifted on and months came
+and went, and it seemed all over for good between Rosalie and Silver
+Tongue. Then that labor captain turned up again, him I had had trouble
+with before, a black-eyed, fierce, handsome little fellow, who was
+hotter than ever after my girl. Rosalie was just in the humor to do
+something awful, for she was desperately unhappy, with spells of wild
+gayety between, and a recklessness about herself that frightened me more
+than I can tell. She laughed in my face when I warned her about the
+labor captain, and told me straight out she was only a half-caste and it
+didn't matter what became of her. And from the way she carried on and
+got herself talked about from one end of the beach to the other, it
+began to look as though she meant what she said. Altogether I felt
+pretty blue about her, and savage enough against Silver Tongue to
+have--Well, what on earth could I do? What could anybody do? Why had God
+ever made such a silly ass of a baker?
+
+One day I got a note from Sasa French that took me up to Malifa at a
+tearing run. Scanlon, the half-caste policeman, was there, and when I
+had listened to his story I threw my hat in the air and shouted like a
+boy, and Sasa and I waltzed up and down the veranda to the petrifaction
+of two missionary ladies who happened to be passing in tow of some
+square-toes from the Home Society. Sasa and I plumped into a buggy, and
+with Scanlon on horseback pounding behind us we made all sail for
+Seumanutafa's. Bidding him follow, we then raced off to Mulinu'u, where,
+sure enough, we found a young man named Tautala in one of the houses,
+who brought out the music box and very soon satisfied me as to the truth
+of what Scanlon had said. Then at a slower pace, so that Tautala might
+keep up with us, we walked to To'oto'o's house and taxed him with the
+whole business!
+
+At first he made some show of denying it, but what could he say with
+Scanlon and Tautala in risen witness against him? He tried to refuse to
+come with us (which would have spoiled everything), until Scanlon took a
+hand in the fray and let his imagination run riot about the law, which,
+as he was the official representative of it and wore a pewter star on
+his breast, soon settled To'oto'o's half-hearted objections. If anything
+else were wanted, it was the arrival at this juncture of Seumanutafa at
+the head of a dozen retainers, who added the finishing stroke to the
+little resistance To'oto'o had left. Then we all started off for the
+Southern Cross Bakery, and, as we walked slowly and naturally, attracted
+a good deal of attention; and as we told every one we met where we were
+going to, and why, we grew and grew until, as I looked down the
+procession, I couldn't see the end of it. The Chief Justice was sucked
+in. Likewise the President. Marquardt, the chief of police, joined us;
+Haggard, the land commissioner; some Mormon missionaries; two lay
+brothers from the school; a lot of passengers from the mail boat, with
+handkerchiefs stuck into their sweaty collars; Captain Hufnagel on
+horseback, with a small army of Guadalcanaar laborers; half the synod of
+the Wesleyan church in white _lavalavas_ and hymn-books; a picnic party
+that had just returned (not wholly sober) from the Papase'ea;
+blue-jackets from the _Sperber_; blue-jackets from the _Walleroo_; three
+survivors of the British bark _Windsor Castle_, burned at sea; a German
+scientist in Jaeger costume, with blue spectacles and a butterfly net;
+six whole boatloads of an _aumoenga_ party from Manu'a; a lot of
+political prisoners on parole; two lepers, and Charley Taylor!
+
+It was well we had brought Marquardt with us, for he and his police
+caught the humor of the thing, and on reaching the bakery formed us up
+in a great hollow square with one side blank for Silver Tongue, who
+stood and gazed at us transfixed from the shade of his veranda. Then
+Seumanutafa, Sasa, Scanlon, Tautala, To'oto'o, and I broke ranks and
+marched up to him.
+
+"Old man," I said, "if you were to think a year you'd never guess what
+brought us here to-day!"
+
+"It's O's head again," he said, grinding his teeth and casting a
+vitriolic glance at To'oto'o, "and if there was any law or order in this
+Godforsaken land"--he looked daggers at the Chief Justice as he said
+this--"that fellar would have got short jift for murdering my
+fader-in-law's aunt's son!"
+
+"He didn't murder him," I said.
+
+Silver Tongue's jaw fell. He looked at us quite overcome. For a minute
+he couldn't say a word.
+
+"Oh, but he deed!" he said at last.
+
+"It was Tautala that killed him," I said, indicating the young man we
+had brought from Mulinu'u, "and it turns out he sold your relation's
+head to To'oto'o for seven dollars and a music box." At this, smiling
+from ear to ear, Tautala held up the music box to public view, and would
+have set it going had not something fortunately caught in the works.
+
+"It's a lie!" gasped Silver Tongue. "It's a lie!"
+
+"Scanlon himself was at the battle," I went on, "and he saw the whole
+thing and was a witness to Tautala getting the seven dollars, and he
+made To'oto'o pony up four dollars more as the price of his own
+secrecy."
+
+"Four dollars," ejaculated Scanlon. "That's right, Captain Branscombe.
+Four dollars!"
+
+"So, if you are angry with anybody," I said, "you ought to be angry
+with Tautala. All To'oto'o did was to buy a little cheap notoriety for
+eleven dollars and a music box."
+
+I never saw a man so stung in all my life as Oppenstedt. The eyes seemed
+to start from his head, and he glared at To'oto'o as though he could
+have strangled him. Tautala was quite forgotten in the intensity of his
+indignation toward Rosalie's uncle. You see, he had been hating To'oto'o
+ferociously for six months, and couldn't switch off at a moment's notice
+on an absolute stranger like Tautala. Besides, his hatred for To'oto'o
+had become a kind of monomania with him, and now here I was telling him
+what a fool he had made of himself, and proving it with two witnesses
+and a music box. No wonder that he was staggered.
+
+"Now, old fellow," I said, "we'll call bygones bygones, and maybe you'll
+let us see a little more of you than we've been doing lately."
+
+"You mean Rosalie, of gourse," he said, snapping the words like a mad
+dog.
+
+"Yes, Rosalie," I said.
+
+"Gaptain Branscombe," he said, his face convulsed with passion, "that
+gossumate liar and hybocrite has made such a thing impossible. Far rader
+would I lay me in the grave--far rader would I have wild horses on me
+trample--than that I should indermarry with a family and bossibly
+betaint my innocent kinder with the plood of so shogging and
+unprincibled a liar. A man so lost to shame, so beplunged in cowardice
+and deceit that he couldn't his own heads cut off, but must buy dem of
+others, and faunt himself a hero while honest worth bassed unnoticed and
+bushed aside."
+
+"It was honest worth that chopped off the head of your father-in-law's
+aunt's son!" I said.
+
+"Gaptain," he returned, "there are oggasions when in condrast to a
+liar--to a golossal liar--to one who has made a peeziness of systematic
+deception--a murderer is a shentlemans!"
+
+"Oh, you villain baker!" cried Sasa, joining in. "You make _tongafiti_.
+You never want marry the girl at all. All the time you say something
+different. Oh, you bad mans, you break girls' hearts--and serve you
+right somebody cut your head off!"
+
+"Wish they would," I said, out of all patience with the fellow. "First
+he can't marry Rosalie because her uncle's a murderer. Now he can't
+marry her because her uncle's a liar. Disprove that, and he'd dig up
+some fresh objection!"
+
+"I lofe her! I lofe her!" protested Silver Tongue.
+
+"Come, come," I said, "you aren't marrying the girl's adopted uncle."
+
+"A traidor to my family? No, gaptain, dat is what I can never be," said
+Silver Tongue.
+
+"Traitor--nothing!" I said.
+
+"Oh, the silly baker!" said Sasa.
+
+"He speaks like a delirious person," said Seumanutafa.
+
+"Now about that ham," said the Chief Justice, belligerently coming
+forward and speaking in rich Swedish accents, "when I send my servant
+for a ham, Mr. Oppenstedt, I want a good ham--not a great, coarse, fat,
+stinking lump of dog meat----"
+
+"Let's go," I said to Sasa; "Captain Morse is holding back the _Alameda_
+for a talk, and I know there's an iced bucket of something in the corner
+of his cabin."
+
+"Wish the dear old captain would land and punch his head off!" said Sasa
+vindictively.
+
+"Whose head?" I asked.
+
+"Silver Tongue's," she returned.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sasa had always plagued me to get up a moonlight sailing party on the
+_Nukanono_, a little fifteen-ton schooner of mine that plied about the
+Group. From one reason and another the thing had never come off, though
+we had talked and arranged it all time and time again. Now that I had
+remasted her and overhauled her copper and painted her inside and out,
+the subject had bobbed up again; and as I couldn't make any objection,
+and as the moon for the first time in seven years had happened to be
+full at the same moment when the vessel happened to be free, Sasa
+informed me (in the autocratic manner of lovely woman dealing with an
+old sea horse) that the invitations were out, the music engaged, and
+that my part was to plank down fifty dollars, keep my mouth shut, and do
+what I was told.
+
+I perceived from the beginning that there was something queer about the
+trip, for Sasa, usually so communicative, could scarcely be induced to
+speak of it at all; and then when she did it was with such a parade of
+mystery and reserve that I felt myself completely baffled. However, like
+the jossers in the poem, it wasn't for me to reason why, and so I
+obediently ran about the beach, did what I was bidden, and discreetly
+asked no questions. I confess, though, that on the day itself my
+curiosity began to reach the breaking point, when I was told, with
+gentle impressiveness, that I was to remain in my house till the minute
+of nine forty-five, pull off quietly to the _Nukanono_, board her by the
+fore chains, and crouch there in the bow till I was told to get up!
+
+It was a glorious moonlight night as I got into Joe's boat and saw the
+_Nukanono_ across the bay, her loosened sails flapping in the first
+faint breath of the land breeze, and her booms sparkling from end to end
+with Chinese lanterns. The water was like black glass, the outer reefs
+were silent, and the downpouring air from the mountains was fragrant
+with _moso'oi_, and so warm and scented against the cheek that I doubt
+not but what you could have smelled Upolu ninety miles to leeward. As
+we drew nearer, the sound of girls' laughter, the tuning of musical
+instruments, the hum and talk and gayety of a large company, floated
+over to us from the schooner's deck, wonderfully mellowed by the
+intervening water and (as it seemed to me) softened into a sort of
+harmony with the night itself.
+
+However, I did not allow these reflections to put me off my duty or make
+me forgetful of the strict commands I had previously received from Sasa.
+I came up softly under the bow of the _Nukanono_, dismissed Joe in a
+whisper, and climbed silently to my appointed station. I had not been
+there a minute when I felt Sasa's hand on my shoulder and heard her say
+softly in my ear, "_Malie_," which in Samoan means good or well done.
+Then she slipped away, and I heard her with sweet imperiousness ordering
+about the crew and bidding them slip the moorings. We had hardly got
+steerage-way when I heard a commotion aft, a choking, angry voice, that
+sounded through the hubbub like Silver Tongue's, a quick, fierce,
+violent struggle, and then suddenly the companion hatch went shut with a
+bang. Even as it did so the fore-hatch followed with a crash, and
+everybody began to cheer. From below there rose the sound of thumping,
+smothered Teutonic protests, and a long, poignant, and unmistakably
+feminine wail.
+
+"All finish, captain," said Sasa, coming up to me cheerfully.
+
+"Would you mind telling me what it's all about?" I asked.
+
+"Just a little _tongafiti_ to bring loving hearts together," said Sasa.
+"They threw Silver Tongue down the after hatchway, while me and the
+girls we pushed Rosalie down the forehold. There they are, all alone in
+the dark, with five hours to make it up!"
+
+I could not help laughing at Sasa's plan, especially when under my feet
+I began to hear more frenzied thumping and more feminine wails. Then I
+recollected there wasn't five feet of headroom below, and that the
+place, even with the hatches off, was hot enough to boil water in.
+
+"They'll die down there, Sasa," I said.
+
+"No fear," said Sasa. "Rosalie is half Samoa, and as for Silver
+Tongue--if he get roast like his own bread nobody care a banana."
+
+"But, Sasa--" I protested.
+
+"Now you go flirt with some my girls," she said, "and don't bother your
+old head about nothings!"
+
+"But, my dear girl--" I protested.
+
+"They'll do very nicely, thank you," said Sasa, interrupting me, "and if
+they're hungry, isn't there ham sandwich? And if they're thirsty, isn't
+there claret punch in a milk can? And as for lights--true lovers don't
+want no lights!"
+
+"Well, Sasa," I said, "I dare say it's a bright idea, and that you
+deserve the greatest credit for arranging it all; but for the lord's
+sake, let me off the ship before you remove the hatches."
+
+"Oh, no," said Sasa, "everybody stay and see the fun!"
+
+Fun, indeed, I thought, as I heard a terrific pounding below, and an
+uproar that would have been creditable to a sinking liner. The deck
+shook with sledge-hammer blows, and a lot of glasses tumbled off one of
+our improvised tables. Then we heard what was obviously a revengeful
+wrecking of the whole ship's interior--the smashing of crockery and
+lamps, a tramping and a kicking and a throwing down of everything that
+was loose or could be wrenched off, together with a hollow,
+reverberatory boom of German profan---- No, I won't be unjust, and one
+really couldn't hear well. Sasa stamped on the deck with her little foot
+and cried out: "Be quiet, you silly baker!" But the silly baker only
+roused himself to a renewed ferocity, and, instead of calming down, went
+off again like twenty-five bunches of firecrackers under a barrel--and
+large firecrackers, too.
+
+Off and on he must have kept this up for more than an hour; then at
+length he subsided, finding, I suppose, that one German baker, however
+infuriated, was unable to make an impression on a three-inch deck. By
+the end of the second hour we had forgotten all about him, for heeling
+over in the pleasant breeze, and what with singing and telling stories
+and flirting in the moonlight we were all too happy and too busy to take
+thought of the stifling lovers below our feet. Occasionally I had a
+haunting sense of a day of reckoning, but I held my peace and forebore
+to disquiet my pretty hostess, who was the life and soul of the whole
+party aboard, and whose silvery laughter chimed in so sweetly with the
+tropic night and the rippling gurgle of water along our keel.
+
+It was past three o'clock when we picked up the Mission light and ran
+back to our moorings off the Firm. Then the question arose as to who
+would uncage our love-birds and bear the first brunt of Silver Tongue's
+explosion. I confess I was very little eager for the job, and felt a
+peculiar sinking in the region of my watch pocket as we unlocked the
+after-hatch and rolled it softly back, Sasa, with a bull's-eye lantern
+penetrating the gloom with a dazzling circle of light. It fell on the
+figures of Rosalie and Silver Tongue seated on a settee and locked in
+each other's arms. Rosalie was asleep, with her graceful head lying on
+Silver Tongue's breast and her long lashes still wet with tears. The
+baker, his face crimson with heat and streaked with rivulets of
+perspiration, looked up at us grimly through a sort of mist. I waited
+for him to spring to his feet and throw himself like a lion on my
+shrinking form; but, instead of doing so, he pressed his arms closer
+round Rosalie and smiled--yes, by Jove, smiled--and, if you'll take the
+word of a retired master mariner, winked, with a peculiar, tender and
+calfish expression that in anybody else would have been called skittish.
+
+"How goes it, old man?" I said.
+
+"Gaptain," he returned in the tone of a clarionet tootling a love
+passage in grand opera, "me and Rosalie invites you all to the Bublic
+Hall Thursday night to dance at our wedding!"
+
+
+
+
+PROFESSOR NO NO
+
+
+It was years ago that he came to Uvea (said little Nofo, as we sat side
+by side on a derelict spar and watched the sun go down into the
+lagoon)--years and years and years ago, when I was an unthinking child
+and knew naught of men nor their crooked hearts. He was a chief, of wild
+and strange appearance, with a black beard half covering his piglike
+face; a thin, bent, elderly chief, with hairy hands, and a head on which
+there was nothing at all, and teeth so loose in his mouth that at night
+he laid them in a cup beside him. He was landed from a ship that
+forthwith sailed and was never seen again--he and three tents, and a
+boat and innumerable boxes, all numbered from one to a thousand, and a
+nigger named Billy Hindoo to care for him and cook.
+
+The Government gave him a piece of land next the lagoon, where he
+pitched his tents and lived; and they put a taboo round the land so that
+none might cross, and also a notice on a board, saying, "Be careful of
+the white man." Here he unpacked his things, and arranged a place for
+Billy Hindoo, and another place, open at the sides, where at a table he
+was daily served with sardines and bottled beer. He was named Professor,
+and his occupation, unlike that of all other white men, was to look at
+dead fish through bits of glass. He was a man of no kindness nor
+accomplishments, meanly solitary, and, in spite of two pairs of
+spectacles worn the one on the other, he was almost blind besides. Were
+you to come near him, he would scream out, "No, no!" Were you even to
+touch his bits of glass, or finger his sticky shadow pictures in the
+pool, he would run at you, crying, "No, no!" Were you to approach him as
+he bathed in the lagoon, marveling at his unsightliness, he would beat
+the water like one delirious, and scream again, "No, no!" So, in time,
+his name became changed from Professor into No No, or, as many called
+him in one word, Professor No No; and we all grew to hate him, as did
+also Billy Hindoo, who was generous and loving, and gave away
+unstintedly sardines and biscuit to those he favored.
+
+But Professor No No, unexpectedly returning in his boat with a new dead
+fish no bigger than that (a fish, too, of so little worth that one
+couldn't eat it without feeling ill for the succeeding week), discovered
+Billy Hindoo dividing a tin of biscuit among the girls with whom he had
+made friends. The rage of Professor No No was without limit, and he ran
+at Billy Hindoo and choked him with his hairy hands, and beat him over
+the body with a stick, and drove him away with execrations. Then he sat
+down at the table and drank bottled beer, and held up the fish to his
+blind eyes, and at intervals shouted out, "No, no; No, no," as we all
+crowded about the taboo line, watching and wondering.
+
+The next day Billy Hindoo came back, but Professor No No repelled him
+with a stick, having counted the beer and the sardines and the biscuit,
+and found many missing. Then Billy Hindoo sought a place in the house of
+Tamua, and being a man of subtle mind, though without paper on which to
+write, carved the date of his rejection on a tree, together with the
+names of witnesses who had seen him struck. He would fain have brought
+suit against his master before the ancients, but they were afraid of
+men-of-war, and thought it ill to interfere. But the anger of Billy
+Hindoo surpassed that of a woman whose man has cast her off; and,
+baffled in one direction, he redoubled his efforts in another, telling
+tales about Professor No No that made the strongest shudder to hear
+them; how, indeed, he was Antichrist, and that his coming to Uvea had
+been foretold in Revelations. Whether this was true or false, it was
+evident that Professor No No believed not in God; for it was seen he
+went never to church, and remembered (when strangers asked him if he
+were a missionary) that he would grow beside himself and roar, "No,
+no!" snorting like a suffocating person.
+
+Now there lived in the village a chief named Malamalama, a young man who
+owned a fine house and much land, and was withal so handsome and gay
+that there was scarce a woman but whose eyes shone at the sight of him.
+And Malamalama's wife was named Salesa, and the strange thing about
+Salesa was that she was white. Her father had been a _papalangi_, and
+her mother (who came from another island to the southward) a half-white;
+and Salesa, the child of the two, was fairer than either, and a girl,
+besides, of wonderful beauty. It was this that found her favor in
+Malamalama's sight, for she was without family, and what Kanaka blood
+she possessed was that of slaves; but the chief must needs have his way,
+being a man of imperious temper and willful under advice; and so the
+little out-islander was married to him and elevated to the rank of
+chieftainess.
+
+Then her arrogance and pride, previously concealed by the humbleness of
+her station, broke out with the fierceness of consuming flames. Were you
+to pass her on the road and say, "_Talofa, Salesa_," she often deigned
+not to return your greeting; and when people came to her house she did
+not like, she would say to them, "Go away," like that, so that everyone
+was insulted and retired with darkened faces. Of course, she was not
+utterly without friends, women of contemptible spirit who fawned on her
+like dogs, saying, "Lo, is she not beautiful?" But they were only a
+handful, and by degrees grew less and less, for she was as mean with her
+property as Professor No No, and made the most trifling returns for pigs
+or costly presents. So in time she was left alone in her fine house, and
+though she had a sewing machine and a musical box, and goldfish in a
+glass jar, and an umbrella with a glittering handle, she spent her days
+in yawning, and her nights in telling Malamalama what a fool she had
+been to marry him.
+
+After the manner of men, Malamalama's love increased in the proportion
+of her disdain, and there was nothing he would not do to try and please
+her. He took her on board every succeeding ship, and remained for hours
+in the trade room while she spent the price of many tons of copra and
+pearl shell in filling a chest with purchases, saying, in her
+presumptuous way, "Give me twenty fathoms of this; give me forty fathoms
+of the other. This silk is good, lo! I will take a bolt." And
+Malamalama, who perhaps wanted an anchor for his boat, or a little,
+tiny, trifling pea-soupo of paint, had perforce to do without either,
+and paddle ashore again, poorer, indeed, than many of his serfs and
+dependents.
+
+On these occasions also Salesa showed a lawless deportment among the
+whites that put her good name in jeopardy and caused many to wonder and
+gossip. She would sit at the cabin table and drink beer and eat
+sardines, saying saucily, "Me white mans, too," as she joked and laughed
+with the captains and supercargoes. Or, if some one put his head down
+the hatchway, she would call out, "Oh, the Kanaka dog! Go 'way, you
+peeping Kanaka dog!" Whereat the whites would slap her on the back, and
+it was said they even placed her on their knees and kissed her. Be that
+true or false, Malamalama grew to hate the sight of a ship; and
+sometimes, when he and Salesa went on board together, he showed her a
+sharp knife, and said, "Be careful, you wicked white woman, or I shall
+kill you."
+
+She was as changeable as a little child, and had humors, too, of
+tenderness and contrition, when she would put her arms round her
+husband's neck and be-darling him, saying, "I love you! I love you!" and
+bemoan her contrariness and the fact that she was white. For though she
+was born and bred with us, she felt she was not of our race; and
+sometimes she would say to Malamalama when he reproached her, "Sell me
+to one of the captains for a whaleboat and let me go." But Malamalama
+only loved her the more, and his handsome face grew sullen and angry as
+he threatened again to kill her if she misbehaved.
+
+Now when Professor No No came to live with us on the lagoon, Salesa was
+beside herself with curiosity, and heaped presents on Billy Hindoo in
+order to learn about his master. But Billy Hindoo knew nothing but his
+own stutter, and though he took the presents and came constantly to
+Salesa's house, very little in the way of information was accomplished.
+At last, greatly daring, Salesa arrayed herself in her finest clothes,
+and with servants carrying gifts of pigs and chickens, went down to the
+lagoon to pay a visit to the stranger. She found Professor No No sitting
+at his table, looking at dead fish through bits of glass, and he never
+turned round as the party halted at the taboo line and coughed
+deprecatorily in order to attract his attention. Then Salesa, who feared
+neither devil nor man, took the baskets in her arms and stepped across
+the taboo, saying in a voice of sweetness, "Professor No No! Professor
+No No!"
+
+He sprang from the table and rushed at her, waving his arms, and
+screaming as was his wont, "No, no! No, no!" while she, overcome with
+terror, dropped the gifts and fled like a sea mew on the wings of the
+wind. That night all Uvea joked about her discomfiture, while she sat in
+her house and cried, and Billy Hindoo was invited everywhere to tell the
+story in the antics that served him in the place of a tongue. But once
+Salesa had set her heart on a thing she never faltered nor turned aside;
+and though she waited and waited, it was not as one conquered or
+resigned. When the quarrel came between Billy Hindoo and his master,
+she saw the means, in Professor No No's desolation and abandonment, of
+obtaining the satisfaction of her purpose. For the white man, thus left
+to himself, grew increasingly dirty and uncared for; and his camp, once
+so clean under the care of Billy Hindoo, became as a pigsty of empty
+cans and bottles. Nothing therein was washed, and the savor of Professor
+No No and his camp blew noisomely across the taboo line as one walked to
+leeward.
+
+One day, after spying out that he had already sailed out for more fish
+to look at through bits of glass, Salesa crept into the settlement and
+began to make it clean again. She carried away all the tins and bottles;
+she swept the disordered grass; she entered the professor's tent,
+filling his water-bottles, making his bed and decorating it with flowers
+and _laumaile_. Then, as she had so often watched Billy Hindoo from a
+distance, she spread the table with a clean cloth, and on it she placed
+a bottle of beer and a tin of sardines under a wire netting and three
+ship's biscuits in a row. Then she went back and hid in the undergrowth,
+waiting and waiting, like a warrior in an ambush.
+
+But Professor No No made no sign as he landed from his boat, nor did he
+seem to perceive that anything unusual had taken place in the time he
+had been gone. He drank the bottle of beer and ate the sardines and
+biscuit, never troubling himself whence they had come; and while Salesa
+waited and waited with a suffocating heart, he looked at dead fish
+through bits of glass. But day by day she returned to his camp with the
+assiduity of a mother to her nursing child; and by degrees growing
+bolder with custom, she no longer watched until Professor No No had
+departed, but moved here and there about his land, secure by reason of
+his blindness and preoccupation. Like a wild animal to whom one
+approaches with gentleness and precaution, thus it was with Professor No
+No in the hands of Salesa. First he saw her only at a distance as she
+cleaned and swept; then a little closer as she spread his table and laid
+out his bottle of beer and the sardines and biscuit; then it came about
+that she even touched him with impunity, and sat beside him in a chair
+as he continued to look at dead fish through bits of glass. At last she
+dared to speak, telling him softly the names of the dead fish, which he
+wrote down in a little book, and informing him also that her name was
+Salesa, and that she loved him.
+
+And she, so defiant and proud, became as another person; so that she was
+kind not only to Professor No No, but to others whom she had previously
+treated with contumely. She carried the white man's packages when he
+went abroad, his photograph box and all manner of apparatus and tools,
+and the bottle of beer and the sardines for his well-being, never
+heeding the sun nor the fiery sand. She sat with him daily in his boat,
+baiting his hooks and catching fish likewise, and grew wise also in
+looking at them through bits of glass, so that he no longer ran at her
+and cried, "No, no!" when she touched his things. On the contrary, her
+wisdom increased in such matters, becoming in time even as his own, so
+that she also took photographs, and hammered off pieces of coral from
+the reef, and grew excited over little, common, worthless fish that
+stung you if you touched them.
+
+It is not to be supposed that Malamalama watched with any equanimity
+this increasing friendship between Professor No No and his wife, or that
+the constant tale of scandal and evil-doing fell on heedless ears. He
+beat Salesa repeatedly with a stick, and she bit him in return all over
+his beautiful body; and their fine house, once the envy of all Uvea,
+reechoed distressfully with screams and blows. But the madness of a
+woman for a man is not thus to be set aside, and the more Malamalama
+beat her with a stick, the more ardent grew her love for Professor No
+No; and when he talked with her and argued, she would answer unabashed
+that whites were whites and Kanakas were Kanakas, and that it was ill to
+mix the oil and water of the races.
+
+"But he is overgrown with hair like a dog," said Malamalama, "except on
+his head, which glistens like a sting ray in the sun, and he is
+altogether hideous and frightening. It is not reasonable that anyone
+should prefer him to me."
+
+"But there is that in his head which makes him beautiful," said Salesa.
+
+"Lo! I have things in my head also," said Malamalama, "and I pass my
+life, besides, like a man, diving for shell, and cutting copra on my
+property, and attending to the affairs of the church where I am deacon,
+and finding everywhere a better employment than that of looking at dead
+fish through bits of glass."
+
+"Malamalama," said Salesa, "divorce me and let me go, and take thy
+choice of all the maids of Uvea in my stead. Professor No No loves me
+not, but I am his bondslave in love, and care for no other man but him."
+
+Now this was very good advice, and the chief would have done well to
+follow it. But there is in men a pride about their women that blinds
+their eyes to sense, and Malamalama, instead of heeding, grew, on the
+contrary, morose and willful. He listened more greedily than ever to
+Billy Hindoo, and to the tales the nigger brought him constantly of
+Salesa's misdoing; for Billy Hindoo was crazed with anger against his
+master, and against the woman who had so successfully supplanted him,
+and was eager to revenge himself on both. And one day he brought not
+only a new tale, but a bottle of gin he had managed to pilfer from the
+camp of Professor No No.
+
+Malamalama began to drink the gin, and the more he drank the more he
+began to feel the aching of his spirit. He stopped the passers-by and
+told them of his wrongs; he rolled over in the road, so that he was all
+dirty, calling out curses on his wife and Professor No No. He cried and
+cried, and staggered about and shouted, and rushed hither and thither,
+exclaiming, "I will kill them! I will kill them!" And all the while he
+drank of the gin with an increasing fury, so that he went at last and
+got his rifle and four boxes of cartridges and walked unsteadily toward
+the lagoon, weeping and laughing and beating the air with his loaded
+gun. And I, then only a little child, followed him at a distance,
+wondering and mocking with the others.
+
+Now on this occasion it happened that Salesa was away in the boat, and
+Professor No No, all alone, was sitting at his table and looking at dead
+fish through bits of glass. Malamalama stopped at the taboo line, not
+daring to cross it, and withheld, besides, by the notice on the tree;
+and he was so tipsy with the gin that he could barely shout, nor hold
+the gun up to his shoulder. But he fired, as straight as he could, in
+the direction of Professor No No, and shattered a glass barrel of dead
+fish at his elbow. Professor No No leaped in the air, so that at first
+we thought, erroneously, that he had been hurt; and he ran this way and
+that, dodging the bullets from Malamalama's gun. He seemed to believe
+that the taboo gave him protection, for, instead of bolting into the
+undergrowth, he raced around and around in a circle, and then inside
+this tent and that, so that it was laughable to watch him popping in and
+out like a terrified rat. And Malamalama, so overcome with gin that he
+could barely see, fired and fired and fired from the four boxes of his
+cartridges. Then, when all was finished, he rose and went home, while
+the children crowded the line and shouted, "Professor No No, art thou
+dead?"
+
+That night there was a meeting of the ancients in the speak-house, and
+all the culprits were there under guard to receive a judgment.
+Malamalama was fined one dollar for being drunk and fifteen dollars for
+firing unwarrantably at Professor No No; and Professor No No was fined
+fifteen dollars for having won Salesa from her husband; and Billy Hindoo
+was fined fifteen dollars for having given the gin to Malamalama and for
+the mischief he had caused with his lying tongue; and Salesa was
+surrendered to the matrons of the village to receive a lashing for her
+misconduct. Then Tanielu, the pastor, prayed that God's wrath might be
+averted from so wicked a village, and made a beautiful parable about the
+Garden of Eden and the serpent.
+
+One might have thought that this would have healed the matter, and that
+a punishment so nearly equal would have been submitted to with humility
+and grace. But, on the contrary, the quarrel went from bad to worse, so
+that Tanielu, the pastor, would say sorrowfully from the pulpit that
+Uvea was like another hell, but with four devils instead of one.
+Malamalama, once a pillar of the church, was degraded from the rank of
+deacon and expelled, becoming speedily dissolute and abandoned, opening
+his house for forbidden dances, and taking new wives in shameless
+succession; and Salesa, her pretty body red with stripes, found no
+consolation whatever in her white darling, who ran at her repellingly,
+shouting "No, no!" like a lion; and Billy Hindoo, of whom everyone had
+tired on account of his light fingers and calumniating tongue, grew
+increasingly burdensome to his adopted family, and spent most of his
+time in stoning Professor No No from a safe distance and demanding his
+wages even to that day, together with a passage at once to the white
+country.
+
+During this season no ship at all came to Uvea, though Professor No No
+watched unceasingly for one, and likewise Billy Hindoo, and likewise
+Malamalama, the chief; and Tanielu prayed and prayed and prayed without
+end, "Lord, send Thou speedily a vessel and rid us of these intruders."
+The white man, for all his wisdom, was cowardly beyond belief, and so
+fearful of Malamalama that the sight of Salesa made him tremble
+forthwith with apprehension. And she, repelled by her husband and
+dependent on the bounty of those that despised her, became as one lost
+to all propriety, and would run at Professor No No and clasp him in her
+arms and cherish him, he fighting and resisting with all his might,
+crying "No, no!" in a terrible voice. Were he to unmoor his boat, lo!
+she was there swimming in its wake and demanding to be taken in, lest
+she drown; were he to sit down and quietly look at dead fish through
+bits of glass, lo! there also was she beside him in a chair; were he to
+slumber in a shady place during the afternoon, he would awake with his
+head in her lap or with her kisses against his lips.
+
+So weak, indeed, was his heart, that he was not even grateful for her
+assistance against Billy Hindoo, who came constantly, this day and that,
+with unfailing regularity, to throw stones at his former master and cry
+threateningly, "Hi, yi! give me wages even to this day, and return me to
+the white country according to thy covenant." Then it was that Salesa
+would throw stones back again, or would hide in the bushes and try to
+strike the nigger with a knife, saying in mockery as she sprang at him,
+"Hi, yi! take that!" And once she came to him so close that she slashed
+him across the breast, and he hastened bleeding before the ancients and
+vociferously complained. Then she was whipped again by the matrons, and
+Billy Hindoo was fined for throwing stones, and Professor No No was
+fined yet a second time for stealing away Malamalama's wife, and
+Malamalama was fined for leading a life of infamy and riot, and Tanielu
+said again from the pulpit, "Hasten, Lord, or Thy servants perish!"
+
+Thus the days passed in unending strife and bitterness, terrible now to
+be recalled. When Malamalama took a new wife, the former wife's family
+would lie in wait and try to kill him; and other husbands, before
+exemplary and well conducted, growing restive to see him so successful
+in his unbridled wickedness, took in their turn the pick of the village
+maids, propagating hatred and disorder the like of which had never
+before been known in Uvea. Then the drought came, and the young nuts
+shriveled on the trees, and the sky, as far as one's eye could reach,
+remained like shining copper, without a breath. It was plainly seen that
+God, in anger, was laying His hand heavily on Uvea; and lo! He spoke
+through the pastor Tanielu, saying, "Repent, repent, or else ye perish!"
+
+There was a great meeting of the ancients in the speak-house; and one
+ancient spoke for Malamalama, and another ancient spoke for Salesa, and
+another ancient spoke for Professor No No, and still another ancient
+spoke for Billy Hindoo; and the whole matter was inquired into from the
+first day and debated in turn by all the ancients, and a final judgment
+at length arrived at. Malamalama was confirmed in his latest marriage,
+swearing with his hand on the Holy Book that in future he would cease
+his evil and cling to her, giving a fine mat by way of reparation to
+each of her predecessors; and Salesa was declared divorced from
+Malamalama, and she and Professor No No were ordered to marry themselves
+forthwith before the pastor Tanielu; and Billy Hindoo was commanded to
+go back to his master and remain within the taboo line under pain of
+death, and an ancient was appointed to visit him daily to lash him if he
+misbehaved even in the smallest matter; and then the whole meeting
+prayed first for rain, and then that God might send a ship.
+
+When the new arrangement was with difficulty explained to the white man,
+he was as one crazed, waving his arms and screaming out "No, no!"
+without cessation; and he persisted thus, to the scandal of everyone,
+until Tanielu, losing patience, struck him like that on the head and
+married him immediately to Salesa, whose face shone with contentment and
+happiness. In this manner Professor No No and Salesa and Billy Hindoo
+were escorted homeward to their camp; and then everyone breathed with
+relief and congratulated one another on so peaceful and satisfactory a
+settlement.
+
+But the ancients were still in their places when Salesa returned, saying
+that Professor No No had repulsed her; and behind her was Billy Hindoo,
+equally repulsed, who said his master refused to pay him his wages to
+that day or to send him back at once to the white country according to
+the covenant; and behind them both was Professor No No with his head
+tied in a towel, where the pastor had hurt him, cursing and reviling
+like a maniac.
+
+Then the ancients held another meeting; and lo! it was a secret meeting;
+and Tanielu spoke for God, and everyone made speeches in turn; and it
+was recalled, with eloquent outbursts, how peaceful and happy Uvea had
+been in the days preceding Professor No No's arrival. There were some
+who wanted to have him killed as a punishment; and others who voted
+against Salesa, saying it was she who was at fault; and still others who
+burned with resentment against Billy Hindoo, declaring that he was the
+worst of all. Thus, like a battle rolling to and fro, Salesa, Professor
+No No, and Billy Hindoo were each in turn imperiled; and when day broke,
+their fate, though they knew it not, had been finally settled by the
+ancients.
+
+Professor No No's boat was carried by twenty men from the lagoon shore,
+where it lay, over to the ocean beach; and with it was borne sardines
+and biscuit and beer from the white man's store; and the glass barrels
+were emptied, many of them, of their dead fish, being washed and
+refilled with fresh water from the spring, and their glass tops fastened
+tightly with cocoanut sinnet. Then, when everything had been made ready,
+Billy Hindoo was forced to seat himself in the bow of the boat; and in
+the stern were put Salesa and Professor No No, side by side, the center
+being filled with the cargo of provisions and water.
+
+And Salesa laughed and joked with the men, begging them to take out
+Billy Hindoo, or to give him a boat of his own; and saying wildly, when
+denied, that she was going where none might whip her now, to find a
+beautiful island whereon to live with her husband. But the white man was
+convulsed with fear, and said nothing in the making ready of the boat,
+not even "No, no" when Salesa put her arms round him and kissed him
+again and again on the lips; and Billy Hindoo shook like a wet dog in
+the bow, whimpering, "Hi, yi! me British subject! me no likey!" babbling
+deliriously besides of his wages even to that day, and of the
+unfulfilled covenant with its passage to the white country in a ship.
+
+Then the sail was hoisted and the sheet put into Salesa's hand; and in
+this wise the boat was shoved into deep water, and her bow headed
+straight to seaward. Then Tanielu fell on his knees and prayed that Uvea
+might be delivered forever and ever of such an infliction; and the young
+men formed a line with their rifles, ready to shoot if the voyagers
+showed the least sign of coming back; and across the waves one could see
+Salesa supporting Professor No No as the boat lay over in the wind, and
+her mocking laughter was borne back to us. And we waited and waited and
+waited as it became a diminishing speck against the sky; and waited and
+waited and waited until it disappeared. Then, lo! there were explosions
+of thunder and lightning, and the rain descended in torrents, and the
+little children all threw off their clothes and ran about rejoicing in
+the wet, while the elders looked at one another, and said, "Lo, Uvea is
+delivered!"
+
+
+
+
+CAPTAIN ELIJAH COE
+
+
+Puna Punou lies in 14th South exactly, though the writer keeps back the
+longitood for reasons that will soon be understood by the gentle
+reader--if the gentle reader is patient and won't skip. Not that there
+is any buried treasure there, or any foolishness of that kind; it's
+girls mostly, and pearl shell and cocoanuts, that Puna Punou produces,
+and you don't need no chart with red crosses from my dying hands to find
+any of them. But Mrs. Tweedie is still alive, and likewise Elijah Coe,
+and I'd be acting like the son of a sea cook if I did a hand's turn to
+hurt either. Of course it's an old story now, going back to the days
+before the bottom had dropped out of copra, and there was still money to
+be made in beach-la-mar and fungus. Oh, my, yes! a long time ago, before
+steam ever got into the Group, before law and order and compulsory
+vaccination, and an hour and a half of Deputy Commissioner every nine
+months.
+
+It was always a mighty fine island to look at, rising sheer from the sea
+to basaltic cliffs, and high needlelike pinnacles, and forested solid
+from the water's edge to almost the top; and off the main settlement of
+Fale a Lupo there was good holding ground in six fathoms. A tidy little
+island, indeed, and I'd never raise it of a dawn, and all its palms and
+beaches and little basket-work houses peeping out of the deep shade, but
+I'd feel glad all over again that it was there, and breathe in the
+fragrant smell of it like a child happy at getting home from school. I
+guess the people there helped a lot, too, for they were the handsomest
+in the Pacific, and it was a regular port of call for the whalers to
+take in green stuff, girls, fresh water, and firewood.
+
+In the old days it was the Rev. John Geer who ran the missionary mill,
+and taught the heathen to put their pennies in the plate and wear
+pants--not that they ever did the last to any alarming extent, except in
+the annual reports that were sent back to be printed East; while Mrs.
+Geer she homeopathed the island and inculcurated the principles of
+female virtoo in the young. But after twenty-one years of it the Geers
+returned home to Connecticut, and the Tweedies were landed from the
+_Olive Branch_ barkentine, to take their places in that section of the
+world's vineyard.
+
+Tweedie was a hay-colored little man, narrer chested and tallowy, but if
+ever there was a copper-riveted Christian from Christianville I guess he
+was _it_! Meek! Why he was happy to get slapped, he was that pleased to
+turn the other cheek; and if you took away his cloak, he was the kind of
+fellar who wanted you to take his panjammers extra. Had no spirit at
+all, and the Kanakas walked over him scandalous. But it was his wife I
+wanted to tell about, Alethea Tweedie; for if ever there was an angel
+from heaven, with the prettiest blue eyes, and hair like streaming gold,
+and the cherriest lips you ever saw out of a chromo, and teeth whiter
+than--than--(it don't sound right to say a shark's) it was that peerless
+creature.
+
+How Tweedie could have captured such a bang-up stunner was hard to
+understand then, and harder afterwards. A king on his throne might have
+been glad to win Alethea Tweedie for his queen, and captains and
+supercargoes would have knifed each other for a single smile, if she had
+been the kind to lead them on--which, Lord bless me! was the last
+thought she had in her curly head. I suppose she came from one of them
+little places back East where it's all women for miles, and they rate
+anything a man that can raise a whisker! Thrown away, that's what the
+beach called it, and misdoubted whether Tweedie wasn't a girl, too, only
+with drill trousers instead of panties.
+
+In all them brown faces and tanned leathery white ones you can imagine
+what a pink rosebud she seemed to be; and it wasn't like that she
+stopped at that, for she could sing like a nightingale and talk to beat
+the band; and her laugh itself was like music, sounding long afterwards
+in your ears at sea. Hit? Jimini Christmas, I should say I was hit! Am
+still, for that matter, with just the memory of her, though twenty years
+have come and gone, and I loved the ground her little feet walked on.
+Not that there was anything out of the way in that. We all did, down to
+Portuguese Joe, and Billy Jones's cousin; and as for Elijah Coe, he
+simply give one yelp and keeled over!
+
+Coe was the captain and owner of the _Peep o' Day_ topsail schooner, and
+had been trading about the Group for a matter of eight years. In all my
+seafaring days I never saw his match for dare-deviltry or courage,
+though a quieter man to look at there never was. He was about forty
+years old, tall and lean, with a nose on him like a hawk; and to see him
+stripped you'd think he was a boy, he was that straight and well set up.
+A fine man to look at, very quick on his pins, and kind of proud and
+silent in company like he was mostly thinking of something else. I
+reckon perhaps he likely was, for he was splendidly educated, with rows
+on rows of books in his cabin, and a cyclopediar six feet long. The mate
+said he knew everything in it up to R, not to speak of working lunars in
+a saucer of quicksilver, and reckonizing squid by its Latin name.
+
+No one knew how he had got the money to buy his ship, which was a
+remarkable fine vessel and fitted up regardless. Some said there was
+once a name on the brass bell aft, which had been filed down careful and
+worked over with emery paper afterwards; but I never could see no sign
+of it myself, though I never went aboard but I took a good look; and
+others who said it was Labor. He certainly knew a lot about the
+Westward, and I heard him, one day, giving Captain Rick the directions
+to enter Port McGuire by. But you know what a place the beach is for
+talk, and, anyway, heaps of good men and highly respected have been
+Blackbirders in their time, and I never could see no harm in the trade
+myself. But the gossip was that he had flown the Peruvian flag and
+emptied whole islands, though I never believed a word of it myself. It
+was remarkable, too, how he kep his people, and how they looked up to
+him, which wouldn't have been the case if he had been like they
+represented. There was John Rau, the mate, a bullet-headed Belgian, who
+used to walk just like _he_ did and copy all his little ways slavish,
+reading the cyclopediar, too, and stopping at R from discipline. And
+Lum, the China cook, a freak of a fellar, with coal-black hair all round
+his head like a girl's, and who'd out-Coe Coe till you'd split. The rest
+of the crew was just the usual thing--Rotumah boys, an Highwayman or
+two, and some Nieues--sometimes the same, sometimes different--like on
+any island vessel.
+
+It was some time before Captain Coe got on to the Tweedies, or Alethea,
+as I suppose I ought to say, for nobody ever took no particular stock in
+the _he_-Tweedie. He ran acrost her first when he was ashore doctoring
+some of his native friends, and handing out pain-killer and salts
+unstinted. They walked home together to the Mission house, standing a
+long time at the door, and he talking with his hat off. He must have
+been well brought up and used to meeting ladies, for anybody could tell
+by her face that she was pleased. She didn't seem the least bit eager to
+let him go, and once she took his Tahiti hat and held it in both her
+hands like she would prevent him. And he didn't seem to want to go
+neither, though he wrastled for his hat, very perlite and gay, and I
+could see the glisten of her white teeth through the spyglass.
+
+The next day he called in state, with the skull of a shark in a silk
+handkerchief, and a man carrying a crate of onions. Oh, it may sound
+common to you, but it's like sending flowers to your lady-love in Puna
+Punou, and I've seen a year pass without the sight of one! I guess he
+walked in on velvet, and it is certain he stayed nigh two hours, for I
+timed him myself from the deck of the _Ransom_--the beach being a great
+place to take notice, as I have said already--and what was our feelings
+when next Sunday the captain marched into church--yes, sir--in crisp new
+panjammers and a polkadot neckerchief; and I'm blest if John Rau wasn't
+there, too, likewise polka-dotted; and that there Chinaman tagging along
+behind, rigged the same, only with earrings extra, and taking a back
+seat out of respeck! Afterwards they all went up to the Mission house in
+a body, Tweedie jumping in with an address, and everybody singing except
+the Chinaman, who was made to stop!
+
+You mustn't think for a minute that we traders knew the missionary or
+that he knew us, or that the beach took any part in this except at a
+distance. There's no love lost between missionaries and traders. That's
+what made it so strange to see Captain Coe going the way he did, and
+taking up with all that nigger-loving and "Johnny, how's your soul?" We
+could only see one reason, and that was Alethea Tweedie; and the betting
+was about even whether he'd pull it off or not. But if we didn't _talk_
+to the Tweedies, I guess there was mighty little that went on there we
+didn't know of--whether it was turtle steak for breakfast, or the tiff
+they had about her wearing too gauzy a dress at the party Coe gave
+aboard the _Peep o' Day_.
+
+He did it up in style, with bunting and Chinese lanterns and the king,
+and afterwards there was fireworks. Oh, my, yes! a regular blow-out,
+with the crew in new jumpers and two boatloads of flowers and _moso'oi_!
+We all asked one another where it was going to end, what with the picnic
+next day, and him always at the Mission house. But we might have saved
+our breath, as far as any scandal was concerned, for, instead of up
+stick and away, with the lady locked in his cabin, like some of the
+beach had fondly hoped, what did Coe do but turn missionary himself! Got
+religion, by God! till you couldn't have known him for the same master
+mariner; while John Rau and Lum, not to be behindhand neither, cavorted
+into the holy swim with a whoop and a bang! The captain went off
+terrific--like everything he did--making Billy Jones's cousin marry his
+wife, and Peter Extrum marry _his_; and there was more half-caste
+baptizing and squealing and certificating than I remember since the
+tidal wave of Eighty-one!
+
+Coe put it all down to conviction and a change of heart, but anybody
+could see it was Alethea Tweedie who was _his_ religion. When he prayed,
+which he used to do tremendous, it was all the time to Mrs. Tweedie; and
+when he said the kingdom of heaven, you knew mighty well that to him it
+was the coral Mission house on the hill. He put her on a pedestal a mile
+high, and kept her at the top by worshiping so hard at the bottom. I
+guess she couldn't have got off without stepping all over him, and was
+just forced to be a saint whether she wanted to or no. Not but what she
+was as good as gold, and a pattern for any young white woman to go by,
+but her eyes always kind of melted when she looked at Coe; which was no
+wonder, as he stood six feet high and straight as a dart, and every girl
+in the island was wild about him; and she had an imperious little way of
+treating him like he was a favorite dog who she was proud to show off
+being master of. She sent him her canary, which was all she had in the
+world except her clothes, and wrote a little piece how it would sing to
+him at sea and soothe his rugged bosom.
+
+This wasn't all he got neither, for she was a great one with her needle,
+and did texts better nor a Sailors' Home. Coe's cabin was more like a
+little Bethel than the inside of a trading ship, for there was six of
+them, and a red worsted dog extra, playing with a blue worsted ball, and
+"Jesus, Lover of my Soul" and "Where is my Wandering Boy To-night?" The
+biggest joke of all was in the trade room, where there was "Honesty is
+the Best Policy," and "God Sees You"; and the boys guyed Coe about it
+unmerciful till he laid out Tom Dawlish with a fancy lamp, and said a
+gentleman ought to know where to stop. He was an awful thin-skinned kind
+of Christian when it came to any remarks being passed on Mrs. Tweedie,
+and Tom has a scar there to this day, though Coe made it up to him
+afterwards with a melodian worth nine dollars.
+
+But Coe wasn't the only dog around the Mission house. Mrs. Tweedie
+started up another, a scamp of a chief named Afiola. In every community
+there's some fellar who's at the root of all the mischief that happens,
+so that if anybody gets speared of a dark night, or a girl is missing
+from home, you know just where to look for who done it. In Puna Punou
+you looked for Afiola, and the chances were you'd find him drunk on
+orange beer and laying for trouble with a gun. Oh, yes, indeed, there
+was two to his credit, to my certain knowledge, murders both, and I'll
+bet a ton of shell to an old hat besides that he had a hand in taking
+off the Chinaman at Oa Bay. A regular bad lot, and, like every big
+scalawag, every little scalawag had to tail along with him, too, for
+company and mutual protection; so his houses was the kind of Bowery of
+Puna Punou, with the whalers going to him to buy girls, and all that.
+
+There were higher chiefs than Afiola in the settlement--five or six of
+them, at least, not to speak of the king--but none of them seemed able
+to do a thing to stop him. They were all a slack lot at any time, and
+thought excommunicating him enough, and taking away his communion
+ticket. I guess he had been out of the church for a matter of six years,
+and, as I said before, he was the scandal of the place and a terror.
+They were all dead scared of him, that was the truth, and, though his
+following was small, they were ugly customers and well armed, and could
+line up a dozen rifles in the twinkling of an eye. We often talked it
+over among ourselves how to break the gang up, but, as he always left
+the whites alone, and was even a favorite with the worst, it ended like
+it begun--in smoke.
+
+This Afiola wasn't of any particular age, because the natives don't know
+when they are born, and have nothing to go by like dates and sich. I
+suppose Afiola was somewheres around thirty, for he had two children,
+about eight or nine each, a girl and a boy, who lived with him in his
+house, together with Talavao, his old mother, Sosofina, his aunt, Oloa,
+his uncle, his brother Filipo, and a raft of other blood relations whose
+names I disremember. Like all the chiefs of Puna Punou, Afiola was a
+tall, fine-looking man, very vigorous, lordly, and pleasant spoken, and
+if it weren't for his pock-marked face and the wickedest eyes I ever saw
+in a man's head, you would have said he was a perfect gentleman, and
+handsome, as Kanakas go. I had never had a bit of trouble with him
+myself, and whenever I put business in his way he had always come down
+prompt with pigs and mats and _masoa_.
+
+It was a long time before he took any notice of the Tweedies, not going
+to church, and always busy raising a little hell somewheres. But when it
+came, it came with a bang and no mistake, and, my stars, if he didn't
+pull in the slack! He made up to the Mission house like he was their
+long-lost brother; threw fits of reformation till they took him back
+into church membership again; and not a blessed day passed but it was
+pigs or chickens or sugar cane or pineapples at the Mission-house door,
+and please, might their servant Afiola approach their Excellencies! It
+was as good as a play to see the rascal winding them around his little
+finger and doing injured innocent on their front stoop. To hear him gas,
+you'd think there was a conspiracy to run him out of Fale a Lupo; and
+even when he owned up to some of his misdeeds, it was like a compliment
+to the Tweedies for having yanked in such a black sheep. I read
+somewheres that the road to success is to trade on people's weaknesses,
+and the soft spot with the Tweedies was their desire to make a
+thundering success and leave all their predecessors in the soup. After
+having captured the chief white sinner, Elijah Coe, they were now
+hauling in the boss brown one, Afiola, and I guess they felt as pleased
+as a fellar who's bought a ton of shell for a condemned army musket.
+
+My, but they were good to that man, forever inviting him to breakfast or
+that, and sending for him first thing if they were in a fix! It was all
+Afiola this, and Afiola that; and he got texts, too, from Mrs. Tweedie,
+and red worsted dogs, and "God Bless Our Home." By the time they had
+engineered him into shoes and pants, no one daring to laugh for fear
+he'd shoot them, they promoted him deacon, and put him on the committee
+for reroofing the church. Of all mutton-headed proceedings, I never saw
+the like, specially as he hoodwinked them right along, and acted worse,
+even, than before. You can imagine Captain Coe's feelings when, rounding
+up a three months' cruise, he found this six-foot-three of black devil
+and hypocrite snugged in the Mission house like a maggot in a
+breadfruit. They say he went on awful, speaking out the truth before
+them all, and daring Afiola to deny it. But Mrs. Tweedie she got him
+outside on the veranda, walking up and down with her arm through his,
+and pleading and going on and begging to beat the band. It shows the
+power she had over him, that at last he went in and asked Afiola's
+pardon, and the next day sent him a case of kerosene by way of
+reparation. I suppose if she had told him to go on his knees he would
+have done it, being that crazy to please her in everything.
+
+On second thoughts, however, and after hearing how Afiola had been
+kicking up, he went to the king and tried to stiffen him to take a stand
+against Afiola, volunteering to do the job himself, if supported, and
+proposing to exile the fellar to Makatea, and disperse the rest of the
+gang about the Group gratis in the _Peep o' Day_. He said otherwise he
+was afraid to leave Puna Punou with such a scoundrel loose, and
+threatened to write to Sydney for a man-of-war. But Maunga the king was
+a saphead and a coward, and he couldn't see it Coe's way at all; and not
+having the sense to keep his mouth shut, what does he do but traipse
+around the settlement, telling everybody what the captain said and
+wanted.
+
+After that the Mission-house door was shut in Coe's face, and when Mrs.
+Tweedie passed him on the road it was with her pretty head in the air,
+and not looking. This nearly broke the captain's heart, and if you've
+ever seen a dog as has been kicked out by his master, you can picture
+Coe for yourself. He got very down and miserable, and talked some of
+chucking the Group altogether and going back to the Kingsmills, or even
+further, and how Henderson and Macfarlane were going to put on a steamer
+and run us all out. He tied up the _Peep o' Day_ at a hundred and forty
+dollars a week and nothing coming in, making the excuse she was foul and
+the copper needing cleaning; and when you saw nothing doing and asked
+why, he flared up and said you could go to hell! And all this, if you
+please, for the privilege of seeing Afiola sailing up to the Mission
+house and being honored guest, and Mrs. Tweedie smiling her prettiest,
+_vice_ Elijah Coe, fired! We fully thought he'd backslide onto
+square-face and female society, but, if anything, he grew more
+missionary than ever, and nearly lammed the life out of Freddy Rice for
+speaking disrespectful of the Virgin Mary! You see, Coe's religion,
+being as it was Mrs. Tweedie, didn't make no proper distinction between
+sects, and he just stood up for anybody who had his name in the Bible!
+
+Then thinking, I dessay, that absence makes the heart grow fonder, he
+went to sea again and put in a spell of two months about the Group; and
+when he got back he dressed up in his best with a red silk handkerchief
+around his neck, sailor fashion, and a crimson sash and patent-leather
+shoes, and the rest of him white drill, and went a-calling on the
+Mission house to see if he couldn't break into society again. But there
+was a wicked streak in Mrs. Tweedie, for all her pretty face and golden
+hair, and being too good a woman to love anybody but her husband, she
+found a queer kind of satisfaction in hating Coe, or pretending like she
+did, and driving him half-mad with the things she said to him. She
+regularly led on the captain to admit he loved her, and then jumped on
+him with both her little feet for saying it, till the poor fellar
+stumbled out of the house feeling he had disgraced himself awful and was
+never to come back no more.
+
+She wrote him letters afterwards on scented pink paper, which made him
+spend days and days with his head leaning on the cabin table, wanting
+the worsted dog back, and the canary, and saying she would tell her
+husband; and then saying he might keep them and she wouldn't! If he had
+treated her just like a Kanaka girl who was dead stuck on him, I guess
+he would have found out that women are much the same, whether with
+golden hair or coal-black, and that there is much the same colored devil
+in every one of them. But to Coe, Alethea Tweedie wasn't no human being
+at all, but an angel straight from heaven, and to think the angel hated
+him was almost more than he could bear.
+
+He turned crankier than ever, working off steam on Rau and Ah Lum, with
+twenty-five cents for every swear, and nothing at night but hymns. But I
+guess Rau and the China boy would have gone on their knees and kowtowed
+to a sting ray if Coe had told them to, for they didn't have no more
+wills of their own than a child unborn, and everything he said, went. If
+he had turned pirate, they would have followed him just as meek, and
+would have scuttled ships and made passengers walk planks with the same
+devotion and zeal to please him!
+
+But all this was by the way, so far as it availed the captain with Mrs.
+Tweedie, who passed him on the road as cold as ever, and received the
+swear-money disdainful, and never said "thank you" for it, though there
+was eighteen dollars in the bag and the biggest share Coe's. Afiola
+himself had been getting out of favor for two months. He couldn't
+manage to be deacon of the church one day, and the next pirating along
+the coast mad drunk on orange beer; besides, the Tweedies were getting
+to talk native now, and got more the hang of what was going on around
+them. So they give Afiola a sort of drumhead court-martial, and bounced
+him unanimous, and all the pent-up deviltry of the man came out of him
+at one lick, like touching off a dynamite cartridge. Tweedie preached
+against him from the pulpit; the other chiefs, slow as they had been to
+move before, now waked up a bit, and there was a general feeling in the
+respectable part of the native community that he was pushing things too
+far. You see, he had named one of his pigs after the king, and there was
+more scandal over that than for all the crimes he had been guilty of;
+and there was a razor-backed yaller one for Tweedie, and an old sow for
+the queen, and porkers for the princes, and he passed insulting remarks
+on them till the Kanakas went wild--those that weren't of Afiola's own
+family, I mean; and Afiola would laugh and laugh till his great pocked
+face grew a dirty crimson, laying on a mat with a Winchester beside him,
+and sniggering as they'd bring him orange beer in a calabash.
+
+I guess he thought he'd wind up by pulling off the biggest thing yet,
+for he had a kind of pride of wickedness in him, and gloried in being
+the bad man of Puna Punou. He wanted to top it all now, and do something
+that tremendous that it would shake the whole island from Fale a Lupo to
+Diamond Rock. Anyway, whatever he thought or didn't think, what he did
+was to waylay Mrs. Tweedie one morning about ten, as she was going over
+to visit the native pastor's wife, who was sick; and, tying her hands
+and feet together with sinnet, he put her in a hammock and carried her
+off up the mountain; and this, if you please, in open daylight, with
+scores of people looking on, while she screamed and struggled and
+fought, and they helpless to do anything against the line of Afiola's
+rifles--and Tweedie himself not four hundred yards away, organizing a
+Y.M.C.A. for untattooed boys, and explaining how they was to play basket
+ball, and learn arithmetic nights!
+
+When I heard the news, which was right off and the moment after it
+happened, I had only one idea in my head, and that was to reach Captain
+Coe as fast as the paddles could race me off to the schooner. It is in
+them moments that the strong man looms up like a mountain and one's cry
+is for a leader. But it seemed for a spell like it was a knock-out blow
+for Coe, and that he couldn't grapple with the thing at all, moaning and
+grinding his teeth, and tearing the red-dotted handkerchief off his neck
+like it choked him. When I tried to talk, he swore at me terrible,
+saying he wanted to think, by God! and I was to shut my bloody face; and
+ordering the mate and the Chinaman into the lazarette to get out the
+arms. There was a big store of them, which the pair got out on their
+hands and knees, the place being cramped and low and the guns furthest
+in; and they broke open boxes of cartridges on the cabin floor till they
+ran all over. Then Coe ordered the whaleboat cleared and went ashore
+with nigh all hands, every one of them with a loaded rifle, and he with
+a twelve-bore gun; and if you ever saw the light of hell in a man's
+eyes, it was Coe as he formed us up on the beach and headed inland in a
+crowd. The whole settlement was buzzing like a hornet's nest, and they
+were beating a wooden drum in front of the king's house, and everybody
+was running every which way, telling the news, and how Mrs. Tweedie had
+been carried off by Afiola, and all screaming out at once, like natives
+do when excited.
+
+Finding Afiola would be about as easy as the needle in the haystack, and
+the crews of a hundred _Peep o' Days_, and all the warriors of Fale a
+Lupo besides, couldn't have tracked and cornered him up the mountain. I
+thought Coe was acting like a hot-headed crazy fool to try, for they
+were bound to see him first, and could always hide if we got too close,
+or fight if need be, with all the points of the game in their favor. But
+that wasn't what he meant to do, not he, but surrounded Afiola's two
+houses, and took out everybody in them--Talavao his aunt, Oloa his
+uncle, Filipo his brother (who was sick on a mat), and Afiola's two
+children, Mali and Popo, and a raft of men and women, to the number of
+twenty or more all told. They were scared blue at the sight of the
+cocked rifles, and held up their hands like lambs for the Chinaman to
+rope them, which he did like lashing a chest and about as tender, the
+tears streaming down the women's faces. But there wasn't a spark of
+compassion in Elijah Coe, and he never give them a thought.
+
+He was at a white heat, and his finger was just itching on the trigger
+of his gun, and he never started for the beach till all the Bowery was
+crackling in smoke and flame. Not that our eighteen or twenty was the
+whole of Afiola's family in the settlement. I guess there was several
+hundreds of them altogether, taking it fine and large, retainers,
+hangers-on, and connections of one kind and another; but Coe's boldness
+took them by surprise, and not being in the secret of Mrs. Tweedie's
+carrying off, they weren't prepared or anything. But even in the time we
+were tying up the prisoners they began to turn ugly and bunch together
+and hoot, and all the way back to the beach it was touch and go whether
+they wouldn't rush us.
+
+Not a soul durst ask Coe what he meant to do as we pitched into the
+water and shoved off, him sitting there so grim and fierce, with his
+eyes smoldering in his head like coals; but there was no sound but the
+straining of the rowlocks, and a whimper or two from the women, and the
+swish and gurgle of the water along the keel. I'll never forget that
+boat ride if I live to be a hundred; the drums rolling and re-rolling
+around the bay, and that strange humming of voices behind us like the
+wind in the rigging of a ship, and Coe and the Kanakas and the Chinaman
+and John Rau and the men pulling. But as for Coe's plan, we weren't long
+kept waiting for what it was. The prisoners were bundled into the ship's
+waist, with Lum to stand over them, while the mate got out the kedge and
+brought the schooner broadside on to the mountain. Then they bent a
+noose and ran up old Oloa between the masts. It was no fancy hanging
+with a drop calculated to his height, but just the old-fashioned kind,
+slow and awful, and if the steward hadn't come round with a tray of
+glasses and some square-face I guess I would have just sunk right down
+where I was. The crew made one panic-stricken gallop for the side, and
+popped over, nobody trying to stop them, though Rau asked, quite calm,
+was he to shoot, and the captain said No. The Nieue steward was the only
+one that didn't go, but crouched down in the scuppers with his teeth
+chattering.
+
+Then Coe leaned over the rail and talked to the prisoners in the waist;
+told them that he was going to string up one an hour, children and all,
+till Mrs. Tweedie was brought back safe; and he ordered Lum to cast
+loose one of the old women so that she might swim ashore and carry the
+news. My, if she wasn't over that rail like lightning, and striking out
+for home with her skinny arms! Coe knew mighty well that Afiola had a
+string of people up the mountain keeping him informed of everything that
+happened--the Kanaka telegraph, we used to call it. Then, besides, up
+there they could see for miles, and Coe had kedged the schooner acrost
+the fairway so that Afiola might reckonize his relations in the rigging.
+You might wonder that such an unmitigated black villain would care what
+Coe did, so long as he had his wicked way with Mrs. Tweedie, and a whole
+trackless mountain to lose himself in; but there's an awful soft streak
+in Kanakas for their own blood, and we had his whole family in our
+hands, not to speak of the two kids. It seemed almost like a waste of
+lives to look up and see not a speck, or the least sign whatever, that
+was hid under the tree tops, and it was hard to convince oneself that
+Coe was doing the right thing, and that from those rocky cliffs there
+was sharp Kanaka eyes taking us all in, with Alethea Tweedie tied hand
+and foot, and Afiola in a sweat about his children.
+
+The captain sat on a chair at the forrard end of the house, smoking a
+cigar, and occasionally searching the woods with his binoculars. There
+was a stack of loaded rifles beside him, and a keg of dynamite with a
+loose lid to it. Some of the sticks had touch-and-go fuses to them,
+ready to throw if they tried boarding; and sometimes he would take out
+his watch and look at it hard, and every time he looked the people in
+the waist would set up a kind of a wail. At one o'clock we ran up
+Filipo, Afiola's brother, and settled down to another spell of waiting.
+Somewheres along of three bells we saw them getting a boat out by Pita's
+house, and lo and behold! it was Tweedie, with the native pastor and a
+divinity student named Henry to pull him. When they were close enough to
+talk, he fell on his knees in the boat, though it was half full of bilge
+and slopped all over him; and he besought Captain Coe, by all that was
+holy, to stop murdering the innocent, and rattled on fast and scolding
+like he was in the pulpit. We was to leave it to God, he said, and went
+on like we was worse nor Afiola, the pitiful hound, like it wasn't his
+own wife we was doing our damnedest to save.
+
+Captain Coe let him have his say, and then he leaned over the ship's
+side, holding to the starboard shrouds with one hand and taking the
+cigar out of his mouth with the other, and told him, with a most
+deliberate spit, as how he was going on with one every hour till Mrs.
+Tweedie was brought back safe and sound, and when he used up them he had
+aboard, how he was going to land for more. He didn't speak it particular
+loud, and you might have thought he was talking what a hot day it was;
+but there was that in his voice I've never heard before or since, and
+you knew he'd live right up to every word he said. I guess the pastor
+and the student understood a little English, for when Coe finished they
+laid on to their oars like mad, and headed the old sieve for shore
+again, Tweedie in the bilge and still protesting.
+
+At two o'clock we turned off Sosofina, Afiola's aunt. We now had three
+aloft, and as we rolled gently broadside on to the swell they'd swing
+together and swing apart till you didn't care to look at them. That hour
+from two to three was the very longest I ever spent in my life. It was
+the hottest time of day and the sun beat down unmerciful, the pitch
+running in the seams, and the awnings being stripped off to better fight
+the ship, if need be. The steward passed round sardines and buttered
+biscuit, and I recollect the Chinaman wolfing his right out of the can
+and tipping it cornerwise to drink the ile. Bar Coe, he was the coolest
+customer of the lot, which was the more remarkable, as he was a
+mild-mannered man ordinarily, given to playing the China fiddle to
+himself, and very obliging if you wanted fresh yeast or the way he
+curried pigeon. Rau, the Belgian, with his hairy arms and stubby figure,
+struck one somehow as being more in his element in so wild a business,
+and you took his calm for granted, like a soldier serving a gun and
+doing what he's told. If Coe had ordered him to set off the dynamite and
+blow up the ship, he would have said "Aye, aye, sir!" and obeyed,
+respectful and willing, like the first-class seaman and navigator he
+was. He had served in the Belgian navy, and the habit had stuck to him.
+But in all of us, after all--me and Lum and John Rau and the Nieue
+steward--it was Coe's spirit that had raised us to this pitch, and he
+had blown a little of his own breath into every one of us. We were all
+Elijah Coe's that day, and it was only afterwards it came over us how
+different we had acted from our proper selves.
+
+Well, as I said, it was drawing toward six bells, and we were keyed up
+tremendous, as we might expect to see the result of our work now any
+minute; and it was a shuddering thing to think of sending up another,
+and him a child. We all watched Coe out of the corner of our eye as he
+went on smoking his cigar, and every time he took out his watch and
+looked at it it seemed like my heart stopped beating.
+
+"Three o'clock, boys!" he says, rising business-like from his chair,
+while Lum looked up expectant, and my gizzard seemed to shrink inside
+me. "Three o'clock, boys!"
+
+He hadn't no more nor got the words out of his mouth when Rau ripped out
+there was a canoe coming off, and we all ran pellmell for the rail. Sure
+enough, there was an outrigger aiming straight for us, and the fellar in
+it was bent double and paddling that fast that the water spurted at the
+bow like it was a race. When he got within a cable's length he stopped,
+and waved something he had in his hand, and shouted a lot of stuff we
+couldn't make head or tail of. Coe made motions to him to come nearer,
+and Rau and me did the same, till the fellar got back something of his
+nerve, paddling with one hand and holding the little board aloft in the
+other (like he might a flag of truce), and venturing toward us slower
+and slower, till at last Coe reached down and took the thing from him
+standing up.
+
+It was a slab of fresh-cut _fuafua_, about a foot long by three inches
+wide, and on it, written, as I heard afterwards, in blood and spit and
+gunpowder, was a message from Mrs. Tweedie herself--not many words on
+it, and them printed, for she only had a pointed stick by way of a pen,
+but saying as how she was unharmed and was being brought back fast, and
+please, he wasn't to trice up any more of Afiola's family.
+
+The captain read it aloud to us about a dozen times, and then, his face
+working so he couldn't speak no more, he gripped hands with me, and then
+with John Rau, and not forgetting the Nieue steward, and then he went
+down the forward ladder, and I'm blest if he didn't put his arm round
+the Chink, and burst out sobbing--yes, sir, like a great overwrought
+girl, sitting on the tool chest, limp as a rag, and wiping his eyes with
+the cuff of his blue-striped panjammers, the Chinaman, patting him like
+he might a dog, saying, "Poor captain! Never you mind, captain! She all
+lite now, captain," while the prisoners broke out in a big gabble of how
+they were saved, and piped up with a hymn.
+
+He wasn't the man to take anything for granted, however, and after he
+had sort of pulled himself together and got his second wind, so to
+speak, he cast loose a couple more with a message that he had to have a
+letter on paper from Mrs. Tweedie herself, countersigned by the king,
+that she was at home, safe, and no harm done. He might have saved
+himself the trouble, for they hadn't been gone ten minutes before she
+came off herself, queening it in the stern of the king's great _alia_,
+seventy feet long, with Tweedie and Maunga, and the princes, and eighty
+men chorusing to the paddles, with drums aft, and a young boy dancing in
+the bow and keeping time with a rifle. Except for her paleness, which
+was like marble, and the bloody marks of the sinnet on her pretty
+wrists, you wouldn't have taken her for much different than usual; and
+she skipped up the ladder as sprightly as you please, and made a bee
+line for Elijah Coe like a schoolgirl running to her pa for the
+holidays.
+
+She wanted to throw herself on her knees and kiss his hands; and when he
+forced her up, she flung her arms around his neck and kissed him, saying
+he was her preserver, and how he had saved her from worse than death,
+and so overflowing and grateful and outspoken that nobody knew where to
+look, least of all the captain, who turned all colors, and couldn't say
+anything but "You're welcome," like a ninny.
+
+We cleared a little space for Tweedie to pray in, which was his way of
+celebrating, and couldn't very well be prevented, and the king followed
+with a speech what he'd do to Afiola when he caught him--the tarnation
+liar! The crew came off, swimming in ones and twos to beg for pardon,
+and the prisoners were unbound and given three crates of biscuit and
+three barrels of pork and some boat sails to wrap the corpses in, and
+there was more hurrah-boys and good feeling and port wine in the cabin
+than you could ever have thought possible under the circumstances.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Was that all? Well, for a time it was, Coe slipping out at dawn on the
+ebb with a cargo of Afiola rapscallions he was to drop, one here, one
+there, all around the Group, we having no further use for them in Puna
+Punou.
+
+The measles struck us shortly afterwards in a Tahiti bark, and it
+carried off a sight of people, Afiola included, who was in a sort of
+armed hiding on the other side of the island. Tweedie, too, who had
+always been a complaining whelp, started up a cough about this time, and
+died. Of course, this wasn't right off, but spread over a matter of
+eighteen months or more, Coe coming and going regular in the _Peep o'
+Day_, and Mrs. Tweedie more blooming than ever.
+
+Coe turned up from Sydney, where he had gone for a general refitting and
+overhaul, just as Mrs. Tweedie was taking her passage in the _Olive
+Branch_, missionary auxiliary barkentine for Honolulu. None of the
+saints would have a word to say to him, calling him "the man of blood,"
+and ordering him off the ship, as he stood his ground and wouldn't budge
+even when the anchor was apeak and the barkentine under steerage way.
+But he kept singing out for her while they tried to hustle him over the
+side and into his boat, and the more they hustled the louder he shouted,
+"Mrs. Tweedie! Mrs. Tweedie!" till at last she heard him in her cabin
+below, and came running up, smiling, and arranging her hair with her
+hands.
+
+It was a tight place for Coe, having to do his courting while they were
+moving him on like the police; but, for all that, when he went down the
+ladder it was with Mrs. Tweedie with him, and they pulled ashore and
+were married by the Kanaka pastor, and went a-honeymooning in the _Peep
+o' Day_, bringing up in Papiete three weeks later, to buy her some
+clothes, for every stitch to her name was beating up to Honolulu in the
+_Olive Branch_.
+
+
+
+
+MR. BOB
+
+
+Far away in the western Pacific, in that labyrinth of coral reefs and
+low, palm-rimmed isles floating between the blue of heaven and the
+deeper blue of sea, known to the pajama-clad, ear-ringed traders as "the
+Group," and to the outer world as Micronesia--here, one burning morning
+there arrived a visitor from "Home," who descended, not from some tubby
+bark or slant-masted schooner, but Godlike from the glorious stars
+themselves--Christmas Day!
+
+The Rev. Walter Kirke looked out moodily from beneath the eaves of his
+basket-work house, and his heart sank as he gazed across the sweltering
+strip of water, twenty miles wide, that divided the island of Apiang
+from its neighbor, Tarawa. His brother in the Lord across the strait,
+the perpetually unfortunate Titcombe (the Rev. J. B. Tracy Titcombe,
+M.A., Cam.), had sent in a proa with a message of such urgency and need
+that delay, let alone refusal, was utterly out of the question.
+
+"The king has broken all his promises," wrote Titcombe, in a hand
+illegible from distress and agitation. "He threatens to burn the new
+church, flog the members, and spear personally the leading lights of
+our infant congregation. Yesterday, on my remonstrating with him, he
+gave me twenty-four hours to leave the island, calling me at the same
+time a sting ray, a detached jellyfish--a white squid, together with
+some other local expressions of a highly wounding and contemptuous
+nature. The tiny fold is terrorized, and Thomas Najibika, my deacon and
+right-hand man, is in hourly apprehension of a massacre. My wife and
+little Kenneth are down with fever, and this, together with my halting
+knowledge of the native language, has put me at such a disadvantage that
+I have no alternative but to appeal to you. For Heaven's sake, please
+come instantly and exert yourself on my behalf, or else we may lose
+Tarawa for good, and put back the good work by a dozen years."
+
+"We'll have to go, dear," said Kirke to his pretty wife.
+
+"Yes, we'll have to go," she assented sadly.
+
+She could not help feeling cross with the Titcombes for always muddling
+things--a little unjustly, perhaps--for her own missionary path had ever
+been so easy and untroubled. Mrs. Kirke was a woman of marked beauty,
+whose sweet imperiousness, sympathy, humor, and tact made her the adored
+of the islanders. She not only spoke native well, but with a zest and
+sparkle, a silver ripple of irony, ridicule, and good-fellowship that
+carried everything before it. No kings ever bothered Mrs. Kirke. Even
+the redoubtable Tembinok, with forty boats full of armed savages, had
+been stemmed in his Napoleonic career and turned back by her from his
+projected invasion of Apiang--presenting the missionary's wife, on his
+departure, with a gold-inlaid Winchester that was the apple of his eye.
+
+"I shall make Karaitch smart for this!" she said vindictively. "I
+sha'n't let him off with less than twenty tons of copra for my girls'
+school; and he'll have to apologize, too, and swear on a shark's head to
+behave for a year."
+
+"We can't all have such intrepid little wives," said Kirke, putting his
+arm fondly about her. Experience had shown him that in native questions
+she was always as good as her word, and it was with a kind of proud
+humility he conceded her the place he was so much less able himself to
+fill. He had not the faintest apprehensions about the Tarawa matter. Ada
+would bring the king to heel in fifteen minutes, and in twenty there
+would be the dawn of a new peace, with stately apologies, gifts of
+turtle and bonito hooks, endless and troublesomely idiomatic
+compliments, and incidentally a little friction with the Titcombes, who
+would certainly resent being saved so easily.
+
+No, Kirke wasn't afraid of Karaitch. Ada would settle Karaitch out of
+hand. What he dreaded was that twenty miles of water under the noonday
+sun, and the problem of Daisy--Daisy, their little girl of eight, who
+was playing so contentedly on the floor with the presents Santa Claus
+had just brought her.
+
+"Oh, Walter, I can't let Daisy go again!" cried Mrs. Kirke. "Last time
+she nearly died in the boat, and you know she wasn't really herself for
+weeks and weeks afterwards."
+
+Daisy heard her name being spoken, and looked up. Her sleek little head
+and round brown eyes gave her the look of a baby seal. Such a happy baby
+seal that morning, with a five-shilling magic lantern, twelve biblical
+slides, a dolly that could squeak in the most lifelike manner, and a
+darling little chair!
+
+"But leave her?" questioned Kirke, with a hopeless gesture of his hand.
+"And that with the island full of mutineers, and Heaven only knows
+to-day what deviltry and carousing?"
+
+Mrs. Kirke thought awhile.
+
+"Twenty miles over there--three hours," she said at last; "an hour to
+straighten out the king--four hours; three back, makes seven. That means
+being home by sundown. We can trust Nantok all right to take good care
+of her, and then I'll get Peter to send down an armed guard."
+
+Kirke acquiesced in silence. He was a tall, thin man, not over-clever,
+whose fervent Christianity was strangely at variance with a
+constitutional inclination to see the darker side of things. He
+distrusted Nantok, distrusted the king's guard, felt a profound
+apprehension of that jeering, boisterous mob of sailors, who pigged
+together in Rick's old boatshed, and were numerous enough to defy every
+law of the island. It was terrible to him to leave his little girl in
+such company. Yet he recalled his last trip across the strait, when she
+had fainted with the heat--fainted again and again--as they had
+attempted, with such distress and agony, to screen her from a glare as
+pitiless as a furnace. He remembered dipping her, naked, all but
+lifeless, into the milkwarm water, till up from the transparent depths
+the swift, bluish glimmer of a shark warned him to snatch her in.
+Remembered the hopelessness of it, the terror, the despair, he himself
+bending to an oar, and offering every inducement his mind could think of
+to incite his crew to pull their hearts out. No, all that was a
+nightmare to look back on--never, never to be repeated.
+
+Daisy was called over and the situation explained to her. Like all only
+children, living constantly in the society of her parents, and sharing
+their talk and plans, she was precociously old for her age, and more
+serious and thoughtful than a little tot ought to be. Though her lower
+lip trembled, and her eyes flooded with tears, she put on a brave face
+to it, and protested her willingness to remain with Nantok and be a good
+little girl.
+
+"And mamma and papa will be back at dusk; and if they are detained, you
+mustn't be the least bit worried about them; and you'll let Nantok put
+you to bed at eight; and if you wake up and feel frightened, you are to
+remember the army outside, guarding you in your sleep like a little
+princess!"
+
+"And Dod, too," added Daisy piously, though inwardly pleased to have the
+army as well.
+
+"Oh, my lamb!" cried Mrs. Kirke, clasping her to her breast. "It breaks
+mamma's heart to leave her little girl on Christmas Day!"
+
+Altogether it was a damp moment in the Kirke family, and even the
+missionary's eyes were suspiciously moist as he knelt beside his wife
+and talked hurriedly about the magic lantern, and the dolly, and what a
+jolly evening they'd all have when they got back from Tarawa.
+
+Preparations were soon made. The whaleboat was got ready, and manned by
+a stout crew of such recent Christians that the demons of the strait had
+first to be appeased by two tins of salmon and six biscuit, paid
+secretly in advance to Nebenua, the devil-priest. Then, when all was
+ready, even to the breaker of brackish water, a forty-pound tin of
+biscuit, two hundred fresh nuts, medicine chest, compass, and five
+pounds of niggerhead tobacco by way of petty cash, the whole expedition
+was tantalized and held back by the non-arrival of the guard, who were
+frenziedly searching for their boots. Why the army was so ruthlessly
+condemned to wear boots, is a question that was often asked and never
+properly answered. Nobody else wore boots--not even the king; but the
+military caste is proverbially dressy, and it is enough to say that the
+armed forces of Apiang set immense store by their boots.
+
+At last they arrived, boots and all, a straggling, hobbling party of
+seven, with cartridge belts and rifles. Little Daisy was formally put in
+their charge; solemn pledges were given and accepted; a keg of beef, to
+be subsequently presented, was hedged about with innumerable
+restrictions. That keg--like liberty--was to be at the price of eternal
+vigilance. And then, when everything had been said, and explained, and
+threatened, the whaleboat hoisted her anchor--a coral stone--and set a
+straight course for Tarawa.
+
+It was a long day--a very long day--quite the longest day in Daisy's
+tiny life. She successively exhausted the magic lantern, the dolly, and
+the chair. She went out and prattled with the army where they sprawled
+under the lee of the kitchen, smoking endless _pandanus_ cigarettes. She
+helped Nantok prepare lunch--a bowl of chocolate made with condensed
+milk, and hot buttered toast. After lunch she had a nap with Nantok on
+the mats, and after that again an exciting talk about the great massacre
+on Tapatuea, where all Nantok's people had been killed during that
+Kanaka Saint Bartholomew's. Then out to the army again, and checkers,
+which the army played amazingly well, beating her so often that even
+this pastime palled. Then----
+
+Oh, what a sigh!
+
+The sleek little seal was aweary, aweary. The house was so empty, so
+still, and there was such a void in that aching baby heart! She went
+into papa's room and cried on his bed. He would be drowned in the
+strait; savage old Karaitch would shoot him with a gun; he would be
+blown out to sea like Mr. Pettibone the beach-comber. The hot tears
+scalded her cheeks. She had always liked Mr. Pettibone. Papa called him
+a proff--proff--proff something, but he had always been so jolly, and
+his red face and funny little blue eyes rose before her out of the mist.
+She cried over the lost Pettibone; over Tansy the cat, that had died
+from eating a lizard; over Nosey, her pet chicken, that Nantok had
+killed by mistake one night for supper; cried over papa and mamma, far
+away in the whaler--totaled up all the little sadnesses of her little
+life, meting out tears to every one. And then, feeling greatly
+refreshed, she went out on the front porch, and wondered what she should
+do next.
+
+Down the shore, about a mile away, there were others who found time less
+heavy on their hands. At the Land We Live In, a one-roomed saloon which
+catered for a permanent white population of thirteen, and a transient
+one that varied from a cutter to a full-rigged ship--at the Land We Live
+In Christmas was being celebrated in a rousing fashion. To begin with,
+there were the mutineers of the _Lord Dundonald_, twenty-two strong,
+with plenty of money still to spend. Their revolt against authority had
+not been without some redeeming features, and an unbiased critic would
+have found it hard to blame them. After twenty-seven days and nights at
+the pumps of a four-masted sieve, the Lords had struck in a body, and
+forced the captain to abandon the ship and set out in three boats for
+Apiang. Here they double-dyed their crime by compelling the wrathful
+master to pay them their wages to date, from six hundred and thirty-nine
+pounds he had taken with him from a vessel he had fondly hoped to pump
+to China. Captain Latimer, with the three mates, the carpenter, and one
+of the hands, had sailed away south in the longboat, vowing yardarms and
+a man-of-war, and when last seen was sinking over the horizon in the
+direction of the Fiji Islands.
+
+Well, here they all were in the Land We Live In, together with Tom
+Holderson, Peter Extrum, Eddy Newnes, and Long Joe Kelly, all of Apiang;
+Papa Benson, of Tarawa; Jones and Peabody, of Big Muggin; and crazy old
+Jimmy Mathison, of nowhere in particular--unless it were the nearest gin
+bottle; and it was a rip-roaring Christmas, and no mistake, with
+bottled beer flowing like water, and songs and choruses and clog dances
+and hornpipes; and Papa Benson (in earrings and pink pajamas) a-blowing
+enough wind through his concertina to have sailed a ship. And there were
+girls, too, seven or eight of them, in bright trade-cotton Mother
+Hubbards--a bevy of black-eyed little heathen savages, who bore a hand
+with the trays, and added their saucy laughter to the general gayety,
+helping out Larry the barkeep as he drew unending corks or stopped to
+wipe the sweat off his forehead, saying, "Genelmen, the drinks is on
+Billy," or Tommy, or Long Joe, or whoever it was that was treating.
+
+Suddenly, at the door, which had been kept shut to prevent the natives
+from assembling and peering in--suddenly, at the door, there was heard a
+faint, faint knock. The concertina stopped. Fritz, the Dutchman, said
+"Hoosh!" and raised his pipe for silence. The knock was repeated. Quiet
+descended on the Land We Live In. Larry looked up from his bottles, and
+in a rough and belligerent voice called out, "Come in!"
+
+The invitation was hesitatingly obeyed, and there stood Daisy Kirke on
+the threshold, a sweet, faltering figure, with her guard, boots and all,
+lined up in the roadway. Hardly a soul in the room knew there was a
+little white girl on the island; and the sight of Daisy, with the red
+ribbon in her hair, her dimity frock, her long stockings and pinafore,
+was as startling as it was unexpected.
+
+"Howdy-do, evver'body?" said she.
+
+There was an embarrassed silence.
+
+"I know you better than you do me," went on Daisy confidentially,
+proving it with her forefinger. "That's Tommy, the cabin boy; and
+yonder's Mr. Mathison, the beach-comber; and you"--indicating a giant of
+a man with an aquiline nose and a square-cut beard--"you are Mr. Bob
+Fletcher, the ringleader!"
+
+A giggle of subdued merriment ran round the room. An instinctive respect
+kept it within bounds, or perhaps it was Bob Fletcher's fierce and
+warning look that cowed any incipient rowdyism. The brawny mutineer set
+her on his knee, and, in a voice harshened by thirty years' service
+before the mast, asked her deferentially if she fancied a glass of
+syrup?
+
+"No, thank you," said Daisy politely; and then, addressing everybody in
+general, "papa and mamma's gone to Tarawa!"
+
+"Now, if that ain't too bad!" put in Bob sympathetically.
+
+"And so it just occurred to me," went on Daisy, "to do something nice to
+surprise them when they came back."
+
+A profound silence greeted this remark. The devil's love of holy water
+is a craving compared to the amount of love lost between a South Sea
+missionary and the rough white element that mocks his labors at every
+turn. It was the custom of the Lord Dundonalds, moreover, to hoot the
+Rev. Walter Kirke whenever they met him. It was a recollection of this
+that made the present situation so piquant and humorous.
+
+"Besides, it seems too bad," continued Daisy, "that the natives should
+have such a fuss made over them, while all you white gentlemen are left
+out in the cold. It must look queer to Dod, and I don't believe He likes
+it!"
+
+"Everything for the niggers--that's right," muttered Tom Extrum
+bitterly, "and not even a six-months-old newspaper for the likes of us!"
+
+"You don't look so werry wicked," said Daisy, taking in the room with a
+comprehensive glance, and putting an arm around Mr. Bob's neck, as
+though confident of having at least one friend among the company. "I
+wonder if you wouldn't all like to come along to my house, and play with
+my magic lantern, and--and--organize a Band of Hope?"
+
+She was abashed by the roar of laughter that followed the proposal. Papa
+Benson flung himself on the floor and rolled over and over. Long Joe
+uttered whoops of delight. Even Mr. Bob shook with speechless mirth,
+till the veins on his forehead stood out like strings. Never in all its
+history was there such a hullabaloo in the Land We Live In. As the
+rumpus died down something very like remorse overwhelmed the roisterers
+as they saw Daisy's flushing, quivering little face, hot with
+mortification.
+
+It was Mr. Bob who sprang to the rescue before the brimming tears could
+fall.
+
+"I'm on!" he shouted, rising to his feet with unexpected enthusiasm.
+"Now, then, boys, who says 'Aye, aye' for the Band of 'Ope?"
+
+A good part of the crowd would have preferred to stay by their spree;
+but so contagious is example and so sheeplike the sailor nature, that
+the whole room fell in with Bob, and answered his call like one man.
+
+He swung Daisy up on his shoulder, where, from that dizzy perch, she
+looked back shyly at the noisy pack behind her. Secure in the conquest
+of the ringleader, whom intuitively she felt stronger than the rest, and
+kinder and more resolute, with a heart beneath his rough exterior as
+simple and childlike as her own, she managed to keep up her courage in
+spite of the loud, frightening laughter and the tipsy boisterousness and
+horseplay that marked the inception of the Band of Hope. Her
+satisfaction was suddenly checked, however, by the sight of the Kanaka
+girls joining the procession and making as though to follow.
+
+"No, they mustn't come!" she cried out jealously. "Please, Mr.
+Mathison, tell them they mustn't come! This is to be for men only!"
+
+"Turn them back!" thundered Bob. "Don't yer 'ear the little lady's
+_h_orders? Scamper, ye jades!"
+
+Papa Benson struck up a quickstep on the concertina, and, marching
+beside Bob Fletcher, helped to lead the van. The mutineers,
+beach-combers, and traders fell in two by two. The rear was brought up
+by the guard, loutish, hobbling, and out of step, bearing their rusty
+Springfields at all angles. In this fashion they made the missionary's
+house, swarmed into the neat bare inclosure of coral sand, and invaded
+the silent rooms.
+
+A terrible irresolution was stealing over Daisy. Twelve slides,
+representing the wanderings of Saint Paul, began to seem too trifling a
+means of holding the attention of this enormous and expectant crowd.
+Besides, it came over her with a shock that she was a little hazy about
+Saint Paul; and then there were disturbing questions of sheets and
+darkened windows, and how to make it work. It was with dismay, verging
+on despair, that she saw the serried ranks of her recruits crowding the
+room to bursting, and all regarding her with humorous anticipation. But
+good Mr. Bob, holding her in his lap, and stroking her hair with an
+enormous red hand, showed a most comforting disposition to himself take
+the breach. At any rate, he roared for silence; told Mr. Mathison he'd
+cut his liver out if he didn't belay with them there remarks, and
+assumed a tone of authority that calmed the tumult of Daisy's
+misgivings.
+
+"Friends," he said, "and mates, and respected genelmen _h_all, we are
+here, two and three gathered togetherlike, for the purpose of
+_h_organizing a Band of 'Ope."
+
+"Local Number One," interrupted Billy Dutton, the donkey-man, who had
+had some trades'-union experience.
+
+"Band of 'Ope, Local Number One," continued Mr. Bob, receiving the
+suggestion in an accommodating spirit. "And it is with great pleasure I
+propose the name of _h_our first president, Miss Daisy Kirke, of
+Apiang."
+
+Then, my stars, wasn't there a cheer! Daisy hung her head, nestled
+closer to Mr. Bob, and felt all the joy of good works promptly bearing
+fruit.
+
+"I don't see no reason," went on Mr. Bob, "why a false modesty, that 'as
+been my _h_unfailing 'andicap through life, should prevent me from
+nominating myself as your _h_esteemed vice president. I do not wish to
+seem a-soaring too 'igh, or reaching out for honors that belong to
+_h_abler 'eads nor mine; but I'll take the sense of the meeting in a
+kindly spirit, and will abide peaceable by a show of 'ands!"
+
+When the applause had subsided, Billy Dutton sprang up, and wanted to
+know "what about a recording seckitary?"
+
+"I don't see no 'arm in the honorable genelman _h_assuming the job
+'isself," said Mr. Bob, "if 'e thinks 'e's sufficient of a speller, and
+won't run the band into 'orrible extravagances for 'igh-priced wines and
+luxuries. The assessments of this band is going to be low, and the diet
+plain. Who says Brother Dutton ain't the man for the place? Is it you,
+Mr. Riley, I see raising your fist agin him? Oh, only to ax a question.
+Well, one thing at a time, Brother Riley. Does the meeting _h_endorse
+Mr. Willum Dutton for recording seckitary?"
+
+The meeting did, vociferously and with cheers. Daisy ran and got her
+slate for the recording seckitary, who thereupon (after first inscribing
+the names of the office bearers in a shaky print) began to draw a
+wonderful picture of a pirate ship.
+
+"Afore listening to the plans of our valued president," said Mr. Bob, "I
+propose myself to _h_offer up a few general remarks on 'Ope! Me and 'Ope
+is old friends, genelmen. We set sail together from the port of London,
+'Ope and I, when I was a bright-faced boy that 'igh! We've bunked in
+together, fair weather and foul, coming on this thirty year. We 'ave set
+in our time, me and 'Ope, on the bottom of a capsized schooner, ore
+laden out of Mazatlan, with our tongues 'anging out like the tails of
+some vallyble new kind of a black dorg. 'Ope and I took the Chainy
+coast once on a chicken coop. 'Ope and I, when we 'ad the dollars, blew
+them in right royal. 'Ope and I, when we 'adn't none, tightened our
+belts and cheered each other _h_up. Looking back over all them years, I
+want to stand _h_up and testify right 'ere to the best friend of the
+sailorman, bar none, and p'r'aps the _h_only one he ever truly 'ad--and
+that's 'Ope, God bless her!"
+
+Amid the ensuing uproar, which jarred the walls of that prim missionary
+residence like an explosion of dynamite, spilling plates off dressers
+and cock-billing texts, and arresting the astonished clock at four
+forty-six, little Daisy was trying to nerve herself to address the
+assembled company. The unforeseen docility of the band had put new ideas
+in that sleek, baby-seal head. Odds and ends of tracts and storybooks
+recurred to her. Infantile ambitions awoke and clamored. But it was
+daunting, just the same, to confront those rows of eyes, and those great
+big, unshaved, shaggy-looking faces, all keenly waiting for her to
+speak.
+
+"Now, then, little lady," said the vice president, "'ere's your Band of
+'Ope, a-panting to set its 'and to the plow!"
+
+Daisy cleared her throat. Pride and timidity struggled with each other
+in that eager little countenance. Had it not been for an encouraging
+squeeze from Mr. Bob, who knows but what she might have burst into
+tears, and disgraced herself before the whole band. But the squeeze,
+coming exactly at the right time, averted so mortifying a catastrophe.
+
+"My dear friends," began Daisy, catching with unconscious mimicry some
+of the rounded tones of her father's voice--"my dear, kind friends!"
+
+"Well, go on," cried Mr. Bob; "that's a swell start! That's the way to
+wake them up!"
+
+"Hear! hear!" (This from a dozen places.)
+
+"I have called you togevver," went on Daisy bravely, "so we might enjoy
+the travels of Saint Paul, which belongs to the magic lantern Santa
+Claus brought me this morning for Christmas, because I'm such a good
+little girl. Saint Paul was a kind of a sailor, too, and got
+shipwrecked, like Mr. Bob, in an awful storm. I used to know all about
+Saint Paul, but somehow I've got mixed up about him since. Perhaps one
+of our members will oblige, so we'll know what the slides are about when
+we get _w_ound to them?"
+
+There was a profound silence. No one volunteered. Billy Dutton, looking
+up from the pirate ship, to which he was adding some finishing touches,
+said he was afeared the president would find them a sad, ignorant lot of
+ignorpotammusses.
+
+"Then we'll just have to get along without Saint Paul," said Daisy
+regretfully. "Perhaps it is as well, too, for Bands of Hope isn't only
+for amoosement, but to do good, and help uvvers, and carry the glad
+tidings right and left into the darkest corners of the earth."
+
+"Gee-whilikins!" exclaimed Sammy Nesbit, "where's this we're fetching up
+to, mates?"
+
+"Silence! _H_order! Shut your face! Dry up, there, Sammy!" roared the
+Band of Hope.
+
+"I was finking," went on the president, confidentially and undisturbed,
+"why a nice little surprise for papa wouldn't be as good an idea as any.
+It's an awful long way to Tarawa and back, and papa's never been werry
+strong since the fever he got in New Guinea, before he married mamma
+with Mr. Chalmers."
+
+"Wot sort of a surprise _h_exactly?" asked the vice president with an
+expression of some doubt.
+
+"Putting up mottoes _w_ound the walls," returned Daisy, "and green
+branches and palm leaves and texes and Merry Christmas, like grandpapa's
+in Devonshire, when I was a little tiny winy girl. And papa will be so
+pleased and happy and surprised that I know he'll just love it, and
+won't never feel tired at all!"
+
+The Band of Hope, who seemed given to singular and inextinguishable fits
+of laughter, promptly went off into another paroxysm; and laughter with
+the Band of Hope was no drawing-room performance, no polite titter
+behind an upraised hand. When the Band of Hope laughed, it rolled on the
+floor, beat its clenched fists against neighboring backs, screamed,
+huzzaed, cat-called, kicked pajama legs in the air, and shook the
+pictures off the walls. Mr. Bob seemed to be the only one who knew how
+to behave, but even Mr. Bob grew crimson in the face, and choked, and
+opened his mouth till you could see way down his froat.
+
+"Genelmen," he said, when at last he had somewhat recovered, "you've
+listened to our _h_orders, and I'll _h_only remind you that them that
+_h_ain't with us is agin us, as Saint Paul says. Back-sliders and goats
+may return to the bar, but me and the fleecy sheep is agoing to see this
+thing through, and do our dooty _h_under the regilations by Board of
+Trade _h_appointed. Goats, as I said afore, will kindly rise and step
+out!"
+
+"We ain't no blooming quitters," spoke up Billy Dutton. "Goats, nothing,
+you wall-eyed old ram! You want to cinch all the texes for yesself, and
+make a running with our lovely president. But we are on to you, Bob
+Fletcher, and I voice the sentimomgs of the whole band when I says with
+Saint John, in the forty-first epistle to the Proosians, 'Wot you put
+your fist to, that do it with all yer might!'"
+
+"Aye, aye!" chorused the band with boisterous approval.
+
+"Then _h_up and work, you devils!" exclaimed the vice president. "Pull
+out that table, Mack; and you, there, bear a 'and to 'elp 'im, 'Enery.
+Set _h_up the little chair, Williams! Easy with Saint Paul, you, Tommy,
+or you'll crack him sure--and lay the whole caboodlum on the shelf,
+_h_out of 'arm's way! Lively, lads--lively!"
+
+Bob lifted Daisy in his arms, and carrying her to the table, installed
+her comfortably in the little chair.
+
+"Captain's bridge," he said; "and if anything ain't right, or just
+_h_according to your _h_idears, you sing out to the lower deck, loud and
+'earty; only mind you don't get _h_excited and spill orf!"
+
+Daisy's eyes danced, and her timidity all vanished as she saw the jovial
+and obedient band grouping together and hotly discussing the proposed
+decorations. Distances were measured with tarry thumbs. A party of six
+was told off to climb the cocoa palms across the road; while another,
+shouting and hallooing like schoolboys, was dispatched to Holderson's
+station to get sinnet. There was a noisy wrangle over spelling. "I never
+seed it like that," said one, squinting over Billy's slate, "and I don't
+believe nobody else ever did neither." "For the love of Mike," roared
+another, "let's stick to them words we're all agreed on, and keep off of
+that thorological grass!" "Man and boy, I've been to sea this thirty
+years," exclaimed Mr. Bob with crushing vehemence, "and there warn't no
+T in Christmas then, and there ain't now! C-R-I-S-S-M-A-S, you
+son of a sea cook, and I know _h_every letter of it like the palm of me
+'and!"
+
+In a corner, dispassionately aloof from all the bustle and argument,
+Papa Benson, that venerable dandy of the pink pajamas, pumped up the
+concertina, and drew melodiously on his ancient repertoire. To the
+inspiring strains of "In Her Hair She Wore a White Camellia," "Oh,
+Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out To-night?" and the "Mulligatawny
+Guards," the good work progressed with sailorlike speed and system. The
+bare, dreary room grew gay with greenery. Stitched to the matting walls
+with sinnet there appeared letters, words, and finally complete
+inscriptions: PEAS ON ERTH AND GOODWILL TOWARDS MAN; DAISY
+KIRKE, THE SEAMAN'S STAR; MERRY CRISSMAS, and GOD BLESS OUR HOM.
+
+Daisy clapped her hands with delight, and did not stint her praise or
+approval. Occasionally she would stand up on the "bridge" to anxiously
+point out a crooked letter, or call attention to a doubtful spelling;
+and her little heart overflowed with satisfaction at the brisk "Aye,
+aye, Miss!" that greeted her smallest criticism. Mr. Bob worked like a
+horse, and not only made things jump, but kept a sharp watch as well on
+the unguarded utterances of his mates. Once, at some remark of Mr.
+Tod's, he flared up like a lion, and stepping close to Mr. Tod, with
+his fist clenched, said, "Drop that, Toddy--d'ye 'ear--drop it!" and
+stared at him so fierce and splendid, that Mr. Tod fell back and mumbled
+something about "No offense," and "It kinder ripped out unbeknownst,
+Bob, old cock!"
+
+By the time it was all finished dusk was falling. The room had been
+beautifully swept out, and likewise the porch, and Mr. Bell was in the
+act of dancing a fascinating clog to Papa Benson's "Soldier's Joy" on
+the concertina, when Nantok rushed in, shouting that Mr. Kirke was
+coming. And, indeed, she had no sooner given the news than it was
+confirmed by the whaler's crew, whose voices could be heard far across
+the water, lustily singing at their paddles.
+
+A sort of consternation descended on the Band of Hope. "Hell!" exclaimed
+Mr. Dutton, and dropped his broom with a crash. There was a mad scurry
+to escape. The little president was forgotten in the pellmell rush, and
+from the height of her table she perceived her friends flying away
+without a word of farewell. No, not all. The faithful Mr. Bob, quiet and
+masterful even in that panicky moment of the missionary's return, came
+up to her, and taking her hand in both his own, nuzzled it long and
+lovingly against his cheek.
+
+"Little Daisy," he said, and his voice sounded kind of strange and
+different, "I want you to give a message to your pa--a message from me,
+you say to 'im--and that is, 'e'll never 'ave no more trouble with the
+boys down the shore. And if any of them gets fresh, or gives 'im any
+lip, or 'oots--you tell 'im this, Daisy--I'll break every bone of 'is
+body, so 'elp me, Moses. And it _h_ain't because of 'im, or anythink the
+like of that, but because he's the father of the darlingest little gal
+that _h_ever breathed, and the sweetest and the dearest."
+
+Daisy flung her arms around his neck and kissed him; and as her face
+pressed his, rough as mahogany and hairy as a mat, she felt it all wet
+with tears.
+
+Daisy was still wondering what it was that could make Mr. Bob cry, when
+he suddenly let her go, and walked out of the door in his funny, heavy,
+lurching sea walk, looking straight before him, and unheeding the "Happy
+Noo Year, Mr. Bob!" she called after him in a pitiful little voice.
+
+"Poor Mr. Bob!" said Daisy to herself; and then, happening to put her
+hand to her hair, she discovered that the red ribbon was gone!
+
+"He must have stole it for a keepsake when I was kissing him!" she
+exclaimed. "Oh, you bad, bad Mr. Bob!"
+
+But her eyes sparkled nevertheless, as she ran out to greet papa and
+mamma.
+
+
+
+
+OLD DIBS
+
+
+His beginnings was a mystery, where he come from a conjecture, and his
+business in Manihiki Island one of them things that bothered a fellow in
+his sleep and yapped at his heels when he was awake. Captain Corker had
+picked him up at Penrhyn, and the trader there said he had been landed
+from a barkentine, lumber laden, from Portland, and from there back
+there was a haze on his past thicker than Bobby Carter's. Leastways,
+with Bobby there was his forty-five different stories to account for the
+leg-iron scars on his ankles, but with Old Dibs you hadn't even that to
+chew on. Nothing but five large new trunks and the clothes he stood in.
+Remarkable clothes, too, they were, for a coral island in the mid
+Pacific, being invariably a stovepipe hat and a Prince Albert coat, with
+trousers changing from pearl gray to lead color, with stripes, till
+you'd think he'd melt!
+
+He was a fine man to look at, about sixty years of age, very portly and
+pleasant spoken, and everything he said sounded important, even if it
+was only about the weather or why cocoanut milk always gave him cramps.
+He said his name was Smith. People who change their names seem always
+to change it to Smith, till you wonder sometimes they don't choose
+Jones, or maybe Patterson, or Wilkins. But you'll notice it is Smith
+every time, though we always called him Old Dibs, because of the money
+that he had and threw around so regardless.
+
+My first sight of him was on the front porch, mopping his forehead, and
+asking whether he might have board and lodging by the week. I told him
+that we hardly carried style enough for a gentleman like him, but all we
+had he was welcome to--and if not too long--for nothing. He seemed
+pleased at this, and more pleased still when he looked over our big
+bedroom and noticed my wife's smiling, comely face. She's only a Kanaka
+girl, but I wouldn't trade her for a million. And he laid down a shining
+twenty-dollar gold piece and asked if that would do every Tuesday?
+
+Now I am as fond of money as any man, but I'm not a pirate, and so I
+said it was too much. But he wouldn't take no denial, and flung it down
+on the trade-room counter again, saying he counted it settled. Then I
+turned to with his trunks, told my wife to bundle out into the boatshed,
+and opened beer.
+
+"Making a long stay, sir?" said I.
+
+"I hardly know, Bill," he said. (I had told him my name was Bill.) "I
+hardly know, Bill," and with that he heaved a tremendous sigh.
+
+"We don't often have visitors here," I said. "The last was eighteen men
+of the British bark _Wolverine_, in boats, from French Frigate Shoals,
+where they were cast away."
+
+"I'm looking for a quiet place to end my days in," he says.
+
+"Well, I guess you've found it," I says.
+
+"It looks as though I had, Bill," he answers, gazing seaward where the
+palms was bending in the trade breeze and there was nothing but the
+speck of Captain Corker's schooner beating out. I could see he was
+pretty downhearted, and though I set the music box going to cheer him
+and asked if he fancied a nice mess of gulls' eggs for supper, it wasn't
+no good, and finally he went into his room and set out the rest of the
+day on one of the trunks.
+
+I went along the same evening to talk it over with Tom Riley, the other
+trader in Manihiki, who, in spite of our being in opposition and all
+that, was more like my own born brother than a rival in business. We
+never let down the price of shell or copra on each other, and lined up
+shoulder to shoulder if a third party tried to break in, and so we had
+enough for both of us and a tidy bit over. Tom was afire to hear all
+about Old Dibs, and had been getting bulletins the whole afternoon from
+the Kanakas, down to the twenty dollars and the five trunks, and even
+the way he sighed.
+
+Tom knew right away he was a defaulter, and said we were in powerful
+luck to have got him. It was fine of Tom to take it like that, for what
+luck there was was mine, and he said he'd help out with chickens and
+fresh fish and some extra superior canned stuff he had, so that Old Dibs
+would be comfortable and want to stay. Tom was a good deal like that
+professor who could make a prehistoric animal out of one prehistoric
+bone, and then, when later on they discovered the whole beast entire, it
+was head and tail with the one he had drawn on the blackboard. And by
+the time the square-face had made a second round, Tom's fancy had flown
+higher than a yellow-back novel, Old Dibs being dead, blessing me with
+his last breath and making me the heir of all his riches!
+
+Tom walked home with me, still talking, for we had now bought a
+ninety-ton schooner with my legacy, me captain and him supercargo, and
+we had taken out French naturalization papers so we might be free of the
+Paumotu and Tubuai groups. When we said good night, whispering so as not
+to disturb Old Dibs, who was snoring out serene, it had grown to be a
+fleet, with headquarters at Papiete, and a steam service to 'Frisco! We
+were a pair of boys, both of us, and could make squid taste like lamb
+chops just by telling ourselves it was so!
+
+I reckon Old Dibs was a little suspicious of me and Tom, and small blame
+to him for that, the Islands being pretty full of tough customers, with
+never no law nor order nor nobody to appeal to in trouble unless it was
+your gun. He made me put a stout bolt on his door and chicken wire over
+the windows, and always slept with the lamp burning in his room; and it
+was noticeable, too, that he never cared to wander far away from the
+house. He was given to playing the flute in the stern of an old
+whaleboat, which was drawn up near the station with a cocoanut shelter
+over it. He never went anywhere, except to the native pastor's (Iosefo
+his name was). I suppose he felt a kind of protection in him--Iosefo
+being the nearest thing to an official in the island--and he made
+himself very solid in that quarter, giving to the church lavish and
+going there every Sunday. He always come back from them visits with a
+ruminating look in his eye, and the first thing he did was to make a bee
+line for his room, like somebody might have been tampering with his
+trunks.
+
+Finally one day he took me aside and said: "Bill, that Iosefo is a very
+agreeable man, and if it would be the same to you, I'd like to have him
+a little about the house."
+
+"Why, Mr. Smith," I said, "you needn't have troubled to ask me that; any
+friend of yours is welcome, I am sure, and I never saw no harm in
+Iosefo, even if he is a missionary."
+
+I thought he meant to have the fellow in to talk with him or play
+checkers, to while away the time that hung so heavy on his hands. But it
+wasn't this at all--except for a halfway pretense at the beginning. No;
+he paid Iosefo ten dollars a week, for what do you think? To sit on one
+of his trunks (_the_ trunk, I reckon) from seven in the morning till six
+at night, barring service time Sundays. Yes, sir; nothing else than a
+squatting sentry, mounting guard over the boodle inside the trunk and
+protecting it from me! I wonder what the home missionary society would
+have said to see Brother Iosefo yawning all day on the top of a trunk,
+or writing his sermon on his knee, Saturdays!
+
+At first I felt pretty hot about it, for it smacked too much of setting
+a thief to catch a thief, or at least offsetting the pastor and me like
+the compensating idea of a ship's chronometer; but my wife liked the
+respectability it give us before the natives; and Tom said my resenting
+it would be like putting the cap on my head. So I acted like I didn't
+give a whoop, the one way or the other.
+
+And then it wasn't easy to be anything but fond of Old Dibs, for he was
+a nice man to live with, never turning up his nose at the poor food we
+give him, and always so kind and polite to Sarah, my wife, that she
+fairly idolized him. He was a real gentleman through and through, and if
+his money (he called it his "papers," his valuable "papers") weighed
+heavy on his mind, I guess I'd have been no better in his shoes, having
+to trust to strangers who might cut your throat. He had the whole island
+to roam over now, instead of being cooped up like a chicken in a coop,
+and we all noticed what a change in him it made for the better, throwing
+off flesh, and not panting so heavy between the spells of his flute, and
+walking with his head in the air like the island belonged to him.
+
+He wasn't much of a fluter, playing mostly from notes, and often picking
+them out so slow that you'd forget what the tune began like. He despised
+simple things like "Way Down Upon the Suwanee River," and the difficult
+things seemed to despise _him!_ But he stuck at it indefatiguable, and
+blew enough wind through his flute to have sailed a ship. After
+breakfast in the morning, which he took in his panjammers like me, he
+would dress himself up nice in his Prince Albert, give his topper a
+wipe, and start away with the flute and a roll of music in a natty
+little case, like he was off to the Bank for the day. The only thing
+that ruffled him any was the children, about eighty of them, who always
+went along, too, and set in a circle around him when he played. I told
+him they'd soon tire of tagging after him, which he said he was mighty
+glad to hear; but if it was flies, they couldn't have been more
+pertinacious. I spoke to the king about it, and Old Dibs he complained
+to Iosefo, but it only seemed to whoop it up and add to the procession.
+The king said if he'd just flute in one place, he would put a taboo
+around it which neither children nor grown-ups would cross; but Old Dibs
+said that the looking on, even from a distance, would be quite as
+disturbing as being sprawled all over; and so the children followed him
+unabated.
+
+Then I had a happy thought, and suggested the graveyard! This was a
+walled-in inclosure, perhaps a hundred feet each way, on the weather
+side of the island, and on a windy day, with the surf thundering in, it
+was the lonesomest spot where a man could find himself. The natives left
+it alone at all times, except to bury somebody, and none of them came
+nearer to it than they could help. The Kanakas have a powerful dread of
+spirits, and even in the daytime they'd give the place a wide berth. The
+walls, too, being about seven feet high, prevented the children from
+peeking in, except at the gateway, which was so narrow that it was easy
+to get out of view.
+
+Old Dibs perked up at this and cottoned to the idea tremendous; and the
+graveyard soon become his regular stamping ground, except when there was
+a funeral. He rigged up a little shelter for himself in the center, with
+a music stand I made for him out of scantling; and often he took his
+lunch in his pocket and spent the whole day. Not a child ventured to
+show himself, and he had it as much to himself as though he owned it;
+and he could lay his stovepipe down now without any fear of its being
+greased up or sat on. It led to his asking a raft of questions about the
+natives and their superstitions, and how none of them ventured to go
+near the place unless in a big party. He came back to that again and
+again, and always with the same interest. I ought to have suspected what
+was running in his head, but I didn't. In fack, we had all settled down
+now like we had always lived together, and I didn't bother any more
+about him, or what he said or did, than if he had been my wife's father!
+It was a good deal like having a rich uncle to stay with you, and after
+the first excitement you took it all as a matter of course.
+
+Even Iosefo, sitting on the trunk in the bedroom, became one of them
+things that ran into habit; and in some ways it was a good idea, too,
+for it brought custom to the store, what with the deacons coming over to
+talk about church affairs, and the Committee on Ways and Means meeting
+there regular. Even the gold twenty every week settled down in the same
+channel of routine, and I didn't bite it any more, as I used to do, nor
+hold it in my hand wondering where it come from. I just put it away with
+the rest and thought no more about it. The only concern of me and Sarah
+was to feed up the old fellow to the best of our ability and try and
+make him pleased.
+
+We had been running along like this for I don't know how long, when one
+night, toward the small hours, a singular thing happened. I was sleeping
+very light, and I woke up all of a sudden and saw Old Dibs standing in
+the doorway! He had a candle in his hand and bulked up enormous in his
+red silk dressing gown, and there was a wild look on his unshaved face.
+
+I held my breath and watched him through my half-shut eyes--watched him
+for quite a spell, till he softly tiptoed away again in his naked feet,
+and I heard the door close behind him in the house. I waited a long
+while wondering what to do, and what there could be in the boatshed to
+bring him out at such an unlikely hour. At first I was for getting my
+rifle and sitting up the balance of the night; but then, as I waked up
+more and tried to think it out, it seemed that he had a better right to
+be afraid of me than me of _him_. It couldn't be to do me no harm, I
+reckoned, but probably to assure himself that I was asleep.
+
+He was plainly up to something, and it was equally plain he didn't want
+me to know it. So I got out of bed--if you can call a stack of mats and
+a schooner's topsail a bed--and lit out to see what was doing. It was no
+good trying to get into the house, for Old Dibs had nailed the keys and
+handed them out every morning through the winder when I went to take him
+his shaving water. But the curtains of the bedroom weren't extra close,
+and if I could get up on the veranda without too much of a creaking I
+knew I could see in all right. There's a lot of cat in a sailor, even to
+the nine lives and the dislike of getting wet, and I was soon on my
+knees at the sill, taking in the performance.
+
+The room was lit up as usual, and all the big five trunks were open,
+with Old Dibs diving into them like he was packing for the morning
+train. Leastways, that was my first thought; the second was, that
+something stranger than that was up, and that people didn't usually go
+traveling with an outfit of pinkish paper cut into shavings. You've seen
+them, haven't you?--the kind of packing they put into music boxes, fine
+toys, and the like, flummoxy twisted paper ravelings that protect the
+varnish and have no weight to speak of. Well, that was what was in them
+trunks, and Old Dibs was pawing it out till it stuck up in the room,
+yards high, like a mountain. Occasionally he seemed to strike something
+harder than paper--something that would take both his hands to lift--and
+it was only a little clinking canvas bag that big.
+
+Money? Of course it was money! And he was stacking it in a leather
+dress-suit case laid on the floor next his bed.
+
+You could see he was nervous by the way he kept looking behind him; and
+once, when a rat ran across the attic, he jumped awful and the whole
+floor shook. It was a queer sensation to look right into a man's eyes
+and him not see you, which I did with Old Dibs again and again as he'd
+stop and listen. I ought to have said that one of the trunks was clothes
+all right, but even here there was three or four bags of coin, which he
+got out and added to the others.
+
+Then he counted the bags and tried to turn the top of the suit case on
+them, but couldn't manage it. He arranged them first this way and then
+that way, but there was always about a dozen outstanding. The canvas
+itself was very coarse, and there was lots to spare, the slack being
+turned over and over, and tied with heavy twine extra. Then he took them
+all out, and slitting them open, just let the stuff rip naked.
+
+Lord! but it was a dandy sight, a dazzle of double eagles cascading like
+a river, and so swift that you couldn't pretend to count them! He seemed
+satisfied to go on like that, cutting one open after the other, till the
+suit case brimmed up solid. There was fifty-eight bags in all, and the
+Lord only knows how much in each; but, as I said, it took both his hands
+to lift a single one. I reckon I didn't know there was so much money in
+all the world, and it came over me afresh how fond I was of Old Dibs,
+and how good I was going to be to him.
+
+When the last bag was emptied he thought he'd put back the suit case
+into one of the trunks, never recollecting that he might as well have
+tried to lift a locomotive. Then he laid hands on just the handle at one
+end, and he couldn't even shift it. You disremember how heavy gold is,
+seeing so little of it, and counting a hundred dollars a fortune. But he
+had there, considering the trunks weighed the usual amount, say about a
+hundred and fifty pounds each, and gold at nearly twenty dollars an
+ounce--well, the next day Tom worked it out to about two hundred and
+fifty thousand dollars.
+
+Think of it! With nothing between it and me but some chicken wire and an
+old gentleman in a dressing gown! It would have seemed a snap to some
+people, but I never made a dishonest dollar in my life--except in the
+way of trade, and then it was to natives (who water copra on you and
+square the difference); and he was in no more danger of harm than if it
+had been Lima beans.
+
+Then--to get along with my yarn--he took the comforter off the bed, and
+setting it down flat on the floor, begun to cover it with double
+handfuls ranged in rows, till he had worked down the suit case to where
+he could lift it. He carried it over to the nearest trunk, placed it
+snug in the bottom, and started to load it up again from the stacks on
+the quilt. I don't know how long he took to do it, but it was quite a
+time, and he looked pretty well tired out when it was over, and he sat
+back in the rocker and rocked--me still glued at the winder--and he
+reached out for his flute and put it to his lips (though he didn't blow
+into it), and worked his fingers like he was playing a piece. After a
+time he laid it down, and drawing his dressing gown closer around him,
+took another go at filling up the trunks again with the paper packing.
+
+This seemed a good time for me to skip, which I did more cautious than
+ever, my heart beating that loud I wonder he didn't hear me. I felt for
+my pipe in the dark, and went out under the stars to the edge of the
+lagoon, to think it all over. You might wonder what I had to do with it
+unless it was to make away with him and scoop the pool for me and Tom;
+but, as I said before, I wasn't that kind of a man, and millions
+wouldn't have made no difference. But I was in a sort of tremble for the
+old fellow himself, for what was he doing alone with it in the far
+Pacific, unless there were others after him, hotfoot?
+
+Wherever there's a carcass there's sharks to eat it, though you may have
+sailed a week and not seen a fin; and human sharks have the longest
+scent of any, especially when they have the law on their side and courts
+of justice behind them. I wanted to keep the money in the family, so to
+speak, and I was not only unwilling to harm Old Dibs myself, but I
+didn't want no others to harm him neither.
+
+I talked it over with Tom next morning, till the eyes nearly bulged out
+of his head. Tom was less of a pirate even than me, but he had to have
+his fling in fancy, being, as I said, one of them natural-born yarners,
+and he never got back to earth till we had poisoned Old Dibs (wavering
+between Rough on Rats and powdered glass), covered up all traces of the
+crime, divided the money equal, and sailed away West in his five-ton
+cutter, to bring up at last in one of the Line islands. After arranging
+it all to the last dot, even to the name of our ninety-ton schooner, and
+the very bank in Sydney where we'd lay the stuff in our joint names, he
+said there was only one thing to do, and that was to warn Old Dibs, and
+arrange some kind of a scheme to protect him.
+
+"They are bound to run him down," said Tom. "A man that skips out with
+nothing, and a man that skips out with a quarter of a million, are in
+two different classes; and it wouldn't surprise me the least bit if
+there was six ships aiming for Manihiki simultaneous."
+
+By the time I started back to find Old Dibs I was worked up to quite a
+fever, and I'd keep looking over my shoulder expecting every minute to
+see one of them six ships in the pass. He had finished breakfast and had
+gone, and so I followed him over to the weather side, where, as usual,
+he was sitting under his tarpaulin in the graveyard, tootling for all he
+was worth. He looked up, a little surprised to see me, and I guess ships
+were running through his head also, for that was his first question.
+
+I sat down on a near-by grave.
+
+"The fack is, Mr. Smith," I said, very meaningly, "you paid me a little
+visit last night and I paid you one."
+
+"Oh, my God!" he said, turning whiter than paper, and the voice coming
+out of him like an old man's.
+
+"There's no 'my God' about it," I said. "But me and Tom Riley's been
+talking it over, and we'd like to bear a hand to help you."
+
+"It's mine," he said, very defiant, and trembling. "It's mine, every
+penny of it, and honest come by."
+
+"No doubt," I said, "but would I be guessing wrong if there were others
+who didn't think so?"
+
+"There _are_ others," he said at last, seeing, I suppose, that my face
+looked friendly, and realizing that me and Tom would hardly take this
+tack if we meant to massacre him in his sleep.
+
+"Mr. Smith," I said, "you never had two better friends than Bill Hargus
+or Tom Riley."
+
+He laid down his flute.
+
+"I'd never feel in any danger with that good wife of yours about," he
+said. It didn't seem quite the right remark under the circumstance, but
+there was a power of truth back of it. That girl of mine was regularly
+struck on Old Dibs, and, being a Tongan, was full of the Old Nick, and
+would have bit my ear off if I had lifted my hand to him. The two of
+them had patched up an adoption arrangement, him being her father, and
+she used to play _suipi_ with him, and taught him to repeat Psalms in
+native. It's only another proof how women are the same everywhere, and
+how far it goes with them to be treated with a little respeck and
+consideration.
+
+"You have a plan?" he says. "Well, Bill, what is it?"
+
+"It's a plan to get a plan," I said. "What chance would you have as
+things are now?"
+
+"Chance?" he inquires.
+
+"You'd be in irons and aboard, before you'd know what had happened to
+you," I said.
+
+He looked at me a long time and then heaved a sigh.
+
+"I'd do for myself first," he said. "They'll never put me in the dock so
+long as I have a pistol and the will to use it on myself."
+
+"I think me and Tom could improve on that," said I.
+
+"This island's too small to hide in," he said. "No background," he said.
+"I was looking for a place where there was mountains and inland
+country--and maybe caves."
+
+"You never could make a success of it by yourself," I said. "You
+couldn't in an island made to order, with electric buttons and trapdoors
+let into the granite. But me and you and Tom might, and if you've the
+mind to, we will."
+
+He was kind of over his panic by this time, and I guess he saw the sense
+of it all.
+
+"Bill," he said, "it's a weight off my mind to have you know the truth.
+Fetch along Tom, and I'll do anything you two say, for I've nearly split
+my old head trying to find a way out; but what could I do single
+handed?"
+
+"Tom's a corker," I said. "He's got an imagination like a box factory.
+If I was in a tight place like yours, I'd sail the world around just to
+find Tom Riley."
+
+"Let's call him in, then," he says, "for, as things are now, if they
+should strike this island, I'm a dead man!" And with that he took up his
+flute again and fluted very thoughtful and low, while I made a line for
+Tom's station.
+
+Tom was as happy as a lawyer with his first case. He hurried along, with
+a bottle of beer in each pocket and a memorandum book to write in, and
+just gloried in the whole business. It was like one of his own yarns
+come true, and he had to pinch himself to make sure he wasn't dreaming.
+He took hold right off; and it was pleasant to watch Old Dibs setting
+back on a grave, with the comfortable air of a man that's being taken
+charge of by experts. I won't go into all that we arranged and didn't
+do, it being enough to say what we _did_, Tom beginning a bit wild about
+putting contact mines in the channel and importing a submarine boat from
+Sydney, and coming down gradual to what the poet calls human nature's
+daily food. This was, to rig a platform in a giant _fao_ tree that stood
+in the middle of the island, about three miles down the coast, and fix
+it up with food and things, for Old Dibs to camp in.
+
+The idea was to hide him till dark in the attic of my house, and then to
+put him up the tree for as long as the ship stayed by us. Tom said I
+could easily stand off my house being searched for a few hours, even if
+it was a man-of-war that come, telling them they might do it to-morrow.
+Then Tom said we'd have to take Iosefo, the native pastor, into it part
+way, making him preach from the pulpit and order the people to deny all
+knowledge of Old Dibs if they were asked questions about him by
+strangers. Tom said the important thing was to gain the first day's
+start; for though it wasn't in reason to expect the whole island, man,
+woman, and child, to keep the secret, we might be pretty sure it
+wouldn't leak out under twenty-four hours. Then, last of all, we were to
+make away with all Old Dibs's trunks, packing what clothes he had, and
+that into camphor-wood chests, which would occasion no remark, specially
+if they were covered over on the top with trade dresses and hats, and
+such like.
+
+Old Dibs liked it all tiptop, and, more than anything, Tom's honest,
+willing face; but he shied a bit when we walked along to the tree in
+question, and looked up sixty feet into the sky, where he was to hang
+out on his little raft.
+
+"Good heavens, Riley!" he says, "do you take me for a bird, or what?"
+
+But Tom talked him round, showing how we'd rig a boatswain's chair on a
+tackle, and a sort of rustic monkey-rail to keep him from being dizzy,
+and had an answer ready for every one of old Dibs's criticisms. Tom and
+me, having been seafaring men, couldn't see no trouble about it, and the
+only thing to consider serious was how much the platform might show
+through the trees, and whether or not the upper boughs were strong
+enough to hold. We went up to make sure, straddling out on them, and
+bobbing up and down, and choosing a couple of nice forks for where we'd
+lay the main cross-piece. Tom tied his handkerchief around a likely
+bough, to mark the place for the block and give us a clean hoist from
+below, and we both come down very cheerful with the prospect.
+
+Old Dibs seemed less gay about it, and had thought up a lot of fresh
+objections; but Tom said there was only one thing to worry about, and
+that was whether the whole concern wouldn't show plain against the sky.
+We got off a ways to take a look, and very unsatisfying it was, too. A
+big, leafy tree seems a mighty solid affair, till you stand off and look
+right through it; and Old Dibs was for giving up the idea and trying the
+cellar, which was Tom's other notion. But the tree business appealed to
+Tom more, and he explained how we'd paint the contraption green, and how
+people, when they were walking, never looked up, but ahead; and how
+unwholesome a cellar would be, and likely to give Old Dibs the
+rheumatics; not to speak of pigs rooting him out, and no air to speak
+of.
+
+"Then think of the view," said Tom, who was as happy as a sand boy and
+in a bully humor, "and so close to the stars, Mr. Smith, that you can
+pick them down for lights to your cigar!"
+
+Old Dibs smiled a sickly smile, like he was unbending to a pair of kids.
+
+"Have it your own way, then, Riley," says he, "but you're responsible
+for the thing being a success, and don't look for me to dance tight
+ropes or do monkey on a stick."
+
+"I'd engage to put a cow up there," said Tom, not overpolite, though he
+meant no harm, "or a parlor organ, with the young lady to play it."
+
+"Mr. Smith," said I, "you'll only need shut your eyes and trust to us,
+and take it all as it comes."
+
+"Boys," said Old Dibs, kind of solemn and helplesslike, "you'll do the
+square thing by me, won't you? You won't sell an old man for blood
+money? You won't get me up there and then strike a trade with them
+that's tracking me down?"
+
+You ought to have seen Tom Riley's face at that! I was afraid there
+would be a bust-up then and there. But all he did was to walk faster
+ahead, like he didn't care to talk to us any more, and gave us the broad
+of his back. Old Dibs ran after him and caught his arm, panting out he
+was sorry and all that, and how Tom was to put himself in his place,
+with the whole world banded against him. I felt sorry to see the old
+fellow eating dirt, and trotting along so fat and wheezy, with Tom
+almost pushing him off like a beggar, and it was like spring sunshine
+when Tom turned square around and said:
+
+"Hell! that's all right, Mr. Smith." And I guess it was Old Dibs's face
+that needed watching, it was beaming and happy, specially when they
+shook hands on it, and we all three walked along abreast, like a father
+and his two sons on the way to the bar.
+
+Tom didn't let grass grow under his feet, and he went at it all with a
+rush, beginning first of all with Iosefo, the Kanaka pastor. Natives
+are never so helpful and willing as when you're egging them on to do
+something they shouldn't, and he fell in with the preaching idea, and
+wanted to start right away. But they finally decided it had better be a
+monthly affair, so the natives shouldn't lose track of it, and Iosefo
+commenced the first Sunday. Anybody that gave away Old Dibs was to have
+his house burned in this world and his soul in the next; and Iosefo laid
+it on thick about our all loving him, and what a friend he has proved
+himself to the island; and when he reached the point where he announced
+that Old Dibs had contributed fifty dollars toward the fund for the new
+church, you could feel a rustle go through the whole congregation, and a
+general gasp of satisfaction. Iosefo drew a fancy picture of Judas
+hanging himself, and brought it up to date with Old Dibs, and what a
+scaly thing it was to do anyway. He let himself rip in all directions,
+even to the persecutions in what he called the White Country, which he
+said Old Dibs had endured for religion's sake, and how he had been
+thrown to the lions in the Colossium.
+
+Old Dibs sat there as smug as smug, little knowing how the agony was
+being piled on his bald head; and just when Iosefo was making him cow
+the lions with a glance, Old Dibs took the specs off his nose and wiped
+them, while everybody was worked up tremendous to know whether he had
+been eat or not. Iosefo was no slouch when he once got his hand in, and
+carried it over to the next number like a story in a magazine, the
+Kanakas all going out buzzing, wishing it was Sunday week, and eyeing
+Old Dibs with veneration.
+
+The platform was number two on the list, and me and Tom, with the
+measurements we had taken in the tree, made a very neat job of it, and
+painted it green topside and bottom. We laid it together in Tom's shed,
+and got in Old Dibs to see if it would fit him, which it did beautiful,
+being six foot six by two and a half. Tom explained we'd put a natty
+railing around it, likewise painted green, and carry a width of fine
+netting below, so that pillows or things shouldn't slip overboard. Tom
+was hurt at Old Dibs not being more enthusiastic, and finally said:
+"Hell! Mr. Smith, what are you sticking at?"
+
+"It'll never sustain the coin," said Old Dibs, jouncing up and down on
+it like a dancing hippopotamus.
+
+"You weren't meaning to take that up, too?" cries Tom.
+
+"I thought that was part of the scheme?" said Old Dibs. "Why, you said a
+whole cow yourself. Didn't he, Bill?"
+
+This was a facer for Tom, but all he asked was how much money there
+was.
+
+"It weighs hundreds of pounds," said Old Dibs, very sly, and not wanting
+to name figgers.
+
+We neither of us could very well blame the old gentleman for not wanting
+to trust us with a quarter of a million dollars while he was up a tree
+like a canary bird; and so Tom or I didn't say what was in our minds,
+which was to bury it somewheres. In fact, there was a longish silence,
+till I suggested using some two-inch iron pipe I had at home, instead of
+the light boat spars Tom had cut for the purpose.
+
+"And as for the money," said I, "why not have a locker for it at each
+end, with the weight resting against the forks, and maybe a little room
+extra for Mr. Smith's toothbrush and toilet tackle?" I minded the size
+of the suit case I had last seen the stuff in, and showed Tom about what
+was wanted.
+
+"But that'll cut him off at each end," objected Tom, looking at Old Dibs
+like he was measuring him for a coffin, "and you know yourself six foot
+six is the most we can allow."
+
+"Oh, I don't mind shortening up a bit," said Old Dibs, laying down to
+show how easy it might be done, and eager to be accommodating.
+
+"And I'd propose chicken wire instead of net," says I to Tom, noticing
+how the old gentleman bulked outboard. "He's putting a strain on that
+worse nor a live shark."
+
+Tom said he thought so, too, and him and I put in half a day making the
+platform over, while Old Dibs crossed over to the graveyard and fluted
+away the rest of the afternoon. We waited for the full moon before
+getting it into the tree, for daytime was out of the question, and Tom
+and I managed it very well, and to both our satisfaction. The tropic
+moon is a whale of a moon, and you can almost see to read by it, and it
+wasn't the want of light that bothered us any. The trouble was more to
+get it level and lash it proper with zinc wire. But we finished it up in
+style, with a second coat of green paint everywhere except the bottom,
+and, though I do say it myself, it was as snug a little crow's nest, and
+as comfortable and strong, as though it had been made by people
+regularly in the business. We rigged the tackle, too, and tried out the
+Manila rope with the boatswain's chair, and would have sent up Old Dibs
+on a trial trip if we hadn't feared he'd never make another. So we let
+it go at that, he paying us one hundred dollars for our trouble, and
+expressing himself mighty well pleased.
+
+I reckon perhaps he was, for we fixed up the attic, too, and had
+everything in train so that there wouldn't be no hitch when the time
+come. Tom got kind of sore waiting for it, for after having put so much
+work into the thing he naturally wanted to see it used, and it galled
+him to wait and wait, with nothing doing. But Old Dibs took it more
+cheerful, and minded a good deal less about its being wasted; and as the
+months run on, he seemed to think he was out of the woods, and perked up
+wonderful.
+
+Not that he wasn't careful, of course, or that Iosefo let down on the
+preaching; for nobody could be sure what day or what minute the pinch
+mightn't come. He grew quite familiar with the attic part of it,
+scooting up there whenever we raised a sail, and remaining for days at a
+time when a ship was in port. We had a fair number of them, off and
+on--the missionary bark, the _Equator_, Captain Reid; the _Lorelei_,
+Captain Saxe; the _Ransom_, Captain Mins; the _Belle Brandon_, Captain
+Cole; the brigantine _Trenton_, in ballast, calling in to set her
+rigging; the cutter _Ulysses_, with supplies for Washington Island, and
+the Seventh-Day Adventist schooner _Pitcairn_, with her mate dying of
+some kind of sickness. They buried him ashore, and then went out again,
+after giving us the precise date at which the world was coming to an
+end, and saying what a hell of a poor millennium it was going to be for
+anybody save _them_! Oh, yes, the usual straggle of vessels that
+happened our way, with months between; and, once, the smoke of a steamer
+on the horizon.
+
+Perhaps a matter of eighteen months altogether since Old Dibs first
+landed, and day followed day, like it might have gone on forever. One
+wouldn't have remarked any particular change in him, except that his rig
+was getting shabbier and the shine was coming off the stovepipe--and
+perhaps some improvement in the flute. This, an extra bulk, and a kind
+of contented look he hadn't wore before, was what life on the island had
+done for Old Dibs; and he branched out a bit in the line of household
+favorite, cutting kindling wood for Sarah, gutting fish, scraping
+cocoanut for the chickens; and the pair of them would sit and gossip for
+hours about the neighbors--how Taalolo had driven his wife out of doors,
+and the true inwardness of the king's quarrel with Ve'a, and why the
+Toto family was in ambush to cut off Tehea's nose. He could talk better
+native than I could, and he was made a pet of everywhere around the
+settlement, and there was seldom a pig killed but what they'd bring him
+the head out of respeck. Not that he wasn't as regular as ever at the
+graveyard; but he had kind of shook in, so to speak, and nobody gave a
+feast but what he sat at the right hand and divided honors with the
+pastor and the king.
+
+One afternoon, from the bench, I heard them raise a cry of "_Pahi,
+Pahi_," and I run out of the copra-shed, where I was weighing, to see a
+schooner heading in. She was a smart-looking little vessel of fifty or
+sixty tons, and she come up hand over hand, making a running mooring
+off the settlement. Tom and I was waiting for her in a canoe, Old Dibs
+meanwhile climbing into the attic and dropping the trapdoor, with "Under
+Two Flags" and a lamp to support the tedium. That was getting to be
+routine now, and his last words were to buy all the books and papers we
+could lay our hands on, and not forget Sarah's list of stores she was
+out of. Bless my soul! he was always mindful of them things, and it was
+always _carte blanche_ in the trade room for anything she fancied.
+
+Well, we climbed aboard, and they told us she was the Sydney pilot boat
+_Minnie_, under charter to two gentlemen aboard who had an option on one
+of Arundel's guano islands. They had struck a leak in their main water
+tank, and were in for repairs and filling up fresh.
+
+Tom and me got more of a welcome than seemed quite right, captains
+usually being shortish with traders till the gaskets are on; but in this
+case it was all so damn friendly that I nudged Tom and Tom nudged me. We
+all trooped below to have a drink in the cabin, and the two guano
+gentlemen were introduced to us, and likewise another they called their
+bookkeeper. All three of them were hulking big men, very breezy and well
+spoken, with more the manner of recruiting sergeants soft-sawdering you
+to enlist than the ways of people high up in business. Mr. Phelps, who
+took the lead, did several things to make me chew on, and he shivered
+over his "h's" like he had been brought up originally without any. He
+was so genial, that if you had any money in your pocket you would have
+held on tight to it, and taken the first opportunity to get out. And his
+big hearty laugh was altogether too ready and his manners too free, and
+when he clapped me on the back I felt glad to think Old Dibs was tight
+in his attic, and his tree in good running order.
+
+"Very little company hereabouts?" he asked, filling up our glasses for
+the second round.
+
+"Nothing but us two," says Tom.
+
+"My wife's father is somewhere down this way," volunteered Mr. Phelps.
+
+"You don't say!" says I, nudging Tom again under the cuddy table.
+
+"A fine old gent," went on Mr. Phelps, "but he met misfortunes in the
+produce commission business, and had to get out very quiet."
+
+"Too bad!" said I.
+
+"It grieves my wife not to know where he is," continued Mr. Phelps, "she
+being greatly attached to her father, and him disappearing like that;
+and she told me not to grudge the matter of fifty pounds to find him."
+
+"There's a lot of room in the South Seas to lose a produce commission
+merchant in," says I.
+
+"Here's a likeness of him," says Mr. Phelps, taking a photograph out of
+his pocket, while four pairs of eyes settled on Tom and me like gimlets,
+and there was the kind of pause when pins drop.
+
+"A very fine-appearing old gentleman," says I, starting in spite of
+myself when I saw it was a picture of Old Dibs.
+
+"Give us a squint, Bill," says Tom, taking it out of my hands as bold as
+brass. And then: "I've seen that face somewhere; I know I have. Lord
+bless me, wherever could it have been?" And he looked at it, puzzled and
+recollectful, me holding my breath, and the rest of them giving a little
+jump in their seats.
+
+Tom brought his fist down on the table with a blow that made the glasses
+ring.
+
+"It was on the _Belle Brandon_!" he cried out, very excited. "A stout
+old party, fair complected, who played the flute."
+
+"That's him!" cried Phelps, half-starting from his chair.
+
+"I reckon he must be up Jaluit way," said Tom coolly, "Captain Cole
+being bound for the Marshalls at the time."
+
+I could feel them shooting glances all around us.
+
+"It's remarkable your friend here doesn't remember him," says the one
+they called Nettleship, indicating me with the heel of his glass.
+
+"I didn't happen to get aboard the _Brandon_," says I. "What was I
+doing, Tom? I disremember."
+
+"That was when you was laid up with boils," says Tom, as ready as
+lightning.
+
+"So it was," says I.
+
+"You didn't happen to pass any talk with him?" asks Mr. Phelps of Tom.
+
+"Nothing particular," says Tom.
+
+"Even a little might help us," says Mr. Phelps. "See if you can't
+remember."
+
+"Oh! he said he was looking for a quiet place to end his days in,"
+answers Tom.
+
+"I wonder that this here island wasn't to his taste," says Mr.
+Nettleship, with a quick look.
+
+"Oh, it was," says Tom unabashed, "only Captain Cole broke in and said
+he knew a better."
+
+By this time nearly all our heads were touching over the table, except
+the one they called the bookkeeper, who had run for a chart.
+
+"Did he call the island by any particular name?" inquires Mr. Phelps.
+
+"I think he said Pleasant Island," says Tom, "because I mind the old
+gentleman saying it must be a pleasant place with such a name and I said
+I had been there, but the holding ground was poor."
+
+The bookkeeper laid the chart on the table, and the captain found
+Pleasant Island with his thumb.
+
+He was about to say it was a ten days' run leeward, when he broke off
+sudden with "ouch" instead, being kicked hard under the table, and
+pretending it was the beginning of a cough instead.
+
+"I'm looking for a change of weather at the full of the moon," remarks
+Tom, "and you'd be wise to take this good spell while it lasts."
+
+I guess Tom overdid it this time, and I gave him hell for it when we
+went ashore, for I saw the change on Phelps's face, and that he suddenly
+suspicioned Tom was playing double.
+
+"Business comes first," he says, rolling up the chart, "and though I
+would like to find him, just for my poor wife's satisfaction, I can't go
+wild-goose-chasing all over the Pacific for a woman's whim."
+
+Tom was beginning to feel that he had overdone it, too, and roused more
+suspicion than he had laid; so he thought to make it up by losing
+interest in Old Dibs, and what was Fitzsimmons doing now, and was it
+true that John L. had retired from the ring? But he didn't seem to
+recover the ground he had lost, and I judged it a bad sign when we went
+up the companion for Phelps to say, kind of absent-minded, that he'd go
+two hundred and fifty pounds for his father-in-law, alive or
+dead--raising it to five hundred as we dropped over the side.
+
+We pulled first to Tom's house, so as to divert suspicion, and from
+there I went along by myself to tip off the news to Old Dibs. When I had
+given the knocks agreed on, three sets of four, he drew back the trap,
+and asked very cheerful how I had made out with the books and papers.
+
+"Good God, man, they're here!" says I.
+
+"Who's here?" he asks, incredulous.
+
+"A whole schooner of detectives from Sydney," says I. "They say they're
+buying guano islands, but there's already five hundred pounds out for
+you, dead or alive."
+
+His great fat hand began to shake on the trap.
+
+"Never you mind, Mr. Smith," I says reassuring. "Tom will be due here at
+midnight, and then we'll run you up your tree."
+
+But that didn't seem to soothe him any, and he quavered out he would be
+better where he was. But I said they'd rummage the whole island upside
+down before they were done, and all he had to do was to lay low, not
+worry, and let me and Tom handle the thing for him.
+
+He reached down his hand through the trap, and I shook it, he saying,
+"God bless you, Bill--God bless you!" And then it went shut, and I heard
+him blow out the lamp.
+
+The next step was to take my old girl into the secret, she being a
+Tongan, as I've already said, and as true as steel. She didn't say much,
+but I guess it would have done Old Dibs good to have seen her eyes
+flash, and the way her teeth grit, and how quick she was to understand
+her part--which was, to pack his clothes in camphor-wood chests under a
+top dressing of trade. Old Dibs made no bones about giving her the keys,
+while I took it on myself to tell Iosefo the enemy had arrived, and he'd
+better move about the village warning everybody of the fack. It was well
+I did so, for Phelps and Nettleship and the rest come ashore soon
+afterwards with their pockets full of trifles for the children and the
+girls, and they strolled about the settlement, stopping to rest and
+drink cocoanuts in the different houses. Phelps had brought the
+photograph along and showed it right and left, asking if they had ever
+seen anybody like that. I guess some of them would have cried out if it
+hadn't been for the pastor joining the party, like he wanted to do the
+honors of the island, telling the natives beforehand about the
+photograph, and shooing off the children when they come too close to it.
+The whites probably thought he was talking what nice folks they were,
+for he had a kind of bland missionary way of talking, though he was
+really calling them the sons of Belial, and saying how the person who
+gave Old Dibs away would have his house burned and go to hell.
+
+The pastor did yeoman's service that day, and at sundown they all went
+back to their ship, very grumpy and dissatisfied, returning no wiser
+than when they'd come. Iosefo held a service afterwards to rub it in,
+and the king spoke at it, and likewise the chiefs, and so in our
+different ways we all pulled together for the common good. They had
+quite a jollification that night on the schooner, singing songs and
+playing some kind of a hurdy-gurdy on deck, and the sound of it come
+over the water very pleasant to hear. I sneaked off in a canoe toward
+ten o'clock, to make sure it wasn't a blind, but there was no
+misdoubting what they were up to. They were all drunk, and getting
+drunker, and I couldn't but think what a poor, tipsifying set of sleuths
+they were, and how different from Sherlock Holmes in the book. I lay for
+nearly an hour under their quarter, to hear what I could hear, and all I
+got was the odds and ends of some smutty stories, and once being very
+near spit on the head.
+
+When I got back to the station there was Tom to meet me, it being eleven
+now, and the village fast asleep. We overhauled the gear to make sure it
+was all in order, Sarah making up a basket of provisions for the old
+man, together with his toothbrush, comb, panjammers, blanket, a demijohn
+of water, and a bottle of gin. She said he had eaten no dinner, groaning
+and carrying on awful, wanting her to shoot him with his pistol and end
+it all. But he seemed to have pulled himself together by the time we
+were ready, for he let himself down from the attic quite spry, and made
+us all laugh by the remarks he passed. But one could see he just forced
+himself to do it, and his face looked powerful haggard and flabby in the
+lantern light, and he moved queer on his legs, like a push would have
+sent him over.
+
+I had a little two-wheeled truck that I used about the store to run bags
+of shell about in, and copra, and on this we put the treasure, eight
+bags of it, each one as heavy as could be lifted comfortably. Old Dibs
+insisted on cutting one open and serving us out a double handful each,
+not forgetting a share for Tom's wife as well as mine, and saying, "Take
+it, and God bless you, my dear, kind friends!" We dropped it into my
+tool chest, and threw the key on the floor of the bedroom, meaning to
+divide up equal later on.
+
+We rigged a sort of rope harness to the truck, giving Tom the handles to
+steer by, while Old Dibs, Sarah, and me did tandem in front. The
+boatswain's chair and the coil of Manila rope were lashed down on the
+load, as well as the basket of provisions, Sarah carrying the demijohn
+in her hand, Old Dibs the gin and "Under Two Flags," while I led the way
+with the lantern.
+
+My, but we must have made a queer sight as we plowed through the
+darkness, Tom bearing down on the handles and fighting to keep the truck
+on an even keel, Old Dibs grampussing along as wheeler, and Sarah and me
+tugging like battery mules! Of course everybody knows that gold is
+heavy, but when you run into the hundred thousands it becomes pig-iron
+heavy, cannon heavy, house-and-lot-and-barn heavy! It nearly pulled the
+hearts out of us to keep that truck moving, specially in the sand before
+we struck a harder going.
+
+I thought time and again it was going to prove the death of Old Dibs. He
+was always laying down in his harness like a done-up Eskimo dog in the
+pictures, and having to be fanned alive again. But when we'd propose to
+cut him out, he'd say No, and stagger to his feet, showing a splendid
+spirit and cart-horsing ahead till his poor old breath came in roars.
+
+It was a thankful moment when we got to the tree, where me and Tom,
+after a spell of rest, jumped in together with a will. It was no slouch
+of a job to get that tackle in position, the block being iron shod and
+heavy, the rope inch Manila, and the night as black as the pit of
+Tophet. Tom went aloft first, with a coil of light line, having to feel
+his way for the place we had marked with the handkerchief, and
+threatening more than once to come down quicker than he had gone up. The
+handkerchief had rotted off, or blown away long since, and it bothered
+Tom not a little to find where it had been. But at last he did so,
+dropping his line for the lantern, according to the plan we had arranged
+beforehand, so as to avoid all shouting and noise. When he had placed
+the lantern to his satisfaction, the line came straggling down again
+for the block and the gear to make it fast with, and when this was done
+the inch Manila went up, and everything was ready.
+
+It showed how well Tom and I had thought it out, that there wasn't a
+single hitch, except for the lantern blowing out and Tom having no
+matches, I going up to see what was delaying him, and having none
+neither. Then we changed places, Tom being a heavier man to pull, and I
+remaining aloft to handle the freight as it came along. They made the
+boatswain's chair fast below, and sent her up with the first load--two
+bags of coin--getting it on a level with the platform by the lantern
+marking the place. I stood on the platform and had no trouble in yanking
+the stuff in; and this went right along like a mail steamer, till it was
+all up, and it came old Dibs's turn.
+
+But he just took one look at the boatswain's chair, and said "Nit,"
+laying down on the ground when they tried to persuade him into it, and
+rolling over and over in desperation. We argufied over him for an hour,
+and it seemed all to no purpose, he refusing to budge an inch, saying he
+weighed two hundred and twenty pounds, and was better off in the attic.
+
+Time was running away on us, and me and Tom got tired of saying the same
+things over and over, and always getting the same answers, and finally
+we lost our tempers, and said we'd go home. Then he said he'd come
+home, too, and we said No, we had washed our hands of him. Then he said
+he was only a poor old man and would blow his brains out, and we said he
+might, if he wanted to. Then, when we had gone about twenty paces, he
+come lumbering after us, saying, "For God's sake, stop!" and swearing he
+would go up peaceful, and make no more trouble.
+
+We tied him in like a baby in a high chair, I going up to receive him,
+while my wife and Tom laid on to the rope with a yeo-heave-yeo under
+their breaths. All the fight had clean gone out of him, and the only
+thing he did was to squeal a little when he bumped against the trunk,
+and tried to fill up with air to make himself lighter. But he reached
+the top all right, and I landed him very careful, he squatting down on
+the floor and saying, "Oh, my God!" I was too busy clearing away, and
+letting the block down to Tom, for me to hear much else he said, but
+when I was through and went to take a last look at him, he seemed quite
+snug and contented, and glad he had come. He shook hands very grateful,
+looking for me to come back the following night and report, I to make an
+owl signal like we had agreed on previously.
+
+I wished him happy dreams, and come down, all three of us setting out
+for home with the truck and the gear, my wife in a tantrum at our having
+threatened to desert Old Dibs when he acted so cowardly. Tom made it
+worse by saying the Kanakas were losing all respeck for whites, and if
+_he_ was married to a Tongan, and was spoken to like that, he'd quit--by
+gum, that's what _he'd_ do! Then she said it would serve me right if she
+went away in the schooner with the white men, and I would never see her
+again. And I said, "Oh, dear, but I'd feel sorry for the white man that
+got you!" Then she said she'd give all the gold Old Dibs had made her a
+present of to be back home in Tonga; and then I said I'd gladly add mine
+to hers. And when Tom added his, I thought we were in for a race war.
+
+We all got back pretty cross and tired, but a little beer put heart in
+us; and I pulled her down on my knee and said she was the only girl in
+the world, and that I wouldn't trade her for a ten-ton cutter; while Tom
+counted out the money Old Dibs had given us previous, and said we were
+all a pack of fools, and that he was as fond of Sarah as anybody. So
+peace descended like a beautiful vision, and there was four hundred and
+forty dollars for each of us, with a twenty over that we tossed for, and
+engineered to let Sarah win. Tom said we might shake hands on a good
+night's work, and went home in high spirits, jingling his money in a
+bandanner.
+
+It wasn't long after breakfast the next morning when I heard a great
+stamping and tramping out in front, and there, if you please, was the
+whole schooner party, Phelps, Nettleship, the bookkeeper, and the
+captain. They had thrown off the mask now, and Phelps had a warrant a
+yard long for the apprehension of Runyon Rufe, which he read aloud to
+me, while the others listened with their hats off like it was church.
+
+"I thought you gentlemen were in the guano business," says I, when he
+had finished.
+
+"We're in the Runyon Rufe catching business," says Mr. Phelps, very
+genial, "and we trust you will not oppose the officers of the law in the
+exercise of their functions."
+
+"I don't want to oppose anybody when it's four to one," says I, equally
+genial, "though may I make so bold as to inquire who is Runyon Rufe and
+what's he done?"
+
+"Never heard of Runyon Rufe!" says Nettleship, like it was George
+Washington or Alfred the Great.
+
+"Here it is, better than I can tell it," said Mr. Phelps, handing me a
+printed proclamation:
+
+      TEN THOUSAND POUNDS REWARD.
+
+      RUNYON RUFE, Banker and Company Promoter, wanted
+      for gigantic frauds in connection with the Invincible
+      Building Society, the Greater London Finance Syndicate,
+      Suburbs Limited, and other undertakings. Fled to the United
+      States, where he had previously put by sums aggregating two
+      hundred thousand pounds; resisted extradition; forfeited his
+      bail; was traced to Portland, Oregon, and thence to Penrhyn
+      Island, South Pacific, where all clews as to his whereabouts
+      were lost.
+
+      Aged sixty-three; height, five feet nine inches; imposing
+      appearance; weight, fifteen stone and over; fair complexion;
+      brown eyes, with bushy, gray eyebrows; scanty gray hair; of
+      a plethoric habit, and with a noticeable hesitancy of
+      speech. When last seen was well supplied with money, and was
+      heard declaring his intention of making his way toward the
+      lesser-traveled islands of the Pacific Ocean.
+
+      The above reward, in whole or in part, will be paid by
+      Houghton & Cust, No. 318 George Street, Sydney, New South
+      Wales, on receiving information that will lead to the arrest
+      of the said Runyon Rufe.
+
+      Traders and others are cautioned against harboring the
+      fugitive, or aiding and abetting his escape from the
+      officers of justice.
+
+I read it three times and then handed it back.
+
+"Show me where to sign," says I.
+
+"We have to go through the disagreeable formality of searching these
+premises," said Mr. Phelps, disregarding my joke, "and if you have no
+objections we shall begin now!"
+
+"And suppose I _did_ have an objection?" I asked.
+
+"We'd search them just the same," said Mr. Phelps, grinning.
+
+I was in two minds what to do; but I noticed the bookkeeper's lip was
+cut, and there was dried blood on Mr. Nettleship's knuckles, and it
+didn't seem good enough. I saw they had begun on Tom first, and that
+decided me to take water with my formality.
+
+"Walk in," says I.
+
+They didn't wait for a second asking, and a minute later were poking and
+rummaging all through the place. They thought I might have hid him
+somewheres, and turned over everything to that end, not opening as much
+as a chest or pulling out a single drawer. It wasn't much pleasure to
+look on and see them doing it, but I had to take my medicine, and it was
+common sense to appear cheerful about it. They crawled into all kinds of
+places, and backed out of all kinds of others, and tapped the walls to
+see if any was hollow, and turned over sacks of pearl shell and copra,
+and sneezed and swore and burrowed and choked, till at last Mr. Phelps
+really found something, and that was a centipede that bit him. This
+brought them all out on the front veranda again, where I had to pretend
+I was sorry, which I was--for the centipede.
+
+I asked what they were going to do next, and they said, "Get aboard and
+bathe it with ammoniar"; and I said, "No, I meant about Runyon Rufe";
+and Mr. Phelps he give me a wicked look, and said that they'd lay him by
+the legs before long, together with a few white trading gentlemen,
+maybe, to keep him company; and I said, "Oh, dear, I hope that isn't any
+insinuation against present company!" and he said, "the present company
+might put the cap on if it fitted them"; and I said "if he couldn't keep
+a civil tongue in his head he had better get off my front stoop"; and
+he said "he wouldn't demean himself by bandying words with a
+beach-comber," and went off sucking his hand, with the others crowding
+around him, and asking him how it felt now.
+
+I suspicioned there had been a leak somewheres, and was surer than ever
+when Tom came around with his eye bunged up where Nettleship had hit
+him. And it certainly looked black that they made no appearance of
+moving, raising an awning over the quarter-deck, and bringing up tables
+and swinging hammocks like it was for a week. The pastor had told Tom
+that one of the children had reckonized Old Dibs's photograph, and
+clapped his hands before he could be stopped, crying out, "Ona! Ona!"
+the name Old Dibs went by among the Kanakas.
+
+We put in a pretty anxious day, for they began a systematic prowl all
+over the island, obviously dividing out the territory and doing it
+simultaneous. That night they set a watch on my house and Tom's, the
+news coming in from Iosefo, who had spies out watching them. It was
+regular wheels within wheels, and I couldn't but wonder how poor Old
+Dibs was faring up his tree, waiting and waiting for us to come!
+
+The next day they prowled harder than ever, this time the crew joining
+in, mate, cook, cabin boy, and four hands. Like was natural, they made
+me and Tom's first--the crew, I mean--and we both had the same happy
+thought, square-face. The mate went off with only three drinks in him,
+taking the cabin boy with two, but the rest of them sucked it in by the
+bucket, and the fartherest any of them got away was a hundred yards, and
+him with a bottle in his hand. They were a pretty ugly crowd by
+nightfall, refusing to go back to the ship when ordered, and roaring and
+yelling about the settlement to all hours. The afterguard still kept tab
+on me and Tom, however, and so yet another night passed without our
+daring to make our date with Old Dibs. But in the morning they lost all
+patience, rounding up the crew with handspikes, and all going off to the
+schooner with half of them in irons. Phelps and Nettleship helped to get
+up anchor themselves, and toward nine o'clock we had the blessed sight
+of their heels, beating out of the lagoon against a stiff trade.
+
+It was hard to have to wait the balance of the day doing nothing, for we
+might need the tree idea again, and it would have been a mug's game to
+have given away the secret to the Kanakas. Tom and me both felt
+considerable rocky, besides, from having drunk so much gin with the
+schooner's people; for though we had held back all we could, and had
+tipped our glasses on the sly, we couldn't seem too behindhand in
+whooping it up with them. But we were dead dogs now all right, and the
+main part of breakfast and dinner was the buckets of water we poured
+over each other's heads. It was what you might call a very long day, and
+it seemed like the sun would never set, for we were both of us in a
+sweat about Old Dibs, and more than anxious how he had made out.
+
+Then sundown came, and dusk, and night itself, and still another long
+spell for the Kanakas to go to sleep, which it seemed as though they
+never would. Yes, a long day, and a long, long evening, and it was like
+a whole week had passed before we stood under the tree and owly-owled to
+Old Dibs.
+
+It was a mighty faint answer he gave back, and when me and Tom had
+rigged up the chair again we found we had a sick man on our hands. The
+exposure had nearly done for him; that, and the fear of being caught,
+and all the water having leaked out of the demijohn, which he had stood
+on its side the better to hide it. He was that weak he could hardly sit
+up, and was partly off his nut, besides, wanting to telephone at once to
+Longhurst, and mixing up Tom with the Public Prosecutor.
+
+He would put his poor old trembling hand across his forehead like he was
+trying to wipe all this away, saying, "Is that you, Tom Riley?" and,
+"Bill, Bill," like that. It was no easy matter to get him down, for he
+almost needed to be lifted into the boatswain's chair, and couldn't as
+much as raise a little finger to help himself or hold on, and once we
+nearly spilled him out altogether. Fortunately, my old girl had brought
+some hot coffee in a beer bottle, and this was just like pouring new
+life down his throat. Our first business was to get him home and tuck
+him in, returning and making a second trip of the treasure, and winding
+up all serene about two in the morning, with Old Dibs sitting up in bed
+and eating fried eggs.
+
+When Iosefo reported next morning, Old Dibs paid him a hundred dollars
+and dispensed with his services, saying that though he'd always be glad
+to see him around as a friend, he had no more call to keep him sitting
+on the chest. This made Tom and me feel good, for it showed he trusted
+us now, which he had never quite done before. In a day or two he was
+almost as lively as ever, out in the graveyard playing on his flute, and
+attending to church work on committee nights the same as before.
+
+But there was a big change in him for all that, and me and Tom got it
+into our heads that he wasn't going to live very long, for he had that
+distressed look on his face that showed something wrong inside. He used
+to run on talking to himself half the night, and once he burst in to
+where I was asleep, saying he had seen me at the treasure chest, prizing
+off the lid, and what did I mean by it? After having lived together so
+long and comfortable, it wasn't very pleasant to see him going crazy on
+us--and going crazy that way--being suspicious we meant to rob and kill
+him, and all of us being in a conspiracy. He told the pastor he was
+afraid of his life of Tom and me, and if it wasn't for Iosefo he would
+be fearful to stay in my house a minute; and he told Tom _he_ was the
+only friend he had; and then said the same to me, warning me against Tom
+and Iosefo, saying they were at the winder every night trying to break
+in. And all this, maybe, on the very self-same day, the three of us
+comparing notes and wondering where it was all going to end.
+
+It ended sooner than any of us expected; for one morning, when Sarah
+went to take him his coffee, his door was locked, and for all our
+hammering we couldn't raise a sound. I broke it in at last, expecting
+that he'd rise up and shoot me, and dodging when it went inward with a
+crash. But there was nobody to shoot, the room being stark empty, and
+the only thing of Old Dibs his clothes on a chair. We were at a loss
+what to do, and waited for half an hour, thinking he might turn up.
+Then, real uneasy in our minds, we went out to look for him. He wasn't
+anywhere near the house or the beach, and as a last resort we went
+across the island to the graveyard, thinking perhaps he had taken it
+into his head to have a before-breakfast tootle on the flute. We found
+him, sure enough, in the middle of the graveyard, but laying forward in
+his old crimson dressing gown, dead.
+
+Yes, sir, cold to the touch like it had been for hours, and holding a
+blackened lantern in his poor old fist--dead as dead--face down in the
+coral sand. We rolled him over to do what we could for him, but he had
+passed to a place beyond help or hurt. I went back for Tom in a
+protuberation, saying, "My God! Tom, what do you think's happened?--Old
+Dibs's dead in the graveyard!" I guess the old man had never been so
+close to Tom as he had been to me, boarding in my house and almost a
+father to me and the wife, for Tom took it awful cool, and asked almost
+the first thing about the money.
+
+"You and me will divide on that," he says.
+
+"Sure," I says, "but that can stand over till afterwards, Tom."
+
+"Stand over, nothing!" he says, very sharp; and with that we both set
+off running for my house.
+
+It was a jumpy thing to enter that darkened room, with the feeling you
+couldn't shake off that Old Dibs was peering in at us, and that every
+minute we'd hear his footstep, everything laid out just as he had last
+touched them, and almost warm, even to his slippers and his collar and
+the old hat against the wall. But it made no more difference to Tom than
+if it had been his own hat, and he tramped in like a policeman, saying,
+"Where is it, Bill?"
+
+"In one of them two camphor-wood chests," says I.
+
+He lifted up one of them by the end and let it fall ker-bang!
+
+"Not here," says he.
+
+"Try the other," says I, with a sudden sinking.
+
+He let that crash, too, and turning around, looked me in the face.
+
+"Good God, Tom!" said I.
+
+"Just what I suspected all along," said Tom, as savage as a tiger. "He's
+made way with it!"
+
+We didn't stop to speak another word, but rummaged the whole room upside
+down.
+
+"He's buried it," says Tom, savager than ever, "and what kind of a
+bastard was you to let him?"
+
+"It was none of my business," says I.
+
+"None of your business!" he repeated, screaming out at me like a
+woman--"to have a quarter of a million by the tail and let it go? You
+might have been slack about your own half, but it was a swine's trick
+not to keep track of mine!"
+
+"He can't have taken it very far," I said.
+
+"Not far!" yelled Tom, making an insult of every word I said. "Why, what
+was to prevent him lugging away a little this day and that, till the
+whole caboodle was sunk in a solid block? What do you suppose he was
+doing with the lantern, you tom-fool? Planting it, of course--planting
+every dollar of it, night after night, while you were snoozing in your
+silly bed."
+
+"If it's anywhere it's in the Kanaka graveyard," says I. "I'll go bail
+it's within ten feet of where we found his dead body."
+
+"Did you stake the place?" says Tom.
+
+I was ashamed to tell him I hadn't even thought of the money, being
+struck all of a heap, and always powerful fond of Old Dibs.
+
+"It would serve you right if I made you dig up the whole graveyard,
+single-handed," said Tom; "and if you had a spark of proper feeling,
+Bill Hargus, you'd fall on your knees and beg my parding for having
+acted like such a damned ninny!"
+
+I would have answered him back in his own coin if I hadn't felt so bad
+about it all, and rattled, besides. I had punched Tom's head often and
+often, and he had punched mine; but I was staggered by the money being
+missing, and the loss of it just seemed to swallow up everything else.
+Somehow, it had never seemed _my_ money till then, and the more I felt
+it mine the more galling it was to give it up. Tom relented when he saw
+how cut up I was, withdrawing all the hard things he had said, and going
+on the other tack to cheer me up. He said he was just as big an ass as I
+was, and came out handsome about its being both our fault, and how it
+didn't matter a hill of beans anyway, for we'd soon get our spades on to
+it. It stood to reason it couldn't be far away or buried very deep, and
+a little fossicking with an iron ramrod would feel it out in no time.
+
+Well, we gave Old Dibs a good send off, Tom and me making the coffin,
+and we buried him in a likely place to windward of the Kanaka graveyard.
+Tom wouldn't have him _inside_, for fear the natives might chance on the
+treasure themselves, and we put a neat fence around the place, with a
+priming and two coats of white paint, and a natty gate to go in by with
+brass hinges. The whole settlement turned out, Iosefo outdoing himself,
+and the king butting in with an address, and everything shipshape and
+Bristol fashion, as sailors say. We didn't have no flowers, and the
+whole business was sort of home-made and amateur, but Sarah made up for
+the lack of them by pegging out the grave with little poles, and
+streamers which gave quite a gay look to it, and fluttered in the wind,
+very pretty to see.
+
+Then Tom and me started in our digging operations on a checkerboard
+plan, very systematic, with stakes where we left off, working by night
+so as not to rouse the natives' ill will. Or, I ought to have said, two
+nights, for I guess we didn't cover up our tracks sufficient, and they
+got on to it. We discovered this in the form of a depitation of chiefs
+and elders, who give us warning it had to stop ker-plunk! They said
+they wouldn't allow their graveyard torn up, and altogether acted very
+ugly and insulting. Tom and I had to sing small and put in a holiday
+neither of us wanted, for the Kanakas had the whip hand of us, and I
+never saw them so roused. Tom at first tried to carry it off with a high
+hand, informing them that he was a British subjeck, by God! and was they
+meaning to interfere with a British subjeck? But I couldn't see how that
+gave him any right to dig up Kanaka graveyards for money that didn't
+belong to him, and so I smoothed them down and out-talked Tom, saying it
+shouldn't happen again, and I was glad they had mentioned it!
+
+We waited a few weeks for the storm to blow over, and then begun again,
+this time more cautious than before by a darned sight. We thought we
+were managing beautifully, till the next day, when we went out fishing
+in Tom's boat and come back to find both our stations burned to the
+ground, and all our stuff stacked outside the smoking ruins,
+higgledy-piggledy!
+
+This was getting it in the neck, and we saw we were beat. We ran up a
+couple of little shacks and settled down to ordinary trading again, with
+what good spirits you can imagine. We didn't even dare walk on the
+weather side of the island, lest they'd carry out their next threat,
+which was to shoot us; and the only revenge we had was raising prices
+on them and monkeying with the scales, winning out in both ways. But it
+was a poor set off to a quarter of a million of cold coin where almost
+we could lay our hands on it, and if there was in the whole world a
+human being more blue and miserable than me, it was Tom Riley. Then, to
+make matters worse, the whole thing was common property now, the Kanakas
+knowing as much as we did, and more, and the news was passed along to
+every ship that came--all about Old Dibs and the money in the graveyard.
+You might be surprised the natives didn't take a leaf out of our book
+and dig it up for themselves; but you'll never really civilize a Kanaka
+if you try a thousand years, and they wouldn't have turned up their dead
+grandmothers and fathers and aunts for all the gold in the Bank of
+England--being sunk in superstition and slavishly afraid of spirits and
+the like.
+
+We had to sit with folded hands and pretend to be pleased, while every
+ship that called had to take its whack at the graveyard. First it was
+the _Lorelei_, getting off scot-free with only a taboo; then it was the
+_Tasmanian_, with a bullet through the captain's leg; then the cutter
+_Sprite_, with concussion of the brain. I never saw the Kanakas drove so
+wild, till at last, when there was a ship off the settlement, they'd set
+an anchor watch on the graveyard and do sentry go with loaded guns.
+
+Then one fine day a French schooner from Tahiti ran in, unloaded sixteen
+men armed with rifles and carrying pickaxes and spades, who marched
+across the island singing the "Marseillaise," and proceeded to take up
+the whole place. The natives rallied with everything they could lay
+their hands on, from Winchesters to fish spears, and my, if they didn't
+chase out them Frenchmen at the double! They got away, leaving one dead
+and carrying three, making a bee line for the beach, the schooner
+covering their retreat with a blazing Nordenfeldt. They were in such a
+hurry to be gone that they cut away their moorings with an ax, and I had
+the privilege, later on, of buying their anchor, second hand, for ten
+dollars in trade.
+
+The natives got wilder than ever after this, and were almost afraid to
+die, lest they'd be dug up again and their bones cast to the winds. From
+being the most orderly island in the Pacific, Manihiki slumped to be the
+worst; and it got such a name that ships were scared of coming near it;
+and once, when Tom and me went out in a whaleboat toward a becalmed
+German bark, hoping to raise a newspaper or a sack of potatoes, they
+opened fire on us and lowered two boats to tow away the ship. Tom and me
+got mixed up in the general opinion of the place, which was stinking bad
+and what they called a pirates' nest, and an English man-of-war came
+down special to deport Tom. I never was so glad in my life to be an
+American, for, though the captain gave Tom what he called the benefit of
+the doubt, they fined him two hundred and fifty dollars and slanged him
+like a nigger.
+
+The last straw was the visit of a French man-of-war, that opened
+broadsides on us without warning, and then landed and burned the
+settlement, including everything me and Tom owned in the world, except
+the clothes we stood in and the cash we snatched on the run. This was on
+account of the "outrage" on the Tahiti schooner.
+
+Tom said the island was becoming a regular human pigeon-shoot, and
+wondered where the lightning would strike next; and we both grew clean
+sick of it and in a fever to get away. There was not even the temptation
+of Old Dibs's treasure to keep us now, for the natives all got together
+and heaped up the graveyard solid with rock to the level of the outside
+walls, and floored the top with cement six inches deep, putting in a
+matter of a thousand tons. It was as solid as a fortification, and
+pounded down, besides, with pounders, like a city street; and if ever
+there was money in a safe place and likely to stay there undisturbed, I
+guess it was Old Dibs's.
+
+It was a happy day for Tom and me when the _Flink_ dropped anchor off
+the settlement, and we patched it up with the captain to give us a
+passage to the Kingsmills, to begin the world again. It had always lain
+sort of heavy on my wife that we hadn't put up a name over old Dibs's
+grave, and now that we were going away with that undone she reproached
+me awful. You see, I had promised her something nice in the marble line
+from Sydney, and kept putting her off and off in the hope she'd forget
+it. She had been remarkably fond of the old fellow, as, indeed, so was
+I, and she said it was a shame to go away forever with this unattended
+to. I didn't have no time for anything fancy, nor the ability neither,
+but as the ship lay over for a couple of days I made shift to please her
+with a wooden slab. We went over and set it up about an hour before we
+sailed, and for all I know it may be there yet. Some folks might kick at
+the inscription, but he had always been mighty good and kind and
+free-handed to us, and you must take a man as you find him. This was how
+it run:
+
+      SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF RUNYON RUFE BANKER AND
+      PHILANTHROPIST ERECTED BY HIS SORROWING FRIENDS
+
+
+
+
+THE LABOR CAPTAIN
+
+
+It was a wild March day, and the rising wind sang in the rigging of the
+ships. The weather horizon, dark and brilliant, in ominous alternations
+showed a sky of piled-up cloud interspersed with inky patches where
+squalls were bursting. To leeward, the broad lagoon, stretching for a
+dozen miles to the tree-topped rim of reef, smoked with the haze of an
+impending gale. Ashore, the palms bent like grass in the succeeding
+gusts, and the ocean beaches reverberated with a furious surf. The great
+atoll of Makin, no higher than a man, no wider than a couple of
+furlongs, but in circumference a sinuous giant of ninety miles or more,
+lay like a snake on the boisterous waters of the equator and defied the
+sea and storm.
+
+Within the lagoon, and not far off the settlement, two ships rocked at
+anchor. One, the _Northern Light_, was a powerful topsail schooner of a
+hundred tons; straight bowed, low in the water, built on fine lines and
+yet sparred for safety, the sort of vessel that does well under plain
+sail, and when pressed can fly. The other, the _Edelweiss_, was a
+miniature fore and after of about twenty tons, a toy of delicacy and
+grace, betraying at a glance that she had been designed a yacht, and,
+in spite of fallen fortunes, was still sailed as one. The man that laid
+her lee rail under would get danger as well as speed for his pains, and
+in time would be likely to satisfy a taste for both by making a swift
+trip to the bottom.
+
+The deck of the _Northern Light_ was empty save for the single tall
+figure of Gregory Cole, captain and owner, who was leaning over the rail
+gazing at the _Edelweiss_. He was a man of about thirty, his tanned,
+handsome face overcast and somber, his eyes, with their characteristic
+hunted look, fixed in an uneasy stare on his smaller neighbor.
+
+He had never known how passionately he had loved Madge Blanchard until
+he had lost her; until after that wild quarrel on Nonootch, when her
+father had called him a slaver to his face, and they had parted on
+either side in anger; until he had beaten up from westward to find her
+the month-old wife of Joe Horble. Somehow, in the course of those long,
+miserable months, he had never thought of her marrying; he felt so
+confident of that fierce love she had so often confessed for him; he had
+come back repentant, ashamed of the burning offense he had then taken,
+determined to let bygones be bygones, and to begin, if need be, a new
+and a more blameless way of life. It was natural for the girl to side
+with her father; to resent her lover's violence and temper; to show a
+face as cold as his own when he said he would up anchor and to sea.
+Fool that he had been to keep his word! fool that he had been to tear
+his heart to pieces out of pride! fool that he had been to let it stand
+between him and the woman he loved! His pride! with Madge now in Joe
+Horble's arms!
+
+He cursed the fate that had brought him into the same lagoon with the
+_Edelweiss_; that had laid his ship side by side with Joe's dainty
+schooner; that shamed and mocked him with the unceasing thought that
+Madge--his Madge--was aboard of her. He paced up and down the
+quarter-deck. He had more than a mind to get to sea, but the gloom to
+windward daunted him, and he ordered out the kedge instead and bade the
+mate strip the awnings off her. By Jove! if things grew blacker he'd
+house his topmasts. Then he looked again at the little _Edelweiss_, and
+tried to keep back the thought of Horble sitting there below with Madge.
+
+He had to see her. He was mad to see her. The thought of her tortured
+and tempted him without end. Suppose she, too, had learned that love is
+stronger than oneself; that the mouth can say Yes when the heart within
+is breaking; that she, like himself, had found the time to repent her
+folly? Was he the man to leave her thus; to acquiesce tamely in a
+decision that was doubtless already abhorrent to her; to remain with
+unlifted hand when she might be on fire for the sign to come to him?
+No, by God! he'd beg her forgiveness and offer her the choice. Yes or
+No! It was for her to choose.
+
+He jumped into the dinghy and pulled over to the schooner. Small at a
+distance, she seemed to shrink as he drew near her, so that when he
+stood up he was surprised to find his head above the rail. So this was
+Horble, this coarse, red-faced trader, with the pug nose, the fat hands,
+the faded blue eyes that met his own so sourly!
+
+"Captain Horble?" said Gregory Cole.
+
+"Glad to see you aboard," said Horble.
+
+They shook hands and sat side by side on the rail.
+
+"Where's Madge?" said Gregory.
+
+"Mrs. Horble's ashore," said the captain.
+
+"I'm afraid I can never call her anything but Madge," said Gregory,
+detecting the covert reproach in the other's voice.
+
+Horble was plainly ill at ease. His face turned a deeper red. He was on
+the edge of blurting out a disagreeable remark, and then hesitated,
+making an inarticulate sound in his throat. Like everybody else, he was
+afraid of the labor captain.
+
+"Crew's ashore, too," said Gregory, glancing about the empty deck.
+
+"There ain't no crew," muttered Horble.
+
+"Thunder!" cried Gregory. "Do you do it with electricity, or what?"
+
+"Me and Madge runs her," returned Horble.
+
+"Do you mean to say she pully-hauls your damn ropes?" exclaimed Gregory.
+
+"Yes," said Horble. "What's twenty tons between the two of us?"
+
+"And cooks?" said Gregory.
+
+"And cooks," said Horble.
+
+"You don't believe in lapping your wife in luxury!" exclaimed Gregory.
+
+"Madge and I talked it over," said Horble. "I was for trading ashore,
+but her heart was set on the schooner. I can make twice the money this
+way and please her in the bargain."
+
+"I know she can sail a boat against anybody," said Gregory, wincing at
+the remark.
+
+Horble spat in the water and said nothing. His fat, broad back said,
+plainer than words: "You're an intruder! Get out!"
+
+"I believe she's aboard this very minute," said Gregory with a strange
+smile.
+
+"She's ashore, I tell you," said Horble sullenly.
+
+"I'll just run below and make sure," said Gregory.
+
+He slipped down the little companion way, looked about the empty cabin
+and peered into the semi-darkness of the only stateroom.
+
+"Madge!" he cried. "Madge!"
+
+Horble had not lied to him. There was not a soul below. But on the cabin
+table he saw Madge's sewing machine and a half-made dress of cotton
+print. She had always been fond of books, and there, in the corner, was
+her little bookcase, taken bodily from her old home in Nonootch.
+Scattered about here and there were other things that brought her memory
+painfully back to him; that hurt him with their familiarity; that caused
+him to lift them up and hold them with a sort of despairing wonder: her
+guitar, her worn, lock-fast desk; the old gilt photograph album he
+remembered so well. He sat down at the table and buried his face in his
+hands. What a fool he had been! What a fool he had been!
+
+He was roused by the sound of Horble's footsteps down the ladder. With
+his head leaning on his hand, he looked at the big naked feet feeling
+for the steps, then at the uncouth clothes as they gradually appeared,
+then at the fat, weak, frightened face of the man himself. He grew sick
+at the sight of him. Would Horble strike him? Would Horble have the grit
+to order him off the ship? No; the infernal coward was getting out the
+gin--a bottle of square-face and two glasses.
+
+"Say when," said Horble.
+
+"When," said Gregory.
+
+Horble tipped the bottle into his own glass. A second mate's grog! One
+could see what the fellow drank.
+
+"Here's luck," said Gregory.
+
+"Drink hearty," said Horble.
+
+"Joe Horble," said Gregory, leaning both elbows on the table, "there's
+something you ought to know: I love Madge, and Madge loves me!"
+
+Horble gasped.
+
+"She's mine!" said Gregory.
+
+Horble helped himself to some more gin, and then slowly wiped his mouth
+with the back of his hand.
+
+"You're forgetting she's my wife," he said.
+
+"I'll give you a thousand pounds for her, cash and bills," said Gregory.
+
+"You can't sell white women," said Horble. "She ain't labor."
+
+"A thousand pounds!" repeated Gregory.
+
+"I won't sell my wife to no man," said Horble.
+
+The pair looked at each other. Horble's hand felt for the gin again. His
+speech had grown a little thick. He was angry and flustered, and a dull
+resentment was mantling his heavy face.
+
+"I'll go the schooner," cried Gregory. "The _Northern Light_ as she lies
+there this minute, not a dollar owing on her bottom, with two hundred
+pounds of specie in her safe. Lock, stock, and barrel, she's yours!"
+
+Horble shook his head.
+
+"Madge ain't for sale," he said.
+
+"Please yourself," said Gregory. "You'll end by losing her for
+nothing."
+
+"Captain Cole," said Horble, "Madge has told me how near it was a go
+between you and her, and how, if you hadn't cleared out so sudden the
+way you did, she would have married you in spite of old Blanchard. But
+when you went away like that you left the field clear, and you mustn't
+bear me no malice for having stepped in and taken your leavings. What's
+done's done, and it's a sorry game to come back too late and insult a
+man who never did you no harm."
+
+"Oh!" said Gregory.
+
+"If you choose," continued Horble in his tone of wounded reasonableness,
+"you can make a power of mischief between me and Madge. I don't think it
+comes very well from you to do it; I don't think anything that calls
+himself a man would do it; least of all a genelman like yourself, whom
+we all respeck and look up to. Captain Cole, if you've lost Madge, you
+know you can only blame yourself."
+
+"I don't call her lost," said Gregory.
+
+"Captain Cole," said Horble, calmly but with a quiver of his lip, "we'll
+take another drink and then we'll say good-by."
+
+"I'm not going till I see Madge," said Gregory.
+
+Horble began to tremble.
+
+"It's for Madge to decide," added Gregory.
+
+"Decide what?" demanded Horble in a husky stutter.
+
+"Between you and me, old fellow," said Gregory.
+
+"And you've the gall to say that on my ship, at my table, about my
+wife!" exclaimed Horble, punctuating the sentence with the possessive.
+
+"Yes," said Gregory.
+
+Horble sat awhile silent. He was obviously turning the matter over in
+his head. He said at last he would go on deck and take another look to
+windward.
+
+"There's a power of dirt to windward!" he said.
+
+Gregory, left to himself, edged closer against the bulkhead. He felt
+that something was about to happen, and he was in the sort of humor to
+never mind what. It did not even worry him to think he was unarmed.
+
+The companion way darkened with Horble's body, and the big naked feet
+again floundered for the steps. As they deliberately descended, Gregory
+changed his place, taking the corner by the lazarette door, where, at
+any rate, he could only be attacked in front. Horble's face plainly
+showed discomfiture at this move, and his right hand went hurriedly
+behind his back. Gregory was conscious of a belaying pin being whipped
+out of sight, and in an instant he was roused and tense, his nostrils
+vibrating with a sense of danger. The two men stared at each other, and
+then Horble backed into the stateroom, remarking with furtive
+insincerity, "There's a power of dirt to windward!" This said, the door
+went shut behind him. Gregory sprang to his feet and burst it open with
+his powerful shoulders, crushing Horble against the bunk, who, pistol in
+hand, fired at him point blank. The bullet went wide, and there was a
+sound of shattering glass. Gregory's hands clenched themselves on
+Horble's, and the revolver twisted this way and that under the double
+grasp. Horble was panting like a steam engine; his lower jaw hung open,
+and he cried as he fought, the tears streaking his red face; there was
+an agonized light in his eyes, for his forefinger was breaking in the
+trigger guard. A hair's breadth more and he could have driven a bullet
+through his opponent's body; a twist the other way--and he moaned and
+ground his teeth and frenziedly strove to regain what he had lost.
+Suddenly he let go, snatched his left hand clear, and throttled Gregory
+against the wall. Gregory, suffocating, his eyes starting from their
+sockets, his mouth dribbling blood and froth, struggled with supreme
+desperation for the pistol. Getting it in the very nick of time, and
+eluding Horble's right hand, he fired twice through the armpit down.
+
+Horble sank at the first shot, and received the second kneeling. Then he
+toppled backward, and lay in a twitching heap against the drawers below
+the bunk, groaning and coughing. Gregory, with averted face, gave him
+another shot behind the ear, and another through the mouth, and then
+went out, sick and faint, shutting the stateroom door behind him. He sat
+for a long time beside the table, absolutely spent, and still holding
+the revolver in his hand. He was shaking in a chill, though the
+temperature was over eighty, and the cabin, when he had first entered
+it, had seemed to him overpoweringly hot and stifling. He warmed himself
+with a nip of gin. He looked over his clothes for a trace of blood, and
+was thankful to find none. He took off his coat; he examined the soles
+of his shoes. No blood! Thank God, no blood!
+
+He went on deck and cast the revolver overboard, standing at the
+taffrail and watching it sink. Even in the time he had been below the
+wind had risen; it was blowing great guns to seaward, and the lagoon
+itself was white and broken as far as the eye could reach. Aboard his
+own schooner they were busy housing the topmasts, and the yeo-heave-yeo
+of straining voices warned him that Cracroft was hoisting in the boats
+and making everything snug.
+
+Gregory leaned against the wheel and tried to think. To throw Horble's
+body overboard would be to accomplish nothing. The blood, the shot
+holes, the disordered cabin, would all betray him. To scuttle the
+schooner with a stick of dynamite was a better plan, but that involved
+returning to the _Northern Light_, with the possibility of Madge coming
+off in the interval and discovering the murder for herself. No, the risk
+of that appalled him. Besides, whatever happened, he had another reason
+for keeping the truth from Madge. The fact of Horble's death, even if
+she thought it accidental, would shock her to the core. It was
+inconceivable that she would feel anything but horror stricken, whether
+she judged her former lover innocent or not. She might even undergo a
+terrible remorse. At such a moment how little likely she would be to
+give way to him! Of course she would refuse. Any woman would refuse.
+Every restraining influence would be massed against him. No, his only
+hope lay in getting her aboard his schooner and out of the lagoon before
+the least suspicion could dawn upon her. Once away, and it might be two
+years before she might even hear of Horble's death. Once away, and the
+empty seas would keep his secret. Once away----
+
+He studied the weather with a new and consuming anxiety. How could he
+manage to get out at all, or pick a course through the middle channel!
+It was thick with coral rocks, and in a day so overcast the keenest eye
+aloft would be at fault. And outside, what then? By God! it was working
+up to a hurricane. To run before it would be courting death. Hove to, he
+would be cramped for room, with three big islands on his lee. In his
+lawless and desperate past he had taken many a fall with fortune; he
+was accustomed to weigh the danger of perilous alternatives; he knew
+what it was to hazard everything on his own vigilance and skill, and to
+bear with a sailor's fatalism the throw of those dread dice on which his
+own life had been so often staked. But to stake Madge's life! Madge,
+whom he loved so dearly! Madge, for whom he would have died! And yet
+there was something sublime in the thought of taking her in his arms and
+driving before the gale, the storm sails treble reefed on the bending
+yards, the decks awash from end to end, Madge beside him, the pitchy
+night in front, the engulfing seas behind; to swim or sink, to ride or
+smother, accepting their fate together, and, if need be, drowning at the
+last in each other's arms.
+
+He looked toward the settlement and saw a crowd of natives pushing a
+whaleboat into the water; looked again, and saw old Maka taking his
+place in the stern sheets and assisting a woman in beside him. The
+woman! It needed no second glance to tell him it was Madge. He had never
+counted on her coming off in company. Fool that he was, he had taken it
+for granted that she would be alone. Everything, in fact, turned on her
+being alone. Then, with a start, he remembered his own dinghy, and how
+it would betray him. He had made it fast on the schooner's starboard
+quarter, near the little accommodation ladder. Going on his hands and
+knees, lest his head should be seen above the shallow rail, he unloosed
+the painter, worked the boat astern, and drew it in again to port. Then
+he crouched down in the alleyway and waited.
+
+A few minutes later and the whaler was bumping against the schooner's
+side. It might have been bumping against Gregory's heart, so agonizing
+was the suspense as he lay breathless and cramped between the coffinlike
+width of house and rail.
+
+"It was kind of you to bring me off, Maka," said Madge.
+
+The old Hawaiian laughed musically in denial. "No, no!" he cried.
+
+"You must come below and see the captain," said Madge.
+
+Gregory was in a cold sweat of apprehension.
+
+"Too much storm," said Maka doubtfully. "I go home now, and put rocks on
+the church roof."
+
+"Five minutes won't matter," said Madge.
+
+Again Gregory trembled.
+
+"More better I go home quick," said Maka. "No rocks, no roof!"
+
+The boat shoved off, the crew striking up a song. Madge seemed to remain
+standing at the gangway where they had left her. Gregory felt by
+instinct that she was gazing at the _Northern Light_, and that as she
+gazed she sighed; that she was lost in reverie and was loath to go
+below.
+
+He rose stiffly from his hiding place. Even as he did so it came over
+him that he was extraordinarily tired--so tired that he swayed as he
+stood and looked at her.
+
+"Madge!" he said in almost a whisper. "Madge!"
+
+She turned instantly, paling as she saw who confronted her.
+
+"Greg!" she cried.
+
+For a moment they stared at each other speechless. Then he leaped on the
+house and ran to her, she shrinking back from him as he tried to take
+her hands.
+
+"You must not!" she cried, as he would have kissed her. "Greg, you must
+not! I'm married. It's all different now."
+
+He tried to put his arms around her, but she pushed him fiercely back.
+Her eyes were flashing, and her bosom rose and fell.
+
+"I'm Joe's wife," she said.
+
+Then, from his face, she seemed to divine something.
+
+"What have you done to Joe?" she cried. She would have passed him, but
+he stopped her.
+
+"No, no!" he protested.
+
+"Let me go, or I shall call him," she broke out. "You sha'n't insult me!
+You sha'n't kiss me!"
+
+He was kissing her even as he held her back, even as she fought and
+struggled with him--on the lips, on the neck, on her black, loosened
+hair, now tangling and flying in the wind. He was so weak that she soon
+got the better of him--so weak and dizzy that he did not guard himself
+as she struck him on the mouth with her little doubled-up fist.
+
+He put his hand to his lip and found it bleeding. He showed her what she
+had done. She drew back, and regarded him with mingled pity and
+exultation.
+
+"Now will you let me go?" she cried.
+
+"Madge," he returned, "Joe's drunk in his berth. I made him drunk,
+Madge. I had to talk to you alone, and there was no other way."
+
+She was stung to the quick. Her husband's shame was hers, and it was
+somehow plain that Horble had been at fault before. She never thought to
+doubt Greg's word, though his callousness revolted her.
+
+"What is it you want to say?" she said at last in an altered voice.
+
+"To ask you to forgive me."
+
+"For what? for taking advantage of Joe's one failing?"
+
+"No; for leaving you the way I did."
+
+"I'll never do that, Greg--never, never, never!"
+
+"Your father----"
+
+"Don't try and blame my father, Greg."
+
+"I blame only myself."
+
+"Why have you come back to torture me?" she exclaimed. "You said it was
+forever. You cast me off, when I cried, and tried to keep you. You said
+I'd never see you again."
+
+"I was a fool, Madge."
+
+"Then accept the consequences, and leave me alone."
+
+"And if I can't----"
+
+She looked him squarely in the eyes. "I am Joe's wife," she said.
+
+"Madge," he said, "I am not trying to defend myself. I'm throwing myself
+on your mercy. I'm begging you, on my knees, for what I threw away.
+I----"
+
+"You've broken my heart," she said; "why should I mind if you break
+yours?"
+
+"Madge," he cried, "in ten minutes we can be aboard the _Northern Light_
+and under weigh; in an hour we can be outside the reef; in two, and this
+cursed island will sink forever behind us, and no one here will ever see
+us again or know whither we have gone. Let us follow the gale, and push
+into new seas, among new people--Tahiti, Marquesas, the Pearl
+Islands--where we shall win back our lost happiness, and find our love
+only the stronger for what we've suffered."
+
+She pointed to the windward sky. "I think I know the port we'd make,"
+she said.
+
+"Then make it," he cried, "and go down to it in each other's arms."
+
+For a moment she looked at him in a sort of exaltation. She seemed to
+hesitate no longer. Her hot hands reached for his, and he felt in her
+quick and tumultuous breath the first token of her surrender. Herself a
+child of the sea, brought up from infancy among boats and ships, her
+hand as true on the tiller, her sparkling eyes as keen to watch the luff
+of a sail as any man's, she knew as well as Gregory the hell that
+awaited them outside. To accept so terrible an ordeal seemed like a
+purification of her dishonor. If she died, she would die unstained; if
+she lived, it would be after such a bridal that would obliterate her tie
+to the sot below. Then, on the eve of her giving way, as every line in
+her body showed her longing, as her head drooped as though to find a
+resting place on the breast of the man she loved, she suddenly called up
+all her resolution and tore herself free.
+
+"I'm Joe's wife!" she said.
+
+Gregory faltered as he tried again to plead with her; but in his mind's
+eye he saw that stiffening corpse below, lying stark and bloody on the
+cabin floor.
+
+"You gave me to him," she burst out. "I'm his, Greg. I will not betray
+my husband for any man."
+
+Again he besought her to go with him. But the moment of her madness had
+passed. She listened unmoved, and when at last he stopped in despair,
+she bade him take his boat and go.
+
+He sat down on the rail instead, his eyes defying her.
+
+She stepped aft, and his heart stood still as she seemed on the point of
+descending the companion. But she had another purpose in mind. Throwing
+aside the gaskets, she stripped the sail covers off the mainsail and
+began, with practiced hands, to reef down to the third reef. Then she
+went forward and did the same to the forestaysail. A minute later,
+hardly knowing why or how, except that he was helping Madge, Gregory,
+like a man in a dream, was pulling with her on the halyards of both
+sails. The wind thundered in them as they rose; the main boom jerked
+violently at the sheet and lashed to and fro the width of the deck; the
+anchor chain fretted and sawed in the hawse hole; the whole schooner
+strained and creaked and shook to the keelson. Gregory, in amazement,
+asked Madge what she was doing.
+
+"Going to sea, Greg," she said.
+
+"Alone?" he cried. "Alone?"
+
+"Joe and I," she said.
+
+It was on his tongue to tell her Joe was dead; but, though he tried, he
+could not do so. It wasn't in flesh and blood to tell her he had killed
+her husband. He could only look at her helplessly, and say over and
+over again, "To sea!"
+
+"Greg," she said, "I mean to leave you while I am brave--while I am yet
+able to resist--while I can still remember I am Joe's wife!"
+
+"And drown," he said.
+
+"What do I care if I do?" she returned. "What do I care for anything?"
+
+"If it's to be one or the other," he said, "I'll go myself. With my big
+schooner I'd have twice the chance you'd have."
+
+She put her arms round his neck and kissed him. "You sweet traitor," she
+said, "you'd play me false!"
+
+He protested vehemently that he would not deceive her.
+
+"Besides," she said, "I could risk myself, but I couldn't bear to risk
+you, Greg."
+
+He tried a last shot. The words almost strangled in his throat.
+
+"And Joe?" he said. "Have you no thought of Joe?"
+
+"Joe loves me," she said--"loves me a thousand times better than you
+ever did. Joe's man enough to chance death rather than lose his wife."
+
+"But I won't let you go!" said Gregory.
+
+"You can't stop me," she returned.
+
+He caught her round the body and tried to hold her, but she fought
+herself free. His strength was gone; he was as feeble as a child; in
+the course of those short hours something seemed to have snapped within
+him. Even Madge was startled at his weakness.
+
+"Greg, you're ill!" she cried, as he staggered, and caught at a backstay
+to save himself from falling. He sat down on the house and tried to keep
+back a sob. Madge stooped, and looked anxiously into his face. She had
+known him for two years as a man of unusual sternness and self-control;
+obstinate, reserved, willful, and moody, yet one that gave always the
+impression of unflinching courage and resolution. It was inexplicable
+now to see him crying like a woman, his square shoulders bent and
+heaving, his sinewy hands opening and shutting convulsively.
+
+"You're ill," she repeated. "I'll go down and fetch you something."
+
+This pulled him together. "I'm all right, Madge," he said faintly. "I
+suppose it's just a touch of the old fever. See, it's passing already."
+
+She watched him in silence. Then she stepped forward, dropped down the
+forecastle hatchway, and reappeared with an ax. While he was wondering
+what she meant to do, she raised it in the air and crashed it down on
+the groaning anchor chain. It parted at the first blow, and the
+_Edelweiss_, now adrift, blundered broadside on to leeward.
+
+Madge ran aft, brought the schooner up in the wind, and cried out to
+Gregory to get into his boat.
+
+He said sullenly he wouldn't do anything of the kind.
+
+She lashed the wheel and came up to him.
+
+"I mean it, Greg," she said.
+
+"You are going to your death, Madge," he said.
+
+"Get into your boat!" she repeated.
+
+He rose, and slowly began to obey.
+
+"You may kiss me good-by, Greg," she said.
+
+She put up her face to his; their lips met. Then, with her arm around
+him, she half forced, half supported him to the port quarter, where his
+boat was slopping against the side. He wanted to resist; he wanted to
+cry out and tell her the truth, but a strange, leaden powerlessness
+benumbed him. He got into the dinghy, drew in the dripping painter she
+cast after him, and watched her ease the sheet and set the vessel
+scudding for the passage. With her black hair flying in the wind, her
+bare arms resting lightly on the wheel, her straight, girlish, supple
+figure bending with the heel of the deck, she never faltered nor looked
+back as the water whitened and boiled in the schooner's wake.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gregory came to himself in his own cabin. Cracroft, the mate, was
+bending over him with a bottle of whisky. The Malita steward was chafing
+his naked feet. Overhead the rush and roar of the gale broke pitilessly
+on his ears.
+
+"The _Edelweiss_!" he gasped; "the _Edelweiss_!"
+
+"Went down an hour ago, sir," said Cracroft grimly.
+
+
+
+
+A SON OF EMPIRE
+
+
+Raka-hanga is a dot of an island in the mid-Pacific, and so far from
+anywhere that it doesn't belong to a group--as most islands do--but is
+all by its lonesome in the heave and roll of the emptiest ocean in the
+world. In my time it was just big enough to support two traders, not
+counting old man Fosby, who had sort of retired and laid down life's
+burden in a Kanaka shack, where if he did anything at all it was making
+bonito hooks for his half-caste family or playing the accordion with his
+trembly old fingers.
+
+It was me and Stanley Hicks that divided the trade of the place, which
+was poor to middling, with maybe a couple of hundred tons of copra a
+year and as much pearl shell as the natives cared to get. It was deep
+shell, you understand, and sometimes a diver went down and never came
+up, and you could see him shimmering down below like the back of a
+shark, as dead as a doornail. Nobody would dive after that, and a whole
+year might pass with the Kanakas still holding back unless there was a
+church assessment or a call for something special like a sewing machine
+or a new boat. It averaged anywhere from five tons to sixty, and often,
+as I said, nothing at all.
+
+I had got rooted in Raka-hanga, and so had Stanley Hicks, and though we
+both had ideas of getting away and often talked of it, we never
+did--being like people half asleep in a feather bed, with life drifting
+on unnoticed, and the wind rustling in the palms, and one summer day so
+like another that you lost count of time altogether.
+
+You would have to go far to see a prettier island than Raka-hanga, or
+nicer, friendlier, finer-looking people; and when I say they never
+watered their copra on us, nor worked any of those heartbreaking
+boycotts to bring prices down, you can realize how much out of the
+beaten track it was and how little they had yet learned of civilization.
+They were too simple and easy-going for their own good and that's a
+fact, for they allowed David, the Tongan pastor, to walk all over them,
+which he did right royal with his great, fat, naked feet; and when
+anything didn't please this here David nor the deacons, they stuck him
+or her in the coral jail and locked the door on him--or her--as the case
+might be and usually was.
+
+We were what might be called a republic, having no king and being
+supposed to be ruled by the old men, who met from time to time in a
+wickerwork building that looked more like a giant clothes-basket than
+anything resembling a house. Yes, Raka-hanga was an independent country,
+and no flag floated over us but our own--or would have if we had had
+one, which we hadn't. Of course Stanley and I knew it could not last
+like this forever, and even the natives weren't unprepared for our being
+annexed some day by a passing man-of-war--though all hoped it would go
+on as it was, with nobody interfering with us nor pasting proclamations
+on trees. It is all very fine to see "GOD SAVE THE QUEEN" _or_
+"VIVE LA REPUBLIQUE" at the bottom of a proclamation, but
+Stanley and I knew it meant taxes and licenses and penal servitude if
+you did this or failed to do that, and all those other blessings that
+are served out to a Pacific island when one of the great powers suddenly
+discovers it on the map.
+
+Our republic was more in name than anything else, for old David, the
+missionary, ruled the island with a rod of iron, and was so crotchety
+and tyrannical that no Kanaka could call his soul his own. Every night
+at nine he stood out in front of his house and rang a hand bell, and
+then woe betide any one who didn't go to bed instanter and shut up, no
+matter if it were in the full of the moon and they in the middle of a
+game of cards or yarning sociable on an upturned boat.
+
+One had to get up just as military and autocratic--and as for dancing,
+why the word itself could hardly be said, let alone the actual thing,
+which meant the jail every time and a dose of the pastor's whip thrown
+in extra. It was a crime to miss church, and a crime to flirt or make
+love, and the biggest crime of all was not to come up handsome with
+church offerings when they were demanded. If you will believe me it was
+a crime to _grieve_ too much if somebody died--if the dead person were
+married that is, and if you were of the opposite sex and not closely
+related!
+
+As I said before, the natives were so easy-going that they took it all
+lying down, and allowed this here David to swell into a regular despot,
+though there must have been coming on two thousand of them, and him with
+nothing but his bell and his whip and his big roaring voice. Naturally
+he did not dare interfere with us white men, though Stanley and I toed
+the line more than we liked for the sake of business and keeping clear
+of his ill will. The only one who wasn't scared of the old Tartar, and
+stood right up to him, was a hulking big Fijian, named Peter Jones.
+Nobody knew how he came by that name for there wasn't a white drop in
+his body, he being unusually dark and powerful and full of the Old Nick,
+and with a mop of hair on him like you never saw, it was that thick and
+long and stood out on end all round his head which was the Fiji fashion
+of wearing it.
+
+Peter could lick his weight in wildcats, as the saying goes, and was
+always ready to do it at the fall of a hat. He was a bullying,
+overbearing individual and had terrorized his way into a family and
+married their daughter, helping himself promiscuous, besides, to
+anything he fancied, with nobody daring to cross him nor complain.
+Stanley and I were afraid of him and that's the truth, and gave him a
+little credit for peace and quietness' sake, which was well worth an
+occasional can of beef or a fathom or two of Turkey cotton.
+
+Once, when there was a ship in, he got most outrageously drunk, and
+rolled about the village, singing and yelling--swigging from the bottle
+he carried and stumbling after the girls, trying to hug them. If ever
+there was a scandal in Raka-hanga it was the sight of this
+six-foot-three of raving, roaring savage, rough-housing the place upside
+down and bellowing insults at the top of his lungs. But nothing was done
+to stop him till the liquor took its course, and then old David, he
+gathered the Parliament about him, and ran him into the jail with a
+one-two-three like a sack of oats.
+
+But Peter Jones was none of your stand-up-at-the-altar-and-repent-boys,
+being a white man by training, if not by blood, and after he had sobered
+up, what if his wife didn't smuggle him in a knife, and what if he
+didn't dig his way out! Yes, sir, that's what Peter Jones did--dug
+through the gravel floor and tunneled out, rising from the grave, so to
+speak, to the general uproar and hullabaloo of the entire settlement.
+Then--no one stopping him--he armed himself with an old Springfield
+rifle and an ax and a crowbar, and the cry went up he was going to
+murder the pastor, with the children running along in front and the
+women screaming.
+
+But Peter wasn't gunning for any missionary, which even in Raka-hanga
+might have had a nasty comeback--the natives being mild but not cowards,
+and beginning to buzz like hornets and reach for their shark-tooth
+spears. No, what Peter was inflamed against was the coral jail, which he
+set at most ferocious with crowbar and ax until it was nothing but a
+heap of rubbish. Then he shot holes through the galvanized roofing, and
+burned it in a blazing fire along of the iron-studded door and window
+framing. By this time the missionary was trying to raise the multitude
+against Peter, but they were none too fond of the coral jail themselves
+and did nothing but hoot and shout like a pack of boys at a circus,
+which indeed it was and enough to make you split your sides laughing.
+After that Peter was let alone and nobody dared cross him, no matter
+what he did.
+
+But this is all by the way to give you an idea of what Raka-hanga was
+like, and make the rest of the yarn the easier to understand. I shall
+always feel sorry all my life that Stanley and I were off fishing on the
+windward side of the island and thereby missed Clemm's arrival in the
+lagoon, which was well over before we got there, with the stern of a
+ten-oared boat heading for a man-of-war, and Clemm himself standing
+kind of helpless on the beach in the midst of all his chests and boxes
+and bedding.
+
+He made a splendid appearance in his white clothes and shirt and
+pipe-clayed shoes and pith-helmet, being a short, thick-set man with
+gray hair and a commanding look. When we came running up he spoke to us
+very grand, though genial, saying: "Gentlemen, I am the new Resident
+Deputy Commissioner, and I call on you to assist me raise the flag and
+annex this island in the name of her Royal and Imperial Majesty, Queen
+Victoria!"
+
+At this he took his hat off, and we did the same, though I am an
+American, and then went on to tell us that he had just been landed by
+H.M.S. _Ringarooma_ to take possession of the island, and would we
+kindly inform the natives and escort him to the king.
+
+On learning we were a republic and that it would take time to assemble
+the old men, he condescended to accept my hospitality for a spell, and
+was most pleased and gracious at the little we could do in his honor.
+Meanwhile messengers were sent to gather in the chiefs and tell them the
+great news, and how the Commissioner was soon coming to meet them in the
+"Speak-house," as the natives called the wickerwork. Mr. Clemm said the
+_Ringarooma_ had been sent under hurry orders to annex right and left in
+order to forestall the French, who had broken their international
+agreement and were hoisting their flag all over the place. He also
+explained that was the reason why the man-of-war could not stop, it
+being a neck-and-neck race between her and the French which could reach
+the Tokelaus first. Between drinks he likewise showed us his commission,
+which was written very big and imposing on crinkly paper, with seals,
+where he was called "Our well-beloved and right trusty James Howard
+Fitzroy Clemm, Esquire,"--as well as the flag he had brought with him,
+which was an eight-by-twelve ensign, with the halyards all ready to run
+it up.
+
+I can tell you Stanley and I were mighty proud to escort the Deputy
+Commissioner to the Parliament, which we did slow and stately in our
+best pajamas, with the natives reverencing him as he passed and eying us
+two most respectful. The old men were there in rows, and also David, the
+pastor, who took the interpreting out of my hands and as usual hogged
+the whole show. Perhaps it was as well he did, for he had a splendid
+voice and a booming way of speaking that suited the grandeur of the
+occasion.
+
+Then Mr. Clemm's commission was read aloud, first by him in English and
+then by David in Kanaka, and afterwards the Commissioner made a rousing
+speech, all about the loving English and the low, contemptible French,
+and at the end he asked everybody to hold up his right hand who wished
+to be a loyal, faithful, obedient subject of the Great Queen.
+
+Up shot every hand most grateful at the narrow escape they had had of
+being French; and then outside it was again repeated, even the children
+holding up their little paws, and the flag hoisted temporary to a
+coconut palm amid shouts of rejoicing led off by Stanley and me and
+Peter Jones who had followed along after us.
+
+The next question was where to lodge the Commissioner till a proper
+house could be built for him, and he showed he wasn't a gentleman to be
+trifled with by cutting short their jabber, and choosing Fono's, which
+was the finest in the settlement, and ordering him to clear out, bag and
+baggage--which Fono didn't want to do and objected very crossly till
+Peter Jones snatched up a rock and ran at him like he meant to pound his
+head in. This pleased Mr. Clemm so much that he right off appointed
+Peter marshal of his court at a salary of forty dollars a month, and put
+him in charge of shifting his things into his new quarters.
+
+I took the liberty of warning Mr. Clemm against the Fijian, but he only
+threw back his head and told me most cutting to kindly mind my own
+business. But any rancor I might have felt at this disappeared when he
+made me clerk of the court, and Stanley tax collector, each at a salary
+of sixty dollars a month, with David "Native Adviser and Official
+Interpreter" at the same figure.
+
+This was the beginning of the new government, with everything old done
+away with, and the first official sign of it was a brand-new,
+white-painted flagpole with crosstrees and ratlines in front of the fine
+big house that was next built for the Commissioner to live in. The
+natives had to do this for nothing, supplying forty men, turn and turn
+about, though the galvanized iron, hardware, paint, varnish and what not
+were bought of Stanley and me, and paid for in taxes. It was a very fine
+place when done, with a broad veranda in front and an inner court
+behind, where Mr. Clemm used to lie in a striped hammock, waited on hand
+and foot.
+
+But I fancy the wicked French couldn't have taxed the Kanakas any harder
+than Mr. Clemm did, which was the best thing in the world for them,
+considering how slack they were by nature and not given to doing
+anything they could help. It only needed a little attention to double
+the copra crop of the island, not to speak of shell--so that the taxes
+were a blessing in disguise, the natives being better off than they had
+ever been before. Of course they didn't like it and put up a great deal
+of opposition till Mr. Clemm raised a Native Constabulary of seven men,
+commanded by Peter Jones, and all of them armed any way he could,
+including Stanley's shotgun and my Winchester repeater, old man Fosby's
+Enfield and several rusty Springfields pounced on here and there as
+against the law to own them.
+
+They were tricked out very smart in red _lavalavas_ and white drill
+coats, and being all of them of the obstreperous, no-good class like
+Peter, they were soon the terror of the island. Not that Mr. Clemm
+didn't keep them tight in hand, but when it came to an order of court or
+any backwardness in taxes he never seemed to care much whom they
+plundered and beat, which was what they reveled in and thirsted for the
+chance of.
+
+Old David was the first to feel the weight of authority, and I believe
+his job of Native Adviser was merely a plan to keep him in good humor
+till Mr. Clemm was ready to squash him, which Mr. Clemm did three months
+later most emphatic. The Kanakas were forbidden to contribute to the
+church, and the pastor's private laws were abolished, and there was no
+more excommunicating nor jail for church members nor any curfew either.
+The natives went wild with joy--all except a few old soreheads that are
+always to be found in every community--and the only folks who were now
+forced to go to church were the Native Constabulary, who lined up
+regular to keep tab on what the missionary preached, and arrest him for
+sedition in case he let his tongue run away with him.
+
+In private, however, old David made all the trouble he dared, and tried
+to hearten up his followers by saying there would be a day of reckoning
+for Mr. Clemm when the missionary vessel arrived on her annual
+visit--at which the Commissioner pretended to laugh but couldn't hide he
+was worried. Leastways he asked a raft of questions about the _Evangel
+of Hope_, and that with a ruminating look, and about the character of
+the people in charge which were Captain Bins and the Reverend T. J.
+Simpkins. The _Evangel of Hope_ never stayed any longer than to land a
+few stores and hymn books for the pastor and take off what copra and
+shell he had acquired by way of church subscriptions. At that time she
+was about due in two months, and we all laughed at the empty larder she
+was going to find, though, as I said, Mr. Clemm seemed worried,
+remarking it was hard to be misrepresented and slandered when his only
+thought was for the good of the island.
+
+He was certainly upsetting things very lively and bossed the island like
+it belonged to him. If the natives could play all they wanted, now that
+David was deposed, they had bumped into something they had never known
+before and that was--work. The Commissioner couldn't abide laziness in a
+Kanaka, and went at them terrific, building a fine road around the
+island and another across it, with bridges and culverts, where he used
+to ride of a sundown in a buggy he had bought off Captain Sachs of the
+_H. L. Tiernan_, with men tugging him instead of horses, and the Native
+Constabulary trotting along in the rear like a Royal Progress.
+
+He built a fine-appearing wharf, too, and an improved jail with a cement
+floor, and heaven help anybody who threw fish-guts on the shore or
+didn't keep his land as clean as a new pin. There was a public well made
+in the middle of the settlement, with cement steps and a white-painted
+fence to keep away the pigs, and the natives, though they hated to work,
+were proud, too, of what they had done, and I doubt if they had ever
+been so prosperous or freer of sickness. I know Stanley and I doubled
+our trade, in spite of having to take out heavy licenses, which meant
+that not only we, but everybody else were that much better off. Petty
+thieving disappeared entirely, and likewise all violence, and one of the
+Commissioner's best reforms was a land court where titles were
+established and boundaries marked out, that stopping the only thing the
+Kanakas ever seriously quarreled about. Six months of the Commissioner
+had revolutionized the island, and few would have cared to go back to
+the old loose days when your only Supreme Court was the rifle hanging on
+your wall.
+
+Well, it grew nearer and nearer for the _Evangel of Hope_ to arrive, and
+Mr. Clemm he began to do a most extraordinary thing, which was nothing
+else than a large cemetery! Yes, sir, that's what Mr. Clemm did, tearing
+down five or six houses for the purpose on the lagoon side, nigh the
+wharf, and planting rows on rows of white headstones, with low mounds
+at each, representing graves. There must have been a couple of hundred
+of them, and often it was a whitewashed cross instead of a stone or
+maybe a pointed stake--the whole giving the impression of a calamity
+that had suddenly overtaken us.
+
+It was no good asking him what it was for; the Commissioner wasn't a man
+to be questioned when he didn't want to be; all he said was that Stanley
+and I were to stick inside our stores when the ship came and not budge
+an inch till we were told. With us orders were orders, but the Kanakas
+were panicky with terror, and that cemetery with nobody in it seemed to
+them like tempting Providence. It took all of Mr. Clemm's authority to
+keep them quiet, and it got out that the Commissioner was expecting the
+end of the world, and the graves were for those that wouldn't go to
+heaven! Kanakas are like that, you know--spreading the silliest rumors
+and making a lot out of nothing--though in this case they couldn't be
+blamed for being considerable scared. But Mr. Clemm knew how to turn
+everything to account, and on the principle that the church was the
+safest place to be found in on the Day of Judgment, ordered that
+everybody should go there the moment he fired three pistol shots from
+his veranda. I noticed, however, that the Native Constabulary seemed to
+be taking the end of the world mighty calm, which looked like they had
+been tipped off ahead for something quite different.
+
+But the meaning of the cemetery appeared later when one morning, along
+of ten or so, my little boy came running in to say the _Evangel_ was
+sighted in the pass. Of course, I stuck indoors, mindful of
+instructions, though that didn't prevent me from looking out of my upper
+window and taking in all that happened. The first was a tremendous
+yellow flag raised on the Commissioner's staff, and the second were
+those three pistol shots which were to announce the Day of Judgment.
+Then you ought to have seen the settlement scoot! There was a rush for
+the church like the animals at the Ark, though old David, the pastor,
+wasn't any Noah. Him and the deacons were led down to the jail and
+locked in, and then Peter Jones and his constables divided into two
+parties--three of them returning to the church, while the other three
+with Peter got a boat ready, with another yellow flag in the stern.
+
+By this time the missionary vessel was well up under a spanking spread
+of canvas, with the water hissing at her bows and parting white and
+sparkling in a way dandy to watch. You could almost feel her shiver at
+the sight of Peter's yellow flag rowing towards her, and through the
+glass I noticed a big commotion aboard, with half a dozen racing up the
+rigging and making signs at those below. It was plainer than words that
+they had seen the cemetery and were struck of a heap, which was no
+wonder considering how new and calamitous it looked, with them rows on
+rows of neat little headstones and nicely mounded graves.
+
+She never even dropped her anchor nor lowered her gangway, but hove to,
+short; and when Peter came up he was made to lay on his oars and keep
+his distance, yelling what he had to say with both hands at his face
+while the captain he yelled back with a speaking trumpet. Of course I
+didn't hear a word, but it was easy enough to put two and two together,
+remembering the sea meaning of a yellow flag which is seldom else than
+smallpox. Yes, that was why we had all took and died in the new
+cemetery, and that was why the settlement looked so lifeless and
+deserted! After no end of a powwow they hoisted out a boat, and when it
+was loaded to the gunwales with stores and cases, it was cast off for
+Peter to pick up and take in tow. It held half a ton of medical
+comforts, and I often had the pleasure of drinking some of them
+afterwards on Mr. Clemm's veranda, where we all agreed it was prime
+stuff and exactly suited to our complaints.
+
+What old David thought of it all through the bars of the coral jail can
+only be left to the imagination. He had been banking on the _Evangel_ to
+turn the scales against Mr. Clemm, and there she was heading out of the
+lagoon again, not to return for another year! We celebrated it that
+night with medical comforts unstinted, while the natives they
+celebrated, too, thankful to find the world still here and the Day of
+Judgment postponed. Old David wrote a red-hot protest, countersigned by
+the deacons, and not knowing what else to do with it, sealed it in a
+demijohn and threw it into the sea, where like enough it still is,
+bobbing around undelivered to the missionary society and still waiting
+for the angels to take charge of it.
+
+Mr. Clemm's next move was to start building a small cutter of twenty
+tons, which he named the _Felicity_ and charged to the government as an
+official yacht. Old man Fosby had been a shipwright in years gone by,
+and under his direction the Kanakas made a mighty fine job of the little
+vessel, which was fitted up regardless and proved to be remarkably fast
+and weatherly. She was the apple of the Commissioner's eye, with a crew
+of four in uniform, and a half-caste Chinaman named Henry for captain,
+whom he had persuaded to desert from a German schooner where he was
+mate. Mr. Clemm was so fond of taking short cruises in the _Felicity_
+that we never gave his coming and going much thought, till one day he
+went off and never came back! Yes, sir, clean disappeared over the
+horizon and was never seen again from that day to this, nor the party
+with him which included several very fine-looking young women!
+
+The natives took it like the loss of a father, which indeed it was, Mr.
+Clemm being a grand man and universally beloved--kindly yet strict, and
+always the soul of justice. After giving him up altogether for lost, we
+put seals on his private effects, and Peter Jones took charge of the
+government, advised by Stanley and me. It showed the splendid influence
+Mr. Clemm had had that Peter had become quite a model, and instead of
+breaking loose was all on the side of law and order. Our idea was to
+hold the fort until a new Commissioner might be sent, and the only
+slight change we made was to double our salaries. The natives had grown
+so used to civilized government that they made no trouble, and we three
+might have been governing the island yet if a man-of-war hadn't suddenly
+popped in.
+
+It was the _Ringarooma_, the self-same ship that had landed Mr. Clemm
+some eighteen months before, and Stanley and I were the first to board
+her, meeting the captain at the break of the poop, just when he had come
+down from the bridge.
+
+"I have the honor to report the disappearance of Deputy Commissioner
+James Howard Fitzroy Clemm," said I. "He sailed from here on March
+sixteenth in the government yacht _Felicity_, and has never been seen
+nor heard from since."
+
+The captain, who was a sharp, curt man, looked puzzled.
+
+"I don't know what you're talking about," he said, as abrupt as a
+thunderbolt.
+
+"Why, sir, you landed him yourself," said Stanley, "and the same day he
+took possession of the island and hoisted the British flag."
+
+"Annexed us," said I.
+
+The captain frowned very angry, like if we were making sport of him we
+should fast rue it.
+
+"I never landed anybody here but a fellow named Baker," he said. "I
+deported him from the Ellice Islands for sedition, bigamy, selling gin
+to the natives, suspected arson and receiving stolen goods. If he called
+himself a Deputy Commissioner he was a rank impostor, and had no more
+authority to annex this island than you have."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Months afterwards we learned that instead of being lost in the
+_Felicity_ like we all had thought, Clemm had turned pirate in a small
+way down to the Westward till the natives took and ate him at
+Guadalcanaar.
+
+
+
+
+CLOUD OF BUTTERFLIES
+
+
+Behind Apia, on the edge of the Taufusi swamp, was a small collection of
+huts, jumbled together in squalor and dirt, with pigs dozing in the ooze
+and slatternly women beating out _siapo_ in the shade. It was a dunghill
+of out-islanders, Nieues, Uveans, Tongans, Tapatueans, banded together
+in a common poverty; landless people of other archipelagoes, despised of
+the Samoans, and paying tribute to the lord of the soil--a few men in
+war; a grudging hog in times of peace.
+
+Here lived O'olo, a boy of twenty, whose chief-like face, and fine manly
+bearing marked him as one apart in that nest of outcasts. He was of
+Tongan blood, though all he knew of his parents was that they had
+escaped from Nukualofa at the time of the Persecution, and had died in
+Samoa when he was a child. Old Siosi, who had adopted him, could tell
+him no more than that; not that O'olo asked many questions, being
+content to drift on the ocean of life, and careless of anything save
+what belonged to the day. He weeded taro, occasionally worked for
+thirty-five cents a day at the unloading of ships; stole bread-fruit and
+bananas up the mountain, and slept peacefully at night on the stones of
+Siosi's floor.
+
+If ever he envied the Samoans, the mood was brief, and seldom darkened
+his spirits for long. To him the Samoans were a race above, with
+splendid houses, and spacious lands, and a haughty contempt for such an
+eat-bush at O'olo, the Tongan; and O'olo looked up at them mightily, and
+respected them as a dog does a man, though sometimes he said: "I wish
+God had made _me_ a Samoan"; and then the swamp appeared very dismal to
+O'olo, and the huts mean and noisome, and the mallets seemed to be
+pounding on his heart instead of the suddy bark.
+
+Now it happened that a new clergyman came to the coral church on the
+other side of the coconut grove, and what was more important to O'olo
+brought with him a lovely daughter. O'olo did not know how important it
+was till he first met Evanitalina in the path, and was so suddenly
+stricken with her beauty that he had hardly the sense to make way for
+her to pass. Slim and graceful, with her glossy hair gathered at the
+nape with a ribbon, and her bright _lavalava_ kilted to the knee, she
+gave O'olo a glance as sparkling as moonlight on a pool, all her young
+womanhood alive to his confusion, and quick to divine its cause. Though
+her eyes had scarcely dwelt on him an instant, she had seen enough for
+her heart to say: "_Panga!_ What a handsome youth"; and was filled with
+a strange elation in which there was a dart of pain.
+
+On her return O'olo was still where she had left him, though in his
+hand was a crimson _aute_ blossom that had not been there before; and
+when she drew close he held it out, saying: "Oh, lady, here is a little
+worthless gift!" She took it smiling, and put it behind her ear, and had
+it been a pig or a fine mat no sweeter could have been her words of
+gratitude, for Evanitalina had been well brought up, and courtesy was as
+natural to her as breathing.
+
+"I am named O'olo," said the young man, "and if you like _aute_
+blossoms, every day shall I bring you some."
+
+"I am Evanitalina, the daughter of Samuelu, the clergyman," she
+returned, "and I shall be glad of the blossoms, for as yet thy father
+has tabooed no lands for our garden."
+
+Then O'olo realized she had mistaken him for the son of Amatuanai, the
+chief, and while flattered he was also much cast down.
+
+"I am only a Tongan," he said, deprecatorily, shame halting his tongue,
+"and I live yonder where you see that nameless-animal rooting in the
+slough--though to God a Tongan is every bit as good as a Samoan, and the
+only chiefs are those who are strong in faith."
+
+Evanitalina hastened to agree with him, though she was very disappointed
+just the same, for he was so handsome, and had such pleasant manners,
+and an air so noble and winning that she had never doubted he was of
+rank. She herself was of the exalted I'i family, of Safotulafai, and
+her grandfather was Tu'imaleali'ifano, and her great-grandfather had
+been Tu-ia'ana. Yet as she went on, the memory of O'olo stayed with her
+like the scent of frangipani, and for all he was a Tongan and without
+land or position, she felt a great tenderness for him; and taking the
+crimson flower she pressed it to her bosom, trembling with joy as she
+did so, and saying to herself: "I love thee, I love thee, I love thee!"
+
+The next day they met again, and the next after that, and soon the
+village gossips were all of a chatter, though not a word of it reached
+the Reverend Samuelu nor his wife. But if Evanitalina dared not tell her
+parents of O'olo, in her conduct at least she was as good as gold, and
+every time she held a tryst with her sweetheart, she took her little
+brother with her as convention demands; and Polo, bribed with sugar
+cane, sucked and chewed at the pieces O'olo peeled for him, his shaven
+head untroubled by the woes of his elders. They, alas, were very
+wretched, for O'olo had saved up two dollars, which was what to get
+married costs, and was urging Evanitalina to run away with him to Atua;
+while she, with superior wisdom called his proposal that of a delirious
+person, for how were they to live afterwards except slavelike on the
+bounty of others? When he answered they could return to Siosi and the
+swamp, her lip curled scornfully, and she reminded him she was of the
+renowned I'i family, accustomed to dignity and ease, to whom the
+settlement of out-islanders was hardly better than a wallow of
+nameless-animals.
+
+Now, however true this might be, it was hurtful to O'olo's pride, and he
+was often goaded into sharp retorts which invited others even sharper,
+so that their passion might be compared to a mountain, up one side of
+which they climbed in joy and gladness, to descend on the other in
+alienation. Not that they loved each other any less; that, indeed, was
+the most cruel part of it; and when at last they separated it was with
+breaking hearts.
+
+The days that followed were heavy with sorrow, for each strove ardently
+to pain the other, and with every stab thus inflicted there were two
+wounds, one in the giver and one in the stricken person. O'olo spent his
+two dollars in riot and debauchery, and when released from prison fell
+into greater evil, so that his communion-ticket was withdrawn, and those
+who missed taro, or chickens, or run-wild daughters used to say
+darkeningly: "Lo, it is that Taufusi Tongan," and sought to waylay him
+with an ax.
+
+Evanitalina, in her turn, encouraged the wooing of Viliamu, a
+highly-connected young man, whose father was a Member of Parliament, and
+who earned a dollar and a half a day in the explosion-water manufactory.
+In this profession he was wondrous skilful, and could be seen daily
+under a shed, directing the apparatus, and giving orders to his helpers
+like a white man. A bottle of explosion-water held no more than half a
+coconut, yet it was sold for ten cents, and it was a perplexity that
+anybody liked it, for it shot up your nose like the rush of a bat, and
+made you choke and sneeze, as Evanitalina discovered when once Viliamu
+brought her some. But it was a fine thing to be able to make it, and
+earn a dollar and a half a day, and dress magnificently, and give costly
+presents; and though Evanitalina did not love Viliamu she admired him,
+and accepted his gifts, and thought wickedly how it must afflict O'olo
+to see her and Viliamu seated on the same mat, or with their heads side
+by side on the same bamboo pillow.
+
+Nor was Viliamu her only suitor, for there was also Carl, the German
+half-caste, who was captain of a schooner, and wore trousers and a black
+sash, and owned valuable property in Savaloalo; Carl who called for her
+almost every Sunday in a buggy, and took her driving like a white lady,
+to Vailele or Vaitele or Utumapu; Carl of the ringing laugh, and jolly,
+smiling face, and tattooed girl-fish on his arm, who could sing, and do
+tricks with cards, and invent the funniest forfeits when they all played
+games, and yet, who at leave-time never failed to say with seriousness:
+"Oh, my pigeon, am I to love uselessly forever?"
+
+Again and again was Evanitalina drawn to take Viliamu, and then to take
+Captain Carl, for Samuelu was always urging that a final decision be
+come to, knowing the folly of maids, and the lack and fewness of worthy
+men for husbands. But as she was on the brink, like a diver pausing
+before the plunge, her eyes would alight on O'olo, smolderingly
+regarding her from afar, and then her whole strength would turn to
+water, and not for anything would she have married Carl, though all
+Savalalo belonged to him, and all the ships of the sea; nor likewise
+would she have married Viliamu, even had he owned the explosion-water
+manufactory and been himself a Member of Parliament, for of her heart
+there was but one master, and that was the Tongan.
+
+But, alas, there was no coming together, for O'olo in his despair had
+put himself beyond all intercourse with those of honor, becoming a
+terror and a scourge, and inhabiting the jail more frequently than
+Siosi's roof-tree; and nightly, when he was free, he caroused with low
+companions, drinking gin, and cooking stolen pigs, and eating stolen
+taro, and saying in his infamy: "Why should I work for thirty-five cents
+a day when all the Tuamasanga is mine?"
+
+Yet the rich food had no flavor in his mouth, and though the gin
+maddened his spirit, it could not drown his wretchedness, for deep
+within him, like a maggot in a bread-fruit, was the torment of love.
+Sometimes in prison he would lower his head like a cow, and run at the
+wall, exclaiming: "I will die, I will die!" And then he would fall, with
+his beautiful hair all matted with blood, and his beautiful body next to
+lifeless, though with his purpose unattained, owing to the thickness of
+his skull. Surely no person in hell was ever more unhappy than O'olo,
+and it is with grief one tells of him, for he was like a child, who, on
+being refused a mango throws away his banana in wilfulness--and with
+him, his banana was right conduct, and the respect of others, and the
+laws of God, leaving him nothing save an aching spirit.
+
+Then the war came, with the Tuamasanga in an uproar from end to end,
+every young man being called to arms, and troops pouring in from Tutuila
+and the westward to join in the onslaught against Mataafa. The Taufusi
+people, as foreigners, were not liable to the levy except for two
+striplings by way of rent, both of whom were subscribed with
+unwillingness, though neither was O'olo. This Evanitalina learned with
+joy, for death was in the air and bloody fighting nigh at hand, and her
+tenderness for O'olo, lying secret in her bosom, like a red-hot coal,
+was fanned to the flame of agony. But no, he was fortunately in the
+lock-up, and it was reported he had said scornfully of the war: "A
+Tongan gentleman has no concern with the squabbles of dogs"; which, if
+insulting, was not without the balm of reassurance to Evanitalina,
+greatly dreading.
+
+One drowsy afternoon, however, as she was sewing under the eaves, alone
+except for Polo, who had made a Mataafa soldier of the dog, and was
+pretending, victoriously, to cut the animal's head off with a piece of
+wood, as so soon, in reality, would be happening to living men, pierced
+with wounds, and lying in their blood--one hot afternoon while nothing
+stirred except the flies, and even these buzzed sleepily, Evanitalina of
+a sudden was roused by the sound of steps, and looking up, beheld a
+warrior advancing towards the house. His face was blackened with
+charcoal, as is the custom, and about his hair was the scarlet scarf of
+the Government, and against his skin glistened a belt of cartridges; and
+his walk was fearless and proud, as befitted so handsome a man and one
+of such noble mien.
+
+"_Talofa_," he said, and then Evanitalina gave a cry, for it was O'olo;
+and with that cry, every thought vanished except her love, which rose
+tumultuously within her like a wave bursting between rocks, and foaming
+white over them, so that she could answer not a word to his greeting,
+but stared uselessly at him like a dead person.
+
+"I am going to the war," explained O'olo, bending down on his beautiful
+legs, and bringing his face so close to hers that his breath was on her
+cheek. "Doubtless I shall die, for with many so brave it will be
+difficult for me to excel them, though that is my intention at whatever
+cost."
+
+"But how is it you are not in prison?" inquired Evanitalina, recovering
+her voice, and speaking in a tremble. "The judge allotted you two
+months, and lo, here you are with only sixteen days of it expended."
+
+At this O'olo's heart warmed, for it showed him how assiduous had been
+Evanitalina's counting of his imprisonment, for it was exactly sixteen
+days, even as she said, she tallying it every morning with a little
+stone; and it spoke to him better than words of the endurance and
+strength of her love, which, like his own, was as fathomless as the sea.
+
+"I was made free on this condition," he said, touching his rifle, "and
+though to me the Government is nothing, nor the King, nor the quarrel
+more than that of gulls on a rock, or the squeals of nameless-animals
+over carrion, yet I consented for thy sake, Evanitalina."
+
+"My sake?" she exclaimed, astonished. "Were it to please me I would
+implore thee to remain behind, though I thought my name had long ceased
+to be anything to thee, and that I was utterly forgotten and cast
+aside."
+
+"So did I try to make it," he said, "for no shark could have been more
+cruel than thee to me, nor any bat more blind to worth, and because I
+had neither lands nor family thou drovest me forth with contempt."
+
+"It was the insufficiency of the two dollars, O'olo," she protested,
+"and not that of my love, which was unbounded; and if I merited
+punishment for what seemed right to me, have I not received it, and
+atoned a thousand times over for my fault? Did Viliamu gain me for all
+his wealth and position, or did Carl the half-caste take me to wife? I
+was truer to thee than ever thou wast to me, and nightly I wept, and
+held the memory of thee in my arms, like a mother whose babe is dead.
+And this I will do, if thou wilt return to jail, and break the covenant
+of thy freedom--I will marry thee, and go live with thee in Siosi's
+house, and forfeit rank and honor and the regard of all, reckoning them
+as naught in the comparison of thy love."
+
+At this O'olo could hardly keep back his tears, so greatly was he
+overcome; and his hand met Evanitalina's and clasped on hers, and his
+chest shook like one grief-stricken at the death of a near relation. He
+had learned many things since he had become bad, and knew better than
+before the gulf that lay between an eat-bush like himself and a member
+of the renowned I'i family. Our Lord in the desert was not more tempted
+by the kingdoms of the world than he at that moment by Evanitalina, who
+was offering herself in all her young beauty for his delight.
+
+But resolutely he put the devil behind him, saying: "I will not have
+thee stoop to me, so that persons shall mock at thy choice, and the
+parable of the pearl and the nameless-animal shall be repeated in the
+Taufusi swamp. No! I shall make of this war a ladder, and reach glory or
+die and to that I am determined as never was man before. If I come back
+it shall be as one famous for prowess, bearing heads that I have taken,
+and with chiefs eager to adopt me. Thus shall I return, an eat-bush no
+longer nor despised, but a David who has slain his Goliath, with the
+multitude applauding, and the greatest of the Tuamasanga vying to give
+me the title of their son. Or, if not that, then shall I claim the land
+God withholds not from every man, nay, not from the poorest or the
+lowest, and the name of that land is the grave."
+
+At this Evanitalina sobbed, and clung pitifully to O'olo, and pressed
+his head to her bosom, unmindful of decorum, and so consumed by misery
+she was like a person in a fit. O'olo, too, was suffocated with sadness,
+for it seemed a dreadful thing to die and be cast blood-stained into a
+pit, he that was so handsome, and in the flood of his youth, with
+perhaps his dissevered head tossing in the air amid shouts and triumph.
+Indeed, so lost was he in wretchedness that he was taken unawares by
+Samuelu on his way inland from a deacons' meeting, who, convulsed,
+seized a coconut branch, and ran at him, crying: "Let there be a going,
+thou worthless one! Fly, thou of the Belial family, and be quick with
+it, else I shall whip thee hence like a cur!" And with that he whipped
+and whipped at O'olo, departing, for the Tongan was too mannerly to
+strike a clergyman, and one so greatly his senior, though his spirit
+smarted worse than his body at the insult. Thus he passed from the sight
+of Evanitalina, like a horse being chased from a bread-fruit plantation,
+with no time to look back, or wave with his hand a last greeting.
+
+He marched the same day with the Vaiala contingent under the high-chief
+Asi, and that night, shivering on the wet ground, O'olo had his first
+taste of war. As to it he had many misconceptions, not reckoning on the
+severity of the rule, or the trifling importance attached to a Tongan,
+however lionlike his heart. He saw that he was one of many, a grain in a
+heap of sand, who might at an order be kept in the rear, and never hear
+the whistle of a bullet, or earn the chance of distinction. In the army,
+too, little thought was taken of food, so that one banana was given for
+breakfast, and for dinner a coconut, which O'olo found hard, he having
+always been a hearty eater, and accustomed to _palusami_ and luxuries.
+The monotony also, was unendurable, especially when the tobacco was
+gone, and one was forbidden to move, being condemned to sit hungry and
+distressed for a whole day at a time, sucking a white stone by way of
+alleviation. To O'olo a white stone was very insufficient for
+nourishment, and so he tried grass and weeds like Nebuchadnezzar, to
+the undoing of his stomach, which dissatisfied, was afflicted with
+cramps, so that he rolled and rolled in pain, and lamented loudly, till
+Asi cried out: "Make that Tongan to cease from bellowing, or else the
+enemy will surely discover us!"
+
+But let it not be said that O'olo was womanish or afraid, for on the
+contrary he thirsted for battle like King David, whom he took for his
+example, and his repining was due to the backwardness of his rulers and
+the tightness of their leash. When at last the advance was ordered on
+the Mataafa stronghold he was noticeable for his leaps of joy; and while
+others wore an anxious appearance and showed uncertainty in their walk,
+O'olo sang with exultation, and stepped out as though on his way to a
+feast.
+
+The stronghold was of stone, and had been used by the Germans for the
+retaining of cattle, and stood solitary on a hill with the land falling
+away on every side. As it flashed and sparkled with the Mataafa fire it
+was seen by O'olo to be a place not easy to capture, with much loss to
+be experienced before ax could cross ax, and knife meet knife, in the
+final charge; so that, with wisdom, he shot little in order not to tire
+himself, and hugged the ground in a manner suggestive of terror rather
+than boldness, for to be killed here was useless and foreign to his
+purpose, fame resting in the fort, and there the heads to be taken.
+Thus, when they sprang up at the call, he was unfatigued, with
+cartridges still in his gun, and wind in his body, and up the hill he
+raced with swiftness, so that scarcely two of his companions matched
+pace with him, and those who had cried: "Coward, coward!" panted in his
+rear, and perceived it was a hero they had mocked.
+
+Nor at the gateway was there any slackening of Tongan valor, and over it
+O'olo scrambled, undeterred by rifle and ax, so that it was a miracle
+that he stayed alive as he dropped within, even as Daniel into the
+lion's den, beset by twenty, and he alone. It was like a tempest and he
+in the center, and for lightning was the flame of the guns, and for
+thunder the roar of their explosion, and for the raging sea the crash of
+blows, given and taken, and the sobbing breath of men. Here the Tongan
+rock withheld the enemy, while the army of the Government rolled over
+the wall in a resistless torrent, and with tumult and fury beset the
+Mataafas until they fled. Now, O'olo, with coolness, had already marked
+an old chief of towering stature and magnificent appearance as the one
+whose head he would take, unwishful of a boy's, or that of a person of
+no importance, and him he pressed hard in the rout, and at last laid low
+with the butt of his weapon, straddling his body, and prepared to hack
+at his throat with his knife.
+
+The old chief, whose hurt had not bereft him of his senses, begged
+piteously for his life in a voice choked by the weight of O'olo on his
+chest, and troubled by the imminence of death; offering first ten cans
+of biscuit, and then twenty, and then property and fine mats in
+quantities unstinted. But O'olo, although it was like a beautiful dream
+come true, dallied with the killing, being squeamish in regard to it,
+and needing a space to confirm his resolution, he saying with derision:
+"Thou pig-faced person, thou hast not the property thou namest, and even
+wert thou the Lord of the earth, yet still would I take thy head!" To
+which the fallen warrior made answer: "I am Tangaloa, the high-chief of
+Leatatafili, in Savai'i, and the property I speak of is no myth, and all
+of it thine if thou wilt spare me." To which O'olo replied: "And when I
+should claim it, verily thou wouldst forget thy covenant, and order thy
+young men to chastise me forth, they laughing at the cheat, and I with
+neither head nor property, and the back of me lacerated with blows!"
+Then the old chief fell into a great tremble, repeating: "No, no," his
+flesh shrinking on his bones, and horror in his face; and as O'olo
+looked down at him, making motions with his knife, the Tongan's thought
+was suddenly moved into a new direction, and lo, it was like a burning
+torch in a cavern, so bright it was in the darkness of his previous
+purpose, he saying: "Oh, Tangaloa, there is a price, and that is my
+adoption as thy son, and to that wilt thou pledge thyself in an oath
+before God?" To which, overjoyed, the venerable warrior consented with
+impetuosity, crying out that he would do so, and seeing in the proposal
+the high-chief-hand of God, for had not his own son lately died?
+
+"And cherish me, and love me?" demanded O'olo with renewed motions of
+his knife, he undesirous of showing too great a willingness, and
+pretending indecision, besides doubting the chief's integrity.
+
+"As God sees me that I will perform," said Tangaloa, "and now in my
+extremity I perceive the worth of true dealing with every man, for all
+my past years stand in witness to my honor, and he who trusted me has
+never been deceived."
+
+At this O'olo was reassured, and he repeated the oath for Tangaloa to
+say after him, making it very full and exact, with nothing omitted; and
+then he kissed the old man, beginning to feel for him the tenderness of
+a son, he that had never had a father until this moment, and now having
+gained one of the loftiest rank; and he raised him lovingly, and bound
+his wound with a strip of cloth, and be-darlinged him, Tangaloa
+returning his love, and saying again and again: "Blessed be God that He
+has sent me a son for my protection."
+
+Nor were these words of empty import, for others of the victorious army
+were much displeased at O'olo's clemency, and would have torn away
+Tangaloa and killed him, had not O'olo resisted with lowered gun and a
+threatening expression, so that he dared not leave his father for an
+instant so greedy were the warriors for his head. All that day he
+crouched beside him, with neither water to drink nor food to eat,
+guarding Tangaloa preciously; and had it not been for the confusion that
+attends the finish of a battle, and the lessening of authority that
+follows, he would have been overpowered by a multitude, and all his
+bravery wasted. But those who assailed him were without cohesion or
+settled plan, and they were as dogs, rushing up to affright, and then
+losing courage at O'olo's demeanor, which was fierce and unshaken, with
+his rifle at the cock.
+
+It was a day terrible to remember in its heat and hunger and unbearable
+thirst, with about them the headless dead, festering in the sun and
+blackening, and over them the sky without a cloud, and always at their
+hearts the dread of Asi and the chiefs, returning to kill them both. At
+dusk it seemed as though O'olo could never get his father to his feet,
+so destroyed was the old man by weakness and disinclination, and he was
+as a sinking canoe, or a sting ray flopping on the reef, and abandoned
+by the tide. But O'olo persevered, dragging and supporting him until
+coconuts were reached, where he climbed a tree and threw down nui in
+abundance; and as they drank the water they were greatly refreshed, and
+with every bite of the rind, vigor returned, and with vigor, boldness.
+Then Tangaloa said: "Let us pray"; and with that they both went down on
+their knees, the old chief beseeching God for deliverance, and
+repeating again and again his thankfulness for O'olo, and for the nuts.
+
+But all was far from finished, and there was much for God to do yet if
+ever He destined them to gain the security of Savai'i; and O'olo
+proclaimed his intention of hiding in the mountains, and going eastward
+circuitously, and making no sign or stir until the close of the war, and
+the withdrawal of the Tuamasanga from A'ana. To this Tangaloa agreed
+without argument, resigning himself like a little child to O'olo's
+guidance, and making no demur when the Tongan said: "Let us rise and go,
+for by dawn we must be on the heights, and beyond pursuit."
+
+Thus determined, they took the plantation road upward, assisted by the
+moon which was near its full; and toilsomely attaining the limits of the
+cultivated land, buried themselves in the tomb of the forest. Here, with
+groping and hurt, and frequent misdirection, they struggled on and on,
+making of a watercourse their path, and at times so hidden in the defile
+of rocks that it was as though the earth had closed over them. In this
+manner were many hours spent until at last Tangaloa fell exhausted on a
+bank of ferns, saying: "More I cannot do." Then O'olo built a fire to
+warm his parent, who was perishing of cold, and rubbed his legs, and
+shaped a bough for his pillow, and kissed him lovingly; and when the old
+man said: "I am convinced we shall die"; he answered stoutly, "No, we
+shall live, for God has not brought us thus far to desert us now"; at
+which Tangaloa was comforted and went to sleep, while O'olo watched and
+watched beside him, his heart much troubled by the evil of their
+situation, and the frailty of the old chief, and the assailing doubts as
+to whether, after all, they should ever escape.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The news of O'olo's desertion was variously twisted by the returning
+troops, so that to Evanitalina, inquiring in anguish, there were as many
+tales as men. Some would have it that they had seen him die, giving
+details; others that he had run away from the battle, in wildness and
+panic; others praised him truthfully for a hero, and as the first to
+leap the fort. Of these there was a fewness, for the most preferred to
+laud themselves or their relations rather than another, and accordingly
+most of the chatter was scornful of O'olo, and to his discredit. But
+Evanitalina knew that O'olo was no coward, and her misgiving was that he
+was dead, which deepened with the passing of months, and no sign nor
+token coming to prove the contrary. Viliamu, too, was assiduous in
+declaring it, which he did with artfulness and pretended sorrow, urging
+all the while his own suit, like a squid of apparent harmlessness on the
+surface, but with its suckers enfolding venomously below.
+
+Never was a maid in sadder straits, widowed before she was a wife, and
+unceasingly plagued by Samuelu to marry either Viliamu or Carl. She grew
+thin, and when she walked it was like a sick person, staggeringly, and
+once of so passionate a temper she changed to a gentleness that nothing
+could disturb. The compassion of the other maids lavished itself upon
+her, for they saw that she was dying of grief for her beloved; and at
+night, when wooed under the stars, they spoke with tenderness of O'olo
+and Evanitalina, and of their love so cruelly ruptured; so that every
+one wept, even young men who previously had had neither consideration
+nor sense, to whom a maid was a maid, were only she pretty, and who
+would have hastened for another had the first died; which shows that
+true love is like a seed, growing and becoming a tree, from which others
+eat the fruit to their own improvement, and increased understanding.
+
+Every day Evanitalina grew more weak, yet unlike most sick persons, she
+was without fear at her condition, even welcoming it, and saying: "Soon
+I shall pass beyond the skies on my last _malanga_"; an once when she
+saw a wilted _aute_, she said: "Such am I, once blooming and now
+a-droop," and with that she plucked fiercely at the petals, and crushed
+them in her hand, as though she were hastening her own extinction.
+
+One morning, shortly after prayers, as she reclined on a mat, with her
+eyes raised to that far-away country of which she often spoke, while
+Samuelu sat at the table, writing his sermon, there appeared on the
+village green three old gentlemen of stately and impressive appearance,
+bearing staves, who, stopping at that distance, inquired loudly whether
+this was the house of Samuelu, the clergyman? Then being greeted, and
+answered, "Yes," the three old gentlemen ceremoniously advanced, and
+ranged themselves within the eaves, saying that they had come on a
+wooing-party of sixty boats with Cloud-of-Butterflies, the young chief
+of Leatatafili, who was seeking a wife. At this, marveling greatly,
+Samuelu informed them they were mistaken as to the house, since his
+highness Cloud-of-Butterflies was unknown to him, and he surely unknown
+to Cloud-of-Butterflies. But the old orators replied, No, they were not
+mistaken, and asked had he not a daughter named the Lady Evanitalina,
+for it was for her that Cloud-of-Butterflies, in sixty boats, was at
+hand to offer marriage.
+
+Then Samuelu's amazement redoubled, and even Evanitalina, previously
+languid, looked up surprised, and in her face was a strange expression
+like that of a startled pigeon; and on being asked in a becoming speech
+whether she would condescend to receive the visitor and his gifts, she
+answered with bewilderment that it was as her father wished, at which
+Samuelu said, "Yes," with no great willingness, desiring to continue
+his sermon, and dreading the outlay in _'ava_ for the reception of so
+vast a company. Then the three old gentlemen excused themselves in
+polished phrases, full of beauty and eloquence, and retired to inform
+Cloud-of-Butterflies that the Lady Evanitalina was desirous that he
+should come.
+
+Shortly afterwards there was the beat of drums, and the tramp of
+multitudes, and the screaming of innumerable pigs borne on poles, and a
+sound like that of an advancing army, thunderous and roaring. The eaves
+of every house was black with onlookers, and there were white people,
+galloping up on horses, astounded, and many others on foot, running.
+Then, shaking the ground with its progress the procession marched into
+view; and of pigs there seemed two hundred, and of men a number beyond
+counting; and at the head were youths, throwing their rifles in the air
+as they sang and danced. But of these things Evanitalina was scarcely
+heedful, for with breathless body and quivering heart her whole
+attention was on Cloud-of-Butterflies in the center of the pageant, who,
+girded in a priceless mat, and wearing at his throat a whale-tooth
+necklace, and surrounded with deference and honor, was not to her
+Cloud-of-Butterflies at all, but O'olo, arisen from the grave, and
+hastening to claim her for his bride.
+
+
+
+
+BEN
+
+
+I was in the bark Ransom, with twenty tons of trade aboard, and looking
+for a station up in the Westward, when I fixed it up with Tom Feltenshaw
+at Arorai Island to buy him out. It was a good little station, and far
+better than I could have hoped for at the money I had to offer, with a
+new tin roof and a water tank and a copra shed with a cement floor, and
+an imported banana in an imported ton of earth to give a natty effect to
+the back view--the front being all reef and dazzle and Pacific Ocean.
+
+Lonesome? Coffin-lid, nail-her-down, lonesome--why, of course! Was there
+ever a coral island that wasn't? But there was copra in plenty; only one
+other trader and him a boozer; quite a bit of pearl shell, and Tom's
+book showing how he had cleared thirty-three hundred dollars in a year.
+He had boils something awful, and for the last two years it had just
+been a fight to stick it out. I came along when the boils had won all
+along the line, with Tom ready to leave everything all standing in order
+to get away.
+
+There hadn't been a ship in five months, and he had come mighty near
+pegging out, having made his will and tacked it to the shed door,
+besides giving the natives receipts in advance that he had died a
+natural death, they being afraid some passing man-of-war might hold
+them responsible and shoot up the island.
+
+We had settled everything, counted out the money, and shook hands when
+Tom says, over a good-by nip of Square-face: "Oh, that girl of mine,
+Ben,--you'll take care her, won't you?"
+
+"Girl?" says I.
+
+"She's broke in to cooking and washing and white ways," explains Tom,
+"and it'd go against my conscience to feel I hadn't left her
+comfortable."
+
+"Let's see her," I said.
+
+He called her in, and one glance at her settled the matter. She was
+about eighteen, as slim and straight as a dart, and, by far and away,
+the prettiest woman I had seen in the group. She stood there mighty
+sullen as I sized her up, and admired her splendid black hair that was
+bound by a red ribbon at the nape of her neck, very coquettish and
+attractive. I've always liked that proud, to-hell-with-you look in a
+girl, and it seemed to make her better worth having, like there was
+something to master before you could have your will with her. Yes, it
+was bargain day for me all right, and the store wasn't the only thing I
+was getting cheap.
+
+"What she saying?" I asked, as she spoke something in Kanaka to Tom,
+showing real pretty teeth.
+
+"She won't stay if you whip her," grins Tom.
+
+"Bless her heart, I won't whip her," I says, thinking to break the ice
+by pulling her down on my knee. But she struggled like a wildcat, and
+Tom, he suddenly turns red-hot jealous.
+
+"Leave that till I'm gone," he says, kind of choking. "If it wasn't for
+these damn boils I should never have parted with her or the station."
+Then after another nip he takes his bag of money, and calls out to the
+Kanakas at the porch to carry his two chests down to the boat that was
+laying there ready to take him aboard. He ups as though to kiss the girl
+good-by, but she sprang back from him, as fierce as she had been with
+me--fiercer, I guess; and when he caught her she turned away her head
+like she hated him. Then he swore and stumbled out of the house without
+another word or anything, while me and the girl stood side by side, both
+of us in our different ways deserted, and slung together by the fate of
+things. She didn't fight this time when I made free with her again, but
+began to sob like her heart would break, while I squeezed and cuddled
+her and watched the sinking topsails of the Ransom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Women are always alike at bottom; it is only men that are different. A
+bit of finery would make Rosie happy for a week. Her hair was an
+everlasting job, so was her skin, which she kept out of the sun and
+rubbed down very careful with oil. She took walks to see how the other
+women wore the single bushy garment that they do in the Gilberts, the
+fashion varying from time to time: now it is swung very jaunty from side
+to side, now it's low and now it's high, and sometimes it's thick and
+sometimes it's thin, and sometimes the modest-and-quiet is the dressy
+way of it. She took care of the house very nice, and what few clothes
+and things we had were arranged most tidy in three chests with bell
+locks. I never hear a little bell ting-a-ling to-day but what it brings
+those days back to me, with her so busy at our funny housekeeping. When
+I coasted around the island, trading, she 'ud stay behind and guard the
+place like a bulldog, and never took a thing except a little soap or
+tobacco or maybe a tin of meat for her Pa, a nosing old gentleman
+dressed in a mat, who always bobbed up when I was out of the way, being
+discouraged at other times from living and dying with us.
+
+Yes, I got very fond of her--loved her, you might call it, for all she
+was a little savage, and ate squid, and carried a shark-tooth dagger
+against any of the girls that might show a fancy for me. In time I
+taught her to play cribbage and checkers and dominoes, so that at night
+we would sit very sociable under the lamp, she and I, with the surf
+groaning on the outer reef, and it was more like a home than I'd ever
+had in my wandering, lonely, up-and-down life. She was quick to learn,
+and loving to beat the band, yet ever kind of imperious and saucy like I
+belonged to her instead of its being the other way around. She had no
+idea of white people--used to say they looked like Kanakas who had been
+drowned for a week--and was most scornful how it was always copra,
+copra, copra with us. It was just her way to tease me and make me cross,
+for then she would snuggle up and ripple over with laughter and hold me
+tight in her soft, round girlish arms, and say that I was _her_ copra--a
+whole ship of it, and how she 'ud hang herself from a coconut tree if I
+were to die--and by God, she would have done it, too, them Gilbert women
+being great on love, and the thing happening often enough.
+
+Several years passed, and I can't recall a single word of disagreement
+between us. She was all the world to me in those days, and I doubt if in
+the whole group there was a pair so happy. Ben's Rosie, they called
+her--the captains and supercargoes and mates that came our way--and they
+all thought a lot of her, and brought her many a little present that
+made her eyes sparkle--such pretty eyes as they were, and so full of
+fun--gold fish, and rolls of silk, and music boxes or a trade hat. It
+was always a standing joke that she was tired of me, and was going to
+run away with them; and if they were quite old, like Captain Smith or
+Billy Baker, there wasn't any length she wouldn't go to, even to hugging
+them and playing with their whiskers right before me, and saying in her
+sweet, broken English: "Oh, you poor old captain, with nobody to love
+you--but never mind, I go with you this time, sure I go, and Bennie can
+get a girl from Big Muggin, oh, so pretty, who bite him like a dog!"
+
+Then little Ben came, and for a time it looked as though he was going to
+be quite a boy, and grow up. But at the end of twenty-one months, as he
+was nearing his second birthday, he sickened and died; and we dressed
+him up in his poor little best, and put him away forever in the coral.
+Rosie took on about it terrible--so terrible that I think something must
+have broken in her brain. She was never the same afterwards; not that
+she was always mourning, I don't mean that--but she grew cranky and
+queer and changed in every way. She would start into a fury at a word,
+and throw things about, and scream. She would tell the most awful lies
+about how I had treated her, and invent things that never took place.
+Even on a dot of a coral island there is gossip and slander and a Kanaka
+Mrs. Grundy, and Rosie was doing her best to ruin me, so that I was
+avoided, and the King and the other high muck-a-mucks went to Tyson's,
+the opposition trader, and tabooed my store till I didn't know which way
+to turn.
+
+I ought to have sold out and quit, and left Rosie on the other fellow
+like Feltenshaw had done me. But I loved her for what she had been to
+me, and for the poor mite moldering under ground, and so just took my
+medicine for a whole miserable year and let it go at that. Every
+misfortune I've had in life I seem to trace to what was good and
+generous in me. Certainly if I'd shaken her off then and there, I would
+have been a happier man, and been saved things that have since almost
+drove me mad.
+
+The upshot of it was that finally I did sell the station to a couple of
+Chinamen--brothers--and I would like to say right here there never was a
+whiter pair than these two, or any that stood up straighter to a
+bargain. Once the main price was fixed, there was no haggling over
+valuations, nor any backwardness or suspicion, though in the rush I was
+in not to hold the schooner over long, it would have been easy to beat
+me out of a hundred dollars or two. They pulled us off to the vessel--me
+and Rosie and them three camphor-wood chests with the bell locks and a
+big roll of mats and a keg of silver dollars--and an hour later six
+years of my life had sunk with the palms, as lost and disappeared as the
+schooner's wake in the sea behind us.
+
+After the Line Apia struck me as a wonderfully bustling, busy little
+place, and I took to it like a man does who's had nothing but coral and
+coconuts to look at till all the world seems nothing else. It came over
+me what a prisoner I'd been up there, and how much I had paid in
+unthought-of ways for that keg of Chile money. Rosie, too, brightened up
+considerable with the novelty of it all, and was so gay and laughing and
+like her old self that I was gladder than ever at having made the
+change.
+
+It didn't take me long to size up conditions; and the better part of
+that keg soon put me in possession of a two-story house and store in the
+center of the town on the main street, with a pretty good stock taken
+over from the widow of the man who had lately died there. I was hardly
+what could be called a trader any more, what with a place so big and
+fine, with a tramway running down to a shaky wharf, and a busted
+bookkeeper coming in every Tuesday night to post my books. I was a South
+Sea merchant now, and was reaping the fruit of all them lonely slaving
+days on the Line. No more pajamas neither, but a clean, white suit every
+day, and with Rosie perking up like she did, them were real good times
+for me, and pleasant to look back on; and though I do say it myself, my
+neighbors liked me and I was respected and looked up to, and I was
+called the Gilbert Island Consul from the way I was always ready to
+befriend anybody from there, whether white or native, even once going
+before the Supreme Court and being complimented by the Chief Justice on
+behalf of some Nonootch people whose wages were being held back.
+
+Then my ward run me for the Municipal Council, and I was elected by
+twenty-two votes to four over Grevsmuhl; and I can tell you it made me
+feel a mighty proud man to be honored like that and placed so high; and
+if my head didn't swell I guess my heart did, to almost bursting, at
+such a rise in life, and one so unexpected and undreamed of. It hardly
+seemed it could be me the police touched their caps to, or the consuls
+confabbed with about local affairs as they dropped in to buy a
+toothbrush or a pair of socks--me who had landed there so short a time
+before in my pajamas and kind of dazed at the size and noise of the
+place after the silence of the Line--just common old me, with earrings
+in my ears and gaping like a Rube.
+
+It meant a big uplift to me in every kind of a way, and I was a better
+man for all that confidence and trust, and wanted like hell to show I
+was worth it. The week after I was elected to the Council I married
+Rosie proper and right, thinking a Councillor ought to set an example in
+his community; and every one was very cordial to me about it, especially
+in my own ward, where two or three of them even followed my lead, saying
+that with the mail steamers now calling and the town generally on the up
+grade, it was time to let go on the old, wrong way of things, and get
+into line with civilization.
+
+Whether it was the change from the coral islands or the lavish new diet
+or what, Rosie had been laying on flesh for a long time in a quiet,
+unnoticed kind of way till finally she suddenly plumped up like a
+balloon. My, but she grew something awful, a waddling, monstrous
+mountain of a woman, with her eyes burying like a pig's, and the whole
+of her shaking as she walked. She was ashamed to go out any more except
+by night, sulking all day indoors, instead, and rocking in a hammock.
+As I said before, she'd never been right since Benny's death, and though
+she had pulled up for a time and acted very much improved she slumped at
+last, and slumped worse than she ever had been. Her old surly fits on
+the Line were nothing compared with the rampageous way she went on now,
+and if there was ever a she devil on earth or a man driven plumb
+distracted it was Rosie and me in our splendid house.
+
+When she was taken with those spells of hers she was nothing less than a
+cursing, snarling, foaming maniac, and stopped at nothing to make me a
+spectacle and a byword. Again and again she chased me out with an ax;
+she would fling into the store with nothing over her but a single dirty
+garment, and pull down whole shelves of stuff out of sheer devilment,
+screaming with rage. She slandered everybody, and reflected on every
+woman who was unfortunate enough to know us, so that I was sued twice
+for defamation--or rather she--with verdict and damages, all that I
+could do being to hold up my hands and tell the judge she wasn't
+answerable for her actions. Hell, that was what it was--straight,
+unadulterated hell--with no way out that I could see till I died or she.
+
+It was about this time I began to notice a fellow named Tyne on the
+beach--a thin, tall, hungry-looking man in a derby hat, very shabby
+black clothes, and no socks--who was said to be a busted doctor landed
+off of a French bark. His name came up before the Council, but as he had
+no papers or diplomas to show, and was hazy besides where he came from
+and how, we refused to let him practice, and were insulted besides at
+his daring to ask us.
+
+Well, one day this Tyne, he comes into my store, very hang-dog, and so
+famished and shaky that I couldn't but feel sorry for him, and he asks
+for the job of pushing my handcart around the beach, getting stuff out
+of Customs, and making deliveries--he having heard I had fired my Nieue
+boy for pilfering.
+
+"Fifty cents a day, Doc," I says. "It's hardly fit for a white man."
+
+"My God," he says, in a real gentleman's voice, "I'm starving. I'd push
+anything anywhere for a bite of bread and a corner of a shed to sleep
+in. Ain't there a spark of charity in this town for a white man who is
+down on his uppers?"
+
+I answered him with a can of sardines and some pilot break, which he
+went out and wolfed right there on the front stoop, and then came back
+wanting to know where was the cart and what was he to do? This was first
+how we got acquainted, Doc and me; and a remarkably finely educated man
+he was, too, and I don't doubt for a minute all that he represented
+himself. I fixed up a small shed for him with some mats, a tin basin and
+a lamp; and after a day or two, seeing how willing he worked and how
+faithful in spite of every one staring at a white man between the
+shafts, I let him take his meals regular with me and Rosie like one of
+the family.
+
+For all he was down and out, and trundled my things about the beach like
+a donkey, in knowledge and everything he was miles above me and I knew
+it--and he made it plain he knew it, too. He was not at all a genial
+man, but had a rasping, bitter way about him, and a tongue as sharp as a
+razor, and a line of talk as to how the world was made up of flats and
+sharpers, all of them hypocrites, and how there wasn't but one sin--and
+that was to be found out. He talked like the devil might be expected to
+talk, there being no goodness or honor anywhere; and in some ways he
+wasn't unlike him in looks as generally represented, being tall and
+thin, with keen gray eyes that seemed to bore right through you, and a
+wicked, sneering mouth like a slit across his face.
+
+Very soon he was doctoring natives on the sly for quarters and half
+dollars and bonito hooks and tappa, and quite a row of bottles and
+drug-store stuff began to accumulate along the ledges of the shed walls.
+I didn't think it was my business to interfere as long as he let white
+people alone, besides feeling sorry for him, and appreciating the way he
+paid no attention to Rosie's outbreaks, sitting there like he was air,
+and not passing a single remark--being, for all his faults, a gentleman
+through and through. At last he chucked the handcart altogether, though
+he went on messing with me and living in my shed, his Kanaka practice
+growing very extensive. It grew and grew till finally the regular doctor
+called a halt, and he was warned in an official letter, and told he
+would get three months' imprisonment if he persisted. At this I thought
+he would go back to the shafts again, though I didn't care to propose it
+lest it should hurt his feelings. But instead he bought an accordion and
+did nothing but play and play on it for days, beginning awful bad like
+he didn't know one end of it from another, but improving wonderful till
+it was dandy to hear him.
+
+I guess there was nothing Doc couldn't do if he tried, though why
+accordion was more than I could answer. But it wasn't loafing that kept
+him stuffed in a hot shed all day, wheezing polkas out of the
+hurdy-gurdy, but a real good idea of improving on the handcart. What if
+he didn't make a whole band out of himself, with a harness holding a
+comb across his mouth, and a bass drum for him to kick with one foot and
+a tambourine to frisk with the other. My, when he started off with "The
+Stars and Stripes Forever" you might have thought he was six, with a
+drum major prancing along in front! He give a demonstration that night
+in the Tivoli Hotel, and drew the town; and when he come home it was
+with a pocketful of silver and a couple of dates for a wedding and the
+Kaiser's birthday.
+
+After that Doc became an institution, with a pretty Kanaka girl to carry
+the drum and pass round the saucer; and every night when he hadn't a
+special engagement he would make the round of the bars, picking up what
+little he could. If there was a ship to be sold at auction, or a public
+meeting to protest against a high-handed something, it got to be the
+fashion to plaster the notice of it on Doc's back, him playing under a
+tree for all he was worth with the sweat pouring down his face, while
+all hands turned out to see what was the rumpus. He made money hand over
+fist, and would have paid for his keep only I wouldn't have it. We had
+grown to be sort of friends, him and me, from both having so much to
+bear--for he was too proud and highly educated a man to like making a
+monkey of himself, and it ground into him hard, and with me it was
+Rosie, Rosie, Rosie.
+
+Oh, God, what things I had to put up with! What endless mortifications!
+What everlasting, heartbreaking scenes and scandals! She got to
+following me to Council meetings, bellowing like a wildcat, and clawing
+the policeman who was ordered to put her out; and again and again I had
+to leave in the middle to try and get her home, half the beach tagging
+along with us, laughing and jeering till I could have died of shame.
+
+The day I resigned from the Council, being unable to stand it any
+longer, I was sitting in the front room, with my head in my hands, when
+Doc came in, and patted me on the back.
+
+"Too bad," he says, "too bad."
+
+"Oh, Doc," I says, "I'm the most miserable chap alive."
+
+"It's bound to end some time," he remarked.
+
+I shook my head. We had no means of taking care of lunatics, and that
+was about what Rosie was. The Colonies all had laws, barring out
+undesirables and such, even if a steamer would have taken her, which
+none of them would. "I'll tell you what I'd do," said Doc. "I'd give
+five hundred dollars to a labor-ship captain, put her aboard at night,
+and leave it to him to land her in one of those islands where they eat
+you for dinner."
+
+"I couldn't do that," I said.
+
+"Too fond of your money, eh?" he sneers.
+
+"Oh, Doc," I answered, "I'd give everything I possess, lock, stock and
+barrel--and ten years of my life thrown in--to be decently quit of her."
+
+He smiled a bit incredulous. "Suppose an angel came down from heaven and
+took you at your word," he says. "The next day you'd be beating Mr.
+Angel out of his price--you know you would, and screaming worse than she
+does at being held to your bargain."
+
+"Perhaps I would, Doc," I agreed, his manner of speaking somehow making
+it feel very real; "it's hard to begin without a dollar and nothing but
+the clothes you stand in. But downstairs in my safe I have two thousand
+dollars in hard cash, American money, which the angel could take and
+welcome."
+
+"That's a lot of money," he says, wondering like, "but it would be worth
+it to you, wouldn't it?"
+
+"My God, yes," I says, rather regretting I told him about the safe, for
+there was a shine in his eyes and a calculating look I didn't like.
+
+"And you wouldn't bilk the angel when he handed in his bill?" he went
+on.
+
+"Oh, hell, Doc," I said, "what's the use of talking of angels? I've just
+got to grin and bear it."
+
+"But you'd pay, wouldn't you?" he persisted.
+
+I said yes, just to stop his pestering; and after a couple of drinks off
+of the sideboard he went away. That evening I locked myself in the
+store, took the money out of the safe, and carried it up to the attic
+where I hid it under an old mattress. I smeared a little varnish around
+the combination lock with a rag, and next day I looked for finger marks,
+but there weren't none. Yet I was still suspicious, and the money stayed
+in the attic. Doc was too bright a man to have left home without a
+reason.
+
+Things went on as usual for a long time--business middling, Doc rounding
+up the bars, Rosie raising Cain occasionally, or snarling and muttering
+in the hammock just as the humor took her. It was the damnedest life for
+a man to lead, just pigging it and worse every day, with no order and
+anything--a can of meat for lunch, a can of meat for dinner, and the
+table left slovenly like it was. Then she fell kind of sick, and though
+I felt sorry to see her doubled up and groaning, it had a good side to
+it, for I got a Chinaman in to cook at forty dollars a month, and he
+straightened things out fine and cleaned up the dirt of ages. I called
+in Doctor Funk, the regular physician, and for a time Rosie improved,
+getting well enough to nearly bite the cook's finger off when he tried
+to stop her giving away a consignment of hams. But after a while she
+took sick again, the cramps coming back worse than ever, and I let Doc
+do what he could for her, which wasn't much, though better than Funk,
+whose stuff didn't seem any more good and had lost its effect.
+
+Finally, early one morning, she was taken most awful bad, vomiting
+blood, and twisting and twitching in a way horrible to see, she being so
+mountainous fat, and gibbering crazily in the Gilbert language--all
+about me and little Benny, and devils snapping at her toes, and a giant
+squid what was dragging her down to drown. Then of a sudden she grew
+very quiet, and Doc, looking close to her face, said, "Good God, she is
+dead!" Yes, dead, just as Doctor Funk hurried in, glaring to see Doc
+there, and saying something out loud about God damn quacks, and looking
+and smelling savagely at the different bottles. Doc slunk out of sight,
+and then Funk, he calmed down, and spoke to me very sympathetic and kind
+as to what I was to do, and how, after all, it was a merciful release.
+
+I buried her the same day, that being the rule in the tropics, and the
+better part of the town followed her to the grave in the foreign
+cemetery, that being a kind of rule or custom, too, in Apia, as well as
+everybody getting tight afterwards at the Tivoli bar.
+
+It was a strange feeling to come back to the house and to know that
+Rosie was gone out of it forever, and that I had passed another big
+landmark in my life. For all it was such a release, I was bluer than
+blue, yet I won't deny I was glad, too, but in a frightened kind of way,
+and half wishing again and again that she was back. Her running on about
+Benny and me before she died stuck in my throat, and seemed awful
+pitiful; and I remembered how pretty she once had been, and always such
+a good, true wife, and how me and the little store was all the world to
+her before sorrow broke her heart.
+
+I went upstairs, and sat looking out on the bay, thinking it all over,
+and how in time death comes to every one of us, high or low; thinking,
+too, that I was a free man now--a prosperous, respected, looked-up-to
+man, and an ex-Councillor with a home that many a woman would consider
+well worth sharing. I wondered if Miss Nelson up at the Mission would
+consider a man as unrefined as I was and thirty-seven years old, she so
+sweet and young and with such gentle, winning ways. She was a governess
+to their children, and that made me think she would, for no woman likes
+to be a dependent and at the beck and call of another. I sat there
+dreaming of her, and of the place nicely fixed up, and of us driving out
+of a Sunday to Vailele in a smart little buggy, with me reelected to the
+Council, and people saying: "How d'ye do, won't you drop in a
+moment"--to me and Miss Nelson, married.
+
+If this sounds wrong, remember Rosie had been no wife to me for three
+years--only a torment and a disgrace--and I deserved some credit for
+having stood it like I did. I had never dared have such thoughts before,
+though I'd often remarked what a pretty creature Miss Nelson was, just
+like a man does without anything further in his head. Yet looking back
+on it, and the few times she had been in the store when we had spoken
+together, I kind of felt she liked me, and she had certainly never been
+in any hurry to leave; with this much to go on, and the fact that she
+always smiled at me most winsome the few times we passed each other on
+the street, I couldn't help thinking I had made a start without my
+knowing it, and that if I followed it up hard this dream of her and me
+might be made to come true.
+
+I was turning this over in my mind when a squall of rain came tearing
+along, the sky all black with it, and the roof hammering like a boiler
+factory. In Samoa you needn't look out of the window to see if it is
+raining. It comes down deafening, and the iron roars with the weight and
+smash of it. This was how I didn't notice Doc till he stood right there
+beside me. There was something awful strange and grave about him, and I
+give a little jump I was that taken by surprise.
+
+He lit a cigar, and waited very impatient for the squall to pass; and as
+he went to the window and beat a little tattoo on it with his finger
+nail, I noticed he was all dressed up like I'd never seen him before.
+Then he came back, looking at me very steadfast, and says: "Well, Ben,
+you're out of the woods at last."
+
+"Yes, thank the Lord!" says I.
+
+"Same here," he says, meaning himself. "When the mail comes in to-night,
+I'm off to San Francisco."
+
+"Why, Doc!" I cried out, utterly flabbergasted.
+
+"Yes," he says, "and for all I care, the whole damned island may sink in
+the sea, and stay there, with nothing but coconuts and my old accordion
+to mark the place and maybe one of the wheels of that bloody handcart."
+
+I was still knocked silly.
+
+"But, Doc," I says, "you can't have enough to pay your passage."
+
+Then he laughs.
+
+"A hundred and seventy-five ain't much out of two thousand," he says.
+
+"Two thousand?" I says, more mystified than ever.
+
+"Yes," he answers, facing me square. "The two thousand that you owe me,
+Mr. Ben."
+
+I was just going to answer I didn't owe him nothing when the words
+stopped midway on my tongue. I began to tremble instead--tremble till my
+hands could hardly hold to my chair, till I couldn't keep my mouth from
+dribbling.
+
+"It's a debt of honor," he went on. "You can repudiate it if you want
+to, and snap your fingers in my face, but I trusted you, I got you out
+of your mess, and now I ask you for my money."
+
+I couldn't answer anything, but looked at him speechless while he goes
+to the door, peeks outside of it very careful lest any one might be
+listening, and then comes tiptoeing back. It was so plain what he meant
+to tell me that I managed to cry out, "No, no," and shook worse nor
+ever.
+
+"You're a straight man, Ben," he says. "What you owe, you pay. I
+wouldn't have risked it if I had had any doubt about that."
+
+I stumbled to the sideboard, poured myself out a big drink, never
+minding what I spilled, and then went up to the attic where the bag of
+money was still lying under the old mattress. I brought it down and give
+it to him, only asking him not to count it as that was more than I could
+bear.
+
+He made a grab for it, never saying a word, and as he went out of the
+doorway that was the last I ever saw of him.
+
+Was I a fool to have paid him? Was it all a bluff, and just his hellish
+ingeniousness for turning everything to account? Funk never questioned
+she had died a natural death. Yet true or untrue, paying Doc that two
+thousand dollars made me a murderer. In the bottom of my heart I believe
+he did it, and there are nights when I wake up in a sweat of horror. But
+wouldn't it have been a dirty act to bilk him of his money, all the more
+as it would have been so easy? To this day I don't know whether I ought
+to have paid or not, though if I hadn't it would have lightened my
+conscience of a frightful load. But when I think that I always see him
+closing the door and tiptoeing back, ready to whisper the truth.
+
+If it was the truth.
+
+Well, what would you have done?
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+    +------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                            |
+    |                                                |
+    | Some inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in  |
+    | the original document have been preserved.     |
+    |                                                |
+    | Typographical errors corrected in the text:    |
+    |                                                |
+    | Page  19  counsul changed to consul            |
+    | Page  29  counsul changed to consul            |
+    | Page  64  pigeon changed to pidgin             |
+    | Page  71  break changed to brake               |
+    | Paqe  80  palisami changed to palusami         |
+    | Page  81  annoymous changed to anonymous       |
+    | Page 128  Colossium changed to Colosseum       |
+    | Page 169  kep changed to kept                  |
+    | Page 188  forrard changed to forward           |
+    | Page 190  Honolula changed to Honolulu         |
+    | Page 191  Honolula changed to Honolulu         |
+    | Page 199  beech-comber changed to beach-comber |
+    | Page 204  hullabulloo changed to hullabaloo    |
+    | Page 321  Savalolo changed to Savalalo         |
+    | Page 322  Savalolo changed to Savalalo         |
+    | Page 326  that changed to than                 |
+    | Page 335  venemously changed to venomously     |
+    | Page 346  Cousul changed to Consul             |
+    +------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas, by
+Lloyd Osbourne
+
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