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    <p>
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    <h1>
      SOUTH SEA TALES
    </h1>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <h2>
      By Jack London
    </h2>
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <h2>
      Contents
    </h2>
    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
      <tr>
        <td>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> THE WHALE TOOTH </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> MAUKI </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> &ldquo;YAH! YAH! YAH!&rdquo; </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> THE HEATHEN </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> THE INEVITABLE WHITE MAN </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> THE SEED OF McCOY </a>
          </p>
        </td>
      </tr>
    </table>
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <h2>
      THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI
    </h2>
    <p>
      Despite the heavy clumsiness of her lines, the Aorai handled easily in the
      light breeze, and her captain ran her well in before he hove to just
      outside the suck of the surf. The atoll of Hikueru lay low on the water, a
      circle of pounded coral sand a hundred yards wide, twenty miles in
      circumference, and from three to five feet above high-water mark. On the
      bottom of the huge and glassy lagoon was much pearl shell, and from the
      deck of the schooner, across the slender ring of the atoll, the divers
      could be seen at work. But the lagoon had no entrance for even a trading
      schooner. With a favoring breeze cutters could win in through the tortuous
      and shallow channel, but the schooners lay off and on outside and sent in
      their small boats.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Aorai swung out a boat smartly, into which sprang half a dozen
      brown-skinned sailors clad only in scarlet loincloths. They took the oars,
      while in the stern sheets, at the steering sweep, stood a young man garbed
      in the tropic white that marks the European. The golden strain of
      Polynesia betrayed itself in the sun-gilt of his fair skin and cast up
      golden sheens and lights through the glimmering blue of his eyes. Raoul he
      was, Alexandre Raoul, youngest son of Marie Raoul, the wealthy
      quarter-caste, who owned and managed half a dozen trading schooners
      similar to the Aorai. Across an eddy just outside the entrance, and in and
      through and over a boiling tide-rip, the boat fought its way to the
      mirrored calm of the lagoon. Young Raoul leaped out upon the white sand
      and shook hands with a tall native. The man's chest and shoulders were
      magnificent, but the stump of a right arm, beyond the flesh of which the
      age-whitened bone projected several inches, attested the encounter with a
      shark that had put an end to his diving days and made him a fawner and an
      intriguer for small favors.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Have you heard, Alec?&rdquo; were his first words. &ldquo;Mapuhi has found a pearl&mdash;such
      a pearl. Never was there one like it ever fished up in Hikueru, nor in all
      the Paumotus, nor in all the world. Buy it from him. He has it now. And
      remember that I told you first. He is a fool and you can get it cheap.
      Have you any tobacco?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Straight up the beach to a shack under a pandanus tree Raoul headed. He
      was his mother's supercargo, and his business was to comb all the Paumotus
      for the wealth of copra, shell, and pearls that they yielded up.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was a young supercargo, it was his second voyage in such capacity, and
      he suffered much secret worry from his lack of experience in pricing
      pearls. But when Mapuhi exposed the pearl to his sight he managed to
      suppress the startle it gave him, and to maintain a careless, commercial
      expression on his face. For the pearl had struck him a blow. It was large
      as a pigeon egg, a perfect sphere, of a whiteness that reflected
      opalescent lights from all colors about it. It was alive. Never had he
      seen anything like it. When Mapuhi dropped it into his hand he was
      surprised by the weight of it. That showed that it was a good pearl. He
      examined it closely, through a pocket magnifying glass. It was without
      flaw or blemish. The purity of it seemed almost to melt into the
      atmosphere out of his hand. In the shade it was softly luminous, gleaming
      like a tender moon. So translucently white was it, that when he dropped it
      into a glass of water he had difficulty in finding it. So straight and
      swiftly had it sunk to the bottom that he knew its weight was excellent.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Well, what do you want for it?&rdquo; he asked, with a fine assumption of
      nonchalance.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I want&mdash;&rdquo; Mapuhi began, and behind him, framing his own dark face,
      the dark faces of two women and a girl nodded concurrence in what he
      wanted. Their heads were bent forward, they were animated by a suppressed
      eagerness, their eyes flashed avariciously.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I want a house,&rdquo; Mapuhi went on. &ldquo;It must have a roof of galvanized iron
      and an octagon-drop-clock. It must be six fathoms long with a porch all
      around. A big room must be in the centre, with a round table in the middle
      of it and the octagon-drop-clock on the wall. There must be four bedrooms,
      two on each side of the big room, and in each bedroom must be an iron bed,
      two chairs, and a washstand. And back of the house must be a kitchen, a
      good kitchen, with pots and pans and a stove. And you must build the house
      on my island, which is Fakarava.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Is that all?&rdquo; Raoul asked incredulously.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;There must be a sewing machine,&rdquo; spoke up Tefara, Mapuhi's wife.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Not forgetting the octagon-drop-clock,&rdquo; added Nauri, Mapuhi's mother.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes, that is all,&rdquo; said Mapuhi.
    </p>
    <p>
      Young Raoul laughed. He laughed long and heartily. But while he laughed he
      secretly performed problems in mental arithmetic. He had never built a
      house in his life, and his notions concerning house building were hazy.
      While he laughed, he calculated the cost of the voyage to Tahiti for
      materials, of the materials themselves, of the voyage back again to
      Fakarava, and the cost of landing the materials and of building the house.
      It would come to four thousand French dollars, allowing a margin for
      safety&mdash;four thousand French dollars were equivalent to twenty
      thousand francs. It was impossible. How was he to know the value of such a
      pearl? Twenty thousand francs was a lot of money&mdash;and of his mother's
      money at that.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Mapuhi,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you are a big fool. Set a money price.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      But Mapuhi shook his head, and the three heads behind him shook with his.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I want the house,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It must be six fathoms long with a porch all
      around&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; Raoul interrupted. &ldquo;I know all about your house, but it won't
      do. I'll give you a thousand Chili dollars.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The four heads chorused a silent negative.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And a hundred Chili dollars in trade.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I want the house,&rdquo; Mapuhi began.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What good will the house do you?&rdquo; Raoul demanded. &ldquo;The first hurricane
      that comes along will wash it away. You ought to know.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Captain Raffy says it looks like a hurricane right now.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Not on Fakarava,&rdquo; said Mapuhi. &ldquo;The land is much higher there. On this
      island, yes. Any hurricane can sweep Hikueru. I will have the house on
      Fakarava. It must be six fathoms long with a porch all around&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      And Raoul listened again to the tale of the house. Several hours he spent
      in the endeavor to hammer the house obsession out of Mapuhi's mind; but
      Mapuhi's mother and wife, and Ngakura, Mapuhi's daughter, bolstered him in
      his resolve for the house. Through the open doorway, while he listened for
      the twentieth time to the detailed description of the house that was
      wanted, Raoul saw his schooner's second boat draw up on the beach. The
      sailors rested on the oars, advertising haste to be gone. The first mate
      of the Aorai sprang ashore, exchanged a word with the one-armed native,
      then hurried toward Raoul. The day grew suddenly dark, as a squall
      obscured the face of the sun. Across the lagoon Raoul could see
      approaching the ominous line of the puff of wind.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Captain Raffy says you've got to get to hell outa here,&rdquo; was the mate's
      greeting. &ldquo;If there's any shell, we've got to run the risk of picking it
      up later on&mdash;so he says. The barometer's dropped to
      twenty-nine-seventy.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The gust of wind struck the pandanus tree overhead and tore through the
      palms beyond, flinging half a dozen ripe cocoanuts with heavy thuds to the
      ground. Then came the rain out of the distance, advancing with the roar of
      a gale of wind and causing the water of the lagoon to smoke in driven
      windrows. The sharp rattle of the first drops was on the leaves when Raoul
      sprang to his feet.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;A thousand Chili dollars, cash down, Mapuhi,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And two hundred
      Chili dollars in trade.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I want a house&mdash;&rdquo; the other began.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Mapuhi!&rdquo; Raoul yelled, in order to make himself heard. &ldquo;You are a fool!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He flung out of the house, and, side by side with the mate, fought his way
      down the beach toward the boat. They could not see the boat. The tropic
      rain sheeted about them so that they could see only the beach under their
      feet and the spiteful little waves from the lagoon that snapped and bit at
      the sand. A figure appeared through the deluge. It was Huru-Huru, the man
      with the one arm.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Did you get the pearl?&rdquo; he yelled in Raoul's ear.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Mapuhi is a fool!&rdquo; was the answering yell, and the next moment they were
      lost to each other in the descending water.
    </p>
    <p>
      Half an hour later, Huru-Huru, watching from the seaward side of the
      atoll, saw the two boats hoisted in and the Aorai pointing her nose out to
      sea. And near her, just come in from the sea on the wings of the squall,
      he saw another schooner hove to and dropping a boat into the water. He
      knew her. It was the OROHENA, owned by Toriki, the half-caste trader, who
      served as his own supercargo and who doubtlessly was even then in the
      stern sheets of the boat. Huru-Huru chuckled. He knew that Mapuhi owed
      Toriki for trade goods advanced the year before.
    </p>
    <p>
      The squall had passed. The hot sun was blazing down, and the lagoon was
      once more a mirror. But the air was sticky like mucilage, and the weight
      of it seemed to burden the lungs and make breathing difficult.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Have you heard the news, Toriki?&rdquo; Huru-Huru asked. &ldquo;Mapuhi has found a
      pearl. Never was there a pearl like it ever fished up in Hikueru, nor
      anywhere in the Paumotus, nor anywhere in all the world. Mapuhi is a fool.
      Besides, he owes you money. Remember that I told you first. Have you any
      tobacco?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      And to the grass shack of Mapuhi went Toriki. He was a masterful man,
      withal a fairly stupid one. Carelessly he glanced at the wonderful pearl&mdash;glanced
      for a moment only; and carelessly he dropped it into his pocket.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You are lucky,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It is a nice pearl. I will give you credit on
      the books.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I want a house,&rdquo; Mapuhi began, in consternation. &ldquo;It must be six fathoms&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Six fathoms your grandmother!&rdquo; was the trader's retort. &ldquo;You want to pay
      up your debts, that's what you want. You owed me twelve hundred dollars
      Chili. Very well; you owe them no longer. The amount is squared. Besides,
      I will give you credit for two hundred Chili. If, when I get to Tahiti,
      the pearl sells well, I will give you credit for another hundred&mdash;that
      will make three hundred. But mind, only if the pearl sells well. I may
      even lose money on it.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Mapuhi folded his arms in sorrow and sat with bowed head. He had been
      robbed of his pearl. In place of the house, he had paid a debt. There was
      nothing to show for the pearl.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You are a fool,&rdquo; said Tefara.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You are a fool,&rdquo; said Nauri, his mother. &ldquo;Why did you let the pearl into
      his hand?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What was I to do?&rdquo; Mapuhi protested. &ldquo;I owed him the money. He knew I had
      the pearl. You heard him yourself ask to see it. I had not told him. He
      knew. Somebody else told him. And I owed him the money.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Mapuhi is a fool,&rdquo; mimicked Ngakura.
    </p>
    <p>
      She was twelve years old and did not know any better. Mapuhi relieved his
      feelings by sending her reeling from a box on the ear; while Tefara and
      Nauri burst into tears and continued to upbraid him after the manner of
      women.
    </p>
    <p>
      Huru-Huru, watching on the beach, saw a third schooner that he knew heave
      to outside the entrance and drop a boat. It was the Hira, well named, for
      she was owned by Levy, the German Jew, the greatest pearl buyer of them
      all, and, as was well known, Hira was the Tahitian god of fishermen and
      thieves.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Have you heard the news?&rdquo; Huru-Huru asked, as Levy, a fat man with
      massive asymmetrical features, stepped out upon the beach. &ldquo;Mapuhi has
      found a pearl. There was never a pearl like it in Hikueru, in all the
      Paumotus, in all the world. Mapuhi is a fool. He has sold it to Toriki for
      fourteen hundred Chili&mdash;I listened outside and heard. Toriki is
      likewise a fool. You can buy it from him cheap. Remember that I told you
      first. Have you any tobacco?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Where is Toriki?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;In the house of Captain Lynch, drinking absinthe. He has been there an
      hour.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      And while Levy and Toriki drank absinthe and chaffered over the pearl,
      Huru-Huru listened and heard the stupendous price of twenty-five thousand
      francs agreed upon.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was at this time that both the OROHENA and the Hira, running in close
      to the shore, began firing guns and signalling frantically. The three men
      stepped outside in time to see the two schooners go hastily about and head
      off shore, dropping mainsails and flying jibs on the run in the teeth of
      the squall that heeled them far over on the whitened water. Then the rain
      blotted them out.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;They'll be back after it's over,&rdquo; said Toriki. &ldquo;We'd better be getting
      out of here.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I reckon the glass has fallen some more,&rdquo; said Captain Lynch.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was a white-bearded sea-captain, too old for service, who had learned
      that the only way to live on comfortable terms with his asthma was on
      Hikueru. He went inside to look at the barometer.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Great God!&rdquo; they heard him exclaim, and rushed in to join him at staring
      at a dial, which marked twenty-nine-twenty.
    </p>
    <p>
      Again they came out, this time anxiously to consult sea and sky. The
      squall had cleared away, but the sky remained overcast. The two schooners,
      under all sail and joined by a third, could be seen making back. A veer in
      the wind induced them to slack off sheets, and five minutes afterward a
      sudden veer from the opposite quarter caught all three schooners aback,
      and those on shore could see the boom-tackles being slacked away or cast
      off on the jump. The sound of the surf was loud, hollow, and menacing, and
      a heavy swell was setting in. A terrible sheet of lightning burst before
      their eyes, illuminating the dark day, and the thunder rolled wildly about
      them.
    </p>
    <p>
      Toriki and Levy broke into a run for their boats, the latter ambling along
      like a panic-stricken hippopotamus. As their two boats swept out the
      entrance, they passed the boat of the Aorai coming in. In the stern
      sheets, encouraging the rowers, was Raoul. Unable to shake the vision of
      the pearl from his mind, he was returning to accept Mapuhi's price of a
      house.
    </p>
    <p>
      He landed on the beach in the midst of a driving thunder squall that was
      so dense that he collided with Huru-Huru before he saw him.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Too late,&rdquo; yelled Huru-Huru. &ldquo;Mapuhi sold it to Toriki for fourteen
      hundred Chili, and Toriki sold it to Levy for twenty-five thousand francs.
      And Levy will sell it in France for a hundred thousand francs. Have you
      any tobacco?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Raoul felt relieved. His troubles about the pearl were over. He need not
      worry any more, even if he had not got the pearl. But he did not believe
      Huru-Huru. Mapuhi might well have sold it for fourteen hundred Chili, but
      that Levy, who knew pearls, should have paid twenty-five thousand francs
      was too wide a stretch. Raoul decided to interview Captain Lynch on the
      subject, but when he arrived at that ancient mariner's house, he found him
      looking wide-eyed at the barometer.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What do you read it?&rdquo; Captain Lynch asked anxiously, rubbing his
      spectacles and staring again at the instrument.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Twenty-nine-ten,&rdquo; said Raoul. &ldquo;I have never seen it so low before.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I should say not!&rdquo; snorted the captain. &ldquo;Fifty years boy and man on all
      the seas, and I've never seen it go down to that. Listen!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      They stood for a moment, while the surf rumbled and shook the house. Then
      they went outside. The squall had passed. They could see the Aorai lying
      becalmed a mile away and pitching and tossing madly in the tremendous seas
      that rolled in stately procession down out of the northeast and flung
      themselves furiously upon the coral shore. One of the sailors from the
      boat pointed at the mouth of the passage and shook his head. Raoul looked
      and saw a white anarchy of foam and surge.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I guess I'll stay with you tonight, Captain,&rdquo; he said; then turned to the
      sailor and told him to haul the boat out and to find shelter for himself
      and fellows.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Twenty-nine flat,&rdquo; Captain Lynch reported, coming out from another look
      at the barometer, a chair in his hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      He sat down and stared at the spectacle of the sea. The sun came out,
      increasing the sultriness of the day, while the dead calm still held. The
      seas continued to increase in magnitude.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What makes that sea is what gets me,&rdquo; Raoul muttered petulantly.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;There is no wind, yet look at it, look at that fellow there!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Miles in length, carrying tens of thousands of tons in weight, its impact
      shook the frail atoll like an earthquake. Captain Lynch was startled.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Gracious!&rdquo; he bellowed, half rising from his chair, then sinking back.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But there is no wind,&rdquo; Raoul persisted. &ldquo;I could understand it if there
      was wind along with it.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You'll get the wind soon enough without worryin' for it,&rdquo; was the grim
      reply.
    </p>
    <p>
      The two men sat on in silence. The sweat stood out on their skin in
      myriads of tiny drops that ran together, forming blotches of moisture,
      which, in turn, coalesced into rivulets that dripped to the ground. They
      panted for breath, the old man's efforts being especially painful. A sea
      swept up the beach, licking around the trunks of the cocoanuts and
      subsiding almost at their feet.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Way past high water mark,&rdquo; Captain Lynch remarked; &ldquo;and I've been here
      eleven years.&rdquo; He looked at his watch. &ldquo;It is three o'clock.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      A man and woman, at their heels a motley following of brats and curs,
      trailed disconsolately by. They came to a halt beyond the house, and,
      after much irresolution, sat down in the sand. A few minutes later another
      family trailed in from the opposite direction, the men and women carrying
      a heterogeneous assortment of possessions. And soon several hundred
      persons of all ages and sexes were congregated about the captain's
      dwelling. He called to one new arrival, a woman with a nursing babe in her
      arms, and in answer received the information that her house had just been
      swept into the lagoon.
    </p>
    <p>
      This was the highest spot of land in miles, and already, in many places on
      either hand, the great seas were making a clean breach of the slender ring
      of the atoll and surging into the lagoon. Twenty miles around stretched
      the ring of the atoll, and in no place was it more than fifty fathoms
      wide. It was the height of the diving season, and from all the islands
      around, even as far as Tahiti, the natives had gathered.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;There are twelve hundred men, women, and children here,&rdquo; said Captain
      Lynch. &ldquo;I wonder how many will be here tomorrow morning.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But why don't it blow?&mdash;that's what I want to know,&rdquo; Raoul demanded.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Don't worry, young man, don't worry; you'll get your troubles fast
      enough.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Even as Captain Lynch spoke, a great watery mass smote the atoll.
    </p>
    <p>
      The sea water churned about them three inches deep under the chairs. A low
      wail of fear went up from the many women. The children, with clasped
      hands, stared at the immense rollers and cried piteously. Chickens and
      cats, wading perturbedly in the water, as by common consent, with flight
      and scramble took refuge on the roof of the captain's house. A Paumotan,
      with a litter of new-born puppies in a basket, climbed into a cocoanut
      tree and twenty feet above the ground made the basket fast. The mother
      floundered about in the water beneath, whining and yelping.
    </p>
    <p>
      And still the sun shone brightly and the dead calm continued. They sat and
      watched the seas and the insane pitching of the Aorai. Captain Lynch gazed
      at the huge mountains of water sweeping in until he could gaze no more. He
      covered his face with his hands to shut out the sight; then went into the
      house.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Twenty-eight-sixty,&rdquo; he said quietly when he returned.
    </p>
    <p>
      In his arm was a coil of small rope. He cut it into two-fathom lengths,
      giving one to Raoul and, retaining one for himself, distributed the
      remainder among the women with the advice to pick out a tree and climb.
    </p>
    <p>
      A light air began to blow out of the northeast, and the fan of it on his
      cheek seemed to cheer Raoul up. He could see the Aorai trimming her sheets
      and heading off shore, and he regretted that he was not on her. She would
      get away at any rate, but as for the atoll&mdash;A sea breached across,
      almost sweeping him off his feet, and he selected a tree. Then he
      remembered the barometer and ran back to the house. He encountered Captain
      Lynch on the same errand and together they went in.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Twenty-eight-twenty,&rdquo; said the old mariner. &ldquo;It's going to be fair hell
      around here&mdash;what was that?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The air seemed filled with the rush of something. The house quivered and
      vibrated, and they heard the thrumming of a mighty note of sound. The
      windows rattled. Two panes crashed; a draught of wind tore in, striking
      them and making them stagger. The door opposite banged shut, shattering
      the latch. The white door knob crumbled in fragments to the floor. The
      room's walls bulged like a gas balloon in the process of sudden inflation.
      Then came a new sound like the rattle of musketry, as the spray from a sea
      struck the wall of the house. Captain Lynch looked at his watch. It was
      four o'clock. He put on a coat of pilot cloth, unhooked the barometer, and
      stowed it away in a capacious pocket. Again a sea struck the house, with a
      heavy thud, and the light building tilted, twisted, quarter around on its
      foundation, and sank down, its floor at an angle of ten degrees.
    </p>
    <p>
      Raoul went out first. The wind caught him and whirled him away. He noted
      that it had hauled around to the east. With a great effort he threw
      himself on the sand, crouching and holding his own. Captain Lynch, driven
      like a wisp of straw, sprawled over him. Two of the Aorai's sailors,
      leaving a cocoanut tree to which they had been clinging, came to their
      aid, leaning against the wind at impossible angles and fighting and
      clawing every inch of the way.
    </p>
    <p>
      The old man's joints were stiff and he could not climb, so the sailors, by
      means of short ends of rope tied together, hoisted him up the trunk, a few
      feet at a time, till they could make him fast, at the top of the tree,
      fifty feet from the ground. Raoul passed his length of rope around the
      base of an adjacent tree and stood looking on. The wind was frightful. He
      had never dreamed it could blow so hard. A sea breached across the atoll,
      wetting him to the knees ere it subsided into the lagoon. The sun had
      disappeared, and a lead-colored twilight settled down. A few drops of
      rain, driving horizontally, struck him. The impact was like that of leaden
      pellets. A splash of salt spray struck his face. It was like the slap of a
      man's hand. His cheeks stung, and involuntary tears of pain were in his
      smarting eyes. Several hundred natives had taken to the trees, and he
      could have laughed at the bunches of human fruit clustering in the tops.
      Then, being Tahitian-born, he doubled his body at the waist, clasped the
      trunk of his tree with his hands, pressed the soles of his feet against
      the near surface of the trunk, and began to walk up the tree. At the top
      he found two women, two children, and a man. One little girl clasped a
      housecat in her arms.
    </p>
    <p>
      From his eyrie he waved his hand to Captain Lynch, and that doughty
      patriarch waved back. Raoul was appalled at the sky. It had approached
      much nearer&mdash;in fact, it seemed just over his head; and it had turned
      from lead to black. Many people were still on the ground grouped about the
      bases of the trees and holding on. Several such clusters were praying, and
      in one the Mormon missionary was exhorting. A weird sound, rhythmical,
      faint as the faintest chirp of a far cricket, enduring but for a moment,
      but in the moment suggesting to him vaguely the thought of heaven and
      celestial music, came to his ear. He glanced about him and saw, at the
      base of another tree, a large cluster of people holding on by ropes and by
      one another. He could see their faces working and their lips moving in
      unison. No sound came to him, but he knew that they were singing hymns.
    </p>
    <p>
      Still the wind continued to blow harder. By no conscious process could he
      measure it, for it had long since passed beyond all his experience of
      wind; but he knew somehow, nevertheless, that it was blowing harder. Not
      far away a tree was uprooted, flinging its load of human beings to the
      ground. A sea washed across the strip of sand, and they were gone. Things
      were happening quickly. He saw a brown shoulder and a black head
      silhouetted against the churning white of the lagoon. The next instant
      that, too, had vanished. Other trees were going, falling and
      criss-crossing like matches. He was amazed at the power of the wind. His
      own tree was swaying perilously, one woman was wailing and clutching the
      little girl, who in turn still hung on to the cat.
    </p>
    <p>
      The man, holding the other child, touched Raoul's arm and pointed. He
      looked and saw the Mormon church careering drunkenly a hundred feet away.
      It had been torn from its foundations, and wind and sea were heaving and
      shoving it toward the lagoon. A frightful wall of water caught it, tilted
      it, and flung it against half a dozen cocoanut trees. The bunches of human
      fruit fell like ripe cocoanuts. The subsiding wave showed them on the
      ground, some lying motionless, others squirming and writhing. They
      reminded him strangely of ants. He was not shocked. He had risen above
      horror. Quite as a matter of course he noted the succeeding wave sweep the
      sand clean of the human wreckage. A third wave, more colossal than any he
      had yet seen, hurled the church into the lagoon, where it floated off into
      the obscurity to leeward, half-submerged, reminding him for all the world
      of a Noah's ark.
    </p>
    <p>
      He looked for Captain Lynch's house, and was surprised to find it gone.
      Things certainly were happening quickly. He noticed that many of the
      people in the trees that still held had descended to the ground. The wind
      had yet again increased. His own tree showed that. It no longer swayed or
      bent over and back. Instead, it remained practically stationary, curved in
      a rigid angle from the wind and merely vibrating. But the vibration was
      sickening. It was like that of a tuning-fork or the tongue of a
      jew's-harp. It was the rapidity of the vibration that made it so bad. Even
      though its roots held, it could not stand the strain for long. Something
      would have to break.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ah, there was one that had gone. He had not seen it go, but there it
      stood, the remnant, broken off half-way up the trunk. One did not know
      what happened unless he saw it. The mere crashing of trees and wails of
      human despair occupied no place in that mighty volume of sound. He chanced
      to be looking in Captain Lynch's direction when it happened. He saw the
      trunk of the tree, half-way up, splinter and part without noise. The head
      of the tree, with three sailors of the Aorai and the old captain sailed
      off over the lagoon. It did not fall to the ground, but drove through the
      air like a piece of chaff. For a hundred yards he followed its flight,
      when it struck the water. He strained his eyes, and was sure that he saw
      Captain Lynch wave farewell.
    </p>
    <p>
      Raoul did not wait for anything more. He touched the native and made signs
      to descend to the ground. The man was willing, but his women were
      paralyzed from terror, and he elected to remain with them. Raoul passed
      his rope around the tree and slid down. A rush of salt water went over his
      head. He held his breath and clung desperately to the rope. The water
      subsided, and in the shelter of the trunk he breathed once more. He
      fastened the rope more securely, and then was put under by another sea.
      One of the women slid down and joined him, the native remaining by the
      other woman, the two children, and the cat.
    </p>
    <p>
      The supercargo had noticed how the groups clinging at the bases of the
      other trees continually diminished. Now he saw the process work out
      alongside him. It required all his strength to hold on, and the woman who
      had joined him was growing weaker. Each time he emerged from a sea he was
      surprised to find himself still there, and next, surprised to find the
      woman still there. At last he emerged to find himself alone. He looked up.
      The top of the tree had gone as well. At half its original height, a
      splintered end vibrated. He was safe. The roots still held, while the tree
      had been shorn of its windage. He began to climb up. He was so weak that
      he went slowly, and sea after sea caught him before he was above them.
      Then he tied himself to the trunk and stiffened his soul to face the night
      and he knew not what.
    </p>
    <p>
      He felt very lonely in the darkness. At times it seemed to him that it was
      the end of the world and that he was the last one left alive. Still the
      wind increased. Hour after hour it increased. By what he calculated was
      eleven o'clock, the wind had become unbelievable. It was a horrible,
      monstrous thing, a screaming fury, a wall that smote and passed on but
      that continued to smite and pass on&mdash;a wall without end. It seemed to
      him that he had become light and ethereal; that it was he that was in
      motion; that he was being driven with inconceivable velocity through
      unending solidness. The wind was no longer air in motion. It had become
      substantial as water or quicksilver. He had a feeling that he could reach
      into it and tear it out in chunks as one might do with the meat in the
      carcass of a steer; that he could seize hold of the wind and hang on to it
      as a man might hang on to the face of a cliff.
    </p>
    <p>
      The wind strangled him. He could not face it and breathe, for it rushed in
      through his mouth and nostrils, distending his lungs like bladders. At
      such moments it seemed to him that his body was being packed and swollen
      with solid earth. Only by pressing his lips to the trunk of the tree could
      he breathe. Also, the ceaseless impact of the wind exhausted him. Body and
      brain became wearied. He no longer observed, no longer thought, and was
      but semiconscious. One idea constituted his consciousness: SO THIS WAS A
      HURRICANE. That one idea persisted irregularly. It was like a feeble flame
      that flickered occasionally. From a state of stupor he would return to it&mdash;SO
      THIS WAS A HURRICANE. Then he would go off into another stupor.
    </p>
    <p>
      The height of the hurricane endured from eleven at night till three in the
      morning, and it was at eleven that the tree in which clung Mapuhi and his
      women snapped off. Mapuhi rose to the surface of the lagoon, still
      clutching his daughter Ngakura. Only a South Sea islander could have lived
      in such a driving smother. The pandanus tree, to which he attached
      himself, turned over and over in the froth and churn; and it was only by
      holding on at times and waiting, and at other times shifting his grips
      rapidly, that he was able to get his head and Ngakura's to the surface at
      intervals sufficiently near together to keep the breath in them. But the
      air was mostly water, what with flying spray and sheeted rain that poured
      along at right angles to the perpendicular.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was ten miles across the lagoon to the farther ring of sand. Here,
      tossing tree trunks, timbers, wrecks of cutters, and wreckage of houses,
      killed nine out of ten of the miserable beings who survived the passage of
      the lagoon. Half-drowned, exhausted, they were hurled into this mad mortar
      of the elements and battered into formless flesh. But Mapuhi was
      fortunate. His chance was the one in ten; it fell to him by the freakage
      of fate. He emerged upon the sand, bleeding from a score of wounds.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ngakura's left arm was broken; the fingers of her right hand were crushed;
      and cheek and forehead were laid open to the bone. He clutched a tree that
      yet stood, and clung on, holding the girl and sobbing for air, while the
      waters of the lagoon washed by knee-high and at times waist-high.
    </p>
    <p>
      At three in the morning the backbone of the hurricane broke. By five no
      more than a stiff breeze was blowing. And by six it was dead calm and the
      sun was shining. The sea had gone down. On the yet restless edge of the
      lagoon, Mapuhi saw the broken bodies of those that had failed in the
      landing. Undoubtedly Tefara and Nauri were among them. He went along the
      beach examining them, and came upon his wife, lying half in and half out
      of the water. He sat down and wept, making harsh animal noises after the
      manner of primitive grief. Then she stirred uneasily, and groaned. He
      looked more closely. Not only was she alive, but she was uninjured. She
      was merely sleeping. Hers also had been the one chance in ten.
    </p>
    <p>
      Of the twelve hundred alive the night before but three hundred remained.
      The Mormon missionary and a gendarme made the census. The lagoon was
      cluttered with corpses. Not a house nor a hut was standing. In the whole
      atoll not two stones remained one upon another. One in fifty of the
      cocoanut palms still stood, and they were wrecks, while on not one of them
      remained a single nut.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was no fresh water. The shallow wells that caught the surface
      seepage of the rain were filled with salt. Out of the lagoon a few soaked
      bags of flour were recovered. The survivors cut the hearts out of the
      fallen cocoanut trees and ate them. Here and there they crawled into tiny
      hutches, made by hollowing out the sand and covering over with fragments
      of metal roofing. The missionary made a crude still, but he could not
      distill water for three hundred persons. By the end of the second day,
      Raoul, taking a bath in the lagoon, discovered that his thirst was
      somewhat relieved. He cried out the news, and thereupon three hundred men,
      women, and children could have been seen, standing up to their necks in
      the lagoon and trying to drink water in through their skins. Their dead
      floated about them, or were stepped upon where they still lay upon the
      bottom. On the third day the people buried their dead and sat down to wait
      for the rescue steamers.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the meantime, Nauri, torn from her family by the hurricane, had been
      swept away on an adventure of her own. Clinging to a rough plank that
      wounded and bruised her and that filled her body with splinters, she was
      thrown clear over the atoll and carried away to sea. Here, under the
      amazing buffets of mountains of water, she lost her plank. She was an old
      woman nearly sixty; but she was Paumotan-born, and she had never been out
      of sight of the sea in her life. Swimming in the darkness, strangling,
      suffocating, fighting for air, she was struck a heavy blow on the shoulder
      by a cocoanut. On the instant her plan was formed, and she seized the nut.
      In the next hour she captured seven more. Tied together, they formed a
      life-buoy that preserved her life while at the same time it threatened to
      pound her to a jelly. She was a fat woman, and she bruised easily; but she
      had had experience of hurricanes, and while she prayed to her shark god
      for protection from sharks, she waited for the wind to break. But at three
      o'clock she was in such a stupor that she did not know. Nor did she know
      at six o'clock when the dead calm settled down. She was shocked into
      consciousness when she was thrown upon the sand. She dug in with raw and
      bleeding hands and feet and clawed against the backwash until she was
      beyond the reach of the waves.
    </p>
    <p>
      She knew where she was. This land could be no other than the tiny islet of
      Takokota. It had no lagoon. No one lived upon it.
    </p>
    <p>
      Hikueru was fifteen miles away. She could not see Hikueru, but she knew
      that it lay to the south. The days went by, and she lived on the cocoanuts
      that had kept her afloat. They supplied her with drinking water and with
      food. But she did not drink all she wanted, nor eat all she wanted. Rescue
      was problematical. She saw the smoke of the rescue steamers on the
      horizon, but what steamer could be expected to come to lonely, uninhabited
      Takokota?
    </p>
    <p>
      From the first she was tormented by corpses. The sea persisted in flinging
      them upon her bit of sand, and she persisted, until her strength failed,
      in thrusting them back into the sea where the sharks tore at them and
      devoured them. When her strength failed, the bodies festooned her beach
      with ghastly horror, and she withdrew from them as far as she could, which
      was not far.
    </p>
    <p>
      By the tenth day her last cocoanut was gone, and she was shrivelling from
      thirst. She dragged herself along the sand, looking for cocoanuts. It was
      strange that so many bodies floated up, and no nuts. Surely, there were
      more cocoanuts afloat than dead men! She gave up at last, and lay
      exhausted. The end had come. Nothing remained but to wait for death.
    </p>
    <p>
      Coming out of a stupor, she became slowly aware that she was gazing at a
      patch of sandy-red hair on the head of a corpse. The sea flung the body
      toward her, then drew it back. It turned over, and she saw that it had no
      face. Yet there was something familiar about that patch of sandy-red hair.
      An hour passed. She did not exert herself to make the identification. She
      was waiting to die, and it mattered little to her what man that thing of
      horror once might have been.
    </p>
    <p>
      But at the end of the hour she sat up slowly and stared at the corpse. An
      unusually large wave had thrown it beyond the reach of the lesser waves.
      Yes, she was right; that patch of red hair could belong to but one man in
      the Paumotus. It was Levy, the German Jew, the man who had bought the
      pearl and carried it away on the Hira. Well, one thing was evident: The
      Hira had been lost. The pearl buyer's god of fishermen and thieves had
      gone back on him.
    </p>
    <p>
      She crawled down to the dead man. His shirt had been torn away, and she
      could see the leather money belt about his waist. She held her breath and
      tugged at the buckles. They gave easier than she had expected, and she
      crawled hurriedly away across the sand, dragging the belt after her.
      Pocket after pocket she unbuckled in the belt and found empty. Where could
      he have put it? In the last pocket of all she found it, the first and only
      pearl he had bought on the voyage. She crawled a few feet farther, to
      escape the pestilence of the belt, and examined the pearl. It was the one
      Mapuhi had found and been robbed of by Toriki. She weighed it in her hand
      and rolled it back and forth caressingly. But in it she saw no intrinsic
      beauty. What she did see was the house Mapuhi and Tefara and she had
      builded so carefully in their minds. Each time she looked at the pearl she
      saw the house in all its details, including the octagon-drop-clock on the
      wall. That was something to live for.
    </p>
    <p>
      She tore a strip from her ahu and tied the pearl securely about her neck.
      Then she went on along the beach, panting and groaning, but resolutely
      seeking for cocoanuts. Quickly she found one, and, as she glanced around,
      a second. She broke one, drinking its water, which was mildewy, and eating
      the last particle of the meat. A little later she found a shattered
      dugout. Its outrigger was gone, but she was hopeful, and, before the day
      was out, she found the outrigger. Every find was an augury. The pearl was
      a talisman. Late in the afternoon she saw a wooden box floating low in the
      water. When she dragged it out on the beach its contents rattled, and
      inside she found ten tins of salmon. She opened one by hammering it on the
      canoe. When a leak was started, she drained the tin. After that she spent
      several hours in extracting the salmon, hammering and squeezing it out a
      morsel at a time.
    </p>
    <p>
      Eight days longer she waited for rescue. In the meantime she fastened the
      outrigger back on the canoe, using for lashings all the cocoanut fibre she
      could find, and also what remained of her ahu. The canoe was badly
      cracked, and she could not make it water-tight; but a calabash made from a
      cocoanut she stored on board for a bailer. She was hard put for a paddle.
      With a piece of tin she sawed off all her hair close to the scalp. Out of
      the hair she braided a cord; and by means of the cord she lashed a
      three-foot piece of broom handle to a board from the salmon case.
    </p>
    <p>
      She gnawed wedges with her teeth and with them wedged the lashing.
    </p>
    <p>
      On the eighteenth day, at midnight, she launched the canoe through the
      surf and started back for Hikueru. She was an old woman. Hardship had
      stripped her fat from her till scarcely more than bones and skin and a few
      stringy muscles remained. The canoe was large and should have been paddled
      by three strong men.
    </p>
    <p>
      But she did it alone, with a make-shift paddle. Also, the canoe leaked
      badly, and one-third of her time was devoted to bailing. By clear daylight
      she looked vainly for Hikueru. Astern, Takokota had sunk beneath the sea
      rim. The sun blazed down on her nakedness, compelling her body to
      surrender its moisture. Two tins of salmon were left, and in the course of
      the day she battered holes in them and drained the liquid. She had no time
      to waste in extracting the meat. A current was setting to the westward,
      she made westing whether she made southing or not.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the early afternoon, standing upright in the canoe, she sighted
      Hikueru. Its wealth of cocoanut palms was gone. Only here and there, at
      wide intervals, could she see the ragged remnants of trees. The sight
      cheered her. She was nearer than she had thought. The current was setting
      her to the westward. She bore up against it and paddled on. The wedges in
      the paddle lashing worked loose, and she lost much time, at frequent
      intervals, in driving them tight. Then there was the bailing. One hour in
      three she had to cease paddling in order to bail. And all the time she
      drifted to the westward.
    </p>
    <p>
      By sunset Hikueru bore southeast from her, three miles away. There was a
      full moon, and by eight o'clock the land was due east and two miles away.
      She struggled on for another hour, but the land was as far away as ever.
      She was in the main grip of the current; the canoe was too large; the
      paddle was too inadequate; and too much of her time and strength was
      wasted in bailing. Besides, she was very weak and growing weaker. Despite
      her efforts, the canoe was drifting off to the westward.
    </p>
    <p>
      She breathed a prayer to her shark god, slipped over the side, and began
      to swim. She was actually refreshed by the water, and quickly left the
      canoe astern. At the end of an hour the land was perceptibly nearer. Then
      came her fright. Right before her eyes, not twenty feet away, a large fin
      cut the water. She swam steadily toward it, and slowly it glided away,
      curving off toward the right and circling around her. She kept her eyes on
      the fin and swam on. When the fin disappeared, she lay face downward in
      the water and watched. When the fin reappeared she resumed her swimming.
      The monster was lazy&mdash;she could see that. Without doubt he had been
      well fed since the hurricane. Had he been very hungry, she knew he would
      not have hesitated from making a dash for her. He was fifteen feet long,
      and one bite, she knew, could cut her in half.
    </p>
    <p>
      But she did not have any time to waste on him. Whether she swam or not,
      the current drew away from the land just the same. A half hour went by,
      and the shark began to grow bolder. Seeing no harm in her he drew closer,
      in narrowing circles, cocking his eyes at her impudently as he slid past.
      Sooner or later, she knew well enough, he would get up sufficient courage
      to dash at her. She resolved to play first. It was a desperate act she
      meditated. She was an old woman, alone in the sea and weak from starvation
      and hardship; and yet she, in the face of this sea tiger, must anticipate
      his dash by herself dashing at him. She swam on, waiting her chance. At
      last he passed languidly by, barely eight feet away. She rushed at him
      suddenly, feigning that she was attacking him. He gave a wild flirt of his
      tail as he fled away, and his sandpaper hide, striking her, took off her
      skin from elbow to shoulder. He swam rapidly, in a widening circle, and at
      last disappeared.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the hole in the sand, covered over by fragments of metal roofing,
      Mapuhi and Tefara lay disputing.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;If you had done as I said,&rdquo; charged Tefara, for the thousandth time, &ldquo;and
      hidden the pearl and told no one, you would have it now.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But Huru-Huru was with me when I opened the shell&mdash;have I not told
      you so times and times and times without end?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And now we shall have no house. Raoul told me today that if you had not
      sold the pearl to Toriki&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I did not sell it. Toriki robbed me.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;&mdash;that if you had not sold the pearl, he would give you five
      thousand French dollars, which is ten thousand Chili.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;He has been talking to his mother,&rdquo; Mapuhi explained. &ldquo;She has an eye for
      a pearl.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And now the pearl is lost,&rdquo; Tefara complained.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It paid my debt with Toriki. That is twelve hundred I have made, anyway.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Toriki is dead,&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;They have heard no word of his schooner. She
      was lost along with the Aorai and the Hira. Will Toriki pay you the three
      hundred credit he promised? No, because Toriki is dead. And had you found
      no pearl, would you today owe Toriki the twelve hundred? No, because
      Toriki is dead, and you cannot pay dead men.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But Levy did not pay Toriki,&rdquo; Mapuhi said. &ldquo;He gave him a piece of paper
      that was good for the money in Papeete; and now Levy is dead and cannot
      pay; and Toriki is dead and the paper lost with him, and the pearl is lost
      with Levy. You are right, Tefara. I have lost the pearl, and got nothing
      for it. Now let us sleep.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He held up his hand suddenly and listened. From without came a noise, as
      of one who breathed heavily and with pain. A hand fumbled against the mat
      that served for a door.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Who is there?&rdquo; Mapuhi cried.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Nauri,&rdquo; came the answer. &ldquo;Can you tell me where is my son, Mapuhi?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Tefara screamed and gripped her husband's arm.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;A ghost!&rdquo; she chattered. &ldquo;A ghost!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Mapuhi's face was a ghastly yellow. He clung weakly to his wife.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Good woman,&rdquo; he said in faltering tones, striving to disguise his vice,
      &ldquo;I know your son well. He is living on the east side of the lagoon.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      From without came the sound of a sigh. Mapuhi began to feel elated. He had
      fooled the ghost.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But where do you come from, old woman?&rdquo; he asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;From the sea,&rdquo; was the dejected answer.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I knew it! I knew it!&rdquo; screamed Tefara, rocking to and fro.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Since when has Tefara bedded in a strange house?&rdquo; came Nauri's voice
      through the matting.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mapuhi looked fear and reproach at his wife. It was her voice that had
      betrayed them.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And since when has Mapuhi, my son, denied his old mother?&rdquo; the voice went
      on.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;No, no, I have not&mdash;Mapuhi has not denied you,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;I am not
      Mapuhi. He is on the east end of the lagoon, I tell you.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Ngakura sat up in bed and began to cry. The matting started to shake.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What are you doing?&rdquo; Mapuhi demanded.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I am coming in,&rdquo; said the voice of Nauri.
    </p>
    <p>
      One end of the matting lifted. Tefara tried to dive under the blankets,
      but Mapuhi held on to her. He had to hold on to something. Together,
      struggling with each other, with shivering bodies and chattering teeth,
      they gazed with protruding eyes at the lifting mat. They saw Nauri,
      dripping with sea water, without her ahu, creep in. They rolled over
      backward from her and fought for Ngakura's blanket with which to cover
      their heads.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You might give your old mother a drink of water,&rdquo; the ghost said
      plaintively.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Give her a drink of water,&rdquo; Tefara commanded in a shaking voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Give her a drink of water,&rdquo; Mapuhi passed on the command to Ngakura.
    </p>
    <p>
      And together they kicked out Ngakura from under the blanket. A minute
      later, peeping, Mapuhi saw the ghost drinking. When it reached out a
      shaking hand and laid it on his, he felt the weight of it and was
      convinced that it was no ghost. Then he emerged, dragging Tefara after
      him, and in a few minutes all were listening to Nauri's tale. And when she
      told of Levy, and dropped the pearl into Tefara's hand, even she was
      reconciled to the reality of her mother-in-law.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;In the morning,&rdquo; said Tefara, &ldquo;you will sell the pearl to Raoul for five
      thousand French.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The house?&rdquo; objected Nauri.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;He will build the house,&rdquo; Tefara answered. &ldquo;He ways it will cost four
      thousand French. Also will he give one thousand French in credit, which is
      two thousand Chili.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And it will be six fathoms long?&rdquo; Nauri queried.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Ay,&rdquo; answered Mapuhi, &ldquo;six fathoms.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And in the middle room will be the octagon-drop-clock?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Ay, and the round table as well.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Then give me something to eat, for I am hungry,&rdquo; said Nauri,
      complacently. &ldquo;And after that we will sleep, for I am weary. And tomorrow
      we will have more talk about the house before we sell the pearl. It will
      be better if we take the thousand French in cash. Money is ever better
      than credit in buying goods from the traders.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      THE WHALE TOOTH
    </h2>
    <p>
      It was in the early days in Fiji, when John Starhurst arose in the mission
      house at Rewa Village and announced his intention of carrying the gospel
      throughout all Viti Levu. Now Viti Levu means the &ldquo;Great Land,&rdquo; it being
      the largest island in a group composed of many large islands, to say
      nothing of hundreds of small ones. Here and there on the coasts, living by
      most precarious tenure, was a sprinkling of missionaries, traders,
      bêche-de-mer fishers, and whaleship deserters. The smoke of the hot ovens
      arose under their windows, and the bodies of the slain were dragged by
      their doors on the way to the feasting.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Lotu, or the Worship, was progressing slowly, and, often, in crablike
      fashion. Chiefs, who announced themselves Christians and were welcomed
      into the body of the chapel, had a distressing habit of backsliding in
      order to partake of the flesh of some favorite enemy. Eat or be eaten had
      been the law of the land; and eat or be eaten promised to remain the law
      of the land for a long time to come. There were chiefs, such as Tanoa,
      Tuiveikoso, and Tuikilakila, who had literally eaten hundreds of their
      fellow men. But among these gluttons Ra Undreundre ranked highest. Ra
      Undreundre lived at Takiraki. He kept a register of his gustatory
      exploits. A row of stones outside his house marked the bodies he had
      eaten. This row was two hundred and thirty paces long, and the stones in
      it numbered eight hundred and seventy-two. Each stone represented a body.
      The row of stones might have been longer, had not Ra Undreundre
      unfortunately received a spear in the small of his back in a bush skirmish
      on Somo Somo and been served up on the table of Naungavuli, whose mediocre
      string of stones numbered only forty-eight.
    </p>
    <p>
      The hard-worked, fever-stricken missionaries stuck doggedly to their task,
      at times despairing, and looking forward for some special manifestation,
      some outburst of Pentecostal fire that would bring a glorious harvest of
      souls. But cannibal Fiji had remained obdurate. The frizzle-headed
      man-eaters were loath to leave their fleshpots so long as the harvest of
      human carcases was plentiful. Sometimes, when the harvest was too
      plentiful, they imposed on the missionaries by letting the word slip out
      that on such a day there would be a killing and a barbecue. Promptly the
      missionaries would buy the lives of the victims with stick tobacco,
      fathoms of calico, and quarts of trade beads. Natheless the chiefs drove a
      handsome trade in thus disposing of their surplus live meat. Also, they
      could always go out and catch more.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was at this juncture that John Starhurst proclaimed that he would carry
      the Gospel from coast to coast of the Great Land, and that he would begin
      by penetrating the mountain fastnesses of the headwaters of the Rewa
      River. His words were received with consternation.
    </p>
    <p>
      The native teachers wept softly. His two fellow missionaries strove to
      dissuade him. The King of Rewa warned him that the mountain dwellers would
      surely kai-kai him&mdash;kai-kai meaning &ldquo;to eat&rdquo;&mdash;and that he, the
      King of Rewa, having become Lotu, would be put to the necessity of going
      to war with the mountain dwellers. That he could not conquer them he was
      perfectly aware. That they might come down the river and sack Rewa Village
      he was likewise perfectly aware. But what was he to do? If John Starhurst
      persisted in going out and being eaten, there would be a war that would
      cost hundreds of lives.
    </p>
    <p>
      Later in the day a deputation of Rewa chiefs waited upon John Starhurst.
      He heard them patiently, and argued patiently with them, though he abated
      not a whit from his purpose. To his fellow missionaries he explained that
      he was not bent upon martyrdom; that the call had come for him to carry
      the Gospel into Viti Levu, and that he was merely obeying the Lord's wish.
    </p>
    <p>
      To the traders who came and objected most strenuously of all, he said:
      &ldquo;Your objections are valueless. They consist merely of the damage that may
      be done your businesses. You are interested in making money, but I am
      interested in saving souls. The heathen of this dark land must be saved.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      John Starhurst was not a fanatic. He would have been the first man to deny
      the imputation. He was eminently sane and practical.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was sure that his mission would result in good, and he had private
      visions of igniting the Pentecostal spark in the souls of the mountaineers
      and of inaugurating a revival that would sweep down out of the mountains
      and across the length and breadth of the Great Land from sea to sea and to
      the isles in the midst of the sea. There were no wild lights in his mild
      gray eyes, but only calm resolution and an unfaltering trust in the Higher
      Power that was guiding him.
    </p>
    <p>
      One man only he found who approved of his project, and that was Ra Vatu,
      who secretly encouraged him and offered to lend him guides to the first
      foothills. John Starhurst, in turn, was greatly pleased by Ra Vatu's
      conduct. From an incorrigible heathen, with a heart as black as his
      practices, Ra Vatu was beginning to emanate light. He even spoke of
      becoming Lotu. True, three years before he had expressed a similar
      intention, and would have entered the church had not John Starhurst
      entered objection to his bringing his four wives along with him. Ra Vatu
      had had economic and ethical objections to monogamy. Besides, the
      missionary's hair-splitting objection had offended him; and, to prove that
      he was a free agent and a man of honor, he had swung his huge war club
      over Starhurst's head. Starhurst had escaped by rushing in under the club
      and holding on to him until help arrived. But all that was now forgiven
      and forgotten. Ra Vatu was coming into the church, not merely as a
      converted heathen, but as a converted polygamist as well. He was only
      waiting, he assured Starhurst, until his oldest wife, who was very sick,
      should die.
    </p>
    <p>
      John Starhurst journeyed up the sluggish Rewa in one of Ra Vatu's canoes.
      This canoe was to carry him for two days, when, the head of navigation
      reached, it would return. Far in the distance, lifted into the sky, could
      be seen the great smoky mountains that marked the backbone of the Great
      Land. All day John Starhurst gazed at them with eager yearning.
    </p>
    <p>
      Sometimes he prayed silently. At other times he was joined in prayer by
      Narau, a native teacher, who for seven years had been Lotu, ever since the
      day he had been saved from the hot oven by Dr. James Ellery Brown at the
      trifling expense of one hundred sticks of tobacco, two cotton blankets,
      and a large bottle of painkiller. At the last moment, after twenty hours
      of solitary supplication and prayer, Narau's ears had heard the call to go
      forth with John Starhurst on the mission to the mountains.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Master, I will surely go with thee,&rdquo; he had announced.
    </p>
    <p>
      John Starhurst had hailed him with sober delight. Truly, the Lord was with
      him thus to spur on so broken-spirited a creature as Narau.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I am indeed without spirit, the weakest of the Lord's vessels,&rdquo; Narau
      explained, the first day in the canoe.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You should have faith, stronger faith,&rdquo; the missionary chided him.
    </p>
    <p>
      Another canoe journeyed up the Rewa that day. But it journeyed an hour
      astern, and it took care not to be seen. This canoe was also the property
      of Ra Vatu. In it was Erirola, Ra Vatu's first cousin and trusted
      henchman; and in the small basket that never left his hand was a whale
      tooth. It was a magnificent tooth, fully six inches long, beautifully
      proportioned, the ivory turned yellow and purple with age. This tooth was
      likewise the property of Ra Vatu; and in Fiji, when such a tooth goes
      forth, things usually happen. For this is the virtue of the whale tooth:
      Whoever accepts it cannot refuse the request that may accompany it or
      follow it. The request may be anything from a human life to a tribal
      alliance, and no Fijian is so dead to honor as to deny the request when
      once the tooth has been accepted. Sometimes the request hangs fire, or the
      fulfilment is delayed, with untoward consequences.
    </p>
    <p>
      High up the Rewa, at the village of a chief, Mongondro by name, John
      Starhurst rested at the end of the second day of the journey. In the
      morning, attended by Narau, he expected to start on foot for the smoky
      mountains that were now green and velvety with nearness. Mongondro was a
      sweet-tempered, mild-mannered little old chief, short-sighted and
      afflicted with elephantiasis, and no longer inclined toward the turbulence
      of war. He received the missionary with warm hospitality, gave him food
      from his own table, and even discussed religious matters with him.
      Mongondro was of an inquiring bent of mind, and pleased John Starhurst
      greatly by asking him to account for the existence and beginning of
      things. When the missionary had finished his summary of the Creation
      according to Genesis, he saw that Mongondro was deeply affected. The
      little old chief smoked silently for some time. Then he took the pipe from
      his mouth and shook his head sadly.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It cannot be,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I, Mongondro, in my youth, was a good workman
      with the adze. Yet three months did it take me to make a canoe&mdash;a
      small canoe, a very small canoe. And you say that all this land and water
      was made by one man&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Nay, was made by one God, the only true God,&rdquo; the missionary interrupted.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It is the same thing,&rdquo; Mongondro went on, &ldquo;that all the land and all the
      water, the trees, the fish, and bush and mountains, the sun, the moon, and
      the stars, were made in six days! No, no. I tell you that in my youth I
      was an able man, yet did it require me three months for one small canoe.
      It is a story to frighten children with; but no man can believe it.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I am a man,&rdquo; the missionary said.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;True, you are a man. But it is not given to my dark understanding to know
      what you believe.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I tell you, I do believe that everything was made in six days.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;So you say, so you say,&rdquo; the old cannibal murmured soothingly.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was not until after John Starhurst and Narau had gone off to bed that
      Erirola crept into the chief's house, and, after diplomatic speech, handed
      the whale tooth to Mongondro.
    </p>
    <p>
      The old chief held the tooth in his hands for a long time. It was a
      beautiful tooth, and he yearned for it. Also, he divined the request that
      must accompany it. &ldquo;No, no; whale teeth were beautiful,&rdquo; and his mouth
      watered for it, but he passed it back to Erirola with many apologies.
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      In the early dawn John Starhurst was afoot, striding along the bush trail
      in his big leather boots, at his heels the faithful Narau, himself at the
      heels of a naked guide lent him by Mongondro to show the way to the next
      village, which was reached by midday. Here a new guide showed the way. A
      mile in the rear plodded Erirola, the whale tooth in the basket slung on
      his shoulder. For two days more he brought up the missionary's rear,
      offering the tooth to the village chiefs. But village after village
      refused the tooth. It followed so quickly the missionary's advent that
      they divined the request that would be made, and would have none of it.
    </p>
    <p>
      They were getting deep into the mountains, and Erirola took a secret
      trail, cut in ahead of the missionary, and reached the stronghold of the
      Buli of Gatoka. Now the Buli was unaware of John Starhurst's imminent
      arrival. Also, the tooth was beautiful&mdash;an extraordinary specimen,
      while the coloring of it was of the rarest order. The tooth was presented
      publicly. The Buli of Gatoka, seated on his best mat, surrounded by his
      chief men, three busy fly-brushers at his back, deigned to receive from
      the hand of his herald the whale tooth presented by Ra Vatu and carried
      into the mountains by his cousin, Erirola. A clapping of hands went up at
      the acceptance of the present, the assembled headman, heralds, and
      fly-brushers crying aloud in chorus:
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;A! woi! woi! woi! A! woi! woi! woi! A tabua levu! woi! woi! A mudua,
      mudua, mudua!'
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Soon will come a man, a white man,&rdquo; Erirola began, after the proper
      pause. &ldquo;He is a missionary man, and he will come today. Ra Vatu is pleased
      to desire his boots. He wishes to present them to his good friend,
      Mongondro, and it is in his mind to send them with the feet along in them,
      for Mongondro is an old man and his teeth are not good. Be sure, O Buli,
      that the feet go along in the boots. As for the rest of him, it may stop
      here.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The delight in the whale tooth faded out of the Buli's eyes, and he
      glanced about him dubiously. Yet had he already accepted the tooth.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;A little thing like a missionary does not matter,&rdquo; Erirola prompted.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;No, a little thing like a missionary does not matter,&rdquo; the Buli answered,
      himself again. &ldquo;Mongondro shall have the boots. Go, you young men, some
      three or four of you, and meet the missionary on the trail. Be sure you
      bring back the boots as well.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It is too late,&rdquo; said Erirola. &ldquo;Listen! He comes now.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Breaking through the thicket of brush, John Starhurst, with Narau close on
      his heels, strode upon the scene. The famous boots, having filled in
      wading the stream, squirted fine jets of water at every step. Starhurst
      looked about him with flashing eyes. Upborne by an unwavering trust,
      untouched by doubt or fear, he exulted in all he saw. He knew that since
      the beginning of time he was the first white man ever to tread the
      mountain stronghold of Gatoka.
    </p>
    <p>
      The grass houses clung to the steep mountain side or overhung the rushing
      Rewa. On either side towered a mighty precipice. At the best, three hours
      of sunlight penetrated that narrow gorge. No cocoanuts nor bananas were to
      be seen, though dense, tropic vegetation overran everything, dripping in
      airy festoons from the sheer lips of the precipices and running riot in
      all the crannied ledges. At the far end of the gorge the Rewa leaped eight
      hundred feet in a single span, while the atmosphere of the rock fortress
      pulsed to the rhythmic thunder of the fall.
    </p>
    <p>
      From the Buli's house, John Starhurst saw emerging the Buli and his
      followers.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I bring you good tidings,&rdquo; was the missionary's greeting.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Who has sent you?&rdquo; the Buli rejoined quietly.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;God.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It is a new name in Viti Levu,&rdquo; the Buli grinned. &ldquo;Of what islands,
      villages, or passes may he be chief?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;He is the chief over all islands, all villages, all passes,&rdquo; John
      Starhurst answered solemnly. &ldquo;He is the Lord over heaven and earth, and I
      am come to bring His word to you.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Has he sent whale teeth?&rdquo; was the insolent query.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;No, but more precious than whale teeth is the&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It is the custom, between chiefs, to send whale teeth,&rdquo; the Buli
      interrupted.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Your chief is either a niggard, or you are a fool, to come empty-handed
      into the mountains. Behold, a more generous than you is before you.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      So saying, he showed the whale tooth he had received from Erirola.
    </p>
    <p>
      Narau groaned.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It is the whale tooth of Ra Vatu,&rdquo; he whispered to Starhurst. &ldquo;I know it
      well. Now are we undone.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;A gracious thing,&rdquo; the missionary answered, passing his hand through his
      long beard and adjusting his glasses. &ldquo;Ra Vatu has arranged that we should
      be well received.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      But Narau groaned again, and backed away from the heels he had dogged so
      faithfully.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Ra Vatu is soon to become Lotu,&rdquo; Starhurst explained, &ldquo;and I have come
      bringing the Lotu to you.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I want none of your Lotu,&rdquo; said the Buli, proudly. &ldquo;And it is in my mind
      that you will be clubbed this day.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The Buli nodded to one of his big mountaineers, who stepped forward,
      swinging a club. Narau bolted into the nearest house, seeking to hide
      among the woman and mats; but John Starhurst sprang in under the club and
      threw his arms around his executioner's neck. From this point of vantage
      he proceeded to argue. He was arguing for his life, and he knew it; but he
      was neither excited nor afraid.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It would be an evil thing for you to kill me,&rdquo; he told the man. &ldquo;I have
      done you no wrong, nor have I done the Buli wrong.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      So well did he cling to the neck of the one man that they dared not strike
      with their clubs. And he continued to cling and to dispute for his life
      with those who clamored for his death.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I am John Starhurst,&rdquo; he went on calmly. &ldquo;I have labored in Fiji for
      three years, and I have done it for no profit. I am here among you for
      good. Why should any man kill me? To kill me will not profit any man.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The Buli stole a look at the whale tooth. He was well paid for the deed.
    </p>
    <p>
      The missionary was surrounded by a mass of naked savages, all struggling
      to get at him. The death song, which is the song of the oven, was raised,
      and his expostulations could no longer be heard. But so cunningly did he
      twine and wreathe his body about his captor's that the death blow could
      not be struck. Erirola smiled, and the Buli grew angry.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Away with you!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;A nice story to go back to the coast&mdash;a
      dozen of you and one missionary, without weapons, weak as a woman,
      overcoming all of you.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Wait, O Buli,&rdquo; John Starhurst called out from the thick of the scuffle,
      &ldquo;and I will overcome even you. For my weapons are Truth and Right, and no
      man can withstand them.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Come to me, then,&rdquo; the Buli answered, &ldquo;for my weapon is only a poor
      miserable club, and, as you say, it cannot withstand you.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The group separated from him, and John Starhurst stood alone, facing the
      Buli, who was leaning on an enormous, knotted warclub.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Come to me, missionary man, and overcome me,&rdquo; the Buli challenged.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Even so will I come to you and overcome you,&rdquo; John Starhurst made answer,
      first wiping his spectacles and settling them properly, then beginning his
      advance.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Buli raised the club and waited.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;In the first place, my death will profit you nothing,&rdquo; began the
      argument.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I leave the answer to my club,&rdquo; was the Buli's reply.
    </p>
    <p>
      And to every point he made the same reply, at the same time watching the
      missionary closely in order to forestall that cunning run-in under the
      lifted club. Then, and for the first time, John Starhurst knew that his
      death was at hand. He made no attempt to run in. Bareheaded, he stood in
      the sun and prayed aloud&mdash;the mysterious figure of the inevitable
      white man, who, with Bible, bullet, or rum bottle, has confronted the
      amazed savage in his every stronghold. Even so stood John Starhurst in the
      rock fortress of the Buli of Gatoka.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Forgive them, for they know not what they do,&rdquo; he prayed. &ldquo;O Lord! Have
      mercy upon Fiji. Have compassion for Fiji. O Jehovah, hear us for His
      sake, Thy Son, whom Thou didst give that through Him all men might also
      become Thy children. From Thee we came, and our mind is that to Thee we
      may return. The land is dark, O Lord, the land is dark. But Thou art
      mighty to save. Reach out Thy hand, O Lord, and save Fiji, poor cannibal
      Fiji.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The Buli grew impatient.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Now will I answer thee,&rdquo; he muttered, at the same time swinging his club
      with both hands.
    </p>
    <p>
      Narau, hiding among the women and the mats, heard the impact of the blow
      and shuddered. Then the death song arose, and he knew his beloved
      missionary's body was being dragged to the oven as he heard the words:
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Drag me gently. Drag me gently.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;For I am the champion of my land.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Give thanks! Give thanks! Give thanks!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Next, a single voice arose out of the din, asking:
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Where is the brave man?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      A hundred voices bellowed the answer:
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Gone to be dragged into the oven and cooked.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Where is the coward?&rdquo; the single voice demanded.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Gone to report!&rdquo; the hundred voices bellowed back. &ldquo;Gone to report! Gone
      to report!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Narau groaned in anguish of spirit. The words of the old song were true.
      He was the coward, and nothing remained to him but to go and report.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      MAUKI
    </h2>
    <p>
      He weighed one hundred and ten pounds. His hair was kinky and negroid, and
      he was black. He was peculiarly black. He was neither blue-black nor
      purple-black, but plum-black. His name was Mauki, and he was the son of a
      chief. He had three tambos. Tambo is Melanesian for taboo, and is first
      cousin to that Polynesian word. Mauki's three tambos were as follows:
      First, he must never shake hands with a woman, nor have a woman's hand
      touch him or any of his personal belongings; secondly, he must never eat
      clams nor any food from a fire in which clams had been cooked; thirdly, he
      must never touch a crocodile, nor travel in a canoe that carried any part
      of a crocodile even if as large as a tooth.
    </p>
    <p>
      Of a different black were his teeth, which were deep black, or, perhaps
      better, LAMP-black. They had been made so in a single night, by his
      mother, who had compressed about them a powdered mineral which was dug
      from the landslide back of Port Adams. Port Adams is a salt-water village
      on Malaita, and Malaita is the most savage island in the Solomons&mdash;so
      savage that no traders or planters have yet gained a foothold on it;
      while, from the time of the earliest bêche-de-mer fishers and sandalwood
      traders down to the latest labor recruiters equipped with automatic rifles
      and gasolene engines, scores of white adventurers have been passed out by
      tomahawks and soft-nosed Snider bullets. So Malaita remains today, in the
      twentieth century, the stamping ground of the labor recruiters, who farm
      its coasts for laborers who engage and contract themselves to toil on the
      plantations of the neighboring and more civilized islands for a wage of
      thirty dollars a year. The natives of those neighboring and more civilized
      islands have themselves become too civilized to work on plantations.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mauki's ears were pierced, not in one place, nor two places, but in a
      couple of dozen places. In one of the smaller holes he carried a clay
      pipe. The larger holes were too large for such use. The bowl of the pipe
      would have fallen through. In fact, in the largest hole in each ear he
      habitually wore round wooden plugs that were an even four inches in
      diameter. Roughly speaking, the circumference of said holes was twelve and
      one-half inches. Mauki was catholic in his tastes. In the various smaller
      holes he carried such things as empty rifle cartridges, horseshoe nails,
      copper screws, pieces of string, braids of sennit, strips of green leaf,
      and, in the cool of the day, scarlet hibiscus flowers. From which it will
      be seen that pockets were not necessary to his well-being. Besides,
      pockets were impossible, for his only wearing apparel consisted of a piece
      of calico several inches wide. A pocket knife he wore in his hair, the
      blade snapped down on a kinky lock. His most prized possession was the
      handle of a china cup, which he suspended from a ring of turtle-shell,
      which, in turn, was passed through the partition-cartilage of his nose.
    </p>
    <p>
      But in spite of embellishments, Mauki had a nice face. It was really a
      pretty face, viewed by any standard, and for a Melanesian it was a
      remarkably good-looking face. Its one fault was its lack of strength. It
      was softly effeminate, almost girlish. The features were small, regular,
      and delicate. The chin was weak, and the mouth was weak. There was no
      strength nor character in the jaws, forehead, and nose. In the eyes only
      could be caught any hint of the unknown quantities that were so large a
      part of his make-up and that other persons could not understand. These
      unknown quantities were pluck, pertinacity, fearlessness, imagination, and
      cunning; and when they found expression in some consistent and striking
      action, those about him were astounded.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mauki's father was chief over the village at Port Adams, and thus, by
      birth a salt-water man, Mauki was half amphibian. He knew the way of the
      fishes and oysters, and the reef was an open book to him. Canoes, also, he
      knew. He learned to swim when he was a year old. At seven years he could
      hold his breath a full minute and swim straight down to bottom through
      thirty feet of water. And at seven years he was stolen by the bushmen, who
      cannot even swim and who are afraid of salt water. Thereafter Mauki saw
      the sea only from a distance, through rifts in the jungle and from open
      spaces on the high mountain sides. He became the slave of old Fanfoa, head
      chief over a score of scattered bush-villages on the range-lips of
      Malaita, the smoke of which, on calm mornings, is about the only evidence
      the seafaring white men have of the teeming interior population. For the
      whites do not penetrate Malaita. They tried it once, in the days when the
      search was on for gold, but they always left their heads behind to grin
      from the smoky rafters of the bushmen's huts.
    </p>
    <p>
      When Mauki was a young man of seventeen, Fanfoa got out of tobacco. He got
      dreadfully out of tobacco. It was hard times in all his villages. He had
      been guilty of a mistake. Suo was a harbor so small that a large schooner
      could not swing at anchor in it. It was surrounded by mangroves that
      overhung the deep water. It was a trap, and into the trap sailed two white
      men in a small ketch. They were after recruits, and they possessed much
      tobacco and trade goods, to say nothing of three rifles and plenty of
      ammunition. Now there were no salt-water men living at Suo, and it was
      there that the bushmen could come down to the sea. The ketch did a
      splendid traffic. It signed on twenty recruits the first day. Even old
      Fanfoa signed on. And that same day the score of new recruits chopped off
      the two white men's head, killed the boat's crew, and burned the ketch.
      Thereafter, and for three months, there was tobacco and trade goods in
      plenty and to spare in all the bush villages. Then came the man-of-war
      that threw shells for miles into the hills, frightening the people out of
      their villages and into the deeper bush. Next the man-of-war sent landing
      parties ashore. The villages were all burned, along with the tobacco and
      trade stuff.
    </p>
    <p>
      The cocoanuts and bananas were chopped down, the taro gardens uprooted,
      and the pigs and chickens killed.
    </p>
    <p>
      It taught Fanfoa a lesson, but in the meantime he was out of tobacco.
      Also, his young men were too frightened to sign on with the recruiting
      vessels. That was why Fanfoa ordered his slave, Mauki, to be carried down
      and signed on for half a case of tobacco advance, along with knives, axes,
      calico, and beads, which he would pay for with his toil on the
      plantations. Mauki was sorely frightened when they brought him on board
      the schooner. He was a lamb led to the slaughter. White men were ferocious
      creatures. They had to be, or else they would not make a practice of
      venturing along the Malaita coast and into all harbors, two on a schooner,
      when each schooner carried from fifteen to twenty blacks as boat's crew,
      and often as high as sixty or seventy black recruits. In addition to this,
      there was always the danger of the shore population, the sudden attack and
      the cutting off of the schooner and all hands. Truly, white men must be
      terrible. Besides, they were possessed of such devil-devils&mdash;rifles
      that shot very rapidly many times, things of iron and brass that made the
      schooners go when there was no wind, and boxes that talked and laughed
      just as men talked and laughed.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ay, and he had heard of one white man whose particular devil-devil was so
      powerful that he could take out all his teeth and put them back at will.
    </p>
    <p>
      Down into the cabin they took Mauki. On deck, the one white man kept guard
      with two revolvers in his belt. In the cabin the other white man sat with
      a book before him, in which he inscribed strange marks and lines. He
      looked at Mauki as though he had been a pig or a fowl, glanced under the
      hollows of his arms, and wrote in the book. Then he held out the writing
      stick and Mauki just barely touched it with his hand, in so doing pledging
      himself to toil for three years on the plantations of the Moongleam Soap
      Company. It was not explained to him that the will of the ferocious white
      men would be used to enforce the pledge, and that, behind all, for the
      same use, was all the power and all the warships of Great Britain.
    </p>
    <p>
      Other blacks there were on board, from unheard-of far places, and when the
      white man spoke to them, they tore the long feather from Mauki's hair, cut
      that same hair short, and wrapped about his waist a lava-lava of bright
      yellow calico.
    </p>
    <p>
      After many days on the schooner, and after beholding more land and islands
      than he had ever dreamed of, he was landed on New Georgia, and put to work
      in the field clearing jungle and cutting cane grass. For the first time he
      knew what work was. Even as a slave to Fanfoa he had not worked like this.
      And he did not like work. It was up at dawn and in at dark, on two meals a
      day. And the food was tiresome. For weeks at a time they were given
      nothing but sweet potatoes to eat, and for weeks at a time it would be
      nothing but rice. He cut out the cocoanut from the shells day after day;
      and for long days and weeks he fed the fires that smoked the copra, till
      his eyes got sore and he was set to felling trees. He was a good axe-man,
      and later he was put in the bridge-building gang. Once, he was punished by
      being put in the road-building gang. At times he served as boat's crew in
      the whale boats, when they brought in copra from distant beaches or when
      the white men went out to dynamite fish.
    </p>
    <p>
      Among other things he learned beche-de-mer English, with which he could
      talk with all white men, and with all recruits who otherwise would have
      talked in a thousand different dialects. Also, he learned certain things
      about the white men, principally that they kept their word. If they told a
      boy he was going to receive a stick of tobacco, he got it. If they told a
      boy they would knock seven bells out of him if he did a certain thing,
      when he did that thing, seven bells invariably were knocked out of him.
      Mauki did not know what seven bells were, but they occurred in
      beche-de-mer, and he imagined them to be the blood and teeth that
      sometimes accompanied the process of knocking out seven bells. One other
      thing he learned: no boy was struck or punished unless he did wrong. Even
      when the white men were drunk, as they were frequently, they never struck
      unless a rule had been broken.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mauki did not like the plantation. He hated work, and he was the son of a
      chief. Furthermore, it was ten years since he had been stolen from Port
      Adams by Fanfoa, and he was homesick. He was even homesick for the slavery
      under Fanfoa. So he ran away. He struck back into the bush, with the idea
      of working southward to the beach and stealing a canoe in which to go home
      to Port Adams.
    </p>
    <p>
      But the fever got him, and he was captured and brought back more dead than
      alive.
    </p>
    <p>
      A second time he ran away, in the company of two Malaita boys. They got
      down the coast twenty miles, and were hidden in the hut of a Malaita
      freeman, who dwelt in that village. But in the dead of night two white men
      came, who were not afraid of all the village people and who knocked seven
      bells out of the three runaways, tied them like pigs, and tossed them into
      the whale boat. But the man in whose house they had hidden&mdash;seven
      times seven bells must have been knocked out of him from the way the hair,
      skin, and teeth flew, and he was discouraged for the rest of his natural
      life from harboring runaway laborers.
    </p>
    <p>
      For a year Mauki toiled on. Then he was made a house-boy, and had good
      food and easy times, with light work in keeping the house clean and
      serving the white men with whiskey and beer at all hours of the day and
      most hours of the night. He liked it, but he liked Port Adams more. He had
      two years longer to serve, but two years were too long for him in the
      throes of homesickness. He had grown wiser with his year of service, and,
      being now a house-boy, he had opportunity. He had the cleaning of the
      rifles, and he knew where the key to the store room was hung. He planned
      to escape, and one night ten Malaita boys and one boy from San Cristoval
      sneaked from the barracks and dragged one of the whale boats down to the
      beach. It was Mauki who supplied the key that opened the padlock on the
      boat, and it was Mauki who equipped the boat with a dozen Winchesters, an
      immense amount of ammunition, a case of dynamite with detonators and fuse,
      and ten cases of tobacco.
    </p>
    <p>
      The northwest monsoon was blowing, and they fled south in the night time,
      hiding by day on detached and uninhabited islets, or dragging their whale
      boat into the bush on the large islands. Thus they gained Guadalcanar,
      skirted halfway along it, and crossed the Indispensable Straits to Florida
      Island. It was here that they killed the San Cristoval boy, saving his
      head and cooking and eating the rest of him. The Malaita coast was only
      twenty miles away, but the last night a strong current and baffling winds
      prevented them from gaining across. Daylight found them still several
      miles from their goal. But daylight brought a cutter, in which were two
      white men, who were not afraid of eleven Malaita men armed with twelve
      rifles. Mauki and his companions were carried back to Tulagi, where lived
      the great white master of all the white men. And the great white master
      held a court, after which, one by one, the runaways were tied up and given
      twenty lashes each, and sentenced to a fine of fifteen dollars. They were
      sent back to New Georgia, where the white men knocked seven bells out of
      them all around and put them to work. But Mauki was no longer house-boy.
      He was put in the road-making gang. The fine of fifteen dollars had been
      paid by the white men from whom he had run away, and he was told that he
      would have to work it out, which meant six months' additional toil.
      Further, his share of the stolen tobacco earned him another year of toil.
    </p>
    <p>
      Port Adams was now three years and a half away, so he stole a canoe one
      night, hid on the islets in Manning Straits, passed through the Straits,
      and began working along the eastern coast of Ysabel, only to be captured,
      two-thirds of the way along, by the white men on Meringe Lagoon. After a
      week, he escaped from them and took to the bush. There were no bush
      natives on Ysabel, only salt-water men, who were all Christians. The white
      men put up a reward of five-hundred sticks of tobacco, and every time
      Mauki ventured down to the sea to steal a canoe he was chased by the
      salt-water men. Four months of this passed, when, the reward having been
      raised to a thousand sticks, he was caught and sent back to New Georgia
      and the road-building gang. Now a thousand sticks are worth fifty dollars,
      and Mauki had to pay the reward himself, which required a year and eight
      months' labor. So Port Adams was now five years away.
    </p>
    <p>
      His homesickness was greater than ever, and it did not appeal to him to
      settle down and be good, work out his four years, and go home. The next
      time, he was caught in the very act of running away. His case was brought
      before Mr. Haveby, the island manager of the Moongleam Soap Company, who
      adjudged him an incorrigible. The Company had plantations on the Santa
      Cruz Islands, hundreds of miles across the sea, and there it sent its
      Solomon Islands' incorrigibles. And there Mauki was sent, though he never
      arrived. The schooner stopped at Santa Anna, and in the night Mauki swam
      ashore, where he stole two rifles and a case of tobacco from the trader
      and got away in a canoe to Cristoval. Malaita was now to the north, fifty
      or sixty miles away. But when he attempted the passage, he was caught by a
      light gale and driven back to Santa Anna, where the trader clapped him in
      irons and held him against the return of the schooner from Santa Cruz. The
      two rifles the trader recovered, but the case of tobacco was charged up to
      Mauki at the rate of another year. The sum of years he now owed the
      Company was six.
    </p>
    <p>
      On the way back to New Georgia, the schooner dropped anchor in Marau
      Sound, which lies at the southeastern extremity of Guadalcanar. Mauki swam
      ashore with handcuffs on his wrists and got away to the bush. The schooner
      went on, but the Moongleam trader ashore offered a thousand sticks, and to
      him Mauki was brought by the bushmen with a year and eight months tacked
      on to his account. Again, and before the schooner called in, he got away,
      this time in a whale boat accompanied by a case of the trader's tobacco.
      But a northwest gale wrecked him upon Ugi, where the Christian natives
      stole his tobacco and turned him over to the Moongleam trader who resided
      there. The tobacco the natives stole meant another year for him, and the
      tale was now eight years and a half.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;We'll send him to Lord Howe,&rdquo; said Mr. Haveby. &ldquo;Bunster is there, and
      we'll let them settle it between them. It will be a case, I imagine, of
      Mauki getting Bunster, or Bunster getting Mauki, and good riddance in
      either event.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      If one leaves Meringe Lagoon, on Ysabel, and steers a course due north,
      magnetic, at the end of one hundred and fifty miles he will lift the
      pounded coral beaches of Lord Howe above the sea. Lord Howe is a ring of
      land some one hundred and fifty miles in circumference, several hundred
      yards wide at its widest, and towering in places to a height of ten feet
      above sea level. Inside this ring of sand is a mighty lagoon studded with
      coral patches. Lord Howe belongs to the Solomons neither geographically
      nor ethnologically. It is an atoll, while the Solomons are high islands;
      and its people and language are Polynesian, while the inhabitants of the
      Solomons are Melanesian.
    </p>
    <p>
      Lord Howe has been populated by the westward Polynesian drift which
      continues to this day, big outrigger canoes being washed upon its beaches
      by the southeast trade. That there has been a slight Melanesian drift in
      the period of the northwest monsoon, is also evident.
    </p>
    <p>
      Nobody ever comes to Lord Howe, or Ontong-Java as it is sometimes called.
      Thomas Cook &amp; Son do not sell tickets to it, and tourists do not dream
      of its existence. Not even a white missionary has landed on its shore. Its
      five thousand natives are as peaceable as they are primitive. Yet they
      were not always peaceable. The Sailing Directions speak of them as hostile
      and treacherous. But the men who compile the Sailing Directions have never
      heard of the change that was worked in the hearts of the inhabitants, who,
      not many years ago, cut off a big bark and killed all hands with the
      exception of the second mate. The survivor carried the news to his
      brothers. The captains of three trading schooners returned with him to
      Lord Howe. They sailed their vessels right into the lagoon and proceeded
      to preach the white man's gospel that only white men shall kill white men
      and that the lesser breeds must keep hands off. The schooners sailed up
      and down the lagoon, harrying and destroying. There was no escape from the
      narrow sand-circle, no bush to which to flee. The men were shot down at
      sight, and there was no avoiding being sighted. The villages were burned,
      the canoes smashed, the chickens and pigs killed, and the precious
      cocoanut trees chopped down. For a month this continued, when the schooner
      sailed away; but the fear of the white man had been seared into the souls
      of the islanders and never again were they rash enough to harm one.
    </p>
    <p>
      Max Bunster was the one white man on Lord Howe, trading in the pay of the
      ubiquitous Moongleam Soap Company. And the Company billeted him on Lord
      Howe, because, next to getting rid of him, it was the most out-of-the-way
      place to be found. That the Company did not get rid of him was due to the
      difficulty of finding another man to take his place. He was a strapping
      big German, with something wrong in his brain. Semi-madness would be a
      charitable statement of his condition. He was a bully and a coward, and a
      thrice-bigger savage than any savage on the island.
    </p>
    <p>
      Being a coward, his brutality was of the cowardly order. When he first
      went into the Company's employ, he was stationed on Savo. When a
      consumptive colonial was sent to take his place, he beat him up with his
      fists and sent him off a wreck in the schooner that brought him.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Haveby next selected a young Yorkshire giant to relieve Bunster. The
      Yorkshire man had a reputation as a bruiser and preferred fighting to
      eating. But Bunster wouldn't fight. He was a regular little lamb&mdash;for
      ten days, at the end of which time the Yorkshire man was prostrated by a
      combined attack of dysentery and fever. Then Bunster went for him, among
      other things getting him down and jumping on him a score or so of times.
      Afraid of what would happen when his victim recovered. Bunster fled away
      in a cutter to Guvutu, where he signalized himself by beating up a young
      Englishman already crippled by a Boer bullet through both hips.
    </p>
    <p>
      Then it was that Mr. Haveby sent Bunster to Lord Howe, the falling-off
      place. He celebrated his landing by mopping up half a case of gin and by
      thrashing the elderly and wheezy mate of the schooner which had brought
      him. When the schooner departed, he called the kanakas down to the beach
      and challenged them to throw him in a wrestling bout, promising a case of
      tobacco to the one who succeeded. Three kanakas he threw, but was promptly
      thrown by a fourth, who, instead of receiving the tobacco, got a bullet
      through his lungs.
    </p>
    <p>
      And so began Bunster's reign on Lord Howe. Three thousand people lived in
      the principal village; but it was deserted, even in broad day, when he
      passed through. Men, women, and children fled before him. Even the dogs
      and pigs got out of the way, while the king was not above hiding under a
      mat. The two prime ministers lived in terror of Bunster, who never
      discussed any moot subject, but struck out with his fists instead.
    </p>
    <p>
      And to Lord Howe came Mauki, to toil for Bunster for eight long years and
      a half. There was no escaping from Lord Howe. For better or worse, Bunster
      and he were tied together. Bunster weighed two hundred pounds. Mauki
      weighed one hundred and ten. Bunster was a degenerate brute. But Mauki was
      a primitive savage. While both had wills and ways of their own.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mauki had no idea of the sort of master he was to work for. He had had no
      warnings, and he had concluded as a matter of course that Bunster would be
      like other white men, a drinker of much whiskey, a ruler and a lawgiver
      who always kept his word and who never struck a boy undeserved. Bunster
      had the advantage. He knew all about Mauki, and gloated over the coming
      into possession of him. The last cook was suffering from a broken arm and
      a dislocated shoulder, so Bunster made Mauki cook and general house-boy.
    </p>
    <p>
      And Mauki soon learned that there were white men and white men. On the
      very day the schooner departed he was ordered to buy a chicken from
      Samisee, the native Tongan missionary. But Samisee had sailed across the
      lagoon and would not be back for three days. Mauki returned with the
      information. He climbed the steep stairway (the house stood on piles
      twelve feet above the sand), and entered the living room to report. The
      trader demanded the chicken. Mauki opened his mouth to explain the
      missionary's absence. But Bunster did not care for explanations. He struck
      out with his fist. The blow caught Mauki on the mouth and lifted him into
      the air. Clear through the doorway he flew, across the narrow veranda,
      breaking the top railing, and down to the ground.
    </p>
    <p>
      His lips were a contused, shapeless mass, and his mouth was full of blood
      and broken teeth.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;That'll teach you that back talk don't go with me,&rdquo; the trader shouted,
      purple with rage, peering down at him over the broken railing.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mauki had never met a white man like this, and he resolved to walk small
      and never offend. He saw the boat boys knocked about, and one of them put
      in irons for three days with nothing to eat for the crime of breaking a
      rowlock while pulling. Then, too, he heard the gossip of the village and
      learned why Bunster had taken a third wife&mdash;by force, as was well
      known. The first and second wives lay in the graveyard, under the white
      coral sand, with slabs of coral rock at head and feet. They had died, it
      was said, from beatings he had given them. The third wife was certainly
      ill-used, as Mauki could see for himself.
    </p>
    <p>
      But there was no way by which to avoid offending the white man who seemed
      offended with life. When Mauki kept silent, he was struck and called a
      sullen brute. When he spoke, he was struck for giving back talk. When he
      was grave, Bunster accused him of plotting and gave him a thrashing in
      advance; and when he strove to be cheerful and to smile, he was charged
      with sneering at his lord and master and given a taste of stick. Bunster
      was a devil.
    </p>
    <p>
      The village would have done for him, had it not remembered the lesson of
      the three schooners. It might have done for him anyway, if there had been
      a bush to which to flee. As it was, the murder of the white men, of any
      white man, would bring a man-of-war that would kill the offenders and chop
      down the precious cocoanut trees. Then there were the boat boys, with
      minds fully made up to drown him by accident at the first opportunity to
      capsize the cutter. Only Bunster saw to it that the boat did not capsize.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mauki was of a different breed, and escape being impossible while Bunster
      lived, he was resolved to get the white man. The trouble was that he could
      never find a chance. Bunster was always on guard. Day and night his
      revolvers were ready to hand. He permitted nobody to pass behind his back,
      as Mauki learned after having been knocked down several times. Bunster
      knew that he had more to fear from the good-natured, even sweet-faced,
      Malaita boy than from the entire population of Lord Howe; and it gave
      added zest to the programme of torment he was carrying out. And Mauki
      walked small, accepted his punishments, and waited.
    </p>
    <p>
      All other white men had respected his tambos, but not so Bunster.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mauki's weekly allowance of tobacco was two sticks. Bunster passed them to
      his woman and ordered Mauki to receive them from her hand. But this could
      not be, and Mauki went without his tobacco. In the same way he was made to
      miss many a meal, and to go hungry many a day. He was ordered to make
      chowder out of the big clams that grew in the lagoon. This he could not
      do, for clams were tambo. Six times in succession he refused to touch the
      clams, and six times he was knocked senseless. Bunster knew that the boy
      would die first, but called his refusal mutiny, and would have killed him
      had there been another cook to take his place.
    </p>
    <p>
      One of the trader's favorite tricks was to catch Mauki's kinky locks and
      bat his head against the wall. Another trick was to catch Mauki unawares
      and thrust the live end of a cigar against his flesh. This Bunster called
      vaccination, and Mauki was vaccinated a number of times a week. Once, in a
      rage, Bunster ripped the cup handle from Mauki's nose, tearing the hole
      clear out of the cartilage.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh, what a mug!&rdquo; was his comment, when he surveyed the damage he had
      wrought.
    </p>
    <p>
      The skin of a shark is like sandpaper, but the skin of a ray fish is like
      a rasp. In the South Seas the natives use it as a wood file in smoothing
      down canoes and paddles. Bunster had a mitten made of ray fish skin. The
      first time he tried it on Mauki, with one sweep of the hand it fetched the
      skin off his back from neck to armpit. Bunster was delighted. He gave his
      wife a taste of the mitten, and tried it out thoroughly on the boat boys.
      The prime ministers came in for a stroke each, and they had to grin and
      take it for a joke.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Laugh, damn you, laugh!&rdquo; was the cue he gave.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mauki came in for the largest share of the mitten. Never a day passed
      without a caress from it. There were times when the loss of so much
      cuticle kept him awake at night, and often the half-healed surface was
      raked raw afresh by the facetious Mr. Bunster. Mauki continued his patient
      wait, secure in the knowledge that sooner or later his time would come.
      And he knew just what he was going to do, down to the smallest detail,
      when the time did come.
    </p>
    <p>
      One morning Bunster got up in a mood for knocking seven bells out of the
      universe. He began on Mauki, and wound up on Mauki, in the interval
      knocking down his wife and hammering all the boat boys. At breakfast he
      called the coffee slops and threw the scalding contents of the cup into
      Mauki's face. By ten o'clock Bunster was shivering with ague, and half an
      hour later he was burning with fever. It was no ordinary attack. It
      quickly became pernicious, and developed into black-water fever. The days
      passed, and he grew weaker and weaker, never leaving his bed. Mauki waited
      and watched, the while his skin grew intact once more. He ordered the boys
      to beach the cutter, scrub her bottom, and give her a general overhauling.
      They thought the order emanated from Bunster, and they obeyed. But Bunster
      at the time was lying unconscious and giving no orders. This was Mauki's
      chance, but still he waited.
    </p>
    <p>
      When the worst was past, and Bunster lay convalescent and conscious, but
      weak as a baby, Mauki packed his few trinkets, including the china cup
      handle, into his trade box. Then he went over to the village and
      interviewed the king and his two prime ministers.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;This fella Bunster, him good fella you like too much?&rdquo; he asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      They explained in one voice that they liked the trader not at all. The
      ministers poured forth a recital of all the indignities and wrongs that
      had been heaped upon them. The king broke down and wept. Mauki interrupted
      rudely.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You savve me&mdash;me big fella marster my country. You no like 'm this
      fella white marster. Me no like 'm. Plenty good you put hundred cocoanut,
      two hundred cocoanut, three hundred cocoanut along cutter. Him finish, you
      go sleep 'm good fella. Altogether kanaka sleep m good fella. Bime by big
      fella noise along house, you no savve hear 'm that fella noise. You
      altogether sleep strong fella too much.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      In like manner Mauki interviewed the boat boys. Then he ordered Bunster's
      wife to return to her family house. Had she refused, he would have been in
      a quandary, for his tambo would not have permitted him to lay hands on
      her.
    </p>
    <p>
      The house deserted, he entered the sleeping room, where the trader lay in
      a doze. Mauki first removed the revolvers, then placed the ray fish mitten
      on his hand. Bunster's first warning was a stroke of the mitten that
      removed the skin the full length of his nose.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Good fella, eh?&rdquo; Mauki grinned, between two strokes, one of which swept
      the forehead bare and the other of which cleaned off one side of his face.
      &ldquo;Laugh, damn you, laugh.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Mauki did his work throughly, and the kanakas, hiding in their houses,
      heard the &ldquo;big fella noise&rdquo; that Bunster made and continued to make for an
      hour or more.
    </p>
    <p>
      When Mauki was done, he carried the boat compass and all the rifles and
      ammunition down to the cutter, which he proceeded to ballast with cases of
      tobacco. It was while engaged in this that a hideous, skinless thing came
      out of the house and ran screaming down the beach till it fell in the sand
      and mowed and gibbered under the scorching sun. Mauki looked toward it and
      hesitated. Then he went over and removed the head, which he wrapped in a
      mat and stowed in the stern locker of the cutter.
    </p>
    <p>
      So soundly did the kanakas sleep through that long hot day that they did
      not see the cutter run out through the passage and head south,
      close-hauled on the southeast trade. Nor was the cutter ever sighted on
      that long tack to the shores of Ysabel, and during the tedious head-beat
      from there to Malaita. He landed at Port Adams with a wealth of rifles and
      tobacco such as no one man had ever possessed before. But he did not stop
      there. He had taken a white man's head, and only the bush could shelter
      him. So back he went to the bush villages, where he shot old Fanfoa and
      half a dozen of the chief men, and made himself the chief over all the
      villages. When his father died, Mauki's brother ruled in Port Adams, and
      joined together, salt-water men and bushmen, the resulting combination was
      the strongest of the ten score fighting tribes of Malaita.
    </p>
    <p>
      More than his fear of the British government was Mauki's fear of the
      all-powerful Moongleam Soap Company; and one day a message came up to him
      in the bush, reminding him that he owed the Company eight and one-half
      years of labor. He sent back a favorable answer, and then appeared the
      inevitable white man, the captain of the schooner, the only white man
      during Mauki's reign, who ventured the bush and came out alive. This man
      not only came out, but he brought with him seven hundred and fifty dollars
      in gold sovereigns&mdash;the money price of eight years and a half of
      labor plus the cost price of certain rifles and cases of tobacco.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mauki no longer weighs one hundred and ten pounds. His stomach is three
      times its former girth, and he has four wives. He has many other things&mdash;rifles
      and revolvers, the handle of a china cup, and an excellent collection of
      bushmen's heads. But more precious than the entire collection is another
      head, perfectly dried and cured, with sandy hair and a yellowish beard,
      which is kept wrapped in the finest of fibre lava-lavas. When Mauki goes
      to war with villages beyond his realm, he invariably gets out this head,
      and alone in his grass palace, contemplates it long and solemnly. At such
      times the hush of death falls on the village, and not even a pickaninny
      dares make a noise. The head is esteemed the most powerful devil-devil on
      Malaita, and to the possession of it is ascribed all of Mauki's greatness.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      &ldquo;YAH! YAH! YAH!&rdquo;
     </h2>
    <p>
      He was a whiskey-guzzling Scotchman, and he downed his whiskey neat,
      beginning with his first tot punctually at six in the morning, and
      thereafter repeating it at regular intervals throughout the day till
      bedtime, which was usually midnight. He slept but five hours out of the
      twenty-four, and for the remaining nineteen hours he was quietly and
      decently drunk. During the eight weeks I spent with him on Oolong Atoll, I
      never saw him draw a sober breath. In fact, his sleep was so short that he
      never had time to sober up. It was the most beautiful and orderly
      perennial drunk I have ever observed.
    </p>
    <p>
      McAllister was his name. He was an old man, and very shaky on his pins.
      His hand trembled as with a palsy, especially noticeable when he poured
      his whiskey, though I never knew him to spill a drop. He had been
      twenty-eight years in Melanesia, ranging from German New Guinea to the
      German Solomons, and so thoroughly had he become identified with that
      portion of the world, that he habitually spoke in that bastard lingo
      called &ldquo;bech-de-mer.&rdquo; Thus, in conversation with me, SUN HE COME UP meant
      sunrise; KAI-KAI HE STOP meant that dinner was served; and BELLY BELONG ME
      WALK ABOUT meant that he was sick at his stomach. He was a small man, and
      a withered one, burned inside and outside by ardent spirits and ardent
      sun. He was a cinder, a bit of a clinker of a man, a little animated
      clinker, not yet quite cold, that moved stiffly and by starts and jerks
      like an automaton. A gust of wind would have blown him away. He weighed
      ninety pounds.
    </p>
    <p>
      But the immense thing about him was the power with which he ruled. Oolong
      Atoll was one hundred and forty miles in circumference. One steered by
      compass course in its lagoon. It was populated by five thousand
      Polynesians, all strapping men and women, many of them standing six feet
      in height and weighing a couple of hundred pounds. Oolong was two hundred
      and fifty miles from the nearest land. Twice a year a little schooner
      called to collect copra. The one white man on Oolong was McAllister, petty
      trader and unintermittent guzzler; and he ruled Oolong and its six
      thousand savages with an iron hand. He said come, and they came, go, and
      they went. They never questioned his will nor judgment. He was
      cantankerous as only an aged Scotchman can be, and interfered continually
      in their personal affairs. When Nugu, the king's daughter, wanted to marry
      Haunau from the other end of the atoll, her father said yes; but
      McAllister said no, and the marriage never came off. When the king wanted
      to buy a certain islet in the lagoon from the chief priest, McAllister
      said no. The king was in debt to the Company to the tune of 180,000
      cocoanuts, and until that was paid he was not to spend a single cocoanut
      on anything else.
    </p>
    <p>
      And yet the king and his people did not love McAllister. In truth, they
      hated him horribly, and, to my knowledge, the whole population, with the
      priests at the head, tried vainly for three months to pray him to death.
      The devil-devils they sent after him were awe-inspiring, but since
      McAllister did not believe in devil-devils, they were without power over
      him. With drunken Scotchmen all signs fail. They gathered up scraps of
      food which had touched his lips, an empty whiskey bottle, a cocoanut from
      which he had drunk, and even his spittle, and performed all kinds of
      deviltries over them. But McAllister lived on. His health was superb. He
      never caught fever; nor coughs nor colds; dysentery passed him by; and the
      malignant ulcers and vile skin diseases that attack blacks and whites
      alike in that climate never fastened upon him. He must have been so
      saturated with alcohol as to defy the lodgment of germs. I used to imagine
      them falling to the ground in showers of microscopic cinders as fast as
      they entered his whiskey-sodden aura. No one loved him, not even germs,
      while he loved only whiskey, and still he lived.
    </p>
    <p>
      I was puzzled. I could not understand six thousand natives putting up with
      that withered shrimp of a tyrant. It was a miracle that he had not died
      suddenly long since. Unlike the cowardly Melanesians, the people were
      high-stomached and warlike. In the big graveyard, at head and feet of the
      graves, were relics of past sanguinary history&mdash;blubber-spades, rusty
      old bayonets and cutlasses, copper bolts, rudder-irons, harpoons, bomb
      guns, bricks that could have come from nowhere but a whaler's trying-out
      furnace, and old brass pieces of the sixteenth century that verified the
      traditions of the early Spanish navigators. Ship after ship had come to
      grief on Oolong. Not thirty years before, the whaler BLENNERDALE, running
      into the lagoon for repair, had been cut off with all hands. In similar
      fashion had the crew of the GASKET, a sandalwood trader, perished. There
      was a big French bark, the TOULON, becalmed off the atoll, which the
      islanders boarded after a sharp tussle and wrecked in the Lipau Passage,
      the captain and a handful of sailors escaping in the longboat. Then there
      were the Spanish pieces, which told of the loss of one of the early
      explorers. All this, of the vessels named, is a matter of history, and is
      to be found in the SOUTH PACIFIC SAILING DIRECTORY. But that there was
      other history, unwritten, I was yet to learn. In the meantime I puzzled
      why six thousand primitive savages let one degenerate Scotch despot live.
    </p>
    <p>
      One hot afternoon McAllister and I sat on the veranda looking out over the
      lagoon, with all its wonder of jeweled colors. At our backs, across the
      hundred yards of palm-studded sand, the outer surf roared on the reef. It
      was dreadfully warm. We were in four degree south latitude and the sun was
      directly overhead, having crossed the Line a few days before on its
      journey south. There was no wind&mdash;not even a catspaw. The season of
      the southeast trade was drawing to an early close, and the northwest
      monsoon had not yet begun to blow.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;They can't dance worth a damn,&rdquo; said McAllister.
    </p>
    <p>
      I had happened to mention that the Polynesian dances were superior to the
      Papuan, and this McAllister had denied, for no other reason than his
      cantankerousness. But it was too hot to argue, and I said nothing.
      Besides, I had never seen the Oolong people dance.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I'll prove it to you,&rdquo; he announced, beckoning to the black New Hanover
      boy, a labor recruit, who served as cook and general house servant. &ldquo;Hey,
      you, boy, you tell 'm one fella king come along me.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The boy departed, and back came the prime minister, perturbed, ill at
      ease, and garrulous with apologetic explanation. In short, the king slept,
      and was not to be disturbed.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;King he plenty strong fella sleep,&rdquo; was his final sentence.
    </p>
    <p>
      McAllister was in such a rage that the prime minister incontinently fled,
      to return with the king himself. They were a magnificent pair, the king
      especially, who must have been all of six feet three inches in height. His
      features had the eagle-like quality that is so frequently found in those
      of the North American Indian. He had been molded and born to rule. His
      eyes flashed as he listened, but right meekly he obeyed McAllister's
      command to fetch a couple of hundred of the best dancers, male and female,
      in the village. And dance they did, for two mortal hours, under that
      broiling sun. They did not love him for it, and little he cared, in the
      end dismissing them with abuse and sneers.
    </p>
    <p>
      The abject servility of those magnificent savages was terrifying. How
      could it be? What was the secret of his rule? More and more I puzzled as
      the days went by, and though I observed perpetual examples of his
      undisputed sovereignty, never a clew was there as to how it was.
    </p>
    <p>
      One day I happened to speak of my disappointment in failing to trade for a
      beautiful pair of orange cowries. The pair was worth five pounds in Sydney
      if it was worth a cent. I had offered two hundred sticks of tobacco to the
      owner, who had held out for three hundred. When I casually mentioned the
      situation, McAllister immediately sent for the man, took the shells from
      him, and turned them over to me. Fifty sticks were all he permitted me to
      pay for them. The man accepted the tobacco and seemed overjoyed at getting
      off so easily. As for me, I resolved to keep a bridle on my tongue in the
      future. And still I mulled over the secret of McAllister's power. I even
      went to the extent of asking him directly, but all he did was to cock one
      eye, look wise, and take another drink.
    </p>
    <p>
      One night I was out fishing in the lagoon with Oti, the man who had been
      mulcted of the cowries. Privily, I had made up to him an additional
      hundred and fifty sticks, and he had come to regard me with a respect that
      was almost veneration, which was curious, seeing that he was an old man,
      twice my age at least.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What name you fella kanaka all the same pickaninny?&rdquo; I began on him.
      &ldquo;This fella trader he one fella. You fella kanaka plenty fella too much.
      You fella kanaka just like 'm dog&mdash;plenty fright along that fella
      trader. He no eat you, fella. He no get 'm teeth along him. What name you
      too much fright?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;S'pose plenty fella kanaka kill 'm?&rdquo; he asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;He die,&rdquo; I retorted. &ldquo;You fella kanaka kill 'm plenty fella white man
      long time before. What name you fright this fella white man?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes, we kill 'm plenty,&rdquo; was his answer. &ldquo;My word! Any amount! Long time
      before. One time, me young fella too much, one big fella ship he stop
      outside. Wind he no blow. Plenty fella kanaka we get 'm canoe, plenty
      fella canoe, we go catch 'm that fella ship. My word&mdash;we catch 'm big
      fella fight. Two, three white men shoot like hell. We no fright. We come
      alongside, we go up side, plenty fella, maybe I think fifty-ten (five
      hundred). One fella white Mary (woman) belong that fella ship. Never
      before I see 'm white Mary. Bime by plenty white man finish. One fella
      skipper he no die. Five fella, six fella white man no die. Skipper he sing
      out. Some fella white man he fight. Some fella white man he lower away
      boat. After that, all together over the side they go. Skipper he sling
      white Mary down. After that they washee (row) strong fella plenty too
      much. Father belong me, that time he strong fella. He throw 'm one fella
      spear. That fella spear he go in one side that white Mary. He no stop. My
      word, he go out other side that fella Mary. She finish. Me no fright.
      Plenty kanaka too much no fright.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Old Oti's pride had been touched, for he suddenly stripped down his
      lava-lava and showed me the unmistakable scar of a bullet. Before I could
      speak, his line ran out suddenly. He checked it and attempted to haul in,
      but found that the fish had run around a coral branch. Casting a look of
      reproach at me for having beguiled him from his watchfulness, he went over
      the side, feet first, turning over after he got under and following his
      line down to bottom. The water was ten fathoms. I leaned over and watched
      the play of his feet, growing dim and dimmer, as they stirred the wan
      phosphorescence into ghostly fires. Ten fathoms&mdash;sixty feet&mdash;it
      was nothing to him, an old man, compared with the value of a hook and
      line. After what seemed five minutes, though it could not have been more
      than a minute, I saw him flaming whitely upward. He broke surface and
      dropped a ten pound rock cod into the canoe, the line and hook intact, the
      latter still fast in the fish's mouth.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It may be,&rdquo; I said remorselessly. &ldquo;You no fright long ago. You plenty
      fright now along that fella trader.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes, plenty fright,&rdquo; he confessed, with an air of dismissing the subject.
      For half an hour we pulled up our lines and flung them out in silence.
      Then small fish-sharks began to bite, and after losing a hook apiece, we
      hauled in and waited for the sharks to go their way.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I speak you true,&rdquo; Oti broke into speech, &ldquo;then you savve we fright now.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      I lighted up my pipe and waited, and the story that Oti told me in
      atrocious bech-de-mer I here turn into proper English. Otherwise, in
      spirit and order of narrative, the tale is as it fell from Oti's lips.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It was after that that we were very proud. We had fought many times with
      the strange white men who live upon the sea, and always we had beaten
      them. A few of us were killed, but what was that compared with the stores
      of wealth of a thousand thousand kinds that we found on the ships? And
      then one day, maybe twenty years ago, or twenty-five, there came a
      schooner right through the passage and into the lagoon. It was a large
      schooner with three masts. She had five white men and maybe forty boat's
      crew, black fellows from New Guinea and New Britain; and she had come to
      fish beche-de-mer. She lay at anchor across the lagoon from here, at
      Pauloo, and her boats scattered out everywhere, making camps on the
      beaches where they cured the beche-de-mer. This made them weak by dividing
      them, for those who fished here and those on the schooner at Pauloo were
      fifty miles apart, and there were others farther away still.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Our king and headmen held council, and I was one in the canoe that
      paddled all afternoon and all night across the lagoon, bringing word to
      the people of Pauloo that in the morning we would attack the fishing camps
      at the one time and that it was for them to take the schooner. We who
      brought the word were tired with the paddling, but we took part in the
      attack. On the schooner were two white men, the skipper and the second
      mate, with half a dozen black boys. The skipper with three boys we caught
      on shore and killed, but first eight of us the skipper killed with his two
      revolvers. We fought close together, you see, at hand grapples.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The noise of our fighting told the mate what was happening, and he put
      food and water and a sail in the small dingy, which was so small that it
      was no more than twelve feet long. We came down upon the schooner, a
      thousand men, covering the lagoon with our canoes. Also, we were blowing
      conch shells, singing war songs, and striking the sides of the canoes with
      our paddles. What chance had one white man and three black boys against
      us? No chance at all, and the mate knew it.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;White men are hell. I have watched them much, and I am an old man now,
      and I understand at last why the white men have taken to themselves all
      the islands in the sea. It is because they are hell. Here are you in the
      canoe with me. You are hardly more than a boy. You are not wise, for each
      day I tell you many things you do not know. When I was a little
      pickaninny, I knew more about fish and the ways of fish than you know now.
      I am an old man, but I swim down to the bottom of the lagoon, and you
      cannot follow me. What are you good for, anyway? I do not know, except to
      fight. I have never seen you fight, yet I know that you are like your
      brothers and that you will fight like hell. Also, you are a fool, like
      your brothers. You do not know when you are beaten. You will fight until
      you die, and then it will be too late to know that you are beaten.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Now behold what this mate did. As we came down upon him, covering the sea
      and blowing our conches, he put off from the schooner in the small boat,
      along with the three black boys, and rowed for the passage. There again he
      was a fool, for no wise man would put out to sea in so small a boat. The
      sides of it were not four inches above the water. Twenty canoes went after
      him, filled with two hundred young men. We paddled five fathoms while his
      black boys were rowing one fathom. He had no chance, but he was a fool. He
      stood up in the boat with a rifle, and he shot many times. He was not a
      good shot, but as we drew close many of us were wounded and killed. But
      still he had no chance.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I remember that all the time he was smoking a cigar. When we were forty
      feet away and coming fast, he dropped the rifle, lighted a stick of
      dynamite with the cigar, and threw it at us. He lighted another and
      another, and threw them at us very rapidly, many of them. I know now that
      he must have split the ends of the fuses and stuck in match heads, because
      they lighted so quickly. Also, the fuses were very short. Sometimes the
      dynamite sticks went off in the air, but most of them went off in the
      canoes. And each time they went off in a canoe, that canoe was finished.
      Of the twenty canoes, the half were smashed to pieces. The canoe I was in
      was so smashed, and likewise the two men who sat next to me. The dynamite
      fell between them. The other canoes turned and ran away. Then that mate
      yelled, Yah! Yah! Yah!' at us. Also he went at us again with his rifle, so
      that many were killed through the back as they fled away. And all the time
      the black boys in the boat went on rowing. You see, I told you true, that
      mate was hell.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Nor was that all. Before he left the schooner, he set her on fire, and
      fixed up all the powder and dynamite so that it would go off at one time.
      There were hundreds of us on board, trying to put out the fire, heaving up
      water from overside, when the schooner blew up. So that all we had fought
      for was lost to us, besides many more of us being killed. Sometimes, even
      now, in my old age, I have bad dreams in which I hear that mate yell, Yah!
      Yah! Yah!' In a voice of thunder he yells, Yah! Yah! Yah!' But all those
      in the fishing camps were killed.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The mate went out of the passage in his little boat, and that was the end
      of him we made sure, for how could so small a boat, with four men in it,
      live on the ocean? A month went by, and then, one morning, between two
      rain squalls, a schooner sailed in through our passage and dropped anchor
      before the village. The king and the headmen made big talk, and it was
      agreed that we would take the schooner in two or three days. In the
      meantime, as it was our custom always to appear friendly, we went off to
      her in canoes, bringing strings of cocoanuts, fowls, and pigs, to trade.
      But when we were alongside, many canoes of us, the men on board began to
      shoot us with rifles, and as we paddled away I saw the mate who had gone
      to sea in the little boat spring upon the rail and dance and yell, Yah!
      Yah! Yah!'
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;That afternoon they landed from the schooner in three small boats filled
      with white men. They went right through the village, shooting every man
      they saw. Also they shot the fowls and pigs. We who were not killed got
      away in canoes and paddled out into the lagoon. Looking back, we could see
      all the houses on fire. Late in the afternoon we saw many canoes coming
      from Nihi, which is the village near the Nihi Passage in the northeast.
      They were all that were left, and like us their village had been burned by
      a second schooner that had come through Nihi Passage.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;We stood on in the darkness to the westward for Pauloo, but in the middle
      of the night we heard women wailing and then we ran into a big fleet of
      canoes. They were all that were left of Pauloo, which likewise was in
      ashes, for a third schooner had come in through the Pauloo Passage. You
      see, that mate, with his black boys, had not been drowned. He had made the
      Solomon Islands, and there told his brothers of what we had done in
      Oolong. And all his brothers had said they would come and punish us, and
      there they were in the three schooners, and our three villages were wiped
      out.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And what was there for us to do? In the morning the two schooners from
      windward sailed down upon us in the middle of the lagoon. The trade wind
      was blowing fresh, and by scores of canoes they ran us down. And the
      rifles never ceased talking. We scattered like flying fish before the
      bonita, and there were so many of us that we escaped by thousands, this
      way and that, to the islands on the rim of the atoll.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And thereafter the schooners hunted us up and down the lagoon. In the
      nighttime we slipped past them. But the next day, or in two days or three
      days, the schooners would be coming back, hunting us toward the other end
      of the lagoon. And so it went. We no longer counted nor remembered our
      dead. True, we were many and they were few. But what could we do? I was in
      one of the twenty canoes filled with men who were not afraid to die. We
      attacked the smallest schooner. They shot us down in heaps. They threw
      dynamite into the canoes, and when the dynamite gave out, they threw hot
      water down upon us. And the rifles never ceased talking. And those whose
      canoes were smashed were shot as they swam away. And the mate danced up
      and down upon the cabin top and yelled, 'Yah! Yah! Yah!'&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Every house on every smallest island was burned. Not a pig nor a fowl was
      left alive. Our wells were defiled with the bodies of the slain, or else
      heaped high with coral rock. We were twenty-five thousand on Oolong before
      the three schooners came. Today we are five thousand. After the schooners
      left, we were but three thousand, as you shall see.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;At last the three schooners grew tired of chasing us back and forth. So
      they went, the three of them, to Nihi, in the northeast. And then they
      drove us steadily to the west. Their nine boats were in the water as well.
      They beat up every island as they moved along. They drove us, drove us,
      drove us day by day. And every night the three schooners and the nine
      boats made a chain of watchfulness that stretched across the lagoon from
      rim to rim, so that we could not escape back.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;They could not drive us forever that way, for the lagoon was only so
      large, and at last all of us that yet lived were driven upon the last sand
      bank to the west. Beyond lay the open sea. There were ten thousand of us,
      and we covered the sand bank from the lagoon edge to the pounding surf on
      the other side. No one could lie down. There was no room. We stood hip to
      hip and shoulder to shoulder. Two days they kept us there, and the mate
      would climb up in the rigging to mock us and yell, Yah! Yah! Yah!' till we
      were well sorry that we had ever harmed him or his schooner a month
      before. We had no food, and we stood on our feet two days and nights. The
      little babies died, and the old and weak died, and the wounded died. And
      worst of all, we had no water to quench our thirst, and for two days the
      sun beat down on us, and there was no shade. Many men and women waded out
      into the ocean and were drowned, the surf casting their bodies back on the
      beach. And there came a pest of flies. Some men swam to the sides of the
      schooners, but they were shot to the last one. And we that lived were very
      sorry that in our pride we tried to take the schooner with the three masts
      that came to fish for beche-de-mer.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;On the morning of the third day came the skippers of the three schooners
      and that mate in a small boat. They carried rifles, all of them, and
      revolvers, and they made talk. It was only that they were weary of killing
      us that they had stopped, they told us. And we told them that we were
      sorry, that never again would we harm a white man, and in token of our
      submission we poured sand upon our heads. And all the women and children
      set up a great wailing for water, so that for some time no man could make
      himself heard. Then we were told our punishment. We must fill the three
      schooners with copra and beche-de-mer. And we agreed, for we wanted water,
      and our hearts were broken, and we knew that we were children at fighting
      when we fought with white men who fight like hell. And when all the talk
      was finished, the mate stood up and mocked us, and yelled, Yah! Yah! Yah!'
      After that we paddled away in our canoes and sought water.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And for weeks we toiled at catching beche-de-mer and curing it, in
      gathering the cocoanuts and turning them into copra. By day and night the
      smoke rose in clouds from all the beaches of all the islands of Oolong as
      we paid the penalty of our wrongdoing. For in those days of death it was
      burned clearly on all our brains that it was very wrong to harm a white
      man.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;By and by, the schooners full of copra and beche-de-mer and our trees
      empty of cocoanuts, the three skippers and that mate called us all
      together for a big talk. And they said they were very glad that we had
      learned our lesson, and we said for the ten-thousandth time that we were
      sorry and that we would not do it again. Also, we poured sand upon our
      heads. Then the skippers said that it was all very well, but just to show
      us that they did not forget us, they would send a devil-devil that we
      would never forget and that we would always remember any time we might
      feel like harming a white man. After that the mate mocked us one more time
      and yelled, Yah! Yah! Yah!' Then six of our men, whom we thought long
      dead, were put ashore from one of the schooners, and the schooners hoisted
      their sails and ran out through the passage for the Solomons.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The six men who were put ashore were the first to catch the devil-devil
      the skippers sent back after us.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;A great sickness came,&rdquo; I interrupted, for I recognized the trick. The
      schooner had had measles on board, and the six prisoners had been
      deliberately exposed to it.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes, a great sickness,&rdquo; Oti went on. &ldquo;It was a powerful devil-devil. The
      oldest man had never heard of the like. Those of our priests that yet
      lived we killed because they could not overcome the devil-devil. The
      sickness spread. I have said that there were ten thousand of us that stood
      hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder on the sandbank. When the sickness
      left us, there were three thousand yet alive. Also, having made all our
      cocoanuts into copra, there was a famine.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;That fella trader,&rdquo; Oti concluded, &ldquo;he like 'm that much dirt. He like 'm
      clam he die KAI-KAI (meat) he stop, stink 'm any amount. He like 'm one
      fella dog, one sick fella dog plenty fleas stop along him. We no fright
      along that fella trader. We fright because he white man. We savve plenty
      too much no good kill white man. That one fella sick dog trader he plenty
      brother stop along him, white men like 'm you fight like hell. We no
      fright that damn trader. Some time he made kanaka plenty cross along him
      and kanaka want 'm kill m, kanaka he think devil-devil and kanaka he hear
      that fella mate sing out, Yah! Yah! Yah!' and kanaka no kill 'm.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Oti baited his hook with a piece of squid, which he tore with his teeth
      from the live and squirming monster, and hook and bait sank in white
      flames to the bottom.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Shark walk about he finish,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I think we catch 'm plenty fella
      fish.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      His line jerked savagely. He pulled it in rapidly, hand under hand, and
      landed a big gasping rock cod in the bottom of the canoe.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Sun he come up, I make 'm that dam fella trader one present big fella
      fish,&rdquo; said Oti.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      THE HEATHEN
    </h2>
    <p>
      I met him first in a hurricane; and though we had gone through the
      hurricane on the same schooner, it was not until the schooner had gone to
      pieces under us that I first laid eyes on him. Without doubt I had seen
      him with the rest of the kanaka crew on board, but I had not consciously
      been aware of his existence, for the Petite Jeanne was rather overcrowded.
      In addition to her eight or ten kanaka seamen, her white captain, mate,
      and supercargo, and her six cabin passengers, she sailed from Rangiroa
      with something like eighty-five deck passengers&mdash;Paumotans and
      Tahitians, men, women, and children each with a trade box, to say nothing
      of sleeping mats, blankets, and clothes bundles.
    </p>
    <p>
      The pearling season in the Paumotus was over, and all hands were returning
      to Tahiti. The six of us cabin passengers were pearl buyers. Two were
      Americans, one was Ah Choon (the whitest Chinese I have ever known), one
      was a German, one was a Polish Jew, and I completed the half dozen.
    </p>
    <p>
      It had been a prosperous season. Not one of us had cause for complaint,
      nor one of the eighty-five deck passengers either. All had done well, and
      all were looking forward to a rest-off and a good time in Papeete.
    </p>
    <p>
      Of course, the Petite Jeanne was overloaded. She was only seventy tons,
      and she had no right to carry a tithe of the mob she had on board. Beneath
      her hatches she was crammed and jammed with pearl shell and copra. Even
      the trade room was packed full with shell. It was a miracle that the
      sailors could work her. There was no moving about the decks. They simply
      climbed back and forth along the rails.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the night time they walked upon the sleepers, who carpeted the deck,
      I'll swear, two deep. Oh! And there were pigs and chickens on deck, and
      sacks of yams, while every conceivable place was festooned with strings of
      drinking cocoanuts and bunches of bananas. On both sides, between the fore
      and main shrouds, guys had been stretched, just low enough for the
      foreboom to swing clear; and from each of these guys at least fifty
      bunches of bananas were suspended.
    </p>
    <p>
      It promised to be a messy passage, even if we did make it in the two or
      three days that would have been required if the southeast trades had been
      blowing fresh. But they weren't blowing fresh. After the first five hours
      the trade died away in a dozen or so gasping fans. The calm continued all
      that night and the next day&mdash;one of those glaring, glassy, calms,
      when the very thought of opening one's eyes to look at it is sufficient to
      cause a headache.
    </p>
    <p>
      The second day a man died&mdash;an Easter Islander, one of the best divers
      that season in the lagoon. Smallpox&mdash;that is what it was; though how
      smallpox could come on board, when there had been no known cases ashore
      when we left Rangiroa, is beyond me. There it was, though&mdash;smallpox,
      a man dead, and three others down on their backs.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was nothing to be done. We could not segregate the sick, nor could
      we care for them. We were packed like sardines. There was nothing to do
      but rot and die&mdash;that is, there was nothing to do after the night
      that followed the first death. On that night, the mate, the supercargo,
      the Polish Jew, and four native divers sneaked away in the large whale
      boat. They were never heard of again. In the morning the captain promptly
      scuttled the remaining boats, and there we were.
    </p>
    <p>
      That day there were two deaths; the following day three; then it jumped to
      eight. It was curious to see how we took it. The natives, for instance,
      fell into a condition of dumb, stolid fear. The captain&mdash;Oudouse, his
      name was, a Frenchman&mdash;became very nervous and voluble. He actually
      got the twitches. He was a large fleshy man, weighing at least two hundred
      pounds, and he quickly became a faithful representation of a quivering
      jelly-mountain of fat.
    </p>
    <p>
      The German, the two Americans, and myself bought up all the Scotch
      whiskey, and proceeded to stay drunk. The theory was beautiful&mdash;namely,
      if we kept ourselves soaked in alcohol, every smallpox germ that came into
      contact with us would immediately be scorched to a cinder. And the theory
      worked, though I must confess that neither Captain Oudouse nor Ah Choon
      were attacked by the disease either. The Frenchman did not drink at all,
      while Ah Choon restricted himself to one drink daily.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was a pretty time. The sun, going into northern declination, was
      straight overhead. There was no wind, except for frequent squalls, which
      blew fiercely for from five minutes to half an hour, and wound up by
      deluging us with rain. After each squall, the awful sun would come out,
      drawing clouds of steam from the soaked decks.
    </p>
    <p>
      The steam was not nice. It was the vapor of death, freighted with millions
      and millions of germs. We always took another drink when we saw it going
      up from the dead and dying, and usually we took two or three more drinks,
      mixing them exceptionally stiff. Also, we made it a rule to take an
      additional several each time they hove the dead over to the sharks that
      swarmed about us.
    </p>
    <p>
      We had a week of it, and then the whiskey gave out. It is just as well, or
      I shouldn't be alive now. It took a sober man to pull through what
      followed, as you will agree when I mention the little fact that only two
      men did pull through. The other man was the heathen&mdash;at least, that
      was what I heard Captain Oudouse call him at the moment I first became
      aware of the heathen's existence. But to come back.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was at the end of the week, with the whiskey gone, and the pearl buyers
      sober, that I happened to glance at the barometer that hung in the cabin
      companionway. Its normal register in the Paumotus was 29.90, and it was
      quite customary to see it vacillate between 29.85 and 30.00, or even
      30.05; but to see it as I saw it, down to 29.62, was sufficient to sober
      the most drunken pearl buyer that ever incinerated smallpox microbes in
      Scotch whiskey.
    </p>
    <p>
      I called Captain Oudouse's attention to it, only to be informed that he
      had watched it going down for several hours. There was little to do, but
      that little he did very well, considering the circumstances. He took off
      the light sails, shortened right down to storm canvas, spread life lines,
      and waited for the wind. His mistake lay in what he did after the wind
      came. He hove to on the port tack, which was the right thing to do south
      of the Equator, if&mdash;and there was the rub&mdash;IF one were NOT in
      the direct path of the hurricane.
    </p>
    <p>
      We were in the direct path. I could see that by the steady increase of the
      wind and the equally steady fall of the barometer. I wanted him to turn
      and run with the wind on the port quarter until the barometer ceased
      falling, and then to heave to. We argued till he was reduced to hysteria,
      but budge he would not. The worst of it was that I could not get the rest
      of the pearl buyers to back me up. Who was I, anyway, to know more about
      the sea and its ways than a properly qualified captain? was what was in
      their minds, I knew.
    </p>
    <p>
      Of course, the sea rose with the wind frightfully; and I shall never
      forget the first three seas the Petite Jeanne shipped. She had fallen off,
      as vessels do at times when hove to, and the first sea made a clean
      breach. The life lines were only for the strong and well, and little good
      were they even for them when the women and children, the bananas and
      cocoanuts, the pigs and trade boxes, the sick and the dying, were swept
      along in a solid, screeching, groaning mass.
    </p>
    <p>
      The second sea filled the Petite Jeanne's decks flush with the rails; and,
      as her stern sank down and her bow tossed skyward, all the miserable
      dunnage of life and luggage poured aft. It was a human torrent. They came
      head first, feet first, sidewise, rolling over and over, twisting,
      squirming, writhing, and crumpling up. Now and again one caught a grip on
      a stanchion or a rope; but the weight of the bodies behind tore such grips
      loose.
    </p>
    <p>
      One man I noticed fetch up, head on and square on, with the starboard
      bitt. His head cracked like an egg. I saw what was coming, sprang on top
      of the cabin, and from there into the mainsail itself. Ah Choon and one of
      the Americans tried to follow me, but I was one jump ahead of them. The
      American was swept away and over the stern like a piece of chaff. Ah Choon
      caught a spoke of the wheel, and swung in behind it. But a strapping
      Raratonga vahine (woman)&mdash;she must have weighed two hundred and fifty&mdash;brought
      up against him, and got an arm around his neck. He clutched the kanaka
      steersman with his other hand; and just at that moment the schooner flung
      down to starboard.
    </p>
    <p>
      The rush of bodies and sea that was coming along the port runway between
      the cabin and the rail turned abruptly and poured to starboard. Away they
      went&mdash;vahine, Ah Choon, and steersman; and I swear I saw Ah Choon
      grin at me with philosophic resignation as he cleared the rail and went
      under.
    </p>
    <p>
      The third sea&mdash;the biggest of the three&mdash;did not do so much
      damage. By the time it arrived nearly everybody was in the rigging. On
      deck perhaps a dozen gasping, half-drowned, and half-stunned wretches were
      rolling about or attempting to crawl into safety. They went by the board,
      as did the wreckage of the two remaining boats. The other pearl buyers and
      myself, between seas, managed to get about fifteen women and children into
      the cabin, and battened down. Little good it did the poor creatures in the
      end.
    </p>
    <p>
      Wind? Out of all my experience I could not have believed it possible for
      the wind to blow as it did. There is no describing it. How can one
      describe a nightmare? It was the same way with that wind. It tore the
      clothes off our bodies. I say TORE THEM OFF, and I mean it. I am not
      asking you to believe it. I am merely telling something that I saw and
      felt. There are times when I do not believe it myself. I went through it,
      and that is enough. One could not face that wind and live. It was a
      monstrous thing, and the most monstrous thing about it was that it
      increased and continued to increase.
    </p>
    <p>
      Imagine countless millions and billions of tons of sand. Imagine this sand
      tearing along at ninety, a hundred, a hundred and twenty, or any other
      number of miles per hour. Imagine, further, this sand to be invisible,
      impalpable, yet to retain all the weight and density of sand. Do all this,
      and you may get a vague inkling of what that wind was like.
    </p>
    <p>
      Perhaps sand is not the right comparison. Consider it mud, invisible,
      impalpable, but heavy as mud. Nay, it goes beyond that. Consider every
      molecule of air to be a mudbank in itself. Then try to imagine the
      multitudinous impact of mudbanks. No; it is beyond me. Language may be
      adequate to express the ordinary conditions of life, but it cannot
      possibly express any of the conditions of so enormous a blast of wind. It
      would have been better had I stuck by my original intention of not
      attempting a description.
    </p>
    <p>
      I will say this much: The sea, which had risen at first, was beaten down
      by that wind. More: it seemed as if the whole ocean had been sucked up in
      the maw of the hurricane, and hurled on through that portion of space
      which previously had been occupied by the air.
    </p>
    <p>
      Of course, our canvas had gone long before. But Captain Oudouse had on the
      Petite Jeanne something I had never before seen on a South Sea schooner&mdash;a
      sea anchor. It was a conical canvas bag, the mouth of which was kept open
      by a huge loop of iron. The sea anchor was bridled something like a kite,
      so that it bit into the water as a kite bites into the air, but with a
      difference. The sea anchor remained just under the surface of the ocean in
      a perpendicular position. A long line, in turn, connected it with the
      schooner. As a result, the Petite Jeanne rode bow on to the wind and to
      what sea there was.
    </p>
    <p>
      The situation really would have been favorable had we not been in the path
      of the storm. True, the wind itself tore our canvas out of the gaskets,
      jerked out our topmasts, and made a raffle of our running gear, but still
      we would have come through nicely had we not been square in front of the
      advancing storm center. That was what fixed us. I was in a state of
      stunned, numbed, paralyzed collapse from enduring the impact of the wind,
      and I think I was just about ready to give up and die when the center
      smote us. The blow we received was an absolute lull. There was not a
      breath of air. The effect on one was sickening.
    </p>
    <p>
      Remember that for hours we had been at terrific muscular tension,
      withstanding the awful pressure of that wind. And then, suddenly, the
      pressure was removed. I know that I felt as though I was about to expand,
      to fly apart in all directions. It seemed as if every atom composing my
      body was repelling every other atom and was on the verge of rushing off
      irresistibly into space. But that lasted only for a moment. Destruction
      was upon us.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the absence of the wind and pressure the sea rose. It jumped, it
      leaped, it soared straight toward the clouds. Remember, from every point
      of the compass that inconceivable wind was blowing in toward the center of
      calm. The result was that the seas sprang up from every point of the
      compass. There was no wind to check them. They popped up like corks
      released from the bottom of a pail of water. There was no system to them,
      no stability. They were hollow, maniacal seas. They were eighty feet high
      at the least. They were not seas at all. They resembled no sea a man had
      ever seen.
    </p>
    <p>
      They were splashes, monstrous splashes&mdash;that is all. Splashes that
      were eighty feet high. Eighty! They were more than eighty. They went over
      our mastheads. They were spouts, explosions. They were drunken. They fell
      anywhere, anyhow. They jostled one another; they collided. They rushed
      together and collapsed upon one another, or fell apart like a thousand
      waterfalls all at once. It was no ocean any man had ever dreamed of, that
      hurricane center. It was confusion thrice confounded. It was anarchy. It
      was a hell pit of sea water gone mad.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Petite Jeanne? I don't know. The heathen told me afterwards that he
      did not know. She was literally torn apart, ripped wide open, beaten into
      a pulp, smashed into kindling wood, annihilated. When I came to I was in
      the water, swimming automatically, though I was about two-thirds drowned.
      How I got there I had no recollection. I remembered seeing the Petite
      Jeanne fly to pieces at what must have been the instant that my own
      consciousness was buffeted out of me. But there I was, with nothing to do
      but make the best of it, and in that best there was little promise. The
      wind was blowing again, the sea was much smaller and more regular, and I
      knew that I had passed through the center. Fortunately, there were no
      sharks about. The hurricane had dissipated the ravenous horde that had
      surrounded the death ship and fed off the dead.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was about midday when the Petite Jeanne went to pieces, and it must
      have been two hours afterwards when I picked up with one of her hatch
      covers. Thick rain was driving at the time; and it was the merest chance
      that flung me and the hatch cover together. A short length of line was
      trailing from the rope handle; and I knew that I was good for a day, at
      least, if the sharks did not return. Three hours later, possibly a little
      longer, sticking close to the cover, and with closed eyes, concentrating
      my whole soul upon the task of breathing in enough air to keep me going
      and at the same time of avoiding breathing in enough water to drown me, it
      seemed to me that I heard voices. The rain had ceased, and wind and sea
      were easing marvelously. Not twenty feet away from me, on another hatch
      cover were Captain Oudouse and the heathen. They were fighting over the
      possession of the cover&mdash;at least, the Frenchman was. &ldquo;Paien noir!&rdquo; I
      heard him scream, and at the same time I saw him kick the kanaka.
    </p>
    <p>
      Now, Captain Oudouse had lost all his clothes, except his shoes, and they
      were heavy brogans. It was a cruel blow, for it caught the heathen on the
      mouth and the point of the chin, half stunning him. I looked for him to
      retaliate, but he contented himself with swimming about forlornly a safe
      ten feet away. Whenever a fling of the sea threw him closer, the
      Frenchman, hanging on with his hands, kicked out at him with both feet.
      Also, at the moment of delivering each kick, he called the kanaka a black
      heathen.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;For two centimes I'd come over there and drown you, you white beast!&rdquo; I
      yelled.
    </p>
    <p>
      The only reason I did not go was that I felt too tired. The very thought
      of the effort to swim over was nauseating. So I called to the kanaka to
      come to me, and proceeded to share the hatch cover with him. Otoo, he told
      me his name was (pronounced o-to-o ); also, he told me that he was a
      native of Bora Bora, the most westerly of the Society Group. As I learned
      afterward, he had got the hatch cover first, and, after some time,
      encountering Captain Oudouse, had offered to share it with him, and had
      been kicked off for his pains.
    </p>
    <p>
      And that was how Otoo and I first came together. He was no fighter. He was
      all sweetness and gentleness, a love creature, though he stood nearly six
      feet tall and was muscled like a gladiator. He was no fighter, but he was
      also no coward. He had the heart of a lion; and in the years that followed
      I have seen him run risks that I would never dream of taking. What I mean
      is that while he was no fighter, and while he always avoided precipitating
      a row, he never ran away from trouble when it started. And it was &ldquo;Ware
      shoal!&rdquo; when once Otoo went into action. I shall never forget what he did
      to Bill King. It occurred in German Samoa. Bill King was hailed the
      champion heavyweight of the American Navy. He was a big brute of a man, a
      veritable gorilla, one of those hard-hitting, rough-housing chaps, and
      clever with his fists as well. He picked the quarrel, and he kicked Otoo
      twice and struck him once before Otoo felt it to be necessary to fight. I
      don't think it lasted four minutes, at the end of which time Bill King was
      the unhappy possessor of four broken ribs, a broken forearm, and a
      dislocated shoulder blade. Otoo knew nothing of scientific boxing. He was
      merely a manhandler; and Bill King was something like three months in
      recovering from the bit of manhandling he received that afternoon on Apia
      beach.
    </p>
    <p>
      But I am running ahead of my yarn. We shared the hatch cover between us.
      We took turn and turn about, one lying flat on the cover and resting,
      while the other, submerged to the neck, merely held on with his hands. For
      two days and nights, spell and spell, on the cover and in the water, we
      drifted over the ocean. Towards the last I was delirious most of the time;
      and there were times, too, when I heard Otoo babbling and raving in his
      native tongue. Our continuous immersion prevented us from dying of thirst,
      though the sea water and the sunshine gave us the prettiest imaginable
      combination of salt pickle and sunburn.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the end, Otoo saved my life; for I came to lying on the beach twenty
      feet from the water, sheltered from the sun by a couple of cocoanut
      leaves. No one but Otoo could have dragged me there and stuck up the
      leaves for shade. He was lying beside me. I went off again; and the next
      time I came round, it was cool and starry night, and Otoo was pressing a
      drinking cocoanut to my lips.
    </p>
    <p>
      We were the sole survivors of the Petite Jeanne. Captain Oudouse must have
      succumbed to exhaustion, for several days later his hatch cover drifted
      ashore without him. Otoo and I lived with the natives of the atoll for a
      week, when we were rescued by the French cruiser and taken to Tahiti. In
      the meantime, however, we had performed the ceremony of exchanging names.
      In the South Seas such a ceremony binds two men closer together than blood
      brothership. The initiative had been mine; and Otoo was rapturously
      delighted when I suggested it.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It is well,&rdquo; he said, in Tahitian. &ldquo;For we have been mates together for
      two days on the lips of Death.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But death stuttered,&rdquo; I smiled.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It was a brave deed you did, master,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;and Death was not vile
      enough to speak.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Why do you 'master' me?&rdquo; I demanded, with a show of hurt feelings. &ldquo;We
      have exchanged names. To you I am Otoo. To me you are Charley. And between
      you and me, forever and forever, you shall be Charley, and I shall be
      Otoo. It is the way of the custom. And when we die, if it does happen that
      we live again somewhere beyond the stars and the sky, still shall you be
      Charley to me, and I Otoo to you.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes, master,&rdquo; he answered, his eyes luminous and soft with joy.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;There you go!&rdquo; I cried indignantly.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What does it matter what my lips utter?&rdquo; he argued. &ldquo;They are only my
      lips. But I shall think Otoo always. Whenever I think of myself, I shall
      think of you. Whenever men call me by name, I shall think of you. And
      beyond the sky and beyond the stars, always and forever, you shall be Otoo
      to me. Is it well, master?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      I hid my smile, and answered that it was well.
    </p>
    <p>
      We parted at Papeete. I remained ashore to recuperate; and he went on in a
      cutter to his own island, Bora Bora. Six weeks later he was back. I was
      surprised, for he had told me of his wife, and said that he was returning
      to her, and would give over sailing on far voyages.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Where do you go, master?&rdquo; he asked, after our first greetings.
    </p>
    <p>
      I shrugged my shoulders. It was a hard question.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;All the world,&rdquo; was my answer&mdash;&ldquo;all the world, all the sea, and all
      the islands that are in the sea.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I will go with you,&rdquo; he said simply. &ldquo;My wife is dead.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      I never had a brother; but from what I have seen of other men's brothers,
      I doubt if any man ever had a brother that was to him what Otoo was to me.
      He was brother and father and mother as well. And this I know: I lived a
      straighter and better man because of Otoo. I cared little for other men,
      but I had to live straight in Otoo's eyes. Because of him I dared not
      tarnish myself. He made me his ideal, compounding me, I fear, chiefly out
      of his own love and worship and there were times when I stood close to the
      steep pitch of hell, and would have taken the plunge had not the thought
      of Otoo restrained me. His pride in me entered into me, until it became
      one of the major rules in my personal code to do nothing that would
      diminish that pride of his.
    </p>
    <p>
      Naturally, I did not learn right away what his feelings were toward me. He
      never criticized, never censured; and slowly the exalted place I held in
      his eyes dawned upon me, and slowly I grew to comprehend the hurt I could
      inflict upon him by being anything less than my best.
    </p>
    <p>
      For seventeen years we were together; for seventeen years he was at my
      shoulder, watching while I slept, nursing me through fever and wounds&mdash;ay,
      and receiving wounds in fighting for me. He signed on the same ships with
      me; and together we ranged the Pacific from Hawaii to Sydney Head, and
      from Torres Straits to the Galapagos. We blackbirded from the New Hebrides
      and the Line Islands over to the westward clear through the Louisades, New
      Britain, New Ireland, and New Hanover. We were wrecked three times&mdash;in
      the Gilberts, in the Santa Cruz group, and in the Fijis. And we traded and
      salved wherever a dollar promised in the way of pearl and pearl shell,
      copra, beche-de-mer, hawkbill turtle shell, and stranded wrecks.
    </p>
    <p>
      It began in Papeete, immediately after his announcement that he was going
      with me over all the sea, and the islands in the midst thereof. There was
      a club in those days in Papeete, where the pearlers, traders, captains,
      and riffraff of South Sea adventurers forgathered. The play ran high, and
      the drink ran high; and I am very much afraid that I kept later hours than
      were becoming or proper. No matter what the hour was when I left the club,
      there was Otoo waiting to see me safely home.
    </p>
    <p>
      At first I smiled; next I chided him. Then I told him flatly that I stood
      in need of no wet-nursing. After that I did not see him when I came out of
      the club. Quite by accident, a week or so later, I discovered that he
      still saw me home, lurking across the street among the shadows of the
      mango trees. What could I do? I know what I did do.
    </p>
    <p>
      Insensibly I began to keep better hours. On wet and stormy nights, in the
      thick of the folly and the fun, the thought would persist in coming to me
      of Otoo keeping his dreary vigil under the dripping mangoes. Truly, he
      made a better man of me. Yet he was not strait-laced. And he knew nothing
      of common Christian morality. All the people on Bora Bora were Christians;
      but he was a heathen, the only unbeliever on the island, a gross
      materialist, who believed that when he died he was dead. He believed
      merely in fair play and square dealing. Petty meanness, in his code, was
      almost as serious as wanton homicide; and I do believe that he respected a
      murderer more than a man given to small practices.
    </p>
    <p>
      Concerning me, personally, he objected to my doing anything that was
      hurtful to me. Gambling was all right. He was an ardent gambler himself.
      But late hours, he explained, were bad for one's health. He had seen men
      who did not take care of themselves die of fever. He was no teetotaler,
      and welcomed a stiff nip any time when it was wet work in the boats. On
      the other hand, he believed in liquor in moderation. He had seen many men
      killed or disgraced by square-face or Scotch.
    </p>
    <p>
      Otoo had my welfare always at heart. He thought ahead for me, weighed my
      plans, and took a greater interest in them than I did myself. At first,
      when I was unaware of this interest of his in my affairs, he had to divine
      my intentions, as, for instance, at Papeete, when I contemplated going
      partners with a knavish fellow-countryman on a guano venture. I did not
      know he was a knave. Nor did any white man in Papeete. Neither did Otoo
      know, but he saw how thick we were getting, and found out for me, and
      without my asking him. Native sailors from the ends of the seas knock
      about on the beach in Tahiti; and Otoo, suspicious merely, went among them
      till he had gathered sufficient data to justify his suspicions. Oh, it was
      a nice history, that of Randolph Waters. I couldn't believe it when Otoo
      first narrated it; but when I sheeted it home to Waters he gave in without
      a murmur, and got away on the first steamer to Aukland.
    </p>
    <p>
      At first, I am free to confess, I couldn't help resenting Otoo's poking
      his nose into my business. But I knew that he was wholly unselfish; and
      soon I had to acknowledge his wisdom and discretion. He had his eyes open
      always to my main chance, and he was both keen-sighted and far-sighted. In
      time he became my counselor, until he knew more of my business than I did
      myself. He really had my interest at heart more than I did. Mine was the
      magnificent carelessness of youth, for I preferred romance to dollars, and
      adventure to a comfortable billet with all night in. So it was well that I
      had some one to look out for me. I know that if it had not been for Otoo,
      I should not be here today.
    </p>
    <p>
      Of numerous instances, let me give one. I had had some experience in
      blackbirding before I went pearling in the Paumotus. Otoo and I were on
      the beach in Samoa&mdash;we really were on the beach and hard aground&mdash;when
      my chance came to go as recruiter on a blackbird brig. Otoo signed on
      before the mast; and for the next half-dozen years, in as many ships, we
      knocked about the wildest portions of Melanesia. Otoo saw to it that he
      always pulled stroke-oar in my boat. Our custom in recruiting labor was to
      land the recruiter on the beach. The covering boat always lay on its oars
      several hundred feet off shore, while the recruiter's boat, also lying on
      its oars, kept afloat on the edge of the beach. When I landed with my
      trade goods, leaving my steering sweep apeak, Otoo left his stroke
      position and came into the stern sheets, where a Winchester lay ready to
      hand under a flap of canvas. The boat's crew was also armed, the Sniders
      concealed under canvas flaps that ran the length of the gunwales.
    </p>
    <p>
      While I was busy arguing and persuading the woolly-headed cannibals to
      come and labor on the Queensland plantations Otoo kept watch. And often
      and often his low voice warned me of suspicious actions and impending
      treachery. Sometimes it was the quick shot from his rifle, knocking a
      nigger over, that was the first warning I received. And in my rush to the
      boat his hand was always there to jerk me flying aboard. Once, I remember,
      on SANTA ANNA, the boat grounded just as the trouble began. The covering
      boat was dashing to our assistance, but the several score of savages would
      have wiped us out before it arrived. Otoo took a flying leap ashore, dug
      both hands into the trade goods, and scattered tobacco, beads, tomahawks,
      knives, and calicoes in all directions.
    </p>
    <p>
      This was too much for the woolly-heads. While they scrambled for the
      treasures, the boat was shoved clear, and we were aboard and forty feet
      away. And I got thirty recruits off that very beach in the next four
      hours.
    </p>
    <p>
      The particular instance I have in mind was on Malaita, the most savage
      island in the easterly Solomons. The natives had been remarkably friendly;
      and how were we to know that the whole village had been taking up a
      collection for over two years with which to buy a white man's head? The
      beggars are all head-hunters, and they especially esteem a white man's
      head. The fellow who captured the head would receive the whole collection.
      As I say, they appeared very friendly; and on this day I was fully a
      hundred yards down the beach from the boat. Otoo had cautioned me; and, as
      usual when I did not heed him, I came to grief.
    </p>
    <p>
      The first I knew, a cloud of spears sailed out of the mangrove swamp at
      me. At least a dozen were sticking into me. I started to run, but tripped
      over one that was fast in my calf, and went down. The woolly-heads made a
      run for me, each with a long-handled, fantail tomahawk with which to hack
      off my head. They were so eager for the prize that they got in one
      another's way. In the confusion, I avoided several hacks by throwing
      myself right and left on the sand.
    </p>
    <p>
      Then Otoo arrived&mdash;Otoo the manhandler. In some way he had got hold
      of a heavy war club, and at close quarters it was a far more efficient
      weapon than a rifle. He was right in the thick of them, so that they could
      not spear him, while their tomahawks seemed worse than useless. He was
      fighting for me, and he was in a true Berserker rage. The way he handled
      that club was amazing.
    </p>
    <p>
      Their skulls squashed like overripe oranges. It was not until he had
      driven them back, picked me up in his arms, and started to run, that he
      received his first wounds. He arrived in the boat with four spear thrusts,
      got his Winchester, and with it got a man for every shot. Then we pulled
      aboard the schooner, and doctored up.
    </p>
    <p>
      Seventeen years we were together. He made me. I should today be a
      supercargo, a recruiter, or a memory, if it had not been for him.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You spend your money, and you go out and get more,&rdquo; he said one day. &ldquo;It
      is easy to get money now. But when you get old, your money will be spent,
      and you will not be able to go out and get more. I know, master. I have
      studied the way of white men. On the beaches are many old men who were
      young once, and who could get money just like you. Now they are old, and
      they have nothing, and they wait about for the young men like you to come
      ashore and buy drinks for them.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The black boy is a slave on the plantations. He gets twenty dollars a
      year. He works hard. The overseer does not work hard. He rides a horse and
      watches the black boy work. He gets twelve hundred dollars a year. I am a
      sailor on the schooner. I get fifteen dollars a month. That is because I
      am a good sailor. I work hard. The captain has a double awning, and drinks
      beer out of long bottles. I have never seen him haul a rope or pull an
      oar. He gets one hundred and fifty dollars a month. I am a sailor. He is a
      navigator. Master, I think it would be very good for you to know
      navigation.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Otoo spurred me on to it. He sailed with me as second mate on my first
      schooner, and he was far prouder of my command than I was myself. Later on
      it was:
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The captain is well paid, master; but the ship is in his keeping, and he
      is never free from the burden. It is the owner who is better paid&mdash;the
      owner who sits ashore with many servants and turns his money over.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;True, but a schooner costs five thousand dollars&mdash;an old schooner at
      that,&rdquo; I objected. &ldquo;I should be an old man before I saved five thousand
      dollars.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;There be short ways for white men to make money,&rdquo; he went on, pointing
      ashore at the cocoanut-fringed beach.
    </p>
    <p>
      We were in the Solomons at the time, picking up a cargo of ivory nuts
      along the east coast of Guadalcanar.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Between this river mouth and the next it is two miles,&rdquo; he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The flat land runs far back. It is worth nothing now. Next year&mdash;who
      knows?&mdash;or the year after, men will pay much money for that land. The
      anchorage is good. Big steamers can lie close up. You can buy the land
      four miles deep from the old chief for ten thousand sticks of tobacco, ten
      bottles of square-face, and a Snider, which will cost you, maybe, one
      hundred dollars. Then you place the deed with the commissioner; and the
      next year, or the year after, you sell and become the owner of a ship.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      I followed his lead, and his words came true, though in three years,
      instead of two. Next came the grasslands deal on Guadalcanar&mdash;twenty
      thousand acres, on a governmental nine hundred and ninety-nine years'
      lease at a nominal sum. I owned the lease for precisely ninety days, when
      I sold it to a company for half a fortune. Always it was Otoo who looked
      ahead and saw the opportunity. He was responsible for the salving of the
      Doncaster&mdash;bought in at auction for a hundred pounds, and clearing
      three thousand after every expense was paid. He led me into the Savaii
      plantation and the cocoa venture on Upolu.
    </p>
    <p>
      We did not go seafaring so much as in the old days. I was too well off. I
      married, and my standard of living rose; but Otoo remained the same
      old-time Otoo, moving about the house or trailing through the office, his
      wooden pipe in his mouth, a shilling undershirt on his back, and a
      four-shilling lava-lava about his loins. I could not get him to spend
      money. There was no way of repaying him except with love, and God knows he
      got that in full measure from all of us. The children worshipped him; and
      if he had been spoilable, my wife would surely have been his undoing.
    </p>
    <p>
      The children! He really was the one who showed them the way of their feet
      in the world practical. He began by teaching them to walk. He sat up with
      them when they were sick. One by one, when they were scarcely toddlers, he
      took them down to the lagoon, and made them into amphibians. He taught
      them more than I ever knew of the habits of fish and the ways of catching
      them. In the bush it was the same thing. At seven, Tom knew more woodcraft
      than I ever dreamed existed. At six, Mary went over the Sliding Rock
      without a quiver, and I have seen strong men balk at that feat. And when
      Frank had just turned six he could bring up shillings from the bottom in
      three fathoms.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;My people in Bora Bora do not like heathen&mdash;they are all Christians;
      and I do not like Bora Bora Christians,&rdquo; he said one day, when I, with the
      idea of getting him to spend some of the money that was rightfully his,
      had been trying to persuade him to make a visit to his own island in one
      of our schooners&mdash;a special voyage which I had hoped to make a record
      breaker in the matter of prodigal expense.
    </p>
    <p>
      I say one of OUR schooners, though legally at the time they belonged to
      me. I struggled long with him to enter into partnership.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;We have been partners from the day the Petite Jeanne went down,&rdquo; he said
      at last. &ldquo;But if your heart so wishes, then shall we become partners by
      the law. I have no work to do, yet are my expenses large. I drink and eat
      and smoke in plenty&mdash;it costs much, I know. I do not pay for the
      playing of billiards, for I play on your table; but still the money goes.
      Fishing on the reef is only a rich man's pleasure. It is shocking, the
      cost of hooks and cotton line. Yes; it is necessary that we be partners by
      the law. I need the money. I shall get it from the head clerk in the
      office.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      So the papers were made out and recorded. A year later I was compelled to
      complain.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Charley,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;you are a wicked old fraud, a miserly skinflint, a
      miserable land crab. Behold, your share for the year in all our
      partnership has been thousands of dollars. The head clerk has given me
      this paper. It says that in the year you have drawn just eighty-seven
      dollars and twenty cents.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Is there any owing me?&rdquo; he asked anxiously.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I tell you thousands and thousands,&rdquo; I answered.
    </p>
    <p>
      His face brightened, as with an immense relief.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It is well,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;See that the head clerk keeps good account of it.
      When I want it, I shall want it, and there must not be a cent missing.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;If there is,&rdquo; he added fiercely, after a pause, &ldquo;it must come out of the
      clerk's wages.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      And all the time, as I afterwards learned, his will, drawn up by
      Carruthers, and making me sole beneficiary, lay in the American consul's
      safe.
    </p>
    <p>
      But the end came, as the end must come to all human associations.
    </p>
    <p>
      It occurred in the Solomons, where our wildest work had been done in the
      wild young days, and where we were once more&mdash;principally on a
      holiday, incidentally to look after our holdings on Florida Island and to
      look over the pearling possibilities of the Mboli Pass. We were lying at
      Savo, having run in to trade for curios.
    </p>
    <p>
      Now, Savo is alive with sharks. The custom of the woolly-heads of burying
      their dead in the sea did not tend to discourage the sharks from making
      the adjacent waters a hangout. It was my luck to be coming aboard in a
      tiny, overloaded, native canoe, when the thing capsized. There were four
      woolly-heads and myself in it, or rather, hanging to it. The schooner was
      a hundred yards away.
    </p>
    <p>
      I was just hailing for a boat when one of the woolly-heads began to
      scream. Holding on to the end of the canoe, both he and that portion of
      the canoe were dragged under several times. Then he loosed his clutch and
      disappeared. A shark had got him.
    </p>
    <p>
      The three remaining niggers tried to climb out of the water upon the
      bottom of the canoe. I yelled and cursed and struck at the nearest with my
      fist, but it was no use. They were in a blind funk. The canoe could barely
      have supported one of them. Under the three it upended and rolled
      sidewise, throwing them back into the water.
    </p>
    <p>
      I abandoned the canoe and started to swim toward the schooner, expecting
      to be picked up by the boat before I got there. One of the niggers elected
      to come with me, and we swam along silently, side by side, now and again
      putting our faces into the water and peering about for sharks. The screams
      of the man who stayed by the canoe informed us that he was taken. I was
      peering into the water when I saw a big shark pass directly beneath me. He
      was fully sixteen feet in length. I saw the whole thing. He got the
      woolly-head by the middle, and away he went, the poor devil, head,
      shoulders, and arms out of the water all the time, screeching in a
      heart-rending way. He was carried along in this fashion for several
      hundred feet, when he was dragged beneath the surface.
    </p>
    <p>
      I swam doggedly on, hoping that that was the last unattached shark. But
      there was another. Whether it was one that had attacked the natives
      earlier, or whether it was one that had made a good meal elsewhere, I do
      not know. At any rate, he was not in such haste as the others. I could not
      swim so rapidly now, for a large part of my effort was devoted to keeping
      track of him. I was watching him when he made his first attack. By good
      luck I got both hands on his nose, and, though his momentum nearly shoved
      me under, I managed to keep him off. He veered clear, and began circling
      about again. A second time I escaped him by the same manoeuvre. The third
      rush was a miss on both sides. He sheered at the moment my hands should
      have landed on his nose, but his sandpaper hide (I had on a sleeveless
      undershirt) scraped the skin off one arm from elbow to shoulder.
    </p>
    <p>
      By this time I was played out, and gave up hope. The schooner was still
      two hundred feet away. My face was in the water, and I was watching him
      manoeuvre for another attempt, when I saw a brown body pass between us. It
      was Otoo.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Swim for the schooner, master!&rdquo; he said. And he spoke gayly, as though
      the affair was a mere lark. &ldquo;I know sharks. The shark is my brother.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      I obeyed, swimming slowly on, while Otoo swam about me, keeping always
      between me and the shark, foiling his rushes and encouraging me.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The davit tackle carried away, and they are rigging the falls,&rdquo; he
      explained, a minute or so later, and then went under to head off another
      attack.
    </p>
    <p>
      By the time the schooner was thirty feet away I was about done for. I
      could scarcely move. They were heaving lines at us from on board, but they
      continually fell short. The shark, finding that it was receiving no hurt,
      had become bolder. Several times it nearly got me, but each time Otoo was
      there just the moment before it was too late. Of course, Otoo could have
      saved himself any time. But he stuck by me.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Good-by, Charley! I'm finished!&rdquo; I just managed to gasp.
    </p>
    <p>
      I knew that the end had come, and that the next moment I should throw up
      my hands and go down.
    </p>
    <p>
      But Otoo laughed in my face, saying:
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I will show you a new trick. I will make that shark feel sick!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He dropped in behind me, where the shark was preparing to come at me.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;A little more to the left!&rdquo; he next called out. &ldquo;There is a line there on
      the water. To the left, master&mdash;to the left!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      I changed my course and struck out blindly. I was by that time barely
      conscious. As my hand closed on the line I heard an exclamation from on
      board. I turned and looked. There was no sign of Otoo. The next instant he
      broke surface. Both hands were off at the wrist, the stumps spouting
      blood.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Otoo!&rdquo; he called softly. And I could see in his gaze the love that
      thrilled in his voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      Then, and then only, at the very last of all our years, he called me by
      that name.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Good-by, Otoo!&rdquo; he called.
    </p>
    <p>
      Then he was dragged under, and I was hauled aboard, where I fainted in the
      captain's arms.
    </p>
    <p>
      And so passed Otoo, who saved me and made me a man, and who saved me in
      the end. We met in the maw of a hurricane, and parted in the maw of a
      shark, with seventeen intervening years of comradeship, the like of which
      I dare to assert has never befallen two men, the one brown and the other
      white. If Jehovah be from His high place watching every sparrow fall, not
      least in His kingdom shall be Otoo, the one heathen of Bora Bora.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      THE TERRIBLE SOLOMONS
    </h2>
    <p>
      There is no gainsaying that the Solomons are a hard-bitten bunch of
      islands. On the other hand, there are worse places in the world. But to
      the new chum who has no constitutional understanding of men and life in
      the rough, the Solomons may indeed prove terrible.
    </p>
    <p>
      It is true that fever and dysentery are perpetually on the walk-about,
      that loathsome skin diseases abound, that the air is saturated with a
      poison that bites into every pore, cut, or abrasion and plants malignant
      ulcers, and that many strong men who escape dying there return as wrecks
      to their own countries. It is also true that the natives of the Solomons
      are a wild lot, with a hearty appetite for human flesh and a fad for
      collecting human heads. Their highest instinct of sportsmanship is to
      catch a man with his back turned and to smite him a cunning blow with a
      tomahawk that severs the spinal column at the base of the brain. It is
      equally true that on some islands, such as Malaita, the profit and loss
      account of social intercourse is calculated in homicides. Heads are a
      medium of exchange, and white heads are extremely valuable. Very often a
      dozen villages make a jack-pot, which they fatten moon by moon, against
      the time when some brave warrior presents a white man's head, fresh and
      gory, and claims the pot.
    </p>
    <p>
      All the foregoing is quite true, and yet there are white men who have
      lived in the Solomons a score of years and who feel homesick when they go
      away from them. A man needs only to be careful&mdash;and lucky&mdash;to
      live a long time in the Solomons; but he must also be of the right sort.
      He must have the hallmark of the inevitable white man stamped upon his
      soul. He must be inevitable. He must have a certain grand carelessness of
      odds, a certain colossal self-satisfaction, and a racial egotism that
      convinces him that one white is better than a thousand niggers every day
      in the week, and that on Sunday he is able to clean out two thousand
      niggers. For such are the things that have made the white man inevitable.
      Oh, and one other thing&mdash;the white man who wishes to be inevitable,
      must not merely despise the lesser breeds and think a lot of himself; he
      must also fail to be too long on imagination. He must not understand too
      well the instincts, customs, and mental processes of the blacks, the
      yellows, and the browns; for it is not in such fashion that the white race
      has tramped its royal road around the world.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bertie Arkwright was not inevitable. He was too sensitive, too finely
      strung, and he possessed too much imagination. The world was too much with
      him. He projected himself too quiveringly into his environment. Therefore,
      the last place in the world for him to come was the Solomons. He did not
      come, expecting to stay. A five weeks' stop-over between steamers, he
      decided, would satisfy the call of the primitive he felt thrumming the
      strings of his being. At least, so he told the lady tourists on the
      MAKEMBO, though in different terms; and they worshipped him as a hero, for
      they were lady tourists and they would know only the safety of the
      steamer's deck as she threaded her way through the Solomons.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was another man on board, of whom the ladies took no notice. He was
      a little shriveled wisp of a man, with a withered skin the color of
      mahogany. His name on the passenger list does not matter, but his other
      name, Captain Malu, was a name for niggers to conjure with, and to scare
      naughty pickaninnies to righteousness from New Hanover to the New
      Hebrides. He had farmed savages and savagery, and from fever and hardship,
      the crack of Sniders and the lash of the overseers, had wrested five
      millions of money in the form of bêche-de-mer, sandalwood, pearl-shell and
      turtle-shell, ivory nuts and copra, grasslands, trading stations, and
      plantations. Captain Malu's little finger, which was broken, had more
      inevitableness in it than Bertie Arkwright's whole carcass. But then, the
      lady tourists had nothing by which to judge save appearances, and Bertie
      certainly was a fine-looking man.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bertie talked with Captain Malu in the smoking room, confiding to him his
      intention of seeing life red and bleeding in the Solomons. Captain Malu
      agreed that the intention was ambitious and honorable. It was not until
      several days later that he became interested in Bertie, when that young
      adventurer insisted on showing him an automatic 44-caliber pistol. Bertie
      explained the mechanism and demonstrated by slipping a loaded magazine up
      the hollow butt.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It is so simple,&rdquo; he said. He shot the outer barrel back along the inner
      one. &ldquo;That loads it and cocks it, you see. And then all I have to do is
      pull the trigger, eight times, as fast as I can quiver my finger. See that
      safety clutch. That's what I like about it. It is safe. It is positively
      fool-proof.&rdquo; He slipped out the magazine. &ldquo;You see how safe it is.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      As he held it in his hand, the muzzle came in line with Captain Malu's
      stomach. Captain Malu's blue eyes looked at it unswervingly.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Would you mind pointing it in some other direction?&rdquo; he asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It's perfectly safe,&rdquo; Bertie assured him. &ldquo;I withdrew the magazine. It's
      not loaded now, you know.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;A gun is always loaded.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But this one isn't.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Turn it away just the same.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Captain Malu's voice was flat and metallic and low, but his eyes never
      left the muzzle until the line of it was drawn past him and away from him.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I'll bet a fiver it isn't loaded,&rdquo; Bertie proposed warmly.
    </p>
    <p>
      The other shook his head.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Then I'll show you.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Bertie started to put the muzzle to his own temple with the evident
      intention of pulling the trigger.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Just a second,&rdquo; Captain Malu said quietly, reaching out his hand. &ldquo;Let me
      look at it.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He pointed it seaward and pulled the trigger. A heavy explosion followed,
      instantaneous with the sharp click of the mechanism that flipped a hot and
      smoking cartridge sidewise along the deck.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bertie's jaw dropped in amazement.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I slipped the barrel back once, didn't I?&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;It was silly of
      me, I must say.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He giggled flabbily, and sat down in a steamer chair. The blood had ebbed
      from his face, exposing dark circles under his eyes. His hands were
      trembling and unable to guide the shaking cigarette to his lips. The world
      was too much with him, and he saw himself with dripping brains prone upon
      the deck.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Really,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;... really.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It's a pretty weapon,&rdquo; said Captain Malu, returning the automatic to him.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Commissioner was on board the Makembo, returning from Sydney, and by
      his permission a stop was made at Ugi to land a missionary. And at Ugi lay
      the ketch ARLA, Captain Hansen, skipper. Now the Arla was one of many
      vessels owned by Captain Malu, and it was at his suggestion and by his
      invitation that Bertie went aboard the Arla as guest for a four days'
      recruiting cruise on the coast of Malaita. Thereafter the ARLA would drop
      him at Reminge Plantation (also owned by Captain Malu), where Bertie could
      remain for a week, and then be sent over to Tulagi, the seat of
      government, where he would become the Commissioner's guest. Captain Malu
      was responsible for two other suggestions, which given, he disappears from
      this narrative. One was to Captain Hansen, the other to Mr. Harriwell,
      manager of Reminge Plantation. Both suggestions were similar in tenor,
      namely, to give Mr. Bertram Arkwright an insight into the rawness and
      redness of life in the Solomons. Also, it is whispered that Captain Malu
      mentioned that a case of Scotch would be coincidental with any
      particularly gorgeous insight Mr. Arkwright might receive.............
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes, Swartz always was too pig-headed. You see, he took four of his
      boat's crew to Tulagi to be flogged&mdash;officially, you know&mdash;then
      started back with them in the whaleboat. It was pretty squally, and the
      boat capsized just outside. Swartz was the only one drowned. Of course, it
      was an accident.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Was it? Really?&rdquo; Bertie asked, only half-interested, staring hard at the
      black man at the wheel.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ugi had dropped astern, and the ARLA was sliding along through a summer
      sea toward the wooded ranges of Malaita. The helmsman who so attracted
      Bertie's eyes sported a ten penny nail, stuck skewerwise through his nose.
      About his neck was a string of pants buttons. Thrust through holes in his
      ears were a can opener, the broken handle of a toothbrush, a clay pipe,
      the brass wheel of an alarm clock, and several Winchester rifle
      cartridges.
    </p>
    <p>
      On his chest, suspended from around his neck hung the half of a china
      plate. Some forty similarly appareled blacks lay about the deck, fifteen
      of which were boat's crew, the remainder being fresh labor recruits.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Of course it was an accident,&rdquo; spoke up the ARLA'S mate, Jacobs, a
      slender, dark-eyed man who looked more a professor than a sailor. &ldquo;Johnny
      Bedip nearly had the same kind of accident. He was bringing back several
      from a flogging, when they capsized him. But he knew how to swim as well
      as they, and two of them were drowned. He used a boat stretcher and a
      revolver. Of course it was an accident.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Quite common, them accidents,&rdquo; remarked the skipper. &ldquo;You see that man at
      the wheel, Mr. Arkwright? He's a man eater. Six months ago, he and the
      rest of the boat's crew drowned the then captain of the ARLA. They did it
      on deck, sir, right aft there by the mizzen-traveler.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The deck was in a shocking state,&rdquo; said the mate.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Do I understand&mdash;?&rdquo; Bertie began.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes, just that,&rdquo; said Captain Hansen. &ldquo;It was an accidental drowning.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But on deck&mdash;?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Just so. I don't mind telling you, in confidence, of course, that they
      used an axe.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;This present crew of yours?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Captain Hansen nodded.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The other skipper always was too careless,&rdquo; explained the mate. &ldquo;He but
      just turned his back, when they let him have it.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;We haven't any show down here,&rdquo; was the skipper's complaint. &ldquo;The
      government protects a nigger against a white every time. You can't shoot
      first. You've got to give the nigger first shot, or else the government
      calls it murder and you go to Fiji. That's why there's so many drowning
      accidents.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Dinner was called, and Bertie and the skipper went below, leaving the mate
      to watch on deck.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Keep an eye out for that black devil, Auiki,&rdquo; was the skipper's parting
      caution. &ldquo;I haven't liked his looks for several days.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Right O,&rdquo; said the mate.
    </p>
    <p>
      Dinner was part way along, and the skipper was in the middle of his story
      of the cutting out of the Scottish Chiefs.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he was saying, &ldquo;she was the finest vessel on the coast. But when
      she missed stays, and before ever she hit the reef, the canoes started for
      her. There were five white men, a crew of twenty Santa Cruz boys and
      Samoans, and only the supercargo escaped. Besides, there were sixty
      recruits. They were all kai-kai'd. Kai-kai?&mdash;oh, I beg your pardon. I
      mean they were eaten. Then there was the James Edwards, a dandy-rigged&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      But at that moment there was a sharp oath from the mate on deck and a
      chorus of savage cries. A revolver went off three times, and then was
      heard a loud splash. Captain Hansen had sprung up the companionway on the
      instant, and Bertie's eyes had been fascinated by a glimpse of him drawing
      his revolver as he sprang.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bertie went up more circumspectly, hesitating before he put his head above
      the companionway slide. But nothing happened. The mate was shaking with
      excitement, his revolver in his hand. Once he startled, and half-jumped
      around, as if danger threatened his back.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;One of the natives fell overboard,&rdquo; he was saying, in a queer tense
      voice. &ldquo;He couldn't swim.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Who was it?&rdquo; the skipper demanded.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Auiki,&rdquo; was the answer.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But I say, you know, I heard shots,&rdquo; Bertie said, in trembling eagerness,
      for he scented adventure, and adventure that was happily over with.
    </p>
    <p>
      The mate whirled upon him, snarling:
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It's a damned lie. There ain't been a shot fired. The nigger fell
      overboard.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Captain Hansen regarded Bertie with unblinking, lack-luster eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I&mdash;I thought&mdash;&rdquo; Bertie was beginning.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Shots?&rdquo; said Captain Hansen, dreamily. &ldquo;Shots? Did you hear any shots,
      Mr. Jacobs?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Not a shot,&rdquo; replied Mr. Jacobs.
    </p>
    <p>
      The skipper looked at his guest triumphantly, and said:
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Evidently an accident. Let us go down, Mr. Arkwright, and finish dinner.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Bertie slept that night in the captain's cabin, a tiny stateroom off the
      main cabin. The for'ard bulkhead was decorated with a stand of rifles.
      Over the bunk were three more rifles. Under the bunk was a big drawer,
      which, when he pulled it out, he found filled with ammunition, dynamite,
      and several boxes of detonators. He elected to take the settee on the
      opposite side. Lying conspicuously on the small table, was the Arla's log.
      Bertie did not know that it had been especially prepared for the occasion
      by Captain Malu, and he read therein how on September 21, two boat's crew
      had fallen overboard and been drowned. Bertie read between the lines and
      knew better. He read how the Arla's whale boat had been bushwhacked at
      Su'u and had lost three men; of how the skipper discovered the cook
      stewing human flesh on the galley fire&mdash;flesh purchased by the boat's
      crew ashore in Fui; of how an accidental discharge of dynamite, while
      signaling, had killed another boat's crew; of night attacks; ports fled
      from between the dawns; attacks by bushmen in mangrove swamps and by
      fleets of salt-water men in the larger passages. One item that occurred
      with monotonous frequency was death by dysentery. He noticed with alarm
      that two white men had so died&mdash;guests, like himself, on the Arla.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I say, you know,&rdquo; Bertie said next day to Captain Hansen. &ldquo;I've been
      glancing through your log.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The skipper displayed quick vexation that the log had been left lying
      about.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And all that dysentery, you know, that's all rot, just like the
      accidental drownings,&rdquo; Bertie continued. &ldquo;What does dysentery really stand
      for?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The skipper openly admired his guest's acumen, stiffened himself to make
      indignant denial, then gracefully surrendered.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You see, it's like this, Mr. Arkwright. These islands have got a bad
      enough name as it is. It's getting harder every day to sign on white men.
      Suppose a man is killed. The company has to pay through the nose for
      another man to take the job. But if the man merely dies of sickness, it's
      all right. The new chums don't mind disease. What they draw the line at is
      being murdered. I thought the skipper of the Arla had died of dysentery
      when I took his billet. Then it was too late. I'd signed the contract.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; said Mr. Jacobs, &ldquo;there's altogether too many accidental
      drownings anyway. It don't look right. It's the fault of the government. A
      white man hasn't a chance to defend himself from the niggers.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes, look at the Princess and that Yankee mate,&rdquo; the skipper took up the
      tale. &ldquo;She carried five white men besides a government agent. The captain,
      the agent, and the supercargo were ashore in the two boats. They were
      killed to the last man. The mate and boson, with about fifteen of the crew&mdash;Samoans
      and Tongans&mdash;were on board. A crowd of niggers came off from shore.
      First thing the mate knew, the boson and the crew were killed in the first
      rush. The mate grabbed three cartridge belts and two Winchesters and
      skinned up to the cross-trees. He was the sole survivor, and you can't
      blame him for being mad. He pumped one rifle till it got so hot he
      couldn't hold it, then he pumped the other. The deck was black with
      niggers. He cleaned them out. He dropped them as they went over the rail,
      and he dropped them as fast as they picked up their paddles. Then they
      jumped into the water and started to swim for it, and being mad, he got
      half a dozen more. And what did he get for it?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Seven years in Fiji,&rdquo; snapped the mate.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The government said he wasn't justified in shooting after they'd taken to
      the water,&rdquo; the skipper explained.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And that's why they die of dysentery nowadays,&rdquo; the mate added.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Just fancy,&rdquo; said Bertie, as he felt a longing for the cruise to be over.
    </p>
    <p>
      Later on in the day he interviewed the black who had been pointed out to
      him as a cannibal. This fellow's name was Sumasai. He had spent three
      years on a Queensland plantation. He had been to Samoa, and Fiji, and
      Sydney; and as a boat's crew had been on recruiting schooners through New
      Britain, New Ireland, New Guinea, and the Admiralties. Also, he was a wag,
      and he had taken a line on his skipper's conduct. Yes, he had eaten many
      men. How many? He could not remember the tally. Yes, white men, too; they
      were very good, unless they were sick. He had once eaten a sick one.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;My word!&rdquo; he cried, at the recollection. &ldquo;Me sick plenty along him. My
      belly walk about too much.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Bertie shuddered, and asked about heads. Yes, Sumasai had several hidden
      ashore, in good condition, sun-dried, and smoke-cured. One was of the
      captain of a schooner. It had long whiskers. He would sell it for two
      quid. Black men's heads he would sell for one quid. He had some pickaninny
      heads, in poor condition, that he would let go for ten bob.
    </p>
    <p>
      Five minutes afterward, Bertie found himself sitting on the
      companionway-slide alongside a black with a horrible skin disease. He
      sheered off, and on inquiry was told that it was leprosy. He hurried below
      and washed himself with antiseptic soap. He took many antiseptic washes in
      the course of the day, for every native on board was afflicted with
      malignant ulcers of one sort or another.
    </p>
    <p>
      As the Arla drew in to an anchorage in the midst of mangrove swamps, a
      double row of barbed wire was stretched around above her rail. That looked
      like business, and when Bertie saw the shore canoes alongside, armed with
      spears, bows and arrows, and Sniders, he wished more earnestly than ever
      that the cruise was over.
    </p>
    <p>
      That evening the natives were slow in leaving the ship at sundown. A
      number of them checked the mate when he ordered them ashore. &ldquo;Never mind,
      I'll fix them,&rdquo; said Captain Hansen, diving below.
    </p>
    <p>
      When he came back, he showed Bertie a stick of dynamite attached to a fish
      hook. Now it happens that a paper-wrapped bottle of chlorodyne with a
      piece of harmless fuse projecting can fool anybody. It fooled Bertie, and
      it fooled the natives. When Captain Hansen lighted the fuse and hooked the
      fish hook into the tail end of a native's loin cloth, that native was
      smitten with so an ardent a desire for the shore that he forgot to shed
      the loin cloth. He started for'ard, the fuse sizzling and spluttering at
      his rear, the natives in his path taking headers over the barbed wire at
      every jump. Bertie was horror-stricken. So was Captain Hansen. He had
      forgotten his twenty-five recruits, on each of which he had paid thirty
      shillings advance. They went over the side along with the shore-dwelling
      folk and followed by him who trailed the sizzling chlorodyne bottle.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bertie did not see the bottle go off; but the mate opportunely discharging
      a stick of real dynamite aft where it would harm nobody, Bertie would have
      sworn in any admiralty court to a nigger blown to flinders. The flight of
      the twenty-five recruits had actually cost the Arla forty pounds, and,
      since they had taken to the bush, there was no hope of recovering them.
      The skipper and his mate proceeded to drown their sorrow in cold tea.
    </p>
    <p>
      The cold tea was in whiskey bottles, so Bertie did not know it was cold
      tea they were mopping up. All he knew was that the two men got very drunk
      and argued eloquently and at length as to whether the exploded nigger
      should be reported as a case of dysentery or as an accidental drowning.
      When they snored off to sleep, he was the only white man left, and he kept
      a perilous watch till dawn, in fear of an attack from shore and an
      uprising of the crew.
    </p>
    <p>
      Three more days the Arla spent on the coast, and three more nights the
      skipper and the mate drank overfondly of cold tea, leaving Bertie to keep
      the watch. They knew he could be depended upon, while he was equally
      certain that if he lived, he would report their drunken conduct to Captain
      Malu. Then the Arla dropped anchor at Reminge Plantation, on Guadalcanar,
      and Bertie landed on the beach with a sigh of relief and shook hands with
      the manager. Mr. Harriwell was ready for him.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Now you mustn't be alarmed if some of our fellows seem downcast,&rdquo; Mr.
      Harriwell said, having drawn him aside in confidence. &ldquo;There's been talk
      of an outbreak, and two or three suspicious signs I'm willing to admit,
      but personally I think it's all poppycock.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;How&mdash;how many blacks have you on the plantation?&rdquo; Bertie asked, with
      a sinking heart.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;We're working four hundred just now,&rdquo; replied Mr. Harriwell, cheerfully;
      &ldquo;but the three of us, with you, of course, and the skipper and mate of the
      Arla, can handle them all right.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Bertie turned to meet one McTavish, the storekeeper, who scarcely
      acknowledged the introduction, such was his eagerness to present his
      resignation.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It being that I'm a married man, Mr. Harriwell, I can't very well afford
      to remain on longer. Trouble is working up, as plain as the nose on your
      face. The niggers are going to break out, and there'll be another Hohono
      horror here.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What's a Hohono horror?&rdquo; Bertie asked, after the storekeeper had been
      persuaded to remain until the end of the month.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh, he means Hohono Plantation, on Ysabel,&rdquo; said the manager. &ldquo;The
      niggers killed the five white men ashore, captured the schooner, killed
      the captain and mate, and escaped in a body to Malaita. But I always said
      they were careless on Hohono. They won't catch us napping here. Come
      along, Mr. Arkwright, and see our view from the veranda.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Bertie was too busy wondering how he could get away to Tulagi to the
      Commissioner's house, to see much of the view. He was still wondering,
      when a rifle exploded very near to him, behind his back. At the same
      moment his arm was nearly dislocated, so eagerly did Mr. Harriwell drag
      him indoors.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I say, old man, that was a close shave,&rdquo; said the manager, pawing him
      over to see if he had been hit. &ldquo;I can't tell you how sorry I am. But it
      was broad daylight, and I never dreamed.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Bertie was beginning to turn pale.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;They got the other manager that way,&rdquo; McTavish vouchsafed. &ldquo;And a dashed
      fine chap he was. Blew his brains out all over the veranda. You noticed
      that dark stain there between the steps and the door?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Bertie was ripe for the cocktail which Mr. Harriwell pitched in and
      compounded for him; but before he could drink it, a man in riding trousers
      and puttees entered.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What's the matter now?&rdquo; the manager asked, after one look at the
      newcomer's face. &ldquo;Is the river up again?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;River be blowed&mdash;it's the niggers. Stepped out of the cane grass,
      not a dozen feet away, and whopped at me. It was a Snider, and he shot
      from the hip. Now what I want to know is where'd he get that Snider?&mdash;Oh,
      I beg pardon. Glad to know you, Mr. Arkwright.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Mr. Brown is my assistant,&rdquo; explained Mr. Harriwell. &ldquo;And now let's have
      that drink.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But where'd he get that Snider?&rdquo; Mr. Brown insisted. &ldquo;I always objected
      to keeping those guns on the premises.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;They're still there,&rdquo; Mr. Harriwell said, with a show of heat.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Brown smiled incredulously.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Come along and see,&rdquo; said the manager.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bertie joined the procession into the office, where Mr. Harriwell pointed
      triumphantly at a big packing case in a dusty corner.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Well, then where did the beggar get that Snider?&rdquo; harped Mr. Brown.
    </p>
    <p>
      But just then McTavish lifted the packing case. The manager started, then
      tore off the lid. The case was empty. They gazed at one another in
      horrified silence. Harriwell drooped wearily.
    </p>
    <p>
      Then McVeigh cursed.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What I contended all along&mdash;the house-boys are not to be trusted.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It does look serious,&rdquo; Harriwell admitted, &ldquo;but we'll come through it all
      right. What the sanguinary niggers need is a shaking up. Will you
      gentlemen please bring your rifles to dinner, and will you, Mr. Brown,
      kindly prepare forty or fifty sticks of dynamite. Make the fuses good and
      short. We'll give them a lesson. And now, gentlemen, dinner is served.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      One thing that Bertie detested was rice and curry, so it happened that he
      alone partook of an inviting omelet. He had quite finished his plate, when
      Harriwell helped himself to the omelet. One mouthful he tasted, then spat
      out vociferously.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;That's the second time,&rdquo; McTavish announced ominously.
    </p>
    <p>
      Harriwell was still hawking and spitting.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Second time, what?&rdquo; Bertie quavered.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Poison,&rdquo; was the answer. &ldquo;That cook will be hanged yet.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;That's the way the bookkeeper went out at Cape March,&rdquo; Brown spoke up.
      &ldquo;Died horribly. They said on the Jessie that they heard him screaming
      three miles away.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I'll put the cook in irons,&rdquo; sputtered Harriwell. &ldquo;Fortunately we
      discovered it in time.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Bertie sat paralyzed. There was no color in his face. He attempted to
      speak, but only an inarticulate gurgle resulted. All eyed him anxiously.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Don't say it, don't say it,&rdquo; McTavish cried in a tense voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes, I ate it, plenty of it, a whole plateful!&rdquo; Bertie cried explosively,
      like a diver suddenly regaining breath.
    </p>
    <p>
      The awful silence continued half a minute longer, and he read his fate in
      their eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Maybe it wasn't poison after all,&rdquo; said Harriwell, dismally.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Call in the cook,&rdquo; said Brown.
    </p>
    <p>
      In came the cook, a grinning black boy, nose-spiked and ear-plugged.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Here, you, Wi-wi, what name that?&rdquo; Harriwell bellowed, pointing
      accusingly at the omelet.
    </p>
    <p>
      Wi-wi was very naturally frightened and embarrassed.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Him good fella kai-kai,&rdquo; he murmured apologetically.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Make him eat it,&rdquo; suggested McTavish. &ldquo;That's a proper test.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Harriwell filled a spoon with the stuff and jumped for the cook, who fled
      in panic.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;That settles it,&rdquo; was Brown's solemn pronouncement. &ldquo;He won't eat it.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Mr. Brown, will you please go and put the irons on him?&rdquo; Harriwell turned
      cheerfully to Bertie. &ldquo;It's all right, old man, the Commissioner will deal
      with him, and if you die, depend upon it, he will be hanged.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Don't think the government'll do it,&rdquo; objected McTavish.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But gentlemen, gentlemen,&rdquo; Bertie cried. &ldquo;In the meantime think of me.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Harriwell shrugged his shoulders pityingly.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Sorry, old man, but it's a native poison, and there are no known
      antidotes for native poisons. Try and compose yourself and if&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Two sharp reports of a rifle from without, interrupted the discourse, and
      Brown, entering, reloaded his rifle and sat down to table.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The cook's dead,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Fever. A rather sudden attack.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I was just telling Mr. Arkwright that there are no antidotes for native
      poisons&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Except gin,&rdquo; said Brown.
    </p>
    <p>
      Harriwell called himself an absent-minded idiot and rushed for the gin
      bottle.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Neat, man, neat,&rdquo; he warned Bertie, who gulped down a tumbler two-thirds
      full of the raw spirits, and coughed and choked from the angry bite of it
      till the tears ran down his cheeks.
    </p>
    <p>
      Harriwell took his pulse and temperature, made a show of looking out for
      him, and doubted that the omelet had been poisoned. Brown and McTavish
      also doubted; but Bertie discerned an insincere ring in their voices. His
      appetite had left him, and he took his own pulse stealthily under the
      table. There was no question but what it was increasing, but he failed to
      ascribe it to the gin he had taken. McTavish, rifle in hand, went out on
      the veranda to reconnoiter.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;They're massing up at the cook-house,&rdquo; was his report. &ldquo;And they've no
      end of Sniders. My idea is to sneak around on the other side and take them
      in flank. Strike the first blow, you know. Will you come along, Brown?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Harriwell ate on steadily, while Bertie discovered that his pulse had
      leaped up five beats. Nevertheless, he could not help jumping when the
      rifles began to go off. Above the scattering of Sniders could be heard the
      pumping of Brown's and McTavish's Winchesters&mdash;all against a
      background of demoniacal screeching and yelling.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;They've got them on the run,&rdquo; Harriwell remarked, as voices and gunshots
      faded away in the distance.
    </p>
    <p>
      Scarcely were Brown and McTavish back at the table when the latter
      reconnoitered.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;They've got dynamite,&rdquo; he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Then let's charge them with dynamite,&rdquo; Harriwell proposed.
    </p>
    <p>
      Thrusting half a dozen sticks each into their pockets and equipping
      themselves with lighted cigars, they started for the door. And just then
      it happened. They blamed McTavish for it afterward, and he admitted that
      the charge had been a trifle excessive. But at any rate it went off under
      the house, which lifted up cornerwise and settled back on its foundations.
      Half the china on the table was shattered, while the eight-day clock
      stopped. Yelling for vengeance, the three men rushed out into the night,
      and the bombardment began.
    </p>
    <p>
      When they returned, there was no Bertie. He had dragged himself away to
      the office, barricaded himself in, and sunk upon the floor in a gin-soaked
      nightmare, wherein he died a thousand deaths while the valorous fight went
      on around him. In the morning, sick and headachey from the gin, he crawled
      out to find the sun still in the sky and God presumable in heaven, for his
      hosts were alive and uninjured.
    </p>
    <p>
      Harriwell pressed him to stay on longer, but Bertie insisted on sailing
      immediately on the Arla for Tulagi, where, until the following steamer
      day, he stuck close by the Commissioner's house. There were lady tourists
      on the outgoing steamer, and Bertie was again a hero, while Captain Malu,
      as usual, passed unnoticed. But Captain Malu sent back from Sydney two
      cases of the best Scotch whiskey on the market, for he was not able to
      make up his mind as to whether it was Captain Hansen or Mr Harriwell who
      had given Bertie Arkwright the more gorgeous insight into life in the
      Solomons.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      THE INEVITABLE WHITE MAN
    </h2>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The black will never understand the white, nor the white the black, as
      long as black is black and white is white.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      So said Captain Woodward. We sat in the parlor of Charley Roberts' pub in
      Apia, drinking long Abu Hameds compounded and shared with us by the
      aforesaid Charley Roberts, who claimed the recipe direct from Stevens,
      famous for having invented the Abu Hamed at a time when he was spurred on
      by Nile thirst&mdash;the Stevens who was responsible for &ldquo;With Kitchener
      to Kartoun,&rdquo; and who passed out at the siege of Ladysmith.
    </p>
    <p>
      Captain Woodward, short and squat, elderly, burned by forty years of
      tropic sun, and with the most beautiful liquid brown eyes I ever saw in a
      man, spoke from a vast experience. The crisscross of scars on his bald
      pate bespoke a tomahawk intimacy with the black, and of equal intimacy was
      the advertisement, front and rear, on the right side of his neck, where an
      arrow had at one time entered and been pulled clean through. As he
      explained, he had been in a hurry on that occasion&mdash;the arrow impeded
      his running&mdash;and he felt that he could not take the time to break off
      the head and pull out the shaft the way it had come in. At the present
      moment he was commander of the SAVAII, the big steamer that recruited
      labor from the westward for the German plantations on Samoa.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Half the trouble is the stupidity of the whites,&rdquo; said Roberts, pausing
      to take a swig from his glass and to curse the Samoan bar-boy in
      affectionate terms. &ldquo;If the white man would lay himself out a bit to
      understand the workings of the black man's mind, most of the messes would
      be avoided.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I've seen a few who claimed they understood niggers,&rdquo; Captain Woodward
      retorted, &ldquo;and I always took notice that they were the first to be
      kai-kai'd (eaten). Look at the missionaries in New Guinea and the New
      Hebrides&mdash;the martyr isle of Erromanga and all the rest. Look at the
      Austrian expedition that was cut to pieces in the Solomons, in the bush of
      Guadalcanar. And look at the traders themselves, with a score of years'
      experience, making their brag that no nigger would ever get them, and
      whose heads to this day are ornamenting the rafters of the canoe houses.
      There was old Johnny Simons&mdash;twenty-six years on the raw edges of
      Melanesia, swore he knew the niggers like a book and that they'd never do
      for him, and he passed out at Marovo Lagoon, New Georgia, had his head
      sawed off by a black Mary (woman) and an old nigger with only one leg,
      having left the other leg in the mouth of a shark while diving for
      dynamited fish. There was Billy Watts, horrible reputation as a nigger
      killer, a man to scare the devil. I remember lying at Cape Little, New
      Ireland you know, when the niggers stole half a case of trade-tobacco&mdash;cost
      him about three dollars and a half. In retaliation he turned out, shot six
      niggers, smashed up their war canoes and burned two villages. And it was
      at Cape Little, four years afterward, that he was jumped along with fifty
      Buku boys he had with him fishing bêche-de-mer. In five minutes they were
      all dead, with the exception of three boys who got away in a canoe. Don't
      talk to me about understanding the nigger. The white man's mission is to
      farm the world, and it's a big enough job cut out for him. What time has
      he got left to understand niggers anyway?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Just so,&rdquo; said Roberts. &ldquo;And somehow it doesn't seem necessary, after
      all, to understand the niggers. In direct proportion to the white man's
      stupidity is his success in farming the world&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And putting the fear of God into the nigger's heart,&rdquo; Captain Woodward
      blurted out. &ldquo;Perhaps you're right, Roberts. Perhaps it's his stupidity
      that makes him succeed, and surely one phase of his stupidity is his
      inability to understand the niggers. But there's one thing sure, the white
      has to run the niggers whether he understands them or not. It's
      inevitable. It's fate.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And of course the white man is inevitable&mdash;it's the niggers' fate,&rdquo;
       Roberts broke in. &ldquo;Tell the white man there's pearl shell in some lagoon
      infested by ten-thousand howling cannibals, and he'll head there all by
      his lonely, with half a dozen kanaka divers and a tin alarm clock for
      chronometer, all packed like sardines on a commodious, five-ton ketch.
      Whisper that there's a gold strike at the North Pole, and that same
      inevitable white-skinned creature will set out at once, armed with pick
      and shovel, a side of bacon, and the latest patent rocker&mdash;and what's
      more, he'll get there. Tip it off to him that there's diamonds on the
      red-hot ramparts of hell, and Mr. White Man will storm the ramparts and
      set old Satan himself to pick-and-shovel work. That's what comes of being
      stupid and inevitable.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But I wonder what the black man must think of the&mdash;the
      inevitableness,&rdquo; I said.
    </p>
    <p>
      Captain Woodward broke into quiet laughter. His eyes had a reminiscent
      gleam.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I'm just wondering what the niggers of Malu thought and still must be
      thinking of the one inevitable white man we had on board when we visited
      them in the DUCHESS,&rdquo; he explained.
    </p>
    <p>
      Roberts mixed three more Abu Hameds.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;That was twenty years ago. Saxtorph was his name. He was certainly the
      most stupid man I ever saw, but he was as inevitable as death. There was
      only one thing that chap could do, and that was shoot. I remember the
      first time I ran into him&mdash;right here in Apia, twenty years ago. That
      was before your time, Roberts. I was sleeping at Dutch Henry's hotel, down
      where the market is now. Ever heard of him? He made a tidy stake smuggling
      arms in to the rebels, sold out his hotel, and was killed in Sydney just
      six weeks afterward in a saloon row.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But Saxtorph. One night I'd just got to sleep, when a couple of cats
      began to sing in the courtyard. It was out of bed and up window, water jug
      in hand. But just then I heard the window of the next room go up. Two
      shots were fired, and the window was closed. I fail to impress you with
      the celerity of the transaction. Ten seconds at the outside. Up went the
      window, bang bang went the revolver, and down went the window. Whoever it
      was, he had never stopped to see the effect of his shots. He knew. Do you
      follow me?&mdash;he KNEW. There was no more cat concert, and in the
      morning there lay the two offenders, stone dead. It was marvelous to me.
      It still is marvelous. First, it was starlight, and Saxtorph shot without
      drawing a bead; next, he shot so rapidly that the two reports were like a
      double report; and finally, he knew he had hit his marks without looking
      to see.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Two days afterward he came on board to see me. I was mate, then, on the
      Duchess, a whacking big one-hundred-and fifty-ton schooner, a blackbirder.
      And let me tell you that blackbirders were blackbirders in those days.
      There weren't any government protection for US, either. It was rough work,
      give and take, if we were finished, and nothing said, and we ran niggers
      from every south sea island they didn't kick us off from. Well, Saxtorph
      came on board, John Saxtorph was the name he gave. He was a sandy little
      man, hair sandy, complexion sandy, and eyes sandy, too. Nothing striking
      about him. His soul was as neutral as his color scheme. He said he was
      strapped and wanted to ship on board. Would go cabin boy, cook,
      supercargo, or common sailor. Didn't know anything about any of the
      billets, but said that he was willing to learn. I didn't want him, but his
      shooting had so impressed me that I took him as common sailor, wages three
      pounds per month.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;He was willing to learn all right, I'll say that much. But he was
      constitutionally unable to learn anything. He could no more box the
      compass than I could mix drinks like Roberts here. And as for steering, he
      gave me my first gray hairs. I never dared risk him at the wheel when we
      were running in a big sea, while full-and-by and close-and-by were
      insoluble mysteries. Couldn't ever tell the difference between a sheet and
      a tackle, simply couldn't. The fore-throat-jig and the jib-jig were all
      one to him. Tell him to slack off the mainsheet, and before you know it,
      he'd drop the peak. He fell overboard three times, and he couldn't swim.
      But he was always cheerful, never seasick, and he was the most willing man
      I ever knew. He was an uncommunicative soul. Never talked about himself.
      His history, so far as we were concerned, began the day he signed on the
      DUCHESS. Where he learned to shoot, the stars alone can tell. He was a
      Yankee&mdash;that much we knew from the twang in his speech. And that was
      all we ever did know.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And now we begin to get to the point. We had bad luck in the New
      Hebrides, only fourteen boys for five weeks, and we ran up before the
      southeast for the Solomons. Malaita, then as now, was good recruiting
      ground, and we ran into Malu, on the northwestern corner. There's a shore
      reef and an outer reef, and a mighty nervous anchorage; but we made it all
      right and fired off our dynamite as a signal to the niggers to come down
      and be recruited. In three days we got not a boy. The niggers came off to
      us in their canoes by hundreds, but they only laughed when we showed them
      beads and calico and hatchets and talked of the delights of plantation
      work in Samoa.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;On the fourth day there came a change. Fifty-odd boys signed on and were
      billeted in the main-hold, with the freedom of the deck, of course. And of
      course, looking back, this wholesale signing on was suspicious, but at the
      time we thought some powerful chief had removed the ban against
      recruiting. The morning of the fifth day our two boats went ashore as
      usual&mdash;one to cover the other, you know, in case of trouble. And, as
      usual, the fifty niggers on board were on deck, loafing, talking, smoking,
      and sleeping. Saxtorph and myself, along with four other sailors, were all
      that were left on board. The two boats were manned with Gilbert Islanders.
      In the one were the captain, the supercargo, and the recruiter. In the
      other, which was the covering boat and which lay off shore a hundred
      yards, was the second mate. Both boats were well-armed, though trouble was
      little expected.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Four of the sailors, including Saxtorph, were scraping the poop rail. The
      fifth sailor, rifle in hand, was standing guard by the water-tank just
      for'ard of the mainmast. I was for'ard, putting in the finishing licks on
      a new jaw for the fore-gaff. I was just reaching for my pipe where I had
      laid it down, when I heard a shot from shore. I straightened up to look.
      Something struck me on the back of the head, partially stunning me and
      knocking me to the deck. My first thought was that something had carried
      away aloft; but even as I went down, and before I struck the deck, I heard
      the devil's own tattoo of rifles from the boats, and twisting sidewise, I
      caught a glimpse of the sailor who was standing guard. Two big niggers
      were holding his arms, and a third nigger from behind was braining him
      with a tomahawk.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I can see it now, the water-tank, the mainmast, the gang hanging on to
      him, the hatchet descending on the back of his head, and all under the
      blazing sunlight. I was fascinated by that growing vision of death. The
      tomahawk seemed to take a horribly long time to come down. I saw it land,
      and the man's legs give under him as he crumpled. The niggers held him up
      by sheer strength while he was hacked a couple of times more. Then I got
      two more hacks on the head and decided that I was dead. So did the brute
      that was hacking me. I was too helpless to move, and I lay there and
      watched them removing the sentry's head. I must say they did it slick
      enough. They were old hands at the business.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The rifle firing from the boats had ceased, and I made no doubt that they
      were finished off and that the end had come to everything. It was only a
      matter of moments when they would return for my head. They were evidently
      taking the heads from the sailors aft. Heads are valuable on Malaita,
      especially white heads. They have the place of honor in the canoe houses
      of the salt-water natives. What particular decorative effect the bushmen
      get out of them I didn't know, but they prize them just as much as the
      salt-water crowd.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I had a dim notion of escaping, and I crawled on hands and knees to the
      winch, where I managed to drag myself to my feet. From there I could look
      aft and see three heads on top the cabin&mdash;the heads of three sailors
      I had given orders to for months. The niggers saw me standing, and started
      for me. I reached for my revolver, and found they had taken it. I can't
      say that I was scared. I've been near to death several times, but it never
      seemed easier than right then. I was half-stunned, and nothing seemed to
      matter.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The leading nigger had armed himself with a cleaver from the galley, and
      he grimaced like an ape as he prepared to slice me down. But the slice was
      never made. He went down on the deck all of a heap, and I saw the blood
      gush from his mouth. In a dim way I heard a rifle go off and continue to
      go off. Nigger after nigger went down. My senses began to clear, and I
      noted that there was never a miss. Every time that the rifle went off a
      nigger dropped. I sat down on deck beside the winch and looked up. Perched
      in the crosstrees was Saxtorph. How he had managed it I can't imagine, for
      he had carried up with him two Winchesters and I don't know how many
      bandoliers of ammunition; and he was now doing the one only thing in this
      world that he was fitted to do.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I've seen shooting and slaughter, but I never saw anything like that. I
      sat by the winch and watched the show. I was weak and faint, and it seemed
      to be all a dream. Bang, bang, bang, bang, went his rifle, and thud, thud,
      thud, thud, went the niggers to the deck. It was amazing to see them go
      down. After their first rush to get me, when about a dozen had dropped,
      they seemed paralyzed; but he never left off pumping his gun. By this time
      canoes and the two boats arrived from shore, armed with Sniders, and with
      Winchesters which they had captured in the boats. The fusillade they let
      loose on Saxtorph was tremendous. Luckily for him the niggers are only
      good at close range. They are not used to putting the gun to their
      shoulders. They wait until they are right on top of a man, and then they
      shoot from the hip. When his rifle got too hot, Saxtorph changed off. That
      had been his idea when he carried two rifles up with him.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The astounding thing was the rapidity of his fire. Also, he never made a
      miss. If ever anything was inevitable, that man was. It was the swiftness
      of it that made the slaughter so appalling. The niggers did not have time
      to think. When they did manage to think, they went over the side in a
      rush, capsizing the canoes of course. Saxtorph never let up. The water was
      covered with them, and plump, plump, plump, he dropped his bullets into
      them. Not a single miss, and I could hear distinctly the thud of every
      bullet as it buried in human flesh.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The niggers spread out and headed for the shore, swimming. The water was
      carpeted with bobbing heads, and I stood up, as in a dream, and watched it
      all&mdash;the bobbing heads and the heads that ceased to bob. Some of the
      long shots were magnificent. Only one man reached the beach, but as he
      stood up to wade ashore, Saxtorph got him. It was beautiful. And when a
      couple of niggers ran down to drag him out of the water, Saxtorph got
      them, too.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I thought everything was over then, when I heard the rifle go off again.
      A nigger had come out of the cabin companion on the run for the rail and
      gone down in the middle of it. The cabin must have been full of them. I
      counted twenty. They came up one at a time and jumped for the rail. But
      they never got there. It reminded me of trapshooting. A black body would
      pop out of the companion, bang would go Saxtorph's rifle, and down would
      go the black body. Of course, those below did not know what was happening
      on deck, so they continued to pop out until the last one was finished off.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Saxtorph waited a while to make sure, and then came down on deck. He and
      I were all that were left of the DUCHESS'S complement, and I was pretty
      well to the bad, while he was helpless now that the shooting was over.
      Under my direction he washed out my scalp wounds and sewed them up. A big
      drink of whiskey braced me to make an effort to get out. There was nothing
      else to do. All the rest were dead. We tried to get up sail, Saxtorph
      hoisting and I holding the turn. He was once more the stupid lubber. He
      couldn't hoist worth a cent, and when I fell in a faint, it looked all up
      with us.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;When I came to, Saxtorph was sitting helplessly on the rail, waiting to
      ask me what he should do. I told him to overhaul the wounded and see if
      there were any able to crawl. He gathered together six. One, I remember,
      had a broken leg; but Saxtorph said his arms were all right. I lay in the
      shade, brushing the flies off and directing operations, while Saxtorph
      bossed his hospital gang. I'll be blessed if he didn't make those poor
      niggers heave at every rope on the pin-rails before he found the halyards.
      One of them let go the rope in the midst of the hoisting and slipped down
      to the deck dead; but Saxtorph hammered the others and made them stick by
      the job. When the fore and main were up, I told him to knock the shackle
      out of the anchor chain and let her go. I had had myself helped aft to the
      wheel, where I was going to make a shift at steering. I can't guess how he
      did it, but instead of knocking the shackle out, down went the second
      anchor, and there we were doubly moored.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;In the end he managed to knock both shackles out and raise the staysail
      and jib, and the Duchess filled away for the entrance. Our decks were a
      spectacle. Dead and dying niggers were everywhere. They were wedged away
      some of them in the most inconceivable places. The cabin was full of them
      where they had crawled off the deck and cashed in. I put Saxtorph and his
      graveyard gang to work heaving them overside, and over they went, the
      living and the dead. The sharks had fat pickings that day. Of course our
      four murdered sailors went the same way. Their heads, however, we put in a
      sack with weights, so that by no chance should they drift on the beach and
      fall into the hands of the niggers.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Our five prisoners I decided to use as crew, but they decided otherwise.
      They watched their opportunity and went over the side. Saxtorph got two in
      mid-air with his revolver, and would have shot the other three in the
      water if I hadn't stopped him. I was sick of the slaughter, you see, and
      besides, they'd helped work the schooner out. But it was mercy thrown
      away, for the sharks got the three of them.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I had brain fever or something after we got clear of the land. Anyway,
      the DUCHESS lay hove to for three weeks, when I pulled myself together and
      we jogged on with her to Sydney. Anyway those niggers of Malu learned the
      everlasting lesson that it is not good to monkey with a white man. In
      their case, Saxtorph was certainly inevitable.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Charley Roberts emitted a long whistle and said:
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Well I should say so. But whatever became of Saxtorph?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;He drifted into seal hunting and became a crackerjack. For six years he
      was high line of both the Victoria and San Francisco fleets. The seventh
      year his schooner was seized in Bering Sea by a Russian cruiser, and all
      hands, so the talk went, were slammed into the Siberian salt mines. At
      least I've never heard of him since.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Farming the world,&rdquo; Roberts muttered. &ldquo;Farming the world. Well here's to
      them. Somebody's got to do it&mdash;farm the world, I mean.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Captain Woodward rubbed the criss-crosses on his bald head.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I've done my share of it,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Forty years now. This will be my
      last trip. Then I'm going home to stay.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I'll wager the wine you don't,&rdquo; Roberts challenged. &ldquo;You'll die in the
      harness, not at home.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Captain Woodward promptly accepted the bet, but personally I think Charley
      Roberts has the best of it.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      THE SEED OF McCOY
    </h2>
    <p>
      The Pyrenees, her iron sides pressed low in the water by her cargo of
      wheat, rolled sluggishly, and made it easy for the man who was climbing
      aboard from out a tiny outrigger canoe. As his eyes came level with the
      rail, so that he could see inboard, it seemed to him that he saw a dim,
      almost indiscernible haze. It was more like an illusion, like a blurring
      film that had spread abruptly over his eyes. He felt an inclination to
      brush it away, and the same instant he thought that he was growing old and
      that it was time to send to San Francisco for a pair of spectacles.
    </p>
    <p>
      As he came over the rail he cast a glance aloft at the tall masts, and,
      next, at the pumps. They were not working. There seemed nothing the matter
      with the big ship, and he wondered why she had hoisted the signal of
      distress. He thought of his happy islanders, and hoped it was not disease.
      Perhaps the ship was short of water or provisions. He shook hands with the
      captain whose gaunt face and care-worn eyes made no secret of the trouble,
      whatever it was. At the same moment the newcomer was aware of a faint,
      indefinable smell. It seemed like that of burnt bread, but different.
    </p>
    <p>
      He glanced curiously about him. Twenty feet away a weary-faced sailor was
      calking the deck. As his eyes lingered on the man, he saw suddenly arise
      from under his hands a faint spiral of haze that curled and twisted and
      was gone. By now he had reached the deck. His bare feet were pervaded by a
      dull warmth that quickly penetrated the thick calluses. He knew now the
      nature of the ship's distress. His eyes roved swiftly forward, where the
      full crew of weary-faced sailors regarded him eagerly. The glance from his
      liquid brown eyes swept over them like a benediction, soothing them,
      rapping them about as in the mantle of a great peace. &ldquo;How long has she
      been afire, Captain?&rdquo; he asked in a voice so gentle and unperturbed that
      it was as the cooing of a dove.
    </p>
    <p>
      At first the captain felt the peace and content of it stealing in upon
      him; then the consciousness of all that he had gone through and was going
      through smote him, and he was resentful. By what right did this ragged
      beachcomber, in dungaree trousers and a cotton shirt, suggest such a thing
      as peace and content to him and his overwrought, exhausted soul? The
      captain did not reason this; it was the unconscious process of emotion
      that caused his resentment.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Fifteen days,&rdquo; he answered shortly. &ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;My name is McCoy,&rdquo; came the answer in tones that breathed tenderness and
      compassion.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I mean, are you the pilot?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      McCoy passed the benediction of his gaze over the tall, heavy-shouldered
      man with the haggard, unshaven face who had joined the captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I am as much a pilot as anybody,&rdquo; was McCoy's answer. &ldquo;We are all pilots
      here, Captain, and I know every inch of these waters.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      But the captain was impatient.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What I want is some of the authorities. I want to talk with them, and
      blame quick.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Then I'll do just as well.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Again that insidious suggestion of peace, and his ship a raging furnace
      beneath his feet! The captain's eyebrows lifted impatiently and nervously,
      and his fist clenched as if he were about to strike a blow with it.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Who in hell are you?&rdquo; he demanded.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I am the chief magistrate,&rdquo; was the reply in a voice that was still the
      softest and gentlest imaginable.
    </p>
    <p>
      The tall, heavy-shouldered man broke out in a harsh laugh that was partly
      amusement, but mostly hysterical. Both he and the captain regarded McCoy
      with incredulity and amazement. That this barefooted beachcomber should
      possess such high-sounding dignity was inconceivable. His cotton shirt,
      unbuttoned, exposed a grizzled chest and the fact that there was no
      undershirt beneath.
    </p>
    <p>
      A worn straw hat failed to hide the ragged gray hair. Halfway down his
      chest descended an untrimmed patriarchal beard. In any slop shop, two
      shillings would have outfitted him complete as he stood before them.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Any relation to the McCoy of the Bounty?&rdquo; the captain asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;He was my great-grandfather.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; the captain said, then bethought himself. &ldquo;My name is Davenport, and
      this is my first mate, Mr. Konig.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      They shook hands.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And now to business.&rdquo; The captain spoke quickly, the urgency of a great
      haste pressing his speech. &ldquo;We've been on fire for over two weeks. She's
      ready to break all hell loose any moment. That's why I held for Pitcairn.
      I want to beach her, or scuttle her, and save the hull.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Then you made a mistake, Captain,&rdquo; said McCoy. &ldquo;You should have slacked
      away for Mangareva. There's a beautiful beach there, in a lagoon where the
      water is like a mill pond.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But we're here, ain't we?&rdquo; the first mate demanded. &ldquo;That's the point.
      We're here, and we've got to do something.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      McCoy shook his head kindly.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You can do nothing here. There is no beach. There isn't even anchorage.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Gammon!&rdquo; said the mate. &ldquo;Gammon!&rdquo; he repeated loudly, as the captain
      signaled him to be more soft spoken. &ldquo;You can't tell me that sort of
      stuff. Where d'ye keep your own boats, hey&mdash;your schooner, or cutter,
      or whatever you have? Hey? Answer me that.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      McCoy smiled as gently as he spoke. His smile was a caress, an embrace
      that surrounded the tired mate and sought to draw him into the quietude
      and rest of McCoy's tranquil soul.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;We have no schooner or cutter,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;And we carry our canoes to
      the top of the cliff.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You've got to show me,&rdquo; snorted the mate. &ldquo;How d'ye get around to the
      other islands, heh? Tell me that.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;We don't get around. As governor of Pitcairn, I sometimes go. When I was
      younger, I was away a great deal&mdash;sometimes on the trading schooners,
      but mostly on the missionary brig. But she's gone now, and we depend on
      passing vessels. Sometimes we have had as high as six calls in one year.
      At other times, a year, and even longer, has gone by without one passing
      ship. Yours is the first in seven months.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And you mean to tell me&mdash;&rdquo; the mate began.
    </p>
    <p>
      But Captain Davenport interfered.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Enough of this. We're losing time. What is to be done, Mr. McCoy?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The old man turned his brown eyes, sweet as a woman's, shoreward, and both
      captain and mate followed his gaze around from the lonely rock of Pitcairn
      to the crew clustering forward and waiting anxiously for the announcement
      of a decision. McCoy did not hurry. He thought smoothly and slowly, step
      by step, with the certitude of a mind that was never vexed or outraged by
      life.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The wind is light now,&rdquo; he said finally. &ldquo;There is a heavy current
      setting to the westward.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;That's what made us fetch to leeward,&rdquo; the captain interrupted, desiring
      to vindicate his seamanship.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes, that is what fetched you to leeward,&rdquo; McCoy went on. &ldquo;Well, you
      can't work up against this current today. And if you did, there is no
      beach. Your ship will be a total loss.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He paused, and captain and mate looked despair at each other.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But I will tell you what you can do. The breeze will freshen tonight
      around midnight&mdash;see those tails of clouds and that thickness to
      windward, beyond the point there? That's where she'll come from, out of
      the southeast, hard. It is three hundred miles to Mangareva. Square away
      for it. There is a beautiful bed for your ship there.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The mate shook his head.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Come in to the cabin, and we'll look at the chart,&rdquo; said the captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      McCoy found a stifling, poisonous atmosphere in the pent cabin. Stray
      waftures of invisible gases bit his eyes and made them sting. The deck was
      hotter, almost unbearably hot to his bare feet. The sweat poured out of
      his body. He looked almost with apprehension about him. This malignant,
      internal heat was astounding. It was a marvel that the cabin did not burst
      into flames. He had a feeling as if of being in a huge bake oven where the
      heat might at any moment increase tremendously and shrivel him up like a
      blade of grass.
    </p>
    <p>
      As he lifted one foot and rubbed the hot sole against the leg of his
      trousers, the mate laughed in a savage, snarling fashion.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The anteroom of hell,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Hell herself is right down there under
      your feet.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It's hot!&rdquo; McCoy cried involuntarily, mopping his face with a bandana
      handkerchief.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Here's Mangareva,&rdquo; the captain said, bending over the table and pointing
      to a black speck in the midst of the white blankness of the chart. &ldquo;And
      here, in between, is another island. Why not run for that?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      McCoy did not look at the chart.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;That's Crescent Island,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;It is uninhabited, and it is only
      two or three feet above water. Lagoon, but no entrance. No, Mangareva is
      the nearest place for your purpose.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Mangareva it is, then,&rdquo; said Captain Davenport, interrupting the mate's
      growling objection. &ldquo;Call the crew aft, Mr. Konig.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The sailors obeyed, shuffling wearily along the deck and painfully
      endeavoring to make haste. Exhaustion was evident in every movement. The
      cook came out of his galley to hear, and the cabin boy hung about near
      him.
    </p>
    <p>
      When Captain Davenport had explained the situation and announced his
      intention of running for Mangareva, an uproar broke out. Against a
      background of throaty rumbling arose inarticulate cries of rage, with here
      and there a distinct curse, or word, or phrase. A shrill Cockney voice
      soared and dominated for a moment, crying: &ldquo;Gawd! After bein' in ell for
      fifteen days&mdash;an' now e wants us to sail this floatin' ell to sea
      again?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The captain could not control them, but McCoy's gentle presence seemed to
      rebuke and calm them, and the muttering and cursing died away, until the
      full crew, save here and there an anxious face directed at the captain,
      yearned dumbly toward the green clad peaks and beetling coast of Pitcairn.
    </p>
    <p>
      Soft as a spring zephyr was the voice of McCoy:
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Captain, I thought I heard some of them say they were starving.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Ay,&rdquo; was the answer, &ldquo;and so we are. I've had a sea biscuit and a
      spoonful of salmon in the last two days. We're on whack. You see, when we
      discovered the fire, we battened down immediately to suffocate the fire.
      And then we found how little food there was in the pantry. But it was too
      late. We didn't dare break out the lazarette. Hungry? I'm just as hungry
      as they are.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He spoke to the men again, and again the throat rumbling and cursing
      arose, their faces convulsed and animal-like with rage. The second and
      third mates had joined the captain, standing behind him at the break of
      the poop. Their faces were set and expressionless; they seemed bored, more
      than anything else, by this mutiny of the crew. Captain Davenport glanced
      questioningly at his first mate, and that person merely shrugged his
      shoulders in token of his helplessness.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; the captain said to McCoy, &ldquo;you can't compel sailors to leave
      the safe land and go to sea on a burning vessel. She has been their
      floating coffin for over two weeks now. They are worked out, and starved
      out, and they've got enough of her. We'll beat up for Pitcairn.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      But the wind was light, the Pyrenees' bottom was foul, and she could not
      beat up against the strong westerly current. At the end of two hours she
      had lost three miles. The sailors worked eagerly, as if by main strength
      they could compel the PYRENEES against the adverse elements. But steadily,
      port tack and starboard tack, she sagged off to the westward. The captain
      paced restlessly up and down, pausing occasionally to survey the vagrant
      smoke wisps and to trace them back to the portions of the deck from which
      they sprang. The carpenter was engaged constantly in attempting to locate
      such places, and, when he succeeded, in calking them tighter and tighter.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Well, what do you think?&rdquo; the captain finally asked McCoy, who was
      watching the carpenter with all a child's interest and curiosity in his
      eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      McCoy looked shoreward, where the land was disappearing in the thickening
      haze.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I think it would be better to square away for Mangareva. With that breeze
      that is coming, you'll be there tomorrow evening.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But what if the fire breaks out? It is liable to do it any moment.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Have your boats ready in the falls. The same breeze will carry your boats
      to Mangareva if the ship burns out from under.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Captain Davenport debated for a moment, and then McCoy heard the question
      he had not wanted to hear, but which he knew was surely coming.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I have no chart of Mangareva. On the general chart it is only a fly
      speck. I would not know where to look for the entrance into the lagoon.
      Will you come along and pilot her in for me?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      McCoy's serenity was unbroken.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes, Captain,&rdquo; he said, with the same quiet unconcern with which he would
      have accepted an invitation to dinner; &ldquo;I'll go with you to Mangareva.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Again the crew was called aft, and the captain spoke to them from the
      break of the poop.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;We've tried to work her up, but you see how we've lost ground. She's
      setting off in a two-knot current. This gentleman is the Honorable McCoy,
      Chief Magistrate and Governor of Pitcairn Island. He will come along with
      us to Mangareva. So you see the situation is not so dangerous. He would
      not make such an offer if he thought he was going to lose his life.
      Besides, whatever risk there is, if he of his own free will come on board
      and take it, we can do no less. What do you say for Mangareva?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      This time there was no uproar. McCoy's presence, the surety and calm that
      seemed to radiate from him, had had its effect. They conferred with one
      another in low voices. There was little urging. They were virtually
      unanimous, and they shoved the Cockney out as their spokesman. That worthy
      was overwhelmed with consciousness of the heroism of himself and his
      mates, and with flashing eyes he cried:
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;By Gawd! If 'e will, we will!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The crew mumbled its assent and started forward.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;One moment, Captain,&rdquo; McCoy said, as the other was turning to give orders
      to the mate. &ldquo;I must go ashore first.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Konig was thunderstruck, staring at McCoy as if he were a madman.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Go ashore!&rdquo; the captain cried. &ldquo;What for? It will take you three hours to
      get there in your canoe.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      McCoy measured the distance of the land away, and nodded.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes, it is six now. I won't get ashore till nine. The people cannot be
      assembled earlier than ten. As the breeze freshens up tonight, you can
      begin to work up against it, and pick me up at daylight tomorrow morning.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;In the name of reason and common sense,&rdquo; the captain burst forth, &ldquo;what
      do you want to assemble the people for? Don't you realize that my ship is
      burning beneath me?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      McCoy was as placid as a summer sea, and the other's anger produced not
      the slightest ripple upon it.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes, Captain,&rdquo; he cooed in his dove-like voice. &ldquo;I do realize that your
      ship is burning. That is why I am going with you to Mangareva. But I must
      get permission to go with you. It is our custom. It is an important matter
      when the governor leaves the island. The people's interests are at stake,
      and so they have the right to vote their permission or refusal. But they
      will give it, I know that.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Are you sure?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Quite sure.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Then if you know they will give it, why bother with getting it? Think of
      the delay&mdash;a whole night.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It is our custom,&rdquo; was the imperturbable reply. &ldquo;Also, I am the governor,
      and I must make arrangements for the conduct of the island during my
      absence.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But it is only a twenty-four hour run to Mangareva,&rdquo; the captain
      objected. &ldquo;Suppose it took you six times that long to return to windward;
      that would bring you back by the end of a week.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      McCoy smiled his large, benevolent smile.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Very few vessels come to Pitcairn, and when they do, they are usually
      from San Francisco or from around the Horn. I shall be fortunate if I get
      back in six months. I may be away a year, and I may have to go to San
      Francisco in order to find a vessel that will bring me back. My father
      once left Pitcairn to be gone three months, and two years passed before he
      could get back. Then, too, you are short of food. If you have to take to
      the boats, and the weather comes up bad, you may be days in reaching land.
      I can bring off two canoe loads of food in the morning. Dried bananas will
      be best. As the breeze freshens, you beat up against it. The nearer you
      are, the bigger loads I can bring off. Goodby.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He held out his hand. The captain shook it, and was reluctant to let go.
      He seemed to cling to it as a drowning sailor clings to a life buoy.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;How do I know you will come back in the morning?&rdquo; he asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes, that's it!&rdquo; cried the mate. &ldquo;How do we know but what he's skinning
      out to save his own hide?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      McCoy did not speak. He looked at them sweetly and benignantly, and it
      seemed to them that they received a message from his tremendous certitude
      of soul.
    </p>
    <p>
      The captain released his hand, and, with a last sweeping glance that
      embraced the crew in its benediction, McCoy went over the rail and
      descended into his canoe.
    </p>
    <p>
      The wind freshened, and the Pyrenees, despite the foulness of her bottom,
      won half a dozen miles away from the westerly current. At daylight, with
      Pitcairn three miles to windward, Captain Davenport made out two canoes
      coming off to him. Again McCoy clambered up the side and dropped over the
      rail to the hot deck. He was followed by many packages of dried bananas,
      each package wrapped in dry leaves.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Now, Captain,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;swing the yards and drive for dear life. You
      see, I am no navigator,&rdquo; he explained a few minutes later, as he stood by
      the captain aft, the latter with gaze wandering from aloft to overside as
      he estimated the Pyrenees' speed. &ldquo;You must fetch her to Mangareva. When
      you have picked up the land, then I will pilot her in. What do you think
      she is making?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Eleven,&rdquo; Captain Davenport answered, with a final glance at the water
      rushing past.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Eleven. Let me see, if she keeps up that gait, we'll sight Mangareva
      between eight and nine o'clock tomorrow morning. I'll have her on the
      beach by ten or by eleven at latest. And then your troubles will be all
      over.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      It almost seemed to the captain that the blissful moment had already
      arrived, such was the persuasive convincingness of McCoy.
    </p>
    <p>
      Captain Davenport had been under the fearful strain of navigating his
      burning ship for over two weeks, and he was beginning to feel that he had
      had enough.
    </p>
    <p>
      A heavier flaw of wind struck the back of his neck and whistled by his
      ears. He measured the weight of it, and looked quickly overside.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The wind is making all the time,&rdquo; he announced. &ldquo;The old girl's doing
      nearer twelve than eleven right now. If this keeps up, we'll be shortening
      down tonight.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      All day the Pyrenees, carrying her load of living fire, tore across the
      foaming sea. By nightfall, royals and topgallantsails were in, and she
      flew on into the darkness, with great, crested seas roaring after her. The
      auspicious wind had had its effect, and fore and aft a visible brightening
      was apparent. In the second dog-watch some careless soul started a song,
      and by eight bells the whole crew was singing.
    </p>
    <p>
      Captain Davenport had his blankets brought up and spread on top the house.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I've forgotten what sleep is,&rdquo; he explained to McCoy. &ldquo;I'm all in. But
      give me a call at any time you think necessary.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      At three in the morning he was aroused by a gentle tugging at his arm. He
      sat up quickly, bracing himself against the skylight, stupid yet from his
      heavy sleep. The wind was thrumming its war song in the rigging, and a
      wild sea was buffeting the PYRENEES. Amidships she was wallowing first one
      rail under and then the other, flooding the waist more often than not.
      McCoy was shouting something he could not hear. He reached out, clutched
      the other by the shoulder, and drew him close so that his own ear was
      close to the other's lips.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It's three o'clock,&rdquo; came McCoy's voice, still retaining its dovelike
      quality, but curiously muffled, as if from a long way off. &ldquo;We've run two
      hundred and fifty. Crescent Island is only thirty miles away, somewhere
      there dead ahead. There's no lights on it. If we keep running, we'll pile
      up, and lose ourselves as well as the ship.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What d' ye think&mdash;heave to?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes; heave to till daylight. It will only put us back four hours.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      So the Pyrenees, with her cargo of fire, was hove to, bitting the teeth of
      the gale and fighting and smashing the pounding seas. She was a shell,
      filled with a conflagration, and on the outside of the shell, clinging
      precariously, the little motes of men, by pull and haul, helped her in the
      battle.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It is most unusual, this gale,&rdquo; McCoy told the captain, in the lee of the
      cabin. &ldquo;By rights there should be no gale at this time of the year. But
      everything about the weather has been unusual. There has been a stoppage
      of the trades, and now it's howling right out of the trade quarter.&rdquo; He
      waved his hand into the darkness, as if his vision could dimly penetrate
      for hundreds of miles. &ldquo;It is off to the westward. There is something big
      making off there somewhere&mdash;a hurricane or something. We're lucky to
      be so far to the eastward. But this is only a little blow,&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;It
      can't last. I can tell you that much.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      By daylight the gale had eased down to normal. But daylight revealed a new
      danger. It had come on thick. The sea was covered by a fog, or, rather, by
      a pearly mist that was fog-like in density, in so far as it obstructed
      vision, but that was no more than a film on the sea, for the sun shot it
      through and filled it with a glowing radiance.
    </p>
    <p>
      The deck of the Pyrenees was making more smoke than on the preceding day,
      and the cheerfulness of officers and crew had vanished. In the lee of the
      galley the cabin boy could be heard whimpering. It was his first voyage,
      and the fear of death was at his heart. The captain wandered about like a
      lost soul, nervously chewing his mustache, scowling, unable to make up his
      mind what to do.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What do you think?&rdquo; he asked, pausing by the side of McCoy, who was
      making a breakfast off fried bananas and a mug of water.
    </p>
    <p>
      McCoy finished the last banana, drained the mug, and looked slowly around.
      In his eyes was a smile of tenderness as he said:
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Well, Captain, we might as well drive as burn. Your decks are not going
      to hold out forever. They are hotter this morning. You haven't a pair of
      shoes I can wear? It is getting uncomfortable for my bare feet.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The Pyrenees shipped two heavy seas as she was swung off and put once more
      before it, and the first mate expressed a desire to have all that water
      down in the hold, if only it could be introduced without taking off the
      hatches. McCoy ducked his head into the binnacle and watched the course
      set.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I'd hold her up some more, Captain,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;She's been making drift
      when hove to.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I've set it to a point higher already,&rdquo; was the answer. &ldquo;Isn't that
      enough?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I'd make it two points, Captain. This bit of a blow kicked that westerly
      current ahead faster than you imagine.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Captain Davenport compromised on a point and a half, and then went aloft,
      accompanied by McCoy and the first mate, to keep a lookout for land. Sail
      had been made, so that the Pyrenees was doing ten knots. The following sea
      was dying down rapidly. There was no break in the pearly fog, and by ten
      o'clock Captain Davenport was growing nervous. All hands were at their
      stations, ready, at the first warning of land ahead, to spring like fiends
      to the task of bringing the Pyrenees up on the wind. That land ahead, a
      surf-washed outer reef, would be perilously close when it revealed itself
      in such a fog.
    </p>
    <p>
      Another hour passed. The three watchers aloft stared intently into the
      pearly radiance. &ldquo;What if we miss Mangareva?&rdquo; Captain Davenport asked
      abruptly.
    </p>
    <p>
      McCoy, without shifting his gaze, answered softly:
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Why, let her drive, captain. That is all we can do. All the Paumotus are
      before us. We can drive for a thousand miles through reefs and atolls. We
      are bound to fetch up somewhere.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Then drive it is.&rdquo; Captain Davenport evidenced his intention of
      descending to the deck. &ldquo;We've missed Mangareva. God knows where the next
      land is. I wish I'd held her up that other half-point,&rdquo; he confessed a
      moment later. &ldquo;This cursed current plays the devil with a navigator.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The old navigators called the Paumotus the Dangerous Archipelago,&rdquo; McCoy
      said, when they had regained the poop. &ldquo;This very current was partly
      responsible for that name.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I was talking with a sailor chap in Sydney, once,&rdquo; said Mr. Konig. &ldquo;He'd
      been trading in the Paumotus. He told me insurance was eighteen per cent.
      Is that right?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      McCoy smiled and nodded.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Except that they don't insure,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;The owners write off
      twenty per cent of the cost of their schooners each year.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;My God!&rdquo; Captain Davenport groaned. &ldquo;That makes the life of a schooner
      only five years!&rdquo; He shook his head sadly, murmuring, &ldquo;Bad waters! Bad
      waters!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Again they went into the cabin to consult the big general chart; but the
      poisonous vapors drove them coughing and gasping on deck.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Here is Moerenhout Island,&rdquo; Captain Davenport pointed it out on the
      chart, which he had spread on the house. &ldquo;It can't be more than a hundred
      miles to leeward.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;A hundred and ten.&rdquo; McCoy shook his head doubtfully. &ldquo;It might be done,
      but it is very difficult. I might beach her, and then again I might put
      her on the reef. A bad place, a very bad place.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;We'll take the chance,&rdquo; was Captain Davenport's decision, as he set about
      working out the course.
    </p>
    <p>
      Sail was shortened early in the afternoon, to avoid running past in the
      night; and in the second dog-watch the crew manifested its regained
      cheerfulness. Land was so very near, and their troubles would be over in
      the morning.
    </p>
    <p>
      But morning broke clear, with a blazing tropic sun. The southeast trade
      had swung around to the eastward, and was driving the PYRENEES through the
      water at an eight-knot clip. Captain Davenport worked up his dead
      reckoning, allowing generously for drift, and announced Moerenhout Island
      to be not more than ten miles off. The Pyrenees sailed the ten miles; she
      sailed ten miles more; and the lookouts at the three mastheads saw naught
      but the naked, sun-washed sea.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But the land is there, I tell you,&rdquo; Captain Davenport shouted to them
      from the poop.
    </p>
    <p>
      McCoy smiled soothingly, but the captain glared about him like a madman,
      fetched his sextant, and took a chronometer sight.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I knew I was right,&rdquo; he almost shouted, when he had worked up the
      observation. &ldquo;Twenty-one, fifty-five, south; one-thirty-six, two, west.
      There you are. We're eight miles to windward yet. What did you make it
      out, Mr. Konig?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The first mate glanced at his own figures, and said in a low voice:
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Twenty-one, fifty-five all right; but my longitude's one-thirty-six,
      forty-eight. That puts us considerably to leeward&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      But Captain Davenport ignored his figures with so contemptuous a silence
      as to make Mr. Konig grit his teeth and curse savagely under his breath.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Keep her off,&rdquo; the captain ordered the man at the wheel. &ldquo;Three points&mdash;steady
      there, as she goes!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Then he returned to his figures and worked them over. The sweat poured
      from his face. He chewed his mustache, his lips, and his pencil, staring
      at the figures as a man might at a ghost. Suddenly, with a fierce,
      muscular outburst, he crumpled the scribbled paper in his fist and crushed
      it under foot. Mr. Konig grinned vindictively and turned away, while
      Captain Davenport leaned against the cabin and for half an hour spoke no
      word, contenting himself with gazing to leeward with an expression of
      musing hopelessness on his face.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Mr. McCoy,&rdquo; he broke silence abruptly. &ldquo;The chart indicates a group of
      islands, but not how many, off there to the north'ard, or
      nor'-nor'westward, about forty miles&mdash;the Acteon Islands. What about
      them?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;There are four, all low,&rdquo; McCoy answered. &ldquo;First to the southeast is
      Matuerui&mdash;no people, no entrance to the lagoon. Then comes Tenarunga.
      There used to be about a dozen people there, but they may be all gone now.
      Anyway, there is no entrance for a ship&mdash;only a boat entrance, with a
      fathom of water. Vehauga and Teua-raro are the other two. No entrances, no
      people, very low. There is no bed for the Pyrenees in that group. She
      would be a total wreck.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Listen to that!&rdquo; Captain Davenport was frantic. &ldquo;No people! No entrances!
      What in the devil are islands good for?
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Well, then,&rdquo; he barked suddenly, like an excited terrier, &ldquo;the chart
      gives a whole mess of islands off to the nor'west. What about them? What
      one has an entrance where I can lay my ship?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      McCoy calmly considered. He did not refer to the chart. All these islands,
      reefs, shoals, lagoons, entrances, and distances were marked on the chart
      of his memory. He knew them as the city dweller knows his buildings,
      streets, and alleys.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Papakena and Vanavana are off there to the westward, or west-nor'westward
      a hundred miles and a bit more,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;One is uninhabited, and I heard
      that the people on the other had gone off to Cadmus Island. Anyway,
      neither lagoon has an entrance. Ahunui is another hundred miles on to the
      nor'west. No entrance, no people.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Well, forty miles beyond them are two islands?&rdquo; Captain Davenport
      queried, raising his head from the chart.
    </p>
    <p>
      McCoy shook his head.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Paros and Manuhungi&mdash;no entrances, no people. Nengo-Nengo is forty
      miles beyond them, in turn, and it has no people and no entrance. But
      there is Hao Island. It is just the place. The lagoon is thirty miles long
      and five miles wide. There are plenty of people. You can usually find
      water. And any ship in the world can go through the entrance.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He ceased and gazed solicitously at Captain Davenport, who, bending over
      the chart with a pair of dividers in hand, had just emitted a low groan.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Is there any lagoon with an entrance anywhere nearer than Hao Island?&rdquo; he
      asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;No, Captain; that is the nearest.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Well, it's three hundred and forty miles.&rdquo; Captain Davenport was speaking
      very slowly, with decision. &ldquo;I won't risk the responsibility of all these
      lives. I'll wreck her on the Acteons. And she's a good ship, too,&rdquo; he
      added regretfully, after altering the course, this time making more
      allowance than ever for the westerly current.
    </p>
    <p>
      An hour later the sky was overcast. The southeast trade still held, but
      the ocean was a checker board of squalls.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;We'll be there by one o'clock,&rdquo; Captain Davenport announced confidently.
      &ldquo;By two o'clock at the outside. McCoy, you put her ashore on the one where
      the people are.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The sun did not appear again, nor, at one o'clock, was any land to be
      seen. Captain Davenport looked astern at the Pyrenees' canting wake.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Good Lord!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;An easterly current? Look at that!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Konig was incredulous. McCoy was noncommittal, though he said that in
      the Paumotus there was no reason why it should not be an easterly current.
      A few minutes later a squall robbed the Pyrenees temporarily of all her
      wind, and she was left rolling heavily in the trough.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Where's that deep lead? Over with it, you there!&rdquo; Captain Davenport held
      the lead line and watched it sag off to the northeast. &ldquo;There, look at
      that! Take hold of it for yourself.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      McCoy and the mate tried it, and felt the line thrumming and vibrating
      savagely to the grip of the tidal stream.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;A four-knot current,&rdquo; said Mr. Konig.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;An easterly current instead of a westerly,&rdquo; said Captain &ldquo;Davenport,
      glaring accusingly at McCoy, as if to cast the blame for it upon him.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;That is one of the reasons, Captain, for insurance being eighteen per
      cent in these waters,&rdquo; McCoy answered cheerfully. &ldquo;You can never tell. The
      currents are always changing. There was a man who wrote books, I forget
      his name, in the yacht Casco. He missed Takaroa by thirty miles and
      fetched Tikei, all because of the shifting currents. You are up to
      windward now, and you'd better keep off a few points.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But how much has this current set me?&rdquo; the captain demanded irately. &ldquo;How
      am I to know how much to keep off?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I don't know, Captain,&rdquo; McCoy said with great gentleness.
    </p>
    <p>
      The wind returned, and the PYRENEES, her deck smoking and shimmering in
      the bright gray light, ran off dead to leeward. Then she worked back, port
      tack and starboard tack, crisscrossing her track, combing the sea for the
      Acteon Islands, which the masthead lookouts failed to sight.
    </p>
    <p>
      Captain Davenport was beside himself. His rage took the form of sullen
      silence, and he spent the afternoon in pacing the poop or leaning against
      the weather shrouds. At nightfall, without even consulting McCoy, he
      squared away and headed into the northwest. Mr. Konig, surreptitiously
      consulting chart and binnacle, and McCoy, openly and innocently consulting
      the binnacle, knew that they were running for Hao Island. By midnight the
      squalls ceased, and the stars came out. Captain Davenport was cheered by
      the promise of a clear day.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I'll get an observation in the morning,&rdquo; he told McCoy, &ldquo;though what my
      latitude is, is a puzzler. But I'll use the Sumner method, and settle
      that. Do you know the Sumner line?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      And thereupon he explained it in detail to McCoy.
    </p>
    <p>
      The day proved clear, the trade blew steadily out of the east, and the
      Pyrenees just as steadily logged her nine knots. Both the captain and mate
      worked out the position on a Sumner line, and agreed, and at noon agreed
      again, and verified the morning sights by the noon sights.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Another twenty-four hours and we'll be there,&rdquo; Captain Davenport assured
      McCoy. &ldquo;It's a miracle the way the old girl's decks hold out. But they
      can't last. They can't last. Look at them smoke, more and more every day.
      Yet it was a tight deck to begin with, fresh-calked in Frisco. I was
      surprised when the fire first broke out and we battened down. Look at
      that!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He broke off to gaze with dropped jaw at a spiral of smoke that coiled and
      twisted in the lee of the mizzenmast twenty feet above the deck.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Now, how did that get there?&rdquo; he demanded indignantly.
    </p>
    <p>
      Beneath it there was no smoke. Crawling up from the deck, sheltered from
      the wind by the mast, by some freak it took form and visibility at that
      height. It writhed away from the mast, and for a moment overhung the
      captain like some threatening portent. The next moment the wind whisked it
      away, and the captain's jaw returned to place.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;As I was saying, when we first battened down, I was surprised. It was a
      tight deck, yet it leaked smoke like a sieve. And we've calked and calked
      ever since. There must be tremendous pressure underneath to drive so much
      smoke through.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      That afternoon the sky became overcast again, and squally, drizzly weather
      set in. The wind shifted back and forth between southeast and northeast,
      and at midnight the Pyrenees was caught aback by a sharp squall from the
      southwest, from which point the wind continued to blow intermittently.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;We won't make Hao until ten or eleven,&rdquo; Captain Davenport complained at
      seven in the morning, when the fleeting promise of the sun had been erased
      by hazy cloud masses in the eastern sky. And the next moment he was
      plaintively demanding, &ldquo;And what are the currents doing?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Lookouts at the mastheads could report no land, and the day passed in
      drizzling calms and violent squalls. By nightfall a heavy sea began to
      make from the west. The barometer had fallen to 29.50. There was no wind,
      and still the ominous sea continued to increase. Soon the Pyrenees was
      rolling madly in the huge waves that marched in an unending procession
      from out of the darkness of the west. Sail was shortened as fast as both
      watches could work, and, when the tired crew had finished, its grumbling
      and complaining voices, peculiarly animal-like and menacing, could be
      heard in the darkness. Once the starboard watch was called aft to lash
      down and make secure, and the men openly advertised their sullenness and
      unwillingness. Every slow movement was a protest and a threat. The
      atmosphere was moist and sticky like mucilage, and in the absence of wind
      all hands seemed to pant and gasp for air. The sweat stood out on faces
      and bare arms, and Captain Davenport for one, his face more gaunt and
      care-worn than ever, and his eyes troubled and staring, was oppressed by a
      feeling of impending calamity.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It's off to the westward,&rdquo; McCoy said encouragingly. &ldquo;At worst, we'll be
      only on the edge of it.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      But Captain Davenport refused to be comforted, and by the light of a
      lantern read up the chapter in his Epitome that related to the strategy of
      shipmasters in cyclonic storms. From somewhere amidships the silence was
      broken by a low whimpering from the cabin boy.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh, shut up!&rdquo; Captain Davenport yelled suddenly and with such force as to
      startle every man on board and to frighten the offender into a wild wail
      of terror.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Mr. Konig,&rdquo; the captain said in a voice that trembled with rage and
      nerves, &ldquo;will you kindly step for'ard and stop that brat's mouth with a
      deck mop?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      But it was McCoy who went forward, and in a few minutes had the boy
      comforted and asleep.
    </p>
    <p>
      Shortly before daybreak the first breath of air began to move from out the
      southeast, increasing swiftly to a stiff and stiffer breeze. All hands
      were on deck waiting for what might be behind it. &ldquo;We're all right now,
      Captain,&rdquo; said McCoy, standing close to his shoulder. &ldquo;The hurricane is to
      the west'ard, and we are south of it. This breeze is the in-suck. It won't
      blow any harder. You can begin to put sail on her.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But what's the good? Where shall I sail? This is the second day without
      observations, and we should have sighted Hao Island yesterday morning.
      Which way does it bear, north, south, east, or what? Tell me that, and
      I'll make sail in a jiffy.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I am no navigator, Captain,&rdquo; McCoy said in his mild way.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I used to think I was one,&rdquo; was the retort, &ldquo;before I got into these
      Paumotus.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      At midday the cry of &ldquo;Breakers ahead!&rdquo; was heard from the lookout. The
      Pyrenees was kept off, and sail after sail was loosed and sheeted home.
      The Pyrenees was sliding through the water and fighting a current that
      threatened to set her down upon the breakers. Officers and men were
      working like mad, cook and cabin boy, Captain Davenport himself, and McCoy
      all lending a hand. It was a close shave. It was a low shoal, a bleak and
      perilous place over which the seas broke unceasingly, where no man could
      live, and on which not even sea birds could rest. The PYRENEES was swept
      within a hundred yards of it before the wind carried her clear, and at
      this moment the panting crew, its work done, burst out in a torrent of
      curses upon the head of McCoy&mdash;of McCoy who had come on board, and
      proposed the run to Mangareva, and lured them all away from the safety of
      Pitcairn Island to certain destruction in this baffling and terrible
      stretch of sea. But McCoy's tranquil soul was undisturbed. He smiled at
      them with simple and gracious benevolence, and, somehow, the exalted
      goodness of him seemed to penetrate to their dark and somber souls,
      shaming them, and from very shame stilling the curses vibrating in their
      throats.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Bad waters! Bad waters!&rdquo; Captain Davenport was murmuring as his ship
      forged clear; but he broke off abruptly to gaze at the shoal which should
      have been dead astern, but which was already on the PYRENEES'
      weather-quarter and working up rapidly to windward.
    </p>
    <p>
      He sat down and buried his face in his hands. And the first mate saw, and
      McCoy saw, and the crew saw, what he had seen. South of the shoal an
      easterly current had set them down upon it; north of the shoal an equally
      swift westerly current had clutched the ship and was sweeping her away.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I've heard of these Paumotus before,&rdquo; the captain groaned, lifting his
      blanched face from his hands. &ldquo;Captain Moyendale told me about them after
      losing his ship on them. And I laughed at him behind his back. God forgive
      me, I laughed at him. What shoal is that?&rdquo; he broke off, to ask McCoy.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I don't know, Captain.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Why don't you know?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Because I never saw it before, and because I have never heard of it. I do
      know that it is not charted. These waters have never been thoroughly
      surveyed.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Then you don't know where we are?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;No more than you do,&rdquo; McCoy said gently.
    </p>
    <p>
      At four in the afternoon cocoanut trees were sighted, apparently growing
      out of the water. A little later the low land of an atoll was raised above
      the sea.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I know where we are now, Captain.&rdquo; McCoy lowered the glasses from his
      eyes. &ldquo;That's Resolution Island. We are forty miles beyond Hao Island, and
      the wind is in our teeth.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Get ready to beach her then. Where's the entrance?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;There's only a canoe passage. But now that we know where we are, we can
      run for Barclay de Tolley. It is only one hundred and twenty miles from
      here, due nor'-nor'west. With this breeze we can be there by nine o'clock
      tomorrow morning.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Captain Davenport consulted the chart and debated with himself.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;If we wreck her here,&rdquo; McCoy added, &ldquo;we'd have to make the run to Barclay
      de Tolley in the boats just the same.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The captain gave his orders, and once more the Pyrenees swung off for
      another run across the inhospitable sea.
    </p>
    <p>
      And the middle of the next afternoon saw despair and mutiny on her smoking
      deck. The current had accelerated, the wind had slackened, and the
      Pyrenees had sagged off to the west. The lookout sighted Barclay de Tolley
      to the eastward, barely visible from the masthead, and vainly and for
      hours the PYRENEES tried to beat up to it. Ever, like a mirage, the
      cocoanut trees hovered on the horizon, visible only from the masthead.
      From the deck they were hidden by the bulge of the world.
    </p>
    <p>
      Again Captain Davenport consulted McCoy and the chart. Makemo lay
      seventy-five miles to the southwest. Its lagoon was thirty miles long, and
      its entrance was excellent. When Captain Davenport gave his orders, the
      crew refused duty. They announced that they had had enough of hell fire
      under their feet. There was the land. What if the ship could not make it?
      They could make it in the boats. Let her burn, then. Their lives amounted
      to something to them. They had served faithfully the ship, now they were
      going to serve themselves.
    </p>
    <p>
      They sprang to the boats, brushing the second and third mates out of the
      way, and proceeded to swing the boats out and to prepare to lower away.
      Captain Davenport and the first mate, revolvers in hand, were advancing to
      the break of the poop, when McCoy, who had climbed on top of the cabin,
      began to speak.
    </p>
    <p>
      He spoke to the sailors, and at the first sound of his dovelike, cooing
      voice they paused to hear. He extended to them his own ineffable serenity
      and peace. His soft voice and simple thoughts flowed out to them in a
      magic stream, soothing them against their wills. Long forgotten things
      came back to them, and some remembered lullaby songs of childhood and the
      content and rest of the mother's arm at the end of the day. There was no
      more trouble, no more danger, no more irk, in all the world. Everything
      was as it should be, and it was only a matter of course that they should
      turn their backs upon the land and put to sea once more with hell fire hot
      beneath their feet.
    </p>
    <p>
      McCoy spoke simply; but it was not what he spoke. It was his personality
      that spoke more eloquently than any word he could utter. It was an alchemy
      of soul occultly subtile and profoundly deep&mdash;a mysterious emanation
      of the spirit, seductive, sweetly humble, and terribly imperious. It was
      illumination in the dark crypts of their souls, a compulsion of purity and
      gentleness vastly greater than that which resided in the shining,
      death-spitting revolvers of the officers.
    </p>
    <p>
      The men wavered reluctantly where they stood, and those who had loosed the
      turns made them fast again. Then one, and then another, and then all of
      them, began to sidle awkwardly away.
    </p>
    <p>
      McCoy's face was beaming with childlike pleasure as he descended from the
      top of the cabin. There was no trouble. For that matter there had been no
      trouble averted. There never had been any trouble, for there was no place
      for such in the blissful world in which he lived.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You hypnotized em,&rdquo; Mr. Konig grinned at him, speaking in a low voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Those boys are good,&rdquo; was the answer. &ldquo;Their hearts are good. They have
      had a hard time, and they have worked hard, and they will work hard to the
      end.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Konig had not time to reply. His voice was ringing out orders, the
      sailors were springing to obey, and the PYRENEES was paying slowly off
      from the wind until her bow should point in the direction of Makemo.
    </p>
    <p>
      The wind was very light, and after sundown almost ceased. It was
      insufferably warm, and fore and aft men sought vainly to sleep. The deck
      was too hot to lie upon, and poisonous vapors, oozing through the seams,
      crept like evil spirits over the ship, stealing into the nostrils and
      windpipes of the unwary and causing fits of sneezing and coughing. The
      stars blinked lazily in the dim vault overhead; and the full moon, rising
      in the east, touched with its light the myriads of wisps and threads and
      spidery films of smoke that intertwined and writhed and twisted along the
      deck, over the rails, and up the masts and shrouds.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; Captain Davenport said, rubbing his smarting eyes, &ldquo;what
      happened with that BOUNTY crowd after they reached Pitcairn? The account I
      read said they burnt the Bounty, and that they were not discovered until
      many years later. But what happened in the meantime? I've always been
      curious to know. They were men with their necks in the rope. There were
      some native men, too. And then there were women. That made it look like
      trouble right from the jump.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;There was trouble,&rdquo; McCoy answered. &ldquo;They were bad men. They quarreled
      about the women right away. One of the mutineers, Williams, lost his wife.
      All the women were Tahitian women. His wife fell from the cliffs when
      hunting sea birds. Then he took the wife of one of the native men away
      from him. All the native men were made very angry by this, and they killed
      off nearly all the mutineers. Then the mutineers that escaped killed off
      all the native men. The women helped. And the natives killed each other.
      Everybody killed everybody. They were terrible men.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Timiti was killed by two other natives while they were combing his hair
      in friendship. The white men had sent them to do it. Then the white men
      killed them. The wife of Tullaloo killed him in a cave because she wanted
      a white man for husband. They were very wicked. God had hidden His face
      from them. At the end of two years all the native men were murdered, and
      all the white men except four. They were Young, John Adams, McCoy, who was
      my great-grandfather, and Quintal. He was a very bad man, too. Once, just
      because his wife did not catch enough fish for him, he bit off her ear.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;They were a bad lot!&rdquo; Mr. Konig exclaimed.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes, they were very bad,&rdquo; McCoy agreed and went on serenely cooing of the
      blood and lust of his iniquitous ancestry. &ldquo;My great-grandfather escaped
      murder in order to die by his own hand. He made a still and manufactured
      alcohol from the roots of the ti-plant. Quintal was his chum, and they got
      drunk together all the time. At last McCoy got delirium tremens, tied a
      rock to his neck, and jumped into the sea.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Quintal's wife, the one whose ear he bit off, also got killed by falling
      from the cliffs. Then Quintal went to Young and demanded his wife, and
      went to Adams and demanded his wife. Adams and Young were afraid of
      Quintal. They knew he would kill them. So they killed him, the two of them
      together, with a hatchet. Then Young died. And that was about all the
      trouble they had.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I should say so,&rdquo; Captain Davenport snorted. &ldquo;There was nobody left to
      kill.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You see, God had hidden His face,&rdquo; McCoy said.
    </p>
    <p>
      By morning no more than a faint air was blowing from the eastward, and,
      unable to make appreciable southing by it, Captain Davenport hauled up
      full-and-by on the port track. He was afraid of that terrible westerly
      current which had cheated him out of so many ports of refuge. All day the
      calm continued, and all night, while the sailors, on a short ration of
      dried banana, were grumbling. Also, they were growing weak and complaining
      of stomach pains caused by the straight banana diet. All day the current
      swept the PYRENEES to the westward, while there was no wind to bear her
      south. In the middle of the first dogwatch, cocoanut trees were sighted
      due south, their tufted heads rising above the water and marking the
      low-lying atoll beneath.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;That is Taenga Island,&rdquo; McCoy said. &ldquo;We need a breeze tonight, or else
      we'll miss Makemo.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What's become of the southeast trade?&rdquo; the captain demanded. &ldquo;Why don't
      it blow? What's the matter?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It is the evaporation from the big lagoons&mdash;there are so many of
      them,&rdquo; McCoy explained. &ldquo;The evaporation upsets the whole system of
      trades. It even causes the wind to back up and blow gales from the
      southwest. This is the Dangerous Archipelago, Captain.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Captain Davenport faced the old man, opened his mouth, and was about to
      curse, but paused and refrained. McCoy's presence was a rebuke to the
      blasphemies that stirred in his brain and trembled in his larynx. McCoy's
      influence had been growing during the many days they had been together.
      Captain Davenport was an autocrat of the sea, fearing no man, never
      bridling his tongue, and now he found himself unable to curse in the
      presence of this old man with the feminine brown eyes and the voice of a
      dove. When he realized this, Captain Davenport experienced a distinct
      shock. This old man was merely the seed of McCoy, of McCoy of the BOUNTY,
      the mutineer fleeing from the hemp that waited him in England, the McCoy
      who was a power for evil in the early days of blood and lust and violent
      death on Pitcairn Island.
    </p>
    <p>
      Captain Davenport was not religious, yet in that moment he felt a mad
      impulse to cast himself at the other's feet&mdash;and to say he knew not
      what. It was an emotion that so deeply stirred him, rather than a coherent
      thought, and he was aware in some vague way of his own unworthiness and
      smallness in the presence of this other man who possessed the simplicity
      of a child and the gentleness of a woman.
    </p>
    <p>
      Of course he could not so humble himself before the eyes of his officers
      and men. And yet the anger that had prompted the blasphemy still raged in
      him. He suddenly smote the cabin with his clenched hand and cried:
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Look here, old man, I won't be beaten. These Paumotus have cheated and
      tricked me and made a fool of me. I refuse to be beaten. I am going to
      drive this ship, and drive and drive and drive clear through the Paumotus
      to China but what I find a bed for her. If every man deserts, I'll stay by
      her. I'll show the Paumotus. They can't fool me. She's a good girl, and
      I'll stick by her as long as there's a plank to stand on. You hear me?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And I'll stay with you, Captain,&rdquo; McCoy said.
    </p>
    <p>
      During the night, light, baffling airs blew out of the south, and the
      frantic captain, with his cargo of fire, watched and measured his westward
      drift and went off by himself at times to curse softly so that McCoy
      should not hear.
    </p>
    <p>
      Daylight showed more palms growing out of the water to the south.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;That's the leeward point of Makemo,&rdquo; McCoy said. &ldquo;Katiu is only a few
      miles to the west. We may make that.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      But the current, sucking between the two islands, swept them to the
      northwest, and at one in the afternoon they saw the palms of Katiu rise
      above the sea and sink back into the sea again.
    </p>
    <p>
      A few minutes later, just as the captain had discovered that a new current
      from the northeast had gripped the Pyrenees, the masthead lookouts raised
      cocoanut palms in the northwest.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It is Raraka,&rdquo; said McCoy. &ldquo;We won't make it without wind. The current is
      drawing us down to the southwest. But we must watch out. A few miles
      farther on a current flows north and turns in a circle to the northwest.
      This will sweep us away from Fakarava, and Fakarava is the place for the
      Pyrenees to find her bed.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;They can sweep all they da&mdash;all they well please,&rdquo; Captain Davenport
      remarked with heat. &ldquo;We'll find a bed for her somewhere just the same.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      But the situation on the Pyrenees was reaching a culmination. The deck was
      so hot that it seemed an increase of a few degrees would cause it to burst
      into flames. In many places even the heavy-soled shoes of the men were no
      protection, and they were compelled to step lively to avoid scorching
      their feet. The smoke had increased and grown more acrid. Every man on
      board was suffering from inflamed eyes, and they coughed and strangled
      like a crew of tuberculosis patients. In the afternoon the boats were
      swung out and equipped. The last several packages of dried bananas were
      stored in them, as well as the instruments of the officers. Captain
      Davenport even put the chronometer into the longboat, fearing the blowing
      up of the deck at any moment.
    </p>
    <p>
      All night this apprehension weighed heavily on all, and in the first
      morning light, with hollow eyes and ghastly faces, they stared at one
      another as if in surprise that the Pyrenees still held together and that
      they still were alive.
    </p>
    <p>
      Walking rapidly at times, and even occasionally breaking into an
      undignified hop-skip-and-run, Captain Davenport inspected his ship's deck.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It is a matter of hours now, if not of minutes,&rdquo; he announced on his
      return to the poop.
    </p>
    <p>
      The cry of land came down from the masthead. From the deck the land was
      invisible, and McCoy went aloft, while the captain took advantage of the
      opportunity to curse some of the bitterness out of his heart. But the
      cursing was suddenly stopped by a dark line on the water which he sighted
      to the northeast. It was not a squall, but a regular breeze&mdash;the
      disrupted trade wind, eight points out of its direction but resuming
      business once more.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Hold her up, Captain,&rdquo; McCoy said as soon as he reached the poop. &ldquo;That's
      the easterly point of Fakarava, and we'll go in through the passage
      full-tilt, the wind abeam, and every sail drawing.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      At the end of an hour, the cocoanut trees and the low-lying land were
      visible from the deck. The feeling that the end of the PYRENEES'
      resistance was imminent weighed heavily on everybody. Captain Davenport
      had the three boats lowered and dropped short astern, a man in each to
      keep them apart. The Pyrenees closely skirted the shore, the surf-whitened
      atoll a bare two cable lengths away.
    </p>
    <p>
      And a minute later the land parted, exposing a narrow passage and the
      lagoon beyond, a great mirror, thirty miles in length and a third as
      broad.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Now, Captain.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      For the last time the yards of the Pyrenees swung around as she obeyed the
      wheel and headed into the passage. The turns had scarcely been made, and
      nothing had been coiled down, when the men and mates swept back to the
      poop in panic terror. Nothing had happened, yet they averred that
      something was going to happen. They could not tell why. They merely knew
      that it was about to happen. McCoy started forward to take up his position
      on the bow in order to con the vessel in; but the captain gripped his arm
      and whirled him around.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Do it from here,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;That deck's not safe. What's the matter?&rdquo; he
      demanded the next instant. &ldquo;We're standing still.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      McCoy smiled.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You are bucking a seven-knot current, Captain,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;That is the way
      the full ebb runs out of this passage.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      At the end of another hour the Pyrenees had scarcely gained her length,
      but the wind freshened and she began to forge ahead.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Better get into the boats, some of you,&rdquo; Captain Davenport commanded.
    </p>
    <p>
      His voice was still ringing, and the men were just beginning to move in
      obedience, when the amidship deck of the Pyrenees, in a mass of flame and
      smoke, was flung upward into the sails and rigging, part of it remaining
      there and the rest falling into the sea. The wind being abeam, was what
      had saved the men crowded aft. They made a blind rush to gain the boats,
      but McCoy's voice, carrying its convincing message of vast calm and
      endless time, stopped them.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Take it easy,&rdquo; he was saying. &ldquo;Everything is all right. Pass that boy
      down somebody, please.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The man at the wheel had forsaken it in a funk, and Captain Davenport had
      leaped and caught the spokes in time to prevent the ship from yawing in
      the current and going ashore.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Better take charge of the boats,&rdquo; he said to Mr. Konig. &ldquo;Tow one of them
      short, right under the quarter.... When I go over, it'll be on the jump.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Konig hesitated, then went over the rail and lowered himself into the
      boat.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Keep her off half a point, Captain.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Captain Davenport gave a start. He had thought he had the ship to himself.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Ay, ay; half a point it is,&rdquo; he answered.
    </p>
    <p>
      Amidships the Pyrenees was an open flaming furnace, out of which poured an
      immense volume of smoke which rose high above the masts and completely hid
      the forward part of the ship. McCoy, in the shelter of the mizzen-shrouds,
      continued his difficult task of conning the ship through the intricate
      channel. The fire was working aft along the deck from the seat of
      explosion, while the soaring tower of canvas on the mainmast went up and
      vanished in a sheet of flame. Forward, though they could not see them,
      they knew that the head-sails were still drawing.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;If only she don't burn all her canvas off before she makes inside,&rdquo; the
      captain groaned.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;She'll make it,&rdquo; McCoy assured him with supreme confidence. &ldquo;There is
      plenty of time. She is bound to make it. And once inside, we'll put her
      before it; that will keep the smoke away from us and hold back the fire
      from working aft.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      A tongue of flame sprang up the mizzen, reached hungrily for the lowest
      tier of canvas, missed it, and vanished. From aloft a burning shred of
      rope stuff fell square on the back of Captain Davenport's neck. He acted
      with the celerity of one stung by a bee as he reached up and brushed the
      offending fire from his skin.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;How is she heading, Captain?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Nor'west by west.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Keep her west-nor-west.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Captain Davenport put the wheel up and steadied her.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;West by north, Captain.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;West by north she is.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And now west.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Slowly, point by point, as she entered the lagoon, the PYRENEES described
      the circle that put her before the wind; and point by point, with all the
      calm certitude of a thousand years of time to spare, McCoy chanted the
      changing course.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Another point, Captain.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;A point it is.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Captain Davenport whirled several spokes over, suddenly reversing and
      coming back one to check her.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Steady.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Steady she is&mdash;right on it.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Despite the fact that the wind was now astern, the heat was so intense
      that Captain Davenport was compelled to steal sidelong glances into the
      binnacle, letting go the wheel now with one hand, now with the other, to
      rub or shield his blistering cheeks.
    </p>
    <p>
      McCoy's beard was crinkling and shriveling and the smell of it, strong in
      the other's nostrils, compelled him to look toward McCoy with sudden
      solicitude. Captain Davenport was letting go the spokes alternately with
      his hands in order to rub their blistering backs against his trousers.
      Every sail on the mizzenmast vanished in a rush of flame, compelling the
      two men to crouch and shield their faces.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said McCoy, stealing a glance ahead at the low shore, &ldquo;four points
      up, Captain, and let her drive.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Shreds and patches of burning rope and canvas were falling about them and
      upon them. The tarry smoke from a smouldering piece of rope at the
      captain's feet set him off into a violent coughing fit, during which he
      still clung to the spokes.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Pyrenees struck, her bow lifted and she ground ahead gently to a stop.
      A shower of burning fragments, dislodged by the shock, fell about them.
      The ship moved ahead again and struck a second time. She crushed the
      fragile coral under her keel, drove on, and struck a third time.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Hard over,&rdquo; said McCoy. &ldquo;Hard over?&rdquo; he questioned gently, a minute
      later.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;She won't answer,&rdquo; was the reply.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;All right. She is swinging around.&rdquo; McCoy peered over the side. &ldquo;Soft,
      white sand. Couldn't ask better. A beautiful bed.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      As the Pyrenees swung around her stern away from the wind, a fearful blast
      of smoke and flame poured aft. Captain Davenport deserted the wheel in
      blistering agony. He reached the painter of the boat that lay under the
      quarter, then looked for McCoy, who was standing aside to let him go down.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You first,&rdquo; the captain cried, gripping him by the shoulder and almost
      throwing him over the rail. But the flame and smoke were too terrible, and
      he followed hard after McCoy, both men wriggling on the rope and sliding
      down into the boat together. A sailor in the bow, without waiting for
      orders, slashed the painter through with his sheath knife. The oars,
      poised in readiness, bit into the water, and the boat shot away.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;A beautiful bed, Captain,&rdquo; McCoy murmured, looking back.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Ay, a beautiful bed, and all thanks to you,&rdquo; was the answer.
    </p>
    <p>
      The three boats pulled away for the white beach of pounded coral, beyond
      which, on the edge of a cocoanut grove, could be seen a half dozen grass
      houses and a score or more of excited natives, gazing wide-eyed at the
      conflagration that had come to land.
    </p>
    <p>
      The boats grounded and they stepped out on the white beach.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And now,&rdquo; said McCoy, &ldquo;I must see about getting back to Pitcairn.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </p>
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