The Pacific has many industries but none more appealing to the
imagination than the old sandalwood trade, a perfumed business that
died when copra found its own, before the novelist and the soap
boiler came to work the sea of romance, before the B. P. boats
churned its swell or Honolulu learned to talk the language of San
Francisco.
In those days Levua showed above the billowing green of the
breadfruit, the seaward nodding palms, and the tossing fronds of the
dracænas, a belt, visible from the sea, where the sandalwood trees
grew and flourished. Trees like the myrtle, many branched and not
more than a foot thick in the trunk, with a white deliciously
perfumed wood deepening to yellow at the root.
Sanders, the trader of Levua who exported this timber, paid for it
in trade goods, so many sticks of tobacco at five cents a stick, so
many coloured beads or pieces of hoop iron wherewith to make knives,
for a tree. He paid this price to Tahuku the chief of the tribe and
he paid nothing for the work of tree felling, barking, and cutting
the wood into billets. Tahuku arranged all that. He was the
capitalist of Levua, though his only capital was his own ferocity
and cunning, the trees rightfully belonged to all. The billets
already cut and stored in go-downs were rafted across the lagoon in
fragrant heaps to the _Kermadec_ and shot on board from hand to
hand, piled on deck and then stowed in the hold, a slow business
watched by Le Moan with uncomprehending eyes. She knew nothing of
trade. She only knew what Sru had promised her, that soon, very
soon, the ship would turn and go south to find Karolin once again.
She believed him because he spoke the truth and she had an instinct
for the truth keen as her instinct for direction, so she waited and
watched whilst the cargo came leisurely and day by day and week by
week, the cargo bound for nowhere, never to be sold, never to be
turned into incense, beads, fancy boxes and cabinets; the cargo only
submitted to by the powers that had taken command of the _Kermadec_
and her captain, because until the cargo was on board, the ship
would not take on her water and her sea-going stores in the shape of
bananas and taro.
Down through the paths where the great tree ferns grew on either
side and the artu and Jack-fruit trees cast their shadows, came the
men of Levua, naked, like polished mahogany, and bearing the white
perfumed billets of sandalwood; as they rafted them across the
diamond-clear emerald-green water to where the _Kermadec_ stood in
the sapphire blue of twelve fathoms their songs came and went on the
wind, the singers unconscious that all the business of that beach
was as futile as the labour of ants or the movement of shadows, made
useless by the power of the pearl Le Moan carried behind her left
ear.
The night before sailing, the water and fruit were brought on board
and Peterson went ashore to have supper with Sanders taking Rantan
with him. Carlin remained behind to look after the ship.
It was a lovely evening, the light of sunset rose-gold on the foam
of the reefs and gilding the heights of Levua, the trees and the
bursting torrent whose far-off voice filled the air with a mist of
sound. Carlin, leaning on the rail, watched the boat row ashore, Sru
at the stern oar, Peterson steering. He watched Peterson and the
mate walk up the beach and disappear amongst the trees; they had
evidently given orders that the boat was to wait for them on the
beach, for, instead of returning, Sru and his men squatted on the
sands, lit their pipes and fell to playing su-ken, tossing pebbles
and bits of coral in the air and catching them on the backs of their
hands.
Carlin lit his pipe. What he was watching was more interesting than
any stage play, for he knew that the hour had struck, that the water
and stores were on board and the ship due to raise her anchor at
sunrise.
He stood with his eyes fixed on the beach. The trader’s house and
store lay only a few hundred yards back among the trees and the
native village quarter of a mile beyond and close to the beginning
of the sandalwood groves; would any trouble in the trader’s house be
heard by the people of the village? He put this question to himself
in a general way and the answer came “No.” Not unless shots were
fired; but then without shooting—how—how—how?
How what?
He did not enter into details with himself. He stood watching the
men on the beach and then he saw Sru as if suddenly tired of the
game they were playing, rise up, stretch himself and stroll towards
the boat. Near the boat a fishing canoe was beached and Sru having
contemplated the boat for a minute or so turned his attention to the
canoe. He examined the outrigger, pressed his foot on it and then
bending over the interior picked out something—it was a fish spear
with a single barb. Carlin remembered that Rantan on landing had
looked into the canoe, as though from curiosity or as if to make
sure there was something in it. Who could tell?
The fish spear seemed to interest Sru. He poised it as if for a
throw, examined the barb and then, spear in hand, came back to the
fellows who were still playing their game and sat down. Carlin saw
him exhibiting the spear to them, poised it, talking, telling no
doubt old stories of fish he had killed on the reef at Soma; then,
as if tired, he threw the thing on the sand beside him and lay back
whilst the others continued their endless game.
Then came dark and the steadily increasing shower of starlight till
the coal sack showed in the Milky Way like a hole punched in marble
and the beach like a beach in ghost-land, the figures on it clearly
defined and especially now the figure of Sru, who had suddenly risen
as though alarmed and was standing spear in hand.
Then at a run he made for the trees and vanished.
* * * * *
Carlin turned away from the rail and spat. The palms of his hands
were sweating and something went knock, knock, knock, in his ears
with every beat of his heart. The kanakas on board were down in the
foc’sle from which a thin island voice rose singing an endless song,
the deck was clear only for the figure of Le Moan—and Carlin, half
crazy with excitement, not daring to look towards the beach, walking
like a drunken man up and down began to shout and talk to the girl.
“Hi, you kanaka girl,” cried Carlin, “something up on the beach—Lord
God! she can’t talk, why can’t you talk, hey? Whacha staring at me dumb
for? Rouse the chaps forward, we’ll be wantin’ the anchor up” ... He
went to the foc’sle head and kicked—calling to the hands below to
tumble up, tumble up, and to hell with their singing for there was
something going on on the beach. Ruining everything, himself included,
if they had been a white crew; then making a dash down to the saloon
he beat and smashed at the store cupboard where he knew the whiskey was
kept, beat with his naked fists till the panels gave and he tore them
out, and breaking the neck of a whiskey bottle, drank with bleeding
lips till a quarter of the bottle was gone.
Then he sat at the table still clutching the bottle by the neck but
himself again. The nerve crisis had passed suddenly as it had come.
Yes, there was something going on upon the beach that night when, as
Le Moan and the crew crowding to the port rail watched, the figure
of Rantan suddenly broke from the trees and came running across the
sands towards the boat followed by Sru.
She heard the voice of Sru shouting to the boat kanakas: “Tahuku has
slain the white man, the trader and Pete’son have been slain.” She
saw the boat rushed out into the starlit water and as it came along
towards the ship, she saw some of the crew rush to the windlass and
begin heaving the anchor chain short whilst others fought to get the
gaskets off the jib and raise the mainsail. Already alarmed by
Carlin the words of Sru completed the business. Tahuku was out for
killing and as they laboured and shouted, Carlin hearing the uproar
on deck, put the whiskey bottle upstanding in a bunk and came
tumbling up the ladder and almost into the arms of Rantan who came
tumbling over the rail.