I
Weeks passed, and the opium harvest was in full progress.
Tsuda was everywhere, sweating, swearing in breezy English, heaving
out torrents of instruction in Ainu, to which the sad parties to this
“experiment in transplanting” would listen, though without taking the
trouble to straighten out of the cramped posture that went with their
task of scarifying the poppy capsules.
The new overseer, looking like a White Kami indeed in his gleaming
tropical clothes and smart hat, eyed Tsuda sharply, his nostrils dilating
a little.
“Things are going to be run here a little more scientifically than they
have been in the past, Tsuda,” he said with dry briskness. “You’ve done
very well with the Ainu—you understand their ways and their language; but
the business itself is a little bit beyond your reach.”
It was a new aggressive way of speaking which had developed gradually
with King’s adjustment to the conditions of his changed life. He had his
bearings now, and enjoyed the tang of power.
But Tsuda, no longer accorded quite the old freedom, watched this
development darkly. It was part of Tsuda’s cleverness to be as colloquial
as possible with people: it gave him tone and status. However, of late
King had taken to bringing him up a little short and reminding him there
was only one boss on Hagen’s Island. This bothered Tsuda a great deal.
“By the way,” said King, a half deprecating smile on his lips, “it seems
to me your people are beginning to sag a little. I don’t think it would
be a good thing to let them come to feel that because I am about with
them so much I’m less of a—well,” he flung in rather harshly, “the matter
of morale has got to be looked after. For myself”—there was an impatient
though not altogether convincing gesture—“I realize it’s rubbish—all
your priest-stuff. But—well, you might let them know I’m not too well
pleased.” He stood whipping at the top of an opium plant with his riding
crop. “They’re inclined to be lazy, these long-haired devils. We ought
to find a way to liven them a bit. Probably you’re too stingy with your
saké. Loosen up, Tsuda. I think,” he drawled (and it amounted to a
genuine little apogee of satisfaction with his prerogative here) “I ought
to get more work out of _all_ you people.”
* * * * *
The miserable Ainu prostrated themselves as he passed. It was
overwhelming and a trifle touching at the same time.
But Tsuda’s look was full of brooding discontent, though, to be sure,
this extreme ritual of respect was but a piece of his own passionate
handiwork. As he had just faintly hinted to Stella, the Japanese would
have been a priest—only there was a clash with the Emperor’s police
in his youth, resulting in his deportation in irons to Yezo. “I never
learned for what,” the Captain once admitted to King. “Murder most
likely. The essential fact remains that he managed to escape—h’m?
And fancy my snatching him, years later—h’m?—out of a brawl over a
geisha girl!” The Captain always had a humorous, twitching look at
such times—and especially when he had occasion to refer to Tsuda’s
manipulation of the Ainu—“religion—h’m?—that is, religion and saké....”
It had called for patience and cleverness on Tsuda’s part; at length
the thrall was complete. But as he watched King now reaping this
vicarious homage, and mused upon the exalted niche King filled in Captain
Utterbourne’s scheme, Tsuda resented what more and more struck him as an
intrusion—yes, more and more, while the _Star of Troy_ steamed steadily
day and night into realms of new adventure and prowess.