“PUT NOT YOUR TRUST IN PRINCES”
I
Utterbourne sat with impassive face in the house of Tsuda. Finally he
said: “We will go to see King.”
Nipek-kem went proudly on ahead with a lantern. He did not know exactly
what it was all about—he was just faithfully fulfilling the demands of
his destiny.
“I want you to see for yourself, Captain—gn—what I’ve been up against
here,” wheezed Tsuda, adding in high-pitched oriental petulance: “For
months every damn scrap of business fall on me. He smoke ten—twenty—mebby
fifty pipe a day—yes, _sir_—and then sleep it off—and eat it, too, just
like a Malay. You see for yourself when you go in where he is—gn—what a
damn job I have of it!”
Utterbourne hummed and made no reply.
When they neared the house, Tsuda volunteered, a sad look in his bright,
equivocal eyes: “Last time I pay a friendly visit, Captain, the White
Kami throw a chair at me.” Tsuda sighed and shook his long head. “The
will of the gods—gn—something we can’t understand....”
“The will of the gods,” mused Utterbourne, a little mystically.
“After that,” Tsuda added, “I keep my distance, you damn bet! A man
don’t care to risk his life—no, _sir_!” And he cringed a little, the
posture seeming subtly to add to the impressiveness of his own earlier
words—“what I’ve been up against here.”
“Tsuda,” said Utterbourne dreamily, “what’s the name of this favourite
son of his people who’s honouring us with the lantern?”
“That is Nipek-kem, Captain.”
“Nipek-kem,” ordered Utterbourne, turning toward the Ainu, “come here
with the light a minute.”
The young savage stared. Tsuda uttered a few curt foreign syllables, and
then the Ainu bounded toward them.
“Nipek-kem,” suggested the Captain in his lazy drawl, “please hold the
lantern just here.”
Tsuda, vaguely alarmed, repeated the command in the crude dialect of
Paromushir. All his antennae were out. He sniffed the psychic air between
them.
The Ainu youth, his shirt royal with souvenirs of service, like that of a
general after a life of triumphant campaigns, held the light where he was
bidden to hold it.
Captain Utterbourne glanced round the circle, then murmured: “I’ve been
wondering, Tsuda, about that curious little pouch at your belt. You never
used to wear it.”
The two men stared at each other, striving to break through those
barriers which the Great Mother teaches her children to throw up about
their souls.
“That, Captain? Oh—gn—it’s—”
“Quite so, Tsuda. Nevertheless, I think you’d better give us the gun.”
The duel of eyes continued, each holding the other. It became more
primitive from moment to moment.
“The gun, Captain?”
Not all his cleverness was quite equal to the task of maintaining, in
presence of this awful poker stare, a convincing mask of innocence.
His life might depend on his holding the Captain’s eyes; but it was an
ordeal beyond his powers. He faltered. Suddenly, however, a great light
broke across the lined old face with its strangely youthful eyes, and he
explained: “It was a present—from Wife-of-the-Kami. I guess what you call
it—gn—a keepsake!” And he brought out then, in triumph, the island’s only
revolver, handling the little weapon as a child would a cherished toy.
The Captain didn’t fail to appreciate it all: the light of triumph,
the fondness; still he insisted, quietly but with an undertone of
iron firmness: “You’d better give it to Mr. Sutherland. Keepsakes are
sometimes dangerous, Tsuda. I must have neglected to warn you.”
Tsuda shivered a little with terror and foreboding. However, Captain
Utterbourne made no further comment in this connection.
“I’m going in alone,” the Captain said. “It might excite Mr. King if
we all descended upon him together. He might think us some of Tsuda’s
ogres—the Ogres of Oyeyama.... Sometimes frenzy carries them very
far—h’m? There’s a story told of an opium fiend in Java—or perhaps it
was hashish, I don’t remember. He ran amuck at Batavia and killed a lot
of people in the street before reserves arrived and he was finally run
through by a soldier. The strength of fiends in certain stages—h’m?—it’s
said to be sometimes enormous. The fellow was run through with a pike,
yet such still was the desperation of the man that he—h’m?—he worked
himself forward on the pike, and when he got near enough, stabbed the
soldier to death with a dagger. Therefore—h’m?” the Captain ended, “I
will enter alone. But I will take the lantern from Nipek-kem. Tsuda,
will you assure this impressive individual that he may safely trust the
lantern in my hand?”