|SADLER came down late in the afternoon, and with him little Irish
and King Ogel. If Mrs. Ulswater was expecting a contrite king, she was
disappointed. He strutted across the deck in front of a bodyguard of
three huge warriors, whose garb and outfit were more ferocious than
ornamental, more ornamental than decorous, and more ornamental in
intention than in result. He was unashamed. His misbehaviour had left
no traces on his complacence. He was impertinently vain of that terrific
bodyguard. I noticed Mrs. Ulswater's expression become suddenly set and
determined. I knew the king's complacence irritated her, his unrepented
misbehaviour roused her instinct for discipline. Something was going
to happen. I looked at the warriors. I wished it might not be something
that would cause the introduction into my anxious digestive organism
of those shovel-headed spears, unpleasant objects, nay, surely
indigestible. I hoped for the best. I was calm but expectant.
“Doctor,” said Mrs. Ulswater, “when kings are invited to tea, don't
people have entertainments for them?”
“Invariably! Music and dancing!” I exclaimed, delighted, relieved at
the turn Mrs. Ulswater's intentions seemed to be taking. “Daughters of
Herodias--hem--I mean to say you are quite right. No barbaric potentate
can swallow his victuals without some agreeable distraction.”
“Of course we haven't any of those things,” she said, and looked
thoughtfully at Ram Nad, who was squatted near on the flowered carpet,
“but if Ram Nad should hypnotise the king's men, don't you think it
would amuse him?”
She pointed to the bodyguards. I thought it would. Ram Nad consented.
Venerable and unappalled, he drew near, sat down in front of the guards,
and began his monotonous chant and circuitous gesturing before their
stolid faces, whose stationary expressions and complexions variegated
with tattoo were unmoved by Ram Nad's odd behaviour. Slowly those
copper-skinned and impassive spearmen in ornamental outfit keeled over
and lay stretched and rigid, mute symbols of barbarism, promiscuously
prostrate, frozen ferocities, motionless images of war. A whirl of Ram
Nad's hand, and they rolled, tumbled, turning promiscuity into chaos,
across the deck, and brought up in the scuppers among the geranium
pots. There lay shields and spears, sprawling legs and tattooed faces,
grotesque and horrific, among the brown earthenware pots, the round
velvety leaves and small red petals of that plant so familiar in the
cleanly windows of our native land.
The king was delighted. He thumped his chest, and laughed.
Jimmie Hagan took his pipe out of his mouth, profoundly astonished.
Sadler murmured “Waxworks!”
“More!” the king commanded, doubled over with laughter. “More!”
He wanted the bodyguard tumbled down the companionway, but Mrs. Ulswater
wouldn't allow it. The king turned sulky. Language rumbled in his throat
preparing to be shrieked.
“Fiddlesticks!” said Mrs. Ulswater; “As if I'd let those things into my
parlour! Have them tumbled down the gangway if you want to.”
The king brightened up. Infatuated man, he did not see--he had no
inkling of--the danger that lurked in Mrs. Ulswater's set mouth and
determined expression. I could have warned him, but refrained. Clearly
she was right about the incongruity of fully armed and half-naked
warriors precipitated down stairs into parlours. One feels the
impropriety of it.
While Ram Nad, at the king's boisterous order, was extricating the
warriors from the geranium pots, and while Mrs. Ulswater went forward
and was talking with Captain Jansen, I was thinking it impossible
that she meant to allow the bodyguard to be sent helplessly overboard,
inhumanely, to the great peril of drowning. I was about to intervene,
when I saw Mrs. Ulswater return, followed, to my surprise, by Captain
Jansen and the crew.
“There!” she said, pointing; “Be quick!”
Judge of my astonishment, when Captain Jansen and our muscular crew fell
upon Sadler, Hagan, and King Ogel, and jerking each backward, proceeded
to tie them hands and feet.
“Murther!” said Hagan. “Murther,” he repeated more mildly, and then,
“Hand up that poipe.”
Susannah cried, “Goody!” and rushed about. She was distracted by all
that wealth of curious phenomena, and the scattered arrangement of
objects of interest.
“Pirates!” shouted Sadler. After one huge lunge he subsided, and
laughed. He thundered with husky merriment and unseasonable mirth.
The humiliated and outraged monarch began eloquently, but Captain Jansen
clapped his hand over and corked up the royal anathema. They carried
King Ogel forward. My impression is that Captain Jansen used a strap,
varied, perhaps, at intervals, by a board, to impress upon him Mrs.
Ulswater's opinion. We heard of him, for the time being, no more.
“Tie up those Kanakas!” said Mrs. Ulswater. “Now, Ram Nad, wake them up.
Now, they must be taken ashore. Captain Jansen, you must get up steam.
Untie Mr. Sadler and Mr. Hagan. There!”
She sat down, rocked nervously, and took up her knitting again. Sadler's
laughter had ceased. We both looked at her. We wondered and waited.
“Well!” she said at last defiantly,--as the sound of oarlocks told
of the boats drawing away shoreward, loaded with disentranced but
well-roped, disarmed, bewildered warriors,--“I don't know what you
think, but I think Ogel would have been a dreadful king, and from what
Mr. Sadler said, I think Kolo will do better. Besides, it's easier to
carry off the one that's handy, instead of running after the other,
isn't it? Of course it is.” She added a moment later, “Of course, Mr.
Sadler, you needn't come away unless you like, but you said you didn't
get on with the other king, and I thought it would please Dr. Ulswater.
I know he enjoys your company.”
Sadler wiped his eyes and sighed.
“I ain't been dished up so green and tasty, like a salad,” he said,
“since me and Moses and Pharaoh used to play draw poker, and Moses kept
special providences up his sleeve, nor I ain't had such a good time
since the last time I was licked for stealing horehound candy; which my
recollection, ma'am, is in favour of straps rather'n shingles. It's all
right. Lua's too small for me. You can't stretch nights without kicking
other families out of bed, which makes reverberating scandals. If you
sit down, you squash the judiciary; if you get up, you shake the throne.
This civil war's no good. Why,
What's a war without no slaughter?
I'd rather be at
A Coopdetat
By Mrs. James Ulswater.”
Mrs. Ulswater went below. Her nerves were perhaps a trifle upset. Not
so Susannah. But Susannah was young. She sniffed the battle of life. She
thrilled to the keynote of action. She fell upon Jimmie Hagan with
eager inquiry as to his precise feelings throughout the late excitement.
Sadler and myself stood watching the landing of the spearmen.
“You don't mind going with us?” I asked him.
“Me? No! I'll have to get even with you sometime or be restless. I
ain't up to abducting Mrs. Ulswater nor Susannah, but I'll lay for you,
doctor. You'd better put Jimmie on the crew. He's a good seaman. I'll
be a guest, or a passenger, or an orphan, anything you like. Why, look
yere, doctor. Mrs. Ulswater's been and took me out of temptation to
stamp on my fellowman, and I'm grateful. She's given me a chance at
innocence. Why, my fellowman's always lying around in my way, and I keep
stepping on him, and kicking holes in his garments when he has any, and
bumps on him where he hasn't, and then I goes off to eat sackcloth and
ashes, and wear bread and water. That's mostly the monotonous way of
it. But the point that gets me is this: I recommend an orphan, and
she thinks that'll do for a king; I recommend a king, and she has him
spanked for an orphan. Now, if a candidate for a throne ought to qualify
that way, maybe he ought; but I never heard of it before, which is why
you see me dished for a salad.”
So departed the _Violetta_ from the island of Lua. May its politics have
peace!
The knock-out drops which Ram Nad kept in the ends of his fingers, on
the whole, had worked better than mine, and Mrs. Uls-water's logic had
been, as ever, penetrative, precise, practical.
The preparations for celebrating Christmas were resumed. My anxieties
returned. I confided them to Sadler. I said:
“It is my fixed opinion, that for revelry and sorrow, for a taste of
Eden's rapturous but snaky joys, a mince pie in the tropics lays over
most things.”
“Why, look yere, doctor,” he said. “That there king's got a tempestuous
liver that can't be downed, and he likes pies. The king 'll eat it,
sure, he'll eat it.”