I
The _Willi-Waw_ lay in the passage between the shore-reef and the
outer-reef. From the latter came the low murmur of a lazy surf, but the
sheltered stretch of water, not more than a hundred yards across to the
white beach of pounded coral sand, was of glass-like smoothness. Narrow
as was the passage, and anchored as she was in the shoalest place that
gave room to swing, the _Willi-Waw's_ chain rode up-and-down a clean
hundred feet. Its course could be traced over the bottom of living
coral. Like some monstrous snake, the rusty chain's slack wandered
over the ocean floor, crossing and recrossing itself several times and
fetching up finally at the idle anchor. Big rock-cod, dun and mottled,
played warily in and out of the coral. Other fish, grotesque of form and
colour, were brazenly indifferent, even when a big fish-shark drifted
sluggishly along and sent the rock-cod scuttling for their favourite
crevices.
On deck, for'ard, a dozen blacks pottered clumsily at scraping the teak
rail. They were as inexpert at their work as so many monkeys. In fact
they looked very much like monkeys of some enlarged and prehistoric
type. Their eyes had in them the querulous plaintiveness of the monkey,
their faces were even less symmetrical than the monkey's, and, hairless
of body, they were far more ungarmented than any monkey, for clothes
they had none. Decorated they were as no monkey ever was. In holes in
their ears they carried short clay pipes, rings of turtle shell, huge
plugs of wood, rusty wire nails, and empty rifle cartridges. The calibre
of a Winchester rifle was the smallest hole an ear bore; some of the
largest holes were inches in diameter, and any single ear averaged from
three to half a dozen holes. Spikes and bodkins of polished bone or
petrified shell were thrust through their noses. On the chest of one
hung a white doorknob, on the chest of another the handle of a china
cup, on the chest of a third the brass cogwheel of an alarm clock. They
chattered in queer, falsetto voices, and, combined, did no more work
than a single white sailor.
Aft, under an awning, were two white men. Each was clad in a six-penny
undershirt and wrapped about the loins with a strip of cloth. Belted
about the middle of each was a revolver and tobacco pouch. The sweat
stood out on their skin in myriads of globules. Here and there the
globules coalesced in tiny streams that dripped to the heated deck and
almost immediately evaporated. The lean, dark-eyed man wiped his fingers
wet with a stinging stream from his forehead and flung it from him with
a weary curse. Wearily, and without hope, he gazed seaward across the
outer-reef, and at the tops of the palms along the beach.
“Eight o'clock, an' hell don't get hot till noon,” he complained. “Wisht
to God for a breeze. Ain't we never goin' to get away?”
The other man, a slender German of five and twenty, with the massive
forehead of a scholar and the tumble-home chin of a degenerate, did not
trouble to reply. He was busy emptying powdered quinine into a cigarette
paper. Rolling what was approximately fifty grains of the drug into a
tight wad, he tossed it into his mouth and gulped it down without the
aid of water.
“Wisht I had some whiskey,” the first man panted, after a fifteen-minute
interval of silence.
Another equal period elapsed ere the German enounced, relevant of
nothing:
“I'm rotten with fever. I'm going to quit you, Griffiths, when we get to
Sydney. No more tropics for me. I ought to known better when I signed on
with you.”
“You ain't been much of a mate,” Griffiths replied, too hot himself to
speak heatedly. “When the beach at Guvutu heard I'd shipped you, they
all laughed. 'What? Jacobsen?' they said. 'You can't hide a square
face of trade gin or sulphuric acid that he won't smell out!' You've
certainly lived up to your reputation. I ain't had a drink for a
fortnight, what of your snoopin' my supply.”
“If the fever was as rotten in you as me, you'd understand,” the mate
whimpered.
“I ain't kickin',” Griffiths answered. “I only wisht God'd send me a
drink, or a breeze of wind, or something. I'm ripe for my next chill
to-morrow.”
The mate proffered him the quinine. Rolling a fifty-grain dose, he
popped the wad into his mouth and swallowed it dry.
“God! God!” he moaned. “I dream of a land somewheres where they ain't no
quinine. Damned stuff of hell! I've scoffed tons of it in my time.”
Again he quested seaward for signs of wind. The usual trade-wind clouds
were absent, and the sun, still low in its climb to meridian, turned all
the sky to heated brass. One seemed to see as well as feel this heat,
and Griffiths sought vain relief by gazing shoreward. The white beach
was a searing ache to his eyeballs. The palm trees, absolutely still,
outlined flatly against the unrefreshing green of the packed jungle,
seemed so much cardboard scenery. The little black boys, playing
naked in the dazzle of sand and sun, were an affront and a hurt to the
sun-sick man. He felt a sort of relief when one, running, tripped and
fell on all-fours in the tepid sea-water.
An exclamation from the blacks for'ard sent both men glancing seaward.
Around the near point of land, a quarter of a mile away and skirting the
reef, a long black canoe paddled into sight.
“Gooma boys from the next bight,” was the mate's verdict.
One of the blacks came aft, treading the hot deck with the unconcern of
one whose bare feet felt no heat. This, too, was a hurt to Griffiths,
and he closed his eyes. But the next moment they were open wide.
“White fella marster stop along Gooma boy,” the black said.
Both men were on their feet and gazing at the canoe. Aft could be seen
the unmistakable sombrero of a white man. Quick alarm showed itself on
the face of the mate.
“It's Grief,” he said.
Griffiths satisfied himself by a long look, then ripped out a wrathful
oath.
“What's he doing up here?” he demanded of the mate, of the aching sea
and sky, of the merciless blaze of sun, and of the whole superheated and
implacable universe with which his fate was entangled.
The mate began to chuckle.
“I told you you couldn't get away with it,” he said.
But Griffiths was not listening.
“With all his money, coming around like a rent collector,” he chanted
his outrage, almost in an ecstasy of anger. “He's loaded with money,
he's stuffed with money, he's busting with money. I know for a fact he
sold his Yringa plantations for three hundred thousand pounds. Bell
told me so himself last time we were drunk at Guvutu. Worth millions and
millions, and Shylocking me for what he wouldn't light his pipe with.”
He whirled on the mate. “Of course you told me so. Go on and say it, and
keep on saying it. Now just what was it you did tell me so?”
“I told you you didn't know him, if you thought you could clear the
Solomons without paying him. That man Grief is a devil, but he's
straight. I know. I told you he'd throw a thousand quid away for the fun
of it, and for sixpence fight like a shark for a rusty tin, I tell you I
know. Didn't he give his _Balakula_ to the Queensland Mission when they
lost their _Evening Star_ on San Cristobal?--and the _Balakula_ worth
three thousand pounds if she was worth a penny? And didn't he beat up
Strothers till he lay abed a fortnight, all because of a difference of
two pound ten in the account, and because Strothers got fresh and tried
to make the gouge go through?”
“God strike me blind!” Griffiths cried in im-potency of rage.
The mate went on with his exposition.
“I tell you only a straight man can buck a straight man like him, and
the man's never hit the Solomons that could do it. Men like you and me
can't buck him. We're too rotten, too rotten all the way through. You've
got plenty more than twelve hundred quid below. Pay him, and get it over
with.”
But Griffiths gritted his teeth and drew his thin lips tightly across
them.
“I'll buck him,” he muttered--more to himself and the brazen ball of sun
than to the mate. He turned and half started to go below, then turned
back again. “Look here, Jacob-sen. He won't be here for quarter of an
hour. Are you with me? Will you stand by me?”
“Of course I'll stand by you. I've drunk all your whiskey, haven't I?
What are you going to do?”
“I'm not going to kill him if I can help it. But I'm not going to pay.
Take that flat.”
Jacobsen shrugged his shoulders in calm acquiescence to fate, and
Griffiths stepped to the companionway and went below.