I
Of his many schooners, ketches and cutters that nosed about among the
coral isles of the South Seas, David Grief loved most the _Rattler_--a
yacht-like schooner of ninety tons with so swift a pair of heels that
she had made herself famous, in the old days, opium-smuggling from San
Diego to Puget Sound, raiding the seal-rookeries of Bering Sea, and
running arms in the Far East. A stench and an abomination to government
officials, she had been the joy of all sailormen, and the pride of the
shipwrights who built her. Even now, after forty years of driving, she
was still the same old _Rattler_, fore-reaching in the same marvellous
manner that compelled sailors to see in order to believe and that
punctuated many an angry discussion with words and blows on the beaches
of all the ports from Valparaiso to Manila Bay.
On this night, close-hauled, her big mainsail preposterously flattened
down, her luffs pulsing emptily on the lift of each smooth swell, she
was sliding an easy four knots through the water on the veriest whisper
of a breeze. For an hour David Grief had been leaning on the rail at the
lee fore-rigging, gazing overside at the steady phosphorescence of her
gait. The faint back-draught from the headsails fanned his cheek and
chest with a wine of coolness, and he was in an ecstasy of appreciation
of the schooner's qualities.
“Eh!--She's a beauty, Taute, a beauty,” he said to the Kanaka lookout,
at the same time stroking the teak of the rail with an affectionate
hand.
“Ay, skipper,” the Kanaka answered in the rich, big-chested tones of
Polynesia. “Thirty years I know ships, but never like 'this. On Raiatea
we call her _Fanauao_.”
“The Dayborn,” Grief translated the love-phrase. “Who named her so?”
About to answer, Taute peered ahead with sudden intensity. Grief joined
him in the gaze.
“Land,” said Taute.
“Yes; Fuatino,” Grief agreed, his eyes still fixed on the spot where
the star-luminous horizon was gouged by a blot of blackness. “It's all
right. I'll tell the captain.”
The _Rattler_ slid along until the loom of the island could be seen as
well as sensed, until the sleepy roar of breakers and the blatting of
goats could be heard, until the wind, off the land, was flower-drenched
with perfume.
“If it wasn't a crevice, she could run the passage a night like this,”
Captain Glass remarked regretfully, as he watched the wheel lashed hard
down by the steersman.
The _Rattler_, run off shore a mile, had been hove to to wait until
daylight ere she attempted the perilous entrance to Fuatino. It was a
perfect tropic night, with no hint of rain or squall. For'ard, wherever
their tasks left them, the Raiatea sailors sank down to sleep on deck.
Aft, the captain and mate and Grief spread their beds with similar
languid unconcern. They lay on their blankets, smoking and murmuring
sleepy conjectures about Mataara, the Queen of Fuatino, and about the
love affair between her daughter, Naumoo, and Motuaro.
“They're certainly a romantic lot,” Brown, the mate, said. “As romantic
as we whites.”
“As romantic as Pilsach,” Grief laughed, “and that is going some. How
long ago was it, Captain, that he jumped you?”
“Eleven years,” Captain Glass grunted resentfully.
“Tell me about it,” Brown pleaded. “They say he's never left Fuatino
since. Is that right?”
“Right O,” the captain rumbled. “He's in love with his wife--the little
hussy! Stole him from me, and as good a sailorman as the trade has ever
seen--if he is a Dutchman.”
“German,” Grief corrected.
“It's all the same,” was the retort. “The sea was robbed of a good man
that night he went ashore and Notutu took one look at him. I reckon they
looked good to each other. Before you could say skat, she'd put a wreath
of some kind of white flowers on his head, and in five minutes they were
off down the beach, like a couple of kids, holding hands and laughing. I
hope he's blown that big coral patch out of the channel. I always start
a sheet or two of copper warping past.”
“Go on with the story,” Brown urged.
“That's all. He was finished right there. Got married that night. Never
came on board again. I looked him up next day. Found him in a straw
house in the bush, barelegged, a white savage, all mixed up with flowers
and things and playing a guitar. Looked like a bally ass. Told me to
send his things ashore. I told him I'd see him damned first. And that's
all. You'll see her to-morrow. They've got three kiddies now--wonderful
little rascals. I've a phonograph down below for him, and about a
million records.”
“And then you made him trader?” the mate inquired of Grief.
“What else could I do? Fuatino is a love island, and Filsach is a lover.
He knows the native, too--one of the best traders I've got, or ever had.
He's responsible. You'll see him to-morrow.”
“Look here, young man,” Captain Glass rumbled threateningly at his mate.
“Are you romantic? Because if you are, on board you stay. Fuatino's the
island of romantic insanity. Everybody's in love with somebody. They
live on love. It's in the milk of the cocoa-nuts, or the air, or the
sea. The history of the island for the last ten thousand years is
nothing but love affairs. I know. I've talked with the old men. And if I
catch you starting down the beach hand in hand--”
His sudden cessation caused both the other men to look at him. They
followed his gaze, which passed across them to the main rigging, and saw
what he saw, a brown hand and arm, muscular and wet, being joined from
overside by a second brown hand and arm. A head followed, thatched with
long elfin locks, and then a face, with roguish black eyes, lined with
the marks of wildwood's laughter.
“My God!” Brown breathed. “It's a faun--a sea-faun.”
“It's the Goat Man,” said Glass.
“It is Mauriri,” said Grief. “He is my own blood brother by sacred
plight of native custom. His name is mine, and mine is his.”
Broad brown shoulders and a magnificent chest rose above the rail, and,
with what seemed effortless ease, the whole grand body followed over
the rail and noiselessly trod the deck. Brown, who might have been other
things than the mate of an island schooner, was enchanted. All that he
had ever gleaned from the books proclaimed indubitably the faun-likeness
of this visitant of the deep. “But a sad faun,” was the young man's
judgment, as the golden-brown woods god strode forward to where David
Grief sat up with outstretched hand.
“David,” said David Grief.
“Mauriri, Big Brother,” said Mauriri.
And thereafter, in the custom of men who have pledged blood brotherhood,
each called the other, not by the other's name, but by his own. Also,
they talked in the Polynesian tongue of Fuatino, and Brown could only
sit and guess.
“A long swim to say _talofa_,” Grief said, as the other sat and streamed
water on the deck.
“Many days and nights have I watched for your coming, Big Brother,”
Mauriri replied. “I have sat on the Big Rock, where the dynamite
is kept, of which I have been made keeper. I saw you come up to the
entrance and run back into darkness. I knew you waited till morning, and
I followed. Great trouble has come upon us. Mataara has cried these many
days for your coming. She is an old woman, and Motauri is dead, and she
is sad.”
“Did he marry Naumoo?” Grief asked, after he had shaken his head and
sighed by the custom.
“Yes. In the end they ran to live with the goats, till Mataara forgave,
when they returned to live with her in the Big House. But he is now
dead, and Naumoo soon will die. Great is our trouble, Big Brother. Tori
is dead, and Tati-Tori, and Petoo, and Nari, and Pilsach, and others.”
“Pilsach, too!” Grief exclaimed. “Has there been a sickness?”
“There has been much killing. Listen, Big Brother, Three weeks ago a
strange schooner came. From the Big Rock I saw her topsails above the
sea. She towed in with her boats, but they did not warp by the big
patch, and she pounded many times. She is now on the beach, where they
are strengthening the broken timbers. There are eight white men on
board. They have women from some island far to the east. The women
talk a language in many ways like ours, only different. But we can
understand. They say they were stolen by the men on the schooner. We do
not know, but they sing and dance and are happy.”
“And the men?” Grief interrupted.
“They talk French. I know, for there was a mate on your schooner who
talked French long ago. There are two chief men, and they do not look
like the others. They have blue eyes like you, and they are devils. One
is a bigger devil than the other. The other six are also devils. They do
not pay us for our yams, and taro, and breadfruit. They take everything
from us, and if we complain they kill us. Thus was killed Tori, and
Tati-Tori, and Petoo, and others. We cannot fight, for we have no
guns--only two or three old guns.
“They ill-treat our women. Thus was killed Motuaro, who made defence of
Naumoo, whom they have now taken on board their schooner. It was because
of this that Pilsach was killed. Him the chief of the two chief men, the
Big Devil, shot once in his whaleboat, and twice when he tried to crawl
up the sand of the beach. Pilsach was a brave man, and Notutu now sits
in the house and cries without end. Many of the people are afraid, and
have run to live with the goats. But there is not food for all in the
high mountains. And the men will not go out and fish, and they work no
more in the gardens because of the devils who take all they have. And we
are ready to fight.
“Big Brother, we need guns, and much ammunition. I sent word before I
swam out to you, and the men are waiting. The strange white men do not
know you are come. Give me a boat, and the guns, and I will go back
before the sun. And when you come to-morrow we will be ready for the
word from you to kill the strange white men. They must be killed. Big
Brother, you have ever been of the blood with us, and the men and women
have prayed to many gods for your coming. And you are come.”
“I will go in the boat with you,” Grief said.
“No, Big Brother,” was Mauriri's reply. “You must be with the schooner.
The strange white men will fear the schooner, not us. We will have the
guns, and they will not know. It is only when they see your schooner
come that they will be alarmed. Send the young man there with the boat.”
So it was that Brown, thrilling with all the romance and adventure he
had read and guessed and never lived, took his place in the sternsheets
of a whaleboat, loaded with rifles and cartridges, rowed by four Baiatea
sailors, steered by a golden-brown, sea-swimming faun, and directed
through the warm tropic darkness toward the half-mythical love island of
Fuatino, which had been invaded by twentieth century pirates.