I
“I'm almost afraid to take you in to New Gibbon,” David Grief said. “It
wasn't until you and the British gave me a free hand and let the place
alone that any results were accomplished.”
Wallenstein, the German Resident Commissioner from Bougainville, poured
himself a long Scotch and soda and smiled.
“We take off our hats to you, Mr. Grief,” he said in perfectly good
English. “What you have done on the devil island is a miracle. And we
shall continue not to interfere. It _is_ a devil island, and old Koho is
the big chief devil of them all. We never could bring him to terms. He
is a liar, and he is no fool. He is a black Napoleon, a head-hunting,
man-eating Talleyrand. I remember six years ago, when I landed there in
the British cruiser. The niggers cleared out for the bush, of course,
but we found several who couldn't get away. One was his latest wife. She
had been hung up by one arm in the sun for two days and nights. We
cut her down, but she died just the same. And staked out in the fresh
running water, up to their necks, were three more women. All their bones
were broken and their joints crushed. The process is supposed to make
them tender for the eating. They were still alive. Their vitality was
remarkable. One woman, the oldest, lingered nearly ten days. Well, that
was a sample of Koho's diet. No wonder he's a wild beast. How you ever
pacified him is our everlasting puzzlement.”
“I wouldn't call him exactly pacified,” Grief answered. “Though he comes
in once in a while and eats out of the hand.”
“That's more than we accomplished with our cruisers. Neither the German
nor the English ever laid eyes on him. You were the first.”
“No; McTavish was the first,” Grief disclaimed.
“Ah, yes, I remember him--the little, dried-up Scotchman.” Wallenstein
sipped his whiskey. “He's called the Trouble-mender, isn't he?”
Grief nodded.
“And they say the screw you pay him is bigger than mine or the British
Resident's?”
“I'm afraid it is,” Grief admitted. “You see, and no offence, he's
really worth it. He spends his time wherever the trouble is. He is a
wizard. He's the one who got me my lodgment on New Gibbon. He's down on
Malaita now, starting a plantation for me.”
“The first?”
“There's not even a trading station on all Malaita. The recruiters still
use covering boats and carry the old barbed wire above their rails.
There's the plantation now. We'll be in in half an hour.” He handed the
binoculars to his guest. “Those are the boat-sheds to the left of the
bungalow. Beyond are the barracks. And to the right are the copra-sheds.
We dry quite a bit already. Old Koho's getting civilized enough to make
his people bring in the nuts. There's the mouth of the stream where you
found the three women softening.”
The _Wonder_, wing-and-wing, was headed directly in for the anchorage.
She rose and fell lazily over a glassy swell flawed here and there by
catspaws from astern. It was the tail-end of the monsoon season, and the
air was heavy and sticky with tropic moisture, the sky a florid, leaden
muss of formless clouds. The rugged land was swathed with cloud-banks
and squall wreaths, through which headlands and interior peaks thrust
darkly. On one promontory a slant of sunshine blazed torridly, on
another, scarcely a mile away, a squall was bursting in furious downpour
of driving rain.
This was the dank, fat, savage island of New Gibbon, lying fifty miles
to leeward of Choiseul. Geographically, it belonged to the Solomon
Group. Politically, the dividing line of German and British
influence cut it in half, hence the joint control by the two Resident
Commissioners. In the case of New Gibbon, this control existed only on
paper in the colonial offices of the two countries. There was no real
control at all, and never had been. The bêche de mer fishermen of
the old days had passed it by. The sandalwood traders, after stern
experiences, had given it up. The blackbirders had never succeeded in
recruiting one labourer on the island, and, after the schooner _Dorset_
had been cut off with all hands, they left the place severely alone.
Later, a German company had attempted a cocoanut plantation, which was
abandoned after several managers and a number of contract labourers had
lost their heads. German cruisers and British cruisers had failed to
get the savage blacks to listen to reason. Four times the missionary
societies had essayed the peaceful conquest of the island, and four
times, between sickness and massacre, they had been driven away, More
cruisers, more pacifications, had followed, and followed fruitlessly.
The cannibals had always retreated into the bush and laughed at the
screaming shells. When the warships left it was an easy matter
to rebuild the burned grass houses and set up the ovens in the
old-fashioned way.
New Gibbon was a large island, fully one hundred and fifty miles long
and half as broad.
Its windward coast was iron-bound, without anchorages or inlets, and it
was inhabited by scores of warring tribes--at least it had been,
until Koho had arisen, like a Kamehameha, and, by force of arms and
considerable statecraft, firmly welded the greater portion of the tribes
into a confederation. His policy of permitting no intercourse with white
men had been eminently right, so far as survival of his own people was
concerned; and after the visit of the last cruiser he had had his own
way until David Grief and McTavish the Trouble-mender landed on the
deserted beach where once had stood the German bungalow and barracks and
the various English mission-houses.
Followed wars, false peaces, and more wars. The weazened little
Scotchman could make trouble as well as mend it, and, not content with
holding the beach, he imported bushmen from Malaita and invaded the
wild-pig runs of the interior jungle. He burned villages until Koho
wearied of rebuilding them, and when he captured Koho's eldest son he
compelled a conference with the old chief. It was then that McTavish
laid down the rate of head-exchange. For each head of his own people
he promised to take ten of Koho's. After Koho had learned that the
Scotchman was a man of his word, the first true peace was made. In
the meantime McTavish had built the bungalow and barracks, cleared the
jungle-land along the beach, and laid out the plantation. After that
he had gone on his way to mend trouble on the atoll of Tasman, where
a plague of black measles had broken out and been ascribed to Grief's
plantation by the devil-devil doctors. Once, a year later, he had been
called back again to straighten up New Gibbon; and Koho, after paying a
forced fine of two hundred thousand cocoanuts, decided it was cheaper
to keep the peace and sell the nuts. Also, the fires of his youth
had burned down. He was getting old and limped of one leg where a
Lee-Enfield bullet had perforated the calf.