I
The Kanaka helmsman put the wheel down, and the _Malahini_ slipped into
the eye of the wind and righted to an even keel. Her head-sails emptied,
there was a rat-tat of reef-points and quick shifting of boom-tackles,
and she was heeled over and filled away on the other tack. Though it was
early morning and the wind brisk, the five white men who lounged on
the poop-deck were scantily clad. David Grief, and his guest, Gregory
Mulhall, an Englishman, were still in pajamas, their naked feet thrust
into Chinese slippers. The captain and mate were in thin undershirts and
unstarched duck pants, while the supercargo still held in his hands
the undershirt he was reluctant to put on. The sweat stood out on his
forehead, and he seemed to thrust his bare chest thirstily into the wind
that did not cool.
“Pretty muggy, for a breeze like this,” he complained.
“And what's it doing around in the west? That's what I want to know,”
was Grief's contribution to the general plaint.
“It won't last, and it ain't been there long,” said Hermann, the Holland
mate. “She is been chop around all night--five minutes here, ten minutes
there, one hour somewhere other quarter.”
“Something makin ', something makin ',” Captain Warfield croaked,
spreading his bushy beard with the fingers of both hands and shoving
the thatch of his chin into the breeze in a vain search for coolness.
“Weather's been crazy for a fortnight. Haven't had the proper trades in
three weeks. Everything's mixed up. Barometer was pumping at sunset last
night, and it's pumping now, though the weather sharps say it don't mean
anything. All the same, I've got a prejudice against seeing it pump.
Gets on my nerves, sort of, you know. She was pumping that way the time
we lost the _Lancaster_. I was only an apprentice, but I can remember
that well enough. Brand new, four-masted steel ship; first voyage; broke
the old man's heart. He'd been forty years in the company. Just faded
way and died the next year.”
Despite the wind and the early hour, the heat was suffocating. The wind
whispered coolness, but did not deliver coolness. It might have blown
off the Sahara, save for the extreme humidity with which it was laden.
There was no fog nor mist, nor hint of fog or mist, yet the dimness of
distance produced the impression. There were no defined clouds, yet
so thickly were the heavens covered by a messy cloud-pall that the sun
failed to shine through.
“Ready about!” Captain Warfield ordered with slow sharpness.
The brown, breech-clouted Kanaka sailors moved languidly but quickly to
head-sheets and boom-tackles.
“Hard a-lee!”
The helmsman ran the spokes over with no hint of gentling, and the
_Malahini_ darted prettily into the wind and about.
“Jove! she's a witch!” was Mulhall's appreciation. “I didn't know you
South Sea traders sailed yachts.”
“She was a Gloucester fisherman originally,” Grief explained, “and
the Gloucester boats are all yachts when it comes to build, rig, and
sailing.”
“But you're heading right in--why don't you make it?” came the
Englishman's criticism.
“Try it, Captain Warfield,” Grief suggested. “Show him what a lagoon
entrance is on a strong ebb.”
“Close-and-by!” the captain ordered.
“Close-and-by,” the Kanaka repeated, easing half a spoke.
The _Malahini_ laid squarely into the narrow passage which was the
lagoon entrance _of_ a large, long, and narrow oval of an atoll. The
atoll was shaped as if three atolls, in the course of building, had
collided and coalesced and failed to rear the partition walls. Cocoanut
palms grew in spots on the circle of sand, and there were many gaps
where the sand was too low to the sea for cocoanuts, and through which
could be seen the protected lagoon where the water lay flat like the
ruffled surface of a mirror. Many square miles of water were in the
irregular lagoon, all of which surged out on the ebb through the one
narrow channel. So narrow was the channel, so large the outflow of
water, that the passage was more like the rapids of a river than the
mere tidal entrance to an atoll. The water boiled and whirled and
swirled and drove outward in a white foam of stiff, serrated waves. Each
heave and blow on her bows of the upstanding waves of the current swung
the Malahini off the straight lead and wedged her as with wedges of
steel toward the side of the passage. Part way in she was, when her
closeness to the coral edge compelled her to go about. On the opposite
tack, broadside to the current, she swept seaward with the current's
speed.
“Now's the time for that new and expensive engine of yours,” Grief
jeered good-naturedly.
That the engine was a sore point with Captain Warfield was patent. He
had begged and badgered for it, until in the end Grief had given his
consent.
“It will pay for itself yet,” the captain retorted, “You wait and
see. It beats insurance and you know the underwriters won't stand for
insurance in the Paumotus.”
Grief pointed to a small cutter beating up astern of them on the same
course.
“I'll wager a five-franc piece the little Nuhiva beats us in.”
“Sure,” Captain Warfield agreed. “She's overpowered. We're like a liner
alongside of her, and we've only got forty horsepower. She's got ten
horse, and she's a little skimming dish. She could skate across the
froth of hell, but just the same she can't buck this current. It's
running ten knots right now.”
And at the rate of ten knots, buffeted and jerkily rolled, the
_Malahini_ went out to sea with the tide.
“She'll slacken in half an hour--then we'll make headway,” Captain
Warfield said, with an irritation explained by his next words. “He has
no right to call it Parlay. It's down on the admiralty charts, and the
French charts, too, as Hikihoho. Bougainville discovered it and named it
from the natives.”
“What's the name matter?” the supercargo demanded, taking advantage of
speech to pause with arms shoved into the sleeves of the undershirt.
“There it is, right under our nose, and old Parlay is there with the
pearls.”
“Who see them pearl?” Hermann queried, looking from one to another.
“It's well known,” was the supercargo's reply. He turned to the
steersman: “Tai-Hotauri, what about old Parlay's pearls?”
The Kanaka, pleased and self-conscious, took and gave a spoke.
“My brother dive for Parlay three, four month, and he make much talk
about pearl. Hikihoho very good place for pearl.”
“And the pearl-buyers have never got him to part with a pearl,” the
captain broke in.
“And they say he had a hatful for Armande when he sailed for Tahiti,”
the supercargo carried on the tale. “That's fifteen years ago, and he's
been adding to it ever since--stored the shell as well. Everybody's seen
that--hundreds of tons of it. They say the lagoon's fished clean now.
Maybe that's why he's announced the auction.”
“If he really sells, this will be the biggest year's output of pearls in
the Paumotus,” Grief said.
“I say, now, look here!” Mulhall burst forth, harried by the humid
heat as much as the rest of them. “What's it all about? Who's the old
beachcomber anyway? What are all these pearls? Why so secretious about
it?”
“Hikihoho belongs to old Parlay,” the supercargo answered. “He's got a
fortune in pearls, saved up for years and years, and he sent the word
out weeks ago that he'd auction them off to the buyers to-morrow. See
those schooners' masts sticking up inside the lagoon?”
“Eight, so I see,” said Hermann.
“What are they doing in a dinky atoll like this?” the supercargo went
on. “There isn't a schooner-load of copra a year in the place. They've
come for the auction. That's why we're here. That's why the little
_Nuhiva's_ bumping along astern there, though what she can buy is beyond
me. Narii Herring--he's an English Jew half-caste--owns and runs her,
and his only assets are his nerve, his debts, and his whiskey bills.
He's a genius in such things. He owes so much that there isn't a
merchant in Papeete who isn't interested in his welfare. They go out of
their way to throw work in his way. They've got to, and a dandy stunt it
is for Narii. Now I owe nobody. What's the result? If I fell down in
a fit on the beach they'd let me lie there and die. They wouldn't lose
anything. But Narii Herring?--what wouldn't they do if he fell in a fit?
Their best wouldn't be too good for him. They've got too much money
tied up in him to let him lie. They'd take him into their homes and
hand-nurse him like a brother. Let me tell you, honesty in paying bills
ain't what it's cracked up to be.”
“What's this Narii chap got to do with it?” was the Englishman's
short-tempered demand. And, turning to Grief, he said, “What's all this
pearl nonsense? Begin at the beginning.”
“You'll have to help me out,” Grief warned the others, as he began. “Old
Parlay is a character. From what I've seen of him I believe he's partly
and mildly insane. Anyway, here's the story: Parlay's a full-blooded
Frenchman. He told me once that he came from Paris. His accent is the
true Parisian. He arrived down here in the old days. Went to trading
and all the rest. That's how he got in on Hikihoho. Came in trading when
trading was the real thing. About a hundred miserable Paumotans lived
on the island. He married the queen--native fashion. When she died,
everything was his. Measles came through, and there weren't more than a
dozen survivors. He fed them, and worked them, and was king. Now before
the queen died she gave birth to a girl. That's Armande. When she was
three he sent her to the convent at Papeete. When she was seven or eight
he sent her to France. You begin to glimpse the situation. The best
and most aristocratic convent in France was none too good for the only
daughter of a Paumotan island king and capitalist, and you know the old
country French draw no colour line. She was educated like a princess,
and she accepted herself in much the same way. Also, she thought she was
all-white, and never dreamed of a bar sinister.
“Now comes the tragedy. The old man had always been cranky and erratic,
and he'd played the despot on Hikihoho so long that he'd got the idea
in his head that there was nothing wrong with the king--or the princess
either. When Armande was eighteen he sent for her. He had slews and
slathers of money, as Yankee Bill would say. He'd built the big house on
Hikihoho, and a whacking fine bungalow in Papeete. She was to arrive on
the mail boat from New Zealand, and he sailed in his schooner to meet
her at Papeete. And he might have carried the situation off, despite the
hens and bull-beasts of Papeete, if it hadn't been for the hurricane.
That was the year, wasn't it, when Manu-Huhi was swept and eleven
hundred drowned?”
The others nodded, and Captain Warfield said: “I was in the _Magpie_
that blow, and we went ashore, all hands and the cook, _Magpie_ and all,
a quarter of a mile into the cocoanuts at the head of Taiohae Bay--and
it a supposedly hurricane-proof harbour.”
“Well,” Grief continued, “old Parlay got caught in the same blow, and
arrived in Papeete with his hatful of pearls three weeks too late. He'd
had to jack up his schooner and build half a mile of ways before he
could get her back into the sea.
“And in the meantime there was Armande at Papeete. Nobody called on her.
She did, French fashion, make the initial calls on the Governor and the
port doctor. They saw her, but neither of their hen-wives was at home to
her nor returned the call. She was out of caste, without caste, though
she had never dreamed it, and that was the gentle way they broke the
information to her. There was a gay young lieutenant on the French
cruiser. He lost his heart to her, but not his head. You can imagine
the shock to this young woman, refined, beautiful, raised like an
aristocrat, pampered with the best of old France that money could buy.
And you can guess the end.” He shrugged his shoulders. “There was a
Japanese servant in the bungalow. He saw it. Said she did it with the
proper spirit of the Samurai. Took a stiletto--no thrust, no drive,
no wild rush for annihilation--took the stiletto, placed the point
carefully against her heart, and with both hands, slowly and steadily,
pressed home.
“Old Parlay arrived after that with his pearls. There was one single one
of them, they say, worth sixty thousand francs. Peter Gee saw it, and
has told me he offered that much for it. The old man went clean off for
a while. They had him strait-jacketed in the Colonial Club two days----”
“His wife's uncle, an old Paumotan, cut him out of the jacket and turned
him loose,” the supercargo corroborated.
“And then old Parlay proceeded to eat things up,” Grief went on. “Pumped
three bullets into the scalawag of a lieutenant----”
“Who lay in sick bay for three months,” Captain Warfield contributed.
“Flung a glass of wine in the Governor's face; fought a duel with the
port doctor; beat up his native servants; wrecked the hospital; broke
two ribs and the collarbone of a man nurse, and escaped; and went down
to his schooner, a gun in each hand, daring the chief of police and all
the gendarmes to arrest him, and sailed for Hikihoho. And they say he's
never left the island since.”
The supercargo nodded. “That was fifteen years ago, and he's never
budged.”
“And added to his pearls,” said the captain. “He's a blithering old
lunatic. Makes my flesh creep. He's a regular Finn.”
“What's that?” Mulhall inquired.
“Bosses the weather--that's what the natives believe, at any rate. Ask
Tai-Hotauri there. Hey, Tai-Hotauri! what you think old Parlay do along
weather?”
“Just the same one big weather devil,” came the Kanaka's answer. “I
know. He want big blow, he make big blow. He want no wind, no wind
come.”
“A regular old Warlock,” said Mulhall.
“No good luck them pearl,” Tai-Hotauri blurted out, rolling his head
ominously. “He say he sell. Plenty schooner come. Then he make big
hurricane, everybody finish, you see. All native men say so.”
“It's hurricane season now,” Captain War-field laughed morosely.
“They're not far wrong. It's making for something right now, and I'd
feel better if the _Malahini_ was a thousand miles away from here.”
“He is a bit mad,” Grief concluded. “I've tried to get his point of
view. It's--well, it's mixed. For eighteen years he'd centred everything
on Armande. Half the time he believes she's still alive, not yet come
back from France. That's one of the reasons he held on to the pearls.
And all the time he hates white men. He never forgets they killed her,
though a great deal of the time he forgets she's dead. Hello! Where's
your wind?”
The sails bellied emptily overhead, and Captain Warfield grunted his
disgust. Intolerable as the heat had been, in the absence of wind it
was almost overpowering. The sweat oozed out on all their faces, and now
one, and again another, drew deep breaths, involuntarily questing for
more air.
“Here she comes again--an eight point haul! Boom-tackles across! Jump!”
The Kanakas sprang to the captain's orders, and for five minutes the
schooner laid directly into the passage and even gained on the current.
Again the breeze fell flat, then puffed from the old quarter, compelling
a shift back of sheets and tackles.
“Here comes the _Nuhiva_” Grief said. “She's got her engine on. Look at
her skim.”
“All ready?” the captain asked the engineer, a Portuguese half-caste,
whose head and shoulders protruded from the small hatch just for'ard of
the cabin, and who wiped the sweat from his face with a bunch of greasy
waste.
“Sure,” he replied.
“Then let her go.”
The engineer disappeared into his den, and a moment later the exhaust
muffler coughed and spluttered overside. But the schooner could not hold
her lead. The little cutter made three feet to her two and was quickly
alongside and forging ahead. Only natives were on her deck, and the man
steering waved his hand in derisive greeting and farewell.
“That's Narii Herring,” Grief told Mulhall. “The big fellow at the
wheel--the nerviest and most conscienceless scoundrel in the Paumotus.”
Five minutes later a cry of joy from their own Kanakas centred all eyes
on the _Nuhiva_. Her engine had broken down and they were overtaking
her. The _Malahini's_ sailors sprang into the rigging and jeered as they
went by; the little cutter heeled over by the wind with a bone in her
teeth, going backward on the tide.
“Some engine that of ours,” Grief approved, as the lagoon opened before
them and the course was changed across it to the anchorage.
Captain Warfield was visibly cheered, though he merely grunted, “It'll
pay for itself, never fear.”
The _Malahini_ ran well into the centre of the little fleet ere she
found swinging room to anchor.
“There's Isaacs on the _Dolly_,” Grief observed, with a hand wave of
greeting. “And Peter Gee's on the _Roberta_. Couldn't keep him away from
a pearl sale like this. And there's Francini on the _Cactus_. They're
all here, all the buyers. Old Parlay will surely get a price.”
“They haven't repaired the engine yet,” Captain Warfield grumbled
gleefully.
He was looking across the lagoon to where the _Nuhiva's_ sails showed
through the sparse cocoa-nuts.