I
The moon was rising over Papaleete, over the Pacific Ocean and the bay
where the anchor lights were spilling their amber on the water, over
the palm trees and flame trees and the fragrant town from which, now
clear, now sheltered by the sea wind, came the voices of girls singing
to the tune of Hawaiian guitars.
Mixed with the breathing of the tepid wind in the trees, the voices of
the girls and the tune of the guitars, came the murmur and sigh of the
beach, the last note wanted, the last touch, to a scene of absolutely
absurd and impossible loveliness, amidst which, by the water’s edge,
casting a thirty-foot shadow on the hard white sand, Mr. Harman was
walking, blind to the Eden around him.
Billy was on the beach in more senses than one. He was down and out,
without friends, without food, without drinks, and almost without
tobacco, starving in the midst of plenty, for in Papaleete, if you are
a cadger, you may live for ever on the fat of the land, and not only
live, but love, drink, smoke, dream under tree shadows and bathe in a
sea warm with perpetual summer.
But that was not Billy’s way. This gig, four-square, blue-eyed man out
of San Francisco could do anything but cadge. It wasn’t a question of
morals, it was more a question of simplicity.
Billy’s morals had mostly been forgotten by Nature, or maybe they had
been extracted by San Franciscans and shore-along toughs from
Valparaiso up, anyhow and however that may be, the resulting vacuum
seemed to have filled itself up with simplicity, not stupidity, just
simplicity. The simplicity of a child that allowed him to go into the
most desperate and questionable deals in ward politics and doubtful
sea practice, wide-eyed, blue-eyed, and reproaching others for their
moral lapses with the unchanging formula: “It don’t pay.”
“Crooked dealing don’t pay,” said Mr. Harman after some crooked deal
had failed—never before.
Yet somehow, in some extraordinary way, Billy was lovable, there was
nothing mean about him, and that was maybe why he couldn’t cadge, and
he had behind those blue eyes and that honest-dog looking, tanned
face, a power of cool, uncalculating daring that might have landed him
anywhere if he had come on a decent jumping-off place.
As he turned back along the beach, the moonlight struck a figure
coming towards him. It was Davis. Fate or some strange chance had
thrown Davis and Harman together on the same beach at the same time,
and though there was a world of difference between their faces, forms,
characters and dispositions, they were alike in this—they couldn’t
cadge.
Davis was a lean slip of a man with a chin tuft and a terrific past
about which he was quite open. Never satisfied or driven by the craze
of adventure, he had overrun two or three fortunes and had beached at
Papaleete from a B.P. boat which had picked him up from a trading
station down somewhere in the Paumotus, and was glad to get rid of him
on the terms of a twenty-dollar loan. The captain laughed when Davis
had entered the loan in a pocket-book, but it would be returned with
interest some time or another if the borrower lived. That was Davis.
The one remarkable thing about this plain-looking man with the chin
tuft and the flat cheek-bones was his quietude, nothing hurried or
flurried him. That was perhaps the secret behind his shooting. He was
more than a good shot with a revolver. He was inevitable.
“That’s done,” said Davis, coming up with the other. “Penhill and
Jarvis are highballing it at the club, and their Kanakas are playing
hopscotch with the hula-hula girls. What’s the matter with you? Don’t
go saying you’ve got cold feet.”
“It’s not my feet,” said Mr. Harman, “but I’ve never run off with a
ship before and that’s the fact, it’s not like sinkin’ her or pilin’
her. I’ve done most things, but I’ve never run off with a ship before,
that’s a fact. I’ve never——”
“Oh, close up!” said Davis. “Didn’t I tell you that Penhill can’t move
against us, once I get his ship out, his feet are cut off. I’m the one
man living that he’s afraid of, because I’m the one man living that
can put him in quod without hurting myself. This thing isn’t running
off with a ship. It’s Providence.”
“How do you get at that?” asked Billy doubtfully.
“Well, look at it,” said Davis. “In he comes with the _Araya_, sees
me, remembers the trick he played me, tries to pal up, gets a snub on
the nose, puts it in his pocket, and then goes on the jag, him and
Jarvis, leaving his schooner with a parcel of damn fool Kanakas in
charge and me layin’ about dangerous. Kanakas, why they’re worse than
that! Island boys that’ll take any white man’s bidding s’long as he
feeds them with fried bananas. It’s lovely, that’s what it is,
lovely——” Linking his arm in that of Harman, he was walking him
along the sand towards a boat beached and left almost high and dry by
the ebbing tide. To the right lay the lights of the town, and almost
on the beach sand the long amber glow of the lit club. Harman, walking
between the beauty of Papaleete by night and the glory of the moon
upon the sea, showed no sign of haste to reach the boat.
What bothered him was, not so much the turpitude of the business, as
the seeming futility and madness of it, for even in those days before
wireless talked it was next to impossible to steal a ship and make
good. Every port in the world is a compound eye for scrutiny, the
character of a ship is inquired into as carefully as her health.
Harman knew the whole business. There is a cable from Papaleete to
Suva, and from Suva to ’Frisco and beyond, and to-morrow morning
Penhill had only to speak and the description of the _Araya_ and the
two vanished beachcombers would be in the hands of the San Francisco
authorities before noon; before night all American seaboard ports
would be closed to the _Araya_, and by next day at noon, the British
Board of Trade would seal Australia and Hong Kong. Chinese ports would
be notified in “due course.”
With every bolthole blocked, the _Araya_ might still live free for
years pottering among the less-known islands, they might even pile her
on some rock and make their escape in the boats, but what would be the
use of all that? No, the whole thing would have been futile and
ridiculous but for the one thing that made it possible—Penhill.
Penhill daren’t prosecute. The schooner was his, and he was the only
man who could move, and he was tied. Davis said so. Davis had given
details which made the matter clear to Harman, yet still he hesitated.
They had reached the boat. It was the _Araya’s_, left confidingly on a
beach where no man ever stole boats; there were canoes to be had in
plenty, but Davis preferred the boat, he had reasons.
Harman, resting his hand on the gunnel, looked about him for a moment
at the deserted beach, still undecided.
His dunnage left at the house of a native woman where he had lodged
was unprocurable, he owed a bill. As he stood considering this and
other matters, from the groves by the beach diffusing itself through
the night, came the voice of a native singing a love song, tender,
plaintive, old as Papaleete and focussing in itself all the softness
and beauty that the active soul of Billy Harman had learnt to hate.
He seized the gunnel of the boat and assisted by Davis, shoved her
off.
Out on the moonlit water, the town showed up fairylike, its lights
twinkling amidst the moving foliage. Away on Huahine, rising steeply
like a wall of velvety blackness to the stars, the lights of tiny
villages showed like fireflies come to rest; fronting and beneath all
this mystery and loveliness showed the definite amber glow of the club
where Penhill and Jarvis were drinking themselves blind. That was
Papaleete.
No port authorities, no harbour police, no sign of life but the anchor
lights of a brigantine and a bêche-de-mer boat—that also was
Papaleete. On board the _Araya_ the anchor watch was snoring; kicked
awake and rubbing its eyes, it jumped to the voice of white authority.
The returned boat was a certificate that the new white fellow mas’rs
were representatives of white fellow mas’r Penhill and Penhill’s
character was an antidote to loving inquiries.
“They’re a sprightly lot,” said Harman as the main boom swung to
starboard and the great sail filled, tugging at the sheet. “Monkeys to
jump an’ no tongues to ask questions.”
“That’s Penhill,” said Davis, “he’s milled them into brute beasts, not
that they wanted much milling, but there you are, he done his best and
I reckon we’re profiting by it.”