“I’ve been thinking and thinking ever since we left ’Frisco,” he goes
on, “thinking and thinking, and there it was under my nose all the
time.”
“What?” I questions.
“The reason of the whole of this business,” says he, “why Pat O’Brien,
the brother of my mother Mary—God rest her soul—parted with five
cents to buy a kid candy, why he asked us to dinner, why he pretended
that freezing mixture down below had consumption, why he shipped her
on board the _Greyhound_, and what it is she’s after. It’s all as
plain as day, and there’s more to it than that. Brent, we’re
millionaires.”
“Look here,” I says, “like a good chap, will you take your mind off
the business and pull yourself together—you’ve been thinking too much
over this business; forget it.”
Buck was a queer devil. You never knew how he’d take things. Seeing I
thought his head had gone wrong, instead of explaining like a sensible
chap, he cut the thing off short.
“Maybe you’re right,” he says. “Maybe I’m crazy, maybe I’m not. I’ll
say nothing more. We’ll see.”
I left it at that, not wanting to stir up trouble in his head, and we
didn’t talk of the thing again—not for a long time, anyhow.
But a change had come over Buck. He’d got to be as cheerful as a
cricket, and I’d see him sometimes at table sitting staring in front
of himself as if he was looking at the New Jerusalem, instead of the
bird’s-eye panelling of the after bulkhead; then, by his talk I could
tell his head was travelling on the same old track; when a man talks
of the building price of steam yachts you can tell how his mind is
running, same as when he talks of rents on Pacific Avenue and such
places. But I said nothing, just kept my head shut and let him talk,
and glad I was the morning we raised Levua.
It’s a big island—if you’ve never been down that way—mountainous and
with no proper reef only to the west, for east the sea comes smack up
to the cliffs—but it’s pretty, what with the trees and all, and
there’s a big waterfall comes down on the south from the hills that’s
reckoned one of the sights of the island.
Levenstein’s house was on the beach to the west; a run of reef, broken
here and there, kept the sea pretty smooth on the beach, and there was
ten fathoms close up to the sand. A lot of scouring goes on there with
the tides, and the fishings the best I’ve seen anywhere, just in that
bit of water.
Old Pat O’Brien hadn’t asked to see a photograph of Levenstein, else
maybe he wouldn’t have been so keen on shipping Sadie off on her
travels; I’d forgot the fellow’s good looks, but when he boarded us
after we’d dropped the hook, I remembered the fact and I saw he’d
taken Sadie’s eye.
Levenstein wasn’t unlike Kaiser Bill, only younger and better-looking;
he was the sort women like, and he could coo like a damn turtle dove
when he was in the mind, but he had the reputation of having whipped a
Kanaka to death. I’d just as soon have given a girl’s happiness to
that chap as I’d have given a rump steak to a tiger cat trustin’ in it
to honour it. No, sir, that build don’t make for happiness, not much,
and if Sadie had been my girl when I saw her setting her eyes on him
like that, I’d have put the _Greyhound_ to sea again, even if I’d had
to shove her over the reef to get out.
But I wasn’t bothering about Sadie’s happiness; I reckoned a little
unhappiness mightn’t help to do her much harm by unsticking her glue a
bit, and I reckon Buck felt the same, so, having business in the trade
room and ashore enough to last us for days, we let things rip and
didn’t bother.
Sadie and the old Mammy were given the overseer’s house on shore, and
the girl settled down to enjoy herself. She was awfully keen on
exploring the island and seeing the natives, and she and the old
Kanaka woman would make excursions, taking their grub with them, and
having picnics all over the place, and Levenstein would go with her
sometimes, and Marks, from the north of the island, would come over
sometimes, and it made my blood fair boil to see her carrying on with
those two Germans because she thought them gentlemen, and at the same
time cold-shouldering us as if we weren’t more than the dirt she
walked on.
I said the same to Buck, and Buck he only says: “Leave her to me,” he
says, “she’s come out to get what she won’t get, but she’ll get what
she little expects if she marries uncle Lev,” says Buck. “Leave her to
me,” he says, “I’ll l’arn her before I’ve done with her,” he says.
“Damn her!” says he—which wasn’t the language to use about a girl,
but then Sadie wasn’t so much a girl as a china figure all prickles,
no use to hold or carry and not the ornament you’d care to stick on
your chimney-piece if you wanted to be happy in your home.
One day Buck says to me: “Come on over to the north of the island,” he
says, “I want to have a talk to Marks.”
“What about?” I asks.
“The beauty of the scenery,” he replies.
Off we started. Germans are some good, they can make roads—if I
haven’t told you Levua was a German island, I’ll tell you now. I’m
saying Germans can make roads, and if you doubt me, go and see the
twelve-mile coral road they’ve made round Nauru or what they’ve done
in German New Guinea, and the road to Marks’ plantation was as good as
those.
Coming along for late afternoon we hit the place, and found Marks in.
Marks was like one of those Dutchmen you see in the comic papers, long
china pipe and all, but he was the most level-headed man in the
Islands, and I soon found that Buck had come to him for information
and not to talk about the beauty of the scenery.
We had drinks and cigars, and presently Buck says to Marks, “Look
here,” he says, “you’re a man that knows everything about the West
Pacific, s’pose I found an island that wasn’t on the charts and didn’t
belong to anybody, which of the blessed nations would make a claim to
it; would it be the one whose territory was closest to it?”
Marks leans back in his chair and lights his pipe again, then he says:
“If you find an unknown island, it would belong to England or Germany,
all depends on where it lies in the West Pacific.”
“How’s that?” says Buck. “Why wouldn’t the French or Dutch have a look
in?”
“It’s this way,” says Marks, “Germany in old days wasn’t a sea-going
nation much, and so the English and French and Dutch took up nearly
all the islands of the Pacific, leaving Germany in the cold till 1865,
when she began to want things and show that she could get them. She
took a big bite of New Guinea, then she came to an arrangement with
England that she and England would take all the lands and islands in
the West Pacific no one else had seized and divide them between them.
Get me?”
“Yes,” says Buck.
“The line starts from New Guinea,” says Marks, “then goes east, then
north to fifteen degrees north latitude, and 173 degrees, 30 seconds
east longitude; anything new found west of that would be German,
anything to the east, British.”
“Show us the line on a map,” says Buck, and Marks gets up and fetches
down a map and draws the line with a pencil.
Buck gives a great sigh and thanks him, and then we started off back
home with the rising moon to show us our way and a three hours’ tramp
before us.
On the way I tried to get out of him what his meaning was in asking
those questions, but he wouldn’t tell.
“You thought I was mad when I tried to tell you first,” he said, “and
now you’ll have to wait till I’ve landed the business, but I’ll tell
you one thing——”
“What?” I asks.
“Never mind,” he says, “shut heads are best where a word might spoil
everything.”