THE CANNIBAL KING AND THE PINK PEARL
The swift tropic night had fallen, and the black sky was aglow with
winking stars――miniature moons that turned key, reef, and water into a
phosphorescent glow. Out of the silence came only the weird songs of
the black boatmen gathered about the camp fire at the hut under the
palms. On the schooner the evening meal was over, and Andy sat almost
lost in dreams, while his host drew on his after-dinner cigar.
When Andy and Captain Bassett had landed, after their aerial flight
into the cove, it was nearly dusk. The boy suggested that he would
at once dismantle his machine and take it aboard the schooner, to be
carried to his host’s home on Andros Island, and thence to Nassau and
the steamer. After his nerve-wrecking flight in the afternoon, he did
not feel equal to another sky voyage of perhaps one hundred and fifty
miles.
At this, the Englishman made a peculiar request.
“I wish you wouldn’t take it apart for a little while.”
“Then it isn’t convenient to sail to-night?” said Andy. “But, just as
you like.”
It had been agreed that the schooner was to set sail for distant Andros
as soon as the moon rose.
“Yes,” answered the man slowly. “But I’ve been thinking of something. I
can’t quite make up my mind――I’d like to talk to you about it after a
bit. Then we’ll go as we’ve arranged, if you like.”
“Oh, it isn’t that,” exclaimed the boy. “Nothing would please me more
than to stay here always. But you can see how it is――they’ll all be
worried. I’ve got to get to the telegraph as soon as possible and wire
them I’m not lost in the sea.”
“I understand,” answered Captain Bassett. “It was thoughtless of me to
ask it. Go ahead. We’ll leave with the moon.”
But instead of going ahead, the boy walked to his new-found friend’s
side.
“What was it?” he asked curiously.
“A crazy idea,” answered his host, with a laugh. “Please forget it.”
“I can’t,” said the boy decisively. “If you have the slightest reason
to have me stay here awhile, I know it isn’t a crazy idea. Anyway, I
won’t consent to taking you away from your business on an hour’s notice
and unless it is convenient for you to go.”
The man shrugged his shoulders.
“Coming or going is nothing to me,” he replied. “I am here not because
I am needed――my black overseer can be trusted with my business. But
there are strange things in these faraway keys. For a time you and your
flying machine set me thinking. I’ve dismissed the idea――”
“I haven’t,” interrupted Andy. “Whatever it was, if the _Pelican_ was a
part of it, she’s goin’ to stand there until you tell me what you had
in mind.”
The white-costumed man looked at the boy with a quizzical smile,
appeared to be about to speak, and then only shook his head. He and the
boy were yet standing by the ghostly planes of the aeroplane, on which
the Englishman’s hand rested as if the machine meant much to him.
“It’s about Timbado Key, isn’t it?” suggested Andy, at last.
“Yes,” retorted Captain Bassett, startled. “But how――Oh, yes, I
remember: I told you it had a tragic story. You’re a good guesser,” he
concluded, smiling again.
“I’m not guessing now,” went on the boy impulsively, and unable longer
to restrain himself. “I know about Timbado and about Cajou.”
The man came toward him, a look of surprise on his face.
“I’ve never met any white person who knew that,” he said at once. “What
is it you know?”
The remark had escaped Andy unwittingly. He was embarrassed.
“I――I didn’t mean to speak yet,” he began.
“Why not?” retorted his companion. “What do you know?”
“I’m awfully sorry I said that, Captain Bassett,” went on the boy
slowly. “But I’ll tell you after you tell me the real story.”
“Isn’t yours a real story?” laughed the Englishman.
“I’m sure it isn’t,” answered Andy impulsively. “At least, I don’t want
to talk of it now.”
“It must be uncomplimentary to someone,” suggested his friend.
The boy, still much confused, blurted out:
“It is.”
“Am I concerned?” asked Captain Bassett.
Andy looked at the man again. There was anything but a bad look in
the Englishman’s face. His strong, sunburned countenance was set in
feature, but the boy saw nothing more than the face of a man accustomed
to giving orders and being obeyed. Yet, being in for it, the lad could
not lie. Caught in his indiscretion, he only nodded his head.
“After supper, then, we’ll talk it over,” was the Englishman’s only
comment.
“And,” added Andy, eager to show some appreciation of the man’s
kindness to him, “we won’t take the machine apart until I know what you
were figuring on.”
“As you like,” replied the man in quite another tone.
Nothing more was said until Captain Bassett’s after-dinner cigar was
going well.
“Now,” he said, “before I tell you of what I was thinking and of
Timbado Key, I’d like to hear what you know about the place――that is,
if you like.”
“I don’t like it at all,” answered Andy in renewed confusion. “And I’m
sure part of what I’ve been told is not true. But I’ll finish what
I started, even if you think the less of me for it. I ain’t much for
carryin’ tales.”
“It may be true,” was the Englishman’s comment, as he settled down in
his canvas deck chair and luxuriously drew on his Havana cigar.
With no further preface, Andy repeated the disjointed tale Ba, the
colored man, had gradually revealed: how the Herculean negro had
escaped from the jail in Nassau, how he had been carried away to
Nassau practically a prisoner by Captain Bassett, how he and Nickolas
and Thomas had been sent to steal the great pink pearl from King
Cajou, how Ba had actually seen the jewel and was lashed so cruelly,
and the unsolved mystery of what came after in Ba’s escape and the
disappearance of the other conspirators.
When he had finished, there was no immediate response from the man who
presumably had sent two men to their death at the hands of an African
cannibal――no denial. But Captain Bassett’s cigar had gone out. The
Englishman at last drew a match on the arm of his chair. As it flared
up at the end of his cigar, the observant boy thought he could make out
a smile on the strong face of the accused man. Then it was dark and
silent again.
“This nigger, Cajou,” came at last through the half dark night from
Captain Bassett’s chair――and in a voice devoid of either guilt or
innocence――“is more than you have been told. So far as I know, I am the
only white man who has visited his island and come away again. He is
a king, in a way. He is also the best type of the pure blood African
as he exists in our island world. How he came to be on Timbado, no one
knows. Nor how he made about himself a settlement of others of his
kind. You can find bits of old savagery in similar people on some of
the other ‘out islands.’ But on Timbado, in Cajou’s realm (if you can
call it that), there no doubt exist practices that you can find nowhere
else but on the Congo.”
“Cannibals?” interrupted Andy, drawing his chair forward.
“Among other things,” replied the speaker, “but, of course, only by
report. We can imagine the rest. Also, by report, they are wreckers
and pirates in a small way. By my own experience, I know they are
thieves――Cajou an artful one.”
“Six years ago,” went on Captain Bassett, “in an expedition such as I
have made here, I visited the southern reefs of the Smaller Bank, north
of Cajou’s island. As I told you, I am a fruit and sisal hemp grower on
Andros. But, like everyone in the Bahamas, in the off season, I utilize
my men sponging. And, as you will soon learn, sponging means possible
pearls. Like the gold prospector in other lands, we Bahamans love to
seek the unknown waters where always there is the possibility that we
never quite realize――the Koh-i-noor of pearls; the perfect pink pearl
that is to make us fortune and fame.”
“I understand,” assented the boy.
“As you can see,” continued the Englishman, “it isn’t an unideal fancy.
Even here, in this beautiful cove, there is such a chance――” and the
boy could almost see a smile. “But six years ago, idling as now in
about the same kind of a sleepy place, I got my first sight of Cajou.
In a leaky old ‘sponger,’ crowded with a cargo of half-naked subjects,
he did us the honor of calling on us.”
“What’d he look like?” broke in the entranced lad.
“Anything but a king,” went on the Englishman. “He was certainly eighty
years old, gray haired and thin, but not bent. He was stripped to the
waist, his skin was oiled, and around his bony neck was a necklace of
bits of pink conch shell. He also carried a spear that must have come
from Africa.”
The boy’s heart beat with excitement――this man and his subjects were
only a few miles away.
“He didn’t favor me with a personal call,” continued Captain Bassett,
“but I didn’t stand on ceremony. From what I had heard of the old man,
he had a wonderful influence on hard working, honest colored men, and
I didn’t care to have him hanging around the bay. He arrived about
sundown, and when I rowed up to the side of his boat, I decided not to
go aboard. The fish-cleaning shed at the market in Nassau was perfume
compared to the hold of Cajou’s old hulk.
“By right, I had no control over the vicinity, but I had plenty of help
with me, and I stayed only long enough to tell the king that I’d kick a
hole into the bottom of his boat if he wasn’t gone by morning. He left
all right, sometime in the night, one of my crews of three blacks with
him. As that was their own business, I had to stand it.”
The boy sighed. He had expected a dramatic clash.
“That was only the prelude,” went on the Englishman. “Three weeks
later, when I had reached home again, my pearl bag not much heavier
than when I set out, I learned something more. I had been near fortune
and just missed it. Two days before Cajou visited our mooring, one of
my crews had made the find I had been awaiting for years. The great
pink pearl had been found, and the usual thing happened. My men turned
conspirators and thieves and concealed it.”
Andy sprang to his feet.
“And that’s how Cajou got it?”
“Precisely. One of the men confessed. The savage but clever Cajou
probably got his charms working――like as not did it in all pearl fleets
he could find. Anyway, he got three of my men, and you can be sure he
got the pearl.”
“What’d you do?” asked the boy eagerly.
“What could I do? Somehow it became known at once that I knew the
facts. All the men who had been with me decamped overnight. It was
useless to go to Nassau and the authorities. I had no proof and,
besides, Timbado is far away. Later I did tell the facts to the
governor. He was good enough to tell me if I would locate the property
and establish proof of ownership, he would attempt to recover it. He
even looked up the location of Timbado on the official chart and asked
me to tea. I was grateful and thanked him.”
“Then you never even saw the pearl,” said Andy.
“But I tried to,” said the captain, shaking his head in the negative.
“I judged it was worth while. So I took the trouble to sail all the way
to Timbado and call on the king. I took six men with me――all colored,
but not thieves――and we landed at daybreak. The place is worth going to
see,” explained the speaker. “It isn’t much of an island. Including a
coral reef that surrounds the key, it is about a mile across and almost
circular. There is a circular beach of sand, but the main part of the
island is a coral elevation with bluff-like sides――it resembles the
hill on which Nassau is built.
“My men had no longing to go ashore, so I didn’t insist. There was no
delegation to welcome us, but I beached the boat and walked over to
a group of thatched huts at the base of the bluff. Several men, clad
mainly in rough palmetto hats, watched my approach. One of them, fully
clothed and weighing at least two hundred pounds, came forward. He
spoke English, and was probably the secretary-of-war, as he carried a
revolver in a belt.”
Andy edged forward again.
“I told him I wanted to see the king, and he replied by asking if I had
tobacco or rum. When I told him I wasn’t a trader and repeated that I
wanted to talk to Cajou, he pointed at once to my boat and touched his
revolver. He was so unsociable that I took the trouble to look over my
own, and then I passed on.
“The collection of huts was a combination cook camp and slaughter pen.
Decaying conchs was the predominating odor. But it was varied with the
smell of rotten shark meat, a half-consumed shark hanging from a post
in the center of a filthy court. One glance told me that Cajou’s house
was not here, for behind the odorous pens and the reeking cook pots, I
had seen steps cut in the coral limestone bluff.
“These steps,” went on Captain Bassett, after he had supplemented his
expired cigar with a pipe, “were partly concealed under vines and
dwarfed palms. After most of those about the beach huts had disappeared
toward the top of the elevation, I followed. When I saw this, it
occurred to me at once that the summit would make a good cricket
ground. Mainly, the place was solid, smooth limestone with some sand
and sparse vegetation, and all sloping to the center, where there was a
considerable pool or pond.”
“Weren’t you afraid?” broke in his auditor. But to this there was no
reply.
“On the edge of the pool was a stockade, and in this a quadrangle of
latania-roofed huts. On each side of an opening facing the water were
two dead cocoa palms. From the top of each hung a mess of odds and
ends: bones, shark heads, colored cloth, shells on long strings, that
I knew meant royalty. I saw at once that the palace was at the lowest
part of the basin――you couldn’t even see the tops of the dead palms
from the sea.
“When I started down the slope, black men seemed to spring up
from every few yards of the little palms that grew on the edge
of the elevation. I counted thirty of them and stopped. The fat
secretary-of-war was following me. As I got nearer, I saw something in
the things hanging from the totem-like trunks that set me to thinking――”
“What was it?” asked the boy, breathlessly.
“Well,” answered the Englishman, “you’ve heard the worst about
Timbado. I guess it’s true.”
The boy drew back in horror.
“And you kept on?” he asked, breathing hard.
“There were a good many more than I thought there’d be,” went on
Captain Bassett, “but I’d served in the English army, part of the
time in Afghanistan, and I thought I might as well. When I got to
the open gate, I saw that the stockade surrounded the real town. It
seemed the dormitory for women and children. I thought for a minute
I’d seen enough and that my men might be getting anxious,” went on the
old soldier, sucking at his pipe, “but I didn’t have much choice. The
thirty or more full-grown men I had counted came crowding up behind, so
I went in.
“All this time there wasn’t a word said. Before I could make any
explanation, the king appeared――old Cajou walked out of one of the
huts, as thin and straight and gray as I first saw him. He had on a
blue coat with brass buttons, a navigating officer’s cap marked ‘First
Mate’ in gold letters, and he carried a gold-headed cane. His pink
shell necklace was there, too, hanging on his breast.
“The old man held out his hand, but my eyesight was poor.
“‘Good morning,’ I began. ‘I’ve come for my pink pearl.’
“I had a notion that he understood, but he shook his head.
“‘You don’t speak English,’ I went on.
“Again he shook his head. Then I began to have a little reason. My
curiosity was satisfied. Manifestly, I had gone the limit. Numbers, at
least, were against me, whether they were armed or not. Before anything
could be attempted I whirled about, swung my arm to open a path, and,
as the crowd behind me fell back, I walked out of the enclosure. A
hubbub of voices rose behind me, but not a hand was raised against me.
Indifference seemed the best weapon, and I strolled up to the edge of
the plateau, passed down the steps and to the boat.”
“Then what?” urged the boy.
“I had got about as much as I expected. But I did not give up wholly.
I sailed back home, and at last decided on one more attempt. It was
a slim chance, but I took it. I have often regretted it. Your Ba was
working for me then――his name then was Zaco. I coached Zaco and two
other men named Nickolas and Thomas to go to Timbado and pose as
castaways――not as thieves. They were simply to discover, if possible,
whether the pearl was still there or had been disposed of.
“Not one of them ever returned. Your story is the first account I ever
had of their fate. Nickolas and Thomas are either there to-day as
Cajou’s subjects, or they are dead. Zaco, of course, escaped――somehow.
The marks he carries with him prove that he saw the pearl and that it
was there at that time. I’ve felt that it has been there all these
years. Now that we know it――” and he paused.
“What?” exclaimed his listener, every nerve atingle.
“Let’s go and get it――you and I and the aeroplane,” continued Captain
Bassett calmly.