KING JULIUS.
It was back in San Francisco and several years after, and I was master
of the _Good Sister_ still, but not feeling agreeable at the time,
because Fu Shan and the agent at 'Frisco kept me sitting around
collecting barnacles. They didn't seem to know what they wanted me to
do with her. I guess the business of Sadler and Shan didn't prosper well
for a while after Sadler left, on account of sportive Caucasians.
I was leaning over the rail one day, looking across the wharf, and I
saw J. R. Craney come strolling down with one hand in his pocket and the
other pulling a chin beard. He hadn't changed so much, except that he
looked older and had a chin beard and wore a long black coat and plush
vest. He looked at the _Good Sister_, and he looked at me, and
neither of us said anything for a long time, and his business eye was
absent-minded and calm, and the blind one pale and dead-looking. Then I
says:
“Why don't you get a glass eye, Craney?” and he says, “I wished you'd
call me J. R. Phipp. What you doing with that there ship?” which was a
promising rhyme, but he didn't know he'd done it. I judged his family
name had been collecting barnacles, till it wasn't worth cleaning
maybe, or maybe he was a fugitive or exile from Corazon, or maybe
he'd speculated in matrimony, and was fleeing from hot water, or maybe
kettles, or maybe he'd assassinated his great aunt's second cousin's
husband, which was no business of mine, any of it.
“Look here,” I says, not feeling agreeable. “Here's my programme. You go
up to 22 Market Street, and ask the agent. Then he'll say he don't know.
Then you'll tell him he's a three-cornered idiot, because you'll admire
the truth, and come back and we'll have a drink.”
“All right,” he says, absent-minded and calm, and went off up Market
Street. By-and-by the agent came down with Craney floating behind.
“This is Mr. J. R. Phipp,” says the agent, “who has chartered the _Good
Sister_. Get her ready. Mr. Phipp will superintend cargo himself and
sail with you.”
That was the way it happened. Craney spent days going round the
stores in the city and buying everything that took his eyes. He bought
house-furnishings and pictures, toys, horns, drums, cases of tobacco
and spirits, glass ornaments and plaster statues, crockery and cutlery,
guns, clothes, neckties, and silk handkerchiefs, and cheap jewelry. He'd
go in and ask for a drygoods box. Then he'd potter around the shop till
the box was full. He'd buy out a show case of goods, and maybe he'd
buy the show case. He bought barrels full of old magazines and books on
theology and law, and a cord or two of ten-cent novels, and some poetry
that was handy, and three encyclopaedias, and two or three kinds of
dogs, and a basket phaeton with green wheels, and a printing press, and
a stereopticon. The agent says to me:
“He has a scheme for trading in the South Pacific. He's a lunatic, and
he's paid for six months. Send me news when you get a chance, and come
back by Honolulu for directions. He's a lunatic,” he says, “and you'd
better lose him somewhere and get a commission on the time saved.”
Then he hurried off the way you'd think he was a man with energy,
instead of one that would sit still and let the weeds grow in his hair.
But Craney went on buying chandeliers and chess-boards and clocks and
women's things, such as dresses and ostrich-feathers hats, and baby
carriages, and parasols, and an allotment of assorted dinner-bells, and
one side of a drug store. I don't know all there was in his cases, only
I judged there wasn't any monotony. I says:
“Maybe now you might be done.”
He came aboard and looked thoughtful. Then he felt in his pocket and
pulled out a bunch of knitting needles, and looked thoughtful.
“Well,” he says. “I rather wanted to look up some front porches, ready
made, with door-knockers, but I didn't get to it. It's just as well.”
We dropped out of the Gate with the tide on a Saturday night, and stood
away to the southwest.
Craney was always a talkative man, liking to open out his point of view.
At first I thought he'd gone lunatic of late, and then again when he
showed me his point of view, I found he hadn't changed so much, as got
more so.
Many nights we sat on deck in the moonlight and with a light breeze
pushing in the sails, for the weather in the main was steady, and he'd
smoke a fat cigar, and look at the little shining clouds. He'd talk
and speculate, sometimes shrewd, and then again it was like a matter of
adding a shipload of pirates to the signs of the zodiac, and getting the
New Jerusalem for a result. By-and-by, I felt that way myself, as if,
supposing you kept on sailing long enough, you might run down an island
full of mixed myths and happy angels. Sure he was romantic.
“I'm a romantic man, Tommy,” he says. “That's my secret. Yes, sir,
Romance, that's me! That's the centre of my circumference, that's the
gravity of my orbit, that's the number of my combination. Visions,
ideals! I'm a man to get up and look for the beyond. I want to expand! I
want to permeate! I want the beyond! Here I am, fifty years old. I gets
up and looks out on to the world. I says: 'J. R., this won't do. Is it
for nothing that you're a man of romance? Is it for nothing that you
long to permeate, to expand? The soul of man' I says, 'is airy; it's
full of draughts. Your soul, J. R., flaps like a tent,' I says, 'in the
breezes of dawn. The world is round. Time is fleeting. Is man an ox? No.
Is he a patent inkstand? No. Was he created to occupy a house and fit
his head to a hat? No. Then why delay? Why smother your longings?' I
says; 'J. R., this won't do. This ain't your destiny. Rise! Be winged!
Chase the ideal! Get on the vastness! Seek and find!' But what? I says,
'Fame, fortune, a vocation that's worthy of you.' Where? I says, 'In the
beyond.' Then I took a map, Tommy, and looked over the world; I
examined the globe; I took stock of the earth, and compared lands, seas,
climates. The likeliest-looking place appeared to be the South Pacific
Ocean. Why? It appeared to be, in general, beyond. It was the biggest
thing on the map. It was tropical. Palm-trees, spicy odours, corals,
pearls. 'All right,' I says: 'J. R., it wouldn't take much to be a
millionaire in those unpolluted regions. You'd be a potentate. You'd
wear picturesque clothes, and lie on poppies and lotuses. You'd be a
Solomon to those guileless nations. You'd instruct their ignorance and
preserve their morals. You'd lead their armies to victory on account
of your natural gifts. You'd have your birthdays celebrated with
torch-light processions. You'd be a luxurious patriot.' Now that's a
pleasant way of looking at it. But it seemed to me the likeliest thing
was to go out as a trader. Now as to trading. Sitting on a stool and
figuring discounts is business, and trading cheese-cloth for parrots is
business too. A horse is an animal, and so's a potato-bug. But I take
it where society is loose and business isn't a system, there's always
chance for a man with natural gifts. But you're going to ask me: What
for is all this mixture I've got aboard? If some of it's tradable, you'd
say, there must be a deal of it isn't. And I ask you back, Tommy: Take
it in general, haven't I got a mixture that represents civilisation?
Did you ever see a ship that had more commodious, miscellaneous, and
sufficient civilisation in her than this? I'm taking out civilisation.
Maybe I'm calculating on a boom. Now, the secret of a boom is to spread
out as far as you can reach, and then flap. That's business. When you've
got people's attention, you can settle down and make your bargains. Mind
you,” says Craney, turning on me an eye that was cold and calm--“mind
you, I don't say that's what I'm going to do, nor I don't say what I'm
calculating to trade for. Maybe I have an idea, and maybe I haven't.”
I says, “Course you have.”
“You think so?” he says. “It's no more than reasonable. But look at
all this now”--with one thumb in the armhole of his vest and waving his
cigar with the other hand toward the moon and sea--“look at this
here hemisphere. It's big and still. The kinks and creases of me are
smoothing out. I'm expanding, permeating. I look out. I see those there
shining waves. I says to myself, 'J. R., as a romantic man, you may be
said to be getting there.'”
He used to read some in the daytime, but mostly he'd smoke and meditate
and pull his chin beard, sitting on deck in a red plush-covered
easy-chair, with his feet on the rail. One time he had a volume of
poetry in his hand, turning over the leaves.
“Some of it appears to be sawed down smooth one side,” he says, “and
left ragged on the other, and some of it's ragged both sides.”
Then he read a bit of it aloud, but it didn't go right, for sometimes
he'd trot, as you might say, when he ought to have galloped, and
sometimes he'd gallop when he ought to have trotted, and sometimes he'd
come along at a mixed gait. As a rule, he bumped.
He was no hand at poetry. Nor was he romantic to look at, but thin, and
sinewy, and one-eyed, and some dried up, clean shaven except for a wisp
of greyish whisker on his chin, and always neatly dressed now. When he'd
laugh to himself, the wrinkles would spread around his eyes, one blind,
and the other calm and calculating, and absent-minded. He'd sit with his
cigar tilted up in one corner of his mouth, and his hat tilted forward,
and whittle sticks. He'd talk with anybody, but mostly with me and
Kamelillo, whom he appeared to be asking for information. Kamelillo knew
island dialects about the same as he did English, but wasn't much
for conversation. Craney came one day with a bundle of charts, and he
collected me and Kamelillo in a corner and spread his charts on the
deck. They were old charts.
“Now,” he says, “here is the lines of trade.”
He had the regular routes all marked on his charts.
“There appears to be some vacant spaces,” he says. And there did. “And
here's about the biggest!” And it was. “There don't seem to be any
island there, but here's a name, 'Lua,' only you can't tell what it
belongs to.” No more you could. The name appeared to be dropped down
there so that section of the Pacific wouldn't look so lonely. I brought
out the ship's chart, but it didn't give any name, only two or three
islands sorted around where Craney's chart said “Lua.” It looked as if
you might find one of them, and then again you might not.
“Ever been on any of 'em?” he asked. I hadn't and Kamelillo didn't know,
but looked as if he might have swallowed one without remembering it.
“Nor I,” says Craney, “but I know there's likely to be natives when the
islands are sizable.”
“These might be only coral circles,” I says.
“Well, I guess we'll go and look at 'Lua,' anyway,” he says. “A man
don't put 'Lua' on a map without he's got some idea.”
It was nearly two months from the day we left the coast of the States
when we came to the edge of the letter “L,” as according to Craney's
chart, and we sailed along the bottom of it and around the curve of “U,”
and up the inside on the right, where the ship's chart had an island,
but we missed it, if it was there. Then we came to the top of the right
leg of “U,” where there might be an island on Craney's chart, except
that it looked more like part of the letter. Craney says:
“Try 'A.'”
We cut across into “A.” It was in the curve of the twist at the end of
the “A” that we sighted land at last. The ship's chart had an island in
the neighbourhood, but somewhat to the north. Likely Craney's notion of
coasting the edge of the letters was as good as any. I never claimed the
ship's chart was a good one, for it wasn't. I only told him I'd rather
sail by the advertisements in a newspaper than by his.
There was a reef at the north end of the island, and we ran south down
the coast some miles to where it fell away to the southwest, and dropped
anchor at night in a bay with a white beach and a long row of huts back
from it under the trees. A bunch of natives ran down and stood looking
at us. Some of them swam out a little, or paddled on a log, and then
went back. There was a splashing and calling all night, and fires
shining on the beach. Kamelillo thought he'd been there before, but he
didn't remember when; but if he had, it stuck in his mind, there was
some trouble connected with it, and with one he called a “bad-lot
chief”; but I told Craney that Kamelillo had seen too many islands
and too much strong drink in his career, and he might be thinking of
something that happened in New Zealand.
In the morning Craney took Kamelillo and went ashore. I saw the natives
gathered around him. They all went up the beach and disappeared, and the
boat came back with word from Craney that he and Kamelillo were going
inland and wouldn't be back before night. I didn't think he ought to go
off careless like that; but they came back safely about seven o'clock,
only Craney seemed to be thoughtful and not talkative. He said there was
a business opening there, and he guessed he'd speculate; and he sat on
deck in his red plush chair till past twelve, smoking fat cigars and
staring at the shore. The next day he had up three or four cases from
the hold. There was a crowd waiting for him on the beach, and I saw
him tying the boxes on poles, and some of the barbarians shouldered the
poles, and they all went off in procession. I didn't ask him when he'd
come back, and he didn't come for near a week. Only every day there
would be a native come down and dance around in the shallow to attract
attention, or maybe swim out to the ship with a bit of paper in his
mouth. And the paper would read: “O. K. Business progressing. Yours, J.
R.” or; “I'm permeating. Yours, Julius R.” So I judged it was a peaceful
island, and likely Craney had found something worth trading for. We
went ashore every day, but not inland. We were satisfied to stay on the
beach, and to watch the naked little children dive in the surf, and to
play tag with the population.
But one day I followed a path a mile inland, and climbed a hill and saw
an open valley to the south with several hundred palm-leaf huts, and
farther up was more open country and some hills beyond thickly wooded. I
judged the island was twenty miles north and south, but couldn't see
how far it went westward, and coming back, found a note for me: “O. K. I
never see folks so open to conviction. Yours, J. R.”
It was Craney's business, and not mine. I thought to myself, sometimes
these men you'd think lunatic weren't that way, only they had their
point of view. Next day there was another note: “Two of 'em are dead. I
guess it's a good thing. I bought it anyway. Julius R.” And while I was
thinking it over, and thinking sometimes these men that claimed they'd
got a point of view were really lunatic, Craney came back. He must have
had three hundred natives following him, and they camped on the beach
and seemed to rejoice, for they danced and sang most of the night, while
he and I sat on the deck and talked it over,
“This island,” says Craney, “is full of politics. I'll tell you. They
had a king lately, and, according to accounts, he was old and fat, and
his morals were bad. But he died, and up came five candidates for
the place, and their claims to it I didn't make out, but if it was a
question of votes, I gathered the ballot was tolerable corrupt, and if
it was inheritance, I took it the late royalty had so many heirs they
were common like anybody else. But everybody was busy, and it looked as
if business would be dull for me, and they told me it was no use trying
to be neutral. I'd have to back one of 'em. Course, I didn't know. Each
of the candidates occupied a corner of the island, and now and then
they'd meet in the middle for slaughter. What could I do? Well, I tell
you what I did. I hired five messengers and invited the candidates to a
congress. I says:
“'Not more'n ten to each party.' And they came.
“Kamelillo's a good enough interpreter, only he's sort of condensed. If
a man makes a speech of half an hour, Kamelillo gives a grunt to cover
most of it, and then he states what he guesses is the point of the rest.
But he did well enough.
“Then I got in the middle of 'em and I argued. I says:
“'Gentlemen, this is a peaceful interview. Pile your weapons.'
“I got 'em piled in a heap and I sat on 'em, and argued, and the
candidates argued. They did pretty well, considering only one of 'em had
a shirt. He was old, too, and had chicken bones in his hair, and, it was
curious, but he knew considerable English, and could cuss skilful in
it. The other four were younger, and they appeared a good deal surprised
with the way I argued it. I says:
“'Gentlemen, there ain't room in this island for a Civil War. You see it
for yourself. Now I'll show you. Each of you five take one spear and one
shield, and get into the middle here and fight it out. The rest of us'll
watch.'
“I appealed to the fifty followers, and they all agreed that was a good
thing. The five candidates were doubtful. The old man said he wasn't any
good at that. I says:
“'Venerable, what you want is comfort, not to say luxury, for your
declining years. I'll guarantee you that. You stay quiet.' Then I
knocked open a box and showed him assorted drygoods, and says, 'What do
you say?'
“He thought it looked luxurious, and said he'd think it over. By this
time the others were willing to fight, for their followers all agreed it
was a good thing.
“I never saw the equal of it, Tom, never! I never saw a dog-fight come
up to it for prompt execution. I won't harrow your feelings as mine
were harrowed. I won't puncture you with thrills as I was punctured. We
buried two of 'em decent. The other two were cut up and played out quite
a little. I collected weapons, and I says:
“'Now there are two ways. Either you two can have it out, and when
you're through, anything that's left can have it out with me, or I'll
buy you as you stand.'
“They looked surprised to see it put that way. They were low in their
spirits. They said they didn't want to fight any more that week.
I knocked open the boxes and spread the goods, and then they acted
avaricious, particularly the old man with the chicken bones. Burying two
of 'em was economic. I says:
“'Gentlemen, what's the value you put on your claims? State 'em, and
state 'em reasonable.”
“I dribbled out gingham dresses, and hair-brushes, and pocket mirrors,
and colored prints, and bottles of bay-rum. I never saw folks act
happier. I bought up the claims. I scattered what was left of the goods
among the crowd. I got on the empty boxes, and I says:
“'Here's your monarch. That's me, Julius the First, and only. If anybody
else from now on claims he's a monarch in these regions, he shall be
skinned and melted.' And they all cried: 'Hoi! Hoi!' or words to that
effect. They were unanimous. Kamelillo said they 'liked it good.'”
Craney was silent a while, and I didn't say much. I didn't know how
to get along with monarchs, anyway. The men forward were working by
lantern, hauling up stuff from the hold, and piling it on deck to start
unloading in the morning.
“I'm going out of trade,” he went on. “I'm going into royalty. That's
my retinue on the beach. What's more, it's most of the male population,
including nobility and masses. I'll show 'em. The old king was a bad
lot. I'll be a benevolent monarch. I'll give 'em free schools and a
constitution.
“Tommy,” he says after a long silence, “you'll be going back to San
Francisco, and maybe you'll see some folks that are looking for me,
and maybe they'll be hostile. Very good. You come back with 'em and you
watch me. You're an old friend of me, Tommy. You're a man capable of
expanding. You can get on to large ideas. You can take in vastness. You
come back, and I'll make you heir to the throne.”
But I didn't hanker for Craney's throne. The last I saw of him for that
time was bidding him good-bye on the beach. He appeared to have most
of the public to carry up his cargo, and he appeared to be popular.
Kamelillo stayed with him as interpreter.
At Honolulu there came two men aboard with a letter from the agent in
San Francisco, which agent was irritating on account of slowness, and
had weedy-looking hair. But the letter said:
“Put the _Good Sister_ at service of bearers. They have a warrant for
Phipp.” I says:
“Warrant for Phipp! What for?”
One of them was a sheriff named Breen, a slow, temperate man, and the
other a detective named Jessamine, a yellow-bearded one with light open
eyes, who seemed a pleasant talker, but to the best of my recollection
was one you might call obstinate. They showed me their papers, and these
appeared to be correct. Jessamine's papers stated that he represented
parties in St. Louis, whose names don't count.
“Warrant!” I says. “What for?”
“Why,” says Jessamine, “Phipp isn't his name, as you will see by the
warrant;” which was no particular news to me. But I didn't like the
job of going back after Craney. I didn't seem to take much interest
in parties in St. Louis, but it set me arguing again whether he was a
lunatic, or had a point of view. And so, though I thought it might be
they were going to be surprised when they came to Lua, I said nothing
about that, but fitted up a bit in Honolulu, taking my time, and set
sail once more for Lua. We came there in a high wind on a rainy morning,
about six weeks since I'd left it.
No one was in sight on the beach at first, but the sky clearing, I went
ashore with Breen and Jessamine, and several natives ran out of the
huts and across the beach to meet us. I says, “Man, Ship,” and pointed
inland, at which they seemed to be pleased and set off; and we followed
them by a long trail that came at last in the cleared valley, where were
long-strung-out villages, leading inland to the open country this side
of the wooded hills. By this time we were a procession. We knew when we
had arrived, for there appeared a long range of roofs through the stems
of a palm grove, and a broad path led to it through bushes covered with
red thick-scented flowers. It was King Julius's palace. The front of
it was all one piazza, maybe two-hundred feet long and forty deep, with
slim bamboo pillars; and men seemed to be still shingling one end of it
with layers of plantain leaves. But the king was out in a sort of square
to one side, and had about fifty warriors with feathers in their hair,
practising spears at a mark. Then he saw us, and then he said something
sharp, and the fifty fell into line behind, with spears and shields in
disciplined order. They marched very pretty, and came down on us in a
way to make a man feel shy. I says, “Which of you is going to arrest
him, and how's he going to do it?” Breen says, “You have me!” And
Jessamine says: “Let's see.”
Then the king halted his company and came on alone, looking calm, with
the thumb of one hand in the armhole of his vest, and the other pulling
his chin beard. And Jessamine stepped forward and says:
“J. R. Craney, I arrest you for embezzlement.” And the king looked
him over calm and benevolent. He says, “You don't mean it! Better be
careful. Why, the trouble is, the army ain't really disciplined yet.
They'd jab you full of holes, when I wasn't looking, if they caught your
idea. Better come and have tea. I didn't expect you'd be along for two
months yet.”
It appeared he calculated on three or four months, and my meeting
Jessamine at Honolulu had cut him short. But I didn't see but he held
the cards. Jessamine might arrest till he was blown. The crew of the
_Good Sister_ hadn't shipped to be speared by a king's bodyguard, and I
didn't care much for parties in St. Louis.
Soon we were eating comfortably, sitting on the big piazza around one
of Craney's black walnut tables. The palace seemed to be fitted and
furnished so far mainly from the cargo. Each of us had two or three
waiters back of his chair, some men, some women. The warriors squatted
in line out in front among the flowers. Whenever we were through with a
dish, Craney would send the rest of it down to the warriors, and they'd
gobble it, and watch for more, with their eyes shining, but very quiet.
I recollect there was something that was like a duck, and some canned
tomatoes, and a kind of fruit with a yellow rind.
“There's two hundred in my army,” says Craney sociably, “in four
divisions. This is a special one. Mighty fond of drilling they are.
Fact, 'most everybody's in the army. They're softening under discipline,
but some of 'em are bloodthirsty yet.”
“J. R.,” says Jessamine, “I hate to do it. It's a painful duty.” Craney
says: “Just so. Say no more. You couldn't be expected to know the law
of this state touching the person of the king. Fact is, foreigners ain't
allowed to arrest royalty here. Fact, it's a new law. I just passed it
the other day. You didn't mean any harm. We'll say no more.”
Jessamine looked hurt. “Come now, J. R., it's no use. You're not going
to resist the law.”
“I'm going to maintain it, Jessamine, maintain it.”
“I say, I got the authority of the States of Missouri and California.”
“I asks you, what authority they've got here? First place, you want
extradition papers. You can't have 'em. I won't give 'em to you. Trouble
with you, Jessamine, is you're narrow. You're small, there ain't any
vastness about you, Jessamine.”
“J. R.,” says Jessamine, remonstrating, “this isn't right, and you know
it.”
“You don't expand, Jessamine,” says Craney. “You don't permeate. You
ain't got on to large ideas.”
Craney here distributed cigars, lit a fat one himself, pushed back from
the table, crossed his legs, stuck a thumb in the arm-hole of his plush
vest, and went on unfolding his mind.
“It ain't the king's pleasure to leave this island, nor it ain't the
ways of monarchs, as I take it, to apologise. But putting aside all
that, and supposing you was expanded enough to take that in, I'm going
on to state the way it appears. You says, 'J.R., how'd you come to take
the cash of parties that trusted you?' I answers, 'It comes from being
romantic.' You ain't romantic, Jessamine? That's too bad. You don't see
it. You don't expand to my circumference. You don't permeate my orbit.
You don't get on to me. It was this way. I got up and looked out on
the world. I says: 'J. R., it's clear you haven't enough cash for your
ambitions. But you've got a opportunity. Throw it in. Be bold. If your
conscience squirms, let it squirm. If it wriggles, let it wriggle.
Take the risk. Expand to large ideas.' I took it. Say, I made parties
unwilling investors in me. Now, then, there they are, as delegated
in you. Here's me, Julius R., monarch by purchase and election of the
sovereign state of Lua. You asks, 'What next?' I says: 'This. I'll pay.
I'll settle the claims with interest on investment' But I've got to have
time. Pay with what? Now there's the point. I've been investigating the
produce of this island, the pearl-fishing, the coral, the hardwood. The
pearl-fishing is good. As a business man, I tell you it can be done.”
Jessamine shook his head. “I haven't any authority to settle the case.
I'm told to go and bring you. I've got to do it. It's a painful duty.”
The king smoked a while silently, then said something to his warriors,
who got up and marched away around the corner. “Mighty, Jessamine!” he
says, “you're slow. Most mulish man I ever saw. Well, let it go. You
can't do it. Recollect, attempting the person of the king is a capital
crime. That's the law of this land. It's decided and it don't change.
We'll drop it.”
So nothing more was said of the matter, and we talked agreeably. Whether
Craney's account of his motives was accurate I couldn't say. It didn't
seem likely he ever expected to settle, when he started, or he took all
the chances that he never would. Maybe he cooked up the theory to suit
things as they stood. Maybe not. I don't defend him, and I'm not clear
where he lied or where he fancied. But it seemed to me if he'd made a
long calculation, his luck was standing by him at that point.
When the king left us we went for a walk through the village, talking it
over. Breen said they'd better take the offer, and I thought they'd have
to, but Jessamine wasn't satisfied. He says:
“We haven't the authority. How do you know we wouldn't get into trouble
at home? We've got to take him back. But you see, that isn't the point.
The point is, here's where we make a hit. It's professional with me.
It's reputation. It's the chance of a lifetime.”
I say: “But where's the chance?”
“We'll see. But J. R.'s been the one white man so far. Now we're three
to one. If he can usurp a crown, I don't see but what we can get up an
insurrection.”
The village was a long row of huts built of bamboo and big brown leaves,
and stretched up and down the valley. There was a large hut with two
doors opposite us, and sitting on mats in front was a fat man with
little bones stuck at angles in his grizzled hair. He wore a pink shirt
with studs and a pair of carpet slippers, and around his neck a lot
of glass pendants from a chandelier, and he looked surly and sleepy. I
says:
“You can leave me out. I think you ought to take the offer. If you slip
up, the king'll hang you for treason. If he's the government here, he's
got a right to say what the law is. I'm going back to the ship. You
needn't ask me for backing, for you won't get it.”
We stopped beside the fat man, and I asked him if he hadn't been one of
the rival candidates, thinking it might be the old one with the chicken
bones that spoke English; and he set to work swearing, so I knew it was;
and I judged from the style he swore in he'd been intimate one time with
seamen, and I judged; too, he felt dissatisfied. He said he was rightly
chief of the island, and that man, all of whose grandfathers were
low and disgusting, meaning Julius R., was living in his house, and,
moreover, had given him only three pink shirts. Jessamine sat down by
him, and said nothing, but listened, and I went and found some of the
beach natives, and came back with them to the _Good Sister_.
That night passed, and it came the morning of the next day, and I heard
nothing from them. I went ashore, but found no one about the huts
there but children and a few old women. The old women jabbered at us
excitedly.
I took six of the men and started inland through the hot woods, where
the green and red parrots screamed overhead. When we came out to look up
the valley to the open country, we saw no signs of fighting, nor any one
moving about. Through the valley, as we went up it, there was no smoke
from the huts, no women bruising nuts and ground roots into meal, no fat
man before the hut with two doors sitting on his mats, not a soul in the
village.
But coming near the palace we could see all the red flower shrubs were
trampled and smashed. Then we came on a dead body by the path; then more
bodies, bloody and spitted with spears; and one man, who was wounded,
lifted himself, and glared, and dropped again among the red flowers.
Through the palm stems we saw the roofs of the palace, and the piazza
with the bamboo pillars. The line of the bodyguard was squatted on the
piazza, with their spears upright before them. Everything was still.
Then we heard a cry behind us, and looked, and saw Jessamine and Breen,
but no others with them, running through the village towards us. They
came up to us, and said they had been in the woods hunting for the
villagers who had run away, but found none. We sat down not far from
the wounded man. Jessamine had his arm in a sling, and he told what had
happened, so far as he made it out.
“It was the way I fancied,” he says; “J. R. wasn't so solid with his
army as he thought, except the bodyguard, but I'd no idea they'd go off
like a bunch of fireworks. The old fat one sent messengers around in the
afternoon, and at night we went with him over back of that hill, and met
a crowd who had a few torches, but it was pretty dark, and I couldn't
see how many there were along the hillside. I made them a speech: how J.
R. had run away from his land, and was ruling them here when he had no
right, and they oughtn't to stand it; but I don't know that the fat one
interpreted it. I guess he made a speech of his own. All I know is
they went off like gunpowder. Whether all of them yelled for battle and
rebellion I don't know; some of them might have been yelling against
it. They all yelled, and pretty soon they started hot-foot across the
country for the palace, fighting some with each other, so I gathered
they disagreed. There are corpses all along between here and the hill,
and it was there I caught a cut in the arm. Breen and I agreed to slide
out of it. We went and sat on the hillside and watched. Maybe J. R. had
word of what was coming. He seemed to be ready for them. I judged the
bodyguard met them just above here, and there was a grand mix-up, but we
couldn't see well at the distance. It was an awful noise. And suddenly
it died out. Not a sound for a while. By-and-by a gang of forty or more
ran by us a hundred yards away, and into the woods before we'd decided
what to do; and later, after a long time, there was a sort of chanting
like a ceremony over here at J. R.'s palace, and this came at intervals
all night. This morning we came and found the village empty, and came up
a little beyond here, till some one threw a spear past Breen's head, and
we went away to look for the villagers. I don't know what J. R. is up
to. He appears to be laying low with his wild-cats around him.”
While we were speaking there came someone past the bodyguards, and down
to meet us, and it was Kamelillo. Kamelillo didn't have much to say,
except that the king wanted to see us, but he answered some questions.
He thought that in the attack on the palace the other two candidates
and the fat one fell to quarrelling, and their followers joined, and it
might be the first two had been inclined to stand by the king, only they
thought it was time to have some fighting. But they weren't going to put
up with the fat one. Instead of having it out then, they had all gone
off to different corners of the island, the same as they used to do, and
that suddenly. Kamelillo didn't know how it came about, and doubted if
the candidates knew either. He said they were a “fool lot,” and the king
could settle them, give him time to hang the fat one. But it was no use
now--“Too damn quick,” he said. The women and children had all run to
the woods in the beginning. Being asked about King Julius, Kamelillo
only grunted, and not having any expression of face, you couldn't gather
much from that. But when we came to the piazza, where the bodyguard
squatted, what was left of it, with reddened spears, ghastly to make you
sick, Kamelillo grunted again and said, “He gone die,” and passed in.
The guard broke out wailing and chanting, and rocked to and fro, but
only a moment, after which they held their spears up stiff, as the king
had taught them, and sat still.
Now we followed Kamelillo to a great room, where it seemed the king held
audiences and gave out laws and justice. The red plush chair was on a
raised platform at the far end, and over and on three sides were heavy
red curtains, and glass chandeliers hung from the rafters of the roof,
and a row of mattresses covered with carpet was laid in front, maybe so
that subjects could prostrate themselves comfortable. But the room
was dusky, and still. It seemed to be empty. But we passed up it and
stopped, for on the carpeted mattresses before the throne lay Craney,
all alone.
His coat and vest were put back, his shirt torn open, and his breastbone
split by a spear or hatchet, and it was clear he hadn't long to live.
A ribby chest he had, and a dry, leathery skin. The blood soaked out
from under the cloth he held there against it, and ran down the little
gullies between the ribs. Jessamine sat down and acted nervous. He says:
“I'm downright sorry for this, J. R.,” but Craney didn't seem to hear,
but motioned with his hand and says softly:
“You'd better clear out.”
Jessamine says, “Now, we can't leave you this way.”
But Craney didn't hear and says, “Call in the guard.” The spearmen came
filing in, barefooted, stepping like cats, and took position on each
side, so that you could see it was according to discipline, and maybe
they'd done it every day when he'd held a court or something. We slid
back, feeling shy of the spears, and J. R. looked pleased, and he says:
“You're narrow, Jessamine. You don't permeate. You don't expand. You
don't rise to large--Oh, Jessamine! I'm dying, and I'm sick of your
face. Tommy,”--he says, speaking hoarse and low--“you'd better go.” His
eyes wandered absent-minded to the plush chair with the curtains and
chandeliers and the spearmen standing around it, and down the long room,
like he was taking his leave of things he'd thought of, and things he'd
been fond of, and things he'd hoped for, and things he'd meant to do. He
muttered and talked to himself: “I sat there,” he said, “and I did the
right thing by the people. Gentlemen, these black idjits are friends of
mine. If you don't mind, I'd rather you'd go. But you can stay, Tommy,
if you want to.”
So I stayed until he was gone. When I came away I left the spearmen
chanting over him.
That was Julius R. Craney. Why, I don't praise him, nor put blame on
him. Kamelillo said he was “old boy all right,” but Kamelillo's notions
of what was virtuous weren't civilised notions. A man ought to be
honest. I've known thieves that were singular human. He was mighty happy
when he was a king, was Julius R.