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THE QUEEN VERSUS
BILLY AND
OTHER STORIES
by
LLOYD OSBOURNE
[Illustration]
Charles Scribner’s Sons
New York . . . . 1900
Copyright, 1900, by
Charles Scribner’S Sons
The Devinne Press.
Contents
Page
The Queen versus Billy 3
The Beautiful Man of Pingalap 31
The Dust of Defeat 65
The Happiest Day of his Life 109
Father Zosimus 127
Frenchy’s Last Job 171
The Devil’s White Man 213
The Phantom City 237
Amatua’s Sailor 287
THE QUEEN VERSUS BILLY
THE QUEEN VERSUS BILLY
It was the _Sandfly_, Captain Toombs, that brought the news to Sydney
and intercepted her Majesty’s third-class cruiser _Stingaree_, as she
lay in Man-of-War Cove, with her boats hoisted in and a deck-load
of coal as high as her bulwarks, on the eve of a long trip into the
western Pacific. It was the same old story--another white man sent to
his last account in the inhospitable Solomons, where if the climate
does not kill you the black man soon will: “Thomas Hysslop Biggar,
commonly known as ‘Captain Tom’; aged forty-six; British subject;
occupation, trader in coprah; place of residence, Sunflower Bay, island
of Guadalcanar; murdered by the natives in September, 1888, between
the 7th and the 24th, and his station looted and burned.” There was
trouble in store for Sunflower Bay; they had killed Collins in 1884,
and Casseroles the Frenchman in 1887, and had drawn upon themselves an
ominous attention by firing into the _Meg Merrilies_ in the course of
the same year. Murder was becoming too frequent in Sunflower Bay, and
Captain Casement, while policing those sweltering seas, was asked to
“conduct an inquiry into the alleged murder of T. H. Biggar, and take
what punitive measures he judged to be necessary.”
It was not everybody who would have liked such a task; in dealing with
savages the innocent are too often lumped with the guilty, and while
you are scattering death and canister among the evil-doers, you are
often mangling their wives and children in a way horrible to think of.
Captain Casement had seen such things in the course of his eventful
service, and though no stickler where his duty was concerned, he was
neither a brute nor a coward. He was a simple gentleman of character,
parts, and conscience, with refined tastes, and a horror of shedding
innocent blood. Under his command were five officers: Facey, acting
first lieutenant, Burder, acting second, Assistant Paymaster Pickthorn,
Engineer Sennett, Dr. Roche, ten marines, and a crew of eighty-eight
men.
After a roundabout cruise through the pleasant groups of Fiji,
Tongataboo, and Samoa, with little to occupy him save official dinners,
tennis parties, and an occasional dance ashore, Captain Casement
headed his ship for the wild western islands and pricked out a course
for Sunflower Bay. One hot morning, when the damp, moist air made
everything sticky to the touch, and the whole ship sweated like a
palm-house from stem to stern, the _Stingaree_ ran past the towering
cliffs and roaring breakers of Guadalcanar, and let go her anchor off
the blow-hole in Sunflower Bay. It was a melancholy spot to look at,
though beautiful in a gloomy and savage fashion, and the only signs of
man’s occupancy were the blackened ruin of the trader’s house, a small
mountain of coal half covered with creepers, and a flagstaff surmounted
by a skull. There was no visible beach, for the mangroves ran to the
water’s edge, save where it had been partially cleared away by the man
whose murder they had come to avenge; nor did the closest scrutiny with
the glass betray any tell-tale smoke or the least sign of habitation.
Captain Casement surveyed the place with his keen, practised eyes, and
the longer he looked the less he liked it. The desolation jarred upon
his nerves, and his heart fell a little as the blow-hole burst hoarsely
under the ship’s quarter, and the everlasting breakers on the outer
reef droned their note of menace and alarm.
“Goodness gracious!” he said, in his abrupt, impatient fashion, as he
stood beside Facey on the bridge and superintended the laying of the
kedge. “I don’t half like the look of it, Mr. Facey; it’s a damned
nasty-looking place.”
The first lieutenant nodded. He was a burly, inarticulate man, to whom
speech was always a serious matter.
“And see here, Facey,” went on the captain. “Guns don’t matter much;
none of the devils shoot fit to speak of; but their poisoned arrows are
the very deuce--you know that was the way Goodenough was killed--and
you must keep your weather eye lifting.”
“Am I to go, sir?” asked the lieutenant.
“Yes,” said Casement. “You must take Pickthorn and twenty-five men in
the first cutter. Send Burder in the second, with twenty more, to cover
your landing. And for God’s sake, Facey, keep cool, and neither get
flustered nor over-friendly! Don’t shoot unless you have to; and always
remember they are the most treacherous savages in the world. Be gentle
and firm, and do everything with as little fuss and as great a show of
confidence as you can.”
“All right, sir,” said Facey.
Half an hour later, Facey, with twenty-five well-armed men, had
vanished into the mangroves, while Burder and his crew lay forty yards
off the shore in the second cutter, the officer devouring “Under Two
Flags,” and the men smoking and yarning in the bottom of the boat.
On the _Stingaree_ two light guns were cast loose and made ready to
open fire at a moment’s notice, and a lookout man was stationed in the
maintop. The doctor busied himself in dismal preparation, while the
captain paced the bridge with quick and anxious steps, fretting for the
safety of his party ashore.
Hour after hour passed and brought never a sound from the melancholy
woods. The fierce sun mounted to the zenith and sank again into the
western sky. Casement was beside himself with suspense; a cup of tea
served him for lunch, and he smoked one cigar after another. A deep
foreboding brooded over the ship; the men sat or walked uneasily about
the waist; the maintop was clustered with anxious blue-jackets; and old
Quinn, the gunner, a half-crazy zealot whose religious convictions were
of the extremest order, pattered off prayers beside the shotted guns.
Towards five o’clock, when things were looking desperate and all began
to fear the very worst, a sudden shout roused the ship, and the shore
party, noisy and triumphant, were seen streaming down to the beach. A
few moments later the two boats pulled slowly off to the ship, Facey’s
company the richer by a black man, whose costume consisted of little
more than the ropes he was bound with. A thundering cheer hailed them
as they swept under the stern and drew up at the starboard gangway, and
Facey was soon reporting himself on the bridge.
“I can’t tell you what a relief it is to see you,” said the captain. “I
wouldn’t pass another such day for a thousand pounds!”
Facey was dog-tired, and his tattered clothes and scratched face gave
evidence of a toilsome march. But he was in a boisterous good humour.
He had acquitted himself with marked success, and was thankful to have
brought back his party and himself safe and sound.
“Well, how did you make out?” asked the captain.
“We landed at the trader’s house,” began Facey, “followed a path that
led inland, and reached some Kanaka huts. Not a soul in ’em; clean
gone, every man jack. Followed along a well beaten path which led us
into the next bay, bearing north-northeast half-east, keeping the
liveliest lookout all the time. Three miles along we ran into another
village, chock-a-block with niggers. It looked a nasty go; lots of
guns and spears, and everybody pretty skittish, kind of they would and
they wouldn’t! I recollected your orders and went slow; you know what
I mean, sir--worked off the presents, and smoked my pipe leisurely.
By and by they came round, tricky as the devil, on to make friends or
to eat us alive, whichever seemed the more promising. I let out what
I wanted, and bit by bit found out that all the Sunflower Bay crowd
were there, even to old Jibberik, the chief--him Toombs said was the
biggest scoundrel of the lot. He looked pretty sick and knew mighty
well what we were after. I talked broadsides to that old man, and put
it to him that he had better give up the chaps who had killed the
trader than waltz back to the ship and be shot instanter himself--for
somebody had to go, I said; and just as soon as I got the old codger
alongside of me I gave him to understand that he was my bird, and kept
my cocked pistol pointed at his belly. After no end of a fuss, and
lots of frothing and loud talk, with things looking precious ugly now
and again, we ended by coming out on top. Then they dragged along a
young nigger named Billy, a returned labour-boy from the Queensland
plantations, they said, and handed him over to me as the murderer. I
thought it was more than likely they’d give us some cheap nigger they
had no use for, or some worn-out old customer, as they did in Pentecost
to Dewar of the _Royalist_; but I think this Billy was all right. A lot
of niggers--Billy’s own push, I suppose--looked as black as fits and
wouldn’t come round for a long time. Then I lashed the prisoner’s hands
and tied him to one of our men, and talked pretty straight to Jib. I
made him promise he’d bring his people back at once, and be down on
the beach, himself and two others, to-morrow morning to give evidence
against Billy.”
“You’ve done well, Mr. Facey,” said Casement, as his lieutenant drew to
a close, “and I tell you the story sha’n’t lose when I report it to
the admiral. You had better go now and get your clothes off,” he added.
Facey jumped to his feet. “I am sure I am awfully obliged to you, sir,”
he said.
“Ugh, that’s all right,” said Casement, in his testy way. “What have
you done with the prisoner?”
“Turned him over to the sergeant for safe-keeping, sir,” returned the
officer.
“Leg-irons?” asked Casement.
“Leg-irons, handcuffs, and a dog-chain,” returned Facey, with a grin.
“He’s cost too much to take any chances of his getting off.”
The first thing next morning, old Jibberik was brought aboard with his
two companions. He was a disgusting old gorilla of a man, with a hairy
chest and a cold, leering eye--a mere scarecrow of humanity, of a type
incredibly cruel and debased. He had worked up enough courage overnight
to beg for everything within sight, and he fingered the clothes and
accoutrements of the seamen like a greedy child. His two friends were
not a whit behind him, either in manners or appearance. They clicked
and chattered like monkeys, and showed extraordinary fearlessness in
that armed ship amid the swarming whites; the only man they seemed to
dread was old Jibberik himself; and they wilted under his piercing
glance like flowers in the sun, whenever his baleful attention fell
their way.
Four bells was the time set for the court martial; at nine o’clock
Casement sent for Facey and told him he must prepare to defend the
prisoner.
“Burder will prosecute for the Queen,” he said. “Pickthorn will act as
clerk. Sennett, Roche, and I will compose the court.”
The first lieutenant was overcome. “I don’t think I can, sir,” he said
feebly. “I never did such a thing in my life; I wouldn’t know where to
begin, or to leave off, for that matter.”
“You can leave off when we hang your prisoner,” Casement returned, with
his bull-doggish air. “Of course, it’s all a damned farce,” he went on.
“Somebody’s got to act for the nigger; it’s printed that way in the
book.”
“I’ll move for an adjournment,” said Facey.
“I’ll be hanged if you will,” said the captain. “It’s a beastly
business, and we have got to put it through.”
Facey groaned.
“Well, do you think I like it?” said Casement.
The lieutenant saluted and walked away to find his prisoner.
Billy was clanking his chains in a canvas hutch alongside the sick-bay,
where a man lay dying. He looked up as Facey approached, and his face
brightened as he recognised his captor. He was a good-looking young
negro, and the symmetry of his limbs, and his air of intelligence and
capacity, stood out in pleasant contrast with the rest of his comrades
in Sunflower Bay.
“Billy,” said Facey, “they are going to make judge and jury for you by
and by; and I am to talky-talky for you.”
“All same Queensland,” returned Billy. “May the Lord have mercy on your
sinful soul!”
Facey was stupefied. “Where in thunder did you learn that?” he demanded.
“Oh, me savvy too much,” said Billy.
“Now, see here,” said the lieutenant. “You didn’t kill that trader?”
“Yes, I kill him,” said Billy, cheerfully.
“You did?” cried the other.
“White fellow no good; I kill him,” said the prisoner.
“If you tell that to the captain he’ll shoot you,” said Facey. If the
prisoner was to be defended he was going to give him all the help he
could.
The black boy looked distressed and nodded a forlorn assent.
“You’ll be a big fool to say that,” said Facey.
“White fellow no good; I kill him,” repeated Billy.
“You unmitigated idiot, you’ll do for yourself,” cried the lieutenant,
angrily. “What’s the good of my talking for you if you can’t stand up
for yourself?”
Billy began to whimper; the other’s loud voice and threatening
demeanour seemed to overwhelm him.
Facey was struck with contrition. “Now shut up that snivelling,” he
said, more kindly. “Tell me the truth, Bill. Isn’t this some humbuggery
of old Jib’s--a regular plant, to shield somebody else at the cost of
your hide?”
Billy rolled his eyes, and wiped away the tears with a grimy paw.
“White fellow no good; I kill--”
“You be damned!” cried his legal adviser.
At ten o’clock the court martial was assembled on the quarter-deck.
The captain, with his brawny shoulders thrown forward, and his hands
deep in his trouser pockets, had all the air of a man in the throes
of indigestion. On either side of him were Sennett and Roche; and
in front, beside a table covered with a flag, was Pickthorn, with a
clerkly outfit and a Bible. Billy stood in chains beside a couple of
marines, looking extremely depressed. The old gorillas, their filthy
kilts bulging with what they had begged or pilfered, were in charge of
the sergeant, who had all he could do to prevent their spitting on the
deck.
Facey was the first one sworn. He deposed as to the capture and
identity of the prisoner. Then Billy was led up to the table and told
to plead.
“Kiss the book and say whether you murdered the trader or not,” said
the captain.
“White fellow no good; I kill him,” quavered the prisoner.
“Pleads guilty,” said Casement to the clerk.
“What did you do it for?” demanded the court.
Billy reiterated his stock phrase.
“Take him away,” said the captain.
Jibberik was the next witness. He kissed the book as though it were
his long-lost brother, and looked almost unabashed enough to beg it
of Pickthorn. I shall not weary the reader with his laboured English,
that lingua Franca of the isles which in the Western Pacific is known
as Beach da Mar. He told a pretty plain story: Billy and the trader had
always been on bad terms. One night, crazy with palm-toddy, Billy had
sneaked down to Captain Tom’s house and shot him through the body as he
was reading a book at supper. As to the subsequent burning and looting
of the station the old savage was none so clear, sheltering himself
in the unintelligibility of which he was a master. His two companions
followed suit, and drew the noose a little tighter round Billy’s throat.
Then rose Burder for the Queen. He was a cheeky youngster, with pink
cheeks, a glib tongue, and no end of assurance.
“I don’t propose to waste the time of the honourable court,” he began;
“but if ever there was a flat-footed, self-confessed murderer, I would
say it is the dusky gentleman in the dock. The blood of Biggar cries
aloud for vengeance, and it would be a shame if it cried in vain,” he
said. He would point to that dreary ruin of which the defunct had been
the manly ornament, radiating civilisation round him like a candle in
the dark, and then to that black monster, who had felled him down.
This kind of thing had got to stop in the Solomon Islands; the natives
were losing all respect for whites, and he put it to the court whether
they would not jeopardise the life of the new trader if they acquitted
the murderer of the old. Now that they had got their hand in, he would
go even further, and hang up with Billy the three witnesses for the
prosecution, old Jib and the other brace of jossers, who had villain
and cutthroat stamped--
“Stick to the prisoner,” cried the court.
“I bow to correction, sir,” went on Burder. “I say again, this is no
time for half-measures; and I say that Sunflower Bay will be a better
place to live in without Mr. Billy. I leave it to the honourable
court, with every confidence, to vindicate justice in these islands by
condemning the prisoner to the extreme penalty of the law. The case for
the Queen is closed, gentlemen.”
“I believe you appear for the defence, Mr. Facey?” said Casement, as
the Queen’s prosecutor took his seat.
“I do, sir,” returned the first lieutenant, nervously.
“I should like to say, first of all,” he began, “that I will not
cross-examine these dirty old savages who have given evidence against
my client. I quite agree with everything my honourable friend has said
regarding them, and I cannot think that the court will attach undue
importance to any evidence they may have given. We’ve been told that
the Kanakas are losing all respect for whites, and that if we don’t
take some strong measures there will be the deuce to pay in these
islands. Perhaps there will be; but is that the British justice we’re
so proud of, or is it fair play, gentlemen, to the unfortunate wretch
who is trembling before you? From what I’ve seen of the whites in this
group, I can say emphatically that I’m in a line with the Kanakas. Now,
as to this Billy: What is there against him but his own confession? and
that, I beg leave to point out, ought not to be taken as conclusive.
As like as not he is the scapegoat for the whole bay, and has been
coached up to tell this story under the screw. Just look one moment at
old Jib there, and see how his friends wither when his eyes fall their
way. For all we know to the contrary, his gibberish and click-click may
be to the tune of ‘Billy, you son of a gun, I’ll cut you into forty
pieces, or flay you alive if you don’t stick to what I’ve told you.’
After all, what have we learned from Billy? Nothing more than this:
‘White fellow no good; I kill him.’ Is that what anybody would call a
full confession? Does it give any clew or any details as to the motive
or the carrying out of this murder? It may be, indeed, that Billy is
a monomaniac with a confirmed delusion that he has killed Biggar; the
court may smile, but I think I am right in stating that such things
have occurred and have even led to miscarriages of justice in the past.
I tell you, gentlemen, I believe it was the whole blooming bay that
killed Biggar, and that Billy was just as guilty or just as innocent
as the rest. And there is one thing I feel mortal sure about: that if
we take the prisoner outside the heads we will soon get the gag off
his mouth, and learn a good deal more about this ugly business. Under
old Jib’s search-light he’s got to keep a close lip; but take him out
to sea, and I answer for it he won’t be so reticent. In conclusion,
gentlemen, I say again that the evidence in this case is inconclusive;
that the honourable gentleman who has appeared for the Queen has
failed to make out a convincing case against my client; that Billy’s
confession in itself is not a sufficient proof that he committed the
crime charged against him; and that we cannot take the life of a human
being on such flimsy and unsupported evidence.”
A dead silence fell upon the court when Facey drew his case to a close
and resumed his seat. Nothing could be heard but the scratching of
Pickthorn’s pen and the reverberating growl of the blow-hole as it
fretted and fumed within for the screaming blast which was soon to
follow. Casement rammed his hands deeper into his pockets, gnawed his
tawny mustache, and protruded his chin. At last, with a start, he awoke
from his reverie, and barked out:
“Mr. Sennett, as the youngest member, it is for you to speak first.”
“I think he’s guilty, sir,” said Sennett.
Casement turned his quick glance on Roche.
“Same here,” said the doctor.
“The finding of the court,” said the captain after another pause, “is
that the prisoner Billy is guilty of the murder of T. H.--what’s his
name?--Biggar, at Sunflower Bay, on the blank day of September, 1888,
and is condemned to be shot as an example to the island. Sentence to be
deferred until I get the ship back from New Ireland, where I’ve to look
into that Carbutt business and the outrage at MacCarthy’s Inlet, on
the chance of the prisoner making a further confession and implicating
others in his crime. The court is dismissed.”
“Beg pardon, sir,” said Pickthorn, looking up from his writing as the
others rose to their feet. “What am I to call the case?--the Queen
_versus_ Billy what?”
“Billy nothing,” said the captain, savagely. “Call him William
Pickthorn if you think it sounds better.”
The verdict of the court was explained to Jibberik, and the old rogue
and his pair of friends were landed in the cove, the boat returning to
find the ship with anchor weighed and the loosened sails flapping on
the yards. In a few minutes she was steaming out to sea, and every one
grew confident that Billy’s tongue would soon wag as he saw Sunflower
Bay dwindle behind him. But the dogged savage stuck to his tale; he
had but one reply to all inquiries, to all probing and pumping for
further particulars of the murder. On his side the conversation began
and ended with: “White fellow no good; I kill him.” On other topics
he could be drawn out at will, and proved himself a most tractable,
sweet-tempered, and far from unintelligent fellow. The men got to like
him immensely, keeping him in perpetual tobacco and providing him
with more grog than was quite good for him. In the fo’castle it was
rank heresy to call him a murderer or to express any doubts regarding
his innocence. He became at once the pet and the mystery of the ship,
and his canvas cell the rallying-point for all the little gaieties on
board. He played cards well, was an apt pupil on the accordion, and at
checkers he was the master of the ship! And he not only beat you, but
he beat you handsomely, shaking hands before and after the event, like
a prizefighter in the ring.
Casement felt very uneasy about the boy; he grew more and more
uncomfortable at heart, and it was the talk of the ship that the
problem of Billy was weighing on the “old man” like a hundredweight of
bricks. The whole business preyed upon him unceasingly and he dreaded
each passing day that brought the execution ever nearer. Billy kept
him sleepless in the steaming nights; Billy faced him like a spectre
at his solitary board; Billy’s face blurred the pages of the books
and magazines he had laid up for these dreary days in the Solomons.
Casement visited his prisoner twice a day, against the better judgment
that bade him keep away and try to forget him. He never said much after
his first two ineffectual attempts to wrestle with Billy’s stereotyped
phrase and to extort further information; but, chewing a cigar, he
would stare the black creature out of countenance for ten minutes at a
time, with a look of the strongest annoyance and disfavor, as though
his patience could not much longer withstand the strain.
The officers were not a whit behind their captain. Billy’s artless ways
and boundless good humour had won the whole ward-room to his side; and
his grim determination to die, at once bewildered and exasperated every
soul on board. The strange spectacle offered of a hundred men at work
to persuade their prisoner to recall his damning confession, and on
pins and needles to save him from a fate he himself seemed not to fear.
The captain as good as told Facey that if the boy would assert his
innocence he would scarcely venture to shoot him; and this intelligence
Facey handed on to his client, and, incidentally, to the whole ship’s
company. Never was a criminal so beset. Every man on board tried in
his turn to shake Billy’s obstinacy, and to paint, in no uncertain
colours, the dreadful fate the future held in store for him. One and
all they retired discomfited, some with curses, others on the verge of
tears. They swore at him for a fool; they cajoled him as they would a
child; they acted out his last end with all fidelity to detail, even
to a firing platoon saying “Bang, bang!” in dreadful unison, while a
couple of seamen made Billy roll the deck in agony. The black boy would
shudder and wipe his frightened eyes; but his fortitude was unshaken.
“White fellow no good; I kill him.”
Then old Quinn got after him--wild-eyed, tangle-haired old Quinn, the
gunner, who was half cracked on religion. He prayed and blubbered
beside the wretched boy, overwhelming him with red-hot appeals and
perfervid oratory. Billy became an instant convert, and got to love
old Quinn as a dog his master. There was no more card-playing in
Billy’s cell, no more rum or tobacco; even checkers fell under the
iron ban of old Quinn, to whom every enjoyment was hateful. Billy
learned hymns instead, and would beguile the weary sentry on the watch
with his tuneful rendering of “Go Bury thy Sorrow,” or “Nearer, my
God, to Thee.” He was possessed, too, of a Bible that Quinn gave him,
from which the old gunner would read, in his strident, overbearing
voice, the sweet gospel of charity and good will. But if old Quinn
accomplished much, he ran, as they all ran at last, into that stone
wall of words which Billy raised against the world. Contrition for the
murder which had doomed him to die was what Billy would not show or
profess in any way to feel. Rant though old Quinn might, and beseech
on bended knees, with his eyes burning and his great frame shaking
with agitation, he could extort from his convert no other answer than
the one which all knew so well. Billy’s eyes would snap and his mouth
harden.
“White fellow no good; I kill him.”
As the days passed, and the ship made her way from bay to bay, from
island to island, in the course of her policing cruise among those
lawless whites and more than savage blacks, the captain grew desperate
with the problem of Billy. They all said that Casement looked ten years
older, and that something would soon happen to the “old man” if Billy
did not soon skip out; and the “old man” showed all the desire in the
world to bring about so desirable a consummation. Billy was accorded
every liberty; his chains had long been things of the past, and no
sentinel now guarded him in his cell or watched him periodically in his
sleep. Billy was free to go where he would; and it was the fervent hope
of all that he would lose no time in making his way ashore. But though
Casement stopped at half a hundred villages, and laid the ship as close
ashore as he dared risk her, still, for the life of him, Billy would
not budge. Then they thought him afraid of sharks, which are plentiful
in those seas, and kept the dinghy at the gangway, in defiance of every
regulation, in the hope that the prisoner would deign to use it. But
Billy showed no more desire to quit the ship than Casement himself, or
old Quinn. He did the honours of the man-of-war to visiting chiefs,
and seemed to be proud of his assured position on board. Go ashore?
Escape? Not for worlds!
Then the captain determined upon new measures. He passed a hint
to Facey, and Facey passed it to the mess, and the mess to the
blue-jackets, that they were making things too comfortable for their
prisoner. For a while Billy’s easy life came to an abrupt conclusion.
His best friends began to kick and cuff him without mercy. He was
rope’s-ended by the bo’sun’s mate, and the cook threw boiling water
over his naked skin. The boy’s heart almost broke at this, and he went
about dejected and unhappy for the first time since he had come aboard.
But no harsh usage, no foul words, could drive him to desert the ship.
He stuck to it like a barnacle, for all the captain spun out the cruise
to an unconscionable length and stopped at all sorts of places that
offered a favorable landing for the prisoner. But if Billy grew sad and
moody under the stress of whippings and bad words, it was as nothing
to the change in Casement himself, who turned daily greyer and more
haggard as he pricked a course back to Sunflower Bay. Of course, he
maintained a decent reserve all along, and betrayed, in words at least,
not a sign of his consuming anxiety to rid himself of Billy. But at
last even his iron front broke down. It was on the bridge, to Facey,
when the ship had just dropped anchor in Port McGuire, not forty miles
from Sunflower Bay.
“Mr. Facey,” he said, “send Mr. Burder ashore with an armed party;
tell him just to show himself a bit and come off again.”
“Yes, sir,” said Facey.
“I am thinking they might take that fellow Billy to translate for
them,” he went on, shamefacedly.
The first lieutenant turned to go.
“Hold on,” said the captain, suddenly lowering his voice and drawing
his subordinate close to him. “Just you pass it on to Burder that I
wouldn’t skin him alive--you know what I mean--if--well, suppose that
black fellow cut his lucky altogether--”
Facey smiled.
“Of course,” rasped out the captain, “I can’t tolerate any dereliction
of duty; but if the young devil made a break for it--”
“Ay, ay, sir,” returned the first lieutenant, and darted down the brass
steps three at a time. He called Burder aside and gave his instructions
to that discreet youngster, who was sharp to see the point without
the need for awkward explanations. A broad grin ran round the boat
when Billy was made to descend and take his place beside Burder in the
stern; and so palpable and open was the whole business that some aboard
even shook the negro by the hand and bade him God-speed.
A couple of hours later Burder embarked again and headed for the ship
in a tearing hurry. A chuckle ran along the decks as not a sign of
Billy could be made out, and the nearing boat soon put the last doubt
at rest. There was no black boy among the blue-jackets.
Burder skipped up the steps and saluted the captain on the bridge.
“I have to report the escape of Billy, sir,” he said, with inimitable
gravity and assurance. “I scarcely know how it came to happen, sir, but
he managed to bolt as he was walking between Miller and Cracroft.”
“This is a very serious matter,” said the captain, with ill-concealed
cheerfulness. “I don’t know but what it is my duty to reprimand you
very severely for your carelessness. However, if he’s gone, he’s gone,
I suppose. I hope you took measures to recapture him?”
“Yes, sir,” returned Burder. “Looked for him high and low, sir.”
“Poor Billy!” said the captain, with a smile that spoke volumes. “We’ll
say no more about it, Mr. Burder; it may be all for the best; but
remember, sir, it mustn’t happen again.”
“No, sir,” said Burder.
“How did you manage it, old man?” was the eager question that met the
youngster as he took shelter in the ward-room and ordered “a beer.” All
his messmates were round him, save Facey, who was officer of the deck
and could not do more than hang in the doorway.
“I tell you it wasn’t easy,” said the boy. “We promenaded all round
the place, and I tried like fun to shake him off. I sent him errands
and hid behind trees, and talked of how we were going to shoot him
to-morrow--but it was all no blooming good! I was at my wits’ end at
last, and had almost made up my mind to tie him to a tree and run for
it, when I got a bright idea. I pretended I had dropped my canteen
under a banyan a mile behind the town, a kind of cemetery banyan, full
of dead men’s bones--a rummy place, I can tell you. And when we got
down near the boat, I took the nigger on one side and bade him go and
fetch it. ‘And don’t you come back without it, Billy,’ said I. ‘I’ll
be dismissed the service if I can’t account for that canteen!’ Then he
asked how long I was going to stay, and I said a week; and he went off
like a lamb, while we squared away for the ship. Didn’t you see the
jossers pull!”
It had been the merest pretence that had taken the war-ship into Port
McGuire, and now that her merciful errand had been so successfully
accomplished, and Billy reluctantly torn at last from those who had to
kill him, Captain Casement lost no time in ordering the ship to sea.
But as the winch tugged at the anchor, and the great hull crept up inch
by inch to the tautened chain, a sudden yell roused the captain on the
bridge and struck him as cruelly as one of those poisoned arrows he
feared so much.
“Billy, on the starboard bow!”
Sure enough, a black poll protruded above the rippling bosom of the
bay, and two frantic arms were seen driving a familiar dark countenance
on a course towards the vessel. It was Billy indeed, his honest face
marked with anguish and despair as he fought his way to regain his
prison.
Casement groaned. And for this he had been holding the cruiser two long
weeks in those God-forsaken islands, and had invented one excuse upon
another to delay his return to Sunflower Bay! Billy had been given
a hundred chances to escape, and now, like a bad penny, here he was
again, ready to precipitate the catastrophe which could no longer be
postponed.
A great laugh went up when Billy presented himself on deck, exhausted,
dripping like a spaniel, and sorely hurt in spirit. He began at once to
blurt out the story of the canteen, and made a bee-line for Burder; but
that intrepid youngster could afford to listen to no explanations, and
in self-defence had to order Billy into the hands of the marines, who
led him away protesting.
Casement’s patience was now quite at an end. He headed the ship for
Sunflower Bay, and spared no coal to bring her there in short order.
Three hours after they had passed out of the heads of Port McGuire the
_Stingaree_ was at anchor off the blow-hole.
Facey was drinking a whisky-and-soda, and preparing himself, as best
he could, for the ordeal he knew to be before him, when the captain’s
servant entered the ward-room and requested his presence in the cabin.
“Mr. Facey,” said the captain, “take the doctor and the pay and forty
men well armed from the ship, and when you’ve assembled the village
take that Billy and shoot him.”
“Yes, sir,” said the lieutenant, turning very pale.
“Faugh,” rasped Casement, “it makes me sick. Damn the boy, why couldn’t
he cut? Well, be off with you, and kill him as decently as you know
how.”
Billy did not at first realize how seriously he was involved in the
plans of the shore party that was making ready. He dropped into one of
the boats light-heartedly enough, and took his place cheerfully between
two marines with loaded rifles. But the mournful hush of all about him,
the eyes that turned and would not meet his own, the tenderness and
sorrow which was expressed in every movement, in every furtive look,
of his whilom comrades, all stirred and shook him with consternation.
No one laughed at his little antics. He tickled the man next him, and
nudged him, his friend Tommy, who could whistle like a blackbird and do
amazing tricks with cards; but instead of an answering grin, Tommy’s
eyes filled with tears and he stared straight in front of him. Billy
was whimpering before they were half ashore, and some understanding of
the fate in store for him began to struggle through his thick head.
There was no need to assemble the village. It was there to meet them,
old Jibberik and all, silent, funereal, and expectant. The men were
marched up to the charred remains of the trader’s house and formed up
on three sides of a square, leaving the fourth open to the sea. To
this space Billy was led by Facey and old Quinn, the gunner. The negro
looked about him like a frightened child and clung to the old man.
“Will you give the prisoner a minute to make his peace with God?” asked
old Quinn.
Facey nodded.
Quinn plunged down on his knees, Billy beside him. For a brief space
the gunner pattered prayers thick and fast, like a man with no time to
lose.
“Billy,” he said at last, “as you stand on the brink of that river we
all must cross, as the few seconds run out that you have still to live
and breathe and make your final and everlasting peace with the God you
have so grievously offended, let me implore you to show some sorrow,
some contrition, for the awful act that has brought you to this! Billy,
tell God you are sorry that you killed Biggar.”
For a moment Billy made no answer. At last, in a husky voice, he said:
“You mean Cap’n Tom, who live here before?”
“Him you hurled into eternity with all his sins hot on him. Yes,
Captain Tom, the trader.”
“No!” cried Billy, with a strangled cry. “Me no sorry. White fellow no
good; I kill him.”
“Quinn,” cried Facey, “your time’s up.” The first lieutenant’s face
was livid, and his hands trembled as he bound Billy’s eyes with a silk
handkerchief.
“Stand right there, Billy,” said the officer, turning the prisoner
round to face the firing party, that was already drawn up.
“Good-bye, Missy Facey and gennelmen all,” whimpered the boy.
“Good-bye, Billy,” returned the other. “Now, men,” he added, as he ran
his eye along the faltering faces, “no damned squeamishness; if you
want to help the nigger, you’ll shoot straight. For God’s sake don’t
mangle him.
“Fire!”
THE BEAUTIFUL MAN OF PINGALAP
THE BEAUTIFUL MAN OF PINGALAP
He stood five feet nothing in his naked feet, a muscular, sandy little
fellow, with a shock of red hair, a pair of watery blue eyes, and a
tawny, sun-burned beard, the colour of fried carrots. I could not see
myself that he was beautiful, and might have lived a year with him and
never found it out; though he assured me, with a giggle of something
like embarrassment, that he was no less a person than the Beautiful Man
of Pingalap. Such at least was his name amongst the natives, who had
admired him so persistently, and talked of him so much, that even the
whites had come to call him by that familiar appellation.
“You see,” he said, in that whining accent which no combination of
letters can adequately render, “it tykes a man of a ruddy complexion
to please them there Kanakas; and if he gains their respeck and ’as a
w’y with him sort of jolly and careless-like, there’s nothing on their
blooming island he carn’t have for the arsking.”
I gathered, however, as I talked with him in the shadow of the old
boat-house in which we lived together at Ruk like a pair of tramps,
that he, Henery Hinton, had not presumed to ask for much in those
isles from which he had so recently emerged. Indeed, except for a
camphor-wood chest, a nondescript valise of decayed leather, a monkey,
a parrot, and a young native lady named Bo, my friend owned no more in
the world than the window-curtain pyjamas in which he stood.
“It ain’t much, is it,” he said, with a sigh, “to show for eight long
years on the Line? Sixty dollars and w’at you see before you! Though
the monkey may be worth a trifle, and a w’aler captain once offered me
a mee-lodian for the bird.”
“And the girl?” I asked.
“Who’d tyke her?” he replied, with a drop of his lip. “Did you ever see
an uglier piece in all your life?”
“What do you mean to do with her?” I asked, knowing that the firm had
promised him a passage to Sydney in the _Ransom_, and wondering what
would become of the unfortunate Bo, whom he was little likely to drag
with him to the colonies.
“You don’t think I’m going to desert that girl,” he said truculently,
giving me a look of deep suspicion. “My word!” he went on, “after
having taught her to byke bread and sew, and regularly broke her in
to all kinds of work, it ain’t likely I am going to leave her to be
snapped up by the first feller that comes along. The man as gets her
will find himself in clover, and might lie in bed all day and never
turn his hand to nothink, as I’ve done myself time and time again at
Pingalap, while she’d make breakfast and tend the store. It would tyke
several years to bring a new girl up to her mark, and then maybe she
mightn’t have it in her, after all,--not all of them has,--and so your
pains and lickings would be wasted.”
“Lickings!” I said. “Is that the way you taught Bo?”
“I’d like to know any other w’y,” he said. “My word! a man has to
master a woman, and there’s no getting around it. With some you can do
it with love and kindness, but the most need just the whip and plenty
of it. That little Bo, w’y, I’ve held her down and lashed her till my
arm was sore, and there ain’t a part of me she hasn’t bit one time
and another! Do you see that purple streak on my ear? I thought I was
booked for hydrophobiar that morning, for it swelled up awful, and I
was that weak with loss of blood that when I laid her head open with
a fancy trade lamp I just keeled over in a dead faint. But there was
never no nasty malice in Bo, and if we had a turn up now and then, she
always played to the rules, and never bit a feller when he was down;
and she never hurt me but what she’d cry her eyes out afterwards and
sometimes even arsk me to whip her for her wickedness. My word! I’d lay
it on to her then, for I could use both hands and had nothing to be
afryde of. Of course that was long ago, when she was raw and only half
trained like. I don’t recollect having laid my hand to her since the
_Belle Brandon_ went ashore on Fourteen Island Group.”
Having gone so deeply into the history of her subjugation, the
Beautiful Man could not resist showing me a proof of Bo’s dearly bought
docility, and whistled to her to come to him. This she did readily
enough, her ugly face wrinkling into smiles at sight of him. She was
a wizened little creature, with an expression midway between that of
a monkey and a Japanese image. Of all things in the world, Bo’s chief
pleasure was in clothes, of which she possessed an inordinate quantity,
and it was her custom to make at least three toilets a day. She wore
tight-fitting jackets plastered with beadwork like an Indian’s, with
embroidered skirts of bright cotton, and she incessantly occupied
herself in adding to her stock. Half the day her little claws were busy
with needle and beads, covering fresh bodices with barbarous patterns,
while the monkey played about her and pilfered her things, and the
parrot screamed whole sentences in the Pingalap language.
My own business in the Islands was of a purely scientific description,
a learned society having equipped me for two years, with instructions
to study the anthropological character of the natives, dip into the
botany of Micronesia, and do what I could in its little-known zoölogy.
I had meant to go directly to Yap, but in the uncertainties of South
Sea travelling I had been landed for a spell on the island of Ruk,
from which place I had hope of picking up another vessel before the
month was out. Here I had run across the Beautiful Man, himself a
bird of passage, waiting for the barque _Ransom_; and when I learned
that Johnson, the firm’s manager, had meant to charge me two dollars
and a half a day for the privilege of messing at his table and seeing
him get drunk every night, I was glad to chum in with Hinton and
share the tumble-down boat-house in which he camped. Here we lived
together, the Beautiful Man, Bo, and myself, in a simplicity that
would have shamed the Garden of Eden. We slept at night on the musty
sails of some forgotten ship, and in the daytime Bo prepared our meals
over a driftwood fire. She baked the most excellent bread, and made
her own yeast from fermented rice and sugar, which used to blow up
periodically, with an explosion like that of a cannon. She also made
admirable coffee, and a sort of sugar candy in the frying-pan, as well
as griddle-cakes and waffles with the gulls’ eggs we used to gather for
ourselves. More than this she did not know, except how to open the can
of beef or salmon which was the inevitable accompaniment of all our
meals.
We rose at no stated hour in the morning, the sun being our only
clock, and, as we read it, a very uncertain one. Hinton and I bathed
in the lagoon, where he taught me daily how to dive with the greatest
good humour and zeal, roaring with laughter at my failures, and
applauding my successes to the skies. He often spoke to me in Pingalap,
forgetting for the moment his own mother-tongue, and would wear a
hang-dog expression for an hour afterwards, as though in some way
he had disgraced himself. On our return to the boat-house we would
find breakfast awaiting us, Bo guarding it with a switch from the
depredations of the monkey and the parrot. After breakfast, when the
Beautiful Man and I would lie against the wall and smoke our pipes,
the little savage would wash her dishes, and putting them away in an
empty gin-case, would next turn her attention to the pets, cleaning
and brushing them with scrupulous care. Then, for another hour, we
would see no more of her, while she retired behind a sail to effect
fresh combinations of costume, reappearing at last with her hair
nicely combed, and her breast dazzling like a robin’s. There was to
me something touching in the sight of this little person doing the
round of a treadmill she had invented for herself, and spending the
bright days in stringing her unending beads. It seemed a shame that
she should be abandoned, so forlorn, solitary, and friendless, on the
alien shore of Ruk; and the matter weighed on me so much that it often
disturbed my dreams and gave rise to an anxiety that I was half ashamed
to feel. Several times I spoke to the Beautiful Man on the subject,
drawing a little on my imagination in depicting the wretchedness and
degradation to which he was meaning to leave poor Bo, who could not
fail, circumstanced as she was, to come to a miserable end. He always
took my lecture in good part; for, in fairness to the Beautiful Man,
I must confess he was the most good-natured creature alive, and used
invariably to reply that he would not think of doing such a thing were
it not for the pressing needs of his health, which, he assured me with
solemnity, was in a bad way. I never could learn the exact nature of
his malady, nor persuade him into any recital of his symptoms beyond a
vague reference to what he called constitutional decay. Of course, I
knew well enough that this was a mere cloak to excuse his conduct to
Bo, whom I could see he meant to desert in the most heartless fashion,
if in the meantime he failed to sell her to some passing trader. This
he was always trying to do, on the sly, for he had enough decency left
to screen the business from my view and carry on the negotiations
with as much secrecy as he could manage. But the prospective buyer
invariably cried off when he was shown the article for sale, however
much it was bedizened with beads and shined up with oil, and the matter
usually ended in a big drunk at the station, from which the Beautiful
Man was more than once dragged insensible by his helpmeet. He even
hinted to me that, owing to our long and intimate relations, I might
myself become Bo’s proprietor for a merely nominal sum; and when I told
him straight out that I had come to the Islands to study, and not to
entangle myself in any disreputable connection with a native woman, he
begged my pardon very earnestly, and said that he wished to Gord he had
been as well guided. But he always had a bargaining look in his eye
when I praised Bo’s bread, which indeed was our greatest luxury, or
happened to pass my plate for another of her waffles.
“You’re going to miss them things up there,” he would say. “My word,
ain’t you going to miss them!”