Banderah, the supreme chief of Mayou, was, _vide_ Mr. Deighton's report
to his clerical superiors, “a man of much intelligence, favourably
disposed to the spread of the Gospel, but, alas! of a worldly nature,
and clinging for worldly reasons to the darkness.” In other words,
Banderah, although by no means averse to the poorer natives of the
island adopting Christianity in a very free and modified form, and
contributing a certain amount of their possessions to the missionary
cause, was yet a heathen, and intended to remain one. For Mr. Deighton
he had conceived a personal liking, mingled with a wondering and
contemptuous pity. During an intertribal war he had received a bullet in
his thigh, which the missionary had succeeded, after much difficulty, in
extracting. Consequently, his gratitude was unlimited, and he evinced it
in a very practical manner, by commanding some hundreds of his subjects
to become Christians under pain of death. And, being aware that polygamy
would not be tolerated by Mr. Deighton, he went a step further, and
ordered all those of these forced converts who had more than one wife
to send them to his own harem. This addition to his family duties,
was, however, amply compensated for by the labour of the surplus wives
proving useful to him on his yam and taro plantations.
In his younger days Banderah had once made a voyage to Sydney, in the
service of a trading captain, one Lannigan, whose name, in those days,
was a name to conjure with from one end of Melanesia to the other, and
for whose valour as a fighter and killer of men Banderah had acquired
a respect he could never entertain for a missionary. This captain,
however, died in Sydney, full of years and strong drink, and left the
chief almost broken-hearted, to return a year later to Mayou.
In his curious, semi-savage character there were some good points, and
one was that in compliance with the oft-expressed wishes and earnest
entreaties of Blount and Mr. Deighton, he had agreed to put down the
last remnants of cannibalism which had lingered among the coast tribes
on the island down to the time of this story. And although the older
men, and some of the priests of the heathen faith, had struggled against
his drastic legislation, they finally gave in when Mr. Deighton, weeping
tears of honest joy at such a marvellous and wholesale conversion,
presented each convert with a new print shirt and a highly coloured
picture of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea.
An hour after Blount had walked along the beach to Lak-a-lak, Banderah
saw the captain of the schooner come ashore and walk up the path to
Nathaniel Burrowes' house, where he was warmly greeted by Burrowes and
the German. He remained there for nearly an hour, and then came
out again, and looking about him for a few moments, made direct for
Banderah's house, which stood about three hundred yards back from that
of the American trader.
When close to the chiefs house the captain of the _Starlight_ raised his
head, and Banderah caught sight of his features and recognised him.
“How are you, Bandy?” said the seaman, walking smartly up to the chief,
who was sitting on a mat inside his doorway, surrounded by a part of his
harem and family, “you haven't forgotten me, have you?”
“Oh, no, sir. I no forget you,” said the native, civilly enough, but
without warmth. “How are you, Cap'en Bilker?”
“Sh', don't call me that, Bandy. I'm Captain Sykes now.”
“Yes?” and Banderah's face at once assumed an expression of the most
hopeless stupidity. “All right, Cap'en Sike. Come inside an' sit down.”
“Right, my boy,” said Bilker genially, fumbling in his coat pocket, and
producing a large flask of rum, “I've brought you a drink, Bandy; and I
want to have a yarn with you.”
“All right,” and taking the flask from the captain's hand without
deigning to look at it, he passed it on to one of his wives. “What you
want talk me about, Cap'en? You want me to get you some native for work
on plantation?” and he smiled slily.
“No, no, Bandy. Nothing like that I don't run a labour ship now. I'm a
big fellow gentleman now. I'm captain of that yacht.”
The chief nodded, but said nothing. He knew Captain “Sykes” of old, and
knew him to be an undoubted rascal. Indeed, about ten years before the
cunning blackbirder captain had managed to take thirty of Banderah's
people away in his ship without paying for them; and the moment the
chief recognised the sailor he set his keen native brain to work to
devise a plan for getting square with him. And he meant to take deadly
vengeance.
“Banderah, old man,” and the captain laid one hand on the chiefs naked
knee, “I meant to pay you for those men when I came back next trip. But
I was taken by a man-of-war,” here Bilker crossed his wrists to signify
that he had been handcuffed; “taken to Sydney, put me in calaboose--ten
years.”
“You lie,” said Banderah quietly, but with a danger spark in his eye,
“man-o'-war no make you fas' for a long time after you steal my men.
Plenty people tell me you make two more voyage; then man-o'-war catch
you an' make you fas'.”
“Don't you believe 'em, Banderah,” began the ex-blackbirder, when the
chief interrupted him--
“What you do with my brother?” he said suddenly; “he die too, in Fiji?”
The white man's face paled. “I don't know, Banderah. I didn't know your
brother was aboard when my mate put the hatches on. I thought he had
gone ashore. I never meant to take him away to Fiji anyway.”
“All right; never mind that. But what you want talk to me about?” And
then, as if to put his visitor at his ease, he added, “You dam rogue, me
dam rogue.”
“Yes, yes,” assented Captain Bilker cheerfully; “but look here now,
Bandy, I'm not only going to pay you for those men I took, but give you
a lot of money as well--any amount of money; make you a big, rich chief;
big as Maafu Tonga.{*} But I want you to help me.”
* Maafu of Tonga, the once dreaded rival of King Cacobau of
Fiji. He died in 1877.
“You speak me true?” inquired the chief.
“I swear it,” answered the captain promptly, extending his hand, which,
however, Banderah did not appear to see.
“All right,” he said presently, after a silence of a few moments; then
making a sign for his women and slaves to withdraw to the further end
of the room, so that their muttered talk might not disturb the white man
and himself, he lit his pipe and said, “Go on, tell me what you want me
to do, Cap'en.”
“Look,” said the ex-blackbirder, laying a finger on the chiefs arm and
speaking in a low voice, “these two white men on board the yacht have
got any amount of money, gold, sovereigns--boxes and boxes of it They
stole it; I know they stole it, although I didn't see them do it.”
Banderah nodded his huge, frizzy head. “I savee. These two fellow rogue,
all same you an' me.”
“See, now, look here, Banderah. I mean to have that gold, and I want you
to help me to get it. As soon as these men on board are dead I will give
you a thousand golden sovereigns--five thousand dollar. Then I'll go
away in the schooner. Now, listen, and I'll tell you how to do it. The
Yankee and Peter are going to help.”
Then Captain Bilker, _alias_ Sykes, unfolded his plan as follows:
Banderah was to entice De Vere and his friend some miles into the
interior, where there was a large swamp covered with wild-fowl. Here
they were to be clubbed by Banderah and his people, and the bodies
thrown into the swamp. Then Bilker, accompanied by Schwartzkoff and
Burrowes, were to go on board the schooner and settle the mate and the
white steward.
“How much sovereign you goin' to give Peter and Missa Burrowes?” asked
Banderah.
“Five hundred,” answered Bilker; “five hundred between them. But I will
give you a thousand.”
“You no 'fraid man-o'-war catch you by and by?” inquired Banderah.
“No. Who's going to tell about it? You and your people won't.”
“What 'bout Missa Blount? What 'bout mission'ry?”
Bilker grinned savagely. “Peter and Burrowes say they will kill Blount
if I give them another five hundred sovereigns.”
“What 'bout mission'ry and mission'ry woman?”
For a moment or two Bilker, crime-hardened villain as he was, hesitated.
Then he raised his head and looked into the dark face of the native
chief. Its set, savage expression gave him confidence.
“Plenty missionaries get killed. And, all the man-o'-war captains know
that the Mayou bush-men{*} are very savage. Some day--in about a week
after I have gone away in the schooner, you will take the missionary
and his wife to the little bush town, that Peter and Burrowes tell me
he goes to sometimes. They will sleep there that night. You and some of
your people will go with them and sleep in the same house with them. You
do that sometimes, Banderah, eh?”
* “Bushmen,” a term applied to natives living in the
interior of the Melanesian Islands.
“Yes, sometimes.”
This was perfectly true. The bush tribes on Mayou, although at war with
Banderah and his coast tribes, yet occasionally met their foes in an
amicable manner at a bush village called Rogga, which had been for many
decades a neutral ground. Here Banderah and his people, carrying fish,
tobacco, and bamboos filled with salt water,{*} would meet small
parties of bush people, who, in exchange for the commodities brought
by Banderah, would give him yams, hogs, and wild pigeons. At several of
these meetings Mr. Deighton had been present, in the vain hope that he
might establish friendly relations with the savage and cannibal people
of the interior.
* Having no salt, the bush tribes of Melanesia, who dare not
visit the coast, buy salt water from the coast tribes. They
meet a a spot which is always sacredly kept as a neutral
ground.
“Well,” resumed the ruffian, “you will sleep at Rogga with the
missionary and his wife. In the morning, when you and your people awake,
the missionary and his wife will be dead. Then you will hurry to this
place; you will go on board the man-of-war and tell the captain that the
bad bushmen killed them when they were asleep.”
“I savee. Everybody savee Mayou man-a-bush like kill white men.”
“That's it, Bandy. No one will say you did it.”
“What 'bout Peter an' Burrowes? Perhaps by and by those two fellow get
mad with me some day, and tell man-o'-war I bin kill three white man and
one white woman.”
“Banderah,” and Bilker slapped him on the shoulder, “you're a damned
smart fellow! There's no mistake about that. Now look here, I want you
to get another thousand sovereigns--the thousand I am going to give to
Burrowes and Peter. And after the man-a-bush have killed the missionary
and his wife, they are coming down to the beach one night soon after,
and will kill the two white men. Then there will be no more white men
left, and you'll be the biggest chief in the world--as big as Maafu
Tonga.”
A curious smile stole over the grim features of the chief.
“By God! Cap'en, you savee too much; you dam fine man altogether.”
“Well, look here now, Banderah. Are you going to do it?”
“Yes, I do it right enough.”
“When?”
“To-mollow.”
“To-morrow will do. And, look here, Bandy, I'm going to give you ten
sovereigns each for the men I took away from you.”
“All right,” answered the chief, “now you go away. I want go and look
out for some good men come along me to-mollow.”
“Right you are, Banderah. Take plenty good men. You know what to
do--white men walk along swamp to shoot duck, then _one, two,_” and
Captain Bilker made a motion with his right hand that was perfectly
comprehensible to the chief.
Banderah sat perfectly quiet on his mat and watched the captain
return to Burrowes' house, from where a short time after he emerged,
accompanied by his two fellow-conspirators. Then the three of them
hailed the schooner. A boat put off and took them on board.
*****
An hour or two later Blount returned along the beach from Lak-a-lak, and
walked slowly up the path to his house. Just as he entered the door the
sounds of revelry came over to him from the schooner, whose lights were
beginning to glimmer through the quick-falling darkness of the tropic
night. Some one on board was playing an accordion, and presently he
caught the words of a song--
“Remember, too, the patriots' gore That flecked the streets of
Baltimore; Maryland, my Maryland.”
“Burrowes only sings that when he's very drunk,” he said to himself,
as he sat down to drink a cup of coffee brought to him by his eldest
daughter Taya. “No doubt he and that anointed sweep Bilker are having a
very happy time together.”
“Father,” said the girl in the native tongue, as he put down his cup,
“Banderah is here. He came but now, and will not come inside, but waits
for thee in the copra-house, lest he be seen talking to thee.”
“What the devil is wrong?” muttered Blount, as without waiting to touch
the coffee prepared for him he went outside to the copra-house.
In half an hour he and the native chief came out together, and as they
stood for a minute in the broad streak of light that streamed out from
the lamp on the table in the big room, Taya, who sat in the doorway, saw
her father's face was set and stern-looking.
“Shed thou no blood, Banderah,” he said in the native tongue, “not even
that of these two dogs who have eaten and drunk in my house for four
years.”
“Challi,{*} that is hard. Already are my people thirsty for the blood
of this dog of a captain--he who stole thirty and one of my people. And
because of my brother, who was stolen with them, have I promised them
vengeance. But the other two who are with him on the ship I will spare.”
* Charlie.
“As you will. And as for these two dogs who have planned to kill me,
with them I shall deal myself. If, when the schooner saileth away from
here, these men go not with her, then shall I shoot them dead.”
“Good,” and then grasping the white man's hand, the chief pressed his
nose to his, and vanished in the darkness.