THE MAN'S MAN'S MAN
The sides of the _Blackbirder_ were lined with sallow, scowling faces,
as villainous a crew as ever gathered aboard one disreputable ship
since time began.
They took in all the points of the trim little craft that nosed quietly
up within speaking distance; the British flag, to which they were by
nature antipathetic; the long brown gun forward, with its black mouth
pointing plumb for every shifty eye of them; the glancing barrels of
the Winchesters, and the steady determination of the men who carried
them; the covert menace of the whole silent display. Muttered
blasphemies rolled along the line of yellow faces, and the rumble of
them was heard aboard the _Torch_.
"What you want?" shouted a burly figure, standing aft behind the
deckhouse.
"Your cargo," replied Captain Cathie, patting the breach of his big gun
affectionately, and the objurgations aboard the enemy broke out afresh.
"What you mean?"
"You'd better come aboard here and we'll explain."
"You better fetch me."
"Very well," said Cathie, with joy in his face.
He stooped behind his long gun for a moment, trained it carefully, and
instantly its angry bellow filled sea and sky, and sent the women below
to their knees. They heard a crash, aloft and below, aboard the
_Blackbirder_, and the yells of the men as they scattered to avoid the
falling spars. The smoke, drifting lazily away, showed the brig's
maintopmast nipped neatly at the crosstrees, and hanging with its yards
in a fantastic tangle of ropes to the deck.
"That's the first time of asking," shouted Cathie. "Are you coming?"
and he bent behind his gun again.
"I kom," and they saw the black-a-vised crew set to launching a boat,
with vicious side-glances at their oppressor.
Presently the dirty boat and its dirty crew lay alongside, and the
burly one climbed slowly up the ladder they dropped for him.
His small eyes glared viciously out of his bloated cheeks, "like a
hunted boar's," said Cathie afterwards.
"Now then! You are pirate?"
"Not at all--we're missionaries," said Cathie.
"Missi----!" and the fat one came within measurable distance of
apoplexy.
"You've stolen our people. We want them back. Do you understand?"
But the _Blackbirder's_ English was limited, and the shock of meeting
missionaries of so strange a texture had bemused his wits.
Blair begged Stuart to speak to him in Spanish, and the wandering wits
came back at sound of it.
"Tell him," said Blair, "that the islanders he has kidnapped are our
people, and we intend to take them home again."
And Stuart put it to him so.
"If he makes any resistance we shall overcome it. What does he say?"
"He asks how you're going to take them back."
"We will see to all that presently. First, he will bring aboard here
all the arms they have over yonder," said Blair, and as that sank
through Stuart into the other's understanding, the little boar-eyes
gleamed more viciously than ever, and the fat body rumbled with
volcanic fires.
"We will give him half an hour to deliver up the arms. If they are not
here then, his other mast will go. He will bring them over himself."
The little eyes glared furiously round, but found nothing but grimmest
determination in the faces that hemmed him in. Possibly they did not
fail to note all the other points bearing on the question. He shambled
to the side with a growl in his throat, and got heavily into his boat,
and was pulled across to his ship, and immediately they heard the
simmering of a hot discussion tipped with sharp flakes of invective.
"They don't like it," said Captain Cathie.
The minutes passed. Now and again a scowling face turned their way,
and shot a venomous white-eyed glance at them, but there were no signs
of the arms coming over.
"Five minutes more," shouted Cathie at last, bubbling with excitement,
and clapping the breech of his gun. "And, my goodness, I hope you'll
run it out! I want that other mast," he added softly.
"Five minutes more," shouted Stuart in Spanish, so that there should be
no misunderstanding.
Cathie stood watch in one hand, lanyard in the other, one foot tapping
restlessly. He hungered for that other mast, and the lesson its fall
would teach the yellow dogs.
At last he closed his watch with a snap, stooped to the gun, and with a
roar and a rattling crash, and a blasphemous scatteration below, the
foretopmast shared the devastation of the mainmast.
"Now we have them right as a trivet," said Cathie, "and they'll begin
to understand where they are."
They understood, and five minutes later the boat shoved off again,
bringing the spoils of war, such part of them, at all events, as they
chose to surrender--some thirty muskets, as many cutlasses, and half a
dozen revolvers.
"Now," said Blair, to the downcast captain of the _Blackbirder_,
through Stuart, "you will stop here. We shall tow you back to the
islands. When your cargo is discharged, you will be at liberty to go.
If you ever return on this errand, you will find us waiting for you.
Now, captain," to Cathie, and, at a sign from the captain, one of the
white whale-boats dropped to the water, and half a dozen men jumped
into her, carrying the coil of a stout hawser, which ran out over the
stern of the _Torch_ and was secured amidships.
The _Torch_ herself swung into line ahead of the other, and the big
steel gun swung slowly round till her muzzle grinned threateningly
round each side of the mainmast.
"Tell those men to get back, Stuart, and say the captain waits with
us," and the brig's boat pushed sulkily off. "Now, Stuart, you come
with me, and Matti. We will take revolvers, though we shall not need
them."
Matti shivered into the boat, and Stuart and Blair followed with four
Torches carrying Winchesters, and pulled to the brig and climbed up
among the truculent crew, every man of which had his knife at his back
and hands that itched to get using it.
Blair called for the mate and told him curtly what he had already told
the captain, and added some special instructions for his own benefit.
[Illustration: Blair called for the mate and told him curtly what he
had already told the captain.]
"First, make fast that hawser!"
They did it to the satisfaction of the Torches, and at a call from
Blair the _Torch_ started slowly ahead, the hawser tightened, and every
solid thrust of the blades in the blue water cut an upward step in the
life of the Dark Islands.
"Now, understand! There will be a hand on that rope night and day. If
there is any tampering with it you will hear from us. This
mess"--pointing to the dismantled masts--"you will not touch till we
reach the islands. Now I am going to inspect your cargo. How often do
you feed them?"
"Twice a day."
"Some of us will come across each time and see it done. I hold you
responsible. If they suffer, you will suffer. Understand? Now lead
the way! You"--to Stuart and the four Torches--"please keep your eyes
about you while I go below. Matti, you come with me."
A grating, through which came a most horrible smell, was hauled up, and
the three went down into the inferno, and felt sick before their feet
quitted the ladder. For the mate was sick at this unexpected turn of
fortune, and Blair and Matti came near to physical sickness with the
stench.
Blair clung to the side of the ladder and gazed mistily round. There
was little light, but the dimness seemed to come not so much from lack
of light as from superfluity of nastiness of every possible description
and human misery indescribable. The feel of the place was like a hot
breath from the pit. It closed silently upon one like the hand of a
crawling death. It dimmed the eyes, and choked the throat, and lay
like a weight on the heart.
To breathe it seemed death, yet three hundred miserables breathed it
and lived, and by degrees his eyes discerned them and never lost the
sight.
A great confused tangle of brown limbs and bodies, many entirely naked,
a forest of shock heads, a hypnotising multitude of dark eyes all
focussed on him, and all pitted with sparks of light from the opened
hatch--mostly men, a few women, no children--short panting breaths,
sighs, groans, the dull rattle of chains.
"Have they been fed to-day?" gasped Blair, and pointed to his mouth.
The mate nodded.
Blair went two steps up the ladder and called to Stuart.
"Tell them to feed and water these poor things instantly. Now, Matti,
ask them in all the tongues you know if there is any headman or chief
among them. And say we mean them well."
Matti tried them without success in two or three dialects, but at last
hit upon one that evoked responsive movements in some of those nearest
the light. He felt his way, and at last got a word in answer, the
meaning of which he understood.
Here a couple of men came down the ladder carrying baskets of what
looked like dog-biscuits, which they commenced handing round, one to
each prisoner, and the latter sprang to the limits of their tethers for
them, and snatched and worried them like dogs that had not been fed for
a week. Blair looked at the mate, but the mate looked elsewhere.
It took a long time and many renewals to supply them all; but Blair
would not move till it was done, nor until every one had had a drink of
water. Then the interrupted conversation was resumed.
Yes, there was a chief there, and Blair ordered the mate to release the
man and bring him forward. He came without eagerness, a tall, brown,
well-built man of middle age, with a gloomy, but not absolutely
forbidding face, pinched just now, perhaps with hunger, perhaps with
despair. Experience had taught him to expect nothing but evil at the
hands of white men.
But even his dull misery could not but perceive a difference between
this clean, white-clad white man and those he had become accustomed to,
and he gazed at Blair with a note of sullen inquiry.
"You are a chief?" asked Blair, through Matti.
"I am a king," he said, answering Blair, and bestowing no look on
Matti, who, he perceived, was only a voice. And there was that in his
tone and manner which carried conviction in spite of the misery of his
condition.
"We have come to set you free and to take you back to the island."
And when the words beat through Matti's attempt at his dialect and got
into his brain, it was as though an electric shock had galvanised him
suddenly into new life.
"Free?--the island?" he stammered, and stared, still doubting. "All?"
he asked.
"Yes, all," and he turned and told the news to the rest in quick,
clipping words, and after a moment's amazed silence a shout went up,
and the fetid hole was filled with a deafening buzz of talk.
It was only after anxious consideration of the point that Blair had
decided to tell them the good news. He grudged every lost soul there.
He would not lose one. There might be some given over to utter
despair, and there is no tonic like hope.
"You will come with us," said Blair, to the discrowned king.
The man looked back into the gloom, and then again at Blair, and spoke
eagerly.
"He says one of his wives is there," said Matti. "She shall come also."
The man pointed her out, the mate released her, and they climbed to the
blessed upper air, all a-tremble with eagerness.
"Now, understand!" said Blair to the mate, through Stuart, so that all
could hear him: "when your cargo is discharged, you will be at liberty
to go where you will. If you attempt any treachery, we will blow you
to pieces. If you ever return to the Dark Islands, you do so at your
own peril," and he saw his guests into the boat and followed them.
The woman was young and not uncomely, but subdued and apparently
somewhat dazed still at these sudden reverses of fortune. Neither
spoke a word as the _Torch_ slowed down for them to come aboard, but
the man's eyes roved to and fro in ceaseless questioning, and he seemed
to arrive at an intelligent understanding of matters. The long steel
gun claimed his attention the moment he reached the deck, and from his
instant glance across at the shattered hamper of the brig he evidently
associated the two things.
Their only visible clothing was a native mat wrapped round the waist
and falling nearly to the feet, and the very first thing to do was to
cleanse them of the visible results of their 'tween-decks imprisonment.
Blair led the man down to the men's bathroom, and turned on the taps
and filled the bath before his astonished eyes. He showed him also the
use of soap, by washing his own hands, and left him to complete his
toilet. He could not, however, forbear listening outside to hear how
he got on, and was rewarded at first by a long silence, then by several
tentative turnings on and off of the wonderful taps. Then a slight
splashing suggested an experiment with the soap; and finally grunts of
satisfaction and much wallowing told of savage man's enjoyment of the
amenities of civilisation, and the return to his natural cleanliness.
When he had had time to wash himself several times over, Blair knocked
on the door and went in, and found his guest lying full length under
water, with only his brown nose showing, and evidently feeling very
much better.
He sat up and gurgled some words expressive of his feelings, and was
mightily astonished at the sudden disappearance of the water when the
plug was pulled up. He wanted to fill the bath again at once to see it
run out again, and Blair let him engineer a final sluice for himself.
He was a much pleasanter companion after his wash. His fine brown skin
shone under the unusual treatment of a towel, and his hair stuck out
from his head like a twirling mop. He was about to assume his dirty
mat again, but Blair hauled out some clean towels, tied one round him
like a loin-cloth, draped another from his hips as he had worn his mat,
and threw another over his shoulders, and the man was dressed as he had
never been dressed in his life before. The towels happened to have
broad red bands along the edges, and moreover had fringes, and their
wearer was as proud of them as any Piccadilly dandy of his newest thing
in spring suits.
Somewhat similar doings had been in course in the ladies' quarters,
but, thanks to Aunt Jannet Harvey's very determined, but equally
mistaken, good intentions, the results were less happy.
Aunt Jannet believed firmly that decency as well as cleanliness were
first steps towards godliness, and she was too recent an arrival in the
equatorials, and perhaps also too conservative in her own ideas, to
understand that decency of attire is after all purely matter of custom.
To her, a girl dressed, or undressed, only in a ridi fringe which clung
precariously to her hips and fell half-way to her knee, was practically
unclothed. She did not know that it was death for a man to touch that
scant, precarious garment. Strange anomaly of the cannibal isles--a
dangling fringe of smoked coco-nut fibre a more stringent safeguard
than the multitudinous garments of civilisation! When Aunt Jannet did
learn that fact she thought considerably, and thereafter took a
somewhat wider view of things.
Meanwhile, in the mistaken goodness of her heart, she had insisted on
arraying the newcomer in garments of her own, the most visible of which
was a light print dress, in which the poor creature looked almost as
uncomfortable as she felt.
At sight of her transformation the brown man stared hard, and then
grinned vigorously, and the girl hotched and wriggled in disgustful
discomfort. She came up to the man and fingered his soft towels
wistfully. She spoke to him, and he instantly handed her the one he
had over his shoulder. She tore at the neck of her dress with evident
intention, and Blair begged Jean to take her away and provide her with
what towels she wished.
"Well, I never!" began Aunt Jannet remonstratively.
"That is a mistake that has wrought infinite mischief, dear Aunt
Jannet," he said. "Our work must begin inside, not outside. Meddle as
little as possible with manners and customs or you do more harm than
good."
"My goodness me! It's absolutely indecent for a woman to go about with
nothing on but a towel. Don't tell me you allow them to eat one
another, Kenneth!"
"Well, we break them off that as soon as we can. But in all these
matters we have learned that it is highest wisdom to hasten slowly."
"Well, I----"
But here the brown girl came back, all smiles and modest grace, clad in
red-fringed towels like the man, and even Aunt Jannet, in her heart,
could find no fault with her appearance.
Then Blair called Matti, and, sitting on the deck by the new arrivals,
he quietly commenced his approaches towards the conquest of the Dark
Islands.
Briefly--in the telling, though very much otherwise in the
extracting--this was what they learned. The man's name was Ha'o--which
he pronounced Hacho, the ch as in loch--and the woman's Nai or Na-ee.
He was, he asserted, chief of that one of the Dark Islands which had
been raided by the brig. A number of the islanders had been enticed on
board with soft words and presents and then suddenly made prisoners.
The ship had then apparently sailed, but that same night the village
was burnt and he and the rest carried off.
It was not easy to make him understand what had induced these other
white men to follow and bring them back. If they did really land him
on his own island again--of which he was by no means sure--he would be
their friend and brother. As for those others--looking venomously at
the captain of the brig, who was sitting amidships in gloomy
contemplation of the scurviness of fortune--he would ask nothing better
than to eat them if the chance offered.
"You eat men, then?" asked Blair, through Matti.
"Of course. Why not? Properly cooked they are excellent eating"--or
words to that effect.
And Aunt Jannet Harvey and the other ladies shuddered and wondered, for
he did not by any means look the monster his words implied.
Blair tried hard to convey to him the idea that they had come from the
other side of the world for the sole purpose of helping him and his
people; but that was too much for him--he could not comprehend it.
He got tired of being questioned out of his depth, and strolled about
the ship, examining everything attentively. The long brown steel gun,
the revolving screw, the engines, and the smoke pouring out of the
funnel claimed his chief attention. During the next few days he hung
over the stern watching the revolving blades and the bubbling wake by
the hour, with absorbed and puzzled face, and every now and then would
lick his hand and hold it up to feel the air. There was little wind,
for Captain Cathie had purposely run up into the calm belt to lessen
the strain of the towage, but such as there was it was dead against
them, and the brown man could not understand it. As to the gliding
pistons and smooth-running wheels in the engine-room, they were white
men's magic of the most virulent description, and Matti himself
understood the business too little to be able to convey any clear idea
of the connection between them and the never-resting screw astern.
For the rest, both the brown man and the girl found ample grounds for
wonder in the farm-yard in the bows--the contemplative cow, the
sullen-eyed young bull, the stolid goats, and the rooting piglets and
their mother, and the cocks and hens in their coops, and the men's pet
cat, which occupied their various bunks in turn, and accepted all their
attentions with the utmost complacence and gave nothing in return. But
of all the things that set sparks in the girl's wondering eyes, the
crowning delight was the piano in the saloon and the little harmonium
which was lashed alongside it.
She would sit with her ear pressed tight to the frame and her eyes like
saucers as long as any one would play for her; and when her own slim
brown finger touched one of the white keys and elicited due response
she jumped with delight, and would have practised one-finger exercises
of her own composition all day and all night. There were other wonders
in reserve, but she had enough for the present, and more than enough.
"She has an ear for music," said Jean to her husband one night. "She
was crouching by me during the singing, and I heard her humming the
tune quite nicely."
"They are famous singers, some of them," said Blair. "I count a good
deal on working up to the citadel through Eargate."
The _Blackbirder_ captain was lodged in an empty cabin, and had his
meals there. He had ample time for introspective musing, for none
cared to associate with him.
In the middle of the first night Blair jumped up in a sweat of terror.
The idea had suddenly occurred to him that the hostage might make a
break for liberty or revenge by setting the ship on fire. He went
hastily to the spare cabin and found him snoring comfortably.
Nevertheless he sat there all night, and after that the man was never
left alone, day or night, till they finally got rid of him.
Twice each day some of them, with Matti as interpreter, dropped down to
the brig and saw the islanders duly fed and watered, and said a word or
two of cheer to them. And day after day the sallow crew scowled across
at the quiet ordered life on board the schooner--the pleasant, friendly
relations, the morning and evening services on deck--and cursed sparks
into its vicious eyes; but ventured no more because of the ever-present
Winchesters and the black mouth of Long Tom which gaped hungrily at
them whenever they looked that way.
Their weighted progress was slow. It was the evening of the sixth day
before the distant peaks of the Dark Islands bit up through the setting
sun, and on the morning of the seventh day they were steaming slowly
for the entrance to the lagoon.
Ha'o and Nai had refused to lie down all night. All night long they
had hung over the bows, peering into the darkness in a fever of
anticipation which left them no words. When the flaming east lit up
the giant peak they knew so well, they could scarce contain themselves.
Cannibals they were and benighted heathen, but this was home, and there
was hope in them and for them.
Captain Cathie, with admirable skill, and a couple of his whale-boats,
humoured the brig in, stern foremost, since she had no steerage-way on
her. He dropped her down the lagoon as close to the white sand spear
as he deemed advisable, then bade them drop their anchor and loose the
tow-rope, and heaved a sigh of content as his gallant little ship shook
herself free of that most undesirable partnership.
He took up a position to seaward of the brig, and Blair, and Evans, and
Ha'o, with Matti and the usual guard in attendance, went on board of
her to discharge cargo.
It was a thing to remember, one of the high times of life that stand
out in the past when other things have faded.
A great shout went up from the chaotic mass of brown men as the
white-clad figures came down the ladder and Ha'o shouted the good news
to them. He had been across each day with whoever was going, and
Blair, watching carefully this corner-stone of his enterprise, had come
to think well of him.
A thing to remember, indeed, as the brown figures came tumbling up the
ladder in batches. They fairly scrambled over one another in their
haste, and, after one wild glance round to make sure, flung themselves
headlong into the familiar waters, and made straight for the shore,
shouting breathlessly as they went, eager only to set foot on that
white beach once more.
Blair had reckoned on carrying them ashore in the boats, but who would
wait for boats when the sparkling water called?
That long string of urgently bobbing black heads from brig to
shore--first-fruits of victory--_spolia opima_ in very truth--was a
sight none of them ever forgot. The Torches laughed aloud with
enjoyment. Even the sullen-eyed Blackbirders watched with interest.
Ha'o stood among the white men with wonderful self-control. Instinct
drew him to the water with the rest, but he would not. Even these few
short days on the higher plane had not been without their effect. He
had watched ceaselessly. He had seen much that was beyond him. For
the first time in his life, he had come across a force greater than his
own, which made for good and not for evil. There were stirrings within
him which he did not understand, but the first expression of them made
for restraint.
When the stream of brown bodies ceased pouring out of the hatch, and
the last batch had leaped overboard with joyful shouts, Blair and the
others climbed down into the empty dimness to make sure that all had
gone. They found three lying with starting eyes, too weak to move and
fearful that they had been forgotten. These they wrapped in abandoned
mats and passed up on deck and lowered into one of the whale-boats.
Then a flying visit to the _Torch_ for Nai, and they sped to the shore.
It was only when they all stood on the white beach that Ha'o, shaking
with excitement barely to be restrained, turned to Blair and, grasping
his hand in his own two trembling ones, carried it to his forehead and
said some words in a low voice.
Blair glanced at Matti for enlightenment.
"He says he is your man from this day, and will be to you as a
brother," said Matti, and the white hand and the brown gripped firmly
on the compact. Then Ha'o turned and walked rapidly towards the
village, and they went with him.
So Ha'o of Kapaa'a became the Man's man's man. And the first sparks of
light for the Dark Islands leaped from the match that set fire to the
village thatch ten days before.
So good comes out of evil, and no man may safely say this is good and
that is ill. For no man knows, save Him Who knows all things; and His
ways are so very different from man's ways that wisdom and experience
drive one only to the doing with one's might the thing that is in hand,
in the faithful hope that He will round the corners and shape the work
to its appointed end.