"HIS WONDERS TO PERFORM"
We had heard of the Honourable "Slope" Carew--pearler, "black-birder,"
yachtsman and scion of a noble British family--at every port we had
touched in the South Pacific, but it was not our fortune to meet him
until after our arrival at Suva. There he was one of our first callers,
and it chanced that he, with the Captain of H.M.S. _Clio_ and two or
three other Englishmen, was off to the yacht for dinner the night a
bottle of champagne exploded prematurely in the hands of our Chinese
steward and kicked him backwards down the cabin stairs.
"Makes it seem like the old days on the _Aphrodite_," said Carew,
pausing in his stirring narrative of the way in which Bell, a renegade
American naval officer, had saved the plague ship, _Cora Andrews_. "You
heard of the _Aphrodite_ in Tahiti, didn't you, and of how her cargo of
'Hum's Extra Spry' helped my old pal, the Reverend Horatio Loveworth,
to convert Boraki and his nest of cut-throats on Makatea?"
We had indeed heard the story of the conversion of Boraki and his
fellow pirates of Makatea, but never at better than third or fourth
hand, and in versions so diametrically at variance that the chance to
enjoy the account of one who had actually figured in that famous coup
was too good to let slip. We begged Carew, therefore, to let the _Cora
Andrews_ yarn go over to another time and to give us the "champagne
and missionary" story then and there.
We were dining on deck, and the story, begun over _avocados_, was
continued after we adjourned with coffee and liqueurs to sofa-cushions
or lounging chairs in the cockpit. The tropic moon was dropping
plummets of gold through the rigging, and, as he talked, Carew
punctuated his well-turned sentences with frequent sips from the
oft-replenished glass of cracked ice and absinthe on his chair arm.
Just how much of the golden floss of the streaming moonlight and the
verdant thread of the trickling absinthe were twisted into the yarn he
spun, probably Carew himself could not have told.
"It is a long story if I go back to the beginning, as I shall have
to if you are to understand all that happened," said Carew musingly;
"for from first to last the yarn revolves, not around myself or the
_Aphrodite_ or Boraki, but around a special consignment of champagne to
which we always referred from the moment its true character began to be
revealed as 'Hum's Extra Spry.'
"It was shortly after the pater cut me off with a beggarly five hundred
pounds a year at the end of a series of escapades which had culminated
with my wrecking his yacht on the coast of Morocco that I found myself
in San Francisco. I had sailed my own ninety-footer at Cowes on more
than one occasion, so that I was only following the line of least
resistance in applying for the billet of first mate when I learned that
Colonel Jack Spencer, the mining magnate, had converted a smart sealing
schooner into a private yacht and was preparing to sail with a party
of friends for the South Pacific. Spencer was rather taken with the idea
of having a sprig of British nobility along, and from the first insisted
on treating me more as a guest than an under officer. This was how I
chanced to be included with the skipper in an invitation to a farewell
dinner given by Spencer to a number of San Francisco friends on the
eve of our departure. Here I met the members of the yachting party,
and, what is of more importance to my story, had my first experience
of the potentialities of 'Hum's Extra Spry.'
"Perhaps it will serve to make the strange things which came to pass
afterwards more intelligible if I explain here what Spencer only became
apprised of six months later through offering his New York wine agent a
liberal reward for the information, namely, what put the power in the
fancy-priced consignment of champagne he had ordered especially for the
South Pacific cruise.
"It appeared that one of the chemists of the great Hum winery at
Rheims, in experimenting with a newly-invented aerating powder, had
used that mixture instead of the decolourizing solution in tapering
off a twelve dozen case order of California champagne that was being
hurriedly prepared for re-export to America. Now normal champagne, in
the making, exerts so strong a pressure upon the glass which confines
it that an average of fully twenty per cent. of the bottles used are
burst before the final stage is reached, while the aerating powder
which was being tried out as a substitute for carbon-dioxide gas in
making sparkling Burgundies and Sauternes was calculated to develop a
ten-pounds-to-the-square-inch pressure on its own account. So it
happened that every unit of the order in question, having in addition
to its normal stock of bubbles those generated as a result of the
accidental aeration, was more like a hand grenade than a bottle of
wine. Nine-tenths of the lot suffered total disintegration before it
was ready to be shipped, and the remainder was only saved by being
transferred to rubber-corked bottles of quarter-inch glass, all of the
outsides of which were reinforced with a closely-woven mesh of
gilded wire. Red enamel grape leaves were grilled into the gold foil
of the cap, and the label, in addition to several lines of French
attesting the purity of the contents, bore the English words 'Liquid
Sunshine--Special,' in raised ivory letters.
"The two or three dozen surviving cases of this remarkable vintage were
snapped up the moment they were clear of the customs by Spencer's New
York agent, who rushed them on to San Francisco. All but two cases,
which were kept out to serve at the Spencers' farewell dinner, were
sent aboard the yacht and stowed.
"I saw at once that the old chap was worried when I arrived the evening
of the dinner, and before we went in he took me aside to ask if I knew
anything regarding the handling of 'high-power' wine, as he termed
it. It appeared that in the afternoon, while several bottles of the
new wine were in the refrigerator undergoing a preliminary cooling,
some one had dropped an ice pick in amongst them and they had all gone
off together. The frame of the box held, but the partitions gave way,
wrecking, beyond possibility of salvage, two dozen ice cream models
of the _Aphrodite_ floating in a sea of green jelly. The _Aphrodites_
were replaced by some ready-made anchors which the caterer chanced
to have on hand, but the endeavour to hasten the chilling of more
champagne by the use of a whirligig freezer only resulted in the
annihilation of that useful contrivance and the loss of another bottle
of wine.
"The contents of the first two bottles which the butler opened for
dinner got away to the ceiling almost as fast as did the gilt-capped
corks, and that worthy was about ready to give up in despair when one
of the caterer's men pointed the way to a solution of the immediate
problem by setting the next bottle in a punchbowl and capping it with
an inverted soup plate. The latter was smashed to smithereens at the
first trial, but the aluminum stew pan which replaced it at the next
attempt stood the shock and deflected the cork, cap and a considerable
quantity of a restless yellow liquid to the bottom of the punchbowl.
This liquid, by means of a funnel, was restored to its bottle, hastily
muffling which in a napkin to restrain a persistent catarrhal tendency
of its nose, the flurried butler, fifteen minutes late, dashed into
the dining room with the first installment of the anxiously-awaited
'Sunshine.'
"Now it is just possible that had the butler moved with his wonted
glide of easy dignity nothing very much out of the ordinary would have
happened; but the stiff, broken-kneed trot with which he tried to make
up for lost time aroused the dormant energies of the hard-won contents
of the bottle, with the result that it gathered itself together and
made a fresh break for the open just as its warder was edging in for
a gingerly pour at the glass of a pearly-shouldered dowager who was
sitting on Spencer's right. There was no inverted aluminum stew pan
to deflect the erupting 'Sunshine' this time, and, as a consequence, it
expended itself with one joyous 'whouf' upon the well-kept surfaces
of the stately dame's right cheek and shoulder. Some little of it,
tinged with rose and pearl, caromed off to extinguish a circle of pink
candles on the table, but the most of it remained behind to trickle in
little rose and pearl rivulets down the lady's neck. The unfortunate
victim screamed lustily several times, dabbed wildly at the parts
affected with a little yellow rag which suddenly appeared from nowhere,
and then ran, sobbing, from the room.
"In the meantime the butler's assistants had rounded him up another
bottle of the elusive fluid, and when that functionary appeared again
in the dining room he might have been planting dynamite bombs, so
carefully did he pick his way about and so great was the expression of
terror in his staring eyes. But he stuck gamely to his task and finally
poured out the last of the 'Sunshine' that his improvised distillery
was able to deliver without again interfering with the toilet of any of
the guests.
"In all of this time not a soul was able to get a sip of the phantom
liquid. The moment a trickle of it touched a glass it hissed like
a moistened seidlitz powder, threw spray in the air and piled up a
heap of bubbles which, quickly subsiding, left nothing behind but
a drug-store smell and a damp circle of table cloth. The sprightly
brunette in her first season whom I had taken in came nearest to
getting a drink, and her experience had a dampening effect upon the
enthusiasm of the others. This maid was rash and impulsive, and,
partly by quickness of hand, partly by inhalation, she managed to
deflect laterally a lungful of the pungent spray which was ascending
perpendicularly to bespangle with dewy drops what some one had
just characterized in nautical parlance as her 'natty gaff topsail
pompadour.' Her behaviour for the next minute or two made the
efforts of the plump dowager to staunch the flow of her complexion
seem dignified in comparison. The dinner was finished up with a
more manageable vintage, and next day the _Aphrodite_ sailed
without further requisition having been made upon her stores of
'Extra Spry.'
"All through the three weeks' cruise to Tahiti the restless bubbles in
the thick, green bottles in the _Aphrodite's_ starboard lockers elbowed
each other as they swelled in the tropic heat, but it was not until the
yacht was safely anchored in Papeete harbour that another opportunity
came for any of them to get beyond control. A call had been made on
the French governor in the morning, and that dignitary, according
to official etiquette, was returning the visit in company with his
stately wife the afternoon of the same day. Doubtless you had to go
through the same thing. The trouble came while the hospitable Spencer
was mixing a punch. Cold tea, maraschino, curacao, burnt sugar and a
lot of other stuff had already gone in as a base, quite enough, so the
mixer thought, to dilute a bottle of his 'Extra Spry' to an exhilarant
innocuousness. All might have gone well had the diluting been done
upon scientific principles, but Spencer, whose knowledge of hydraulics
appeared very rudimentary for a man who had made a fortune in placer
mining, directed the Japanese steward to poke the nose of the bottle
into the punch as soon as he started the cork. That obedient functionary
approached the bowl from the side opposite to the one on which the
governor and his wife were seated and did exactly as directed.
"Although the time was but five in the afternoon, His Excellency was
in the full evening dress prescribed for official calls--cock-hat,
claw-hammer coat and two feet of shirt front crossed with a strip of
red, white and blue bunting and a row and a half of medals. A hundredth
of a second after the asthmatically-wheezing nose of the bottle of
'Extra Spry' went over the edge of the bowl this regalia was absorbing
a good half of Spencer's partially mixed punch, while the remainder
bubbled and creamed over the expensive Parisian creation of his stately
wife.
"A sailor, who had taken in the incident from the forward deck, lost
control of himself and broke into a loud guffaw, in which he was
promptly joined by several of his mates. This set two or three of the
more irreverent of the members of Spencer's party going, and when the
spasm of laughter had passed it was found that Their Excellencies, in
high dudgeon, had melted over the side and departed in their waiting
cutter. The Jap was found at the foot of the cabin stairs with a bruise
in the pit of his stomach which bade fair to confine him to the little
French hospital for a fortnight. Tropical heat and the agitation of
the tossing bosom of the South Pacific were conspiring to set on
hair-trigger edge the latent energies of the 'Extra Spry,' and, though
none suspected it, the insistent throb of the imprisoned bubbles were
the pulse beats in the Hand of Fate.
"The coldness of Tahiti officialdom after this incident, a squabble
with his skipper, as well as incipient internal dissensions among the
members of his too-closely-confined party, all conspired to make Spencer
forego the remainder of the cruise he had planned, and within the next
week or so they had all left for San Francisco or Auckland, leaving the
_Aphrodite_ in my hands to be sold to the highest bidder. At the end of
a month I sold her to the Amalgamated Missionary, Bible and Tract
Society, which eagerly embraced the opportunity to replace at a bargain
figure its schooner, _Morning Star_, which the last hurricane had piled
up, a hopeless wreck, upon the beach of Moorea. I was retained as
skipper.
"The Society had long been anxious to undertake some reclamation work
in the Paumotos, and the possession of the _Aphrodite_--a vessel that,
on account of the ease with which she handled, could venture with
comparative safety where the ordinary type of South Sea schooner dared
not go--made it possible to attempt to realize this ambition for the
first time. After a week of busy preparation we made ready to sail for
Makatea, and when the missionary schooner, _Southern Cross_, glided
out of the narrow crack in the reef which constitutes the entrance to
Papeete harbour and headed off for the north-east, there was little to
differentiate her from the saucy _Aphrodite_ which had come bowling
in over an almost identical course a month or so previously. A new
set of gold letters across her stern, a crown and anchor flag at the
main truck, and a plain set of table covers and bedspreads included
about all the changes in sight, and even a search of the lazarette and
lockers would have disclosed little (except some bales of Bibles and
hymn books and some cases of salmon and barrels of salt beef) which
had not been there before.
[Illustration: WEAVING THE WALLS OF A FIJIAN HOUSE]
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF FIJIAN HOUSE, SHOWING
HOW IT IS BOUND TOGETHER WITH COCO FIBRE]
"Fewer still were the old things that had been dispensed with. The
name and the house-flag had to be altered, of course, to suit the
new character of the vessel, while embroidered silk peacocks and
sun-flowers on the coverlets were rather beyond the simple tastes
of the Reverend Horatio Loveworth who was in charge of the work in
hand. But the punchbowl had been retained as a baptismal fount,
the wines--including the 'Extra Spry'--for medicinal purposes, the
fancy stores to be presented as a goodwill offering to King Boraki
of Makatea, and a gramophone, fortified with a big stack of new bass
drum and trombone records of popular hymns, as a music teacher to the
expected converts. Loveworth's keen practicality had been the principal
factor in his rapid rise to the most important position in the South
Pacific missionary service.
"My mate was an Australian of long experience among the Islands, and
the crew a well-picked lot of half-castes and Kanakas. We worked well
together, and I doubt if the little schooner, even in her sealing
days, was ever better handled. After two days of admirable behaviour
in baffling winds and treacherous currents, she penetrated to the very
heart of the stormy Paumotan Archipelago. Ahead loomed the black mass
of Makatea, the half-coral, half-volcanic island of sinister reputation
which was our destination, and between stretched ten miles of submerged
reefs which the chart made no pretence of outlining.
"Ordering sail to be shortened and a man sent aloft, I was just
preparing to begin 'feeling' our way in toward the darker blur that
marked the probable entrance to the lagoon, when the mate's keen eye
descried a lone sail bearing rapidly down on us from landward. My
glass revealed a large out-rigger canoe which, driven by a fair wind
and urged by the flashing paddles of its dozen or more occupants, was
throwing the foam over its bow so swiftly was it sliding through the
water. In less than half an hour it had grated against the side of the
schooner and the leader of the party, a magnificently proportioned
fellow dressed only in a red _pareo_ and a necklace of sharks' teeth,
disdaining the ladder that was lowered for him, leapt lightly over the
rail and, saluting the Reverend Horatio with a bow and a sweep of his
_koui_ fibre hat, announced himself to be King Boraki.
"Speaking in the Marquesan dialect, he said that Makatea had learned
of the great missionary's intended visit from word that had come by
Rangaroa; that Makatea was transported with joy at the honour that was
being done it; that preparations for a fitting reception had been in
progress for a week and were now complete; and, finally, that he had
come to pilot the ship of his distinguished visitor by a safe channel
to the harbour and to be the first of his people to receive a Christian
blessing.
"'God bless you, my brother; ask the rest of our brothers to come
aboard for prayer and refreshment,' ejaculated the Reverend Horatio
fervently, and no sooner was the invitation issued than fifteen more
red _pareos_ and shark tooth necklaces flashed over the rail, their
wearers promptly ranging themselves in an orderly row behind their
leader. An instant later, like puppets controlled by a single string,
every man of them plumped down on his knees, crossed his arms on
his breast and, with eyes devoutly raised at an angle that directed
their gaze somewhere in the vicinity of the third row of reef points
on the idly flapping mainsail, remained motionless.
"'Rehearsed, by Gawd!' muttered the mate, whose quick eye had caught
Boraki's backhand signal. 'Oh, for a Maxim on the deckhouse!'
"'Oh for words to express my thanks for all that has happened and is
going to happen this day!' prayed the Reverend Horatio, heeding naught
but the fact that he was on the eve of the apparent fulfilment of a
lifelong ambition. His prayer was brief but full of feeling, and when
it was over he asked all hands to come below and have something to eat.
"Boraki brought his men to their feet with a wave of his hand, picked
two of his chiefs to accompany him to the cabin with the missionary,
and sent the others forward to feed and fraternize with the crew.
Carried away by Loveworth's enthusiasm and confidence--the man was, and
is, a born leader--the mate and I followed him and the guest of honour
below.
"_Who_ this Boraki was, beyond being the greatest rascal that ever
terrorized the south-eastern Pacific, nobody knew. _What_ he was,
everybody could tell you, but those who asked usually tried to save
time by telling you what he wasn't. By process of elimination you might
then learn that he was a pirate, cut-throat, murderer, cannibal, robber
and other things too numerous to mention; also, that each of his four
hundred men in Makatea was all of these things to a greater or lesser
degree, and that few of them had ever been apprehended or punished.
Boraki himself was supposed to have a good deal of European blood in
his veins, but of what nationality no one was sure. The traders said
that his father was a missionary, and pointed to traits in his character
to prove it; the missionaries said that his father was a trader, and
pointed to traits in his character to prove it; Boraki was silent on the
subject, but indirectly gave both parties the lie by robbing and
killing--and some said eating--traders and missionaries alike.
"All that Boraki had said in his little speech when he boarded the
_Southern Cross_ was quite true, but not quite the whole truth. He
did not state, for example, that the preparations for entertainment
he referred to were to be in the form of endurance tests of walking
on red-hot stones--the walking to be done by the visitors--and that
possibly the red-hot stones might serve for another purpose by the
time the supper hour came around. Nor did he state that the end of his
volunteer piloting was to run the nose of the schooner into a soft
sand bank in the middle of the passage, where canoe-loads of his men,
coming from the lagoon ostensibly as life-savers, could take advantage
of the confusion that was bound to follow the accident to enter into
possession with a minimum of difficulty and risk. The schooner was to
be left till the shifting of the sands at the turn of the tide would
release her without injury. All of which, of course, we did not learn
until later.
"This plan, good enough to have succeeded against a gunboat, had been
evolved by the resourceful pirate in the expectation that the _Southern
Cross_ was coming with nothing less than a battery of rapid-fire guns
and a detachment of French marines to see her through. When Boraki saw
no quick-firers on the deck, no rifles or cutlasses in the cabin, and
not even a revolver or knife in the belts of the officers and crew, he
perceived at once that there was no use risking the loss of the schooner
by running her aground. His action was characteristic.
"The swift happenings of the next hour or so, as I was witness of
them only 'in spots,' I shall describe as the subsequent testimony
of the participants--principally Boraki himself--showed them to have
transpired.
"The distinctly mixed assemblage--Boraki, his two fellow cut-throats,
Loveworth, the Australian first mate, the half-caste second mate and
myself--were seated round the cabin table. The steward had finished
setting out a substantial little lunch and the Reverend Horatio,
having put one of his favourite records into the gramophone, was just
winding it up, when Boraki, without a word even to his companions,
sprang lightly to the top of the cabin stairs and shouted to his men in
Marquesan--a language that was understood by every one on the boat but
myself--to tie up the sailors. Regaining the cabin floor at a single
bound, he swung quickly with a mineral water bottle on the heads of the
first and second mates before either of those unfortunates was clear of
his chair. My own head struck the cabin lamp a sharp blow as I lurched
up out of my swivel seat, and I was already half dazed when Boraki's
hard-swung bludgeon landed on my temple and dropped me like a log
across the second mate. My last recollection was of one of the chiefs,
muffled in Loveworth's long black coat-tails, trying to pinion the
missionary's powerful legs, while the other brown rascal tore at the
clerical stock in an effort to find an effective place to choke. I am
indebted to Boraki for most of what followed.
"Giving each of our prostrate bodies a prod with his toe to assure
himself that they were really as limp as they looked, Boraki perched on
the corner of the table and divided his time between eating chocolate
wafers and giving his henchmen gratuitous tips on the way to hold down
a struggling missionary. It was an even thing for a while, Boraki
avers; the prettiest kind of a fight. But when the man who had stroked
Oxford for three consecutive years finally threw off his assailants
and made a break for the deck and fighting room, the wily pirate felt
that it was time to take a hand himself. Without descending from his
comfortable cross-legged perch on the snowy table-cloth, he leaned
forward as the fugitive dashed by and coolly planted his water bottle
just aft Loveworth's right ear, sending the stout-hearted missionary
down alongside his officers in the shambles on the floor.
"Leaving his companions to tie up the prisoners, Boraki, munching at a
mixed fistful of eclairs and canned salmon, sauntered forward to see
all made snug in that part of the ship. Five minutes later, his head
crowned with Loveworth's waste-basket--a cast iron imitation of a top
hat--and puffing contentedly at a Perfecto, he had taken his station at
the wheel and with the skill of a born sailor was guiding the _Southern
Cross_ in through the maze of shoals that surrounded his island.
"The run in was a dead beat to windward, the sun was pitilessly hot,
and by the time the schooner's anchor went rattling down into the
rose coral floor of Makatea lagoon Boraki's kingly head, under its
sixteen-pound iron crown, was buzzing like the Trade-wind in the palm
fronds. His blood seemed turned to boiling water and the words of the
final orders that he tried to speak rattled together in his throat like
the rustle of dead banana leaves, so that he had to make his meaning
clear by signs. What wonder, then, that not even a hundred-yards-square
of close-packed canoes, from each of which issued shouts of acclamation,
could hold him when, from the cool, dark depth of the cabin, came the
ringing Marquesan equivalent of 'Rum ho!'
"Boraki crossed the cockpit in one bound, negotiated the companionway
in another, and with a third hurdled the prostrate forms of the
prisoners and landed between his two faithful lieutenants who, after
bootlessly ransacking the schooner from stem to stern, had at last
discovered the wine lockers underneath the starboard transoms in the
cabin.
"Boraki was vaguely aware that each of his men was holding up a
cool-looking green bottle, through the wonderful gold network of which
could be seen a beautiful golden liquid that bubbled and flashed and
jumped up and down and seemed quite as impatient to get out and run
down his burning throat as he was to have it do so. In the lockers
below stretched endless lines of similar flashing bottles, and each
line, to the chief's inflamed imagination, seemed long enough to link
the lagoon of Makatea to the moon with a golden chain. He wondered how
long it would take him to drink them all dry.
"But why this terrible delay? Wouldn't these fools ever set the nectar
free and extinguish the flames that were licking up his insides? They
were letting him die while they sought for a white man's 'pull-pull' to
loosen the plugs with! What need was there for a 'pull-pull' anyhow?
He would show them how the thing should be done, and, suiting the
action to the word, the impatient chief seized a bottle in each hand
and deftly opened the two at once by knocking their heads together.
"What else he opened at the same time Boraki probably never thoroughly
understood, and so he was the readier to believe Loveworth when that
keen opportunist told him solemnly that it was the Gate of Hell.
After that point had been impressed upon him, his alarmed query as to
whether or not all the devils who had come out when the Gate opened
had returned was a perfectly natural one. He said that the only thing
he clearly remembered was a feeling of wonder that the heads of the
beautiful bottles should knock off so easily, and that his first
recollection after that was of crying out because he thought some one
was raking off his face with a comb made of shark-hooks. As a matter of
fact the incidents alluded to were separated by more than an hour of
time, and the shark-hook comb sensation was caused by the well-meant
efforts of the first and second mates to remove the cast iron hat from
Boraki's head with the aid of a hammer, file and cold chisel.
"When the roughly opened bottles of 'Extra Spry' kicked downward and
set off the whole mine in the lockers the henchmen were only slammed
across to the opposite side of the cabin and deposited, senseless,
against the china closet; but the king himself, caught bending over,
received the full force of the explosion upon the chest and was shot
like a rocket against the ceiling. By the impact, his iron hat, while
it probably saved him from a fractured skull, was driven through flesh
and cartilage squarely down upon his shoulders, fitting so closely that
only a rust hole in the crown saved its wearer from a speedy smothering.
Surely no other king in history, so securely crowned, ever furnished so
graphic an illustration of the 'Uneasy lies the head' adage.
"Ten seconds after the explosion, out of all the horde that had swarmed
over her, not a Makatean who could help himself remained aboard the
_Southern Cross_, and in less than that many minutes not a canoe cut
the waters of the lagoon and no man, woman or child was stirring in the
village. Huddled in their houses, the whole population was awaiting in
fear and trembling the moment when the devil ship would reopen with
its invisible cannon.
"The terror of the people was increased a hundredfold when a man
who, watching at the sky-light of the cabin, had been stunned by the
explosion, came floundering madly ashore a half hour later and ran
from house to house telling in broken speech how he had seen the white
men--whom they had all beheld lying bound and lifeless on the cabin
floor--rise up and begin driving spikes through King Boraki's head.
Never was clay laid ready to the hand of the moulder more plastic than
was the outlaw community of Makatea at this moment; nor was ever man
better qualified to make the most of the situation than the Reverend
Horatio Loveworth.
"Lying on the floor, as we had been, the explosion, far from doing us
injury, in the stiff jolt it gave our battered frames only hastened our
return to consciousness. Loveworth was the first to slip the napkins
which bound his wrists. Dazed as he was, the good chap yet had the
presence of mind to make the three of us who were still tied promise to
refrain from murdering Boraki and his fellows before he would assist
us in freeing our bonds. To hold the mates to their promises, once their
hands were free to rove over the swelling mounds that marked the
spots where the pirate's hard-swung water bottle had fallen, was a more
difficult matter. They helped me truss up the henchmen and release the
sailors, but enlisting them in actual relief work was a task so well nigh
hopeless that Loveworth gave it up in despair after a few minutes of
entreaty and began alone. It was the muffled gurglings and convulsive
wrigglings set going by his first tug at the iron plug that finally brought
the belligerents into line, they scenting in the vigorous application of
'first aid' measures a possible means of accomplishing their end without
bringing about an open rupture with the missionary, to whom they were
greatly devoted. Considering the zeal with which they set about their
errand of mercy, and their manner of wielding the tools in the delicate
operation of chipping Boraki's head out of the iron hat, there was no
difficulty in locating the source of the fugitive Makatean's spike-driving
story.
"One of the king's first questions after he had been informed that
it was the Gate of Hell that had swung on him was, not unnaturally,
as to whether or not the Gate swung very often like that, and, if it
did, when the next swinging was likely to occur. When he was told that
this was only a special swinging directly occasioned by his shameless
treachery, and that, anyhow, the danger was one that never threatened
good Christians, he was silent for a space, and then asked, with
apparent irrelevance, what had become of the green bottles.
"'Gone to----' began the mate in an angry roar, the realization of
an almost personal loss suddenly assailing him--'the other side of the
Gate,' gently concluded the Reverend Horatio after checking the
obstreperous Australian's threatened outburst of profanity with an
upraised hand.
"'Then teach me and my people how to remain on this side of the Gate,'
gasped Boraki hoarsely, as he sank back with a shiver among the silk
sofa cushions which supported his battered frame.
"So it came to pass that when the king had rested for a while we put
the Crown and Anchor banner of the Missionary Society in his hands,
propped him up in the stern sheets of the starboard lifeboat with one
of his faithful henchmen on either side, and sent him ashore, rowed by
a volunteer crew of the least hurt of the sailors.
"'Tell your people,' shouted Loveworth as the boat gained headway under
a lengthening stroke, 'that you have come back from the Gate of Hell
to help me guide them out of the darkness into the light and to life
everlasting. If they are ready to accept the teaching, hoist the flag
in front of your council house.'
"Boraki heard and nodded vigorously with the gory cylinder that served
him as a head.
"The referendum was accomplished in record time, for in less than
five minutes from the moment the boat touched the beach we saw a man
dart out of a side portal of Boraki's palm-leaf palace and run like
mad to the foot of the lopped-off coconut tree that stood before the
long turtle-backed council house. With straining eyes, we saw him
clamber, monkey-like, up the lofty stump, caught the flashes of a
furiously-swung hammer, and then, snapping exultantly in the whistling
south-east Trade, the flag of the golden Crown and Anchor streamed out
from the official flag-pole of Makatea. The people had made their choice.
"No sooner was his beloved banner out to the breeze than Loveworth,
taking with him the disgusted second mate, put off for the beach in the
whaleboat to catch at its flood the tide of fortune which had at last
begun to set so strongly in his favour. The mate and I went below to
take stock of the wreck in the cabin.
"'S'elp me Father Neptune, I'd give a month's pay to the new mission
to know what it was that knocked them bloomin' pirates into the shape
we woke up to find 'em in,' said the mate musingly, sinking down with
a sigh of relief upon the undisturbed cushions of a port transom.
'P'raps they took liberties with a bunch o' rockets or a keg o' powder;
only there ain't no fire marks nowhere. All the booze smashed up, too.
Wonder who's at the bottom of it, anyhow. Eh! What? Who spoke? You,
Capt'n? No. Oh, you, old Tinhorn. My word, but you gave me a turn.
"_God_," you sez. That's what Pilot Loveworth sez, too, and p'raps it's
true; but what gets me is how He done it. You wasn't laid out with a
crack on the nut, old Tinhorn; tell us how it happened.'
"'_Brrr--in a mysterious way--brrr_,' came the droning answer, leaving
us no wiser than before.
"The jolt of the mate's weary body had thrown over the half-shifted
lever of the already wound-up gramophone, which had been abandoned on
the transom by Loveworth when he turned to receive the first onslaught
of Boraki's henchmen, and the record had commenced to spin. The
sounding-box floundered like a squirrel on its wheel as the black disc,
scarred and littered from the explosion, whirled beneath the needle, and
it chanced that the only intelligible words that came from the horn in
the first few moments were those which the astonished mate had, for an
instant, taken as answers to his conjectures.
"After learning that the deed had been done in a mysterious way, all
we could make out between the '_zrrrs_' and '_bzzzs_' which followed
was that whoever had done the deed had performed wonders, to which the
mate naïvely replied that he had perceived as much at the outset, but
that now he was seeking enlightenment as to how the wonders had been
performed.
"The needle steeple-chased for a couple of circuits after that without
communicating anything relevant, following which, suddenly and without
warning, it came out of the woods onto a stretch of smooth, undamaged
going. Then, in the clear, flute-like tenor of 'Harry McMurtry,
Columbophone Record,' came the words of Loveworth's favourite hymn--
'God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform.'
"The missionary, who was kneeling on the beach invoking a blessing on
the heads of the terrified wretches who had come pouring from their
houses to grovel at his feet, told me afterwards that the words came
floating down to him across the still waters of the lagoon like a voice
from the other world.
"That was all the comment that the only English-speaking witness of the
miracle wrought by 'Hum's Extra Spry' was destined ever to make, for at
the beginning of the next lap the needle went into an incipient crack and
split the record down the middle. The two pieces, together with the
scarred fragments of a cast iron top hat, are still preserved by
Loveworth in the little coral mission at Makatea."
* * * * *
The green bottle on Carew's chair arm had been tilted with increasing
frequency as his story approached its climax, and for the last fifteen
or twenty minutes, save for short spells when he had rallied to explain
this or that phenomenon, he had talked with a far-away expression in
his eyes, as one who visualizes and describes what he sees. He roused
somewhat at the ripple of applause which greeted the end of the yarn,
but he made his adieux like a man in a dream, and his gaze was blank
and vacant as he lurched unsteadily down the gangway to the _Clio's_
launch.
That was the last we ever saw of the Honourable "Slope" Carew. He
sailed next day in the _Clio_ to pilot that gunboat to an unmarked
rock somewhere to the north-west which was to be blown up or charted.
A year later, while in Australia, I read in a Noumea dispatch to the
Sydney _Morning Herald_ that he had shot himself on the lawn of the
Cercle Militaire in a fit of melancholia following a night of absinthe
drinking.