A SHIP OF DEATH
With a good many days of my life to which I cannot look back without
a blush of shame, I write deliberately when I say that the one
ushered in by the raucous grind of the _Cora Andrews'_ chain running
through its hawse-pipe as she let go anchor a couple of cables'
lengths off Kai beach, stands alone in the horror and the painfulness
of its memories. It is characteristic of all but the most degraded of
beach-combers--doubtless their general contempt of life has much to do
with it--that "once in a while" they "can finish in style"; that, on a
showdown, they are usually there with the goods. I had always felt sure
that, in a pinch, I could force myself to come through in the same
way--the thought had gilded many a slough of despond for me. Well, this
day, I had my chance and funked it--funked it clean, as a yellow dog
slinks from a fight with its tail between its legs, as an underbred
hunter refuses a jump. Oh yes, I had an excuse. "Seeing green" is next
thing to "seeing yellow." Almost anyone knows that. But I had thought
that there was enough red blood left in me to make it possible for me to
take the bit in my teeth and finish like a thoroughbred at the last. But
there was not. That was the thought which had made the ghastly tragedy
even more tragical to me, which made a mockery of the triumph which I
might otherwise have felt when, first Australia and then Europe,
acclaimed me as the greatest marine painter of the decade.
For several days previous to the coming of the _Cora Andrews_ I had
been slipping up pretty badly on my "absinthe reform" program. It was
largely the fault, I think, of a positively infernal spell of weather.
The ozone-laden trade winds, falling light after a spell of low
barometer, had finally failed altogether. Kai was lapped in sluggish
moisture-saturated airs that clung like a wet blanket. The Gargantuan
popcorn-like piles of the trade clouds were replaced by strata of
miasmic mists which awakened all the latent fevers in a man's body and
mind. The sea, slatily slick of surface, heaved in oily, indolent
smoothness, sliding over the reef without sound or foam. The brooding,
ominous sullenness was all-pervading, oppressive with sinister
suggestion.
Everyone on the island was drinking heavily, and mostly alone. No tipsy
choruses boomed out from under the sounding-board of Jackson's
sheet-iron roof. Even "Slant" Allen failed to appear for his wild
end-of-the-afternoon dashes up and down the beach. Rona dropped in
languidly one afternoon to say that Bell was tilting the bottle more
frequently than she had ever known him to do before, and that for three
days he had missed his early morning plunge from the reef.
"Too much walkee with Jo'nnee Walkah, Whitnee," she punned in a feeble
flicker of pleasantry. "I veh-ry much worree along Bel-la."
She needn't have worried, though. _He_, at least, had the stuff in him
for a proper finish.
It was only to be expected that I should seek solace in a time like this
by snuggling closer than ever into the enfolding arms of the "Green
Lady." That fickle jade was at her best--and her worst. Never had she
winged me to loftier pinnacles of sensuous delight; never had she
dropped me to profounder depths of horror and despond. The night before
the _Cora_ came marked a new "high"; also a new "low." I dropped like a
plummet straight from a pea-green grotto full of lilies of the valley,
maiden's hair ferns and ambrosia-breathed houri to the fire-scorched
cliffs ringing the mouth of the Bottomless Pit. I knew that Pit of old.
Most of the early hours of my mornings for the last five years had been
spent in trying to keep from being pushed into it.
But this time, though, it looked as if they were going to get away with
it. Failing to break my grip (I always managed to hang on somehow), they
had tried new tactics. They were pushing in the side of the Pit itself
so as to carry me with it. I felt the relentless creeping of the ledge
on which I struggled to maintain precarious footing. If I could only
push back into the rock ... through it ... out to the air! Nothing could
stand against the mighty heave I gave with my shoulders. The cliff
parted with a great rip-roar of rending, and I reeled back, back,
straight through--the pandanus siding of my hut. An instant before a
nigger had knocked off the shackle of the _Cora's_ anchor chain. The
unchecked run of forty-odd fathoms of rusty iron links through a
hawse-pipe is very like in sound to the rending of a rocky cliff--that
is, to a man in an absinthe nightmare.
That violent awakening did not bring me straight back to normal by any
means. You never come out of the "green horrors" that way, unless, of
course, you fall into water, or set fire to the house, or do something
else that calls for instant action. You usually come out by gradual
stages, each successive one marked by a shade more of the earth-earthy
than the last.
In this instance my fall only changed the spirit of my nightmare. I was
by no means out of the woods, either. I had backed away from the Mouth
of the Pit all right, but what brought that Ship of Death--black and
sinister she was against the bloody redness of the infernal
sunrise--unless it was to take me there again? I _knew_ that it was a
real ship. I _knew_ those black things festooned along its rails were
real dead men. I _knew_ that the horrible reek which presently came
pouring in over the oily water to penetrate my contracted nostrils was
the real smell of rotting flesh. I _knew_ that I was looking out at Kai
lagoon, and from the door of my own hut. I _knew_ these things, just as
I _knew_ it was real blood I saw and tasted when I bit my finger to
prove that I knew them.
But it was still as in a dream that I became aware of an erratically
rowed whaleboat pulling away from the Death Ship and making for the
beach. It was with an agreeable sense of relief that I noted that it was
apparently heading for the quay rather than in my direction. Drawing
near, it sheered away from the weed-slippery landing and went full-tilt
for the beach. A man--a big man, bare of legs and of chest, wearing only
a red _sulu_--ran down to meet it. It seemed no more than a perfectly
natural development of the ghastly pantomime that the big man should
raise a revolver and shoot one of the black rowers when the latter
jumped over the gunwale of the whaleboat and started to bolt up the
beach. I saw the flash from the revolver, saw the fugitive crumple and
fall, and the sharp report, impacting on the side of my sheet-iron
rain-water tank, slammed against my ear-drums with a shattering "whang."
That close-at-hand shot had the effect of shocking me back a notch or
two more nearer normal; but, nerve-shattered as I always was at the end
of a night, it was something very akin to the abject terror that gripped
me as I backed away from the Brink of the Pit which now impelled me to
"back away" from the new menace. Seizing my painting things from sheer
force of habit, I slunk off through the long early morning shadows of
the coco palm boles, not to stop until I came out upon the broken coral
of the steep-shelving leeward beach of the island. It was as far as I
could go without swimming.
Here Laku, my Tonga boy, found me toward noon. The coffee from the flask
he brought was the first thing to pass my lips since I had poured my
last drink the night before. It steadied me somewhat, but my nerves
still refused to react. The shock of the morning had been too much for
them. I realized that Kai had a mighty knotty problem on its hands with
that shipload of dead and dying niggers in the lagoon (Laku had told me
it was the _Cora_, and something of what the trouble was), and it took a
lot of screwing before I got my courage up to a point where I could
force my reluctant feet to carry me back to shoulder my share of the
responsibilities.
I was still streaking and dabbing at my canvas at three o'clock, and it
must have been nearly an hour later before I packed up and started back
toward the village. I burned that bizarre rectangle of colour-slashed
canvas on the very first occasion (which was not until a day or two
later) that I had a chance to stand off and look at it objectively.
There was revealed in it too much of the utter unmanliness which marked
my conduct on this most shameful day of my life to make it a pleasant
thing to have around. For me to have kept it would have been like a
man's framing and hanging the excoriation of the judge who had sentenced
him for some despicable crime.
What had transpired in the village up to the moment of my return at the
end of the afternoon I must set down as I learned of it later.
Everything considered, it seems to me that Kai--with one or two notable
exceptions--behaved very creditably in an extremely trying emergency.
Awakened when the _Cora's_ anchor was let go, a number of men had run
out to the beach, from where their glasses quickly gave them a pretty
good idea of the state of affairs aboard the luckless black-birder. Then
they got together at Jackson's--the lot of them in their pajamas or
_sulus_, just as they had tumbled out of their sleeping mats--to decide
what was to be done. The majority at first seemed inclined to stand by
their predetermined plan of shooting the first, and every man from a
plague-infested ship that tried to land on the beach. But at this
juncture Doc Wyndham, calling their attention to the fact that a
whaleboat had already put away from the _Cora_, suggested that they wait
and learn just how things stood before starting off gunning.
"I'm with you as far as shooting any nigger that tries to break
quarantine goes," he said, "but I'm dam'd if I'll stand by and see
anyone take a pot shot at Mike Grogan, or any other sick white man, for
that matter. Old Mike nursed me through a spell of 'black-water' once at
Port Darwin, and if he is in that boat I dope it it's up to me to tote
him home to my shack and do what I can for him. If he can't clamber out
I'm going to wade in and carry him back to the beach, so you'll have to
shoot the two of us if you shoot at all. But I don't think you will. I'm
not asking any of you chaps to have anything to do with the stunt. You
needn't touch him. I'll take him home and swear not to budge from there
till the thing's over one way or the other. After that I'll put myself
in a ten-day quarantine. Moreover, I won't be expecting attention from
any white man or nigger on the island in case the luck goes against me
and I catch the pest myself. It's my own little game and I won't stand
for any interfering in it."
That was the gist of Doc Wyndham's remarks as Jackson outlined them to
me the next day. They met with hearty assent from all of the dozen or
more present, except on the score of letting the Doc have the job all to
himself. He turned down every one of the volunteer nurses, however,
saying it was his own kettle of fish and that he'd have to stew it in
his own way. He even insisted on meeting the boat alone, urging that
there was no use in multiplying the points of possible "plague contact."
So it must have been the distinguished surgeon from Guy's that I saw
shoot the bolting black that morning. Had I continued to watch, instead
of bolting myself at that juncture, I would have seen him wade out, lift
a man tenderly from the stern-sheets of the whaleboat, and start
carrying the limp body up the beach to where a spreading bread-fruit
tree shaded the door of the sheet-iron shack which he was wont
humorously to refer to as his "professional, social and domestic
headquarters for Melanesia." Following that, I would have seen a bunch
of motley-clad figures prance down and start menacing the irresolute
boat-pullers with flourished revolvers, forcing the frightened blacks to
back off and begin splashing their wobbly way out to the _Cora_.
Wyndham's conduct all through struck me as rather fine, especially for a
man who was a convict of three continents and two hemispheres.
Disappointed in finding his friend Grogan in the whaleboat, on learning
that the latter and his mate were already dead, Doc just as cheerfully
set about paying to the Agent the debt he felt he owed to old Mike.
Before entering his house, he called to his girl--a saucy little Samoan
named Melita, who had gone right on sleeping through all the
racket--ordering her to make a hurried departure by the back door and
not to return until he sent for her. The Doc was never a man to let
sentiment interfere with business, Jackson opined.
Making the doomed man as comfortable as possible in his own canvas
folding bed, Wyndham deferred giving an opiate until he had gained such
information as he could of how things were on the _Cora_. Then, after
communicating (from a safe distance) what he had learned to a delegation
from executive headquarters at Jackson's, he nailed a red _sulu_ to his
front door as a danger signal and disappeared behind the bars of his
self-imposed quarantine.
I may as well state here that Wyndham--thanks, doubtless, to the
precautions which he, as a medical man, would have known how to
take--side-stepped the plague completely, quite as completely, indeed,
as he sidestepped the Thursday Island customs authorities a year or so
later, when a half season's shipment of pearls from Makua Reef, Limited,
disappeared as into thin air.
Of the information Wyndham gleaned from the Agent before giving the
latter a shot of morphine to relieve his agony and mercifully hasten the
inevitable end, the most important as affecting Kai's action was that
something over a hundred blacks had been battened down in the schooner's
forecastle and 'midships hold for seventy-two hours, with nothing but a
couple of stubby wind-sails feeding them air. The dead had all been
cleared out before this was done, but there were a lot of bad cases
among the living who were driven or thrown down the hatches. By the
stench, the Agent knew that some of these had already died; but that
many still had life in their bodies he judged by the unabated vigour of
the howling.
The most reassuring news passed on by the dying man was that Ranga-Ro,
Grogan's gigantic Malay Bo'sun, had remained in charge of the _Cora_,
and that he appeared to have the black crew (only three or four of them,
luckily, had succumbed to the plague so far) well in hand. That
brightened the outlook a good deal, for what Kai had feared above all
else was a general breakout and stampede, which might inundate the
island with plague-infected niggers, crazy beyond all possibility of
control.
Ranga, who claimed to have had at one time or another every tropical
disease on record, was--or believed himself to be--a plague immune. He
was not in the least worried over the responsibilities that had fallen
on him, and could be counted upon, the Agent thought, to see the game
through. The only trouble was that he couldn't navigate, so that if the
_Cora_ was going to be taken to a port where any real relief could be
obtained, she would have to have at least one competent white officer.
Would Kai furnish that officer? was the question up before the meeting
called at Jackson's to decide what should be done with the ill-fated
black-birder.
This was rather a larger assemblage than the one which had gathered at
dawn, called up by the rattle of the _Cora's_ anchor-chain. The latter
was mostly made up of the "inside push," "Jackson's Own," as they were
sometimes alluded to, and that they were a dead game bunch of sports was
attested by the way in which they had volunteered in a body to nurse for
Doc Wyndham. The later and more representative meeting was hardly up to
the earlier one on the score of quality. There were a few out-and-out
rotters on the island, and about the worst of these was a typical
Wooloofooloo larrikin from Sydney, whose name I have forgotten. As foul
of tongue as of face, he was as sneaking and cowardly as a wild Malaite
pup reared in a black-birder's galley. He it was who, with a smirk on
his tattoo-defiled face, got up and suggested that the simplest way out
of the difficulty was to "blow up an' burn the bloomin' 'ooker w'ere she
lies. Cook the bloody niggers to a frizzle, pleg an' all." Give him a
few sticks of dynamite and he'd pull off the bally job himself.
The leering wretch, in his eagerness, pushed right out in front of
gaunt-framed old Jackson, who was "presiding." "Wi'out battin' a
blinker," as he told me later, that old Kalgoorlie outlaw took the
proper and necessary action. His straight-from-the-hip kick doubled the
miscreant up, breathless, speechless, upon the floor--the only floor of
sawed boards in all Kai. He rather favoured that method when he had to
throw a man out, Jackson explained, on account of the convenient parcel
it made of him when lifted by the back of his belt.
When Jackson called the meeting to order again and explained what word
Wyndham had sent as to the lay of things on the _Cora_, "Froggy"
Frontein, one of the escapes from Noumea, his Gallic soul aflame, popped
up and volunteered to sail her to any non-French port in the Pacific.
That brought a cheer for "Froggy," but the enthusiasm died down a bit
when it transpired that the only ships the gallant ex-counterfeiter had
ever boarded in his life were the steamer which deported him from
Marseilles and the cutter in which he--buried under copra in its
hold--had escaped from New Caledonia.
More competent volunteers were not lacking, however, and several of
these were trying to urge their respective claims at once when "Slant"
Allen's magnetic glance drew the eye of the chairman and he was given
the floor.
Calling several of the more insistent of the volunteers by name, "Slant"
asked if it had occurred to them that the nearest port which had
quarantine facilities equal to handling more than a dozen cases of
infectious disease was in Australia--probably Townsville, but possibly
Brisbane. They admitted that they hadn't thought that far ahead.
"In that case," Allen cut in with, "it may be in order for me to point
out that there's not a one of the whole mob of you young hopefuls that
wouldn't be pinched and clapped in the brig just as soon as they saw
your face and recollected what it was you sloped for in the first
place."
That shot made some impression, though "Crimp" Hanley seemed to think he
had countered not uneffectively when he asked: "Who in hell thinks he's
going to last long enough to get her there?"
What "Slant" had got up to say, he went on without deigning to engage
the logical "Crimp" in argument, was that there was one first-class
sailor in Kai against whom nothing was booked in Australia, a man,
moreover, who had been known to be looking for a command for a number of
months. He referred to Captain Bell, who, he regretted to say, had not
been summoned to their meeting. If it was agreeable to those present, he
would be glad to wait upon Captain Bell and acquaint him with the facts
in connection with the emergency which confronted them all. In the event
that Captain Bell should see fit to assert his claim to this place of
honour, as he had no doubt would be the case, he--"Slant"--was in favour
of giving that claim precedence over all others, both because of Captain
Bell's well-known ability as a navigator (his late slip, they would all
admit, was due to circumstances quite beyond his control), and because
he was the only competent man available who would not have to step out
of the frying pan into the fire on making port in Australia. What was
more, in case Captain Bell felt that he needed a mate for a voyage which
could not but be beset with much danger and many difficulties,
he--"Slant"--wished to take the occasion to put in his claim for that
berth. He had been in bad in Sydney, he had to admit, but it was nothing
very serious, and he felt assured that, in a pinch, there were certain
influences which could be counted upon to get him clear. No fear that he
would not be seen in the Islands again in due course.
Considering what "Slant" was really driving at, you'll have to admit
that this was put with consummate adroitness. The meeting voted by
acclamation to allow him to carry out his suggestion, adjourning in the
meantime to await developments. It was significant, in the light of what
transpired later, that Allen flatly refused the offer of Jackson and two
or three others to go along to Bell's with him and "make a delegation of
it."
No suspicion was aroused by the fact that Allen, on the way to Bell's
shack, stopped in at his own for five or ten minutes. Indeed, nothing
that he did at any time awakened anybody's suspicions--among the beach
push, I mean.
When "Slant" came out of Bell's at the end of half an hour, he was
accompanied by the American, the latter apparently leaning heavily on
the Australian's shoulder. This occasioned little surprise, as Bell, who
had hardly been seen for the last three days, was believed to have been
drinking heavily. Instead of returning round the curve of the beach to
report at Jackson's, as it had been assumed he would, "Slant" led the
way to a little dugout canoe lying in the shade of the coco palms in
front of Bell's and started pulling it down to the water's edge. When it
was seen that the slender Australian was doing most of the tugging,
while the big American seemed to be blundering about to small purpose,
it was remarked at Jackson's that Bell, for the first time since he hit
the beach of Kai, appeared to have stowed enough booze to submerge his
"Plimsol" and affect his trim. At the same time it was admitted that the
Yankee was a wonderful "weight-carrier"--nothing like him ever seen in
the Islands. It was thus that they mixed nautical and racing idiom at
Jackson's Sporting Club.
When the little canoe was finally launched, Bell, helped by Allen,
stumbled forward and slithered down in the bow. The Australian plied his
paddle from the stern. It was remarked that the dugout's progress was
very slow, but "Slant's" leisurely paddling was attributed to the care
he had to take on account of the trim Bell's lopsided sprawl gave the
cranky craft.
By the time the canoe slid in alongside the _Cora_, Bell appeared to
have collapsed completely. Lifting carefully by the shoulders, Allen was
seen to raise the inert body in the bow enough for a hulking yellow
giant--easily recognizable as the lusty Ranga-Ro--to throw a mighty arm
around its waist. Then, with his other arm looped round a stanchion, he
swung his burden high above the rail and into the arms of two of the
black crew. Thereafter nothing was seen of the _Cora's_ new skipper for
an hour or more.
"Doosed smart loadin'," was Jackson's laconic comment on the teamwork
Allen and Ranga had displayed in hoisting Bell's husky frame out of a
wobbling canoe and up over the _Cora's_ four feet of freeboard topped by
five strands of "nigger wire."
Allen did not go aboard, but continued to lie alongside for ten or
fifteen minutes, evidently giving extended orders to the Malay bos'n.
Immediately the canoe pushed off, great activity was observable among
the crew, who were evidently rushing preparations for getting under way
before the ebb began to race through the passage.
The rate at which Allen paddled back to the beach was in marked contrast
to his leisurely progress on the way out. Grounding the canoe on the
beach near where it had been launched, he made directly for the door of
Bell's house and bolted inside. Reappearing almost immediately, he came
on along the beach at a more deliberate gait.
At Jackson's he told them that Bell had jumped at the chance of taking
the _Cora_ to Townsville.... Said it might be the means of getting his
master's certificate back in case he pulled it off all right. But
he--"Slant"--couldn't allow a white man to tackle a job like that alone.
He had only landed to pick up his kit and a few things Bell wanted. He
was going to get back aboard the _Cora_ before they began to shorten in.
It was going to be a ticklish job, fetching the passage from where she
lay in those fluky airs.
Leaving Jackson's, Allen went to his own (or rather "Quill"
Partington's) house, where, according to what I heard from Mary Regan a
couple of days later, he took several drinks but did not do anything
toward throwing his things together. A half-hour later he was seen
hurrying along the beach to Bell's again, and when he came out from
there it was in the company of a girl--plainly the "Peacock." Paddled by
a third party, who came upon the scene at this juncture, these two went
off to the schooner, boarding her just as she filled away on the first
tack of the almost dead beat to the entrance of the narrow seaward
passage. For all they knew on the beach, Allen was carrying out his
program (with the little incidental of Rona--doubtless taken along at
the last moment by way of a surprise for Bell--thrown in), just as he
had outlined it to them. They were not hurt by his failure to say
good-bye. They were not strong for the gentler amenities in the Islands,
anyhow.