COMPULSORY VOLUNTEERING
As a matter of fact, however, there had been a very considerable slip-up
in "Slant's" carefully doped slate. That was plain from a number of
little things which sunk into even my absinthe-addled brain in the few
minutes I spent in his and Rona's company while paddling them off to the
_Cora_. How staggering a slip-up it must have been for him I was not
able to figure until I got my nerves under control the following day.
I was still far from pulled together when I came back to the village
after my day of hiding (for that's what it amounted to) on the other
side of the island. With my head twanging like an overstrung banjo, I
was feverishly anxious to get home and seek relief in the only thing I
knew would relax the tension of my breaking nerves. I had told Laku to
"putem littl' fella pickaninny in rock-a-bye belonga him" just as soon
as he got back to the shack. This was a long-standing joke between us,
and I knew that he would interpret aright this _bêche-de-mer_ order to
"put the baby in its cradle" as a strict injunction to lay a certain
long green bottle in a little basket of porous coco husk, which,
dampened and hung in a draught, answered the purpose of a crude
refrigerator. The vision of the slender green trickle I should shortly
pour from the dewy fresh lip of that bottle was drawing me on as the
thought of the oasis with its fountain draws the thirsting desert
traveller.
Between horrors fancied and real--from my struggle at the mouth of the
Bottomless Pit to the coming of the Ship of Death--my nerves had
suffered a number of trying shocks since the dawning of that accursed
day; but the one that came nearest to bowling me over I had still to
receive. I had _known_ there was a Bottomless Pit; I had _known_ there
was a Death Ship; I had _known_ they were shooting niggers on the beach.
As each of these horrors was projected upon my vision in turn I had
accepted their reality as a matter of course. Didn't I see them with my
own eyes? Didn't I continue to see them after I had bitten my finger?
But _Rona, with her arm and her peacock shawl thrown over "Slant"
Allen's shoulder, coming out of Bell's house_.... No, that wouldn't
do.... That was one thing they couldn't put over on me. My eyes must be
playing tricks on my brain. I must be in even worse shape than I
thought. Never before had my fancy conjured up a thing so utterly,
impossibly absurd. Wide-eyed and open-mouthed, I pulled up and started
kicking the shin of one foot with the toe of the other. That was another
little trick I had of proving whether or not I saw what I "saw."
At the clink of the broken coral under my shuffling feet the girl turned
her head in my direction, but, far from releasing "Slant's" neck from
her embrace, she only drew the lanky Australian closer with her right
arm, while with her left she beckoned me imperiously.
"Whitnee, come alonga this side, washy-washy!" Her thin clear voice cut
the air like the swish of a rapier.
It was, strangely enough, the fact that she lapsed into the vulgarest of
_bêche-de-mer_, rather than the eagerness of her gesture, that drove
home to my wandering wits the fact that Rona was confronted with
difficulties, that she needed help. Verging on nervous and physical
collapse as I was (and as I knew I would continue to be until I had
gulped my first steadying draught from the cool green bottle), the
realization that something concrete was demanded brought me instantly
out of the half-trance in which I had walked since dawn. Still a sorry
enough specimen, I was at least sufficiently in hand not to need any
more finger-bitings or shin-kickings to know the difference between what
seemed real and what was really real. Letting my easel go one way and my
paint box the other, I hastened forward in answer to Rona's summons.
"Katchem washy-washy one piecee boat," Rona began as I came up, her
heaving breast, flushed face and flashing eyes revealing the emotion
that held her in its grip.
"Man-man; my word, what name this fella thing you do?" I interrupted
between breaths, blurting mixed _pidgin_ and _bêche-de-mer_ English of a
brand to match the vile blend the girl had discharged at me.
"I too much cross this fella 'Slan','" she started to explain. "Him too
much--"
"You'd think she was cross with me, Whitney, if you could see the way
she's sticking me in the neck with her hat pin," Allen cut in, the
half-sheepish, half-amused grin he had worn from the first broadening as
he spoke.
That was the first "straight" English to be spoken, and the words had
the effect of reminding Rona that she had been speaking nothing but low
jargon from the outset. For weeks she had been taking the greatest pains
to avoid both of the weird volapuks in all her chats with me. Pulling
herself together with an effort, she strove again to be a purist.
"'Scuse me, Whit-nee," she chirruped, paying "Slant" for his sally with
a prod that made him duck like a prize-fighter avoiding a straight-arm
punch; "'scuse me, but I'm veh-ry mad. This bloody boundah he put
_kor-klee_ in Bel-la's drink. He take Bel-la to schoonah. Now we all go
off to schoonah. If Bel-la he dead, then I keel this boundah, 'Slan'.'
You will do us the paddl'?--ple-ese, Whit-nee."
There was a deal more that I would fain have been enlightened about, but
my brain was clear enough now to understand the urgent necessity of
getting off to the _Cora_ without delay. A drugged man (or a poisoned
one--it was not until later that I learned how that strange essence of
the wild Papuan fig might be expected to act) on a plague-infested
black-birder looked like just about the last word in hopelessness; but
(I told myself) if there was anything I could do for my friend, it was
up to me to try to do it. Rona seemed to have some sort of plan in her
head, though just what she was taking Allen along for I didn't quite
twig at the moment.
The funny part of it was that the Australian didn't seem particularly
averse from going off to the schooner. Indeed, it was he who cut in to
call Rona's attention to the fact that they were rushing preparations on
the _Cora_ for getting under way, adding: "If you don't want to be left
at the post I might suggest you whip up a bit." Even as he spoke the
throbbing wail of a chantey came to our ears across the water, and I
could just make out the blur of motion on the forecastle where a knot of
niggers was circling round the capstan.
"Washy-washy! Quick! quick! Whit-nee," implored Rona, leading the way,
with Allen's head still in the crook of her arm, to the canoe; "we must
make the great hur-ee."
Luckily, the dugout, although Allen had left it pulled well up on the
beach when he landed, was half awash through the rising of the tide, now
just about to ebb. I launched it without difficulty. Still with her
knife at "Slant's" neck, Rona made him enter ahead of her and crouch in
the bottom of the canoe, well forward, while she seated herself on the
sinnet-wrapped thwart immediately behind his hunched shoulders. When the
unabashed rascal coolly leaned back and started to make himself
comfortable with an arm thrown over her knee, the girl stiffened with a
start of repulsion. It was more than a prick she gave him this time, for
I saw the sudden swell of his jaw muscles wipe out the lines of his grin
as his teeth set over a repressed oath.
Pushing off, I slid gingerly along the port weatherboard until the canoe
heeled just enough to bring a gaping hole in the starboard bow clear of
the water that started to pour through it, and began to paddle
cautiously inside the outrigger, the only place I could get at from
where I sat. Our progress was, of course, slow as to speed and wobbly as
to direction. Even at that, a good deal of water kept slopping in, and I
couldn't blame Allen, who was sitting in it, for asking Rona if she
minded if he baled a bit with his sun-helmet.
Her only reply was another prod with the needlepointed _kris_. (I knew
it was the little Jolo dagger, for I had seen it as she adjusted her
shawl on sitting down). "Hur-ee, Whit-nee," she urged, quiveringly
tense, and continued to keep her flaming gaze riveted on the schooner,
where the latter, foot by foot, was moving up on her shortening chain.
About halfway out Rona gave a start and a glad little cry. "I see
Bel-la," she laughed. "He stand up by wheel. By jingo, he look--he look
like he lick his weight in wile cats!"
That had been the big Southerner's favourite expression when, glowing
with the reaction from his deep, eye-opening dive from the reef, he
would come prancing back to his door of a morning. The sight of his bare
muscular torso, white as marble against the dingy folds of the
half-hoisted mainsail, must have called up in the girl's mind the
picture of Bell breezing in from his bath, and brought the tersely
quaint phrase to her lips. As a matter of fact, there was no saying at
that distance _how_ Bell looked; but it was good to see him on his feet,
at any rate. Probably Rona had been mistaken about the poisoning.
"I told you he was all right," Allen remarked drily, shifting a few
inches to get clear of the water that was beginning to swish about his
knees. "He was drunk--dead drunk; that's all. He began to buck up an
hour ago. Looked through my glass and saw them dousing him with water.
First thing he did was to take a drink (plenty of it aboard)--saw him
tilt the bottle. Then he must have made them open up the hatches.
There's more than the crew lining the rail there for'ard; besides--you
don't think the slop-chute from the galley spills out the bait that's
drawing those black fins, do you? I won't need to tell you they don't
belong to chambered nautili out for an afternoon sail. There's a
man-eating shark under every one of them. Can I lend you my binoculars?"
He started to slip the strap of the powerful racing glasses over his
neck, but desisted when Rona refused to clear the way by lifting the
point of her dagger. Save for maintaining that one important little
point of contact, she ignored him completely, and "Slant" seemed rather
to resent the latter more than the former.
"Well, if you don't want to use it, I suppose you won't mind if I have a
bit of a look-see," he went on in half-assumed petulance. Rona replied
with the usual prod, but interposed no further objection when he raised
and began focussing the glasses.
"Clubbing niggers on the fo'c'sl'," he commented presently, as signs of
commotion were visible forward. "Skipper don't want 'em too thick on
deck while he's getting under way, most likely."
Then, a minute later: "Looks like you'll need an ice-breaker to clear a
passage through those sharks, Whitney; or perhaps we can walk across
their backs from the edge of the jam. Seem to be thick enough to give
good solid footing."
And again, shortly: "Chain almost straight-up-and-down, Whitney. Mudhook
going to break out in a couple of minutes. Can't accelerate that 'long,
long pull' of yours, can you? Looks as if they weren't planning to wait
for us."
It was a gruesome passage, that last hundred yards. The sharks were
hardly as thick as Allen's picturesque hyperbole might have led one to
believe, but there were undoubtedly more than a score of triangular
dorsals slashing about in swift circles. But the sharks, for the most
part, gave us a good berth. It was the things that _didn't_ get out of
the way that came near to flooring me at the last--black, bloated
bodies, floating face down, like logs awash, till the canoe struck them,
then to roll shudderingly over and sweep you with the sightless gaze of
their wide, staring eyes as you fended with the paddle. Rona, her
flashing glances running back and forth over the schooner (following
Bell, who appeared to be lending a hand now and then on sheet or
halyard), seemed not to see the floating horrors around us. Allen's
steely eyes met the corpses stare for stare, and looked them down. But
upon me the horrors which passed the others by descended with full
force. How I kept going is more than I can guess. But I did it. At last
the loom of the _Cora's_ blistered starboard quarter cut off the seaward
view, and I steadied the dugout in close to the upper line of her
weed-foul copper sheathing.
Apparently no notice whatever had been taken of us up to this time.
Short-handed as he was, Bell was doubtless too busy to keep a lookout,
while to the few niggers watching us through the wire the sight of a
dugout carrying "two fella white marsters and one fella Mary" was of
indifferent interest. All they cared about was getting away from the
Death Ship, and they didn't need to be told that this "pickaninny boat"
hadn't come to help forward their desires in that direction. Besides,
the guard walking up and down behind them with a Lee-Enfield over his
black shoulder had undoubtedly given them to understand that the first
one to start over the side would be shot.
It must have been the guard who reported us finally. Burning with
impatience, Rona was just prodding up Allen and ordering him to clamber
aboard and tell "Mistah Bell" she wanted to speak to him, when I heard
the shout of "'Vast heavin'!" ring out, and presently a familiar tousled
head was poked over the top of the barbed wire. (I should explain,
perhaps, that three or four strands of "nigger wire" are run all the way
round the rail of every labour-recruiting ship. This is done with a
double purpose--to make it difficult for the blacks aboard to bolt,
should the spirit move them, and to serve as a partial protection while
at anchor against the always imminent attacks of the treacherous shore
natives.)
There was a look in Bell's face I had never seen there before. The old
familiar furrows of dissipation showed deep around the mouth, but if he
had been drinking heavily, there was nothing to indicate it. What struck
me at once was his air of determination--I might almost say exaltation.
His head was held high, his shoulders were thrown back, and he might
have been treading the deck of a battle-ship as he swung up to the rail.
Everything about him betokened the man who has taken a great resolve,
and means to see it through if it kills him.
Although I had heard no word of it up to that moment, I understood at
once that Bell had taken command of the schooner, that he was going to
try to sail her to some port where the plague-stricken blacks could be
given medical attention and kept under control. It was like Bell to take
on a job like that, I said to myself; but he would do it as a matter of
course. It would never occur to him that there was any alternative, just
as with an order in the Navy. There must be something more to account
for that air of high resolve.... I couldn't help thinking that, and I
was right. He let out what it was shortly.
"It's right nice of you to come off to say good-bye, honey--and of you,
too, Whitney," Bell called down genially; "but, as we'ah not quite what
you'd call fixed fo' cawlahs, you'd bettah do it from wheah you a'. You,
Mistah Allen, if you have fin'ly made up youah mind in the mattah of
signin' up for the voyage, I reckon we can find accommodation fo' you.
But fust, let me say that if you've got any mo' of that dope you put in
my whisky stowed about youah puson, you'd best scuppah it befo' you
climb abo'd. I doan quite twig what you did it fo', unless it was to
dodge out of goin' yo'self, afta you had promised to help me see the job
through. But now, seein' you've come off of youah own free will, I
reckon I can fo'get that lil' slip, providin' it ain't repeated."
Although Rona could hardly have known the exact meaning of "free will,"
she caught the drift of Bell's remarks readily enough. "This rotten
boundah" (bounder was the worst name she knew to call a man in "pure"
English) "not come himself," the girl cut in shrilly, speaking for the
first time. "I fetch him. See!" and she threw back the folds of the
peacock shawl to reveal the bright wavy blade of her little _kris_
boring into the hollow between Allen's right shoulder-blade and the
corded column of his sinewy neck.
"From the reef I see you an' this fella 'Slan''" (Allen's shoulder
quivered under her designative prod) "go off to schoonah in boat," Rona
went on, avoiding as well as she could in her excitement the jargons she
knew Bell disliked so much. "Bime-by I see 'Slan'' come back--you stop
schoonah. When I go home I smell'em _kor-klee_. You no sabe _kor-klee_,
Bel-la. I sabe him too much long time. I smell _kor-klee_ in one
glass--not in othah. Pu-retty soon this boundah 'Slan'' come house. He
say: 'Bel-la go off in schoonah. Now I stop with you all time!' Then I
sabe what for _kor-klee_ veh-ry queeck. So I katch'em this fella by neck
an' fetch'm off schoonah. I say myself: 'If Bel-la dead, I keel this
boundah; if Bel-la not dead, _he_ keel him.' Heah he is, Bel-la--you fix
him pu-lenty. Then we go home-side."
"So that's what upset the appl'-ca't?" There was nothing of the wrath of
the jealous male in Bell's deep, chesty laugh. "Well, I'm not blamin'
Mistah Allen fo' fallin' in love with you, honey. No propah man could
quite help doin' that, as I see it. Just the same, I can't quite approve
of his way of goin' about it, no' the occasion he took fo' it, eethah.
So you brought him off fo' me to execute, honey. That's right rich.
Youah a brick, you shuah a'. But I won't be killin' him, honey--no,
hahdly that. I'm just goin' to sign him on as Fust Mate of the _Cora
Andrews_, just as he 'lowed he do at the beginnin'. Of co'se I won't be
goin' home with you, honey. Doan you see I'm in command of this heah
ship?"
A sudden shiver shook Rona's tense frame at those last words. Half
rising, she started to speak, but Bell cut her short with lifted hand
and went on himself.
"Mistah Allen," he said, addressing himself now to the huddled figure in
the bottom of the canoe; "I said I was goin' to sign you on an' take you
with me. Let me qualify those wuds just a trifle. I'll pumit you to go
if you'll agree in advance to my tums. I might explain that theah's two
dif'rent views in the mattah of the best way of avoidin' catchin' the
pleg. One is, that you must keep strictly soba--straight teetotal; the
otha--diametrically opposed to the fust--is that you must keep dead
drunk--pif'ucated. Now I reckon that it's goin' to take at least one
white man to sail this hookah all the way to Australyuh; that is to say,
at least one white man must steah cleah of the pleg fo' the entahprise
to be crowned with success. But as theah ain't no suah data as to which
is the safe an' sutin way to 'complish this, I figa theah's nothin' else
to do but sta't with two white men, and let one of 'em try the fust
purscripshun an' the otha the second.
"Now (tho' I must admit it's a bit high-handed on my pa't) I've already
picked the one I'm goin' to take; so, if you elect to sign on, Mistah
Allen, you'll have to take the otha. Theah's a dozen cases of whisky
abo'd--not Jawny Wakah, to be suah, but still fayah to middlin' cawn
jooce--an' I had to toss off a tumblah o' two of it as an antidote fo'
that dream-provokin' dope you wished onto me. But"--Bell's head was up
and his shoulders back again--"_that's the last_." His square jaw
snapped shut on the words like a sprung wolf-trap. Now I understood.
_That_ was his Great Resolve.
Bell paused, and in the waiting silence I became aware for the first
time of the low rumble of groaning from the bowels of the ship.
"So you'll see, Mistah Allen"--the corners of his mouth relaxed into a
smile as Bell resumed--"that since the Skippah's plumped to try the
'soba man' preventative, theah's nothin' left for the Mate to do but to
fight off the pleg by the 'drunk man' method. Theah'll only be two of
us, you see, an' it's theahfo' up to us to hedge ouah bets an' play
safe. But you won't be havin' to go if you ain't hankerin' after it. I'm
not (in spite of what the way you've been 'shanghaied' by--by Miss Rona
might lead you to think) runnin' a press-gang. It's entiahly up to you
as to whethah o' not you want to sail as the drunken Mate of the soba
Skippah of a black-birdah full of pleg-rotten niggahs. You see, Mistah
Allen"--the whimsical grin broadened--"you see I'm not tryin' to luah
you on by paintin' the picture any brightah than it is. 'Drunk Mate of a
soba Skippah'--do you get that?"
Allen made no reply, that is, not directly. Raising his hand to fend the
expected prod from Rona, he wriggled halfway round and started to speak
to me, where, in the stern, I still paddled the canoe gently against the
turning tide and held it close alongside the schooner. For an instant I
was puzzled with the look on the side-face he presented, but almost at
once saw the reason for it. For the first time in my recollection the
thin upper lip was uncurled by its mocking smile. By that, I thought I
could gauge something of the extent of his slip-up. Yet--if I could have
read the man's mind--I would have known that it was something even
deeper than the wreck of personal hopes that had sobered "Slant" Allen.
What it was I learned later.
"Whitney," he began, the words coming huskily from the dryness of his
throat; "I don't dope a man's chances for finishing inside the distance
flag in this little Handicap of Captain Bell's as better than a hundred
to one. That's long odds to be on the short end of when a man's life is
his stake. I don't give a damn about my life. Anyone will tell you that.
I've thrown it into the pool on worse than a hundred-to-one shot a good
many times before this. But--well, I'd rather appreciate it if--if you
could see fit to make a point of not telling my friends on the beach
that--that I had any help in--in volunteering--volunteering to lend
Captain Bell a hand in getting this hooker on her way."
Rona, sensing that her responsibilities, so far as Allen was concerned,
were at an end, raised the _kris_ from his neck and thrust it into the
knot of her _sulu_. The Australian lifted himself lightly to his feet
and looked Bell straight between the eyes. "Lead me to your whisky," he
said in a steadied voice.... "By Gawd, I need it!"
Poising an instant on the middle of a forward thwart of the canoe, he
sprang to the rail, clambered smartly to the top strand of the barbed
wire, and swung lightly down to the deck on the main backstay.
It was at this juncture that I went through the feeble motions of trying
to act the part of a man myself. I pointed out to Bell that I had
knocked about on yachts a good deal, and, while I couldn't claim to be
much of a hand with niggers, was probably as good a navigator as Allen
was. I also said something about three men standing a better chance than
two of pulling off the job, and even added, half jocularly, that I was
about ready to go to Australia anyway, as I had had word that an
exhibition of my pictures was due to open in Sydney in a fortnight. I
only hope my words didn't sound as hollow to Bell as they did to me--for
they were the last ones I was ever to speak to him.
Bell's gentlemanliness--nay, rather, his gentleness--came home to me
more in what he refrained from saying in his reply than in what he said.
He did _not_ say that he had no absinthe aboard, and that, as a
consequence, I would be only more useless and undependable than if he
had. He did _not_ say that his hands would be full enough looking after
crazy niggers without having a crazy white man to keep an eye on. He
even refrained from recalling to my mind a story I had told him of a
French official in New Caledonia whose absinthe supply had run out while
he was at an isolated post, and who, unable to stand the deprivation to
the end of the three-days' run in to Noumea in a trading cutter, had
taken a header over the side almost in sight of port--and relief.
All he _did_ say was: "Nonsense, ol' man.... Quite out of the
question.... Nothin' doin'." Then, as though to soften the curtness of
his refusal: "'Twouldn't be propa, Whitney, to set a man that can slap
colour on canvas like you can to herdin' sick niggas. Besides, I'm
countin' on you to stick 'roun' Kai an' be a sort o' fatha an' motha' to
Rona while I'm gone. Youah the only man on the island I'd ca'ah to trust
with that job."
There was nothing more to be said after that, I told myself; nothing
more to be done. I gave up limply and relapsed into wondering how long
it would take me to paddle Rona ashore and traverse the quarter of a
mile of coral clinkers between the place where she would land and the
long green bottle cooling in its breeze-swept swing beneath my coco leaf
jalousies.