RONA COMES ABOARD
Well, I still think I was right on the score of the futility of further
words. Nothing more that I could have _said_ would have changed the
situation; but was there nothing more that I could have _done_? Rona
answered that question, so far as she herself was concerned, then and
there, though hardly in a way that I had the wit or the will to profit
by.
Bell's answer to the girl's anxious appeal that she be allowed to join
him had been no less brusque and decided than that he had made to mine.
"Sorry, honey. No 'commodations fo' ladies this voyage. You wun't
intended to nu'se niggas, anyhow. Can't be done, honey." Then, to me:
"Time to be shovin' off now, Whitney. Tide's already on the tu'n. Right
sorry to have to hurry you-all this way." Not a word of farewell....
Navy training would not down.
"Bel-la, leesten to me!" There was more threat than entreaty in Rona's
voice now. Beyond doubt, he had never crossed her before. That she was
hurt and angry showed in every line of her tense figure, as she balanced
precariously with her left foot on the outrigger and her right on the
port weatherboard. "Bel-la, by crackee, I say I go with you! If you let
me come on schoona, all good. If you say no, by crackee, I--I sweem! I
sweem afta you. You know I good sweema, Bel-la."
Swim! I knew the girl well enough to know it was not a bluff, and Bell
must have known even better. I had heard him speak many a time of her
absolute lack of fear. Also, although at that moment his imagination was
not quickened (as mine was) by the drunken roll a black cadaver under
the counter gave as a questing nose pushed into it from below, he must
have known what shrift a swimmer would have in those shark-infested
waters.
Bell's mouth twitched at her words (I could just see his head and
shoulders where he conned ship with a foot on the starboard rail and a
hand in the shrouds of the mainmast), but he made no reply. Doubtless he
counted on my doing what I could to fish her out before anything
happened. Sweeping his eye fore and aft, he noted how the turning tide
had swung the schooner so that she headed directly away from the
passage, with the fluky puffs of the freshening trade wind coming over
her port quarter. Then, cautioning the men standing by at the fore and
main sheets to "take in sma't" as she gathered way, he bellowed the
order to "Heave away!"
The ululant surge of the _bêche-de-mer_ anchor chantey floated aft as
the blacks resumed their rhythmic tramp around the capstan.
"_What name you b'longa?
What name you b'longa?
You Mary come catch'm ride.
What name you b'longa?
Come hear my songa--
I take you to Sydney-side._"
I have often wondered if the frank invitation in the swinging lines
might not have been the inspiration of Rona's astonishing action.
The obligato of the incoming chain grinding through the hawse-pipe had
accompanied the chantey for only a stave or two, when Allen's clear,
ringing voice (he had not needed to be told where a mate belonged when a
ship was getting under way) announced from the forecastle: "Anchor
broken out, sir!"
"Walk lively! Get catted 'fore she hits the passage!" Bell roared back,
anxious lest the great length of chain still out would make trouble
where the lagoon shoaled at its seaward entrance. A moment later he came
aft and relieved the man at the wheel, ordering the latter to stand by
to keep the mainsheet from fouling the nigger wire. It was the gigantic
Malay, Ranga-Ro, bulking mightily against the purpling eastern twilight
sky, who responded with a deep-rumbling "Ay, ay, su!" and sprang to the
starboard rail to clear the sagging lines running back from the
unstable-minded main boom. Then the amazing thing befell.
As the schooner gathered way and began gliding ahead under the impulse
of the half-filled mainsail, Rona had crouched as though for a spring at
the towing whaleboat. The painter of the latter, however, made fast on
the port side of the taffrail, brought the yawning double-ender too far
away for anything but a creature with wings to bridge the gap. Seeing it
was impossible to jump to the whaleboat, she straightened up again,
swaying undulantly as the dugout bobbed about in the gently heaving wake
of the schooner.
"Bel-la, I come!" There was more of anger than despair in that
steel-clear cry; more indignation than resignation in the hair-trigger
poise of the reed-slender figure. The instant that she hesitated on the
chance that this final threat might soften Bell's resolve was all that
prevented what at best could not have been other than a nasty mess for
the both of us. There was no possible chance for me to intercept her
before she jumped, and, once in the water, I knew she was quite equal to
upsetting the canoe rather than be dragged back into it. As for help
from the schooner--Bell had determined upon his course, and his eyes,
like his mind, were directed ahead, not astern.
It was Ranga-Ro (deftly fending the slack of the mainsheet from the
nigger wire), not Bell, who turned at the sound of Rona's cry. Whether
or not he had glimpsed her during the previous ten minutes, I am not
sure; but for the girl (whose eyes had been on Bell from first to last),
I was certain that the big Malay had not impinged upon her vision
before. Recognition of his racial characteristics must have been
instantaneous. They were written for even an ethnic novice to read in
the giant's straight black hair, high cheek bones, wide mouth, with its
betel nut-stained teeth, and the light golden yellow skin clothing the
monstrously muscled limbs. The peculiar twist of the loosely-looped
_sarong_ and a wisp of rolled leaf behind an ear would have located him
even more definitely; but to Rona the fact that there was an indubitable
Malay staring into her eyes from the nearest rail of the receding
schooner, made the incidental of his being a Moluccan--a Spice Island
man--of little moment. She was used to handling big golden-yellow
men.... They had proved a deal more manageable than a certain white man
she could mention.
I heard, without understanding, the swift run of her tripplingly-tongued
Malay, and only the sibilant hiss of "_Lekas! Lekas!_" at the end told
me that what she had ordered done was to be done "quickly! quickly!" Her
next order--to me--was no less insistent. "Paddl' catch'n schoona,
Whit-nee! Paddl' lak hell!"
The girl's imperious mood brooked no delay. My work was cut out clear
for me, and, everything considered, I am not at all sure that the yellow
man--on the score of zeal, at least--outdid the white man in carrying
out the orders he had received. Slipping back to the stern to even up
the down-by-the-head trim Rona's presence in the bow gave the cranky
dugout, I plied the stubby paddle with all the strength and skill at my
command. The crazy craft rode higher now with Allen out of it, but even
so the speed with which I drove it threw a wave inches above the hole in
the crumbling bow. The up-curling water poured through in a steady
stream. My race, I saw, was against that rising flood in the bottom of
the canoe quite as much as against the schooner.
There were only eight or ten yards to make up on the still slowly moving
_Cora_, and, barring swamping or a collision with a shark or a floating
nigger, I felt that I could do it easily. But what to do when we had
caught her up? Ah, there was where the yellow man was to come in. Ranga
was just as busily carrying out his orders as was I. "Clear away the
nigger wire and stand by to pick me up," had plainly been the drift of
that swift stream of Malay Rona had directed at him. Superbly disdainful
of the sharp barbs that were slashing his bare palms to ribbons, he
forced the whole savage entanglement down to the deck with no more
apparent effort than a child would have used in collapsing a
string-strung "cat's-cradle." Rove through steel stanchions set at close
intervals along the rail, the wire could not be torn entirely clear. So
the direct and simple-minded Ranga did the next best thing--gave a
mighty heave and brought three or four of the nearest stanchions down to
the deck in the tangle of wire they had supported.
An order from Bell at this juncture would probably have stopped this
wholesale destruction of his protective entanglement; or perhaps I
should say _possibly_ rather than probably. One cannot be sure just how
strong a force Rona had lashed into action. It has since occurred to me
that the man must have been gripped with something very closely akin to
the madness of _amok_ to handle that wire with his naked hands as he
did. It may be that the only one from whom he would have brooked
interference was the one who had fired that savage train of
energy--Rona. These points were not to be put to the test, however. From
first to last Bell--although, from the wrecking of the wire almost under
his very eyes, he must have known what was going on--never looked back.
What with the settling of the half-swamped canoe and the accelerating
speed of the schooner, it was touch-and-go at the end. I had gained by
feet at first; then by inches; and finally, with but a couple of yards
more needed to bring the bow up even with the schooner's counter, I
realized that I was no better than holding my own. It was the last ounce
of reserve in my aching frame that I called upon for that final spurt.
Rona must have sensed that I was going my limit, for she said no word
... only crouched, tense as a waiting wild-cat, for the moment of her
spring.
For the first few seconds the gap closed quickly as the canoe gathered
increased headway from the impulse of my wildly driven paddle; then more
slowly and more slowly, until, again, I was no better than holding even.
Another foot, and the jump would be safe. Bending low to make the most
of my expiring strength, my eyes wandered from the goal for an instant.
It was a shuddering gasp of consternation from the bow that brought them
back again. The swooning mainsail, filled by the freshening puffs, was
beginning to make its pull felt in earnest. The gap had widened. Instead
of gaining a foot I had lost two. That dished me completely. "No good,
Rona--I'm--all in," I groaned, and slid limply down into the bottom of
the canoe, where the water now lapped level with the thwarts.
Half fainting though I was, the picture of that super-simian spring of
Rona's is indelibly etched upon my memory. Save for that one quick gasp,
she made no sound. The jump was an impossible one ... sheerly
impossible. And yet-- Only a swift gathering of muscles--very like the
final quivering hunch of an ape that leaps from tree to tree--heralded
action. Then, with a back-kick that forced the already half-submerged
bow right under, she flashed up to her full height and launched her body
into the air.
It was a good jump,--a wonderful one, indeed, considering the unstable
take-off--but of course she missed the rail--and by feet. That didn't
surprise me.... I had seen it was inevitable. But what I had _not_
reckoned upon was the astonishing length of Ranga's mighty left arm.
Standing by with a bight of the mainsheet gripped in his right hand to
keep from overbalancing, he had sprung to the top of the rail as Rona
jumped, leaning out at all of an angle of forty-five degrees, probably
more. It was into the solidly pliant muscles of his great corded left
wrist, extended to the full reach of the arm, that Rona clawed with the
last half inch of her out-stretched fingers--clawed and _held_. I say
_clawed into_, not clutched or seized. The girl's hold on Ranga's wrist
was not that of an acrobat grabbing over the bar for which he has jumped
(her leap was short by an inch at least of giving her a chance to do
that), but rather that of a flung cat clawing into the limb or the trunk
of a tree. With less strength of fingers or length of nails her hands
would merely have brushed the outstretched arm and missed a hold.
Under the impact of that flying hundred and twenty pounds (in spite of
her slenderness, Rona must have weighed quite that) of bone and muscle,
striking, as it did, just where the greatest leverage would be exerted,
Ranga was all but swung round and thrown from his footing. The
hastily-seized mainsheet was hardly a scientifically-run guy for the
leaning tower of his stressed frame, nor did the wreck of the barbed
wire entanglement writhing over the rail offer the solidest of
foundations. Back and forth he swayed, like the half unstepped mast of a
grounded sloop; then steadied, quiveringly, up to his original tense
slant.
The acrobatic miracle wrought by Ranga in swinging Rona's precariously
hanging form inboard was the most perfect feat of strength and balance I
ever saw, or ever expect to see. It looked as sheerly impossible as the
jump had looked--and was accomplished scarcely less quickly. The drawing
up of the extended left arm (what a marvellous rippling and bunching of
golden muscles that was!) brought the girl's pendant form close in
against the corrugated bulge of the giant's chest, reducing the terrific
leverage by a good half. A similar doubling up of the right, with a
sudden tug on the mainsheet at the end of it, did the rest. For an
instant the great rangy rack of corded muscles balanced erect in the
midst of the wire-tangle festooned over the rail; then jumped lightly
down beyond and deposited its burden on the deck.
Hardly ten seconds could have elapsed from the instant of Rona's jump to
the one in which Ranga plumped her down beside Bell at the wheel. The
gap between the canoe and the schooner had widened to hardly twenty
yards. I could see both the Malay and the girl quite distinctly as, with
the latter still looped in the crook of his fingernail-torn left arm, he
poised for a moment on the rail. Neither appeared to have turned a hair.
Neither seemed in the least flustered ... might have been in the habit
of doing that sort of thing every day for all the excitement they showed
about it.
The first thing Ranga did, as the dropped mainsheet gave him a free
hand, was to reach to the knot of his _sarong_ and satisfy himself that
the little bamboo flute tucked in there had ridden out the storm. And
Rona--her first move was to gather up and stow an amber-streaming corner
of the peacock shawl, which was threatening to catch in an uprearing
strand of the nigger wire. Those two funny little incidentals complete
my recollections of that breathless quarter-minute. Whether Rona, or
Bell, or anyone else on the schooner waved good-bye in my direction I do
not recall. Ranga was taking in the slack of the mainsheet when I looked
again, and Bell, peering up at the flapping headsails, was grinding away
at the wheel. Two or three shots rang out following a commotion
forward--probably fired to check a fresh up-surge of the blacks from
below.
As Bell brought her round in a wide circle, the _Cora's_ sails were
flattened in and she began to beat up toward the entrance of the passage
in a series of short tacks. As she headed in past the quay, I heard a
burst of cheers roll up from a knot of humanity blurring the beach in
front of Jackson's. It was just a big, full-throated general whoop, that
first one, but it was quickly followed by a number of other volleys of
"huroars" that seemed to carry suggestions of control and leadership.
The last of these was a hearty "three-times-three," topped off with a
"tiger." "Cheering the parting heroes by name," I muttered to myself,
and wondered who that last rousing "tiger" was meant to speed. I was
still speculating when the sharp whish of a heeling dorsal, as a
sheering shark avoided the submerged outrigger by a hair, awakened me to
a rude realization of the fact that the swift tropic night had all but
fallen and that I was drifting out with the tide in a holed and barely
floating dugout.
Of all the ebbings of the tide of courage that my sorrily spent life had
known, and had still to know, those next few minutes--with the _Cora_
dissolving into the swimming dusk as she beat out through the passage,
the weirdly green wakes of the sharks lacing the oily-black water with
welts of phosphorescence as they assembled for their ghastly banquet,
and my swamped canoe teetering in balance between positive and negative
buoyancy--registered low-water mark. I have never heard of a despairing
absinthe slave trying to break his bonds at the end of the day. It is
invariably at the end of the night that he makes his break for
liberty--at the beginning of the day he has not the courage to face. But
it was the shame of the yellow in me, rather than the green, that held
empire now. Rona had brooked no refusal of her demand to be taken on the
_Cora_. Why had I? She had been ready to swim for it. Why should not I?
Surely the sea, better than anything else, would wash that yellow stain
from my honour and leave it white at the last. I didn't even have to
screw my nerve up to the point of jumping over. Listing heavily to
starboard as the half-capsized dugout was, one little inch edged to the
right, and not even the leverage of the outrigger could keep it from
overturning. Just the inclination of my shoulders would do the trick....
I would not even have to take the initiative to the extent of edging
along. Surely--
With a quick gasp, I slid sharply to one side--but it was to the
left--the outrigger side. The great starshaped welter of green
luminescence, where a half-dozen wallowing man-eaters nuzzled into a
bobbing witch-fire-streaked shape of unreflecting opacity, proved too
much for my last unbroken filament of nerve--all that I needed to make
my honour white. I had always dreaded sharks, and it was my horror of
them now that checked the worthiest impulse that had stirred me that
day. The momentarily eclipsed image of the cooling green bottle took
shape again before my eyes, and, after that, there was nothing to do but
make the best fight I could to reach it.
Proceeding with infinite caution to avoid the upset which I now feared
above everything in the world, I crawled forward along the outrigger
side and stopped the hole in the bow with my folded drill jacket, as a
necessary preliminary to beginning to bail out with my waterproof
sun-helmet. But before I turned to on what could have hardly proved
other than a hopeless task, the sound of oars and voices reached my
ears, and presently the bow of a hard-pulled whaleboat came pushing up
out of the darkness. It was old Jackson whose strong arm reached out and
dragged me in over the gunwale. When they got back their breaths lost in
cheering the departing schooner, he explained, after depositing my limp
form in the stern sheets, Doc Wyndham bawled over to them from
"Quarantine" that some cove had been left behind in a foundered canoe.
Jackson himself reckoned that the Doc was beginning to go off his nut
and see things; but as several of the others seemed to have hazy
recollections of something of the same kind, it was thought best to put
off and investigate.
"'Ow'd you 'appen to miss c'nections?" Jackson asked sympathetically. "I
spotted you paddlin' the canoe off, an' we was so sure the Skipper 'ad
signed you on that we give a speshul w'oop in your 'onour. 'W'at's the
matter wiv W'itney?' I bellered ('member the night you learned us that
one?--time the looted fizz from the _Levuka_ was on tap); an' the boys
cum back wiv: ''E's all right!--you bet!--Ev'ry time!'"
"That wasn't the big 'three-times-three' at the end, was it, Jack?" I
asked, my face burning with shame at the thought.
"Well, no; 'ardly that un," was the half-apologetic reply. "That
ripsnorter was in 'onour uv 'Slant' Allen. Long time pal uv all uv us,
'e is. Slash-bangin' finisher, li'l ol' 'Slant.'... Trust 'im allus to
be on 'and w'en they're liftin' 'ell's 'atches."
I knew then that I wasn't going to be tumbling over myself to tell
"Slant's" friends on the beach that his volunteering to go with the
_Cora_ had been just a shade less voluntary than they reckoned. _He_ had
not pulled up dead at his first hurdle as I had, anyhow. No, until I
knew more of what had transpired earlier in the day, I was not going to
give the man away; and not to his old friends in any case. I would do at
least that much homage to his nerve.
Seeing how dead beat I was, Jackson waved back the crowd at the quay and
headed me straight for home. He knew what I needed, and I was as
grateful for the bluff old outlaw's unspoken sympathy as I was for the
help of his sustaining arm. With rare delicacy, he avoided being a
witness to my assault on the green bottle by leaving me at the door.
Like all the rest of those rough, red-blooded roysterers of Kai, Jackson
felt that habitual absinthe drinking was degenerate, almost immoral....
All right for a "Froggy," of course, but not for a proper white man....
A thing that a real self-respecting beach-comber would never allow
himself to be guilty of. The fact (which could not be concealed for
long) that I was known to be addicted to the habit had taken even more
living down than my painting, especially when they learned I was
straight Yankee and not a "_We-we_."
I drank hungrily at first--gulping glass after glass of the cool green
liquid,--but stopped just as soon as I found my nerves were steadied and
before the first stage of "elevation" was entered upon. (A seasoned
drinker takes some time to reach the latter.) Unspeakably tired
physically, I dropped off to sleep almost as soon as the absinthe
relaxed the tension on my nerves. My rest was dreamless and
untroubled--or comparatively so.