“You want a stitch or two put in that cut. Come inside and I'll do it
for you. Your skipper was here at daylight this morning looking for you.
He told me quite a different story; said that you gave him 'lip' and
then struck him.”
The half-caste laughed quietly. “He lied, sir. He's a regular bully, and
he and the mate knock the men about something terrible. But he made a
mistake when he started on me and called me a nigger. And if he tries to
bring me aboard of that floating hell again I'll kill him, as sure as my
name is Frank Porter.”
The trader's face lightened up. “Are you Frank Porter, the man who saved
the _Marion Renny_ from being cut-off in the Solomon Islands?”
“Yes,” answered the half-caste, “I am the man.”
Palmer extended his hand. “You're welcome to my house, Frank Porter. And
there's no fear of the captain coming ashore again to look for you. Now
come inside, and let me dress that ugly slash for you.”
“Thank you, Mr. Palmer. But I did not come to you for that. I came
to see if you can give me a berth of some sort on your station. I'm a
pretty handy man at almost anything.”
The trader thought a moment; then he looked up quickly. “I cannot give
you anything to do on the station--there is nothing _to_ do. But I will
give you five hundred dollars and a home in my house if you will help me
to do one thing.”
“What is that?”
“Put a bullet into a man here who has murdered thirty people within ten
years. I cannot do it alone, I have tried and failed, and these people
cannot help me. Come inside, and I'll tell you all about it.”
The half-caste followed Palmer into his sitting-room, and the trader,
getting needles and silk thread from his wife, stitched up the wound in
the man's face. Then he gave him a glass of whiskey, and as they smoked
their pipes, told him the story of Jinaban, the Outlaw.
*****
Two years before, when Palmer first landed on the white beach of
Matelotas Lagoon to settle down as a trader for turtle-shell, Jinaban
was one of the three chiefs who ruled over the cluster of palm-clad
islets--the two others were his half-brothers, Jelik and Rao. All
three had met the white man as soon as he landed, and he and they had
exchanged gifts and vows of friendship after the manner of the people of
Las Matelotas.
But Jinaban, who was a man of violent temper, was bitterly aggrieved
when Palmer decided to build his house and trading station in the
village ruled over by his half-brother Jelik. He had long been anxious
to secure a white trader for his own village, and bitter words passed
between Jelik and Raô and himself. Palmer stood by and said nothing. He
had taken an instinctive dislike to Jinaban, whose reputation as a man
of a cruel and sanguinary nature had been known to him long before he
had come to settle in the Carolines. But Palmer was not a man to be
daunted by Jinaban's fierce looks and the bitter epithets he applied to
his half-brothers, whom he accused of “stealing” the white man from him.
He quietly announced his intention of standing to the agreement he had
made with Jelik; and the next day that chief's people set about building
a house for the trader. In a month the house was finished, and Palmer,
who meant to try the lagoon for pearl shell, and thought that his stay
on the island would be a long one, announced his intention of taking
a wife, and asked Jelik for a young girl named Letanë. She was about
seventeen, and her gentle, amiable disposition had attracted him from
the first day he landed on the island. Calling the girl to him, Jelik
questioned her as to her inclinations, and she at once, in the most
innocent and charming manner, expressed her liking for the white
man, but said that her uncle Jinaban, who had gained some idea of her
feelings towards Palmer, had threatened to kill her if she dared
to marry him; for he (Jinaban) had determined that the people of
Ailap--Jelik's village--should not monopolise him altogether, and that a
wife should be chosen from his (Jinaban's) village.
Jelik's face instantly become grave. He knew the rancour of Jinaban's
feelings towards him, and dreaded to incur his further hatred, and soon
acquainted Palmer with his fears. The trader laughed at them, and said
that he would be dictated to by no man as regarded his choice of a wife,
and, drawing the smiling Letanë to him, told the chief to make all haste
with the wedding feast. The news of this soon reached Jinaban, who soon
after made his appearance at Palmer's house accompanied by many old men
of his clan and a young and beautiful girl named Sépé. Trembling with
suppressed rage and excitement, he addressed the trader with all the
eloquence he could command. He was, he said (and with truth), the
greatest of the three brothers in rank and influence, but had yielded
to the white man's desire to live in Ailap under the protection of his
brother Jelik; but neither he (Jinaban) nor his people would put up with
the additional insult of the trader espousing an Ailap girl. And then,
pointing to the girl who accompanied him--a handsome creature about
eighteen or twenty years of age--he earnestly besought Palmer to make
her his wife. Before the trader could frame a reply Letanë, accompanied
by a number of her young girl friends, walked into the room, and,
sitting down beside him, put her hand on his shoulder, and, though her
slender form trembled, gave her uncle and the girl Sépé a look of bold
defiance.
Palmer rose to his feet, and placed his hand on the head of the girl,
who rose with him. “It cannot be, Jinaban. This girl Letanë, who is
of thine own kin, shall be my wife. But let not ill-blood come of it
between thee and me or between thee and her; for I desire to live in
friendship with thee.”
Without a word Jinaban sprang to his feet, and, with a glance of bitter
hatred at the trader and the girl who stood beside him, he walked out of
the house, accompanied by his old men and the rejected Sépé, who, as she
turned away, looked scornfully at her rival and spat on the ground.
In a few weeks the marriage took place, and Palmer made the customary
presents to his wife's relatives. To Jinaban--who refused to attend
the feasting and dancing that accompanied the ceremony--he sent a
new fishing-net one hundred fathoms in length, a very valuable and
much-esteemed gift, for the cost of such an article was considerable.
To Jelik, his wife's guardian, he gave a magazine rifle and five hundred
cartridges, and to Raô, the other brother, presents of cloth, tobacco,
and hatchets.
That night, whilst Palmer slept with his bride, Jinaban came to the
house of his brother Jelik. His black eyes gleamed red with anger.
“What right hast thou, my younger brother, to take from the white man
that which I coveted most? Am not I the greater chief, and thy master?
Give me that gun.”
Jelik sprang to his feet. “Nay, why shouldst thou covet my one gift from
the white man? Is not the net he gave thee worth twenty such guns as the
one he hath given me?”
Jinaban leapt at his brother's throat, and for a minute or two they
struggled fiercely; then Jelik fell with a groan, for Jinaban stabbed
him in the throat twice. Then seizing the rifle and two bags of
cartridges he sallied out into the village. Behind him, panting with
rage, ran his murdered brother's wife, a young woman of twenty years
of age. She carried an infant in her arms, and was running swiftly,
clutching in her right hand a short dagger.
“Stand, thou coward, Jinaban!” she called, setting the child down in the
path--“stand, thou coward, for though thou hast slain my husband thou
shalt not rob me of that which was his--give me back the gun.”
Jinaban laughed fiercely, and his white teeth flashed from his
black-bearded lips; he slipped some cartridges into the rifle. He waited
till the woman was within ten yards of him, then raised the weapon and
shot her dead. And now, his tiger nature aroused to the full, he sprang
into the middle of the village square of Ailap, and began firing at
every person he saw, sparing neither age nor sex. His second brother,
Raô, a courageous young man, seizing the only weapon available--a
seaman's cutlass--rushed forth from his house and, calling upon Jinaban
to lay down his weapon, advanced towards him. Pretending to consent--for
a cartridge had jammed and the rifle would not work--Jinaban held out
the butt to Raô in token of surrender; then the moment Raô grasped it,
he sprang at his throat and bore him to the ground, and, tearing the
cutlass from his hand, he plunged it through and through the prostrate
man's body. Then, with a savage threat against the whole of the murdered
men's families, he turned and fled towards the beach. Dragging a light
canoe down into the water, he sprang into it, and pushed off just as
Palmer appeared on the scene, and, raising his revolver, fired six shots
at the escaping murderer. None of the shots, however, took effect,
and Jinaban, with an oath of vengeance against the white man, paddled
swiftly away and reached the low, densely wooded and uninhabited island
on the western side of the lagoon.
This for two years had now been his lair. Paddling over at dead of night
from time to time, he would stalk, rifle in hand, through the village,
and, entering any house he pleased, demand food and tobacco. And such
was the terror of his name and his chiefly prestige that no one dared
refuse. Sometimes, moved by the lust for slaughter, he would command
that the food he demanded should be carried before him and placed in
his canoe. Then he would shoot the unfortunate bearer dead on the
beach. Against his half-brother's families he manifested the most deadly
hatred; and on one occasion, meeting a girl, a slave of Rao's widow,
on a little islet some miles away from Ailap, he shot the poor child
through her legs, breaking them both, and left her to perish of
starvation. Palmer well knew that he was willingly supplied with food by
the people of his own village, although they asserted their innocence of
aiding him in any way, and expressed the utmost fear and horror of
the outlaw. That his death would be a relief to them as well as to the
people of Ailap was certainly true, but Palmer and his wife Letanë
were well aware that none of Jinaban's own people would ever raise hand
against him; and, indeed, the Ailap people, though they now had the
strongest feelings of friendship for the white man, were so smitten with
terror at the constantly recurring bloody deeds perpetrated by Jinaban,
that they were too terrified to accompany the trader over to the
outlaw's island and track him to his lair. Twice had Palmer crossed over
in the darkness of night, and, Winchester in hand, carefully sought for
traces of Jinaban's hiding-place, but without success. The interior
of the island was a dense thicket of scrub which seemed to defy
penetration. On the last occasion Palmer had hidden among a mass of
broken and vine-covered coral boulders which covered the eastern shore.
Here for a whole night and the following day he remained, keeping a
keen watch upon the line of beach in the hope that he would see Jinaban
carrying his canoe down to the water to make one of his murderous
descents upon the Ailap village. His own canoe he had carefully
concealed among the scrub, and as he had landed on a very dark night
upon a ledge of rocks that stretched from the water's edge to the
thicket, and carried the canoe up, he was sure that no trace of his
landing would be visible to Jinaban. At dark on the following evening he
gave up his quest and paddled slowly over to the village, sick at heart
with fear for his wife Letanë, for the outlaw had made a threat that she
should soon fall a victim to his implacable hatred.
Halfway across the lagoon he heard the sound of two shots, and by its
sharp crack knew that one came from Jinaban's rifle--the rifle he had
given to the slaughtered Jelik. Urging his canoe along the surface of
the quiet water, Palmer soon reached the beach of Ailap village, and
was horrified to learn that the man he had sought had just left after
shooting a lad of fifteen--a cousin of Letanë--whom he had surprised
while fishing in the lagoon. Cutting off the boy's head, Jinaban had
boldly stalked through the village till he reached Palmer's house,
through the open window of which he had thrown his gory trophy, and then
made his escape.
The trader's wife, who at the time was sleeping in the big room of the
house, surrounded by half a dozen natives armed with muskets, at once
sprang up, and, seizing a rifle, started in pursuit, for she feared that
Jinaban had learnt of Palmer's absence, and would wait for and shoot him
as he crossed the lagoon. She managed to reach the beach in time to
see the escaping murderer paddling along in his canoe close in shore.
Kneeling down, she took careful aim and fired. A mocking laugh answered
the shot.
*****
That was the story that Palmer told the half-caste Maori, who listened
to him attentively throughout.
For some minutes, however, after the trader had finished, he did not
speak, and then at last said in his slow, methodical way--
“I will promise you that I'll get you Jinaban, dead or alive, before a
week is out. And I don't want money. But I want you, please, to get
some one of your natives here to come and tell me all they can about
Jinaban's friends in the other village.”
Palmer called to his wife. She came in, heavy-eyed and pale-faced, for
the youth whose head she and her women had just buried was much attached
to her, and her husband as well. At that moment the lad's relatives were
searching the lagoon in the hope of finding the body, into which it had
doubtless been thrown by the ruthless hand of Jinaban; and Letanë had
just returned alone to the house.
In a very short time the half-caste learnt from Letanë that Sépé, who
lived in Jinaban's village, was strongly suspected of receiving visits
from the outlaw, and even of visiting the man himself; for on several
occasions she had been absent from her mother's house for two or three
days at a time. And as most of Jinaban's people were in secret sympathy
with their outlawed chief, the girl's movements were never commented on
by the inhabitants of her own village, for fear that the relatives of
the murdered chiefs, Raô and Jelik, and other people of Ailap, would
kill her. But in some way Sépé had betrayed herself, and Letanë was now
having a strict watch kept upon the girl by two or three of her women
attendants whom she had sent to reside in Ijeet, as Jinaban's village
was called. Ostensibly they had gone to visit some relatives there.
Sépé, however, was always on her guard, and so far the spies had learnt
nothing fresh.
At Porter's request the trader's wife gave him a description of Sépé's
appearance, and also described the exact position of the house in which
she lived with her mother. Then the half-caste unfolded his plan to
Palmer and his wife.
“And now,” he said, “I must go. If I stay longer it may spoil our plans
by making Jinaban's friend suspicious. Give me the bottle of gin,
and I'll carry it so that every one can see it as I walk through the
village. And you must get all your men out of the way by the time I come
back. They might shoot me, but the women will be too frightened.”
Palmer went to his trade room and returned with a large bottle of
Hollands, which he gave to Porter, together with a box of revolver
cartridges; these the half-caste carefully concealed in the bosom of his
singlet. Then, shaking hands with the trader and his wife, he walked out
of the house, down the steps, and along the path to the village.
“Parma,” said Letanë to her husband, as they watched the seaman
disappear among the coco-palms, “dost think this man will be true to us
in this thing?”
“Aye,” replied the trader, “sure am I of his good faith; for he it
was who four years ago, single-handed, fought two hundred of the wild
man-eaters of the Solomon Islands, when they captured the ship in which
he sailed, and slew every man on board but himself. Twenty-and-three of
those devils of _kai tagata_ (cannibals) did he kill with his Winchester
rifle from the fore-top of the ship, although he was slashed in the
thigh with a deep knife wound, and was faint from loss of blood. And
then when the rest had fled in their canoes he came down and steered
the ship away from the land and sailed her in safety to a place called
Rubiana where white men dwell.”
“Ah-h-h!” and Letanë's dark eyes opened wide in admiration.
*****
An hour later Frank Porter, with an half-emptied bottle of liquor placed
before him on the matted floor, was sitting in a house in Jinaban's
village, surrounded by a number of young men and women.
“Come,” he said, with drunken hilarity, and speaking in the Ponapé
dialect, which is understood by the people of Las Matelotas, “come,
drink with me;” and pouring out some of the liquor he offered it with
swaying hand to the man nearest him; “drink, I tell thee, for when this
bottle is empty then shall I make the white man give me more.”
“Bah!” said a tall, dark-skinned girl, whose head was encircled with a
wreath of red and yellow flowers, and who stood with her rounded arms
folded across her bare bosom, “thou dost but boast. How canst thou
_make_ Parma give thee liquor, if, as thou sayest, thou hast no money?
Is he a child to be frightened by loud words--which are but born in
the belly of _that_” and she laughed and pointed contemptuously at the
bottle beside him.
The half-caste looked at her with drunken gravity.
“Who art thou, saucy fool?” he asked, “to so talk to me? Think ye that
I fear any white man? See!” and staggering to his feet he came over to
where she stood, “seest thou this bloodied cut across my face, which was
given me by a white man, when I fought with, three but last night?”
The girl laughed mockingly. “How know I but that last night thou wert
as drunk as thou art now, and fell on the ship's deck and so cut thy
face, and now would make us think that----”
“Nay, Sépé,” broke in a lad who sat near, “'tis true, for I was on the
ship and saw this man fight with three others. He does not lie.”
“Lie!” and the half-caste, drawing his knife from its sheath, flashed it
before the assembled natives; “nay, no liar am I, neither a boaster;
and by the gods of my mother's land I shall make this Parma give me more
grog to drink before the night comes, else shall this knife eat into his
heart. Come ye all, and see.”
And in another minute, followed by the girl Sépe and a dozen or more
men and women, he sallied out into the road, knife in hand, lurching
up against a palm-tree every now and then, and steadying himself with a
drunken oath.
*****
Sitting or standing about Palmer's house were some scores of native
women, who waited for him to awaken from his afternoon's sleep and open
his store so that they might sell him the pearl-shell that the menfolk
had that day taken from the lagoon. But the white man seemed to sleep
long to-day, and when the people saw Letanë, his wife, coming from
her evening bathe, they were glad, for they knew she would open her
husband's store and buy from them whatever they had to sell. But
suddenly, as she walked slowly along the shaded path, a man sprang out
upon her and seized her by the wrist. It was the half-caste sailor.
“Back!” he shouted warningly to the women, as they rushed towards him,
“back, I say, else do I plunge my knife into this woman's heart.” And
then, releasing his hold of Letanë's wrist, he swiftly clasped her round
the waist, and swung her over his shoulder with an exulting laugh. “Tell
ye the white man that his wife shall now be mine, for her beauty hath
eaten away my heart,” and he ran swiftly away with his struggling
burden, who seemed too terrified even to call for assistance.
And then as the loud cries of alarm of the women sounded through the
village, Palmer sprang out from his house, pistol in hand, and darted in
pursuit. The half-caste, with a backward glance over his shoulder, saw
him coming.
Dropping the woman, who seemed to have swooned, for she lay motionless
upon the path, Porter awaited the white man, knife in hand, and laughed
fiercely as Palmer, raising his pistol, fired at him thrice. In another
instant they were struggling fiercely together, and a cry of terror
broke from the watching women when they saw the trader fall as if
stabbed or stunned, and the half-caste, leaping upon him, tear the
pistol from his hand, and, with an exultant cry, wave it triumphantly in
the air. Then he fled swiftly through the palm grove towards Ijeet.
When Palmer opened his eyes, Letanë and a number of terrified women were
bending over him, all but Letanë herself imagining he had been stabbed.
“Nay,” he said, putting his hand to his head, “I was but stunned. Help
me into my house.”
That night the whole population of Ailap came to his house and urged him
to lead them to Ijeet and slay the coward sailor who had sought to take
his life and steal from him his wife.
“Wait,” he answered grimly, “wait, I pray thee, O my friends, and then
shalt thou see that which shall gladden thy hearts and mine. And let
none of ye raise his hand against the half-caste till I so bid him.”
They wondered at this; but went away contented. Parma was a wise man,
they thought, and knew what was best.
When the house was in darkness, and the trader and his wife lay on their
couch of mats with their sleeping child between them, Palmer laughed to
himself.
“Why dost thou laugh, Parma?” And Letanë turned her big eyes upon his
face.
“Because this man Porter is both wise and brave; and in two days or less
we shall sleep in peace, for Jinaban shall be dead.”
*****
Back from the clustering houses of Ijeet village the man who was “wise
and brave” was sitting upon the bole of a fallen coco-palm with his arms
clasped round the waist of the star-eyed Sépé, who listened to him half
in fear, half in admiration.
“Nay,” she said presently, in answer to something he had said, “no love
have I for Jinaban; 'tis hate alone that hath led me to aid him, for he
hath sworn to me that I shall yet see Letanë lie dead before me. And for
that do I steal forth at night and take him food.”
“Dost thou then love Parma?”
“As much as thou lovest his wife,” the girl answered quickly, striking
him petulantly on his knee.
The half-caste laughed. “Those were but the words of a man drunken with
liquor. What care I for her? Thee alone do I love, for thy eyes have
eaten up my heart. And see, when thou hast taken me to Jinaban, and he
and I have killed this Parma, thou shalt run this knife of mine into the
throat of Letanë. And our wedding feast shall wipe out the shame which
she hath put upon thee.”
The girl's eyes gleamed. “Are these true words or lies?”
“By my mother's bones, they be true words. Did not I flee to thy house
and bring thee this pistol I wrenched from Parma's hand to show thee
I am no boaster. And as for these three women of Ailap who spy upon
thee--show me where they sleep and I will beat them with a heavy stick
and drive them back to their mistress.”
Sépé leant her head upon his shoulder and pressed his hand. “Nay, let
them be; for now do I know thou lovest me. And to-night, when my mother
sleeps, shall we take a canoe and go to Jinaban.”
*****
At dawn next morning Palmer was aroused from his sleep by a loud
knocking at the door, and the clamour of many voices.
“Awake, awake, Parma!” cried a man's voice; “awake, for the big sailor
man who tried to kill thee yesterday is crossing the lagoon, and is
paddling swiftly towards thy house. Quick, quick and shoot him ere he
can land.”
In an instant the trader and every one of his household sprang from
their couches, the door was thrown open, and Palmer, looking across
the lagoon, which was shining bright in the rays of the rising sun, saw
about a quarter of a mile away, a canoe, which was being urged swiftly
along by Frank Porter and a woman. She was heading directly for his
house, and already Palmer's bodyguard were handling their muskets, and
waiting for him to tell them to fire.
Taking his glass from its rack over the door he levelled it at the
approaching canoe, and looked steadily for less than half a minute, and
then he gave an exulting cry.
“Oh, my friends, this is a lucky day! Lay aside thy guns, and harm not
the sailor; for in that canoe is Jinaban, bound hand and foot. And the
fight that ye saw yesterday between this half-caste and me was but a
cunning plan between us to get Jinaban into our hands; and no harm did
he intend to my wife, for she too knew of our plan.”
A murmur of joyful astonishment burst from the assembled natives, and in
another moment they were running after Palmer down to the beach.