Port Said, Colombo, Singapore--his recollections here were limited to a
woman's face in a balcony and the cloying aroma of anisette. He
remembered a stop at Sydney, where he made the remarkable discovery that
the Circular Quay was completely circular and could be circumnavigated
in a night. After that he had a sketchy impression of the Shanghai race
meeting and a mad sort of trip in a private yacht full of Australian
sheep-something--kings, perhaps; tremendous fellows, anyway, of amazing
capacity. And then Manila, of course, the place where he hired an
ocean-going tug to urge a broken date on the coy ingenue of a traveling
Spanish opera company. And then Macao, where he found and lost her
again, as coy as ever, together with his wallet. And after that the
hectic session when he and a Norwegian schooner captain hit the bank at
fan-tan and swore eternal friendship amid the champagne baskets on the
schooner's decks under a complicated moon. It was this same captain who
had landed him finally--the baskets having been emptied--at the point of
a boot on the strand where now he sat. So much was still quite clear and
recent, within range of days.
Always through the maze of these memoirs ran one consistent and tragic
motive--a dwindling letter of credit, the fag end of his considerable
patrimony. It had expired painlessly at last, the night before if he
could trust his head, for there had been a noble wake. He recalled the
inscrutable face of the tall white man behind the bar who had cashed it
for him after a rate of exchange of his own grim devising. And he
recalled, too, a waif bit of their conversation as he signed the
ultimate coupon.
"You can date it Fufuti," suggested Bendemeer, and spelled the name for
him.
"And where--where the devil is Fufuti?" he asked.
"Three thousand miles from the next pub," said Bendemeer, with
excessively dry significance.
The phrase came back to him now....
"In that case," decided Junius Peabody, aloud, "--in that case there's
no use trying to borrow car fare, and it's too far to walk. I'm stuck."
Some one sniffed beside him, and he turned to stare into a face that
might have been a distortion of his own yellow, haggard image.
"Hello," he said--and then, by natural sequence: "say, you don't happen
to have a flask anywhere handy about you--what?"
His neighbor scowled aggrievedly.
"Do I _look_ like I 'ad a flask?"
The belligerent whine was enough to renew the identity of the mangy
little larrikin whose couch on the sand he had shared. The Sydney Duck,
they called him: a descriptive title which served as well as any. Junius
did not like him very well, but he had lived in his company nearly a
week and he had long forgotten to make effective distinctions. Brandy is
a great democrat.
"It's my notion I'm going to have the fantods," explained Junius. "I
need a bracer."
"My word, I could do with a nip meself just now," agreed Sydney. "'In't
y' got no more credit with Bendemeer?"
Peabody made an effort.
"Seems to me I was thrown out of Bendemeer's last night. Is that right?"
"You was, and so was me and that big Dutchman, Willems--all thrown out.
But it was your fault. You started playin' chuck farthin' among his
bottles with a bunch of copper spikes.... I never see a man 'old his
liquor worse."
"Well, I paid for it, didn't I?" inquired Junius, without heat. "And I
believe you had your share. But what I'm getting at is--if he threw me
out the credit must be gone."
This was simple logic and unanswerable. "Maybe y' got something else
he'll tyke for th' price," suggested Sydney. "Damn 'im--'e's keen enough
to drive a tryde!"
* * * * *
Junius went through the form of searching, but without any great
enthusiasm, nor was Sydney himself notably expectant--a fact that might
have seemed to argue a rather sinister familiarity with the probable
result.
"I did have some cuff links and things," said Peabody vaguely. "I wonder
what's become of them."
"I wonder," echoed Sydney. As if some last possible claim upon his
regard had been dissipated, he let his lips writhe in mockery. "Ah, and
that's a pity too. You got to learn now what it means bein' on the beach
and doin' _without_ drinks--'cept as you kin cadge them off'n 'alf-caste
Chinymen and such. You won't like it, you won't."
"Do you?" asked Junius.
"Me? I'm used to it. But, Lord, look at them 'ands! I'll lay you never
did a day's work in your life."
"Did you?" inquired Junius Peabody equably.
"Garn!" retorted Sydney with a peculiarly unlovely sneer. "W'y, you
don't know yet what you've come to, you don't. 'Jaimes, fetch me me
mornin' drawft!'--that's your style. Only there 'int no Jaimes no more,
and no drawfts to be 'ad. Ho!... You're only a beachcomber now, mytey. A
lousy beachcomber! And you needn't expect me to do none of your beggin'
for you, for I won't--no fear!"
Junius observed him with attention, with rather more attention than he
could remember having bestowed upon any specific object for a long time.
He examined the features of the Sydney Duck, the undue prominence of
nose and upper lip, the singularly sharp ridge of the whole front
face--whittled, as it might have been; the thin, pink ears and the
jutting teeth that gave him something of the feeble ferocity of a rat.
And with new perception he saw Sydney Duck, not only as an unpleasant
individual but as a type, the fitting comrade and associate for such as
he.
"It's a fact," said Junius Peabody; "I've fallen, pretty low."...
* * * * *
He looked out again upon that unprofitable dawning. To right and left
stretched the flat, dim monotony of the beach, lined in misty surf and
hedged with slim palms like a tufted palisade. From behind drifted the
smokes from scores of homely hearths. Down by Tenbow Head the first
pearling luggers were putting out under silver clouds of sail. Sea and
land stirred once more with the accustomed affairs of busy men, but here
between land and sea was the fringe of things, the deserted domain of
wreckage and cast-off remnants. Here lay a broken spar half buried in
the sand, part of the complex fabric that once enabled some fair ship
to skim the waves. And here among the kelp and the bodies of marine
animals he saw the loosened staves of a barrel limply spread and
upthrust like the fingers of some dead giant, with an empty bottle near
by as if fallen from that slack grip. And here, lastly, he was aware of
Junius Peabody, also on the beach, washed up at the far edge of the
world like any other useless bit of jetsam: to stay and to rot.
"Pretty low," said Junius Peabody.
But Sydney took no offense, and seemed, on the contrary, to extract a
certain degree of pleasure from the other's recognition of his lot.
"Oh, it 'in't so bad," he declared, with a quite human impulse to
reverse the picture. "There's easy pickin' if you know 'ow. Nobody
starves 'ere anyw'y, that's one thing. No nigger will let a man
starve--a soft lot of flats that w'y, the niggers. Often you fall in
with a weddin' or a birthday or somethin'; they're always 'avin' a feast
and _they_ don't care who comes--they 'in't proud. Then you got nobody
aharryin' of you up and down and askin' you wot for, that's a
comfort--my word! And once in a while there's sure to be a new chum come
along with a bit of brass--some flat who's willin' to stand the drinks."
"Like me," suggested Junius.
"Oh, there's plenty like you," nodded the Sydney Duck. "It's the
pearlin' brings 'em, though it 'in't so soft as maybe they think, you
see. When they're stony they mostly tyke a job till they find a chance
to get aw'y again--that's if they're able to do anything at all."
For the first time in his life, probably, Junius Peabody considered his
accomplishments with a view to estimating their value in the open
market.
"I once won the fancy diving event at Travers Island," he said. "And I
used to swim the four-forty in a trifle over six minutes."
"That must 'a' been several seasons back," grinned Sydney.
"Not so many," said Junius slowly. "I forgot to add that I was also an
excellent judge of French brandy."
He got to his feet and began to divest himself of the spotted remains of
an expensive white silk suit.
"What's the gyme now?"
"Morning bath. Have you had yours yet?"
The Sydney Duck laughed, laughter that was strangely unmirthful and so
convulsive that Junius blinked at him, fearing a fit of some kind.
"You're a rare 'un," gasped the Sydney Duck. "I seen a good few, I 'ave,
but none as rare as you. Mornin' bawth--and 'ave I 'ad mine yet!... On
the beach at Fufuti!" He waggled his hands.
"Well, if it seems so queer as all that why not blow yourself?" offered
Junius with perfect good nature. "You can't tell, you might like it.
Come along."
"Garn!" snarled the other.
So Junius turned away and walked down the strand alone. Outward the
ground swell broke and came rushing in with long-spaced undulations, and
as he stood at the verge, shrinking in his nakedness, the east flamed
suddenly through its great red archway and turned all the world to
tinted glory. Fair across to him was flung a shining path. It seemed as
if he had only to step out along that straight way of escape, and for an
instant he had a yearning to try. Never in his life had he followed a
single course to a definite end, and what could be better now than to
choose one at last, to follow, to go on following--and not to return.
* * * * *
He looked down at his body and saw as a revelation the pitiful wasting
of his strength--how scrawny he was of limb, how bloated about the
middle, and his skin how soft and leprous white. He made an ugly figure
under the clear light of the morning, like the decaying things around
him, where the carrion flies were beginning to swarm in the sun. And
there came upon him then a sudden physical loathing of himself, a final
sense of disaster and defeat.
"If I could only begin again--" thought Junius Peabody, and stopped and
laughed aloud at the wish, which is old as folly and futile as sin. But
he had no relief from laughter either, for it was the same he had just
heard from the Sydney Duck, a sort of hiccup. So he stopped that too and
strode forthright into the wash....
Something flung against his shin and tripped him. He sprawled awkwardly
from a singular impact, soft though quite solid. He could see the object
floating on the next wave and was curious enough to catch it up. It was
a rough lump of some substance, a dirty grayish-brown in color, the size
of a boy's football. The touch of it was rather greasy.
Junius stayed with the trove in his hands and the tingling of an odd
excitement in his mind. His first instinct rejected the evidence. He had
a natural suspicion that events do not happen so. But while he brought
to bear such knowledge as he owned, facts read or heard, he found
himself still thrilled.
There was a sound from the shore and the Sydney Duck hurried up behind
him to the edge of the water, both hands clawed, his little eyes
distended.
"You've got it!" He took two steps after a retreating wave, but the next
drove him hopping. It was strange to see the fellow drawn by a frantic
eagerness and chased again by the merest flicker of foam, lifting his
feet as gingerly as a cat.
"What have I got?" asked Junius, standing at mid-thigh where the surf
creamed in between them.
"It's the stuff! Chuck it over--wha-i-i!" Sydney's voice rose to a
squeal as a frothing ripple caught his toes.
Junius came wading shoreward, but he did not relinquish the lump when
the other felt and paddled it feverishly, babbling.
"Look at that--look at that! All smooth an' soft--an' kind of slimy,
like. Oh, no, we 'in't struck it fair rich this time, nor nothin'--oh,
_now_!... Mytey, I tell you--by Gaw', I tell you it's the real stuff!"
"But oughtn't there be an odor--a perfume?"
"Not yet--not while it's fresh. That comes after. And any'ow, what else
could it be--'ey?"
Junius shook his head.
"'Ere, I'll show you, you poor flat!" The larrikin raged about like a
man in a strong temper. "Where's a nail? Gimme a nail, a long nail, or a
piece of wire--'ell, I'll show you!"
He snatched up a strip of planking from the sand and wrenched a rusty
spike from it. With swift jerky gestures he gathered a few dry chips and
splinters, whipped a match, and set them alight. In this brief blaze he
heated the spike and then applied it to the lump. It sank smoothly,
leaving a little melted ring around the hole.
"Ambergris!" he yelped. "Worth near two pound an ounce, right 'ere in
Fufuti.... And the 'arf of it's mine," he added, with a startling shift
to the most brazen impudence.
Junius regarded him, incredulous.
"What? That's wot! Wasn't I here? 'In't I been pallin' along of you?
It's a fair divvy. W'y, damn your soul," he screamed in a sudden febrile
blast of fury, "you don't think you're goin' to 'og my 'arf an' all!"
"_Your_ half!" repeated Junius. "Huh--nothing small about you, is there?
Why, you weren't anywhere near when I found it. Didn't you pass up the
swim?"
Just here the Sydney Duck made his mistake. Had he proceeded with any
finesse, with any understanding of his man, he might have done about as
he pleased and it is likely that little of moment would have transpired
on Fufuti beach that morning. But he acted by his lights, which were
narrow and direct, and he hit Junius Peabody suddenly in the smiling
face of him and knocked him reeling backward. The next instant he was
running for the nearest palms with the prize tucked under one arm.
* * * * *
Junius sat on the sand and blinked, and at first he felt rather hurt,
for he was not used to being treated so, at least not while he was
sober. And thereafter he grinned, for such was his way of turning aside
a casual unpleasantness, and the thing undeniably had its humorous
aspect. But finally came the throb of a strange new emotion, as if some
one had planted a small, hot coal in his breast.
It is a fact worthy of note that never before had Junius Peabody known
the sting of a living anger. But never before had Junius Peabody been
reduced to a naked Junius Peabody, dot and carry nothing--penniless,
desperate, and now cheated of a last hope. That made the difference.
"Hey!" he protested. "See here, you know--Dammit!"
He struggled up and climbed anyhow into trousers, coat, and shoes, and
set off at a shambling trot, with no clear notion of what he meant to do
but keeping the larrikin in sight.
Sydney dodged in among the trees, found them too scant for cover, paused
to fling a yellow snarl over his shoulder, and swung up the shore. He
turned, questing here and there, shouting as he ran, and presently
raised an answering shout from a hollow whence another figure started up
to join him, a bearded, heavy-set rogue, whose abnormally long arms
dangled like an ape's out of his sleeveless shirt. Junius recognized
Willems, the third of their party the night before, and he knew where
the interest of that sullen big Hollander would lie. He had a coalition
of thievery against him now. The two beachcombers ran on together,
footing briskly past the long boat sheds and the high white veranda of
Bendemeer's place....
Under this iron thatch stood the man Bendemeer himself, cool and lathy
in spotless ducks, planted there, as was his morning custom, to oversee
and command all his little capital. And in truth it was a kingdom's
capital, the center of a trading monopoly of the old type and chief seat
of as strange and absolute a tyrant as the world still offers room for;
rich, powerful, independent, fearing nothing between heaven and hell and
at once the best-loved and the best-hated individual in his sphere of
influence.
Bendemeer, trader, philanthropist, and purveyor of rotgut, was one of
those unclassed growths of the South Seas that almost constitute a new
racial type. Nobody could have placed his nationality or his caste or
his accent. His name was of a piece with the grim self-sufficiency that
gave nothing and asked nothing: an obvious jest, borrowed from the
Persian song of an Irish poet, but the one touch of fancy about him.
Somewhere, somehow, he had taken a cynic twist or a rankling wound that
had turned his white man's blood once for all. They tell stories of such
cases up and down the islands, and mostly the stories are very ugly and
discreditable indeed. But not so concerning Bendemeer; against whom was
no scandal, only curses and bitterness. For his peculiarity took the
especially irritating form of fair dealings with some thousands of
brown-skinned natives and no dealings at all with any man of his own
color--except to beat him at strict business and then to sell him as
much villainous liquor as he could at the highest possible price. As he
leaned there indolently in his doorway with arms folded and cheroot
between his thin lips he could measure his own land as far as he could
see on either side, a small part of his holdings in plantations and
trading stations throughout the archipelago. Offshore, behind the only
good strip of barrier reef and near the only navigable channel on the
south coast, lay anchored his _Likely Jane_, flagship of a smart little
navy. His gang of boys was hustling cargo out of her in surfboats, and
both boys and boats were the handiest and ablest that could be found
anywhere for that ticklish work. He had only to turn his head to view
the satisfactory bulk of his sheds and dependencies, solid, new-painted.
The house at his back was trim, broad, and comfortable, and in the
storeroom underneath lay thousands of dollars' worth of assorted trade
goods, all of which would eventually become copra and great wealth.
This was the man, decidedly in possession of his own legs and able to
stand and to navigate on the same, to whom Junius Peabody appealed in
his wretched need....
Junius stumbled up to the steps. The burst had marrow-drawn him, his
lungs labored pitifully as if he were breathing cotton wool. It was hot,
for the sun had sprung wide like an opened furnace gate, but he had not
started a pore.
"I've been robbed," he wheezed, and pointed a wavering hand. "Those
chaps there--robbed--!"
Bendemeer glanced aside up the strand after the disappearing ruffians
and then down at the complainant, but otherwise he did not move, only
stayed considering from his lean, leathery mask, with still eyes,
outward-looking.
"What do you care?" he said idly. "You'll be dead in a month anyhow."
Junius gaped toward him dizzily. The fellow was the local authority and
besides had taken his money. He could not believe that he had heard
aright. "But, say--they've stolen my property!"
Bendemeer shot a blue ring of smoke into the sunshine. "In that case
you've lost it. They're heading for the Rocks, and once they've gone to
earth there you never could find them--you'd be torn to pieces if you
did."
He nicked the ash of his cheroot in a pause. "I suppose you mean I might
help you," he continued. "I might, but I won't. I've seen a good many of
your kind before, drift stuff that gets washed up on the beach. You're
not worth it. And now, since you have no further business with me, I'd
be obliged if you'd kindly get the hell out of my front yard. You're
interfering with the view." ...
Junius Peabody found himself groping away through the sunlight on Fufuti
beach once more. A dead calm held the air. Under the steady, low organ
note of the reef he could hear only the drag of his own steps, the
curious, unforgetable "shr-ring" of boot leather on coral.
It was borne upon him then that he had just acquired a liberal
education, that he had learned more essential facts within the last hour
than he had ever gained before in his twenty-odd years--a tabloid of
life--and too late to be of any use. Such abstractions are sometimes
valuable to a man, but they are not the sort that brings a lump in his
throat and a winking in his eyes. The thing, the sheerly heartfelt thing
that Junius Peabody said to himself, sniffling, was this: "And he
didn't--didn't even offer me a drink!"
There was nothing to draw him any farther--no help, no promise of
success, not even a single witness to shame with a grin or to urge with
an expectant stare--nothing outside himself. Fufuti beach lay stark and
aching white before him. The two thieves had long since lost themselves
among the palms. Down by the water's edge a couple of Bendemeer's boat
boys were salvaging odds and ends lost overboard in an upset in
yesterday's heavy surf. They did not waste a thought or a look on him.
He was many degrees less important than a lot of other rubbish around
there. He might just as well, he might much better, slump down in a
sodden heap amid the rest of the jetsam. And yet he did not.... And he
did go on. For some obscure, irrational human reason, he did go on.
Perhaps because of the tiny coal in his breast, blown red by Bendemeer's
blasting contempt. Perhaps because, after all, no man ever quite
achieves complete resemblance to a jellyfish.
* * * * *
On the southern tip of Fufuti stands Tenbow Head, the end of a rough
little jut of land known locally as the Rocks. To speak by the book,
there is neither rock nor head, but the abyss turned in its sleep once,
and shouldered half a mile of Fufuti's shore line to a height of thirty
feet--enough for a mountain in this sea of humble atolls. Incidentally
it smashed the elevated reefs like chalk in a mortar. Tenbow is a wreck
of shattered coral terraces, clad in the eager growths which profit by
its trifling rise and which alone do profit. For the rest it remains the
island jungle, a section apart and untouched, almost impenetrable.
Junius Peabody began his exploration of this cheerful region by falling
on his face in a gully and bruising his nose very grievously. He found
no trail to guide him up the slope. It was pitted like slag, deceitful
as old honeycomb. The footing crumbled; tempting beds of moss and fern
slipped away at his clutch; twisting lianas caught his ankles and sent
him asprawl. The very ground seemed armed against him with a malignant
life of its own. He had to creep among jagged teeth that sliced his
flimsy garments and his putty-soft flesh. And when a loosened mass slid
gently over at a touch and caught and crushed an arm he scarcely
wondered whether any personal power had directed. It was all the same.
* * * * *
For a long time he lay looking at his pulped fingers and the driven
drops of blood from the quick of his nails, sensing the exquisite pain
almost as a luxury, hugging it to him. But at length he stirred and
began to wriggle forward again.
"If I'm going to die anyway," said Junius Peabody, "I'm going to die
doing this." Which was an extraordinary remark on all accounts....
And so by dint of following something and still following with unlimited
purpose over a limited terrain, he ran it down in the end and came to
the hiding place he sought.
A rooted instinct of the potentially criminal, which prompts them to be
ready to flee though no man pursueth, had moved the beachcombers of
Fufuti long since to prepare their snug retreat in the heart of the
Rocks. On the inward shore of the promontory they had found a level bit
of shelf screened by lush vegetation, with the green-stained cliff for
wall and the sapphire waters of the lagoon below for forecourt. Hither
they repaired in the intervals of lesser lawbreaking and free
entertainment, always secure of hearth and shelter where the broad
pandanus spread its shingles. And hither, straight as merry men to their
shaw, they had brought the great treasure of the morning.
A truly homelike scene was that on which Junius Peabody peered from
ambush above....
From the convenient branch of a tree the Sydney Duck had suspended by
its middle a single stout stick. At one end of the stick he had slung
the stolen lump in a fiber net. At the other he had attached a battered
tin can of the kind that the beneficent enterprise of an American oil
company had spread to most of the dark parts of the earth. On this
balance of an ancient and primitive design he was engaged in weighing
his ill-gotten gains, squatting to the task.
"A gallon of water weighs a good eight pound," he declared. "I figger
five quarts an' a 'arf. And five is ten and the 'arf is one--"
Willems stood beside him in an attitude of stolid skepticism. There was
no mistaking the breed of this big derelict. He had managed to assert it
on a Pacific isle by fashioning himself somehow a pipe with a clay bowl
and a long stem of the true drooping line. He looked quite domestic and
almost paternal as he shuffled his broad feet and towered over the
little larrikin. But the fists he carried in the pockets of his
dungarees bulged like coconuts, and his hairy arms were looped brown
cables. A tough man for an argument was Mynheer Willems.
"Yaw," he was saying. "But how you know you got five quarts and a half?"