THE EMPTY DIVING DRESS
Night in Samarai Island town.
Stars in the water all round about the houses; stars glinting and
disappearing, high among the eighteen-foot leaves of Samarai’s splendid
palms. At the back of the island, where one walks for quiet, the sea
lying like a witch’s mirror of black glass between the scarcely visible
white of the coral pathway and the dark, lurking hills of Sariba and
Basilisk.
Strolling there in the pleasant gloom, by the fresh, salt-smelling
straits, the Marquis and I pursued our quest of the great stone that we
had seen in the charm-bag of Mo, the Sorcerer of Kata-Kata, and that
had already nearly cost us our lives.
“I like this Samarai,” observed the Marquis, treading along the
tinkling gravel of the path with the lightness Nature had oddly linked
to his enormous bulk. “So small that you go round it all in the quarter
of an hour; so beautiful that it resembles a dream of heaven. This
place is Eden, my friend.”
“So all the steamer passengers say,” I answered. “If you’d seen some of
the ladies of Samarai punching one another’s heads with umbrellas in
front of Bunn’s Hotel, or watched half the people of the town going off
in boats on Sunday afternoon and all rowing away from each other, you’d
maybe reckon the Eden part was wearing a little thin. You’ve never
lived on coral islands; I have.”
“I shut my eyes for what I do not like, and look at the rest in a
strange novelty like this: I am not the new broom that never rejoices,”
replied the Marquis, twisting the proverb in a superior tone. “We are
come here on a confounded dangerous and fragile mission; therefore, we
need all the refreshness we can get for our minds.”
“Well, admire the scenery all you like,” I said, “though I don’t see
how it is going to help you to find out where Mo has got to with the
diamond.”
“I demand of you, don’t we jolly well know he is here?” asked the
Marquis. “Wasn’t it on the cause of that, that we are come from
Kata-Kata right off, as soon as we are found that he is taken fright
and enlisted on a pearling vessel to get away before the magistrate and
ourselves should come back to punish him?”
“We don’t know,” I said. “We only guessed. You remember, when the
police had burned the town, and killed the pigs, and all the people had
run off into the bush, being well scared, as they deserved to be――that
was when we heard from our boys that Mo wasn’t there at all; but they
only knew he’d gone down to the coast.”
“But we ourselves, we knew that the pearler vessel had been recruiting
along that veritable coast; that suffices, since the boys have said
that Mo recruited once a long time ago to Thursday Island, and knows
the diving.”
“One can’t tell he didn’t merely go off into the bush,” I said. “I’d
rather he had. A man who goes among a lot of pearlers with a rough
diamond about him that he doesn’t know the value of, isn’t likely to
keep it long――if he keeps his life, he’s fortunate.”
“We shall know on tomorrow, when the fleet comes in for Sunday. It
seems to me that I haven’t always been thankful enough for Sunday.
Flint, tell me, it is surely unusual that a great sorcerer like Mo
should engage himself to work in a pearl fleet?”
“Not so very,” I said. “He bosses the other boys round a lot, as
they’re all afraid of him, and he generally manages to get the best
part of their wages. But I don’t think Mo would have come away if he
hadn’t been scared. He certainly had a very good job where he was.”
“He is wonderful, that man,” said the Marquis, musingly. “I shall be
glad to see him again, although he has done so much bad.”
“Don’t go asking after him,” I warned. “Best leave it to me. We’re
playing for a big stake. My word, Marky, it is a big one! All the money
for everything we want, all the rest of our lives――and we can’t afford
to excite suspicion. These pearler folk keep their eyes skinned, I can
tell you; they live by that.”
“A stitch in time is as good as a mile. I comprehend your warning,
and leave it to you,” said the Marquis, with what one must call (for
the want of a better term) his most Marquisatorial air. “I have all
confidence in you. Do you think that they may perhaps have some
excellent billiard-tables in those hotels?”
“I don’t think; I know they haven’t,” I said. “But they have something
we can knock balls about on, if that will do.”
The next day was Saturday, and on Saturday afternoon, according to the
customs of the pearling fleet, all the luggers were due to come in for
Sunday. It was not a large fleet, there at Samarai. New Guinea has
never been much of a pearling center; but Thursday and Broome Islands
were temporarily exhausted, and a few of the fleet had run over to
Samarai to try what they could do about China Strait.
It is a nasty place for pearling: the shell is none too plentiful, the
depths are appalling; and the current in the straits is at all times
exceedingly dangerous. Still, it is better than nothing when nothing
better is to be had. The best class of pearler does not come to New
Guinea, as a rule. I expected to see none but the riffraff of Thursday
Island when the fleet came in.
There were signs of their presence already. Samarai had not been
improved by the shelling. The hotels were prosperous, and, in
consequence, rowdy; the Papuans, who had come over from various places
in the Territory to take service with the fleet in different ways,
were a nasty-looking lot. There was a new store, kept by a Greek named
George. It had divers’ gear in it, also pearl-shell, curios, cards,
dice, firearms, and knives. I had heard something of George himself, in
my journeyings about the north coasts of Australia, and I didn’t think
him an addition to the society of Samarai, doubtful as the latter was.
However, I wanted a talk with him before the boats came in; so I
disposed of the Marquis safely. It was not difficult: the police were
having a dance on the green near the Government jetty, and he had only
to hear of it to be off like a bandicoot. Then I went down the curious
little main street that is so like something in a theater, with its
primly built offices and stores on one side, and the palms, and the
flaming blue sea, and the great carved canoes from Misima Island on the
other, to the tin shanty where George the Greek was to be found.
I bought some of his rubbishing curios for a commencement, taking care
to inform him that I had a French nobleman tourist in tow, as I knew
well George the Greek wasn’t likely to suppose I wanted the stuff
for myself. And I made the transaction seem natural by demanding a
percentage on the sale, and getting it, too. (Of course, I handed it
over to the Marquis afterward.) By this time the little beast was
quite pleasant and friendly, and disposed to talk, so I proposed an
adjournment to the hotel, intending to pump him cautiously as to the
natives employed in the fleet. He took his keys and began shutting up
shop; it was near closing time already, and they don’t take much stock
of hours in an island town. I had a good look at him while he locked
up, and liked him not at all. I had never seen him so close before.
He was good-looking, but unpleasantly so――black, shiny eyes, too
large, with lashes too long; hooked Mephistophelian nose; jet-black
curls like a spaniel’s; boot-brush mustache――all cheap and gaudy and
smart-looking, and all a bit greasy, somehow. He had horrible little
soft hands, with turn-back fingers; and his figure, though good, was
as twisty and wriggly as a snake’s. It came upon me right then that
if there was a man in New Guinea likely to give us trouble about
that stone (should any breath of the secret creep out), there he
stood――George the Greek.
We didn’t get our talk in the hotel, after all. Before the Greek had
done locking up, the natives raised a cry of “Sail-O!” and we ran out
to see if by any chance it was the fleet. The hour was too early. I
scarcely expected anything but some stray cutter up from Port Moresby
or the East.
But it was the fleet――two hours before its time. We saw the thin masts
pricking like black needles against the sky, a long way off, as we
stood among the trails of pink beach convolvulus, looking into the
Straits. We saw the hulls rise up above the sea-line, and the shapes of
the little vessels appear, and then――――
“Ba God, dey’re half-masted!” said the Greek.
“Half-masted!” repeated the Marquis, who had just turned up, the dance
being done. “But that signifies death!”
“That’s right,” I said. “Some one in the fleet’s dead. That’s why they
are coming home early, and have their flags half-masted. Look, you can
see now――every boat’s got it.”
“What was the name of the boat that came recruiting?” asked the Marquis.
“The _Gertrude_,” I said, treading sharply on his toe. He took the hint
angelically.
“Da _Gertrude_, she is coming first,” contributed the Greek, watching.
“There is a nigger on da _Gertrude_, he owe me three pound nineteen
shillin’. I hope he is not dead.”
“A Malay?” I asked.
“A New Guinea――Mo. He is bad man, dat Mo. He promise, he no pay. I go
down to da jet’, and look. If he is dead, I make da owner pay me.”
We tramped down together through the burning sun to the wooden jetty
that stretched its stilty legs out into water of such a wonderful green
that nobody could hope to describe it or compare it to anything save
itself. We waited there for near half an hour, before the fleet came
up――a dozen or so of poor-looking luggers, dirty and ill-mannered.
The _Gertrude_ came in first, and George the Greek was into a dingey
and over her gunwale before she had time to drop anchor. In a minute
he reappeared, with a face of demoniac fury; spat violently over the
counter, cursed the ship and all in her in at least four different
languages, and jumped into his boat again.
“Lost your money?” I asked, as the dingey shot up to the steps.
George the Greek did not reply, otherwise than by stating, in
gross and in detail, the things he would do to the owner of the
_Gertrude_――should fortune favor him with a chance. The owner of the
_Gertrude_, meantime, a fair, flushed, bloated man, who seemed to have
been drinking, and to have arrived at the pathetic stage, leaned over
the counter and called out to George to “let the poor blighter rest
in ’is blooming grave, and don’t go bringin’ bad luck on yourself by
cursin’ the dead.”
“He got no grave!” shouted George, with much bad language. (He seemed
to think it a very mean circumstance that Mo should have no grave.) “He
lie dere at bottom of da sea, like one damned lobsta.”
“Don’t you make no mistake,” rejoined the captain with drunken
gravity. “He’s here in the cabin, wrapped in his dress, as we took the
poor blighter up, and he’ll be buried proper, just as he is. No one can
say I don’t treat my niggers decent, dead or alive. Good Joe Gilbert:
that’s what I’m known as, and that’s what I am.” He took a bottle out
of his pocket and inverted it on his nose.
“Marky,” I said quietly, “I’d be much obliged if you would go off and
wait for me somewhere; I’ll join you by and by. I want to see if Mo
left any baggage that we could get hold of, and the fewer of us there
are in it, the better. We don’t want to attract notice.”
“I go,” said the Marquis, departing. “I wait near the shop of the
Greek. He interest me, somehow, that beggar.”
I waited until George had gone off, cursing, and then got aboard the
lugger. The captain, on hearing that I was collecting curios for
the Marquis, let me see all the stuff that Mo had left behind. His
sorcerer’s bag, full of the odds and ends we had already seen, lay in
a corner of the little forecastle. I scarcely expected to find what I
was looking for there, and I did not. After purchasing one or two bits
of carving at a price that put the captain in a good temper, I asked
him if that was all the Papuan had had.
“All that I know of,” he said, “unless it was the rubbish he used to
put round his neck before he’d get into the diving-dress.”
My heart beat a little faster. “What was that?” I asked.
“Couldn’t tell you; some of their sorcerer’s charms. Most like, a bone
or a queer bit of coral. His brother would tie it on for him; most
times he went down he’d have something of the sort, and he’d be praying
to his devils before he started, to keep away the sharks. Seems to me
he got the wrong sort of prayer under way: his devils kept away the
sharks all right, but they didn’t take no care about divers’ paralysis,
and that’s what got Mo. He was dead Lord knows how long when we pulled
him up, and he must have lost his air, as he’s all jammed into the
helmet and corselet, and we can’t get it off.”
“Thanks,” I said, picking up my purchases. “I’ll go and take these to
the Marquis.”
I found him waiting near the Greek’s, looking at the things displayed
in the window. Among them was a diving-dress complete: great copper
and gun-metal helmet joined to a wide breast-plate or “corselet;”
leaden-soled boots; rubber-cloth body.
“Did you see that dress?” I asked, as we walked on. “Mo’s inside of one
just like it, jammed in tight. I didn’t see him, but I have seen that
sort of thing before. The face is all flattened out against the glasses
of the helmet....”
“Enough, enough!” cried the Marquis.
“It isn’t enough,” I said. “I’ve got to explain, for a reason. Well,
being like that, there’s no getting them out of the dress without
cutting them to pieces, so it’s the custom of the diving trade to
bury them as they are. Mo will be buried this afternoon over at the
cemetery island. And――_and_――anything he may have had on his person
when he died will be buried with him. And, Marky, the captain told me
he usually went down with some sort of a charm hung round his neck. And
the diamond’s not among his gear that he left behind.”
“It is too horrible!” said the Marquis, his pink face paling.
“All right; if you think it is, I don’t. I’ll take over your share and
welcome.”
“No, I don’t desire that.” The color was coming back to his face. “If
it must be, it shall. Tell me all you think.”
“Come for a walk round the island, and we’ll talk,” I said, leading
off by the big Calophyllum tree that bears such fine nuts. We didn’t
say much till we were away at the back of the island, where we had
strolled the night before. It looked fine there: the view was like the
back-cloth to the scene of “The Pirate’s Island” in a melodrama, and
the arcade of palms was cool and green in the glare of the afternoon.
We talked, walking up and down. I did not want to go back to the town
side until we had finished our plan of campaign, for Samarai, like all
tiny island towns, is full of ears. The Marquis, I must say, came out
rather well here; he had a good, clear head of his own, when it wasn’t
temporarily thrown out of business by one of his three fads, and, as
there was no dancing, no sorcery, and nothing with a petticoat, grass
or silken, in this affair, he was quite sensible.
“First it is to discover,” he said, “whether any one has found out
about the stone. What do you think?”
“No knowing,” I said, “but I think not, on the whole. Mo had only been
here a few days, and unless he was actually doing magic, he wouldn’t
have been opening up his bag. You know he was shy of that, anyhow.”
“Point one: It was probably not discovered that he had the stone. Point
two: Had he taken the stone with him when he dived?”
“Again, no knowing. But I reckon he did. There’d be room on his chest
below the corselet――that’s the breastplate thing that extends over the
diver’s shoulders and chest, to keep off water pressure. And, if he
didn’t know what a diamond was, he certainly valued the thing a lot,
for his sorcery work. And the captain says he usually took some charm
to keep him safe.”
“Good. Point three: How shall we do this sacrilege, since it is
convented that we do it?”
“We’ll have to wait a few days, till the nights are dark all
through――there’s an hour or two of moonlight just now――go over to the
cemetery island in a canoe by ourselves, and do what we have to do.
Makes you creep, doesn’t it?”
“I creep, but I think of my beautiful château in Indre-et-Loire,
all ruined, and my mother, who is already very old, and who has but
little money for the candles she will burn in church at my safety in
traveling, and then, by Jove, old chap, I say to me that the proof of
the pudding sweeps clean, as your excellent English proverbs make it,
and I decide to act.”
“Well, your proverbs are original, Marky, but I don’t know that they
haven’t a queer sort of sense of their own. A pudding this size ought
to sweep most things clean――if you will have it that way. And we’re not
breaking any law of God or man that I know of, in taking a diamond from
a corpse that didn’t know what to do with it when he was alive, and
doesn’t need it now.”
“Perfectly.”
“There’s only one thing. Don’t get to asking any questions anywhere of
any kind of person, about anything. I hope that’s definite. Because you
might, without meaning it in the least, get George or some other fellow
thinking, and we don’t want them to think.”
“I comprehend perfectly. Flint, this is altogether so good that I feel
myself exalted. I will dance――――”
“No, Marky, don’t,” I begged. “Somebody might come. I like your dancing
all right, and I think you’d knock spots off Pavlova and Mordkin, and
the girl who served up prophet’s head――but I don’t want you to dance
now. Anything that excites remark and draws attention to us two is
going to be bad policy at present. Swear off, Marky, if you’re wise.”
“It was but the dance of _Marguerite_ with the casket of jewels that I
desired to make――nothing more, my friend,” said the Marquis, a little
wistfully. “The dance, I mean, that she ought to make――it is never
right done by the theater.”
“Wait till you get the jewel before you start jewel dances,” I said.
“Did you ever hear of the cuckoo clock and the parson?”
“Never; tell me of it.”
“Well, there was once a poor woman who had a cuckoo clock, and the
clock stopped, and wouldn’t go on. Now it happened just then that the
parson came in to make a call on her, and he was rather a bit of an
amateur clock-maker.
“So he took the clock off home with him to fix up, and the poor woman
was overcome with gratitude. And, by and by, he sent it back, saying
it was all right. A few days after, he called on the poor woman again,
and said, in that high and mighty tone a lot of parsons have, ‘Well, my
good woman, how does your clock go now?’ And the poor creature said,
trembling, ‘Thank you, sir, it’s only too kind of you, sir, and it goes
very well indeed, sir. There’s only just one little thing, sir――since
you was so good as to mend it, it oos before it cucks!’ Mark, don’t you
ever oo before you cuck. Lots of people do, and it’s a mighty bad habit
to get into.”
“Certainly, I will remember, and I will not dance the dance of
_Marguerite_ and the jewels, or indeed any dance at all. You have
much wisdom, Flint,” said the Marquis, quite gravely. “I am afraid it
shall be a good while that we have to wait and do nothing. Truly, hope
deferred makes a long turning.”
It certainly seemed a long time, though it was only a week, before I
thought the nights were dark enough to carry out our plan. In the
blazing moonlight of New Guinea some wandering native would without
doubt have seen us crossing the straits to the cemetery island, even if
no white man spied us. The moonless nights were our only chance. But it
was irksome to wait, and wonder and speculate whether any one, by any
possible chance, knew as much as we knew ourselves.
Well, the moonless nights came round, and the evening I had fixed
upon arrived. It was Saturday, when I reckoned that the greater part
of Samarai would be drunk and not in a condition to notice any one’s
movements very closely. I had not adopted a disguise, which the Marquis
was very anxious for me to do. I explained to him that one might as
well hope to disguise the keeper of an elephant successfully――the
elephant would be bound to give him away. And the elephant itself, I
added, couldn’t be made to look like anything but an elephant.
The conclusion was obvious. We did not disguise.
With two spades and a pick in the bottom of a good, double-outrigged
canoe, we set out quietly from the beach in the starlit dusk, not too
early and not too late. There was not the least difficulty about it,
which fact I am sure disappointed the Marquis terribly. I think he
would have liked to black his face and wear a conspirator’s cloak,
and wriggle on his stomach from the hotel to the beach, and have
half-a-dozen Greeks and Malays chase him with revolvers.
But, as a matter of fact, nobody saw us, and we got away without so
much as a splash.
It was a glorious night: we floated in a hollow globe of stars――stars
above, stars below, some flashing like the great diamond we had gone
out to find, some glowing like little moons and casting long spears of
light into the sea. We had a mile or two to go to the cemetery island;
I paddled all the way, and the Marquis, crouched rather uncomfortably
on the rough perch that does duty for a seat in native canoes, sang
softly to himself in I do not know how many languages. The more his
emotions were stirred, the more polyglot he became, as a rule. He
seemed to be a perfect Tower of Babel that night.
We grounded on a white sand beach that shone faintly in the starlight,
and made our way up to the cemetery, along a dank, overgrown track,
with the weird nightbirds of New Guinea chipping and sawing, and
clanking bells, and cracking whips, in the bush alongside. The
intoxicating scent of the tropical forest came sweet and strong in
our faces, on the fresh night-breeze――the smell that “makes your
heart-strings crack,” when you encounter it unexpectedly in some warm,
scented hothouse, far away from the burning equatorial lands.
I do not think either of us thought more than we could help of the
horrible task we had come to do. I, for one, rigidly kept my mind
away from it, and thought only of the stone.... How many carats was
it?――I wondered. We were all familiar with the photographs of the great
Cullinan in the rough, just then. I judged the Sorcerer’s Stone,
compared with that, to be small, but large compared with any other in
the world. Say, three hundred in the rough.... What would it cut to?
How much would it be worth? How many tens of thousands? And who would
buy such a costly gem?
Sometimes these very large diamonds were harder to dispose of
than smaller stones, since purchasers were so few. There were the
millionaires of America――and the rajahs of India――and it would take the
very biggest of either to make bids for our treasure, when we got it.
I didn’t say _if_ we got it. I was determined that we should get it.
We had no lanterns with us: the light of the stars was enough for a
good bushman, and I knew the cemetery track by heart. So do most men
who have lived long in New Guinea.
I guessed where the diver must have been buried: there were not many
suitable spots left. We stumbled along among the overgrown, neglected
mounds, destitute of name or stone to mark them out one from another,
and found what I was looking for――a new, bare grave. I think my heart
was beating rather fast as I struck a match and looked, to make sure....
I dropped the match, and stamped on it.
“Marquis,” I said, “we’re done――” and my voice sounded strange in my
own ears, as I spoke.
“They are before us?” cried the Marquis, going down on his knees by the
grave. “A match!”
“No good,” I said, striking one, however, for a moment. “You see how
the ground’s trampled――and the grave has certainly been dug up, and
covered in very roughly afterward. We’ll open it, of course, but――――”
“They would make a grave of a native roughly! They would trample about
it!”
“Not on the top of it, Mark. When you’re burying a man, black or white,
you don’t stamp over his head. No, you take my word for it, we’ve lost
this trick. But even if we have, we’ve not lost the game. Remember,
we’re on an island, and there isn’t a boat for another fortnight.”
I was digging as I spoke, spading up the loose soil in big lumps, and
throwing it out of the way. The Marquis, again with his Marquisatorial
air, took up the other spade, and joined in. I told him not to worry,
but he insisted.
“It would not be fitting a gentleman of France, if I should let you
commit this sin for me, and not sin also,” he said. I thought that if
the measure of his iniquity were to be calculated by the amount of
digging he got through, it needn’t trouble his conscience much; but
I said nothing, even when he caught a crab with his spade, and fell
almost on top of me. It pleased him, and did not harm any one――least of
all, in my opinion, the poor black wretch below.
In a very few minutes our spades struck something. I felt about in
the soil, and touched a soft, indefinite mass. Exploring carefully, I
found, to my astonishment, that, whatever else I might discover in the
grave, there was no heavy metal helmet and corselet. It was imperative
to strike a light now, no matter what the risk, and I took out a little
bit of candle I had brought with me.
There is no need to say exactly what I saw, or detail anything I may
have done. It was a brief business. Almost at once, I understood that
the grave had been opened, as I had feared; that the body had been
removed from the helmet and corselet with considerable violence,
and that, whatever else there might be in the ravaged tomb of Mo,
ex-sorcerer of Kata-Kata town, diamond there was none.
You might think that the Marquis and I would have been knocked over
by this. We weren’t a bit. We were disappointed; but we had been
disappointed about the sorcerer’s stone before, and the chances of
getting it were not much worse now than they had been on our arrival.
Samarai, a very small island, with every one in sight of every one
else all the time, and no calling steamer due, was about as good a
hunting-ground as one could wish for. And, anyhow, I didn’t mean to
lose heart, if things looked twice as black. So I told the Marquis,
and he agreed with me. He even offered to prove how little he was
discouraged by doing the war-dance of the priests in “Athalie” all the
way back to the shore. I told him I had always reckoned it was a march,
and he explained he would do the dance they ought to have done, and
didn’t.
As I wanted to return as quickly as possible, I persuaded him to put
off the performance until we had got back to the town. I thought he
would have forgotten it by that time, but he hadn’t. The spectacle
of the Marquis, in a very dirty singlet and trousers and bare, sandy
feet, doing the war-dance of the priests by starlight all down the main
street of Samarai at two o’clock in the morning is one of the things
that I expect to remember all the rest of my life.
[Illustration:
_The spectacle of the Marquis, in a dirty singlet and trousers,
and bare feet, doing the war-dance of the priests in “Athalie”
in the main street at two o’clock in the morning, is one of the
things I expect to remember all the rest of my life_]
Next morning, as might have been expected, we were both suffering
from the sort of mental sore-head that follows after great excitement,
and in consequence were somewhat depressed. We walked round and round
the island, chafing, as every one in Samarai chafes, at its narrow
confines, and discussing the affair of the diamond ceaselessly. I don’t
think I shall ever see green palms on a white shore again, or smell the
dank, weedy smell of a coral reef, without thinking of diamonds and
divers and graves. We talked it over inside and out, and upside down,
and arrived at the following conclusion:
George the Greek was probably at the bottom of the matter.
But why George the Greek was at the bottom of the matter, we did not
understand.
If George the Greek had known of the diamond, he would have got it away
from Mo by fraud or force, long before our arrival in Samarai or Mo’s
unlucky death. He would have got it, if he had had to cut the sorcerer
to pieces, alive.
But if George the Greek did not know about the stone (and, indeed, his
conduct on the jetty suggested that he did not), why should he dig the
body up?
These conclusions seemed to point to the fact that George the Greek had
not been in the matter, after all. But neither the Marquis nor I would
accept that explanation――I am sure I do not know why. We said we felt
he had been in it; and the Marquis proposed a visit to his store, to
find out what we could.
In the hot, sleepy hours of the afternoon we went down to George’s
little shanty, feeling more dispirited, now, than either of us would
have cared to admit. The Marquis, I think, wouldn’t have danced the
war-dance of the priests for an audience of a hundred pretty women. I
wouldn’t have laughed at one of his upside-down proverbs for a case of
iced champagne. The street was steaming with the peculiarly unpleasant
heat that follows after a heavy shower in a high temperature, and the
sea, under the westering sun, dazzled like a mirror flashed in one’s
eyes by a mischievous boy.
The Marquis said, as far as I gathered, that “a feeling of sadness came
o’er him that his heart could not resist,” and I said that I felt like
chewed string.
Then happened something that put starch into both of us, as quickly as
if the thermometer had dropped twenty degrees. We heard a row beginning.
“By gum, my friend, they fight somewhere; let’s go and see,” said the
Marquis.
“It’s going to be the father of a row, I reckon,” said I, cheerfully.
“Hurry up, or we’ll miss the best.” For the shouts and stamps that we
had heard were rising into a chorus of yells, punctuated by crashes,
and by shrill screams from one especial voice. It was not a woman’s
voice, but it wasn’t exactly like the ordinary white man’s, and it had
a shrewish quality in it that I seemed to recognize.
“George, for a sovereign!” I cried. And I began to run, the Marquis
coming after as quickly as he could――which was quicker than you would
think, if you had never seen him in action.
George’s shanty, when we reached it, was invisible, except for the
roof. The rest had disappeared under a sort of human wave. At least
twenty men, black, white, and yellow, were shoving and fighting in
front of it, all apparently moved by one desire――to get inside. From
within the store came the owner’s frantic yells, mingled with language
that really was astonishing, even for a Greek. And the crashing and
smashing and banging went on and on, getting louder.
Helping each other as two strong men can, the Marquis and I shoved
somehow through the press――which, we now observed, was composed
entirely of divers. This was Sunday, and the fleet, of course, did not
work, so a number of white men and a few Papuans, Malays, and Japs, all
employed on the luggers as a rule, were left free to spend the Sabbath
as they liked. It seemed that this was what they liked; and it looked
very much like burglary, battery, and murder.
“What’s the row, Bob?” I yelled through the noise to a diver whom
I recognized. He had a tomahawk in his hand and was smashing the
window-frame of the store, the window-panes having long since gone.
Inside, I could see the Greek literally tearing his hair――the first
time I had ever seen any one do it; up till then, I thought only people
in books did so――and trying to get away from Big Carl, a huge Swede,
who had got both arms around George and was holding on like the serpent
in the statue whose name I can’t remember.
All the divers who could get into the store were inside, and they were
very busy indeed, wrecking it with tomahawks. The counter was gone, the
shelves were firewood, the curios and shells were smashed, and there
were some indistinguishable fragments of metal on the floor, which
seemed to arouse the special hatred of the invaders. Bob, too, while I
was trying to make him hear, got away from me, and into the store; and
immediately he began hacking away at the metal on the floor. It looked,
what was left of it, rather like a diver’s corselet.
I wanted to know what it was all about, and as no one seemed disposed
to stop long enough to tell me, I “cut out” by main force another man I
knew and hauled him half across the street. He swore at me, and tried
to fight, but I held him.
“You’ll go when you’ve told me what the row is about,” I said.
The man, swearing at intervals, told me.
“It’s George the Greek,” he said. “Will you let me go?” (Blank.) “It
was the helmet and corselet――Parratt, of the _Dawn_, wanted to buy one,
and George had a second-hand one in his window, cheap――They’re smashing
the floor now――why didn’t I think of that? Let me go.” (Impolite
expressions.) “Well, if you won’t” (impoliteness continued), “Parratt
was looking at it, to decide if he’d go in and buy it tomorrow――it was
only nine pounds, and a new one’s fourteen, and Parratt thought he
would, and he looked at it close, and he saw a rivet in the helmet,
and he knew the rivet, because he put it there himself――Oh!” (very
impolite remarks) “they’ve got him frog’s-marched, and they’re going to
throw him――Don’t hit me, I’ll finish――And the corselet was the one they
buried with Mo, the Papuan who got drowned the other day, and the beast
had dug him up and cut him out of it, to make the price of what Mo owed
him. So when all the divers heard that” (Will you let me go? they’re
taking him to the jetty!), “they came and made a row. Damn!”
He bit a new litany off at the commencement, as I released him, and
made for the jetty at a run. I saw them swing the yelling Greek out
over the water, and let him go with a splash. He could swim all right,
and a ducking was likely to do him good, so I didn’t trouble to
interfere, especially as I saw that the men had about satiated their
anger. I went back to the Marquis, who was staring blankly at the whole
proceeding, and told him what I had heard.
“Admirable, excellent!” he said. “What we tried to do, and have not
done, they are wrecking the shop of the Greek on account of. My
friend, I see that you and I are certainly black-watches.”
“No, Marky, no fear. We’ll keep what we know about ourselves to
ourselves, but there’s not a man in the fleet would call you or me
blackguard for what we’ve tried to do.”
“And for why?”
“Because,” I said, “this is a pearling fleet. And in a pearling fleet
you may do anything you like, sacrilege, robbery, piracy, or murder,
for a pearl, if only it’s big enough. No one would think any the less
of you really, though they might have to pretend they did, if there
were too many authorities about. As for a diamond like old Mo’s――why,
you might dig up the whole of the cemetery without upsetting any one’s
stomach or conscience. But divers don’t like being hacked out of their
dresses when they die in them, which they do pretty often, to gratify
the meanness of a mean little cur like George. That’s the case, Marky.
Anyhow, you and I have no cause to quarrel with it, for it’s shown us
that we were on a wrong scent after all. If the Greek had found such a
thing as a diamond under the corselet――and mind you, he made mincemeat
of old Mo, getting him out of it――he’d never have taken the risk he
did, in showing off the gear second-hand.”
“Then,” demanded the Marquis, “where is the diamond?”
“That’s what we’ve got to find out yet,” I said.
IV
THE FIGHT AT TWELVE
FATHOMS