A NIGHT IN THE STRAITS
They were gathered in the smoke-room which was planted upon the boat
deck abaft the chart-house. It was the snuggery held in common by Madame
and Ching and Ewing; to them was now added another--Willatopy, Pilot.
Madame, when she heard his name so unexpectedly had switched up the
lights behind her and invited him to enter. She wanted to see him
clearly, and to collect her thoughts. All through the long voyage she
had pictured her meeting with a naked Cannibal in the appropriate
setting of a tropical coral island. Yet here and now had come to her out
of the seas a young man, passably English in dress except for his bare
feet, passably English in speech, and a good deal superior to the
English in his masterly knowledge of the variegated depths of his native
seas. The blue eyes of this young man who called himself Willatopy had
astonished her when first she came under their quick steely flash; now
when they were bent upon her, quite plainly in admiration, she sensibly
shrank before their bright intelligence. They were the Toppys eyes; she
had admired them when set in Sir John's pale face; out of the dark,
almost black countenance of young Willatopy they shone like beacons.
They were beacons, the burning evidences of his Toppys blood.
It was their first night in the Straits--what Stevenson, pumped dry of
tropical epithets, so often called "a wonderful night of stars." Yet
Madame Gilbert had no eyes and no mind for the wonder of it. She could
think of nothing but the Cannibal who for months had seemed to be so
very remote and who was now so very near. Indeed exactly opposite to
her, seated cross-legged like an Englishman upon a sofa bunk. His lips
and nostrils were rather thick and broad, and his hair distinctly
negroid--one should, I suppose, say Australoid--he was of the colour of
strong coffee, yet he was not in the least like a Cannibal.
"Gatepath must be even a bigger fool than I thought," muttered Madame
angrily to herself. Which was unjust. She had not, like Gatepath, been
chased down to a boat by a naked furious Willatopy urged on to speed by
the prod of a fish spear. But at that moment Madame was unwilling to be
just, especially to Roger Gatepath.
"What makes your hair so red?" asked Willatopy suddenly.
"It grows that way," murmured Madame feebly.
"I have never seen hair red like that," observed Willatopy. "At Thursday
Island the white women's hair is black or muddy. Not nice. Your hair is
very nice. It shines like, like red copper. And your skin is whiter than
any skin I have seen. Are you white like that all over under your
clothes?"
"Young man," said Ewing, who had just entered and caught the last
enquiry. "You are vairy indiscreet. Leddies do not possess what they do
not please to show us."
"No?" Willatopy lifted his eyebrows. "But Madame"--he had caught the
title from Ching--"has such beautiful skin. Her stockings shine, like
rich bronze, and are very beautiful, but I think that her legs would be
much nicer without all those stockings and petticoats."
Ewing grinned. Ching frowned. Madame for a moment almost blushed and
then laughed in her old rippling fashion.
"Willatopy," said she, "if you don't mind we will change the subject.
White men don't talk like that about white women, and you must try to
behave like a white man. It was all your fault, Alexander," she went on
severely. "If you had left the boy alone I would have dealt with him
myself. How often must I tell you that Scotsmen have no tact?"
"The Scots are a vairy great people," proclaimed Ewing, unabashed. "We
are too great for the snivelling hypocrisy which the English folk call
tak. We say just what we think."
"And that is what makes you so exasperating to live with," rasped
Madame.
"Scots!" cried Willatopy. "I know the Scots. There was one of them at
Thursday Island. He was always drinking whisky and always drunk. He used
to chant songs, long, miles long, and used to shout, as he rolled over
hugging a bottle, 'From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur
springs.'"
Willatopy's exact imitation of the old drunkard's accent, which was not
widely different from Ewing's own accent, sent Madame and Ching into a
roar of laughter.
"I will mind yon," growled the Chief.
"No, you won't," commanded Madame. "You will treat Willatopy very
kindly. He is the pilot, and our lives are in his hands. Yon have
brought your troubles on your own silly head, Alexander, and I don't
sympathise with you one little bit. Now, Willatopy, tell us about
yourself, how you came to be here, where you live, and how it is that
you speak English so well."
"I am not English," said Willatopy, rather unnecessarily. "My father was
English, a very grand Chief in his own country, but he did not love the
English. He always said to me when I was so, so high," he indicated a
child of about the height of the bunk on which he was sitting. "He said
to me, 'Willie, you belong to your mother's people. You are a Hula, of
the tribe of fishers and swimmers and sailors of the sea. It is better
to be a Hula than an Englishman.' I remember the words of my father,
whose hair was long and yellow, and his eyes blue like mine. The girls
say"--he spoke a sentence in native dialect and then translated--"they
say that my eyes are blue as the sky before dawn. The brown girls love
my eyes. Do you love my eyes, Madame? I love yours; they shine like the
English violets which my father planted, like the violets shine before
the sun has soaked up the morning dew."
"You should not say things like that, young man," reproved Ewing.
"Madame will be very angry."
"Oh, shut up, Alexander," snapped Madame Gilbert. "I want to listen to
the boy. He has paid me a pretty compliment. Thank you, Willatopy. I
like your bright steely blue eyes. The girls on your island have good
taste."
"Have you a husband, Madame?" enquired Willatopy eagerly.
"Yes," replied Madame with hardihood. "I have a fine big husband, and I
love him very much."
"I am sorry," said Willatopy, simply. "I think that I should like to
marry you myself. I am a grown man and very rich. I would have built a
very fine hut for you on my island, and I would have taken one of my
girls to be your maiden."
"You are not very old, Willatopy, and it will be better fun for you not
to be married just yet. My own fine big husband would not wish me to
take another one, not even you."
"No," assented Willatopy, true to the strictly monogamous code of the
Straits. "One time, one husband. But it is a great pity. You are very
beautiful, and I love you. The Skipper he called me a nigger, Madame,
but you do not call me a nigger."
"I didn't," growled Ching, to whom the whole scene was highly offensive.
"But if it wasn't for Madame here I would soon show you your proper
place."
"Willatopy is half white," explained Madame. "He is not an ordinary
native. And you said yourself he was a daisy of a pilot."
"So he is. As a pilot and down with the men in the foc's'le he would be
in his proper place. But here, talking like this before you, he makes me
sick. If you will excuse me, Madame, I will go to my chart-room." Ching
stumped off with a sour face, but the more politic Ewing remained. He
did not propose that the novel attractions of Willatopy should have the
field entirely to themselves.
Willatopy, though half white in blood and quite passably well taught by
his late father and in the mission schools on Murray Island, had all the
inconsequence of a native. He would jump about from one subject to
another, like a bee among flowers, sipping here and there, and then
skipping on forgetful of where he had last been. He continued to stare
at Madame in deep admiration--never in his small experience had he seen
a woman with hair so richly red, eyes of so dazzling a violet, or a
figure so graciously indicated by the clinging folds of a modern dress.
His idea of woman had hitherto been of the crudest--black hair and eyes,
and brown limbs fully revealed. But though he continued to be absorbed
by the feminine mystery of Madame--there is no mystery about
nakedness--he forgot all about his recent matrimonial suggestions.
"I sail everywhere in my yawl," said he. "When the tide is high I go
straight over the reefs. They are nothing. But when the water falls I
keep to the channels. Not the deep channels; the little ones which
wander in and out among the islands. It was my father's yawl. He brought
her out from England, from his own country. She was built--I forget
where; perhaps I shall remember soon. It is no matter. In Baru, where I
live with my mother and my sisters, my father bought miles and miles of
shore and forest. It is all mine now, though my mother calls it hers. My
father said to me, 'It will be all yours, Willie, when I die, though
your mother must keep it while she lives.' My father was very rich, and
I am now very rich. I do not work. There are fish, plenty fish, in the
sea; we catch them with nets and in our hands. We are Hula fishers, and
the sea is our home as much as the land. We hunt turtle and dugong. Both
are easy. If you will come with me to my island, Madame, I will show you
how to fish on the Barrier Reef and how to hunt the dugong with spears,
and to catch the silly turtle with suckers. My father said, 'When God
plants bananas and papaw and chestnuts in the woods, and fills the sea
with fish and dugong, and turtle, there is no need for man to waste his
life in work.' My father loved Baru and the Hula more than he loved
England and the English. My father was a beachcomber," added Willatopy,
proudly.
"I have never sailed the southern part of these Straits," said Ewing.
"But I know New Guinea. The Hula tribe belong to New Guinea."
"That is so," assented Willatopy. "My father took my mother from the
Hula pile village at Bulaa, and brought her to Baru, which he bought.
Not the whole island, but miles and miles of shore and forest. I am half
English and half Hula, but I love Hula and hate English. Except you,
Madame. When I go to Thursday Island in my yawl to see my banker and to
get my money--it comes from England, my money does, in big bags--I see
English, and Japanese, plenty Japanese, but I do not love them, not a
bit. I shall never go to England. My father said when I was so, so high:
'Always stick to Hula, Willie, never go to England.' And I never will."
Madame reflected. She was called upon to make a decision of some moment.
Now that Willatopy, risen from the sea, had taken possession of the
_Humming Top_, it was plain that he must remain on board until she let
go her anchor at his island home. She would never arrive without him.
Ching was an excellent deep-sea sailor, but Willatopy was immeasurably
his superior as a pilot of the Straits. It was also obvious that the
blood connection between Willatopy and the Family of Toppys must soon
come out, though it would not necessarily be assumed that he was the
legitimate heir of the family title. Half blood is much more common than
legitimacy. Madame, of course, did not intend at any time to disclose
the fact of her pre-knowledge. The revelation of Willatopy's parentage
must be drawn from the artless boy himself. And since it seemed to
Madame that a disclosure must come sooner or later, it were on the whole
better that it should come sooner. Her task would thereby be made the
more easy. So she led the boy gently, imperceptibly, to the point at
which his identity would become manifest. From Gossip Ewing the
toothsome scandal would spread over the ship as rapidly as if one
shouted it from the bridge.
"I am very dark," observed Willatopy, flying off upon quite a new tack,
"darker than my mother, who is pure Hula. Though I have the blue eyes of
my father, my skin is very dark; it is like my face all over. When I go
to Thursday Island I wear these white clothes, but at home in my island
I wear nothing--almost nothing. When you come to my island, Madame, you
shall dress Hula fashion like my sisters. My sisters are very pale
skinned; my father said that they were the colour of fawns in England."
"You remember your father very well," said Madame, ignoring the
suggestion of a future costume for herself. "Has he been dead long?"
"Years and years. Before the war. I was so high when he died." Willatopy
indicated the stature of a boy of about twelve. "But I remember him very
well indeed. He and I used to sail together in the yawl, and I learned
all the channels; every one. He always said to me, 'Be wise when you
grow up, Willie. Stick to Tops Island. Never go to England. They are all
ravening wolves in England where every man preys on his neighbour.' He
meant, I think, that the English are cannibals. The Hula cut off the
heads of their enemies--it is the custom--but they are not cannibals any
longer. The English are cannibals. They devour one another."
Madame laughed, and thought of Roger Gatepath. This was a turning of the
tables in rich earnest. "Your father meant that there are very many
English crowded upon a small island, and that they try to get money from
one another."
"They are just like that in Thursday Island," cried Willatopy eagerly,
to show that he understood. "When I go there for my money, and carry it
away in a bag, the English try to make me drink so that they may steal
my money. But they never get it. I do not drink when I have my bag to
guard."
"Good man," said Ewing, with approval. "Never mix up whisky and
business."
"Never mix up whisky with anything," advised Madame sententiously.
"I never do," observed Ewing, grinning at her.
"Be quiet, Alexander. Willatopy has taken warning by that horrible
countryman of yours in Thursday Island, and means always to be a good
boy. He won't drink even when he hasn't a bag to guard. And now, Willie,
tell us. Do you remember what part of England your father sailed from?"
Willatopy puckered his forehead. He was not accustomed to search his
memory. The personality of the father had made a deep ineradicable
impression upon the boy, but he knew very little of his origin and
sought not to enquire. The savage half of him took everything as it came
without comment.
"It was by the sea, I am sure," said he at last, "for there was a big
battle long ago which the English won. It was a battle at sea. It is all
in the history books at Murray Island." He dismissed the subject, but
Madame stuck to her questions.
"Whom did the English beat?" she asked.
"I don't know," indifferently. "Yes, I remember. Spaniards."
"Was it the Spanish Armada?"
"Yes, that was it. The Spanish Armada. My father's father fought the
Spaniards." Willatopy's conception of time did not reach much beyond a
single generation. Centuries and historical dates conveyed nothing to
him.
"Yon place must have been Plymouth," observed Ewing. Madame, for one,
blessed the gratuitously informative Scot.
"Thank you, Alexander. You are quick. So your father came from
Devonshire?"
"Yes, Devonshire. He often spoke to me of that country. I had forgotten.
The yawl was built there--at Tops Ham, the Home of the Toppys, my
father's home. He sailed straight away from the Home of the Toppys to
Baru. It is Baru in the native speech," explained Willatopy. "But we
often call it Tops Island."
The murder was out now. Madame stared at Ewing, opening her eyes very
wide, and Ewing stared at her.
"What is all this?" exclaimed the puzzled Chief. "The Home of
Toppys--Tops Island. I don't clearly comprehend. What is your name,
boy?"
"Willatopy."
"I know. But what is your real name, your English name?"
"Willie Toppys."
"And who the blue blazes was your father?" roared Ewing, rising up in
excitement. Madame did her best to affect an equally excited interest.
"My father," said Willatopy with dignity, "was the Honourable William
Toppys. He was a Great Chief in England."
Ewing fell into his chair so suddenly that its revolution nearly pitched
him out again.
"Christ!" shouted he. "He is a by-blow of Mr. William."
The Chief Engineer jumped up, rushed to the chart-room, where Ching was
sulking in solitude, and returned dragging his commanding officer by the
coat collar.
"Ching," he roared, pointing at Willatopy. "D'ye ken the bairn's ee'
noo?"
"I don't ken the Moor's blasted eye," growled Ching. "Why should I?"
"D'ye ever see an ee' like to yon oot of a Toppys heid?"
Ching grudgingly admitted that the eyes of Willatopy were by some
impertinent freak of Nature not unlike those which distinguished the
Family.
Madame broke in. The scene was becoming ridiculous, and Willatopy was
getting cross. He felt that Ewing was making a show of him.
"Alexander," commanded Madame. "Sit down and keep quiet. Captain," she
went on, "we have just discovered that Willatopy our pilot is a son of
Mr. William Toppys, who went to the South Seas twenty years ago and died
there."
"I expect that our Mr. William has left a lot of brown brats scattered
up and down the Islands," grunted Ching. "The boy is a good and useful
pilot, but half blood don't make him a Toppys."
"He is a Toppys, and we can't treat him as a stranger in a Toppys ship.
Willie," went on Madame in her sweetest, most silvery tones. "By a
wonderful coincidence you have come to the help of your own people. This
yacht, the _Humming Top_, is owned by Sir John Toppys, Baronet of Wigan.
We are all employed by the Family of which you are a member. You have
dropped quite by accident among your own people. Sir John Toppys must be
a cousin of yours."
"Are you a cousin of mine, Madame?" asked Willatopy eagerly.
"No. I am a friend, that is all. But aren't you frightfully interested?"
Willatopy considered the situation. "It would have been very nice to
have had you for a cousin, Madame. A sort of white sister. But I don't
want the Skipper to be my cousin. I am a Hula, and I do not love the
English. Also I am hungry, and I want my food."
As a subject for the exhibition of frightful excitement, Willatopy was
a complete failure. He was bored. He had talked himself tired and
hungry. He wanted food and afterwards sleep. He had no use, as the
Americans say, for the cousinhood of Sir John Toppys, Baronet of Wigan.
Ching turned his rude back upon the discovered scion of Toppys, but the
kind-hearted Chief led him away, presented him to the greatly interested
Officers' Mess--Marie declared that she was ravished at the
discovery--and left him in their care.
Later that evening, when Madame had gone to her stateroom, the Captain
and Chief Engineer drew together in their own quarters.
"I have been reckoning," observed Ewing, "how mysterious are the ways of
Providence. There yonder in England is the great House of Toppys without
an heir, unless it be old Sir John; and here in the South Seas there
drops in one son of Mr. William, and maybe, as you say, lots more of
them are round about. To him that hath shall be given more than he
wants--or intends to keep--and to him that hath not shall be taken away
the heirs in whom his heart rejoices. When Lord Topsham's son and
nephews were all killed in the war the old man just withered away. His
House is desolate. I am thinking that if this nigger here, whom they
call Willatopy, had not been born the wrong side of the blanket he would
now have been the long-lost heir of the Barony of Topsham."
"That's nowt," grunted Ching. "He and all like him are just spawn. There
may, for all we know, be a brown Topy on every island in the Straits."
"Maybe aye, maybe no. It is like enough. The Idle Rich are bestially
immoral in their habits. Still, if by some chance Mr. William had
married this nigger's mother the boy would have been the Lord of
Topsham. Ching, I am a grandly circumspectious man. I am uneasy,
powerful uneasy. Why did Sir John Toppys send out the _Humming Top_ to
these waters with that foreign Madame on board of her? She's not his
mistress, I am sure of that. She is a great French lady. Why did he do
it? Did he know, think you, that there was a Willatopy here?"
"He wouldn't have bothered his head about a Moor, anyway. The yacht was
idle, and Madame wanted a voyage. That's reason enough for the likes of
us."
"All coloured men are not Moors, you old Elizabethan seadog. This is a
brown heathen Melanesian, not a Musulman Turk. Ching, I tell you that I
am uneasy. My brain is buzzing with queer thoughts. It sticks in my mind
that when that Willatopy told us the name of his father, our pretty
Madame wasn't nearly so surprised as she sought to make me think she
was. She seemed to my mind to be expecting it."
"You've got too much mind, Ewing. That is what's the matter with you.
You keep to your engine-room and I will keep to my bridge. The ways of
the gentry have nowt to do with us."
At about the same time Marie was brushing out the red gold mane which
flowed in splendid waves over Madame's broad back. There was nothing
grudged when Madame was designed and built. Beauty and power went hand
in hand at her fashioning. She could have crumpled up Marie, the
sinuous French girl, in her strong hands, and stuffed her body through a
port-hole. Their talk was carried on in vivid French; I will do my best
to render its purport in pale English.
"Did you ever see such eyes?" sighed Marie. "They go through me like
swords. And his feet and hands. Quite small, Madame. It is easy to see
that his blood is of the brightest azure. Did you say his father was an
English Lord?"
"Marie," said Madame, crossly. "You are disgustingly promiscuous. I have
allowed you two deck officers and two engineers. All fine handsome white
men. Yet you must now be googling at a coffee-coloured savage. I won't
have it, Marie."
"He is not a savage; he is most intellectual. His English is
perfect--much better than mine. And he knows a few words, they are
certainly but a few, of our French tongue. He is aristocrat. Is he not a
cousin of the rich Sir John Toppys?"
"It is a cousinship which the aristocracy do not usually recognise,"
observed Madame drily. "Willatopy is in my charge, and I won't have him
played with. Especially by an old campaigner like you. Do what you
please with the officers, I give them to you, but leave Willatopy alone.
These half-castes are dangerous to meddle with. Remember, if I have any
reason to suspect that you are up to your usual tricks, I will send you
straight back to France."
Marie shuddered, and promised that she would be cold as an icicle. She
shivered as if her blood had been physically chilled, for there were
grave reasons, the very gravest of reasons, why Marie Lambert did not
desire to be sent back to France.