WILLATOPY: SPORTSMAN
Between the arrival of Madame Gilbert at Tops Island and the coming of
the Hedge Lawyer there interposed three or four brief weeks of
happiness. Not for years had Madame been so purely and childishly happy.
She had sailed away from that man-destroying white civilisation which
during four desperate years of savagery had torn her own world into
rags; she had descended upon an island where the joy of life reigned as
King, and death had no terrors. From a Europe worn out by passion, a
Europe grown old and weary and corrupt, she had flown back, as it were,
to the sparkling morning of free, joyous human life. And with quick
sympathy she revelled in her new experiences.
The _Humming Top_ was moored in shelter hard by the shore of Tops Island
where the tide rose and fell ten feet, and the Pacific swell rolled
continuously. And with it the yacht rolled, too, continuously in spite
of her sturdy bilge keels. She was long and narrow and of light draught,
she was built for speed in the open sea, not for threading the
labyrinths of coral reefs or for lying up indefinitely in the lee of
mangrove swamps. It took all the superb skill of a Willatopy to navigate
her in safety through the channels of the Coral Sea, but not even the
stomach of Willatopy, sound though it was by practice and inheritance,
would have relished the perpetual roll of the _Humming Top_ at anchor.
Madame cleared out of her most comfortable sea home, and took with her
Marie, who had all the Frenchwoman's hatred of uneasy salt water. Sir
John Toppys, at a hint from Madame months before, had purchased three
large tents of the Thames pattern, oblong in shape, and with a wide air
space between walls and roof. These tents were borne ashore and pitched
in an agreeable clearing about a quarter of a mile from Willatopy's
home. Madame desired privacy for herself, and had no wish to intrude
upon that of the Family of Toppys. One tent was equipped for the use of
Madame and Marie, a second contained the gear of a cook and steward, and
the third was set aside for any of the officers or men who might be
assigned to Madame as her shore escort. There were a score or more of
native families on the island, and both Ching and Ewing set their faces
against leaving Madame Gilbert unguarded in their midst. Ching hinted
that head hunting, though a dying industry in the Straits, might be
capable of revival under severe provocation. And Ewing, as he
contemplated Madame's gorgeous copper mane shining in coils upon her
bonny head, hinted that the provocation to secure so unique a specimen
might prove irresistible. Madame laughed and flicked at them both the
muzzle of her Webley automatic.
"I am a perfect shot," quoth she, "and if you will be reassured, I will
promise to keep my gun ever beside my virtuous couch." But in spite of
Madame's skill in shooting--of which she gave an impressive
demonstration on the boat deck--they insisted upon the necessity for an
escort I suspect that neither Ching nor Ewing could endure a long
separation from their Madame Gilbert, and that both senior and junior
officers welcomed a few days of respite from the ever restless _Humming
Top_. There was never any lack of volunteers for the duty of furnishing
the escort and of beguiling the ample leisure of the capacious-hearted
Marie Lambert.
"Profiteering has solid advantages," observed Madame to me, "for those
who draw upon its unfathomable resources of ill-gotten wealth. That dear
old John Toppys of Wigan said nothing to me at the time, but it appeared
that he dredged London and Southampton for the latest and most luxurious
of camp equipment. Our tents had floor boards covered with thick rubber,
and strewn with extravagantly costly rugs. There were beds with the
springiest of mattresses, adjustable rest chairs, dressing tables, and
the dinkiest of toilet apparatus. Unbeknownst, as Ching expressed
it--Sir John had laid down for my use a camp toilet service in solid
silver--and with silver at famine prices!--and had stuck in a card
requesting me to honour it with my gracious acceptance, for keeps. You
see, I had told him that I was a forlorn widow! He had not overlooked
equipment for my maid. Every conceivable device for cooking and serving
food in camp had been thought of and provided, including Primus stoves,
and the men's tent--though less like a bower of Venus than my own--was
good enough for anyone below the exalted standing of a goddess. Even
Ching and Ewing, who had managed to decide in their wise heads that I
was not Sir John Toppys' wayward mistress, opened their eyes at his
lavish provision for my comfort. When he saw his own tent, Alexander
became, if possible, more convinced a business man than ever. 'Wealth is
power,' said he gravely, 'even in a desert island. I have done no so
badly with the dopes and the legitimate trade, but I must do a power of
robbery yet before I can count dollars with Sir John Toppys.' We camped
out on Tops Island, but there was not much of roughing it about Sir
John's notions of camp life."
Madame had won the heart of the Widow Toppys when as a beautiful white
stranger she had clasped the little creature to the bosom of her wet
trench coat, and she speedily gained also the hearts of the two "useless
daughters," scorned by Roger Gatepath. They were twins, very light in
colour, aged about sixteen. Their names, as locally rendered, were
Joytopy and Crytopy. Queer names. Mrs. Toppys, who spoke an English of
her own in the halting accent to which the middle-aged Roger Gatepath
had lingered to listen, explained that one of the girls in her early
infancy had been the most joyous, smiling angel that ever came down from
Heaven. The other twin had howled unceasingly. The Hon. William Toppys
had called one Joy and the other Cry, and had dug up real names which
would suggest the infantile characteristics. The girls had been
christened Joyce and Chrystal, but Joytopy and Crytopy they had always
remained. When Madame met them there was much bubbling joy and little
cry about either of them. They frisked about in their short voluminous
petticoats of stripped banana leaf, wearing bright beads round their
necks, and short-lived tropical flowers in their dusky hair. The girls
were not pretty by European standards, and the blue eyes of Toppys had
passed them by. But there was a glow of splendid health on their pale
brown skin, and the lithe grace of free tropical creatures about their
fully developed figures.
These girls had never worn European clothes. Will Toppys, true to his
theory that the mystery of woman, which has played so devastating a role
in human history, is due to the seduction of clothes, always insisted
that his daughters should wear the native petticoats. They were enough
for decency, said he, but not enough to excite the smallest curiosity.
Especially as the native girls, amphibious as their men folk, always
stripped bare when plunging into the sea. But though Joy and Cry had
never worn, never even seen, the contents of a European draper's shop,
they showed the most fascinated interest in the toilet fripperies of
Madame Gilbert. It was some little time before she could induce them to
enter her tent. To them it suggested a trap of canvas of which one
pulled the string and smothered the incautious entrant. But gradually
she won their confidence. With instinctive courtesy they never would
approach her dwelling unless by direct invitation, and when within moved
about gravely and spoke seldom. Madame to them was a remote royal
personage. The silver toilet service did not move them--thinking that
silver was always money, they called the precious metal bright tin--and
the Persian rugs were an encumbrance to the feet. They hinted also that
the floor coverings and hangings would in time prove a happy hunting
ground for insects and other vermin of the woods. But when one day
Madame opened a trunk and spread before their astonished eyes the
glories of her underwear, they instantly fell down and worshipped. They
had never seen such garments, they had not the slightest notion of how
to put them on, yet the beautiful texture and soft feel of the feminine
things bowled them over instantly. Perhaps it was the instinct of
clothes in their white blood bursting forth; perhaps it was some deeper,
more universal, instinct which makes women of all races kin. I don't
know. But Madame assures me, and I believe her, that at the first sight
and touch of her "things," Joy and Cry bowed their frizzy heads and did
obeisance. They did more than that a few days later. Coming home late
one afternoon after a turtle hunt with Willatopy, Madame found Joy and
Cry in her tent posturing before the deeply interested eyes of her maid
Marie. The banana petticoats lay neglected on the floor, where they had
been tossed, and the girls were clad in French frillies with which Marie
had invested them. Madame was angry, and the girls shrank away from her.
In rapid, furious French, Madame scarified that thoughtless,
warm-hearted maid of hers, and warned her to leave the girls alone as
she had warned her to leave Willatopy alone. Robbed by Madame's stern
orders of the fascinating frillies, the girls resumed their own
petticoats and sadly withdrew. The incident worried Madame not a little,
and she spoke very plainly and seriously to Marie about it. It showed by
how frail a tie these half-white feminine creatures were held to the
simple native habit of life which their white father had laid down for
them. I had nearly written "native life and customs," but checked when
I remembered a discovery which Madame had made concerning these girls.
Though they dressed like natives, and lived in all other respects the
lives of natives, there was a subconscious force in their white blood
which cut them off from familiar commerce with native boys. Girls and
widows in the Torres Straits follow their inclinations, the girls of
their hearts, the widows--one is told--more commonly of their mature
avarice. Married women, by immemorial and most potent custom, are chaste
as Junos. But from this most universal of social customs these two
girls, Joy and Cry, tacitly yet resolutely stood apart. Their own mother
was astonished; she could not comprehend an abstinence which consorted
so queerly, to her mind, with their vigorous healthy natures. Yet it was
so, as she almost tearfully assured Madame.
"But surely you should be glad," said Madame, puzzled and inclined
towards laughter at the woeful visage of little Mrs. Toppys. "Their
father, had he lived, would have honoured his daughters for
this--exclusiveness."
"But how will they ever claim husbands?" wailed the Hula woman from New
Guinea. "How ever can they ask a boy in marriage if already they are
known to be so cold and unnatural?" It is the woman who proposes
marriage in the Straits, and the man who, after full consideration,
gives or withholds his assent.
Madame soothed the disconsolate widow, and went away smiling. Grant had
declared that all the vices and diseases in the Torres Straits were the
gift of the white man, but the instinctive aloofness of Joy and Cry
revealed to the uncomprehending world of Tops Island that some hidden
virtue after all sprang from the white strain in their blood.
Madame, a hardy investigator and always frank in her dealings with
mankind, tackled Willatopy, the brother of Joy and Cry, and the lover of
numberless brown girls whom his blue eyes vanquished at sight.
"My brown girls, they are nothing," declared this easy-mannered Don
Juan, "but Joy and Cry are the daughters of my father, the Great White
Chief. They are not meat for the scum of Baru. The boys here, what are
they but tillers of my garden when they work and whipping blocks for my
stick when they don't? I am rich, I do not work. These others I make
work for me, and pay in white silver from my banker. They are the dirt
under my feet, and if one of them drew near to Joy or Cry, to speak to
them without my leave, I would let out his blood upon the sand, and
would smoke his head over the fire in my cookhouse."
There was nothing of the modern democrat about Willatopy.
As he imagined to himself, and declared to Madame, the fate of a native
island suitor for the temporary favours of his sisters, he drew forth
one of the deadly trench daggers which Alexander, a trader in hardware
for the Islands, had given him in a moment of expansion. I beg the
pardon of Alexander Ewing, man of business. He had sold two daggers to
Willatopy at "trade prices," at a tremendous discount which had made
them seem to him like gifts.
These two trench daggers, which had attracted Willatopy as "just the
things for sharks," bring me to the display before my patient readers of
Willatopy the Sportsman. He was rich, he did no work. He paid reluctant
impecunious native boys to cut his bananas and plant their
rhizomes--even the bountiful banana needs some culture--to sow and reap
vegetables in his garden, to feed his fowls and pigs, and to keep fresh
and sweet the sago palm thatch of his hut. But though he did no work,
Willatopy was an indefatigable sportsman. Incidentally, it is true, he
supplied the family with fish and dugong and turtle, but in his
code--which had a recognisable family likeness to the code of his
father's country--fishing and hunting and shooting, whatever their yield
in food, were not to be confounded with loathsome and derogatory Work.
The labour which they exacted was Sport, and rich man that he was he
could pour out his sweat over them and still remain proudly and
unstainedly idle.
At Auckland, Alexander had fallen in with brother Scots, who seemed to
be flourishing in exile, though they lamented, in the manner of their
great race, the harsh fate which had separated them from a beloved
country to which they had no intention whatever to return. These brother
Scots of Alexander's had assured him that any kind of iron or steel junk
would yield fabulous profits in the Islands, and he after cautiously
testing the advice by taking counsel of mere English New Zealanders, had
gone all out on hardware. Much that he bought at old iron prices was
surplus war material, and included sword bayonets and trench daggers.
Never had such lovely killing knives been seen in the Straits, and the
traders of Thursday Island just rose at them. Alexander sold out at a
rate of profit which made even him gasp, and he was a business man who
could stand a great deal of profit without turning a hair. Willatopy's
trench daggers were sweet weapons. They slipped over the fingers, and
were gripped in the fist, so that the six-inch blades stood out as
deadly steel extensions of the forearm. With the ordinary dagger one
stabs up or down with a blade held at right angles to the wrist, but
with trench daggers one hits out as in boxing, and delivers a blow with
the weight of the body behind it. When Willatopy first put the two
daggers on his hands and hit out, right, left, Ewing bolted behind the
smoke stack.
"They are just the thing for sharks," commented Willie with approval.
"Then take them off, boy, till you meet the sharks," implored our
cautious Alexander.
Soon after Madame had been installed in her tents, after much going and
coming at high tide through the "lubbers' hole" of the bar--she held
that one hair-raising journey through the surf was enough for
honour--Willatopy summoned his gracious lady to witness the first trial
of the daggers.
"There are plenty of sharks in the bay," said he, "fine sharks, as big
as a whaleboat."
"But what do you want with daggers?" inquired Madame, vaguely recalling
pictures of shark fishing with ropes and hooks.
"To kill the sharks with," explained Willatopy. "One hits, so and so,
under the side fins."
"But surely you don't mean to go into the water among the sharks?"
gasped Madame, who had she been a loyal representative of the Baronet of
Wigan should have welcomed any hazard to the life of the Heir of
Topsham.
"Of course," said Willatopy, grinning. "Sharks are just clumsy sheep. No
good, Madame. One at a time is no sport at all, but if I can get two at
once, one with each dagger, there should be fun. So and so." He hit out
as he had done before Ewing, and Madame skipped like a she-goat. Willie
with a dagger on each fist was a most alarming neighbour.
Madame became reconciled to the expedition with difficulty. To her it
was a wanton trifling with death for Willatopy, however expert a
swimmer, to venture with two bits of steel on his fists into the
shark-infested bay. She had all the white woman's dread of the
man-eating shark, and could not get contact with Willatopy's
indifference. But when Mrs. Toppys had assured her that a shark,
properly approached, is as harmless as a seal, and the two girls were
not sufficiently interested to look on at the hunting, she consented to
be present herself. But she made conditions. The yacht's dinghy in which
she was going must be rowed by two sailors and a third must stand in the
bows with a dugong spear ready to interpose should Willatopy seem to be
in grievous peril. The Heir of Toppys grinned at these childish
precautions. To him they were just a white woman's foolishness.
The dinghy was rowed out to a part of the bay which was known to
Willatopy as good shark country, and the boy busied himself in tying
scraps of cord to the grips of the daggers and to his own wrists. He
wanted to make sure that the daggers would not get adrift when he opened
his hands in swimming, and would be ready in place at the moment when
his fists closed. He was not excited in the least degree; his one
feeling was a mild desire to test the efficiency of trench daggers as
shark killers. When he had brought the lifeboat through the big rollers
on the bar, he had been visibly exalted; now on the eve of shark killing
he was no more than placidly interested in the efficacy of his twin
daggers.
He slipped over the side of the dinghy, and the rowers lay on their
oars. He had told them to give him room, at least a hundred yards, lest
the sharks might be frightened away. I think that that direction eased
Madame's mind more than all his previous protestations. Sharks must be
far less terrible than she had supposed if they could be frightened away
by a dinghy.
Madame, herself a good swimmer by European standards, watched Willie
amazed. She had never supposed that a human being could swim with that
perfect ease and swift smoothness. His brown body lay down in the water
as if it loved it, and a bow wave rose and curled over the almost buried
head. He swam on his side with a tremendous reach forward and thrust of
his powerful right arm, and the drive of his legs was a revelation in
the possibilities of marine propulsion. Madame could not see how he
breathed, for his head was cuddled down on the left shoulder, though
breathe he must have done somehow.
"I can't properly describe it," said Madame to me afterwards. "He was a
human torpedo. He went forward in one continuous smooth rush with that
clear bow wave curling over his head."
At a little distance, which to Madame looked too far for safety--she
still placed an emergency trust in the dugong spear--Willatopy's head
rose up and he stopped. Balancing himself in the water by imperceptible
movements of hands and legs, Willatopy was hanging out his body as a
bait for timid sharks. It was not long before one swooped down upon so
attractive a prey. Madame saw the feather of water flung up by a black
moving fin, while Willatopy, peering far down into the clear waters of
the bay, was on the alert against an attack more subtle.
"Silly beast," murmured he, and his fists tightened on the trench
daggers. The black fin ran up and then disappeared as the shark rolled
over to strike upwards with those triple rows of teeth which are set at
some distance behind and below the snout. A shark must attack its prey
belly upwards, and strike from below; if its mouth were in its snout
like a crocodile's it would be a much more dangerous foe. The shark
rolled over and struck upwards. Willatopy's head vanished, his brown
body curled over lazily, and he dived exactly as a dolphin dives. A long
swooping flash downwards. The shark broke the surface where Willie's
head had been, and Willatopy reappeared where the black fin had been.
Shark and boy had changed places, and, if Madame had been nearer, she
might have seen the grin spread out on Willatopy's face. The shark
twisted its long body about, again rolled over and again struck upwards.
Grinning contemptuously, Willatopy slipped downwards under the rising
shark, and appeared again behind its tail.
"Why doesn't he kill the brute?" muttered Madame.
"I don't rightly understand," replied the man with the fatuous spear.
"It looks 'orrible dangersome to me, ma'am. I can't 'ardly believe the
nigger boy will come back alive."
Once or twice more the shark struck at Willie, and once or twice more
the boy evaded the stroke, but made no attack himself. Then all saw for
what he waited. Another black fin, with a curling feather rising before
it, came sliding up to take part in the sport. Madame, frightened, was
now on her feet. Had time permitted, she would, I think, have disobeyed
Willatopy's instructions, and urged the boat forward to his assistance.
But there was no time. The first shark was attacking again, and the
second was rapidly approaching. Willatopy no longer delayed action. He
evaded as before the upward stroke of shark number one, and then, before
the beast could turn, twisted about under water and rose beneath the
belly of shark number two. Right, left, both daggers went home under the
fin. Turning without coming to the surface for breath--he could stay
nearly two minutes under water--Willatopy swooped back at his first
opponent, slipped under it as he had done with the other, and again shot
out both fists--so and so. He came up between the two big fish in water
reddened by their blood, and watched warily for further signs of
activity. But both sharks were dead; he had struck very swiftly, but he
had struck home truly.
Willatopy swam easily towards the boat. Shark hunting, especially with
the very efficient trench daggers, was a sport which rapidly palled,
and he had done with it. But it had not quite done with him. When he was
some twenty yards from the motionless boat, a third shark, more cunning
than his two fellows, rose at Willie from the depths without giving him
warning on the surface. But Willatopy was not caught yet. One swims with
very clearly skinned eyes in shark-infested waters, and the boy saw the
shark's shadow before its body was near enough to be dangerous. The
shark rising belly upwards could not see the boy drop downwards like a
stone, and when it did sight him, the stroke had failed, and Willatopy
had dived under the boat. Madame leaning out over the side glared down
into the clear, almost still, water. She saw what is rarely seen, an
under-water fight between a man and a shark, and she saw, moreover, how
fully Willatopy was justified in his self-confidence. The white body of
the great fish shot by the dark form of the lithe, quickly manoeuvring
boy, who, as it went past, flashed out two blows, right and left, as if
he were a boxer side-stepping and countering an opponent's rush. Madame
could not see the daggers rip home, but she saw the blood spurt from the
side of the shark and its huge body writhe and shudder. Then up came
Willatopy's head not six feet from the boat, and he swung himself in
over the stern. The dead shark, still quivering, rolled slowly up to the
surface, and floated there beside its slayer. The body after allowing
for the immersed portions, was a good deal longer than the sixteen foot
dinghy.
"They are good knives," said Willatopy, pulling the trench knives off
his fists, and unfastening the retaining cords. "They are good knives,
just the things for sharks. But sharks are silly sheep, Madame, hardly
worth the trouble of killing." He pointed to the three big bodies, each
floating in its own red pool, and laughed. "Two at once and then the
third. One kills them just like the sheep that they are. There is no
danger at all, not one little bit."
* * * * * * *
But though Joy and Cry would not trouble to come out of their hut to see
Willatopy kill sharks in the bay, they skipped like schoolgirls at the
promise of a dance, when offered a fishing trip to the Great Barrier.
They were Hulas of New Guinea, whose savage ancestors had for countless
ages fished the waters to leeward of the Barrier. It was the great
kindly sea farm of the Hulas, it had grown with them through more
thousands of years than mankind can count, and it will stand there,
grand, massive and mysterious, long after the last Hula has vanished
from the earth. The abrupt north end of the Barrier was some ten miles
distant--Madame could hear in her tent the everlasting thunder of the
surf against its outer wall--and thence it wound southwards, skirting
the North Queensland coast though never touching it, for twelve hundred
wave-swept miles. Inshore, from Brisbane to Cape York, there interpose
deep navigable channels, starred with islands, and through the Barrier
itself are cut gaps here and there by which the hardy navigator may pass
in safety from the outside Pacific Ocean to the inner channels. By such
a passage, Willatopy, the boy of twelve, had steered his father's yawl
with his father's corpse lashed to its deck.
The Barrier is a long, narrow, tortuous wall of which the outer
face--where the coral polyps love to cling in the foaming surf of the
Pacific--drops down almost sheer for hundreds of feet. On the inner side
the water is more shallow and broken up by reefs. This wall, twelve
hundred miles long, is not more than a quarter of a mile wide on its
coping, and in some stretches is no more than a hundred feet. For
hundreds of thousands of years the madrepores have been working upon it,
each one living out his tiny life in the whirl of the surf, and then
dying, to leave his skeleton of lime as one more brick in the gigantic
masonry.
The coral polyp, species madrepore, of the Barrier is a patient,
courageous little seaman. He is born and bred in the wide ocean. He
cannot endure the boredom of life in the still, tame, waters below the
hundred-foot level; he cannot exist above the low tidal mark, and his
salt soul withers in the muddy freshness of river mouths. I love
Darwin's romantic theory of the Barrier, though later authorities have
cast doubts upon its sufficiency. Project your mind back, says Darwin,
some few hundreds of thousands of years to the time when the Queensland
coast was much higher out of the water than it is now in these
degenerate days. Imagine the land slowly sinking, a few inches maybe in
a century, and there you are! The Great Barrier, skirting the coast yet
never touching it, is explained. The coral polyps, which cannot support
life except between low water mark and twenty fathoms, can only build
fringing reefs along the shore. Wherever a river or stream comes down
there is a gap, for the coral polyps cannot live away from their native
salt. We have then a fringing reef, cut transversely with gaps, and this
reef continually rises in height from the sea bottom as the land slowly
sinks. Each foot of subsidence gives to the polyps an added foot of
water in which to live and multiply. The æons pass, the land subsides,
and presently a water-filled channel opens out between the original
fringing reef and the shore. As the land sinks still further, the
channel widens, and is ever widening. The fringing reef has become a
barrier of which the base on the sea floor is always sinking, and the
coping of the roof always rising, built up by madrepore skeletons.
Against the edge of the new shore a new fringing reef is built up. And
so on through the long centuries. That is Darwin's theory. There are
others, less imaginative and more mechanical, but my instinct rejects
them. I feel that Charles Darwin, though himself a very bad sailor, has
alone done full and sympathetic justice to the splendid sea instincts of
the bold madrepores. They scorn the ease of shelter and shallows. Theirs
is the open coast on which the wild waves break; they make the long
fringe of it one vast coral tomb, and when the land sinks they turn that
ancient fringing tomb into a vast outer Barrier. The madrepore is a true
sea architect, and no peddling theory of under-water detritus, slowly
accumulating as a foundation for his masonry, would deceive him into
building on the rubbish.
Willatopy took charge of the expedition to the Great Barrier. He was
well equipped with gear, for being very rich and not consenting to do
any work, he bought his nets in Thursday Island. The one which he
dragged out of store looked as if it would hold enough fish to feed the
Island for twelve months. It was sixty feet long and about ten feet
wide. One edge was weighted and the other buoyed, and draw ropes were
arranged so that the whole net could be pulled into one long narrow bag.
For the service of the fishing party he commandeered the motor launch
and two whaleboats.
"We will go out with the ebb and come back on the flood," said he, "and
the jolly little motor boat shall tow the whalers. When we arrive, the
motor boat shall be anchored in safety while we fish from the
whaleboats. We shall want"--he spoke as confidently as if the resources
of the _Humming Top_ were as unreservedly at his call as were those of
Tops Island--"we shall want six strong sailors for each boat, and an
engineer to look after the motor. I don't understand motors."
"May we have the boats and men?" asked Madame sweetly of Ching, who had
come ashore to pay his regular morning visit. He was responsible for
Madame's safety on the Island, and nothing would persuade him that her
pretty head was not in grievous peril. The Skipper belonged to the dark
adventurous past.
"You are the owner," growled he, "and if you choose to butt my boats on
the reefs it is your responsibility, Madame Gilbert."
"Willatopy is a first-rate pilot," said she. "I will trust the boats
with him."
The Skipper swore under his breath. "It is not my boats I think of, but
of your foolishness, Madame. You will spoil that Moor until he gets
outside of himself, and then you will be sorry for the rest of your
life. Once a savage always a savage. He is a grand pilot of the Straits,
because he has lived in them and sailed them all his life. But in
everything else he is a naked savage. Go away fishing if you please; you
will be safe with my men."
Ching turned sulkily away. He grudged Willatopy that local knowledge of
the Coral Sea which he would never have opportunity to accumulate for
himself, and above all he grudged him Madame's undisguised favours.
Madame landed a parting dig in the middle of the Skipper's back.
"Willatopy may be a Moor," said she, "whatever a Moor may be. But you
can't look him in the eyes and protest that he isn't a Toppys." That was
the worst of the poor Skipper's troubles. He had served the Family for
twenty-five years, he had all the Devon man's respect for the landed
gentry of his native county, and he was subjected almost nightly to the
veiled hints of Alexander Ewing. Why had Madame Gilbert sailed for the
Torres Straits, and did she and Sir John know that the Willatopy whom
they had found was there waiting to be found? It was not only the naked
savagery of Willatopy which made Captain Ching long to destroy him.
Madame, the girls, and Willatopy went forth to the yacht in the dinghy,
passing the bar at nearly high water, and there joined the procession of
boats which lay waiting for them. The second engineer took charge of the
motor engine, Willatopy himself grasped the tiller, Joy and Cry bubbling
with eagerness to travel in a "buzz boat," clambered into the bows, and
the adventurers set forth for the Great Barrier, which a page or two
back I have ventured to describe. It was early morning. The sun shone as
it shone every day throughout that gracious southern winter. Its rays
had a shrewd bite in them which one never feels in the moist English
summer, so that Madame never ventured to confront them at high noon
without the protection of a helmet. The wind was blowing up from the
south-east as it always did, freshening every moment, and urging on the
tireless Pacific rollers. The string of boats rose and fell as Willatopy
drove them across the swell, and every now and then a wave would break
over the bows, and the warm salt spray lash across the faces of the
passengers. Madame Gilbert, in her bathing dress and thin trench coat,
was equipped to laugh at the lashing of salt water, and the skins of the
half-castes glistened as it soaked into them. Willatopy at a hint from
Madame--though he raised his eyebrows in surprise--had put on the
holiday trousers of Thursday Island. But he warned her that when the
serious business of fishing called for his professional attention, the
absurd usages of civilisation would go scat.
"That is right," explained Madame, "in the water. But on land or in a
boat you should be dressed--slightly. Your father was an English
gentleman, Willatopy."
"My father said," quoted Willatopy, "without clothes there is no
curiosity. Sin came into the world with clothes."
"Yes," drawled Madame. "But that was a long time ago. And sin having
come we have got to put up with it. I prefer you in trousers,
Willatopy."
"As my lady pleases," said he, and Madame started. It was a strange
sentence to come from so very dark a mouth, and she wondered where he
had heard it. Then she remembered that it was Marie's English formula in
acknowledgment of an instruction. Willatopy never came to her tent
without invitation, and, so far as she knew, had never met Marie except
in the officers' mess of the yacht. Where could he have heard her use
just that phrase? Had Marie, in her clandestine French fashion,
constituted herself the instructress of Willatopy in polite usages as
she herself understood them? Violet lightning began to flash from
Madame's eyes, and she determined to be very watchful of the movements
of that maid of hers. Ever since her confidential talk with Grant of
Thursday Island she had felt that the presence of Marie in the yacht and
on the Island was a danger. Marie was a promiscuous little she-devil
wholly devoid of moral scruples. If in defiance of Madame's warning she
indulged her esoteric tastes for Willatopy's brown skin and bright blue
eyes, grave mischief might be done before it could be stopped. "If she
does," murmured Madame, through her gritting teeth, "I will send her
back to France to be shot. And I will give myself the pleasure of
attending her execution. There is no weak masculine softness about me."
The water had fallen below its full height when Madame caught her first
glimpse of the famous Barrier, and the Pacific swell, urged against the
outer face by the south-east trade wind, was meeting the tidal flow and
tossing great spumes of spray high into the air. Over the whole width of
the reef the water boiled and roared, and masses of coral limestone,
tons in weight, were flung about like small stones. Although the
madrepores cannot live above the level of low water, the Barrier was
several feet higher, and here comes in the mechanical theory of Chamisso
and his followers to modify the beautiful simplicity of Darwin's
hypothesis of subsidence. By force of the swell which beats perpetually
on the outer wall, where the polyps flourish in surf, and where their
millions of tiny skeletons are perpetually adding to the structure,
lumps are being torn off and piled upon the coping of the wall. These
lumps under the solvent action of sun and water become cemented into
masses, so that the purity of the original madrepore design is partially
lost. The Barrier has risen higher than the polyps unaided could have
built it. The sea is no respecter of coral graveyards. In this way the
interior of purely coral islands may have become heaped up by masses
torn by the sea from the fringing reefs and flung high up the shore.
Though the Barrier broke the full force of the Pacific rollers, enough
of water swirled over it to set the string of boats tossing and bucking
in the tide rips of the sheltered western face. Willatopy ordered the
whaleboats to be cast off, and the motor launch to be anchored some half
a mile short of the reefs. The second engineer remained on board of her,
but the Topy family and Madame Gilbert transferred their wet persons to
one of the whaleboats. The long net was dragged out and stretched
between the boats, which drifted slowly on parallel courses towards the
Barrier. Between them ran the line of floats which marked the upper edge
of the net. As the boats moved rather faster than the heavily weighted
net, it sagged between them, pulling out into a long wide-mouthed bag
from the jaws of which the fish feeding in the shallows could not
readily escape. The net was carried forward in this fashion until the
boats which were controlling it had reached the inner shelving edge of
the reef, and the depth of water had come down to about ten feet, which,
it may be recalled, was the depth to which the weighted edge of the net
descended. Then the fun began, for the drag-rope on the lower edge
became entangled in the rough coral lumps on the sea floor, and the fish
which had been herded between the net's capacious jaws began to skurry
forth through the opening avenues of escape. To Madame this overflow, as
it were, seemed to matter little, for, between the boats, the fish were
leaping in hundreds, even thousands, and even if half of them won a way
to freedom, there would be far more left than the _Humming Top_ or Tops
Island could possibly consume. But the family of Topy had other views.
The moment had arrived for which these amphibians had waited and hoped;
anyone, white or brown, could trap sea fish in a net; it was vouchsafed
to them alone, hereditary fishers of Hula, to pursue escaping fish into
their own depths, and to catch them directly by hand and teeth.
When the lower drag-rope caught and strained, Willatopy directed both
boats to anchor, and cried out to his sisters in native dialect. What he
said in words Madame did not know, but what he meant was instantly made
plain. Up leapt the three Topys, away went trousers and banana-skin
petticoats, and the three of them, bare as when they were born, and
revelling in their supreme sea skill, streaked overboard. The one dark
body and the two light ones flashed over the gunwale, and took the water
like seals. Down they went to where gaps opened between the net and the
sea floor, and the fish were struggling to escape. The human fish
swooped upon the sea natives, and grappled them with claws and teeth.
These were no small feeble, defenceless fish; the least of them weighed
a pound and a half, and the erectile spines near the tail fins made them
in their own element opponents worthy even of the Hula Topys. Avoiding
the spines, the Topys, boy and girls of equal skill and quickness,
grabbed the elusive fish by the gills, and when both hands were full,
buried their sharp white fangs in the backs of them.
"I shall never forget that sight," said Madame to me. "Down they would
all flash for a few seconds, and then the three black heads shot up and
fish in torrents poured into the boat. Blood ran from their mouths, and
from the bitten backs of the captured fish. Often and often they shot
up, all three of them, with a two-pounder in each hand, and another
gripped in their jaws. We poor white folk are proud if we can by
artifice tickle a trout in its lair and ravish it from a hole with our
hands. These Hula Topys caught those fish in the free open sea. They
never seemed to miss their swoop, for they stayed down a few seconds
only at each dive, and never came up with empty hands. Their diving was
a revelation. There was no effort in it, no clumsy heaving up of the
loins and extravagant splashing. Their brown bodies rolled over and
vanished with as little fuss as the diving of a seal. Perhaps that is
the nearest word to describe what I saw. The Topys were just seals.
Their frizzy hair plastered down by the water gave them, too, something
of the look of seals. All the while they never paused for breath. It was
up and down, up and down, without ceasing, for fully a quarter of an
hour, and the fish came aboard in a torrent. Our bottom boards were
covered before the Topys ceased. And then it was the girls who stopped
to rest, not that indefatigable Willatopy. Joy and Cry swung in over the
high sharp bows and sat down panting on the forward thwart." Madame
laughed a little to herself before she resumed the description. "I was
interested to observe," she went on, "that the girls were tattooed in
deep blue patterns down the centre line of the body and on the upper
part of their thighs. And this interested me, for Willatopy had no
tattoo marks at all. The pattern was identical on both girls, a series
of light brown saltires on a blue ground resembling Alexander's Scottish
St. Andrew's Cross. It was curious that the Hon. William Toppys should
have permitted his daughters to submit to the Hula tribal markings while
his son was excluded. But perhaps men are not tattooed in the tribe
though most of the brown Melanesian boys on Tops Island had some face
markings. What struck me most vividly was the effect of the tattooing in
removing the appearance of bareness. If the Topy girls had been tattooed
from breast to knee they would have appeared to the casual eye to have
been wearing tight bathing dresses, woven in blue and brown checks.
There is a lot to be said for tattooing. Though my dear men turned their
bashful backs there was no suggestion at all of immodesty about Joy and
Cry. I loved their admirable, unconscious simplicity."
When the whaleboats had been loaded with fish to their utmost capacity,
the unwanted remainder were allowed to go free, and the net was hauled
in and coiled down. It was the hand and mouth fishing which the Toppys
really loved, the savage sport, not the larder which absorbed their
interests. The net was the means to an end--the penning up of fish so
that Willie and his sisters might attack them in their native element.
The party lunched by the Barrier while waiting for the tide to turn, and
at slack water Willatopy suggested that Madame, already clad in her silk
bathing gear, should go over the side with him. Madame was willing, but
dreaded sharks. She was quite fearless when confronted by risks which
she understood, but the thought of swimming with sharks smelling at her
toes made the brave lady's blood run cold. For her daily swims off the
Island she always kept to a small narrow creek warranted by Willatopy to
be shark-proof.
"Sharks are nothing," remonstrated Willie. "They will not come where
there are so many boats, and if they do I will drive them away."
"But you have no daggers here, Willie," objected Madame. "Even you
cannot shoo away sharks with bare hands."
One of the sailors offered his sheath knife, but Willatopy put it aside.
"If a silly shark comes by I will borrow it," said he. "There will be
time enough."
Spurred by all this easy indifference--though she saw herself being
gobbled up by a huge shark while Willatopy was strolling off to borrow
the sailor's knife--Madame flung aside the trench coat and her sun
helmet and stood forth as a reluctant sacrifice for the honour of the
white race. Though it may have really been a case of heroism without
risk, in her terrified imagination the seas swarmed with black shark
fins. Over she went, and following her went Willatopy and the girls.
"I can swim a bit," said Madame, "and rather fancied myself at home. But
those brown seals made rings around me. While I lumbered noisily along
they would frisk to and fro, now behind, now in front, now on either
side. Whenever they pleased, they would join me in half a dozen swift
vivid strokes. My progress was exactly like that of an elderly fat woman
down a field with three terriers sporting about her. It was a
humiliating spectacle. I did my best; I swam as fast as I could, and
when I got back to the boat I was puffing like an asthmatic grampus.
Willatopy was good enough to say that I had quite a useful leg drive and
might learn to swim some day if I stuck at it. He regarded me much as a
plus golfer does his thirty-six handicap grandmother. I knew better than
to show those Topys that ungainly agitated sprawl which in Europe we
call diving from the surface. But though the swimming was a humiliation
I enjoyed sitting in the sun to dry."
They returned as they had come, the motor launch towing the whaleboats,
and were sped homewards by the welling flood tide. Madame, though she
knew it not, was nearing the end of her brief spell of irresponsible
happiness. While they had been disporting themselves off the Barrier,
Fate had rung up the curtain for the Final Act in the drama of
Willatopy. It was an Act which was long in the playing, but the end
loomed inevitable almost from the opening bars of the overture. As the
string of boats merrily buzzed into the narrow bay, they all saw that
the _Humming Top_ no longer lay there alone. Within the entrance moored
to the opposite bank was a small schooner which had just come in, for
the crew were even at that moment stowing her lowered sails upon the
deck.
"What is that ship?" asked Madame, her brows gathering into an uneasy
frown. The Island had seemed so much the private property of the Topys
and of the _Humming Top_ that the presence of a stranger schooner became
an unmannerly intrusion. Especially so weather-beaten and dirty a
schooner as that one over there.
"Trading schooners often shelter here for the night while on a round of
the islands," explained Willatopy. "My yawl does all the Baru trade that
there is."
But Madame Gilbert, in spite of this satisfying explanation of the
schooner's presence in the bay, continued to look upon the vessel with
disfavour. If one schooner dropped in thus unceremoniously, another
might come, and another. Some day strangers might land, strangers from
Thursday Island or from the big world beyond Thursday Island. The
splendid steam yacht at its moorings and Madame's luxurious camp outfit
in the woods were not common objects of the shore to be accepted in the
Straits without explanation. And they would use up a lot of explanation,
and still leave the curious unsatisfied. There was too much of Toppys
about the Island and the yacht for their conjunction to be wholly a
matter of chance. Grant, Willatopy's banker, already knew much, and had
guessed the rest. He was safe, for his own reasons. But others coming
might carry away to Thursday Island, and thence to the big world beyond
Thursday Island, a story of the Toppys yacht afloat, and of the Topy
family ashore; and some might--some certainly would--connect the one
with the other. From that discovery to a peering into local registers
would be, for our inquisitive white race, a brief step. Too many people
knew the Toppys secret already, and too many more must presently get
some hint of it. It was not much of a secret after all. Madame frowned
at the dirty schooner and shrugged her shoulders. It was not her secret
anyway, though she had done her best to keep it.