The people of Port ------, on the east coast of New Zealand, were
charmed with the handsome commander of the biggest ocean steamer that
had yet visited the port, and on the eve of his departure gave Captain
Cressingham the usual banquet. Banquets to captains of new lines of
steamers are good things to boom the interests of a budding seaport
town, and so a few score of the “warmest” men in the place cheerfully
planked down their guinea each for the occasion.
The _Belted Will_ had hauled out from the wharf and lay a mile or so
from the shore ready for sea, and the captain had told his chief officer
to send a boat ashore for him at twelve o'clock.
Among the crowd that lounged about the entrance to the town hall and
watched for the arrival of the guest of the evening was a tall, dark,
rough-looking man with white curly hair. One or two of those present
seemed to know him, and presently some one addressed him.
“Hallo, Harry! come to have a look at the swells? 'Taint often you come
out o' nights.”
The white-haired man nodded without speaking, and then moved away again.
Presently the man he was looking for was driven up, and the loungers
drew aside to let him pass up the steps into the blaze of light under
the vestibule of the hall, where he was welcomed by half a dozen
effusive citizens. For a moment he stood and chatted, and the man who
watched clenched his brawny hands and ground his teeth. Then Captain
Cressingham disappeared, and the tall man walked slowly away again in
the direction of the wharves.
*****
At eleven o'clock Cressingham's boat came ashore, and the crew as they
made her fast grumbled and cursed in true sailor fashion.
“Are you the chaps from the _Belted Will?_” said a man, who was leaning
against one of the wharf sheds.
“Yes; who are you, mister?” said one of them.
“I'm Harry--one of the hands that was stowing wool aboard. I heard you
was coming ashore for the captain, and as you won't see him for the next
couple of hours, I thought I'd come down and ask you to come up and have
a couple of nips. It's cold loafing about here. I live pretty close.”
“You're one o' the right sort. What say, Peter?” Peter was only too
glad. The prospect of getting into a warm house was enough inducement,
even without the further bliss of a couple of nips.
In half an hour the two men were helplessly drunk in Harry's room, and
their generous host carefully placing another bottle (not doctored this
time) of rum on the table for them when they awoke, quietly went out
and locked the door behind him. Then he walked quickly back to where
the _Belted Will_ boat lay, and descending the steps, got into her and
seemed to busy himself for a while. He soon found what he was looking
for, and then came the sound of inrushing water. Then he drew the boat
up again to the steps, got out, and casting off the painter, slung it
aboard, and shoved her into the darkness.
For another hour he waited patiently, and then came the rattle of
wheels, and loud voices and laughter, as a vehicle drew up at the
deserted wharf.
“Why not stay ashore to-night, captain,” said one of the guest's
champagne-laden companions, “and tell your man to go back?”
“No, no,” laughed Cressingham. “I don't like the look of the weather,
and must get aboard right away. Boat ahoy! Where are you, men?”
“Your boat isn't here, sir,” said a gruff voice, and a tall man advanced
from the darkness of the sheds. “I saw the men up town, both pretty
full, and heard them laughing and say they meant to have a night ashore.
It's my belief they turned her adrift purposely.”
Cressingham cursed them savagely, and then turned to the tall man.
“Can you get me a boat?”
“Well, sir, there's a big heavy boat belonging to my boss that I can
get, and I don't mind putting you aboard. We can sail out with this
breeze in no time. She's lying under the coal-wharf.”
“That'll do. Good-bye, gentlemen. I trust we shall all meet again in
another eight months or so.”
The big man led the way, and in a few minutes they reached the coal
wharf, under which the boat was moored. She was a heavy, clumsily-built
craft, and Cressingham, on getting aboard and striking a match, cursed
her filthy state. The tall man stepped to the mast and hoisted the
lug-sail, and Cressingham, taking the tiller, kept her out towards the
_Belted Will_ whose riding light was discernible right ahead.
“We must look out for the buoys, sir,” said the gruff-voiced man, as the
breeze freshened up and the heavy boat quickened her speed.
“All right,” said Cressingham, and pulling out a cigar from his overcoat
he bent his head and struck a light.
Ere he raised it the white-haired man had sprung upon him like a
tiger, and seized his throat in his brawny hands. For a minute or
so Cressingham struggled in that deadly grip, and then lay limp and
insensible in the bottom of the boat.
Challoner, with malignant joy, leaned over him with a world of hate in
his black eyes, and then proceeded to business.
Lifting the unconscious man he carried him for'ard, and, placing him
upon a thwart, gagged and bound him securely. Then he went aft and,
taking the tiller, hauled the sheet in and kept the boat away again upon
her course for the _Belted Will_.
He passed within a quarter of a mile of the huge, black mass with the
bright riding light shining upon the fore-stay, and the look-out from
the steamer took no notice of the boat as she swept past toward the open
sea.
*****
Daylight at last. For six hours the boat had swept before the strong
northerly wind, and the land lay nearly thirty miles astern, lost in a
sombre bank of heavy clouds and mist. Challoner had taken off his rough
overcoat and thrown it over the figure of his enemy. He did not want him
to perish of cold. And as he steered he fixed his eyes, lighted up with
an unholy joy, upon the bent and crushed figure before him.
Cressingham was conscious now, and stared with horror-filled eyes at the
grim creature in the craft before him--a gaunt, dark-faced man, clad in
a striped guernsey and thin cotton pants, with a worn and ragged woollen
cap stuck upon his thick masses of white curly hair. Who was he? A
madman.
Challoner seemed to take no notice of him, and looked out upon the
threatening aspect of sea and sky with an unconcerned face. Presently he
hauled aft the sheet a bit, and kept the boat on a more westerly course,
and the bound and wondering man on the for'ard thwart watched his
movements intently.
The boat had made a little water, and the white-headed man stooped and
baled it out carefully; then he looked up and caught his prisoner's eye.
“Ha, ha, Cressingham, how are you? Isn't it delightful that we should
meet again?”
A strange inarticulate cry broke from Cressingham.
“Who are you?”
“What! is it possible that you don't remember me? I am afraid that that
banquet champagne has affected you a little. Try back, my dear fellow.
Don't you remember the _Victory?_”
Ah! he remembered now, and a terrible fear chilled his life-blood and
froze his once sneering tongue into silence.
“Ah! I see you do,” and Challoner laughed with Satanic passion. “And so
we meet again--with our positions reversed. Once, unless my memory fails
me, you put me in irons. Now, Captain Cressingham, I have you seized up,
and we can have a quiet little chat--all to ourselves.”
No answer came from Cressingham. With dilated, horror-stricken eyes and
panting breath he was turned into stone. The wretched man's silence at
last broke up the depths of his maddened tormentor's hatred, and with a
bound he sprang to his feet and raised his hand on high.
“Ah! God is good to me at last, Cressingham. For ten years I hungered
and thirsted for the day that would set me free, free to search the
world over for the lying, murderous dog that consigned me, an innocent
man, to a lifelong death. And when the day came, sooner than I thought
or you thought--for I suffered for ten years instead of for life--I
waited, a free man till I got you into my power.”
His hand fell to his side again, and then he leaned forward and laughed.
Cressingham, with death creeping into his heart, at last found his
voice.
“Are you going to murder me?” he said.
“Yes,” said Challoner, slowly, “I am going to murder you. But not
quickly. There would be no joy in that. I want you to taste some of my
hideous past--some little space, if only for a day or two, of that ten
long years of agony I spent in Pentridge.”
Then he sat down again, and opening the locker in the stern sheets, took
out food and water, and placing it beside him, ate and drank. But he
gave none to Cressingham.
He finished his meal, and then looked again at his prisoner, and spoke
calmly again.
“You are comfortable, I trust, Captain Cressingham? Not cold, I am
certain, for you have my overcoat in addition to your own. Do you know
why I gave it to you? Just to keep you nice and warm during the night,
and--alive. But, as I feel chilly myself now, I'll take it from you.
Thanks,” and he laughed mockingly as he leaned over and snatched it
away.
“You see, sir, we are going on a long cruise--down to the Snares,
perhaps--and I must keep warm myself, or else how can I talk to you to
break the monotony of the voyage?... It is no use looking astern, my
friend. There's only one tug in port, and she is not in sea-going trim,
so we've got a good start of any search party. And as I don't want to
die myself, we won't run away from the land altogether.”
And so the day passed, agony and deadly fear blanching the face of one,
and cruel, murderous joy filling the heart of the other. Once, as the
last dying gleams of the wintry sun for a few brief moments shone over
the blackened waters, Challoner saw a long stream of steamer's smoke
between the boat and the misty line of coast, and he lowered the sail
and let the boat drift till darkness enwrapped them again.
Once more he took out food and water, and ate and drank, and then lit
his pipe and smoked, and watched with eyes that glared with the lust of
murder and revenge the motionless being before him.
Only once in all that night of horror to Cressingham did he speak, and
his voice shook and quivered, and came in choking gasps.
“Challoner, for the love of Christ, kill me and end my misery.”
“Ha! still alive, Captain Cressingham! That is very satisfactory--to
me only, of course. Kill you, did you say?” and again his wild demoniac
laugh pealed out through the black loneliness of the night. “No, I don't
intend to kill you. I want to see you suffer and die by inches. I want
you to call upon God to help you, so that I can mock at you, and defy
Him to rob me of my vengeance.”
A shuddering moan, and then silence again.
Again the day broke, and as the ocean mists cleared and rolled away, and
the grey morning light fell upon the chilled and stiffening form of his
enemy, Challoner came up and looked into his face, and spoke to him.
No answer came from his pallid lips, and Challoner thrust his hand under
Cressingham's coat and felt his heart. He was still alive, and presently
the closed and swollen eyelids opened, and as he met the glance of the
man who leaned over him an anguished groan burst from his heart.
Challoner looked at him intently for awhile; then he hoisted the sail
again, and, taking the tiller, headed the boat in for the land. The wind
had hauled round during the night, and although the boat made a lot
of leeway there was no danger now of being blown away from the land
altogether.
As the sun mounted higher, and the grey outlines of the shores darkened,
he glanced carefully over the sea to the north-west. Nothing in sight
there. But as the boat lifted to a sea he saw about five miles to
leeward that a big steamer was coming up. In half an hour, unless she
changed her course, she would be up to the boat and could not fail to
see her.
In five minutes more Cressingham lay in the bottom of the boat unbound,
but dying fast, and Challoner was speaking to him.
“Cressingham, you are dying. You know that, don't you? And you know that
I am not lying when I tell you that there is a steamer within five miles
of us. In less than half an hour she will be up to us.”
One black, swollen hand was raised feebly, and then fell back, and a
hoarse sound came from his throat.
“Well, now listen. I said I wanted to see you die--die as you are dying
now--with my face over yours, watching you die. And you die and I live.
I can live now, Cressingham, and perhaps the memory of those ten years
of death in life that I suffered through you will be easier to bear. And
yet there is one thing more that you must know--something that will make
it harder for you to meet your Maker, but easier for me.... Listen.”
He knelt beside him and almost shrieked it: “I had no one in the whole
world to care for me when I was tried for my life but my wife--and you,
you fiend, you murderer--you killed her. She died six years ago--starved
and died.”
Cressingham, with closed eyes, lay with his head supported on
Challoner's left arm. Presently a tremor shook his frame, a fleck of
foam bubbled from between his lips, and then the end.
With cold, merciless eyes the other regarded him, with clenched hands
and set teeth. Then he went for'ard and unbent the boat's kedge, and
with the same lashings that had bound the living man to the thwart he
lashed the kedge across the dead man's chest.
He stood up and looked at the approaching steamer, and then he raised
the body in his arms and dropped it over the side.
*****
A few days later the papers said that the steamer _Maungatapu_ had
picked up a man named Harry, who with Captain Cressingham, of the
_Belted Will_ had been blown out to sea from Port ------. It appeared
from the survivor's statement that during a heavy squall the same night
Captain Cressingham had fallen overboard, and his companion was unable
to rescue him.
“THE BEST ASSET IN A FOOL'S ESTATE”
A slight smile lit up the clear-cut, sombre face of Lawson from Safune,
as looking up from his boat at Etheridge's house he saw the glint of
many lights shining through the walls of the roughly-built store. It
was well on towards midnight when he had left Safune and sailed round
to Etheridge's, a distance of twelve or fifteen miles, and as his
boat touched the sand the first streaks of dawn were changing the dead
whiteness of the beach into a dull grey--soon to brighten into a creamy
yellow as the sun pierced the heavy land-mist.
A native or two, wrapped from head to foot in the long _lava lava_ of
white calico, passed him as he followed the windings of the track to
Etheridge's, but gave him no sign of greeting. Had he been any one of
the few other white men living on Savaii the dark men would have stopped
him and, native-like, inquired the reason of his early visit to
their town. But they knew Lawson too well. _Matâaitu_ they called
him--devil-faced. And in this they were not far wrong, for Lawson,
with his dark olive skin, jet black beard, and eyes that belied the
ever-smiling lips, was not a man whom people would be unanimous in
trusting.
The natives knew him better than did his few white acquaintances in
Samoa, for here, among them, the mask that hid his inner nature from
his compeers was sometimes put aside, though never thrown away. But
Etheridge, the hot-blooded young Englishman and friend of six months'
standing, thought and spoke of him as “the best fellow in the world.”
Etheridge had been taking stock, and the wearisome work had paled his
usually florid features. His face flushed with pleasure at Lawson's
quiet voice:--
“Hard at it, Etheridge? I don't know which looks the paler--you or
Lâlia. Why on earth didn't you send for me sooner? Any one would think
you were some poor devil of a fellow trading for the Dutchmen instead of
being an independent man. Now, I'm hungry and want breakfast--that is,
if Lâlia isn't too tired to get it,” and he looked compassionately at
Etheridge's young half-caste wife, sister to his own.
“I'm not tired,” said the girl, quietly. “I've had easy tasks--counting
packets of fish-hooks, grosses of cotton, and things like that. Billy
wouldn't let me help him with the prints and heavy things,” and with
the faintest shadow of a smile on her lips she passed through into the
sitting-room and thence outside to the little thatched cook-house a few
yards away. With ardent infatuation Etheridge rested his blue eyes on
the white-robed, slender figure as she stood at the door and watched the
Niuë cook light his fire for an early cup of coffee--the first overture
to breakfast at Etheridge's.
“By Jove, Lawson, I'm the luckiest man in Samoa to get such a wife as
Lâlia--and I only a new-chum to the Islands. I believe she'd work night
and day if I'd allow it. And if it hadn't been for you I'd never have
met her at all, but would have married some fast creature who'd have
gone through me in a month and left me a dead-broken beachcomber.”
“Yes,” said Lawson, “she _is_ a good girl, and, except her sister, about
the only half-caste I ever knew whom I would trust implicitly. Their
mother was a Hervey Island woman, as I told you, and Lâlia has been with
Terere and me all over Polynesia, and I think I know her nature. She's
fond of you, Etheridge, in her quiet, undemonstrative way, but she's a
bit shy yet. You see, you don't speak either Rarotongan or Samoan, and
half-caste wives hate talking English. Now, tell me, what is it worrying
you? You haven't had another attack?”
“Yes,” said the younger man, “I have--and a bad one, too, and that's why
I sent for you. The stocktaking is nothing; but I was afraid I might get
another that would stiffen me properly. Look here, Lawson, you've been
a true friend to me. You picked me up six months ago a drunken,
half-maddened beast in Apia and saved my life, reason, and money,
and----”
“Bosh!” said Lawson, taking his coffee from the hand of Etheridge's
wife; “don't think of it, my boy. Every man goes a bit crooked
sometimes; so don't thank me too much.”
Etheridge waited till his wife was gone and then resumed: “I've been
horribly scared, Lawson, over this,” and he placed his hand over his
heart, “I was lifting a case of biscuits when I dropped like a pithed
bullock. When I came to, Lâlia was bathing my face.... I feel pretty
shaky still. The doctor at Goddeffroy's warned me, too--said I'd go off
suddenly if I wasn't careful. My father and one brother died like that.
And I want to talk things over with you in case, you know.” Lawson
nodded.
“Everything I have is for her, Lawson--land, house, trade, and money.
You're pretty sure there's no irregularity in that will of mine, aren't
you?”
“Sure. It's very simply written. It's properly witnessed, and would hold
in any court of law if contested. And perhaps your people in Australia
might do that.”
Etheridge reddened. “No; I cut adrift from 'em long ago. Grog, you know.
Beyond yourself and Lâlia, I haven't a soul who'll bother about me.
I think, Lawson, I'll take a run up to Apia and see the Dutch doctor
again. Fearful cur, am I not?”
“Come, Etheridge,” and Lawson laid his smooth, shapely hand--how
dishonest are shapely hands!--on the other's arm. “You're a little
down. Anything wrong with one's heart always gives a man a bad shaking.
There's Lâlia calling us to breakfast, so I won't say any more but this:
Even if Lâlia wasn't my wife's sister, and anything happened to you,
there's always a home for her in my house. I'd do that for your sake
alone, old man, putting aside the principle I go on of showing respect
to any white man's wife, even if she were a Oahu girl and had rickety
ideas of morality.”
When Lawson had first met him and had carried him down to his station on
Savaii, nursed him through his illness, and treated him like a brother,
Etheridge, with the impulsive confidence of his simple nature, poured
out his thanks and told his history, and eagerly accepted Lawson's
suggestion to try his hand at trading, instead of continuing his erratic
wanderings--wanderings which could only end in his “going broke” at
Tahiti or Honolulu, Fifteen miles or so away, Lawson said, there was a
village with a good opening for a trader. How much could he put into
it? Well, he had £500 with him, and there was another thousand in
Sydney--the last of five. Ample, said his host. So one day the land
was bought, a house and store put up, and Etheridge commenced life as a
trader.
The strange tropic beauty of the place and the ways of the people soon
cast their spell over Etheridge's imaginative nature, and he was as
happy as a man possibly could be--with a knowledge that his life hung by
a thread. How slender that thread was Lawson knew, perhaps, better than
he. The German doctor had said, “You must dell him to be gareful, Mr.
Lawson. Any excidemend, any zooden drouble mit anydings; or too much
visky midout any excidemends, and he drop dead. I dell you.”
*****
A month or so after he had settled, Etheridge paid his weekly visit to
Lawson, and met Lâlia.
“This is my wife's sister,” said Lawson; “she has been on a visit to
some friends in Tutuila, and came back in the _Iserbrook?_”
The clear-cut, refined, and beautiful features of the girl did their
work all too quickly on Etheridge. He was not a sensualist, only a
man keenly susceptible to female beauty, and this girl was.
beautiful--perhaps not so beautiful as her sister, Terere, Lawson's
wife, but with a softer and more tender light in her full, dark eyes.
And Lawson smiled to himself when Etheridge asked him to come outside
and smoke when his wife and her sister had said good-night. A student
of human nature, he had long ago read the simple mind of Etheridge as
he would an open book, and knew what was coming. They went outside and
talked--that is, Etheridge did. Lawson listened and smoked. Then he put
a question to the other man.
*****
“Of course I will, Lawson; do you think I'm scoundrel enough to dream
of anything else? We'll go up to Apia and get married by the white
missionary.”
Lawson laughed in his quiet way. “I wouldn't think you a scoundrel
at all, Etheridge. I may as well tell you that I'm not married to her
sister. We neglected doing that when I lived in the eastward groups, and
no one in Samoa is any the wiser, and wouldn't think anything of it if
they were. But although I'm only a poor devil of a trader, I'm a man of
principle in some things. Lâlia is but a child, so to speak, and I'm her
natural protector. Now, you're a fellow of some means, and if anything
did happen to you she wouldn't get a dollar if she wasn't legally
your wife. The consul would claim everything until he heard from your
relatives. And she's very young, Etheridge, and you've told me often
enough that your heart's pretty dicky. Don't think me a brute.”
Etheridge grasped his hand and wrung it. “No, no--a thousand times no.
You're the best-hearted fellow in the world, and I honour you all the
more, Lawson. Will you ask her to-morrow?”
Perhaps if he had heard the manner of Lawson's asking it would have
puzzled his simple brain. And the subdued merriment of the two sisters
might have caused him to wonder still more.
A week or so after, Etheridge and the two sisters went up to Apia.
Lawson was unable to go. Copra was coming in freely, he had said with
a smile, and he was too poor to run away from business--even to the
wedding of his own wife's sister.
*****
As Etheridge and his young wife came out of the mission church some
natives and white loafers stood around and watched them.
“Ho, Mâgalo,” said one, “is not that _teine_, the sister of the wife of
_Matâaitu_ the black-visaged _papalagi?_”
“Aye,” answered a skinny old hag, carrying a basket of water-bottles,
“'tis she, and the other is Terere. I lived with them once at Tutuila.
She who is now made a wife and looketh so good and holy went away but
a year ago with the captain of a ship--a pig of a German--and now, look
you, she marrieth an Englishman.”
The other natives laughed, and then an ugly fat-faced girl with
lime-covered head and painted cheeks called out “_Pâpatetele!_” and
Terere turned round and cursed them in good English.
“What does that mean?” said a white man to Flash Harry from Saleimoa--a
man full of island lore.
“Why, it means as the bride isn't all as she purfesses to be. Them
pretty soft-lookin' ones like her seldom is, in Samoa or anywhere else.”
*****
The day following the stock-taking Etheridge went to Apia--and never
came back.
One night a native tapped gently at Lawson's window and handed him a
note. As he read Terere with a sleepy yawn awoke, and, stretching one
rounded arm out at full length, let it fall lazily on the mat-bed.
“What is it, Harry?”
“Get up, d------ you! Etheridge is dead, and I'm going to take Lâlia up
to Apia as quick as I can. Why the h---- couldn't he die here?”
A rapid vision of unlimited presents from the rich young widow passed
through the mind of Terere--to whom the relations that had formerly
existed between her and Lawson were well known--as she and he sped along
in his boat to Etheridge's. Lâlia received the news with much equanimity
and a few tears, and then leaving Terere in charge, she got into the
boat and rolled a cigarette. Lawson was in feverish haste. He was afraid
the consul would be down and baulk his rapid but carefully arranged
scheme. At Safune he sent his crew of two men ashore to his house for a
breaker of water, and then once they were out of sight he pushed off and
left them. They were in the way and might spoil everything. The breeze
was strong, and that night Lawson and Lâlia, instead of being out in
the open sea beating up to Apia, were ashore in the sitting-room of the
white missionary house on the other side of Savaii.
“I am indeed glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Lawson. Your honourable
impulse deserves commendation. I have always regretted the fact that a
man like you whose reputation as an educated and intelligent person far
above that of most traders here is not unknown to me”--Lawson smiled
sweetly--“should not alone set at defiance the teaching of Holy Writ,
but tacitly mock at _our_ efforts to inculcate a higher code of morality
in these beautiful islands. Ere long I trust I may make the acquaintance
of your brother-in-law, Mr. Etheridge, and his wife.”
Lawson smiled affably, and a slight tinge suffused the creamy cheek of
Lâlia.
“And now, Mr. Lawson, as you are so very anxious to get back home I will
not delay. Here are my wife and my native assistant as witnesses. Stand
up, please.”
*****
“Get in, you little beast,” said Lawson, as he bundled Lâlia into the
boat and started back home, “and don't fall overboard. I don't want to
lose the Best Asset in that Fool's Estate.”
*****
When the consul, a week later, came down to take possession of
Etheridge's “estate,” he called in at Safune to ask Lawson to come and
help him to take an inventory. Terere met him with a languid smile, and,
too lazy perhaps to speak English, answered his questions in Samoan.
“He's married and gone,” she said.
“Married? Aren't _you_ Mrs. Lawson?” said the bewildered consul, in
English.
“Not now, sir; my sister is. Will you take me to Apia in your boat,
please?”
And that is how Lawson, the _papalagi mativa_ (poor white) and “the
best-hearted fellow in the world,” became a _mau aha_--a man of riches,
and went, with the Best Asset in Etheridge's estate, the calm-eyed
Lâlia, to start a hotel in--well, no matter where.