strung, and he possessed too much imagination. The world was too much
with him. He projected himself too quiveringly into his environment.
Therefore, the last place in the world for him to come was the Solomons.
He did not come, expecting to stay. A five weeks' stop-over between
steamers, he decided, would satisfy the call of the primitive he felt
thrumming the strings of his being. At least, so he told the lady
tourists on the MAKEMBO, though in different terms; and they worshipped
him as a hero, for they were lady tourists and they would know only
the safety of the steamer's deck as she threaded her way through the
Solomons.
There was another man on board, of whom the ladies took no notice. He
was a little shriveled wisp of a man, with a withered skin the color of
mahogany. His name on the passenger list does not matter, but his other
name, Captain Malu, was a name for niggers to conjure with, and to
scare naughty pickaninnies to righteousness from New Hanover to the
New Hebrides. He had farmed savages and savagery, and from fever and
hardship, the crack of Sniders and the lash of the overseers, had
wrested five millions of money in the form of bêche-de-mer, sandalwood,
pearl-shell and turtle-shell, ivory nuts and copra, grasslands, trading
stations, and plantations. Captain Malu's little finger, which was
broken, had more inevitableness in it than Bertie Arkwright's whole
carcass. But then, the lady tourists had nothing by which to judge save
appearances, and Bertie certainly was a fine-looking man.
Bertie talked with Captain Malu in the smoking room, confiding to him
his intention of seeing life red and bleeding in the Solomons. Captain
Malu agreed that the intention was ambitious and honorable. It was not
until several days later that he became interested in Bertie, when that
young adventurer insisted on showing him an automatic 44-caliber pistol.
Bertie explained the mechanism and demonstrated by slipping a loaded
magazine up the hollow butt.
“It is so simple,” he said. He shot the outer barrel back along the
inner one. “That loads it and cocks it, you see. And then all I have to
do is pull the trigger, eight times, as fast as I can quiver my finger.
See that safety clutch. That's what I like about it. It is safe. It is
positively fool-proof.” He slipped out the magazine. “You see how safe
it is.”
As he held it in his hand, the muzzle came in line with Captain Malu's
stomach. Captain Malu's blue eyes looked at it unswervingly.
“Would you mind pointing it in some other direction?” he asked.
“It's perfectly safe,” Bertie assured him. “I withdrew the magazine.
It's not loaded now, you know.”
“A gun is always loaded.”
“But this one isn't.”
“Turn it away just the same.”
Captain Malu's voice was flat and metallic and low, but his eyes never
left the muzzle until the line of it was drawn past him and away from
him.
“I'll bet a fiver it isn't loaded,” Bertie proposed warmly.
The other shook his head.
“Then I'll show you.”
Bertie started to put the muzzle to his own temple with the evident
intention of pulling the trigger.
“Just a second,” Captain Malu said quietly, reaching out his hand. “Let
me look at it.”
He pointed it seaward and pulled the trigger. A heavy explosion
followed, instantaneous with the sharp click of the mechanism that
flipped a hot and smoking cartridge sidewise along the deck.
Bertie's jaw dropped in amazement.
“I slipped the barrel back once, didn't I?” he explained. “It was silly
of me, I must say.”
He giggled flabbily, and sat down in a steamer chair. The blood had
ebbed from his face, exposing dark circles under his eyes. His hands
were trembling and unable to guide the shaking cigarette to his lips.
The world was too much with him, and he saw himself with dripping brains
prone upon the deck.
“Really,” he said, “... really.”
“It's a pretty weapon,” said Captain Malu, returning the automatic to
him.
The Commissioner was on board the Makembo, returning from Sydney, and by
his permission a stop was made at Ugi to land a missionary. And at Ugi
lay the ketch ARLA, Captain Hansen, skipper. Now the Arla was one of
many vessels owned by Captain Malu, and it was at his suggestion and
by his invitation that Bertie went aboard the Arla as guest for a four
days' recruiting cruise on the coast of Malaita. Thereafter the ARLA
would drop him at Reminge Plantation (also owned by Captain Malu), where
Bertie could remain for a week, and then be sent over to Tulagi, the
seat of government, where he would become the Commissioner's guest.
Captain Malu was responsible for two other suggestions, which given, he
disappears from this narrative. One was to Captain Hansen, the other
to Mr. Harriwell, manager of Reminge Plantation. Both suggestions were
similar in tenor, namely, to give Mr. Bertram Arkwright an insight into
the rawness and redness of life in the Solomons. Also, it is whispered
that Captain Malu mentioned that a case of Scotch would be
coincidental with any particularly gorgeous insight Mr. Arkwright might
receive.............
“Yes, Swartz always was too pig-headed. You see, he took four of his
boat's crew to Tulagi to be flogged--officially, you know--then started
back with them in the whaleboat. It was pretty squally, and the boat
capsized just outside. Swartz was the only one drowned. Of course, it
was an accident.”
“Was it? Really?” Bertie asked, only half-interested, staring hard at
the black man at the wheel.
Ugi had dropped astern, and the ARLA was sliding along through a summer
sea toward the wooded ranges of Malaita. The helmsman who so attracted
Bertie's eyes sported a ten penny nail, stuck skewerwise through his
nose. About his neck was a string of pants buttons. Thrust through holes
in his ears were a can opener, the broken handle of a toothbrush, a clay
pipe, the brass wheel of an alarm clock, and several Winchester rifle
cartridges.
On his chest, suspended from around his neck hung the half of a china
plate. Some forty similarly appareled blacks lay about the deck, fifteen
of which were boat's crew, the remainder being fresh labor recruits.
“Of course it was an accident,” spoke up the ARLA'S mate, Jacobs,
a slender, dark-eyed man who looked more a professor than a sailor.
“Johnny Bedip nearly had the same kind of accident. He was bringing back
several from a flogging, when they capsized him. But he knew how to swim
as well as they, and two of them were drowned. He used a boat stretcher
and a revolver. Of course it was an accident.”
“Quite common, them accidents,” remarked the skipper. “You see that man
at the wheel, Mr. Arkwright? He's a man eater. Six months ago, he and
the rest of the boat's crew drowned the then captain of the ARLA. They
did it on deck, sir, right aft there by the mizzen-traveler.”
“The deck was in a shocking state,” said the mate.
“Do I understand--?” Bertie began.
“Yes, just that,” said Captain Hansen. “It was an accidental drowning.”
“But on deck--?”
“Just so. I don't mind telling you, in confidence, of course, that they
used an axe.”
“This present crew of yours?”
Captain Hansen nodded.
“The other skipper always was too careless,” explained the mate. “He but
just turned his back, when they let him have it.”
“We haven't any show down here,” was the skipper's complaint. “The
government protects a nigger against a white every time. You can't shoot
first. You've got to give the nigger first shot, or else the government
calls it murder and you go to Fiji. That's why there's so many drowning
accidents.”
Dinner was called, and Bertie and the skipper went below, leaving the
mate to watch on deck.
“Keep an eye out for that black devil, Auiki,” was the skipper's parting
caution. “I haven't liked his looks for several days.”
“Right O,” said the mate.
Dinner was part way along, and the skipper was in the middle of his
story of the cutting out of the Scottish Chiefs.
“Yes,” he was saying, “she was the finest vessel on the coast. But when
she missed stays, and before ever she hit the reef, the canoes started
for her. There were five white men, a crew of twenty Santa Cruz boys
and Samoans, and only the supercargo escaped. Besides, there were sixty
recruits. They were all kai-kai'd. Kai-kai?--oh, I beg your pardon.
I mean they were eaten. Then there was the James Edwards, a
dandy-rigged--”
But at that moment there was a sharp oath from the mate on deck and a
chorus of savage cries. A revolver went off three times, and then was
heard a loud splash. Captain Hansen had sprung up the companionway on
the instant, and Bertie's eyes had been fascinated by a glimpse of him
drawing his revolver as he sprang.
Bertie went up more circumspectly, hesitating before he put his head
above the companionway slide. But nothing happened. The mate was
shaking with excitement, his revolver in his hand. Once he startled, and
half-jumped around, as if danger threatened his back.
“One of the natives fell overboard,” he was saying, in a queer tense
voice. “He couldn't swim.”
“Who was it?” the skipper demanded.
“Auiki,” was the answer.
“But I say, you know, I heard shots,” Bertie said, in trembling
eagerness, for he scented adventure, and adventure that was happily over
with.
The mate whirled upon him, snarling:
“It's a damned lie. There ain't been a shot fired. The nigger fell
overboard.”
Captain Hansen regarded Bertie with unblinking, lack-luster eyes.
“I--I thought--” Bertie was beginning.
“Shots?” said Captain Hansen, dreamily. “Shots? Did you hear any shots,
Mr. Jacobs?”
“Not a shot,” replied Mr. Jacobs.
The skipper looked at his guest triumphantly, and said:
“Evidently an accident. Let us go down, Mr. Arkwright, and finish
dinner.”
Bertie slept that night in the captain's cabin, a tiny stateroom off the
main cabin. The for'ard bulkhead was decorated with a stand of rifles.
Over the bunk were three more rifles. Under the bunk was a big drawer,
which, when he pulled it out, he found filled with ammunition, dynamite,
and several boxes of detonators. He elected to take the settee on the
opposite side. Lying conspicuously on the small table, was the Arla's
log. Bertie did not know that it had been especially prepared for the
occasion by Captain Malu, and he read therein how on September 21, two
boat's crew had fallen overboard and been drowned. Bertie read between
the lines and knew better. He read how the Arla's whale boat had
been bushwhacked at Su'u and had lost three men; of how the skipper
discovered the cook stewing human flesh on the galley fire--flesh
purchased by the boat's crew ashore in Fui; of how an accidental
discharge of dynamite, while signaling, had killed another boat's crew;
of night attacks; ports fled from between the dawns; attacks by bushmen
in mangrove swamps and by fleets of salt-water men in the larger
passages. One item that occurred with monotonous frequency was death by
dysentery. He noticed with alarm that two white men had so died--guests,
like himself, on the Arla.
“I say, you know,” Bertie said next day to Captain Hansen. “I've been
glancing through your log.”
The skipper displayed quick vexation that the log had been left lying
about.
“And all that dysentery, you know, that's all rot, just like the
accidental drownings,” Bertie continued. “What does dysentery really
stand for?”
The skipper openly admired his guest's acumen, stiffened himself to make
indignant denial, then gracefully surrendered.
“You see, it's like this, Mr. Arkwright. These islands have got a bad
enough name as it is. It's getting harder every day to sign on white
men. Suppose a man is killed. The company has to pay through the nose
for another man to take the job. But if the man merely dies of sickness,
it's all right. The new chums don't mind disease. What they draw the
line at is being murdered. I thought the skipper of the Arla had died of
dysentery when I took his billet. Then it was too late. I'd signed the
contract.”
“Besides,” said Mr. Jacobs, “there's altogether too many accidental
drownings anyway. It don't look right. It's the fault of the government.
A white man hasn't a chance to defend himself from the niggers.”
“Yes, look at the Princess and that Yankee mate,” the skipper took up
the tale. “She carried five white men besides a government agent. The
captain, the agent, and the supercargo were ashore in the two boats.
They were killed to the last man. The mate and boson, with about fifteen
of the crew--Samoans and Tongans--were on board. A crowd of niggers came
off from shore. First thing the mate knew, the boson and the crew were
killed in the first rush. The mate grabbed three cartridge belts and two
Winchesters and skinned up to the cross-trees. He was the sole survivor,
and you can't blame him for being mad. He pumped one rifle till it got
so hot he couldn't hold it, then he pumped the other. The deck was black
with niggers. He cleaned them out. He dropped them as they went over the
rail, and he dropped them as fast as they picked up their paddles. Then
they jumped into the water and started to swim for it, and being mad, he
got half a dozen more. And what did he get for it?”
“Seven years in Fiji,” snapped the mate.
“The government said he wasn't justified in shooting after they'd taken
to the water,” the skipper explained.
“And that's why they die of dysentery nowadays,” the mate added.
“Just fancy,” said Bertie, as he felt a longing for the cruise to be
over.
Later on in the day he interviewed the black who had been pointed out
to him as a cannibal. This fellow's name was Sumasai. He had spent three
years on a Queensland plantation. He had been to Samoa, and Fiji, and
Sydney; and as a boat's crew had been on recruiting schooners through
New Britain, New Ireland, New Guinea, and the Admiralties. Also, he was
a wag, and he had taken a line on his skipper's conduct. Yes, he had
eaten many men. How many? He could not remember the tally. Yes, white
men, too; they were very good, unless they were sick. He had once eaten
a sick one.
“My word!” he cried, at the recollection. “Me sick plenty along him. My
belly walk about too much.”
Bertie shuddered, and asked about heads. Yes, Sumasai had several hidden
ashore, in good condition, sun-dried, and smoke-cured. One was of the
captain of a schooner. It had long whiskers. He would sell it for
two quid. Black men's heads he would sell for one quid. He had some
pickaninny heads, in poor condition, that he would let go for ten bob.
Five minutes afterward, Bertie found himself sitting on the
companionway-slide alongside a black with a horrible skin disease. He
sheered off, and on inquiry was told that it was leprosy. He hurried
below and washed himself with antiseptic soap. He took many antiseptic
washes in the course of the day, for every native on board was afflicted
with malignant ulcers of one sort or another.
As the Arla drew in to an anchorage in the midst of mangrove swamps,
a double row of barbed wire was stretched around above her rail. That
looked like business, and when Bertie saw the shore canoes alongside,
armed with spears, bows and arrows, and Sniders, he wished more
earnestly than ever that the cruise was over.
That evening the natives were slow in leaving the ship at sundown. A
number of them checked the mate when he ordered them ashore. “Never
mind, I'll fix them,” said Captain Hansen, diving below.
When he came back, he showed Bertie a stick of dynamite attached to a
fish hook. Now it happens that a paper-wrapped bottle of chlorodyne with
a piece of harmless fuse projecting can fool anybody. It fooled Bertie,
and it fooled the natives. When Captain Hansen lighted the fuse and
hooked the fish hook into the tail end of a native's loin cloth, that
native was smitten with so an ardent a desire for the shore that he
forgot to shed the loin cloth. He started for'ard, the fuse sizzling and
spluttering at his rear, the natives in his path taking headers over the
barbed wire at every jump. Bertie was horror-stricken. So was Captain
Hansen. He had forgotten his twenty-five recruits, on each of which he
had paid thirty shillings advance. They went over the side along with
the shore-dwelling folk and followed by him who trailed the sizzling
chlorodyne bottle.
Bertie did not see the bottle go off; but the mate opportunely
discharging a stick of real dynamite aft where it would harm nobody,
Bertie would have sworn in any admiralty court to a nigger blown to
flinders. The flight of the twenty-five recruits had actually cost the
Arla forty pounds, and, since they had taken to the bush, there was no
hope of recovering them. The skipper and his mate proceeded to drown
their sorrow in cold tea.
The cold tea was in whiskey bottles, so Bertie did not know it was cold
tea they were mopping up. All he knew was that the two men got very
drunk and argued eloquently and at length as to whether the exploded
nigger should be reported as a case of dysentery or as an accidental
drowning. When they snored off to sleep, he was the only white man left,
and he kept a perilous watch till dawn, in fear of an attack from shore
and an uprising of the crew.
Three more days the Arla spent on the coast, and three more nights the
skipper and the mate drank overfondly of cold tea, leaving Bertie
to keep the watch. They knew he could be depended upon, while he was
equally certain that if he lived, he would report their drunken conduct
to Captain Malu. Then the Arla dropped anchor at Reminge Plantation, on
Guadalcanar, and Bertie landed on the beach with a sigh of relief and
shook hands with the manager. Mr. Harriwell was ready for him.
“Now you mustn't be alarmed if some of our fellows seem downcast,” Mr.
Harriwell said, having drawn him aside in confidence. “There's been talk
of an outbreak, and two or three suspicious signs I'm willing to admit,
but personally I think it's all poppycock.”
“How--how many blacks have you on the plantation?” Bertie asked, with a
sinking heart.
“We're working four hundred just now,” replied Mr. Harriwell,
cheerfully; “but the three of us, with you, of course, and the skipper
and mate of the Arla, can handle them all right.”
Bertie turned to meet one McTavish, the storekeeper, who scarcely
acknowledged the introduction, such was his eagerness to present his
resignation.
“It being that I'm a married man, Mr. Harriwell, I can't very well
afford to remain on longer. Trouble is working up, as plain as the
nose on your face. The niggers are going to break out, and there'll be
another Hohono horror here.”
“What's a Hohono horror?” Bertie asked, after the storekeeper had been
persuaded to remain until the end of the month.
“Oh, he means Hohono Plantation, on Ysabel,” said the manager. “The
niggers killed the five white men ashore, captured the schooner, killed
the captain and mate, and escaped in a body to Malaita. But I always
said they were careless on Hohono. They won't catch us napping here.
Come along, Mr. Arkwright, and see our view from the veranda.”
Bertie was too busy wondering how he could get away to Tulagi to the
Commissioner's house, to see much of the view. He was still wondering,
when a rifle exploded very near to him, behind his back. At the same
moment his arm was nearly dislocated, so eagerly did Mr. Harriwell drag
him indoors.
“I say, old man, that was a close shave,” said the manager, pawing him
over to see if he had been hit. “I can't tell you how sorry I am. But it
was broad daylight, and I never dreamed.”
Bertie was beginning to turn pale.
“They got the other manager that way,” McTavish vouchsafed. “And a
dashed fine chap he was. Blew his brains out all over the veranda. You
noticed that dark stain there between the steps and the door?”
Bertie was ripe for the cocktail which Mr. Harriwell pitched in and
compounded for him; but before he could drink it, a man in riding
trousers and puttees entered.
“What's the matter now?” the manager asked, after one look at the
newcomer's face. “Is the river up again?”
“River be blowed--it's the niggers. Stepped out of the cane grass, not
a dozen feet away, and whopped at me. It was a Snider, and he shot from
the hip. Now what I want to know is where'd he get that Snider?--Oh, I
beg pardon. Glad to know you, Mr. Arkwright.”
“Mr. Brown is my assistant,” explained Mr. Harriwell. “And now let's
have that drink.”
“But where'd he get that Snider?” Mr. Brown insisted. “I always objected
to keeping those guns on the premises.”
“They're still there,” Mr. Harriwell said, with a show of heat.
Mr. Brown smiled incredulously.
“Come along and see,” said the manager.
Bertie joined the procession into the office, where Mr. Harriwell
pointed triumphantly at a big packing case in a dusty corner.
“Well, then where did the beggar get that Snider?” harped Mr. Brown.
But just then McTavish lifted the packing case. The manager started,
then tore off the lid. The case was empty. They gazed at one another in
horrified silence. Harriwell drooped wearily.
Then McVeigh cursed.
“What I contended all along--the house-boys are not to be trusted.”
“It does look serious,” Harriwell admitted, “but we'll come through it
all right. What the sanguinary niggers need is a shaking up. Will you
gentlemen please bring your rifles to dinner, and will you, Mr. Brown,
kindly prepare forty or fifty sticks of dynamite. Make the fuses good
and short. We'll give them a lesson. And now, gentlemen, dinner is
served.”
One thing that Bertie detested was rice and curry, so it happened that
he alone partook of an inviting omelet. He had quite finished his plate,
when Harriwell helped himself to the omelet. One mouthful he tasted,
then spat out vociferously.
“That's the second time,” McTavish announced ominously.
Harriwell was still hawking and spitting.
“Second time, what?” Bertie quavered.
“Poison,” was the answer. “That cook will be hanged yet.”
“That's the way the bookkeeper went out at Cape March,” Brown spoke up.
“Died horribly. They said on the Jessie that they heard him screaming
three miles away.”
“I'll put the cook in irons,” sputtered Harriwell. “Fortunately we
discovered it in time.”
Bertie sat paralyzed. There was no color in his face. He attempted to
speak, but only an inarticulate gurgle resulted. All eyed him anxiously.
“Don't say it, don't say it,” McTavish cried in a tense voice.
“Yes, I ate it, plenty of it, a whole plateful!” Bertie cried
explosively, like a diver suddenly regaining breath.
The awful silence continued half a minute longer, and he read his fate
in their eyes.
“Maybe it wasn't poison after all,” said Harriwell, dismally.
“Call in the cook,” said Brown.
In came the cook, a grinning black boy, nose-spiked and ear-plugged.
“Here, you, Wi-wi, what name that?” Harriwell bellowed, pointing
accusingly at the omelet.
Wi-wi was very naturally frightened and embarrassed.
“Him good fella kai-kai,” he murmured apologetically.
“Make him eat it,” suggested McTavish. “That's a proper test.”
Harriwell filled a spoon with the stuff and jumped for the cook, who
fled in panic.
“That settles it,” was Brown's solemn pronouncement. “He won't eat it.”
“Mr. Brown, will you please go and put the irons on him?” Harriwell
turned cheerfully to Bertie. “It's all right, old man, the Commissioner
will deal with him, and if you die, depend upon it, he will be hanged.”
“Don't think the government'll do it,” objected McTavish.
“But gentlemen, gentlemen,” Bertie cried. “In the meantime think of me.”
Harriwell shrugged his shoulders pityingly.
“Sorry, old man, but it's a native poison, and there are no known
antidotes for native poisons. Try and compose yourself and if--”
Two sharp reports of a rifle from without, interrupted the discourse,
and Brown, entering, reloaded his rifle and sat down to table.
“The cook's dead,” he said. “Fever. A rather sudden attack.”
“I was just telling Mr. Arkwright that there are no antidotes for native
poisons--”
“Except gin,” said Brown.
Harriwell called himself an absent-minded idiot and rushed for the gin
bottle.
“Neat, man, neat,” he warned Bertie, who gulped down a tumbler
two-thirds full of the raw spirits, and coughed and choked from the
angry bite of it till the tears ran down his cheeks.