him, and doubted that the omelet had been poisoned. Brown and McTavish
also doubted; but Bertie discerned an insincere ring in their voices.
His appetite had left him, and he took his own pulse stealthily under
the table. There was no question but what it was increasing, but he
failed to ascribe it to the gin he had taken. McTavish, rifle in hand,
went out on the veranda to reconnoiter.
“They're massing up at the cook-house,” was his report. “And they've no
end of Sniders. My idea is to sneak around on the other side and take
them in flank. Strike the first blow, you know. Will you come along,
Brown?”
Harriwell ate on steadily, while Bertie discovered that his pulse had
leaped up five beats. Nevertheless, he could not help jumping when the
rifles began to go off. Above the scattering of Sniders could be
heard the pumping of Brown's and McTavish's Winchesters--all against a
background of demoniacal screeching and yelling.
“They've got them on the run,” Harriwell remarked, as voices and
gunshots faded away in the distance.
Scarcely were Brown and McTavish back at the table when the latter
reconnoitered.
“They've got dynamite,” he said.
“Then let's charge them with dynamite,” Harriwell proposed.
Thrusting half a dozen sticks each into their pockets and equipping
themselves with lighted cigars, they started for the door. And just then
it happened. They blamed McTavish for it afterward, and he admitted
that the charge had been a trifle excessive. But at any rate it went
off under the house, which lifted up cornerwise and settled back on
its foundations. Half the china on the table was shattered, while the
eight-day clock stopped. Yelling for vengeance, the three men rushed out
into the night, and the bombardment began.
When they returned, there was no Bertie. He had dragged himself away
to the office, barricaded himself in, and sunk upon the floor in a
gin-soaked nightmare, wherein he died a thousand deaths while the
valorous fight went on around him. In the morning, sick and headachey
from the gin, he crawled out to find the sun still in the sky and God
presumable in heaven, for his hosts were alive and uninjured.
Harriwell pressed him to stay on longer, but Bertie insisted on sailing
immediately on the Arla for Tulagi, where, until the following steamer
day, he stuck close by the Commissioner's house. There were lady
tourists on the outgoing steamer, and Bertie was again a hero, while
Captain Malu, as usual, passed unnoticed. But Captain Malu sent back
from Sydney two cases of the best Scotch whiskey on the market, for he
was not able to make up his mind as to whether it was Captain Hansen or
Mr Harriwell who had given Bertie Arkwright the more gorgeous insight
into life in the Solomons.
THE INEVITABLE WHITE MAN
“The black will never understand the white, nor the white the black, as
long as black is black and white is white.”
So said Captain Woodward. We sat in the parlor of Charley Roberts' pub
in Apia, drinking long Abu Hameds compounded and shared with us by the
aforesaid Charley Roberts, who claimed the recipe direct from Stevens,
famous for having invented the Abu Hamed at a time when he was spurred
on by Nile thirst--the Stevens who was responsible for “With Kitchener
to Kartoun,” and who passed out at the siege of Ladysmith.
Captain Woodward, short and squat, elderly, burned by forty years of
tropic sun, and with the most beautiful liquid brown eyes I ever saw in
a man, spoke from a vast experience. The crisscross of scars on his bald
pate bespoke a tomahawk intimacy with the black, and of equal intimacy
was the advertisement, front and rear, on the right side of his neck,
where an arrow had at one time entered and been pulled clean through. As
he explained, he had been in a hurry on that occasion--the arrow impeded
his running--and he felt that he could not take the time to break off
the head and pull out the shaft the way it had come in. At the present
moment he was commander of the SAVAII, the big steamer that recruited
labor from the westward for the German plantations on Samoa.
“Half the trouble is the stupidity of the whites,” said Roberts,
pausing to take a swig from his glass and to curse the Samoan bar-boy
in affectionate terms. “If the white man would lay himself out a bit
to understand the workings of the black man's mind, most of the messes
would be avoided.”
“I've seen a few who claimed they understood niggers,” Captain Woodward
retorted, “and I always took notice that they were the first to be
kai-kai'd (eaten). Look at the missionaries in New Guinea and the New
Hebrides--the martyr isle of Erromanga and all the rest. Look at the
Austrian expedition that was cut to pieces in the Solomons, in the bush
of Guadalcanar. And look at the traders themselves, with a score of
years' experience, making their brag that no nigger would ever get them,
and whose heads to this day are ornamenting the rafters of the canoe
houses. There was old Johnny Simons--twenty-six years on the raw edges
of Melanesia, swore he knew the niggers like a book and that they'd
never do for him, and he passed out at Marovo Lagoon, New Georgia, had
his head sawed off by a black Mary (woman) and an old nigger with only
one leg, having left the other leg in the mouth of a shark while diving
for dynamited fish. There was Billy Watts, horrible reputation as
a nigger killer, a man to scare the devil. I remember lying at Cape
Little, New Ireland you know, when the niggers stole half a case of
trade-tobacco--cost him about three dollars and a half. In retaliation
he turned out, shot six niggers, smashed up their war canoes and burned
two villages. And it was at Cape Little, four years afterward, that
he was jumped along with fifty Buku boys he had with him fishing
bêche-de-mer. In five minutes they were all dead, with the exception of
three boys who got away in a canoe. Don't talk to me about understanding
the nigger. The white man's mission is to farm the world, and it's a
big enough job cut out for him. What time has he got left to understand
niggers anyway?”
“Just so,” said Roberts. “And somehow it doesn't seem necessary, after
all, to understand the niggers. In direct proportion to the white man's
stupidity is his success in farming the world--”
“And putting the fear of God into the nigger's heart,” Captain Woodward
blurted out. “Perhaps you're right, Roberts. Perhaps it's his stupidity
that makes him succeed, and surely one phase of his stupidity is his
inability to understand the niggers. But there's one thing sure, the
white has to run the niggers whether he understands them or not. It's
inevitable. It's fate.”
“And of course the white man is inevitable--it's the niggers' fate,”
Roberts broke in. “Tell the white man there's pearl shell in some lagoon
infested by ten-thousand howling cannibals, and he'll head there all by
his lonely, with half a dozen kanaka divers and a tin alarm clock for
chronometer, all packed like sardines on a commodious, five-ton ketch.
Whisper that there's a gold strike at the North Pole, and that same
inevitable white-skinned creature will set out at once, armed with pick
and shovel, a side of bacon, and the latest patent rocker--and what's
more, he'll get there. Tip it off to him that there's diamonds on the
red-hot ramparts of hell, and Mr. White Man will storm the ramparts
and set old Satan himself to pick-and-shovel work. That's what comes of
being stupid and inevitable.”
“But I wonder what the black man must think of the--the inevitableness,”
I said.
Captain Woodward broke into quiet laughter. His eyes had a reminiscent
gleam.
“I'm just wondering what the niggers of Malu thought and still must be
thinking of the one inevitable white man we had on board when we visited
them in the DUCHESS,” he explained.
Roberts mixed three more Abu Hameds.
“That was twenty years ago. Saxtorph was his name. He was certainly the
most stupid man I ever saw, but he was as inevitable as death. There was
only one thing that chap could do, and that was shoot. I remember the
first time I ran into him--right here in Apia, twenty years ago. That
was before your time, Roberts. I was sleeping at Dutch Henry's hotel,
down where the market is now. Ever heard of him? He made a tidy stake
smuggling arms in to the rebels, sold out his hotel, and was killed in
Sydney just six weeks afterward in a saloon row.
“But Saxtorph. One night I'd just got to sleep, when a couple of cats
began to sing in the courtyard. It was out of bed and up window, water
jug in hand. But just then I heard the window of the next room go up.
Two shots were fired, and the window was closed. I fail to impress you
with the celerity of the transaction. Ten seconds at the outside. Up
went the window, bang bang went the revolver, and down went the window.
Whoever it was, he had never stopped to see the effect of his shots. He
knew. Do you follow me?--he KNEW. There was no more cat concert, and in
the morning there lay the two offenders, stone dead. It was marvelous
to me. It still is marvelous. First, it was starlight, and Saxtorph shot
without drawing a bead; next, he shot so rapidly that the two reports
were like a double report; and finally, he knew he had hit his marks
without looking to see.
“Two days afterward he came on board to see me. I was mate, then, on
the Duchess, a whacking big one-hundred-and fifty-ton schooner, a
blackbirder. And let me tell you that blackbirders were blackbirders in
those days. There weren't any government protection for US, either. It
was rough work, give and take, if we were finished, and nothing said,
and we ran niggers from every south sea island they didn't kick us off
from. Well, Saxtorph came on board, John Saxtorph was the name he gave.
He was a sandy little man, hair sandy, complexion sandy, and eyes sandy,
too. Nothing striking about him. His soul was as neutral as his color
scheme. He said he was strapped and wanted to ship on board. Would go
cabin boy, cook, supercargo, or common sailor. Didn't know anything
about any of the billets, but said that he was willing to learn. I
didn't want him, but his shooting had so impressed me that I took him as
common sailor, wages three pounds per month.
“He was willing to learn all right, I'll say that much. But he was
constitutionally unable to learn anything. He could no more box the
compass than I could mix drinks like Roberts here. And as for steering,
he gave me my first gray hairs. I never dared risk him at the wheel when
we were running in a big sea, while full-and-by and close-and-by were
insoluble mysteries. Couldn't ever tell the difference between a sheet
and a tackle, simply couldn't. The fore-throat-jig and the jib-jig were
all one to him. Tell him to slack off the mainsheet, and before you know
it, he'd drop the peak. He fell overboard three times, and he couldn't
swim. But he was always cheerful, never seasick, and he was the most
willing man I ever knew. He was an uncommunicative soul. Never talked
about himself. His history, so far as we were concerned, began the day
he signed on the DUCHESS. Where he learned to shoot, the stars alone can
tell. He was a Yankee--that much we knew from the twang in his speech.
And that was all we ever did know.
“And now we begin to get to the point. We had bad luck in the New
Hebrides, only fourteen boys for five weeks, and we ran up before the
southeast for the Solomons. Malaita, then as now, was good recruiting
ground, and we ran into Malu, on the northwestern corner. There's a
shore reef and an outer reef, and a mighty nervous anchorage; but we
made it all right and fired off our dynamite as a signal to the niggers
to come down and be recruited. In three days we got not a boy. The
niggers came off to us in their canoes by hundreds, but they only
laughed when we showed them beads and calico and hatchets and talked of
the delights of plantation work in Samoa.
“On the fourth day there came a change. Fifty-odd boys signed on and
were billeted in the main-hold, with the freedom of the deck, of course.
And of course, looking back, this wholesale signing on was suspicious,
but at the time we thought some powerful chief had removed the ban
against recruiting. The morning of the fifth day our two boats went
ashore as usual--one to cover the other, you know, in case of trouble.
And, as usual, the fifty niggers on board were on deck, loafing,
talking, smoking, and sleeping. Saxtorph and myself, along with four
other sailors, were all that were left on board. The two boats were
manned with Gilbert Islanders. In the one were the captain, the
supercargo, and the recruiter. In the other, which was the covering boat
and which lay off shore a hundred yards, was the second mate. Both boats
were well-armed, though trouble was little expected.
“Four of the sailors, including Saxtorph, were scraping the poop rail.
The fifth sailor, rifle in hand, was standing guard by the water-tank
just for'ard of the mainmast. I was for'ard, putting in the finishing
licks on a new jaw for the fore-gaff. I was just reaching for my pipe
where I had laid it down, when I heard a shot from shore. I straightened
up to look. Something struck me on the back of the head, partially
stunning me and knocking me to the deck. My first thought was that
something had carried away aloft; but even as I went down, and before
I struck the deck, I heard the devil's own tattoo of rifles from the
boats, and twisting sidewise, I caught a glimpse of the sailor who
was standing guard. Two big niggers were holding his arms, and a third
nigger from behind was braining him with a tomahawk.
“I can see it now, the water-tank, the mainmast, the gang hanging on to
him, the hatchet descending on the back of his head, and all under the
blazing sunlight. I was fascinated by that growing vision of death.
The tomahawk seemed to take a horribly long time to come down. I saw it
land, and the man's legs give under him as he crumpled. The niggers held
him up by sheer strength while he was hacked a couple of times more.
Then I got two more hacks on the head and decided that I was dead. So
did the brute that was hacking me. I was too helpless to move, and I lay
there and watched them removing the sentry's head. I must say they did
it slick enough. They were old hands at the business.
“The rifle firing from the boats had ceased, and I made no doubt that
they were finished off and that the end had come to everything. It was
only a matter of moments when they would return for my head. They were
evidently taking the heads from the sailors aft. Heads are valuable on
Malaita, especially white heads. They have the place of honor in the
canoe houses of the salt-water natives. What particular decorative
effect the bushmen get out of them I didn't know, but they prize them
just as much as the salt-water crowd.
“I had a dim notion of escaping, and I crawled on hands and knees to
the winch, where I managed to drag myself to my feet. From there I
could look aft and see three heads on top the cabin--the heads of three
sailors I had given orders to for months. The niggers saw me standing,
and started for me. I reached for my revolver, and found they had taken
it. I can't say that I was scared. I've been near to death several
times, but it never seemed easier than right then. I was half-stunned,
and nothing seemed to matter.
“The leading nigger had armed himself with a cleaver from the galley,
and he grimaced like an ape as he prepared to slice me down. But the
slice was never made. He went down on the deck all of a heap, and I saw
the blood gush from his mouth. In a dim way I heard a rifle go off and
continue to go off. Nigger after nigger went down. My senses began to
clear, and I noted that there was never a miss. Every time that the
rifle went off a nigger dropped. I sat down on deck beside the winch and
looked up. Perched in the crosstrees was Saxtorph. How he had managed
it I can't imagine, for he had carried up with him two Winchesters and
I don't know how many bandoliers of ammunition; and he was now doing the
one only thing in this world that he was fitted to do.
“I've seen shooting and slaughter, but I never saw anything like that.
I sat by the winch and watched the show. I was weak and faint, and it
seemed to be all a dream. Bang, bang, bang, bang, went his rifle, and
thud, thud, thud, thud, went the niggers to the deck. It was amazing to
see them go down. After their first rush to get me, when about a dozen
had dropped, they seemed paralyzed; but he never left off pumping his
gun. By this time canoes and the two boats arrived from shore, armed
with Sniders, and with Winchesters which they had captured in the boats.
The fusillade they let loose on Saxtorph was tremendous. Luckily for him
the niggers are only good at close range. They are not used to putting
the gun to their shoulders. They wait until they are right on top of
a man, and then they shoot from the hip. When his rifle got too hot,
Saxtorph changed off. That had been his idea when he carried two rifles
up with him.
“The astounding thing was the rapidity of his fire. Also, he never
made a miss. If ever anything was inevitable, that man was. It was the
swiftness of it that made the slaughter so appalling. The niggers did
not have time to think. When they did manage to think, they went over
the side in a rush, capsizing the canoes of course. Saxtorph never let
up. The water was covered with them, and plump, plump, plump, he dropped
his bullets into them. Not a single miss, and I could hear distinctly
the thud of every bullet as it buried in human flesh.
“The niggers spread out and headed for the shore, swimming. The water
was carpeted with bobbing heads, and I stood up, as in a dream, and
watched it all--the bobbing heads and the heads that ceased to bob. Some
of the long shots were magnificent. Only one man reached the beach, but
as he stood up to wade ashore, Saxtorph got him. It was beautiful. And
when a couple of niggers ran down to drag him out of the water, Saxtorph
got them, too.
“I thought everything was over then, when I heard the rifle go off
again. A nigger had come out of the cabin companion on the run for the
rail and gone down in the middle of it. The cabin must have been full
of them. I counted twenty. They came up one at a time and jumped for the
rail. But they never got there. It reminded me of trapshooting. A black
body would pop out of the companion, bang would go Saxtorph's rifle, and
down would go the black body. Of course, those below did not know what
was happening on deck, so they continued to pop out until the last one
was finished off.
“Saxtorph waited a while to make sure, and then came down on deck. He
and I were all that were left of the DUCHESS'S complement, and I was
pretty well to the bad, while he was helpless now that the shooting was
over. Under my direction he washed out my scalp wounds and sewed them
up. A big drink of whiskey braced me to make an effort to get out. There
was nothing else to do. All the rest were dead. We tried to get up sail,
Saxtorph hoisting and I holding the turn. He was once more the stupid
lubber. He couldn't hoist worth a cent, and when I fell in a faint, it
looked all up with us.
“When I came to, Saxtorph was sitting helplessly on the rail, waiting to
ask me what he should do. I told him to overhaul the wounded and see if
there were any able to crawl. He gathered together six. One, I remember,
had a broken leg; but Saxtorph said his arms were all right. I lay
in the shade, brushing the flies off and directing operations, while
Saxtorph bossed his hospital gang. I'll be blessed if he didn't make
those poor niggers heave at every rope on the pin-rails before he found
the halyards. One of them let go the rope in the midst of the hoisting
and slipped down to the deck dead; but Saxtorph hammered the others and
made them stick by the job. When the fore and main were up, I told him
to knock the shackle out of the anchor chain and let her go. I had had
myself helped aft to the wheel, where I was going to make a shift at
steering. I can't guess how he did it, but instead of knocking the
shackle out, down went the second anchor, and there we were doubly
moored.
“In the end he managed to knock both shackles out and raise the staysail
and jib, and the Duchess filled away for the entrance. Our decks were a
spectacle. Dead and dying niggers were everywhere. They were wedged away
some of them in the most inconceivable places. The cabin was full of
them where they had crawled off the deck and cashed in. I put Saxtorph
and his graveyard gang to work heaving them overside, and over they
went, the living and the dead. The sharks had fat pickings that day.
Of course our four murdered sailors went the same way. Their heads,
however, we put in a sack with weights, so that by no chance should they
drift on the beach and fall into the hands of the niggers.
“Our five prisoners I decided to use as crew, but they decided
otherwise. They watched their opportunity and went over the side.
Saxtorph got two in mid-air with his revolver, and would have shot the
other three in the water if I hadn't stopped him. I was sick of the
slaughter, you see, and besides, they'd helped work the schooner out.
But it was mercy thrown away, for the sharks got the three of them.
“I had brain fever or something after we got clear of the land. Anyway,
the DUCHESS lay hove to for three weeks, when I pulled myself together
and we jogged on with her to Sydney. Anyway those niggers of Malu
learned the everlasting lesson that it is not good to monkey with a
white man. In their case, Saxtorph was certainly inevitable.”
Charley Roberts emitted a long whistle and said:
“Well I should say so. But whatever became of Saxtorph?”
“He drifted into seal hunting and became a crackerjack. For six years he
was high line of both the Victoria and San Francisco fleets. The seventh
year his schooner was seized in Bering Sea by a Russian cruiser, and all
hands, so the talk went, were slammed into the Siberian salt mines. At
least I've never heard of him since.”
“Farming the world,” Roberts muttered. “Farming the world. Well here's
to them. Somebody's got to do it--farm the world, I mean.”
Captain Woodward rubbed the criss-crosses on his bald head.
“I've done my share of it,” he said. “Forty years now. This will be my
last trip. Then I'm going home to stay.”
“I'll wager the wine you don't,” Roberts challenged. “You'll die in the
harness, not at home.”
Captain Woodward promptly accepted the bet, but personally I think
Charley Roberts has the best of it.
THE SEED OF McCOY
The Pyrenees, her iron sides pressed low in the water by her cargo of
wheat, rolled sluggishly, and made it easy for the man who was climbing
aboard from out a tiny outrigger canoe. As his eyes came level with the
rail, so that he could see inboard, it seemed to him that he saw a dim,
almost indiscernible haze. It was more like an illusion, like a blurring
film that had spread abruptly over his eyes. He felt an inclination to
brush it away, and the same instant he thought that he was growing old
and that it was time to send to San Francisco for a pair of spectacles.
As he came over the rail he cast a glance aloft at the tall masts, and,
next, at the pumps. They were not working. There seemed nothing the
matter with the big ship, and he wondered why she had hoisted the signal
of distress. He thought of his happy islanders, and hoped it was not
disease. Perhaps the ship was short of water or provisions. He shook
hands with the captain whose gaunt face and care-worn eyes made no
secret of the trouble, whatever it was. At the same moment the newcomer
was aware of a faint, indefinable smell. It seemed like that of burnt
bread, but different.
He glanced curiously about him. Twenty feet away a weary-faced sailor
was calking the deck. As his eyes lingered on the man, he saw suddenly
arise from under his hands a faint spiral of haze that curled and
twisted and was gone. By now he had reached the deck. His bare feet were
pervaded by a dull warmth that quickly penetrated the thick calluses.
He knew now the nature of the ship's distress. His eyes roved swiftly
forward, where the full crew of weary-faced sailors regarded him
eagerly. The glance from his liquid brown eyes swept over them like a
benediction, soothing them, rapping them about as in the mantle of a
great peace. “How long has she been afire, Captain?” he asked in a voice
so gentle and unperturbed that it was as the cooing of a dove.