A Son Of The Sun Page 8

  Five heads, blond and brown, were mingled with the dark heads ofPolynesia that dotted the surface. Grief, rifle in hand, watched for achance to shoot. The Goat Man, after a minute, was successful, and theysaw the body of one man sink sluggishly. But to the Raiatean sailors,big and brawny, half fish, was the vengeance given. Swimming swiftly,they singled out the blond heads and the brown. Those from above watchedthe four surviving desperadoes, clutched and locked, dragged far downbeneath and drowned like curs.

  In ten minutes everything was over. The Huahine women, laughing andgiggling, were holding on to the sides of the whaleboat which had donethe towing. The Raiatean sailors, waiting for orders, were about thecross-tree to which Captain Glass and Mataara clung.

  "The poor old _Rattler_," Captain Glass lamented.

  "Nothing of the sort," Grief answered. "In a week we'll have her raised,new timbers amidships, and we'll be on our way." And to the Queen, "Howis it with you, Sister?"

  "Naumoo is gone, and Motauri, Brother, but Fuatino is ours again. Theday is young. Word shall be sent to all my people in the high placeswith the goats. And to-night, once again, and as never before, we shallfeast and rejoice in the Big House."

  "She's been needing new timbers abaft the beam there for years," quothCaptain Glass. "But the chronometers will be out of commission for therest of the cruise."

  Chapter Four--THE JOKERS OF NEW GIBBON

  I

  "I'm almost afraid to take you in to New Gibbon," David Grief said. "Itwasn't until you and the British gave me a free hand and let the placealone that any results were accomplished."

  Wallenstein, the German Resident Commissioner from Bougainville, pouredhimself a long Scotch and soda and smiled.

  "We take off our hats to you, Mr. Grief," he said in perfectly goodEnglish. "What you have done on the devil island is a miracle. And weshall continue not to interfere. It _is_ a devil island, and old Koho isthe big chief devil of them all. We never could bring him to terms. Heis a liar, and he is no fool. He is a black Napoleon, a head-hunting,man-eating Talleyrand. I remember six years ago, when I landed there inthe British cruiser. The niggers cleared out for the bush, of course,but we found several who couldn't get away. One was his latest wife. Shehad been hung up by one arm in the sun for two days and nights. Wecut her down, but she died just the same. And staked out in the freshrunning water, up to their necks, were three more women. All their boneswere broken and their joints crushed. The process is supposed to makethem tender for the eating. They were still alive. Their vitality wasremarkable. One woman, the oldest, lingered nearly ten days. Well, thatwas a sample of Koho's diet. No wonder he's a wild beast. How you everpacified him is our everlasting puzzlement."

  "I wouldn't call him exactly pacified," Grief answered. "Though he comesin once in a while and eats out of the hand."

  "That's more than we accomplished with our cruisers. Neither the Germannor the English ever laid eyes on him. You were the first."

  "No; McTavish was the first," Grief disclaimed.

  "Ah, yes, I remember him--the little, dried-up Scotchman." Wallensteinsipped his whiskey. "He's called the Trouble-mender, isn't he?"

  Grief nodded.

  "And they say the screw you pay him is bigger than mine or the BritishResident's?"

  "I'm afraid it is," Grief admitted. "You see, and no offence, he'sreally worth it. He spends his time wherever the trouble is. He is awizard. He's the one who got me my lodgment on New Gibbon. He's down onMalaita now, starting a plantation for me."

  "The first?"

  "There's not even a trading station on all Malaita. The recruiters stilluse covering boats and carry the old barbed wire above their rails.There's the plantation now. We'll be in in half an hour." He handed thebinoculars to his guest. "Those are the boat-sheds to the left of thebungalow. Beyond are the barracks. And to the right are the copra-sheds.We dry quite a bit already. Old Koho's getting civilized enough to makehis people bring in the nuts. There's the mouth of the stream where youfound the three women softening."

  The _Wonder_, wing-and-wing, was headed directly in for the anchorage.She rose and fell lazily over a glassy swell flawed here and there bycatspaws from astern. It was the tail-end of the monsoon season, and theair was heavy and sticky with tropic moisture, the sky a florid, leadenmuss of formless clouds. The rugged land was swathed with cloud-banksand squall wreaths, through which headlands and interior peaks thrustdarkly. On one promontory a slant of sunshine blazed torridly, onanother, scarcely a mile away, a squall was bursting in furious downpourof driving rain.

  This was the dank, fat, savage island of New Gibbon, lying fifty milesto leeward of Choiseul. Geographically, it belonged to the SolomonGroup. Politically, the dividing line of German and Britishinfluence cut it in half, hence the joint control by the two ResidentCommissioners. In the case of New Gibbon, this control existed only onpaper in the colonial offices of the two countries. There was no realcontrol at all, and never had been. The beche de mer fishermen ofthe old days had passed it by. The sandalwood traders, after sternexperiences, had given it up. The blackbirders had never succeeded inrecruiting one labourer on the island, and, after the schooner _Dorset_had been cut off with all hands, they left the place severely alone.Later, a German company had attempted a cocoanut plantation, which wasabandoned after several managers and a number of contract labourers hadlost their heads. German cruisers and British cruisers had failed toget the savage blacks to listen to reason. Four times the missionarysocieties had essayed the peaceful conquest of the island, and fourtimes, between sickness and massacre, they had been driven away, Morecruisers, more pacifications, had followed, and followed fruitlessly.The cannibals had always retreated into the bush and laughed at thescreaming shells. When the warships left it was an easy matterto rebuild the burned grass houses and set up the ovens in theold-fashioned way.

  New Gibbon was a large island, fully one hundred and fifty miles longand half as broad.

  Its windward coast was iron-bound, without anchorages or inlets, and itwas inhabited by scores of warring tribes--at least it had been,until Koho had arisen, like a Kamehameha, and, by force of arms andconsiderable statecraft, firmly welded the greater portion of the tribesinto a confederation. His policy of permitting no intercourse with whitemen had been eminently right, so far as survival of his own people wasconcerned; and after the visit of the last cruiser he had had his ownway until David Grief and McTavish the Trouble-mender landed on thedeserted beach where once had stood the German bungalow and barracks andthe various English mission-houses.

  Followed wars, false peaces, and more wars. The weazened littleScotchman could make trouble as well as mend it, and, not content withholding the beach, he imported bushmen from Malaita and invaded thewild-pig runs of the interior jungle. He burned villages until Kohowearied of rebuilding them, and when he captured Koho's eldest son hecompelled a conference with the old chief. It was then that McTavishlaid down the rate of head-exchange. For each head of his own peoplehe promised to take ten of Koho's. After Koho had learned that theScotchman was a man of his word, the first true peace was made. Inthe meantime McTavish had built the bungalow and barracks, cleared thejungle-land along the beach, and laid out the plantation. After thathe had gone on his way to mend trouble on the atoll of Tasman, wherea plague of black measles had broken out and been ascribed to Grief'splantation by the devil-devil doctors. Once, a year later, he had beencalled back again to straighten up New Gibbon; and Koho, after paying aforced fine of two hundred thousand cocoanuts, decided it was cheaperto keep the peace and sell the nuts. Also, the fires of his youthhad burned down. He was getting old and limped of one leg where aLee-Enfield bullet had perforated the calf.

  II

  "I knew a chap in Hawaii," Grief said, "superintendent of a sugarplantation, who used a hammer and a ten-penny nail."

  They were sitting on the broad bungalow veranda, and watching Worth, themanager of New Gibbon, doctoring the sick squad. They were New Georgiaboys, a dozen of them, and the one with th
e aching tooth had been putback to the last. Worth had just failed in his first attempt. He wipedthe sweat from his forehead with one hand and waved the forceps with theother.

  "And broke more than one jaw," he asserted grimly.

  Grief shook his head. Wallenstein smiled and elevated his brows.

  "He said not, at any rate," Grief qualified. "He assured me,furthermore, that he always succeeded on the first trial."

  "I saw it done when I was second mate on a lime-juicer," Captain Wardspoke up. "The old man used a caulking mallet and a steel marlin-spike.He took the tooth out with the first stroke, too, clean as a whistle."

  "Me for the forceps," Worth muttered grimly, inserting his own pair inthe mouth of the black. As he pulled, the man groaned and rose in theair. "Lend a hand, somebody, and hold him down," the manager appealed.

  Grief and Wallenstein, on either side, gripped the black and held him.And he, in turn, struggled against them and clenched his teeth on theforceps. The group swayed back and forth. Such exertion, in the stagnantheat, brought the sweat out on all of them. The black sweated, too, buthis was the sweat of excruciating pain. The chair on which he sat wasoverturned. Captain Ward paused in the act of pouring himself a drink,and called encouragement. Worth pleaded with his assistants to hangon, and hung on himself, twisting the tooth till it crackled and thenattempting a straightaway pull.

  Nor did any of them notice the little black man who limped up the stepsand stood looking on. Koho was a conservative. His fathers before himhad worn no clothes, and neither did he, not even a gee-string. The manyempty perforations in nose and lips and ears told of decorative passionslong since dead. The holes on both ear-lobes had been torn out, buttheir size was attested by the strips of withered flesh that hung downand swept his shoulders. He cared now only for utility, and in one ofthe half dozen minor holes in his right ear he carried a short claypipe. Around his waist was buckled a cheap trade-belt, and between theimitation leather and the naked skin was thrust the naked blade of along knife. Suspended from the belt was his bamboo betel-nut and limebox. In his hand was a short-barrelled, large-bore Snider rifle. Hewas indescribably filthy, and here and there marred by scars, the worstbeing the one left by the Lee-Enfield bullet, which had withered thecalf to half the size of its mate. His shrunken mouth showed that fewteeth were left to serve him. Face and body were shrunken and withered,but his black, bead-like eyes, small and close together, were verybright, withal they were restless and querulous, and more like amonkey's than a man's.

  He looked on, grinning like a shrewd little ape. His joy in the tormentof the patient was natural, for the world he lived in was a world ofpain. He had endured his share of it, and inflicted far more than hisshare on others. When the tooth parted from its locked hold in the jawand the forceps raked across the other teeth and out of the mouth with anerve-rasping sound, old Koho's eyes fairly sparkled, and he lookedwith glee at the poor black, collapsed on the veranda floor and groaningterribly as he held his head in both his hands.

  "I think he's going to faint," Grief said, bending over the victim."Captain Ward, give him a drink, please. You'd better take one yourself,Worth; you're shaking like a leaf."

  "And I think I'll take one," said Wallenstein, wiping the sweat from hisface. His eye caught the shadow of Koho on the floor and followed it upto the old chief himself. "Hello! who's this?"

  "Hello, Koho!" Grief said genially, though he knew better than to offerto shake hands.

  It was one of Koho's _tambos_, given him by the devil-devil doctors whenhe was born, that never was his flesh to come in contact with the fleshof a white man. Worth and Captain Ward, of the _Wonder_, greeted Koho,but Worth frowned at sight of the Snider, for it was one of his _tambos_that no visiting bushman should carry a weapon on the plantation. Rifleshad a nasty way of going off at the hip under such circumstances. Themanager clapped his hands, and a black house-boy, recruited from SanCristobal, came running. At a sign from Worth, he took the rifle fromthe visitor's hand and carried it inside the bungalow.

  "Koho," Grief said, introducing the German Resident, "this big fellamarster belong Bougainville--my word, big fella marster too much."

  Koho, remembering the visits of the various German cruisers, smiled witha light of unpleasant reminiscence in his eyes.

  "Don't shake hands with him, Wallenstein," Grief warned. "_Tambo_, youknow." Then to Koho, "My word, you get 'm too much fat stop along you.Bime by you marry along new fella Mary, eh?"

  "Too old fella me," Koho answered, with a weary shake of the head. "Meno like 'm Mary. Me no like 'm _kai-kai_ (food). Close up me die alongaltogether." He stole a significant glance at Worth, whose head wastilted back to a long glass. "Me like 'm rum."

  Grief shook his head.

  "_Tambo_ along black fella."

  "He black fella no tambo," Koho retorted, nodding toward the groaninglabourer.

  "He fella sick," Grief explained.

  "Me fella sick."

  "You fella big liar," Grief laughed. "Rum tambo, all the time tambo.Now, Koho, we have big fella talk along this big fella mar-ster."

  And he and Wallenstein and the old chief sat down on the veranda toconfer about affairs of state. Koho was complimented on the peace hehad kept, and he, with many protestations of his aged decrepitude, sworepeace again and everlasting. Then was discussed the matter of starting aGerman plantation twenty miles down the coast. The land, of course, wasto be bought from Koho, and the price was arranged in terms of tobacco,knives, beads, pipes, hatchets, porpoise teeth and shell-money--in termsof everything except rum. While the talk went on, Koho, glancing throughthe window, could see Worth mixing medicines and placing bottles back inthe medicine cupboard. Also, he saw the manager complete his labours bytaking a drink of Scotch. Koho noted the bottle carefully. And, thoughhe hung about for an hour after the conference was over, there was nevera moment when some one or another was not in the room. When Grief andWorth sat down to a business talk, Koho gave it up.

  "Me go along schooner," he announced, then turned and limped out.

  "How are the mighty fallen," Grief laughed. "To think that used to beKoho, the fiercest red-handed murderer in the Solomons, who defied allhis life two of the greatest world powers. And now he's going aboard totry and cadge Denby for a drink."

  III

  For the last time in his life the supercargo of the _Wonder_ perpetrateda practical joke on a native. He was in the main cabin, checking off thelist of goods being landed in the whaleboats, when Koho limped down thecom-panionway and took a seat opposite him at the table.

  "Close up me die along altogether," was the burden of the old chief'splaint. All the delights of the flesh had forsaken him. "Me no like'm Mary. Me no like 'm _kai-kai_. Me too much sick fella. Me close upfinish." A long, sad pause, in which his face expressed unutterableconcern for his stomach, which he patted gingerly and with an assumptionof pain. "Belly belong me too much sick." Another pause, which was aninvitation to Denby to make suggestions. Then followed a long, weary,final sigh, and a "Me like 'm rum."

  Denby laughed heartlessly. He had been cadged for drinks before by theold cannibal, and the sternest _tambo_ Grief and McTavish had laid downwas the one forbidding alcohol to the natives of New Gibbon.

  The trouble was that Koho had acquired the taste. In his younger dayshe had learned the delights of drunkenness when he cut off the schooner_Dorset_, but unfortunately he had learned it along with all histribesmen, and the supply had not held out long. Later, when he led hisnaked warriors down to the destruction of the German plantation, he waswiser, and he appropriated all the liquors for his sole use. The resulthad been a gorgeous mixed drunk, on a dozen different sorts of drink,ranging from beer doctored with quinine to absinthe and apricot brandy.The drunk had lasted for months, and it had left him with a thirst thatwould remain with him until he died. Predisposed toward alcohol, afterthe way of savages, all the chemistry of his flesh clamoured for it.This craving was to him expressed in terms of tingling and sensation, ofmaggots crawlin
g warmly and deliciously in his brain, of good feeling,and well being, and high exultation. And in his barren old age, whenwomen and feasting were a weariness, and when old hates had smouldereddown, he desired more and more the revivifying fire that came liquid outof bottles--out of all sorts of bottles--for he remembered them well.He would sit in the sun for hours, occasionally drooling, in mournfulcontemplation of the great orgy which had been his when the Germanplantation was cleaned out.

  Denby was sympathetic. He sought out the old chief's symptoms andoffered him dyspeptic tablets from the medicine chest, pills, anda varied assortment of harmless tabloids and capsules. But Kohosteadfastly declined. Once, when he cut the _Dorset_ off, he had bittenthrough a capsule of quinine; in addition, two of his warriors hadpartaken of a white powder and laid down and died very violently in avery short time. No; he did not believe in drugs. But the liquids frombottles, the cool-flaming youth-givers and warm-glowing dream-makers. Nowonder the white men valued them so highly and refused to dispense them.

  "Rum he good fella," he repeated over and over, plaintively and with theweary patience of age.

  And then Denby made his mistake and played his joke. Stepping aroundbehind Koho, he unlocked the medicine closet and took out a four-ouncebottle labelled _essence of mustard_. As he made believe to draw thecork and drink of the contents, in the mirror on the for'ard bulkhead heglimpsed Koho, twisted half around, intently watching him. Denby smackedhis lips and cleared his throat appreciatively as he replaced thebottle. Neglecting to relock the medicine closet, he returned to hischair, and, after a decent interval, went on deck. He stood beside thecompanionway and listened. After several moments the silence below wasbroken by a fearful, wheezing, propulsive, strangling cough. He smiledto himself and returned leisurely down the companionway. The bottle wasback on the shelf where it belonged, and the old man sat in the sameposition. Denby marvelled at his iron control. Mouth and lips andtongue, and all sensitive membranes, were a blaze of fire. He gaspedand nearly coughed several times, while involuntary tears brimmed inhis eyes and ran down his cheeks. An ordinary man would have coughed andstrangled for half an hour. But old Koho's face was grimly composed. Itdawned on him that a trick had been played, and into his eyes came anexpression of hatred and malignancy so primitive, so abysmal, that itsent the chills up and down Denby's spine. Koho arose proudly.