Part 10

“‘He was,’ says the crab, and then he spun his story. He’d been walking along Alta Street three months ago when he saw three Chinks at a corner, an old boob in spectacles and two young ones. As he came up with them they started quarrelling, pulling the old chap about and kicking him cruel, and Blake, that was the guy’s name, started in like a whole-souled American to save the antiquity from ruin.

“He helped Ming back to his bird shop, and the old chap near drowned him in gratitude, and gave him a chart of a pearl island his son, that had been murdered in a tong dust-up the month before, had discovered when a sailor in one of the Chinese _bêche de mer_ boats, that had been wrecked, with all hands lost but his precious son.

“Blake gave him ten dollars to buy opium with, and being a schooner owner, lost three months hunting for that island which wasn’t there.

“It was the same island that had been wished on us—Buck pulled out his chart and they compared—exactly the same, spot of blood and all. The things must have been lithographed by the dozen and Lord knows how many mugs had fallen to the gratitude trap; which no one but a Chink could ever have invented, if you think over the inwards and outwards of it.

“Then Buck told out loud so that Fong, if he was listening, could hear, how we had fallen on a pearl island, by chance, and how, thinking it was bad navigation that had made us out in our reckonings, he was bringing a thousand dollars to Fong as a present out of the takings according to promise. Then he pulls out his roll and gives the thousand dollars to Blake as a make up. The young Chink ran in at the sight of this, and, as we walked off arm in arm for drinks, I heard sounds from the upper room of that bird shop as if Fong was holdin’ on to something and trying not to be sick.

“Then as we were having drinks the question came up in Buck’s head as to whether he was entitled to that schooner seeing that Fong had managed to get the better of him at the go off. He put it to Blake, and Blake, who was a great chap for backing horses when ashore, says: ‘Go off be damned,’ he says. ‘It’s the finish that matters. You did him on the post,’ he says—and we concluded to leave it at that.”

VIII—A CASE IN POINT

I

There is good fishing to be had round Sydney way, yellow-tail and schnapper and green backed sea bream; jew-fish and mullet and trevalli. You can fish at low tide in the pools or you can fish from a boat, beaching her for the night in one of the coves and camping out under the stars, with the scent of the gums mingling with the scent of the sea, and the song of the waves for lullaby.

Over Dead Man’s Cove and its beach of hard sand the cliff stands bluff and humped like a crouching lion, and there one night the year before last old Captain Brent and I were kicking our heels and smoking after supper and passing in review the day’s work and the tribes of the sea.

Brent was a keen fisherman, and there were few waters he did not know, and few fish he hadn’t taken one time or another. He had always travelled with his eyes open, and his natural history was first hand and his views fresh as originality itself. He said crabs could think, instancing certain hermit crabs that always chose protective-coloured shells, and that not only did sword-fish fight duels—I knew that, for I had seen it myself—but that there were tribal wars carried on in the sea, international struggles so to speak, between the nations of the fishes.

“If fish didn’t kill fish,” said the Captain, “the sea would be solid with mackerel inside two years, to say nothing of herring. Haven’t you ever thought of what keeps them down? It’s the Almighty, of course, but how does He work it? Lots of folk think He works it by making the fish eat the fish just because they are hungry. That’s one of His ways, but another is just war for war’s sake, or for the sake of the grouch one tribe keeps up against another. You see, it’s a bit unfortunate, seeing that if the herring once got above a certain number all the eating in the world wouldn’t stop them from turning the sea solid with herring, so the Almighty has fixed His killing machine with two blades, one that kills for the sake of food and the other for the sake of killing.

“It’s the same with the tribes of men, I reckon, only with them there’s only one blade left, since they don’t kill each other nowadays for the sake of food.

“There’s something in one tribe that makes for war against another tribe. You may boil them but you won’t get it out of them. I’ve seen it. You’d have seen it too if you’d traded among the Islands in the old days, selling Winchesters to the natives to prosecute their wars with, and I’ll give you a case in point.

“I’ve told you how me and Slane pulled off that pearling job, but I never told you what we did with the money. Most chaps would have bust it, we just stuck it in the bank and, after a run to the Yosemite, back we come to ’Frisco on the look out for more larks. We weren’t set on money for the sake of money so much as for the fun of getting it, for I tell you as a mortal truth there’s no hunting to beat the hunting of a dollar, more especial when you’ve got a herd of twenty or thirty thousand of them with their tails up and you after them. We’d had enough of pearling, we had no taste for blackbirding and we were turning copra over in our minds when, sitting having our luncheon one day in Martin’s restaurant, a slab-sided Yank, six foot and over and thin as a Jackstaff, comes along up to us.

“‘You’re Mr. Slane?’ says he.

“‘That’s me,’ says Buck.

“‘I’ve heard tell of you,’ says the chap, ‘and I’ve got a double-barrelled proposition to put before you. May I take a seat at your table? Scudder’s my name, and Martin will tell you I’m a straight man.’

“Down he sits. We’d finished feeding and so had he; the place was pretty empty and no one by to hear, and he begins.

“‘First barrel of the prop,’ he says, ‘is a dodge for killing fish. You know how they fish out in the Islands? Well, they do a good deal of spearin’ and hookin’ and sometimes they poison the fish pools with soap, but the king way is dynamite.’ He pulls a stick of something out of his pocket and goes on. ‘Here’s a stick of dynamite. You can fire it by electricity or you can shove a match on one end and light it and throw the durned thing into the water. It goes bang and a minute after every fish in that vicinity come to the surface stunned dead. That’s so, but the bother is the stuff goes off sometimes premature and the Kanakas are always losing hands and legs and things, which don’t make for its popularity. Being out there last year at Taleka Island I set my invention trap working to hit a device. I’ve always took notice that a man who fills a want fills his pockets, and a patent safety explosive fish killer is a want with a capital “W” right from ’Frisco to Guam. Well, here it is,’ he says, and out of his other pocket he takes the great-grandfather of a Mills bomb, same as the Allies have been pasting the Germans with. It wasn’t bigger than a tangerine orange and rough made, but it had all the essentials. You didn’t pull a pin out, it was just two caps of metal screwed together. The thing was dead as mutton when it was lightly screwed, but screwed tight it exposed its horns and was live as Satan. Just one turn of the wrist tightened it up and then if you flung it against anything, even water, it would go bang. It was a working model, and he showed us the whole thing and the cost of manufacture. His factory was a back bedroom in Polk Street, but he reckoned with a shed and a lathe and a couple of Chink artisans to help he could turn out fifty Scudder Fish Crackers—that’s the name he gave them—a day. He said the Bassingtons had a share in the patent and would give him the material for nothing so as to have the thing tried out. He wanted five hundred dollars to start his factory, then he wanted us to give him an order for two thousand crackers at fifty cents each.

“‘You don’t want no more cargo than that,’ said he, ‘once the Kanakas get the hang of this thing they’ll trade you their back teeth for them; you see it’s new. It’s like millinery. If I could invent a new sort of hat and start a store in Market Street every woman from here to St. Jo would be on it in a cluster. You could scrape them off with a spoon. Kanakas are just the same as women, for two thousand of them crackers you can fill up to your hatches in copra.

“‘Well, now,’ he goes on, ‘on top of that I’ll make you a present of three thousand dollars, if you’ll take the proposition up. Sru, the chief chap at Taleka, wants Winchester rifles and ammunition and he’s got the money in gold coin to pay for them. He wants six thousand dollars’ worth and I can get the lot from Bassingtons for three thousand dollars, boxed and laded on board your ship. The crackers won’t take no room for stowage and the guns and cartridges won’t eat half your cargo space, so you can take some cheap trade goods that’ll give you a deck cargo of turtle shell and _bêche de mer_. Get me? You make money on the crackers, you make money on the guns and you make a bit out of the shell. It’s a golden goose layin’ eggs at both ends and the middle, and I’ll give you a writing promising to pay the five hundred dollars for the factory in one year with twenty per cent, for the loan.’

“I could see Slane was sniffing at it so I didn’t interfere, and the upshot was we made an appointment with Scudder to meet us next day and take a boat out in the harbour to test a couple of his crackers. We did, and he was no liar, the things went off like guns and dead fish were still coming up when a police boat nailed us and rushed us ashore and we had to pay ten dollars fine for illegal behaviour. That’s what the Yanks called it—anyhow the dead fish settled the business and Slane took up the proposition and put his hand in his pocket and fetched out the money to start the factory and gave Scudder his order for two thousand crackers.

“Slane hadn’t disposed of the _Greyhound_. We ran her into dock and had the barnacles scraped off her, gave her some new spars and a new mainsail and finished up with a lick of paint. It took six weeks and by that time Scudder had finished his job and had the crackers ready boxed and all and the Bassington company were waiting to deliver the Winchesters and ammunition. We took the old hooker over to Long Wharf for the stowing and the stuff came down in boxes marked eggs and crockery ware.

“They were pretty sharp after gun-runners in those days, but Scudder fixed everything somehow so that none of the cases were opened. We got the cracker boxes on first and then stowed the guns and cartridges over that, and on top of the guns some trade goods, stick tobacco and rolls of print and such, six Chinks we took for a crew and a Kanaka by name of Taute who could speak the patter of most of the Islands, and off we started.

II

“Taleka is an outlier of the New Hebrides, a long run from ’Frisco, but we never bothered about time in those days. We never bothered about anything much. We hadn’t been out a week when I said one night to Slane, ‘Buck,’ said I, ‘s’pose one of those crackers took it into its head to go off, being screwed too tight?’ ‘If it did,’ said Buck, ‘the whole two thousand would go bang and the cartridges would follow soot; if one of them crackers fructified before its time next minute you’d be sitting on a cloud playing a harp, or helping stoke Gehenna, don’t make any mistake about that.’ We left it so. We never bothered about anything those days as long as the grub was up to time and not spoiled in the cooking.

“We touched at Honolulu and had a look round and then we let out, passing Howland and the Ellices, raising Taleka forty-five days out from ’Frisco.

“It’s a big brute of a high island and away to s’uth’ard of it you can see Mauriri, another big island forty-five or fifty miles away.

“There’s no reef round Taleka, but there are reefs enough to north and west and a big line of rock to s’uth’ard that doesn’t show in calm weather, only now and again when the swell gets too steep and then you’ll see an acre of foam show up all at once. Rotten coast, all but the east side, where a bay runs in between the cliffs and you get a beach of hard sand.

“We dropped anchor in twenty-five fathoms close to the beach. There were canoes on the beach, but not a sign of a native; the cliffs ran up to the sky either side, with the trees growing smaller and smaller, and out from near the top of the cliff to starboard a waterfall came dancing down like the tail of a white horse and that was all; there was no wind scarcely ever there and the water between the cliffs was like a black lake. I tell you that place was enough to give you the jim-jams, more especial when you knew that you were being watched all the time by hundreds of black devils ready to do you in.

“We fired a gun and the echoes blazed out like a big battle going on and then fizzled off among the hills where you’d think chaps were pot-shotting each other. Then the silence went on just as if it hadn’t been broken, and Slane, who’d got a pretty short temper when he was crossed, spat into the harbour and swore at Sru.

“Then he ordered up a case of guns and a box of ammunition, and he and me and Taute rowed ashore with them, beaching the boat and dumping the guns and ammunition on the sand.

“We took the guns out of the case and laid them out side by side same as if they’d been in a shop window, then we opened the ammunition box and exposed the cartridges.

“It was a sight no murder-loving Kanaka could stand and presently out from a valley a bit up beyond the anchorage comes a chap with the biggest belly I’ve ever seen on one man. He had slits in his ears and a tobacco pipe stuck through one of the slits, nothing on him but a gee string and eyes that looked like gimlet holes into hell. I never did see such a chap before or since. It was Sru himself, and he was followed by half a hundred of his tribe, every man armed with an old Snider or a spear, or sometimes both.

“I saw Taute shivering as he looked at Sru, then he bucked up and took heart, seeing that Sru wasn’t armed and was coming for guns, not fighting.

“Then the palaver began, the Kanakas squatting before the gun cases and Slane showing them the Winchesters whilst Taute did the talking. Scudder had been there all right the year before and had measured up Sru and his wants and his paying capacity to a T. He had the gold, brass-yellow Australian sovereigns and British sovereigns got from God knows where, but sovereigns right enough with Victoria’s head on them, for he showed us a fistful, and it was only a question of whether Sru would pay six thousand dollars for our cargo. He wanted to make it four, then he gave in, and we put back in the boat to have the stuff broken out of the hold.

“Knowing the sort of chap Sru was we ought to have made him bring the money on board before a single case was landed, but we were young to the trade and too straight to think another chap crooked, so we didn’t. We let the canoes come alongside and there we hung watching naked Kanakas all shiny with sweat handing overboard the boxes, six guns to a box, to say nothing of the cartridge cases.

“We put off with the last case and then we sat waiting on the beach for our money.

“The Kanakas with the last of the cases turned up into the valley, and when they were gone you couldn’t hear a sound in that place but the noise of the waterfall up among the trees and now and then the sea moving on the beach.

“The water came into that bay as I’ve never seen it come anywhere else. It would be a flat calm, and then, for no reason at all, it would heave up and sigh on the sand and fall quiet again like the bosom of a pious woman in a church.

“There we sat waiting for our money and watching the _Greyhound_ as she swung to her moorings with a Chink fishing over the rail.

“‘What do you think of Sru,’ says Buck at last.

“‘Well, I don’t think he’s a beauty,’ I says, and then talk fizzled out and there we sat waiting for our money and chucking stones in the water.

“I’ve told you there were canoes on the beach when we came in, but after the guns had been brought ashore the canoes had been taken round the bend of the bay, and as we sat there waiting for our money there was no one on that flat beach but our two selves and the Chink who’d helped us to row ashore, the boat was beached close to us and only waiting to be shoved off.

“I says to Buck, ‘Say, Buck,’ I says, ‘suppose old Johnny Sru takes it into his woolly head to stick to the dollars as well as the guns, what are you going to do then?’

“‘Don’t be supposing things,’ says Buck. ‘Sru’s no beauty, maybe, but he’s a gentleman. All savages are gentlemen if you treat them square.’

“‘Where did you get that dope from?’ I asks him.

“‘Oh,’ he says, ‘I don’t know,’ he says, ‘one place or another, but mainly from books.’

“‘Well,’ I says, ‘I’m not much given to book reading, but I hope you’re right, anyway.’

“No sooner were the words out of my mouth than the Chink by the boat gives a yell. I looked up and saw a big rock skipping down hill to meet us. It wasn’t as big as a church, but it seemed to me, looking up, there was many a Methodist chapel smaller; shows you how the eyes magnify things when a chap’s frightened, for it wasn’t more than ten ton all told judging by its size when it hit the target.

“It missed us by six foot and hit the Chink. We couldn’t get him out from under it seeing he was flattened as flat as a sheet of paper and we hadn’t more than got the boat pushed off when down came another and hit the place where we’d been sitting waiting for our money and talking of all savages being gentlemen if you treated them square.

“The chaps above have got the range, but they weren’t wasting ammunition, for as soon as we lit the firing ceased.

“I never did see a chap in a bigger temper than Buck. He went white, and when an Irishman goes white, look out for what’s coming.

“We got aboard and got the boat in, and then we took our seats on the hatch combing and had Taute along for a council of war.

“Taute had chummed up with Sru’s men and a couple of the Marys whilst the unloading was going on, and he’d found out that Sru wanted the guns for an attack on Mauriri, the big island to the s’uth’ard.

“Tiaki was the chief man on Mauriri, and he and Sru had been at it for years, the two islands hitting each other whenever they could, sinking fishing canoes and so on, but never a big battle. They were too evenly matched and knew it. But those Winchesters would make all the difference, so Taute said and we didn’t doubt him.

“Buck, when he’d sucked this in, sits biting his nails. The sun had set by now and the stars were thick overhead and it came to the question of getting out against the breeze and tide or sticking till the morning when the land wind would give us a lift. Taute gave it as his opinion we’d be safe enough for the night. Sru didn’t want our ship, and the Kanakas had got it into their thick heads that when a ship was raided and the crew murdered in those parts, somehow or another, a British cruiser would turn up maybe months later and make trouble, which was the truth. So we let the anchor lie in the mud and we sat down to supper that night as calm as if we weren’t sitting on a hive of hornets that any minute might let out with their stings.

“Middle of supper, Buck hits the table a welt with his fist.

“‘I’ve got the blighter,’ says he.

“‘Who?’ says I.

“‘Sru,’ says he. ‘I’ve got him by the short hairs and if I don’t make him squeal, my name’s not Buck Slane.’

“I didn’t see his meaning, and said so, telling him straight out that we’d better take our gruel and let Sru alone, that we’d been fools to let him have the stuff without the cash brought on to the beach and that we’d only get broken heads by trying to fight him.

“‘I ain’t going to fight him,’ says Buck.

“‘Who is, then?’ says I.

“‘Tiaki,’ says Buck.

“‘That chap over at Mauriri?’ I questions.

“‘The same,’ says him.

“‘But look here,’ I says, ‘how in the nation are you going to ginger him up to fight Sru seeing that he’s been holding off for years and seeing that Sru has got those Winchesters? What would he fight him with?’

“‘Fish crackers,’ says Buck.

“That hit me on the head like an apple. I’d got the durned things so connected with fish in my mind that I’d clean forgot to think that they could be used against humans, more especial by Kanakas used to throwing spears and things all their lives. Then Buck opens up his plan which was simple enough. It would take Tiaki’s men eight or ten hours paddling in their canoes to reach Taleka. If they started at four o’clock in the afternoon they’d make the island by two next morning, then, crawling up that valley they could fall on Sru’s village and bomb it to pieces before daybreak. Bloodthirsty, wasn’t it? But Buck was out for blood, the Irish was raised in him and he didn’t care a cent what happened or what he paid so long as Sru got his gruel.

“‘But look here,’ I said, ‘it’s all very well talking, but Winchesters are Winchesters. Do you propose to start Tiaki on this stunt and not tell him what he’s up against?’

“‘Oh, Lord, no,’ says Buck. ‘Hope I’m a gentleman—besides, that’s what will make him fight. When he knows Sru has got the arms to attack him, he’ll do the attacking first, unless he’s a fool.’

“‘All right,’ says I, and we left it at that.

III

“We slept on deck that night for fear of an attack, me keeping first watch, but nothing came, and just at daybreak we put out, towing her till we caught the land wind and then cracking on all sail for Mauriri.

“We were making ten knots and all that morning Mauriri bloomed up against us, getting bigger and bigger till the foam on the big half-moon reef that lies to northward showed up. There’s a break in the middle of that reef and good anchorage once you’re through, and we pushed right in, dropping our anchor in twenty-fathom water close to the beach.

“Mauriri is a lot more open-faced than Taleka, and the chief village is close to the beach, not hid up a valley.

“It was a white beach, but near black with Kanakas when we dropped the anchor, and there were canoe houses, but not a canoe put off. The crowd ashore didn’t look unfriendly, but they seemed standing on one foot, so to speak, not knowing how to take us or whether we meant fighting or trade.

“Buck ordered the boat to be lowered and whilst the Chinks were getting it over I got him by the arm and took him to the after rail and tried to punch sense into his head.

“‘Look here,’ I says, ‘what’s the good of revenge? it’s unchristianlike and it’s not business, anyway. Forget Sru and trade those crackers for copra, if they’ve got any here, if they haven’t, put out along for some other island.’

“‘He killed my Chink’ says Buck. ‘Blow copra, I want his blood, and I’m going to have it, if it costs me my last nickel.’

“‘All right, all right,’ I says, ‘come along,’ and off we put with Taute to do the talking and a box of stick tobacco to help Tiaki swallow the crackers.

“It was easy to pick him out from the crowd on the beach, he was over six foot, with the half of an old willow pattern plate on his chest dangling from a necklace of sharks’ teeth, he had an underlip like an apron, one eye gone in some gouging match or another, and he stood two foot in front of the rest as if he wasn’t ashamed of himself.

“Taute started the talk whilst Buck opened the tobacco case, and as I watched Tiaki’s face as the yarn went on, I thought to myself, God help Sru.

“Then, when the palaver was over, Taute showed him one of the crackers we’d brought with us and how it worked, explaining we’d got a cargo of them and how he could do Sru in.