Part 13

“She lay as trigg as if she was on the stocks, with scarcely a list and her bow pointing to the break in the reef. Her anchor was in the coral, and you could see the slack of the chain running to her bow. She’d been a brig. The top masts had been hacked off for some reason or another, and pieces of canvas, yards long some of them, showed waving from her foreyard, and it was plain to be seen she’d been sunk with the foresail on her and the canvas had got slashed by fish and the wear of the tides bellying it this way and that till there was nothing left but just them rags.

“I’d never seen a ship murdered before and said so.

“‘Yes,’ says Heffernan, ‘it’s plain enough, she’s been sunk at her moorings; look at the way she’s lying, and look at that anchor chain. Well, I never did think to see a sunk ship at anchor, but I’ve seen it now.’

“‘It’s the chaps ashore that have done this,’ said I.

“‘Sure,’ said Heffernan. ‘Done in the ship and done in the crew. We’ve got to go careful.’

“We put back to the _Mary Waters_ and reported to Sellers.

“‘Skunks!’ said Sellers. ‘Tawela’s Queen Bee of a proper hive. Well, we must be careful, that’s all. Keep our guns handy and give word to the Kanakas to be on the look-out.’

“The _Mary Waters_ had a Kanaka crew as I’ve said, and having given the bo’sun the tip to be on the look-out for squalls, we got rowed ashore, sending the boat back to the schooner.

“Tawela’s house was the first of the line of houses that ran east and west along the beach; it was the biggest, too, and there was only her and her son at the dinner; the rest of the tribe had gone off in the canoes right across the lagoon to the opposite shore to gather shell-fish on the outer beach. Our Kanaka boy that acted as interpreter got this news from Tawela, and it lightened our minds a lot, for if any killing had been meant the tribe wouldn’t have gone off like that.

“It wasn’t a bad dinner, take it all round. Baked pig and oysters, and sweet potatoes and so on, with a palm salad that Tawela never invented herself, that I’ll lay a dollar, and said so.

“‘Oh, she’s probably made the cook of that brig show her how to do things white man style before she murdered him,’ says Sellers.

“‘Damn her,’ says Heffernan, and there those two sat talking away, she listening but not understanding; it was better than a pantomime.

“Then the son gets up and brings in some palm toddy, best I ever struck, and Sellers opens a box of cigars he’d brought with him, and we all lit up, Tawela included.

“I remember, as plain as if it was only ten minutes ago, sitting there looking at the sunlight coming in through the door behind Sellers and striking through the blue smoke of the cigars, and then the next thing I remember is waking up with my hands tied and my feet roped together, lying on my back in a shack with the morning light coming through the cracks in the wall, Heffernan and Sellers beside me.

“It was plain enough what had happened; we’d been doped. I heard Sellers give a groan and called out to him, then Heffernan woke, and there we lay admiring ourselves for the fools we’d been in falling into that mug trap. We’d each landed with a revolver strapped to his belt, but the revolvers were gone.

III

“We hadn’t been lying there cursing ourselves more than half an hour when, the sun having got over the reef, a chap comes in, catches Sellers by the heels and drags him out just as if he’d been a dead carcase.

“‘Good-bye, boys,’ cries Sellers, as he’s dragged along the ground, and good-bye it was, for a few minutes after we heard him scream.

“He went on screaming for fifteen minutes, maybe more, and I was fifteen years older when he let off and the silence came up again with nothing but the sound of the reef and the jabbering of those cursed Kanakas.

“‘If I had a knife I’d stick it into myself,’ says Heffernan. ‘Lord! what have they been doing to him?’

“I couldn’t answer, more than just by spitting, and there we lay waiting our turn and watching the sun striking fuller on the lagoon through the door space.

“I could see the schooner lying there at anchor, but not a soul could I see on board her; the crew were either down below or had been murdered. As I was looking at her I heard Heffernan give a grunt, then I saw that he was sitting up and that his hands were free. He’d been working away, saying nothing, and he’d managed to get the cocoanut fibre rope free of his wrists; a minute after, he’d got his feet loose, and then he turned to me and it didn’t take more than five minutes to make me a free man like himself.

“That being done we set to work on the back wall of the shack, pulling aside the wattles and tearing out the grass binding till we were free at last and out into the thick growth, which was mostly mammee apple and cassia mixed up with pandanus and cocoanut trees.

“What made us bother to break free from the shack, Lord only knows. There was no use getting free, seeing we were on an atoll and would be hunted down like rats once Tawela and her crowd got wind that we were loose; anyhow, we’d worked like niggers and just as if our lives had depended on it, and now in the bushes we were crawling along on our bellies to put as big a distance as we could between ourselves and that crowd—as if it mattered!

“We worked along, taking the line of bushes towards the reef opening, and all the time to the left of us we could hear the breaking of the swell on the outer beach, whilst to the right of us we could see bits of the lagoon now and then through the branches.

“The strangest feeling I’ve ever felt was being stuck like that between the free sea and that locked-in lagoon.

“Prison on one side, so to say, and an open road on the other.

“Well, there we were, the sun getting higher in the sky, and the Kanakas sure to be beating the bushes after us as soon as they found we’d broke loose, but we didn’t say a word on the matter, only went on crawling till we’d reached the last of the trees and thick stuff. From there the coral ran naked to the break in the reef.

“We hadn’t more than reached so far when the hellnation of a hullabaloo broke out behind us, and we thought they’d found we’d escaped, but that wasn’t so, as we discovered in a minute, for chancing to look towards the opening, we saw the top canvas of a schooner away beyond the northernmost pierhead. We reckoned she was two or three mile off, and, crawling along the coral on our bellies till we’d got a clear view of the sea, there she was, right enough, making for the break, the light wind spilling and filling her canvas. She hadn’t much more than steerage way.

“Then we looked back. We couldn’t see the village because of the trees, but we could see the _Mary Waters_ lying there at anchor out in the lagoon, and canoes all about her and chaps swarming on board of her.

“‘See that,’ said Heffernan, ‘all that hullabaloo wasn’t about us. I doubt if they’ve found we’ve escaped yet.’

“‘What are they doing round the schooner?’ says I.

“‘Lord knows,’ says he, ‘but we’ll soon see.’

“We did. Those devils were used to the game of sinking ships and slaughtering sailor men; they’d most likely got all the trade goods they wanted off the schooner by this, and now we saw them passing a tow rope from the bow to one of the canoes and we heard the noise of the winch picking up the anchor chain.

“‘They’re not going to sink her at her moorings,’ said Heffernan, ‘too shallow. Look, they’re towing her to a deeper part of the lagoon.’

“That was so, and as we watched we saw she was getting deeper in the water even as she was towed; they must have begun the job of sinking her the minute the schooner was sighted, forgetting like fools that the chaps coming up would have been sure to sight her spars, or maybe risking even that rather than have the newcomers see the bloody work that had been done on deck.

“You can sink a ship quicker than clean her sometimes. Well, there it was, and suddenly the old _Mary Waters_ gave a dive, and dipped her bowsprit under. I saw her shiver like a dog, and then the stern went, the main hatch cover blowing off from air pressure as soon as the decks were awash. After that she went like a stone till there was nothing left of her but a case or two floating about and a bit of grating.

“Then we crawled back among the trees and held a council of war, as you might say, but we couldn’t fix on anything to do but lay still and wait our chances. We reckoned the fellows in the schooner were sure to come ashore armed, and we’d have time to warn them before they were set on. Our worst chance was that the Kanakas might find us before the schooner was in or the chaps come ashore, but there was no use bothering about that, and there we lay waiting and listening till the fore canvas of the schooner showed at the break, and in she came riding the full flood, every sail drawing to the wind that was freshening up.

“When I saw her full view I nearly leapt out of my skin. She was the _Greyhound_. Buck, as I found afterwards, had put into Papeete, heard of our expedition and me being with it, and, the old whaling chap offering to give him our port of destination for two bottles of whisky, closed on the offer and lit after us. He was anxious to pick up with me and make friends, and maybe he was anxious to have a hand in the coral business as well, no knowing; anyhow, here he was bulling along across the lagoon and evidently making to drop his anchor close to the village.

“‘Come on,’ I says to Heffernan, ‘follow me.’ We made back through the thick stuff, taking the track we’d come by, and we hadn’t more’n reached the sight of Tawela’s house through the trees when we heard the anchor chain go.

“I reckon the damn fool Kanakas had been so busy with the sinking of the schooner and then the _Greyhound_ coming in, that they’d forgot to look to see if we were still safely tied up. Anyhow, the whole crowd were down on the beach to meet the boat that was coming off, and making sure of that, I took a peep into Tawela’s house to see if there was any clubs or spears handy for arming ourselves, and there I see Tawela’s son hiding a long knife under some matting. We went in; he was too scared to yell, and shoving him in a corner, we stripped up the matting, and there were our revolvers, a couple of knives and half a dozen short stabbing spears, all bloody with the blood of Sellers.

“We kicked him out before us, and, with the guns in our hands, down we marched to the beach.

IV

“Buck Slane had landed, he and four of his men, and every man with a Winchester.

“Tawela and her crowd were round them, all friendly as pie and wagging their tails, and so busy pretending to be innocent and God-fearing Kanakas they didn’t notice us till we were almost on them; for a moment I thought they were going to show fight, but when they saw the guns in our hands they boiled down.

“I clapped my gun to Tawela’s head, and called Buck to tie her hands behind her—we hadn’t time to say good-day to each other, just that—and Buck, tumbling to the truth of the matter, whips a big pocket handkerchief from his pocket, and one of his men does the binding. As he was binding her he says, ‘Look at her hands,’ and there, sure enough, was blood dried on her hands, the blood of Sellers calling out for revenge.

“Then, whilst the crowd stood quiet, I gave Buck the facts in four words. He made a signal with his arms to the schooner, and off comes another boat with the mate and four more Kanakas, all armed.

“Then Buck took command, and leaving Tawela with a chap and orders to blow her brains out if she so much as sneezed, we drove that whole crowd along the beach right to the break of the lagoon and left them there with four gunmen covering them. Then we came back.

“We searched round and found what was left of Sellers among the bushes, then we set to.

“‘They’re unfortunate heathens,’ says Buck, ‘but they’ve got to be taught,’ and with that he set fire to Tawela’s house with his own hands. We burnt every house, we smashed everything we could smash, and we broke the canoes to flinders, fishing gear and spears and everything went, so there was nothing left of that population but the people.

“That will learn them,’ says Buck. Then he collected his men, and bundling Tawela into a boat with a parcel of pink coral we found in a shack back of her house, we pushed off. Ridley, the mate, was for shooting her—seeing the evidence on her hands—and slinging the body in the lagoon, but Buck said he was going to give her a decent trial when our minds were cool, and there was lots of time, anyway, after we’d put out. Buck, ever since his business with Sru, had been against doing things in a hurry, specially when it came to killing, so she was had on board and given in charge of two of the Kanaka crew. Then we got the hook up and out we put.

“The Kanakas were still herded at the end near the break, and as we passed through, knowing we’d got their Queen on board, they all set up a shout, ‘Tawela, Tawela’ like the crying of sea gulls, and that was the last we heard of them.

“Then, with the ship on her course, and the Kanaka bo’sun in charge of the deck, we got down to the cabin and started our court-martial.

“She deserved hanging, there were no two words about that. And I reckon it was more superstition about killing a woman than humanity, but maybe I’m wrong; anyhow, Buck brought out his idea, which was to take her to Sydney and have her tried there.

“We’d been going at it for an hour or so, when the mate was called on deck and comes back in a minute or two in a tearing rage.

“‘That wild cat,’ says he, ‘has been asking for food and won’t eat bully beef; says anything that comes out of a shell is tabu to her, turtle or oysters or shell fish, and she reckons canned stuff is the same since it’s in a tin shell. I expect she’s had lots of experience in canned stuff seeing all the ships she’s wrecked. What’s to be done with her?’

“‘Give her biscuits,’ says Buck, ‘and there’s lots of bananas on board.’

“Off the mate goes and back he comes to the conference, but we could fix up nothing that night, Buck still holding out for a proper trial at Sydney, and we pointing out that English or American law would be sure to let a woman escape. It stood like that till next morning, when Buck, coming down to breakfast, says: ‘Boys, I’ve got an idea.’

V

“He’d struck an idea in the night of how to dispose of Tawela. Buck had a fine knowledge of the Kanaka mind, and when he’d explained his idea to us I allowed it was a peach, if what he said was true.

“Have you ever heard tell of the Swatchway—the Scours some call it? It’s an island, or more truly speaking a big lump of reef with half a dozen cocoanut trees on it lying south of the Australs about four hundred and fifty miles from the steamer track between Auckland and Tahiti. It’s got reefs round it all spouting like whales, and ships’ captains give it a big wide berth.

“Well, Buck’s plan was to land Tawela on the Scours; there’s water there according to the Pacific Directory, and Buck said he wasn’t going to maroon her without grub. He’d give her six months’ grub—canned. Bully beef and so on with biscuits in tins. If she starved herself to death in the middle of plenty then it wouldn’t be our fault. He said he’d come back in six months, and if she was alive he’d take her back home, said she was only an ignorant Kanaka and he reckoned six months’ punishment would fill the bill, and if she chose to kill herself, why, then it would be Providence not us that did the business.

“Ridley, at first go off, flew out against this till Buck quieted him, asking who was master of the schooner, and whether he wanted to be logged for insubordination; the course was changed to sou’-sou’-west and two days later we raised the Scours.

“There were six cocoanut trees there, all bearing, so we cut them down and brought the nuts on board, then we landed Tawela and her provisions with a can opener, showing her how to use it. There was a fresh water pond in the coral, so she couldn’t want for water, and there we left her.

“We made for Suva and sold that coral, not getting near the price we thought to, and then we ran a cargo to Auckland.

“I’d noticed for some time Buck wasn’t the man he used to be, and one night it come out. ‘I’ve got something on my mind,’ he says, ‘it’s that dam Kanaka. Can’t help thinking about her. My conscience is clear enough,’ he says, ‘for she deserved her gruel, but I can’t help thinking of her—wonder if she’s dead.’

“‘Oh, it’s ten to one she’s either broke her tabu or some ship has taken her off by this,’ I says to ease him, for I saw that being a good-hearted chap, and imaginative as most Irishmen are, the thing was hitting him as it never hit me.

“Buck shakes his head and falls back into himself and says no more, and time goes on, till one day when we were on the run to Papeete with a mixed cargo, seeing that the chap was making an old man of himself over the business, I says, ‘S’pose we run down to the Scours now instead of on the voyage back as you’d fixed, and see what’s become of that woman?’

“His face lit up, but he pretended to hang off for a while; then he falls in with the idea, and we shifted the helm, raising the place four days later and dropping anchor outside the reefs four months and eight days from the time we’d left it.

“There wasn’t a sign to be seen of anyone on the island, so Buck tells me to take a boat and look; he hadn’t the heart to go himself and said so, plump, and off I put, leaving the boat’s crew with the boat on the beach and tramping across the coral on the look-out for signs.

“I found the canned stuff. There had evidently been a big wind and blown the stuff about, and I found it here and there, but not one empty can could I find or one that had been opened, then, in a dip of the coral I found a skull, the black hair still sticking to it, and a backbone and ribs—the birds make a skeleton of a corpse in no time on a place like that; I reckon I could have found the whole skeleton if I’d hunted, but I didn’t. I put back for the schooner and came on board laughing.

“‘Well,’ I said, ‘she’s done us. You and your talk of Kanakas not breaking their tabu; why, half the tins are opened and empty, and she’s gone, took off by some ship.’

“‘Thank God,’ says Buck.

“That lie of mine lifted the black dog right off his back, and to his dying day he never knew he’d killed that woman as sure as if he’d shot her with a gun. He was as cheerful as a magpie all the rest of that voyage, and so was I. You see I’d heard Sellers screaming whilst those brutes were doing him in and Buck hadn’t.

“That’s all I know about tabu, but it’s first-hand knowledge, personal experience as you might say.”

He ceased, and through the night came the voices of fish spearers from the reef and the far rumble of the surf, and from the back premises the voice of Tahori singing some old song of an Island world whose brilliancy breaks sometimes to reveal the strangest phantoms from the Past.

XI—THE STORY OF BILLY BROKE

I

Do you know that fiction, without side-tracking interest, can often teach a man what he will never learn in a class-room or from a text-book? It can, and the lesson sticks, because the human mind is so constituted that it will retain and assimilate a moral wrapped up in a story, whereas the moral naked and unadorned would be forgotten in fifteen minutes or rejected at once.

I wonder how many men have been saved from selling old lamps for new by the story of Aladdin!

I, like hosts of other men, am a nervy and imaginative individual, and the devil of the thing is that with us our imagination is our worst enemy, keeps us awake at night counting up our losses instead of our profits, fills us with fantastic fears of the future, and, should any of us ever find ourselves in an incriminating position—which God forbid—would, were we innocent, ten to one make us look or act like criminals.

Here is the story of a man who acted like an ass, a highly moral married man whose imagination betrayed him, the story of Billy Broke of Los Angeles, told me by Brent.

Brent had a little fishing boat he kept at a slip near Circular Wharf and he and I used often to go out fishing in Sydney Harbour. One day we were out late, fishing off Farm Cove, so late that on our return a huge moon was rising, flooding the harbour and city with its light. We left the boat tied up in charge of the wharf keeper and tramped off with our fish. Coming up along Halkin Street we saw something like a bundle of old clothes lying in the moonlight right before us, and when we got to it we found it was a dead Chink.

It was a narrow street of tenement houses and not a soul to be seen. There was a big Labour demonstration on that night, so I suppose the inhabitants were all off demonstrating and that accounted for the desolation of the place.

Brent knelt down to inspect. Then he rose up:

“Stabbed,” said he, “and as dead as mutton.”

“What are we to do?” I asked.

“Well,” said Brent, “we can’t be of any use to him, and we don’t want to be mixed up in the business—come along.”

He took me by the arm and led me off. He was a practical man and right enough, I suppose, we could give no clue, the murderer, whoever he might be, was well away, a thousand to one he was a brother Chink and we knew all the bother there would be over the inquest,—still I felt a qualm, but it was so slight I easily drowned it in a whisky and soda at a bar we stopped at. Then I went home and went to bed and put out the light, and with the darkness the moonlit street showed up before my mind’s eye—and the Chink.

“Suppose,” I thought, “suppose someone saw us leaving that street, suppose by any chance we got connected with the business—what would people say? Might they say we had committed the murder?” Absolute nonsense, but there you are, my imagination had got away with me. I couldn’t sleep, and next morning when I met Brent he asked me what was wrong with me and I told him. He took me out for a sail in the harbour where we spent the day cruising about, and after luncheon Brent tackled me over the stupidity of “fancying things.”

“What’s the use of fancying things?” said Brent, “ain’t there enough troubles in the world without breeding them. Suppose you _were_ had over that Chink, where’s the damage, you didn’t kill him—and you ain’t going to be. Forget it. Lord o’ mercy, I’ve seen more guys fooled by their fancies than I can remember the names of. Did I ever tell you of Billy Broke? Brooke was the real name, only some fool of an English ancestor or another left out one of the o’s, so the poor chap was saddled with a nameplate only fit for a hoodoo. Nature not to be behind in the business, fitted him with a set of nerves and an imagination worse than yours and then turned him out into the cold world to make his living. On top of everything he was pious beyond the ordinary, bashful beyond believing and trusting in every man, which isn’t a quality which makes for success in American business circles.

“He’d gone bankrupt four or five times when the Almighty, thinking maybe it was a shame that one of his creatures should be used like that, married him to a common-sense woman with a bit of money and they started a dry goods store in Los Angeles and would have done well enough only for Billy’s nerves and imagination.