Part 13

“Wish he’d look sharp about it,” growled another; “we don’t want chaps seein’ snakes aboard _that_ craft.” And he pointed to the boat. Allen had been the first to notice Benion’s change of manner, and it filled him with something like remorse. But it was too late to turn back now. After all, if the box had been really lost, as it well might have been, Benion would have had to bear his loss, and he must learn to bear it now. Besides, perhaps he would tell him if they got safe out of the island. Yes; he would tell him, but not now while he was in this state. But however he tried to comfort himself, he was too uneasy to lie down with the other men, who were laying in a stock of sleep for their journey on the morrow. In the dim light of the stars he could see, just beyond the shadow of the trees, a figure sitting on the sand looking seaward, and could hear a few broken words brought to him by the night breeze. He could feel, though he could not see, the fierce eyes with a life’s longing written in them. He got up once intending to go and speak to Benion, but abandoned the idea before he reached him, so terrible did he seem in his despair; so he lay down watching him, and trying to drive back his better feelings. About midnight he was almost dozing when he sprang into wakefulness at the sound of his own name coupled with a horrible blasphemy. Benion was kneeling erect, his right arm extended seawards and clutching the back of his neck with his left, declaiming passionately. Suddenly he turned, and falling on his hands and knees, began to crawl towards the tree under which the captain and officers of the ship were asleep. He passed into the shadow of the trees, and for a moment was lost to sight. A horrible fear seized Allen that he was mad and intended to kill some one, but uncertainty prevented him from moving. A ray of light from one of the fires faintly illumined the tree-trunk, and into this the crawling figure emerged from the darkness. Yes; it must be murder that he intended, for now he saw him grasp the captain’s gun that was leaning against the tree, but before he could start forward he was crawling away as swiftly and noiselessly as he had come, dragging the gun after him. Then it was not murder of another but of himself. Now he was out again on the sand, and scuffling along the beach upon his left foot and his right knee, nearly as fast as a man could walk. Allen was too horrified to act--he could only watch the receding figure with terror and bewilderment; and with that strange perversity of humour it crossed his mind how funny Benion looked scuffling along with his gun over his shoulder. But when the figure disappeared behind a protruding tree, he yielded to the impulse to follow and watch him. Perhaps he did not mean to kill himself after all. He came out upon the sands, keeping in the shadow of the trees, and near enough to Benion to distinguish his figure in the dim light. After going a couple of hundred yards the hobbling figure became more distinct, and Allen saw that he had stopped. There was not more than twenty yards between them, and he sought for a deeper shadow in which to stand. Just before him was a tree with low widespreading branches, that threw the trunk into profound darkness. He crept towards it, lifting his feet high and planting them softly on the sand. Something struck him as familiar in the trunk as he neared it. Yes. Surely it was the tree under which the box was buried! Had Benion halted there by chance, or because he knew the spot? He turned to look for him, and saw that he was creeping towards the tree on the other side of the trunk. Then he must know the spot, and he had brought the gun to defend him from interference. Allen would have run away but for the fear of being overheard. Benion was on his knees now not five yards from him. He could hear his labouring breath, and the rustle of the sand as he dragged his wounded leg over it. As he came up Allen moved so as to keep the tree between them. He stopped at the very edge of the pile of sand and vines that hid the box, and sat down. How did he know so well that it was there without feeling for it? He was going to dig it up with his hands! He must get his breath first, though. Was this the time to rest when any of the men might interrupt him? But no, he was not resting, he was doing something. He was measuring the distance with his gun, pushing the butt forward in the sand, so; or was he going to dig with it that he leaned forward and put his foot against the trigger-guard as a fulcrum? Good God! No; his head is against the muzzle! “Benion!”

Before the blinding flash had left his eyes, or the report ceased echoing along the cliff, Allen was kneeling beside his partner, whose head--as much as was left of it--was pillowed on the box for which he had died. But only for a moment. The awful shock, while it numbed his senses, brought him realisation of his own danger. The report must have aroused the men by the fire, and if they found him there they might suspect foul play. What mattered the treasure beside such a danger? Leaving the body as it was, he tore through the undergrowth straight inland to the base of the cliff, and groped his way along the rocks so as to pass to the rear of the camp. His naked feet were torn and bleeding from his headlong rush through the bush, but his mind was too intent upon the sounds from the beach to heed the pain. He heard the voices of men in motion, and a loud shout from the direction of the _ivi_-tree. Then they had found the body! They would bring it back to the camp, and he would be missed; perhaps they had even seen his footsteps! If he would escape suspicion he must mix with the men before they had time to notice his absence. He began to run again and burst out of the bush, heated and breathless, at a spot beyond the camp. He slackened his pace when he saw the fire, but a glance told him that it was deserted. There was a confused murmur from the direction of the _dilo_-tree, and he pressed on in the hope of joining the others unnoticed in the darkness. A few of the men were waving smouldering brands snatched from the fire to fan them into flame, the rest were stooping and craning over each other’s shoulders to look at something in the middle of the circle. Allen, striving to suppress his panting breath, pressed forward like the others, but his labouring lungs would not obey him.

“Why, mate, who the ---- been chasing you? You’re blowing like a black-fish.”

“What is it?” asked Allen between his gasps.

“Your mate, Benion, with a hole in his head that you can put your foot into. Why, where have you been?”

Some of the men turned round to look at him, and in the faint light he was not a prepossessing object. His face and hair were dripping with sweat, though the skin was ghastly white, and his distended nostril and heaving chest showed how fear and physical effort had told upon him.

“Looks as if he could tell us something about it,” muttered one of them.

But Allen roughly forced his way through them, and fell on his knees beside the captain, who was giving directions for lifting the body.

“Benion!” he cried. “Good God! Why could he have done it?”

His distress was so evident that his words turned their thoughts in a new direction.

“After all, the pore devil had the jimmies,” said the boatswain, “and like as not he kicked the trigger off with his foot: must have got a clip on the head as we went ashore.”

The gun was still lying where it fell--the muzzle resting on the dead man’s shoulder, and the butt on the sand beside his right knee. The position was so consistent with the idea of suicide, that they at once adopted it.

“Well, it’s no good moving him till daylight,” said the captain. “Some of you get a bit of sailcloth to cover him with, and let’s leave him as he is until the morning. Now, my lads, turn in and get what sleep you can, for we must be away at sun-up;” and he led the way back to the camp, followed by most of the men. Allen went with them and lay down, pretending to sleep rather than undergo the questions he thought might follow.

They were all astir before daybreak. The captain called Allen, as being Benion’s fellow-passenger, and asked him whether he knew of anything that would account for the suicide.

“He had a box,” replied Allen, “in which he kept all our money. It was lost in the schooner, and when he found that it was gone he lost his head, as you saw.”

“Where were you when the thing happened?”

“I had left the camp on the other side. When I heard the gun go off I ran in and found you round the body. When I left, Benion was sitting here on the beach as he had been all day.”

“H’m! You must have been a long time away,” said the captain, turning to give orders about stowing the stores in the boat. Then taking with him the mate and such of the sailors as were not employed, he walked to the _dilo_-tree followed by Allen. At its foot a sailcloth was spread, which had roughly taken the shape of the body it covered. In the grey light Allen could see that one end of it was stained red and caked hard. The captain saw it too, and said, “Don’t uncover the poor devil; dig the hole here, and we’ll lift him into it just as he is.”

Four sailors armed with bits of broken plank began to scrape up the sand so as to form a hollow trench, and as the mound at the back grew higher, the sand slipped down and met the pile Allen had made round the buried chest. In a few moments a shallow trench had been dug, and they lifted the stiff body still covered and lowered it gently into the rough grave.

“Hats off!” said the captain, gruffly, as he stepped to the side of the grave. “Earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes. We commit his body to the earth, in sure and certain hope that at the last day he will rise again.”

It was all that he could remember of the Burial Service, and he said it defiantly as a man who does his duty regardless of the ridicule he may provoke, and dropped a handful of the coral sand upon the canvas.

“Now shovel in the sand,” he said, roughly; “we’ve done all we can for the poor chap.”

Allen was staring on the box. The creepers and sand he had thrown upon it had taken the square form of the lid, and he could scarcely believe that they had not seen it. But there were blood-stains on it. He ran forward and shovelled the loose sand over them with his hands so quickly that the work was done before another could come to his assistance.

Two hours later the crowded boat was running free, and the island, with its fellow to the northward, had taken definite shape.

“We must give it a name,” said the mate. “What’s it to be?”

“It looks mighty like a boot from this side,” said the boatswain; “and the island to the nor’ward’s like a shoe. Let’s call it Boot Island.”

So Boot Island it was called.

III.

How they reached Levuka at last, and parted company in that budding centre of idleness and cheap liquor--some to work their passages to Sydney, and others to scatter over the group--need not be related here. To get away from something that lay on the beach at Boot Island was Allen’s one desire. Drink is said to drown memories, so he tried drinking; but it would not wash away certain dull red stains on a background of white sand. And on the morning after the debauch the body and mind are too weak to resist an angry past: besides, what might not a man say when he was drunk? To move anyhow, anywhere, were better than this. So he became a wanderer. But the human mind is fashioned mercifully, and blunts with use. If the body be healthy, there is no impression, however strong, that will not wear away with time. He shipped in a whaler, but almost before the high land had melted into the clouds he wished himself back again. He found so many excuses for himself, and as poor Benion had killed himself, what good could the box do him lying on the beach in Boot Island? The first man who landed would find it and take it away, whereas, if he had it, he would keep only his own share, and send the rest to Benion’s widow. He left the ship at the first island they touched. It chanced to be Apemama in the Line Islands, whose king, having vanquished most of the neighbouring atolls, and sighing for other worlds to conquer, eagerly welcomed a white man who could mend his three “Tower” muskets.

He would stay there, he thought, until a vessel bound for Levuka put in; but month followed month and no such ship came. He rose rapidly from the post of chief armourer to be the king’s first minister, and took to himself a woman of the place to be his wife. Ships put in for provisions or to recruit labourers for the South American guano islands; and as the king’s adviser, his services to the captains were paid for, and the money hoarded. So three years slipped over his head, and a ship put in at last wanting provisions, and bound to Levuka to fill up with oil. Allen helped the captain to get his provisions, and sold him his stock of pearl-shell, taking in part payment a passage for himself, his native wife, and her niece. The ship got under weigh, and stood on and off the island till nightfall, and Allen, guided by the riding light, paddled off under cover of the darkness, and cast his canoe adrift; for his royal patron had found him useful, and was prone to secure his own comfort without due regard to the inclination of his dependents. At Levuka he found that his countrymen were busy developing the country with muskets and gunpowder. If a tribe would live it must have as many firearms as its neighbours, and to obtain them it would sell as much land as the foreigner wanted. And so, for ten muskets and a keg of powder, Allen became the possessor of Boot Island, and the vendor, pitying his simplicity, was ready to sell him two other rocky islands on the same terms.

He stood at last, as he had often dreamed, upon the beach where his treasure was buried, and watched the little dinghy labouring out towards the cutter, which presently swooped down upon it and bore it away, running free towards the west. Then he turned to the two women, who sat patiently by the pile of cases on the beach, and pointed to the spot where they had made their camp-fires more than three years ago. They left him to gather sticks, and he passed quickly round the point that hid the _dilo_-tree under which he had buried the box. It was just as he remembered it, save that the ground bore no sign of ever having been disturbed. The creeping vine that lives between soil and sand covered the place with a thick carpet of shiny leaves, and no mound could now be traced. He tried to picture the spot as he had last seen it--the flickering torchlight, the scared faces of the shipwrecked sailors, and the blood-stained sand--but the bright sun threw a checker-work of shade through the branches, and a fresh trade-wind bore the smell of the sea to his nostrils, so that the picture would not fit the frame, and the memory seemed less real to him than a nightmare. Surely he had dreamed that Benion’s shattered body was buried here! If it was true, where was the grave? and how could the whole place look so bright and peaceful? But the box--that could have been no dream! It was for that that he had come, and he must find it. He went resolutely and stood against the gnarled trunk. Standing thus, as he had stood on the night of the wreck, the box must be buried at his feet, but there was nothing to show that the treasure and its silent guardian lay there together. He stooped and tore away the matted vine, and the coral sand, dulled with vegetable mould, lay bare. Yes, there was a slight swelling of the sand here, but so slight that he could scarcely believe that anything lay beneath it. Some one must have found and stolen it! With a terrible sinking of the heart, that drove out all power of reasoning, he fell on his knees and tore away the yielding sand with his fingers. At the fourth plunge his heart stopped, for his hand struck against something hard. He plunged it lower, hoping to feel the square corner, but the thing was round and unfamiliar to the touch. A little lower, and his fingers were beneath it, and with a fierce curiosity he tore it upwards from its sandy bed. It threw the coarse sand from its slippery sides, and lay inert--a shattered skull, with a patch of hair still adhering to it! Allen sat staring with wide eyes at the grinning face as it perched knowingly on a hillock of sand, and then, as it slid over and rolled down towards him, he shrieked yell after yell of mad laughter, and the women, running in the direction of the sound, found him so.

THE HERMIT OF BOOT ISLAND.

It was past three o’clock when we cast off the buoy at Mango, and let the schooner go free before the “trade.” It was blowing fresh, but she was travelling faster than the seas themselves, and was as steady as a rock. At dusk we were abreast of a precipitous island, steep, too, on all sides but one, which ran off to a sloping point like the toe of a boot. The skipper was gazing earnestly at the dark line of shore.

“That’s Boot Island,” he said, in answer to my question; “and the other you can just make out to the nor’ward they call Shoe Island. If there was a light on that point I’d have to go in. The old devil that lives there’s as crank as a March hatter, and I promised I’d go in if he made a fire on the beach as I was passing. You see he might be sick or something, and no one’d ever know. Nothing but a bird could land on this side in weather like this. You’ve got to lie on and off on the lee side and send a boat ashore. There’s no anchorage. He’s getting very crank. Bickaway, the storekeeper, sent a boat last week for his _copra_, but he wouldn’t let him land because it was Saturday. Said he was getting ready for Sunday. The old beggar knew well enough that the boat was chokeful of trade, and he and his women hadn’t enough clothes to cover themselves decently. Bickaway yelled to him that his _copra_ would be rotten before another boat came, but he stood on the beach and waved him off. Said that he couldn’t land before Tuesday, because on Monday he’d be meditating. No, he can’t starve. The women take good care of that. Bickaway saw a fine patch of pumpkins and _kumalas_, besides cocoa-nuts. He won’t catch fish, because he says it’s wicked to take life. There’s only the two women on the place besides him--his woman and her niece; and he must be pretty rough on them at times, or the girl wouldn’t have swum all the way to Shoe Island, and got picked up by the niggers. They brought her back, too, in their boat, and the old chap let them land, and gave them half his _kumala_ crop--he, that don’t like niggers, least of all the Yathata niggers! They say he’s a Yankee, but no one knows for certain. I suppose I’m the only white man as ever got into his house, and that was five years ago. Oh! it’s a long yarn, and not worth telling. I was ‘_beech-de-mar-ing_’ at the back of Taveuni. Hadn’t had any luck, and one of the niggers belonging to Yathata--that’s Shoe Island yonder--says, ‘Why don’t you try Yathata, and the white man’s island?’ So I went over there in a boat I had, and worked her over the reef at spring-tide in very calm weather. I’d heard a lot about old Simpson, that he wouldn’t let any one fish his reefs, because the island was his; but I meant to fish whether or no, as the nigger told me that the reef swarmed with teat-fish, and the Chinamen in Levuka were giving fifty-five pounds a ton. As soon as we let go the anchor, the old devil came out of a lean-to he’d knocked together of packing-cases and rusty iron. He was the damnedest old scarecrow you ever see, with a white beard down to his belt, a filthy old shirt, and blue dungaree pants. I made the boys haul the anchor short and keep lifting it, so as she dragged in, and I stood up in the stern pretending to read a book I had.”

The crest of a big sea surging past us lopped on deck, drenching us to the knees.

“_Uli!_” shouted the skipper to the native steersman. “Here! _Soro na sila_, some of you!” and as they slacked off the sheet he drew me aft out of the waist, and continued.

“Well, as soon as we touched, I jumped out and waited for him.

“‘What have you come for?’ says he.

“‘Stress of weather and short provisions,’ I says. Then he stood looking at me for about a minute, while I opened my book again. After a bit he turned round, and went into his lean-to. When he’d gone in I come up to the door. There was a mat or two on the bed-place, but the floor was bare gravel, and the table an old packing-case nailed on two sticks stuck in the ground.

“‘What d’yer want?’ he says, when I looked in.

“‘Nothing,’ says I, and sat down in the doorway. After a bit he says, ‘To-day’s the third of June, and a Thursday, else you couldn’t have landed. Who’s Governor now?’

“‘Des Vœux,’ I says.

“‘Never heard of him,’ says he; ‘thought Gordon was. What’s _copra_?’

“‘Ten pound five in Levuka.’

“‘Then I’ll get eight pound here,’ says he. ‘I see boats and steamers go past most weeks, but I don’t hear much news. When are you going?’

“I wasn’t going to let on about the _beech-de-mar_ racket, so I opens my book and sings ‘Rock of Ages cleft for me.’ Soon as I begun he comes out and stands looking at me. I only knew one verse, but I kep’ on and sung it three times over, keeping as near as I could to the tune, and he kep’ looking at me all the time as solemn as a cockroach. When I done it three times I sang Amen, and he went back into the shanty. Then I took off my hat and knelt up with my hands clasped as if I was praying to myself. Soon as I got up he says, ‘Come in, will yer, and sit down a bit?’ and then he calls his woman and begins talking Tokelau to her, and she fetched in a dish of hot _kumalas_ the old devil had been keeping back till he thought I’d go. Then she got some eggs and took ’em off to the cook-house, and the old beggar sat on the bed all the time and said he’d wait till I’d done. But just as I’d got hold of a _kumala_ he says, ‘Aren’t you going to say grace?’ a bit suspicious-like, and I says, ‘Of course I am, but I always takes hold of the food first;’ so I holds up the _kumalas_ over my head, and says, ‘For what we’re going to receive, Amen.’ But when we’d done dinner we were good friends, and he’d told me all about his soul, and asked after mine; and he sends the girls off with _kumalas_ for my boys. Then I says that idleness is a bad thing, and I’d like ’em to do a little fishing on the reef at low tide, and he says, ‘But you wouldn’t have them take life?’

“‘Certainly not,’ I says. ‘I wouldn’t kill a fish, not if it jumped into my pocket and I was starving, but with _beech-de-mar_ it’s different, for being a slug he ain’t got feelings, and even Darwin ain’t sure that he ain’t a vegetable.’

“‘That’s so,’ says the old beggar. ‘Well, as long as they don’t fish on Saturday or Sunday or Monday I don’t mind.’

“Well, by Friday night we’d got all the fish worth picking up on the lee side, and I got away on the Saturday, and promised I’d call in if I was passing, and there was a fire on the beach,--‘You might be wanting something, or be sick,’ I says.

“‘If I’m sick,’ he says, ‘I shan’t light a fire, for the Lord ’ll provide.’

“Barring religion, the old devil wasn’t so very cranky, except about a sort of fence he’d got under a _dilo_-tree. I thought it was a grave, and went to look at it, but he come running after me with his eyes half out of his head, and pulled me away by the arm. I suppose his woman had had a kid that had died, and he’d got it buried there. Perhaps it’s that that made him cranky. Well, there’s no fire on the beach, so if he’s alive he don’t want anything.”

THE WARS OF THE FISHING-ROD.