Part 18

To do more was impossible. His only thought now was to escape; to climb up into the fresher air above; to save himself while there was yet time. That unmoving, silent thing in the grass, obscurely dissolving into decay, must perforce be left as it was, to bear its horrible witness against him. The declining margin of his strength filled him with a frenzy of fear that if he waited overlong he might wait for ever. Between the two risks, the one of a possible detection, the other of a doom unspeakable, he did not venture to pause. He felt, indeed, an extraordinary sense of relief as he began, rung by rung, to rise above the narrow ledge; and with relief a strange fatalism, in which it seemed to him that everything had been predestined from the beginning of the world. As he clung to the ladder, overcome at times by spells of faintness which he knew might bring him to the point of letting go his hold, he was always sustained by the thought that the issue lay with destiny. He would live, or he would fall, as it had been written.

In this singular humour, in which all human responsibility for good or evil seemed to count for nothing, the priest continued to mount the steep face of the cliff. He rested at every second step; he struggled against the recurring fits of giddiness that threatened to dash him from his perch; he fought his way up inch by inch, wondering all the time with a grim composure whether or not he was ever destined to reach the top. When at last he drew himself into a coign of safety and sent the great ladder crashing in his wake, when at last he put his foot on the final goal and lay down beneath the trees, then it was that he began to realise the perils to which he had so nearly succumbed, and to quake with a thousand belated apprehensions.

For an hour he remained huddled in the grass, starting at every sound, and altogether daunted by the thought of returning to the village. How would he dare encounter those familiar faces, take up the threads of the old familiar life, endure those awful days to come when the mystery of Michael’s disappearance would be in every mouth? Could he trust himself to simulate the concern he was bound to show, the surprise, the alarm, the increasing astonishment and horror as the days passed and there would be still no news of the missing man? Ah, could he trust himself? Had he in him the power to live such a lie, to go as usual about his duties, to hear the confessions of others when his own tortured heart was so dark with guilt?

* * * * *

When, with faltering steps, he at length reached the village, it was to find the whole place in a tumult. Every canoe was afloat; a couple of whale-boats were scouring the outer bay; and the _malae_, usually so deserted on a hot afternoon, was overrun by an excited throng. Had he not, then, heard the news? It was thought that the Helper had been drowned that morning, and the boats were now searching for his body! Behold, here were the unfortunate’s clothes, found even as they were, and by order of the chief left untouched for the priest himself to see; here, too, was old Lefao, the shrill mother of Pa’a, who had seen the young man go in to his death, and had heard his sinking cry. “Lefao, make for his Excellency a repetition of that mournful sound, and show how he cast up his arms as thou watchedst him from the beach.” The old impostor was enjoying all the importance of having such a tale to tell, and the father winced under a pang of shame as he listened to this unexpected confederate.

It was afterwards thought that the sad affair must have unhinged Father Studby’s mind, for he subsequently began to show symptoms of serious mental disturbance, which culminated a few months later in his tragic suicide. A marble pillar, the outcome of a public subscription in Sydney, was raised to the memory of these two martyrs of the cross. In faded letters, beneath their crumbling names, one can still spell out the lies:

IN LIFE THEY WERE TOGETHER; IN DEATH THEY WERE NOT DIVIDED.

AMATUA’S SAILOR

AMATUA’S SAILOR

Amatua was running down a beautifully shaded road as fast as his little legs would carry him, and close in chase, like a hawk after a sparrow, was a grizzled man-of-war’s-man with a switch. The road was long and straight; on both sides it was bordered by prickly hedges bright with limes, and as impenetrable as a tangle of barbed wire. At every step the white man gained on the boy, until the latter could hear the hoarse, angry breath of his pursuer. Amatua stopped short, and before he could even so much as turn he found himself in a grip of iron. Whish, whish, whish! dashed the switch on his bare back and legs, keen and stinging like the bite of fire-ants. It took all the little fellow’s manliness to keep him from bellowing aloud. The tears sprang to his eyes,--even the son of a chief is human like the rest of us,--but he would not cry.

“What’s all this?” rang out a voice, as a white man reined in his horse beside them--a tall man in spectacles, who spoke with an air of authority.

The sailor touched his hat. “Why, sir, you’d scarcely believe it,” he said, “the fuss I’ve had with this young savage! First he tried to lose me in the woods. I didn’t think nothing of that; but when he got me into a river for a swim, and then made off with my clothes, and hid ’em under a tree--I might have been looking for ’em yet, me that must be aboard my ship at twelve o’clock. Why, it might have cost me my stripe! I tell you, I never dreamed of such a thing, for me and Am have been friends ever since the first day I came ashore. He’s no better than a treacherous little what-d’ye-call-’em!”

“The chief says thou hidst his clothes,” said the stranger, in the native language. “He says thou triedst to lose him in the woods.”

“Ask him if I haven’t always been a good friend to him,” said the sailor. “Ask him who gave him the knife with the lanyard, and who made him the little spear to jug fish on the reef. Just you ask him that, sir.”

“Your Highness,” said Amatua, in his own tongue, “Bill doesn’t understand. I love Bill, and I don’t want him to drown. I want to save Bill’s high-chief life.”

“And so thou hidst Bill’s clothes,” said the stranger. “That was a fine way to help him!”

“Be not angry,” said Amatua. “Great is the wisdom of white chiefs in innumerable things, but there are some little, common, worthless things that they don’t understand at all.”

“Tell him I’m a leading seaman, sir,” went on Bill, who of course understood not a word of what Amatua was saying, and whose red, tired face still showed his indignation.

“The old women say that a great evil is about to befall us,” said Amatua, gravely, entirely disregarding Bill. “Everybody is talking of it, your Highness, even the wise minister from Malua College, Toalua, whose wisdom is like that of Solomon. There’s to be a storm from the north--a storm that will break the ships into ten thousand pieces, and line the beach with dead. Last night I could not sleep for thinking of Bill. Then I said to myself, ‘I will lose Bill for two days in the woods, and then he won’t be drowned at all.’ But Bill is wise, and made the sun guide him back to the right road. Then I made Bill bathe, and tried to steal his clothes. But Bill looked and looked and looked, and when he found them he thought I was a very bad boy.”

The stranger laughed, and translated all this long explanation to Bill.

“Goodness gracious!” said Bill. “Do you mean that the kid believes this fool superstition, and was trying to save me from the wreck?”

“That’s it,” said the stranger. “I’ve known Amatua for a long time, and I think he’s a pretty square boy.”

“Why, bless his little heart,” said the sailor, catching up the boy in his arms, “I might have known he couldn’t mean no harm! I tell you, we’ve been like father and son, me and Am has, up to this little picnic. But just you say to him, sir, that, storm or no storm, Bill’s place is the post of duty, and that he’d rather die there than live to be disgraced.”

But the white man had other work to do than translating for Bill and Amatua. He rode off and left them to trudge along on foot. Half an hour later they reached the beach, and saw the ships-of-war tugging heavily at their anchors. The weather looked dark and threatening, and a leaden surf was pounding the outer reefs. It appeared no easy matter to get Bill into the boat that was awaiting him, for she was full of men bound for the ship, and difficult to manage in the ebb and sweep of the seas. Bill’s face grew stern as he stared before him. He walked to the end of the wharf, and took a long, hawk-like look to seaward, never heeding the shaking woodwork nor the breakers that wet him to the knees. There was something ominous to Amatua in the sight of those deep-rolling ships and the piercing brightness of their ensigns and signal-flags. He was troubled, too, to see Bill so reckless in wetting his beautiful blue trousers and reducing his sliding feet, as the natives call shoes, his lovely patent-leather, silk-laced _se’evae_, to a state of pulp. He tried to draw him back, and pointed to the shoes as a receding wave left them once more to view. But Bill only laughed,--not one of his big hearty laughs, but the ghost of a laugh,--and a queer look came into his blue eyes. He walked slowly back to the boat, which was still rising and falling beside the wharf with its load of silent men. Suddenly he ran his hand into his pocket, and almost before Amatua could realise what it all meant, he felt Bill’s watch in his hand, and a round heavy thing that was unmistakably a dollar, and something soft and silken that could be nothing else than the sailor’s precious handkerchief. A second later Bill was in the boat, the tiller under his arm, while a dozen backs bent to drive him seaward. Amatua stood on the wharf and cried. He forgot the watch and the dollar and the silk handkerchief; he thought only of Bill,--his friend Bill,--the proud chief who would rather die at his post than find a coward’s place on shore. “Come back, Bill,” he cried, as he ran out to the end of the wharf, never caring for the waves that were dashing higher and higher. But the boat held on her course, dipping into the seas or rising like a storm-bird on some cresting comber until she vanished at last behind the towering _Trenton_.

Amatua did not sob for long. He was a practical boy, and knew that it could not help Bill,--poor Bill!--who already had all the salt water he cared about. So Amatua made his way back to land, and sought out a quiet spot where he could look at his new treasure and calculate on the most profitable way of spending his dollar. You could not say that the dollar burned a hole in his pocket, for Amatua did not use pockets, and his only clothes consisted of a little strip of very dingy cotton; but he was just as anxious to spend it as an American boy with ten pockets. First he looked at the watch. It was a lovely watch. It was none of your puny watches such as white ladies wear, but a thumping big chief of a watch, thick and heavy, with a tick like a missionary clock. It was of shining silver, and the back of it was all engraved and carved with ships and dolphins. Bill had shown it to him a hundred times when they had strolled about the town, or had gone, hand in hand, in search of many a pleasant adventure. It brought the tears to Amatua’s eyes to recall it all, and he pushed the watch aside to have a look at the handkerchief. This was another old friend. It was of the softest, thickest silk, such as girls delight in, all red and green and blue and yellow, like the colours of a rainbow.

There was nothing small about Bill. Even the dollar seemed bigger and fatter than any Amatua had seen; but then it must be remembered that dollars had seldom come his way. Oh, that dollar! How was he to spend it so that it would reach as far as two dollars?--a financial problem every one has had to grapple with at some time or another.

He was well up in the price of hardtack. The price fluctuated in Apia--all the way from twelve for a quarter up to eighteen for a quarter. Quality did not count; at any rate, Amatua was not one of those boys who mind a little mustiness in their hardtack, or that slight suspicion of rancid whale-oil which is a characteristic of the cheaper article. Hardtack was hardtack, and eighteen were better than twelve. Here was one quarter gone, and hardtack made way for soap. Yes, he must have soap. Even yesterday old Lu’au had said: “War is a terrible thing. It makes one’s heart shake like a little mouse in one’s body. But lack of soap is worse than war. You can get used to war; but who ever got used to going without soap?” Yes, there must be soap to gladden old Lu’au. This meant another quarter.

As to the third purchase there could be no manner of doubt; some _’ava_, the white, dry root which, pounded in water and strained by the dexterous use of a wisp of fibre, supplies the Samoan for the lack of every comfort. Oh, how the _’ava_ would rejoice his father in those dismal woods, where he lay with the famishing army, bearing hunger, cold, and misery with uncomplaining fortitude. And it should be none of that dusty, spotted stuff that so many traders sell to unknowing whites, or natives in a hurry, but the white _’ava_ from Vaea, which grows the very finest in the South Seas. And the last quarter? How was that to go? Was it to be a new _lava lava_, or a white singlet, or two rusty cans of salmon, or some barrel beef? Amatua would have dearly loved some marbles; but in the depressed state of the family’s finances these were not to be thought of. The beef was the thing; the strong, rank beef that comes in barrels; you could get a slab of it for a quarter, and Latapie, the French trader, would give you a box of matches besides, or a few fish-hooks, for every quarter you spent at his store.

Having finished his calculations, Amatua started off to do his shopping. Even in the short time he had spent in the corner of the ruined church the sea had noticeably risen and was now thundering along the beach, while on the reefs a gleaming spray hung above the breakers like a mist. The stormy sky was splashed with ragged clouds and streaked with flying scud. At their moorings the seven ships rolled under until they seemed to drown the very muzzles of their guns; and the inky vapour that oozed from their funnels, and the incessant shrill shrieking of the boatswains’ whistles, all told a tale of brisk and anxious preparation. “Oh, poor Bill!” thought Amatua, and looked away. The wharf from which he had seen the last of his friend was already a wreck, nothing showing of it but the jagged stumps as the seas rolled back.

Two boys told him that a boat of Misi Moa’s had been smashed to pieces, and that a big whaler from Lufilufi that pulled fifty oars had shared the same fate. Knots of white traders stood gazing solemnly out to sea; the provost guards from the ships were ransacking the town for the few men they still missed, and they were told to hurry or their boats would never live to carry them back. There was a general air of apprehension and excitement; people were nailing up their windows and drawing in their boats before the encroaching ocean; and the impressiveness of the situation was not a little heightened by the heavy guard of blue-jackets lined up before the German consulate, and the throngs of Tamasese’s warriors that swarmed everywhere about, fierce of mien in that unfriendly town, with their faces blackened for war, and their hands encumbered with rifles and head-knives. But Amatua had no time to think of such things; the signs of war were familiar to him, and the armed and overbearing adversaries of his tribe and people were no longer so terrible as they once had been.

The increasing roar of the sea and the wild sky that spoke of the impending gale kept the thought of Bill close to his heart, and he went about his business with none of the pleasure that the spending of money once involved. Not that he forgot his prudence or his skill at bargaining in the anxiety for Bill that tore his little heart. By dint of walking and chaffering, he came off with twenty hardtack for his first quarter; with the soap he extorted a package of starch; and after he had sniffed beef all the way from Sogi to Vaiala,--a distance of two miles,--he became the proprietor of a hunk at least six ounces heavier than the ruling price allowed. The _’ava_ was of a superb quality, fit for a king to drink.

It was late when Amatua got home and crept into the great beehive of a house that had been the pride of his father’s heart. The girls shouted as they saw him, and old Lu’au clapped her hands as her quick eyes perceived the soap. His mother alone looked sad--his poor mother, who used to be so gay and full of fun in that happy time before the war. She had never been the same since her cousin, the divinity student, had brought back her brother’s head from the battle-field of Luatuanuu--that terrible battle-field where the best blood of Samoa was poured out like water.

She looked anxiously at Amatua’s parcels, and motioned him to her side, asking him in a low voice how and where he had got them.

“It was this way,” said Amatua. “Bill and I are brothers. What is mine is Bill’s; what is Bill’s is mine. We are two, but in heart we are one. That’s how I understand Bill, though he talks only the white man’s stutter. ‘Amatua,’ he said, just before he got into the boat,--I mean what he said in his heart, for there was not time for words,--‘we are all of us in God’s high-chief hands this day; a storm is coming, and my place is on my ship, where I shall live or be cast away, as God wills. Take you this dollar and spend it with care for the comfort of all our family; take my very valuable watch, that ticks louder than a missionary clock, and my handkerchief of silk, the like of which there is not in Samoa, and keep them for me. My life is God’s alone, but these things belong to all of our family. Stand firm in the love of God, and strengthen your heart to obey his high-chief will.’”

* * * * *

It was late when Amatua awoke. The house was empty save for old Lu’au, who was kindling a fire on the hearth. A strange uproar filled the air, the like of which Amatua had never heard before--the tramp of multitudes as they rushed and shouted, deafening explosions, and the shrill, high scream of the long-expected gale. Amatua leaped from his mats, girded up his loin-cloth, and ran headlong into the night. It was piercing cold, and he shivered like a leaf, but he took thought of nothing. He ran for the beach, which lay at no great distance from his father’s house, and was soon panting down the lane beside Mr. Eldridge’s store. It was flaming with lights and filled with a buzzing crowd of whites and natives; and on the front verandah there lay the dripping body of a sailor with a towel over his upturned face. The beach was jammed with people, and above the fury of the gale and the roaring breakers which threatened to engulf the very town there rang out the penetrating voices of the old war chiefs as they vociferated their orders and formed up their men. Even as Amatua stood dazed and almost crushed in the mob, there was a sudden roar, a rush of feet, and a narrow lane opened to a dozen powerful men springing through with the bodies of two sailors.

Amatua turned and fought his way seaward, boring through the crowd to where the seas swept up to his ankles, and he could make out the lights of the men-of-war. There was a ship on the reef; he could see the stupendous tangle of her yards and rigging; every wave swept in some of her perishing crew. The undertow ran out like a mill-race; living men were tossed up the beach like corks, only to be sucked back again to destruction. The Samoans were working with desperation to save the seamen’s lives, and more than one daring rescuer was himself swept into the breakers.

Amatua found himself beside a man who had just been relieved, and was thunderstruck to find that it was no other than Oa, an old friend of his, who had been in the forest with Mataafa.

“How do you happen here, Chief Oa?” shouted Amatua.

“The Tamaseses have retired on Mulinuu,” said Oa. “It is Mataafa’s order that we come and save what lives we can.”

“Germans, too?” asked Amatua, doubtfully, never forgetful of his father’s wound, or of his uncle who fell at Luatuanuu.

“We are not at war with God,” said the chief, sternly. “To-night there is peace in every man’s heart.”

Amatua stood long beside his friend, peering into that great void in which so many men were giving up their lives. Sometimes he could make out the dim hulls of ships when they loomed against the sky-line or as the heavens brightened for an instant. Bodies kept constantly washing in, nearly all of them Germans, as Amatua could tell by their uniforms, or, if these were torn from them in the merciless waters, by the prevalence of yellow hair and fair skins. Amatua shrank from the sight of these limp figures, and it was only his love for Bill that kept him on the watch. Poor Bill! How had he fared this night? Was he even now tumbling in the mighty rollers, his last duty done on this sorrowful earth, his brave heart still for ever? Or did he lie, as so many lay that night here and there about the town, wrapped in blankets in some white man’s house or native chief’s, safe and sound, beside a blazing fire?

Amatua at last grew tired of waiting there beside Oa. The cold ate into his very bones, and the crowd pressed and trampled on him without ceasing. He cared for nothing so long as he thought he might find Bill; but he now despaired of that and began to think of his tired little self. He forced his way back, and moved aimlessly along from house to house, looking in at the lighted windows in the vain hope of seeing Bill. Of dead men there were plenty, but he could not bear to look at them too closely. He was worn out by the horror and excitement he had undergone, and when his eyes closed, as they sometimes would, he seemed to see Bill’s face dancing before him. He was a very tired boy by the time he made his way home and threw himself once again on the mats in that empty house.

It was a strange sight that met Amatua’s gaze the next day on the Apia beach. The wind had fallen, and the mountainous waves of the previous night had given way to a heavy ground-swell. But the ships, the wreckage of ships, the ten thousand and one things--the million and one things--which lined the beach for a distance of two miles! One German man-of-war had gone down with every soul on board; another--the _Adler_--lay broken-backed and sideways on the reef; the _Olga_ had been run ashore, and looked none the worse for her adventure. The United States ship _Vandalia_ was a total wreck, and half under water; close to her lay the _Trenton_, with her gun-deck awash; and within a pistol-shot of both was the old _Nipsic_, her nose high on land. The British ship, the _Calliope_, was nowhere to be seen, having forced her way to sea in the teeth of the hurricane.