Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories (1898)
Louis Becke



CONTENTS:

RODMAN THE BOATSTEERER
A POINT OF THEOLOGY ON MÂDURÔ
A MAN OF IMPULSE
THE TRADER
MRS. CLINTON
THE CUTTING-OFF OF THE "QUEEN CHARLOTTE"
THE PERUVIAN SLAVERS
A QUESTION OF PRECEDENCE
A TOUCH OF THE TAR-BRUSH
THE TRADER S WIFE
NINA
THE EAST INDIAN COUSIN
PROCTOR THE DRUNKARD
A PONAPEAN CONVENANCE
IN THE KING'S SERVICE, EPISODES OF A BEACH-COMBER
OXLEY, THE PRIVATEERSMAN
THE ESCAPEE
EMA, THE HALF-BLOOD
LEASSÉ
THE TROUBLE WITH JINABAN





RODMAN THE BOATSTEERER




I.

With her white cotton canvas swelling gently out and then softly
drooping flat against her cordage, the _Shawnee_, sperm whaler of New
Bedford, with the dying breath of the south-east trade, was sailing
lazily over a sea whose waters were as calm as those of a mountain lake.
Twenty miles astern the lofty peaks of Tutuila, one of the islands
of the Samoan group, stood out clearly in the dazzling sunshine,
and, almost ahead, what at dawn had been the purple loom of Upolu was
changing to a cloud-capped dome of vivid green as the ship closed with
the land.

The _Shawnee_ was "a five-boat ship," and, judging from the appearance
of her decks, which were very clean, an unlucky one. She had been out
for over a year, and three months had passed since the last fish had
been killed. That was off the coast of Chile, and she was now cruising
westward and northward towards the eastern coast of New Guinea, where
Captain Harvey Lucy, the master, expected to make up for the persistent
ill-luck that had attended him so far. Naturally a man of most violent
and ungovernable temper, his behaviour to his men on the present voyage
had led to disastrous consequences, and the crew, much as they admired
their captain as one of the most skilful whalemen who had ever trod
a deck, were now worked up into a state of exasperation bordering on
mutiny. Shortly before the Samoan Islands were sighted, the ship's
cooper, a man who took the cue for his conduct to the hands from the
example set by the captain, had had a fierce quarrel with a young
boat-steerer, named Gerald Rodman, who, in a moment of passion, struck
the cooper such a terrific blow that the man lay between life and death
for some hours. An attempt to put Rodman in irons was fiercely resisted
by a number of his shipmates, who were led by his younger brother. But
the after-guard were too strong for the men, and after a savage conflict
the two Rodmans and three other seamen were overpowered by Captain Lucy,
his four mates and the carpenter and stewards. As was common enough
in those days on American whaleships, nearly all the officers were
relatives or connections by marriage, and were always ready to stand
by the captain; in this instance the cooper was a brother of the second
mate. Six days had passed since this affair had occurred, and when Upolu
was sighted the five men were still in irons and confined in the hot
and stifling atmosphere of the sail-locker, having been given only just
enough food and water to keep body and soul together.

Four bells struck, and Captain Lucy made his appearance from below. The
watch on deck, who had hitherto been talking among themselves as they
went about their work, at once became silent, and muttered curses
escaped from their lips as they eyed the tall figure of the captain
standing at the break of the poop. For some minutes he apparently took
no notice of any one about him; then he turned to the mate, who stood
near him, and said:

"Have you had a look at those fellows this morning, Brant?"

"Yes," answered the officer. "They want to know if you're going to let
them have a smoke."

A savage oath preceded Captain Lucy's reply--

"They can lie there till they die before any one of them shall put a
pipe in his mouth."

"Just as you please, captain," said the mate, nonchalantly. "I guess you
know best what you're doing. But there's going to be more trouble aboard
this ship if you don't ease up a bit on those five men; and if I were
you I wouldn't go too far. One of 'em--that youngest Rodman boy--can't
stand much more of that sail locker in such weather as this. And I guess
_I_ don't want to go before a grand jury if he or any of 'em dies."

"I tell you, Brant, that rather than ease up on those fellows, I'd lose
the ship. I'm going to keep them there till we strike another fish, and
then I'll haze what life is left in them clean out of them."

Rough and harsh as he was with the crew of the _Shawnee_, Brant was no
vindictive tyrant, and was about to again remonstrate with the savage
Lucy, when, suddenly, the thrilling cry of "There she blows!" came from
the look-out in the crow's nest; and in a few minutes the barque's decks
were bustling with excitement. A small "pod" or school of sperm whales
were in sight. Four boats were at once lowered and started in pursuit.

When first sighted from the ship the whales were not more than two miles
distant, and moving towards her. The mate's boat was first away, and in
a very short time fastened to the leader of the "pod"--a huge bull over
sixty feet in length. In less than five seconds after the keen-edged
harpoon had plunged deep into his body, the mighty fish "sounded"
(dived) at a terrific speed; the other whales at once disappeared and
Brant's boat shot away from the other three. The remaining boats were
those of the captain and the second and third mates. For some ten or
fifteen minutes their crews lay upon their oars watching the swift
progress of the mate's boat, and scanning the sea from every point
around them, to discern where the vanished and unstricken whales would
rise to breathe again. At last they saw the great bull, to which the
mate's boat was fast, burst out upon the surface of the water, two miles
away. For a minute the mighty creature lay exposed to view, beating the
sea into a white seeth of foam as he struck the water tremendous blows
with his tail, and sought to free himself from the cruel steel in his
body. As he thrashed from side to side, two of his convoy rose suddenly
near him as if in sympathy with their wounded leader. Then, in an
instant, they all disappeared together, the stricken whale still
dragging the mate's boat after him at an incredible speed.

Knowing that in all probability the two whales which had just appeared
would accompany the great bull to the last--when he would receive
the stroke of the death-dealing lance from Brant--the captain of the
_Shawnee_ at once started off in pursuit, accompanied by the second and
third mates' boats. The crews bent to their tough ash oars with
strength and determination. There was no need for the dreadful oaths
and blasphemies with which Captain Lucy and his officers assailed their
ears, or his threats of punishment should they fail to catch up the
mate's boat and miss killing the two "loose" whales; the prospect of
such a prize was all the incentive the seamen needed. With set teeth
and panting bosoms they urged the boats along, and presently they were
encouraged by a cry from the third mate, who called out to the captain
and second mate that the wounded whale was slackening his speed, and Mr.
Brant was "hauling up alongside to give him the lance." In another
fifty strokes the captain and the two officers saw the great head of
the creature that was dragging the mate's boat along again appear on the
surface, and on each side were his devoted cetacean companions, who were
almost of as monstrous a size as the bull himself.

With savage oaths the captain urged his crew to fresh exertions, for
just then he saw the mate go for'ard in his boat and plunge his keen
lance of shining steel into his prize, then back his boat off as the
agonised whale again sounded into the blue depths below, with his
life-blood pouring from him in a bubbling stream.




II.

On board the _Shawnee_ the progress of the boats was watched amid the
most intense excitement; and even the imprisoned seamen, in their foul
and horrible prison, stretched their wearied and manacled limbs and
sought to learn by the sounds on deck whether any or all of the boats
were "fast"--that is, had harpooned a whale. Broken-spirited and
exhausted as they were by long days of cruel and undeserved punishment,
they would have forgotten their miseries in an instant had the fourth
mate ordered them on deck to lower his boat--the only one remaining on
board--and join their shipmates in the other boats in the chase. But of
this they knew there was little prospect, for this remaining boat had
been seriously injured by a heavy sea, which had washed her inboard
a few days before the fight between the officers and crew. Presently,
however, they heard the hurried stamping of feet on deck, and then the
voices of the fourth mate and cooper giving orders to take in sail.

"Jerry," said a young English lad named Wray, to the elder Rodman, "do
you hear that? One of the boats must have got 'fast' and killed. We'll
be out of this in another half-hour, cutting-in. The captain won't
let us lie here when there is work to be done on deck; he's too mean a
Yankee to satisfy his revenge at the expense of his pocket."

But their pleasant belief that a whale had been killed, and that the
ship was shortening sail while the carcass was being cut-in, was rudely
disturbed a few minutes later, when the _Shawnee_ took a sudden list
over to port, and they were all pitched to the lee side of the sail
locker in a heap. A squall had struck the barque.

Bruised and lacerated by the force with which they had been hurled
together, the five prisoners sat up, and were soon enlightened as to the
condition of affairs by the carpenter making his appearance, taking off
their galling irons, and ordering them on deck.

The squall was a very heavy one, accompanied by savage gusts of stinging
rain, and the old ship, with her canvas in great disorder, was every
now and then thrown almost on her beam ends with its fury. After
considerable trouble the officers and crew succeeded in saving her
canvas from being blown to ribbons, and got the barque snug again. A
quarter of an hour later the squall began to lose its force, but the
rain descended in torrents, and obscured the view of the now agitated
ocean to such an extent that the look-outs from aloft could not discern
its surface a cable length away. All those on board the barque felt
intense anxiety as to whether the mate had succeeded in killing his
whale before the squall burst upon him, for they knew that had he not
done so he would have been compelled to cut the line and let his prize
escape; no boat could live in such a sea as had arisen when "fast" to
a sperm whale which was travelling at such a speed, even though fatally
wounded and weak from loss of blood.

An hour passed, and then, to the joy of all on board, the rain ceased,
a faint air came from the westward and blew away the thick clouds of
tropic mist which enveloped the ship. Ten miles distant the verdant
hills and valleys of Upolu glistened in the sunshine, and then one of
the look-outs hailed the deck:

"I can see a boat, Mr. Newman--it is Mr. Brant's. He has killed his
whale, sir."

In an instant the fourth mate was running aloft, but before he had
ascended to the fore-top the lookout cried:

"I can see the other three boats now, sir, and they are all 'fast,'
too."

A cheer broke from the _Shawnee's_ hands, and, disregarding for the time
all discipline, they sprang aloft one after another to gaze upon the
thrilling scene. Three miles away, and plainly discernible in the now
clear atmosphere, was the mate's boat lying alongside the big bull,
which had just been killed, and at about the same distance were the
boats of the captain and second and third mates, all "fast" to whales,
and racing swiftly to windward toward the horizon.

The fourth mate at once came down from aloft and held a hurried
consultation with the cooper--an old and experienced whaler. It was
evident to them that the three boats had only just succeeded in getting
"fast," and that, as darkness was so near, the officers in them would
have great difficulty in killing the whales to which they were "fast,"
as the sea was still very lumpy from the violence of the squall. None
of the boats were provided with bomb-guns, the use of which would have
killed the whales in a very short time; and the wind having again died
away it was impossible for the ship to work up to them. Nothing, it was
evident, could be done to assist the three boats, but it was decided to
send the one remaining on board the barque to help the mate to tow his
whale to the ship before the hordes of sharks, which would be attracted
to the carcass by the smell of blood, began to devour it.

The carpenter was at once set to work to make her temporarily
water-tight. By this time the sun had set, and only the position of
the mate's boat was made known to the ship by a light displayed by Mr.
Brant.

Standing on the port side of the poop, Martin Newman, the fourth mate,
was gazing anxiously out into the darkness, hoping to see the other
three boats show lights to denote that they had succeeded in killing
their fish, and were waiting for a breeze to spring up to enable the
barque to sail towards them. Although Newman was the youngest officer
on board, he was an experienced one, and the fact that his boat had not
been fit to lower with the other four had filled him with sullen rage;
for he was of an intensely jealous nature, and would rather have seen
the boats return unsuccessful from the chase than that he alone should
have missed his chance of killing a fish.

Presently the younger of the two Rodmans, who was his (Newman's) own
boatsteerer, ventured, in the fulness of his anxiety for his shipmates,
to step up to the officer and speak:

"Do you think, sir, that the captain and Mr. Ford and Mr. Manning have
had to cut their lines?"

The officer made no reply; and could the young boatsteerer have seen the
dark, forbidding scowl upon his face, he would never have addressed him
at such an unpropitious moment. But imagining that his question had not
been heard, the youth repeated it.

Newman turned, and seeing the lad standing in an attitude of expectancy,
asked him in savage tones what he was doing there.

"Nothing, sir; I only----"

"I'll teach you that a man doing nothing doesn't suit me when I'm
in charge of the deck of this ship!" and he struck the boatsteerer a
terrific blow in the mouth, which knocked him off the poop on to the
main deck.

When Ned Rodman came to, he found his head supported by his brother and
young Wray, and the rest of the hands on deck standing around him in
sympathetic silence. Newman was the most liked of all the officers,
and the lad whom he had struck down had been rather a favourite of his,
principally, it was supposed, because the two Rodmans came from the same
town as himself; and when the disturbance had arisen with the cooper,
and the two brothers had been put in irons, Newman had several times
expressed his sorrow to them when he had visited them in their prison.
His sudden outburst of violence to Ned Rodman was therefore a surprise
to the men generally; and several of them glanced threateningly at the
figure of the fourth mate, who was now striding to and fro on the poop,
occasionally hailing the look-outs in angry tones, and asking if any
more boat-lights were visible.

Gerald Rodman, though no words escaped his lips as he wiped away the
blood which welled from a terrible cut on his brother's temple, had in
his eyes a red light of passion that boded ill for the fourth mate when
the time came. He was five years older than his brother, and, although
both were boatsteerers, and had made many cruises in the Pacific, this
was the first time they had been shipmates. Unlike Ned, he was a man of
a passionate and revengeful nature, and the second mate, to whose boat
he belonged, had warned the cooper of the _Shawnee_ never to meet Gerald
Rodman ashore alone.

"He is a man who will never forgive an injury, and I would not care to
be in your shoes if he gets you by yourself one day."

And, as a matter of fact, Gerald Rodman had sworn to himself, when he
lay in irons, in the sail-locker, to have his revenge upon both the
cooper and Captain Lucy, should he ever meet either of them ashore at
any of the islands the barque was likely to touch at during her cruise.
He was a man of great physical strength, and, for his position, fairly
well educated. Both his parents were dead, and he and his brother Ned,
and a delicate sister of nineteen, were the sole survivors of a once
numerous family. The care of this sister was the one motive that
animated the elder brother in his adventurous career; and while his
reserved and morose nature seemed incapable of yielding to any tender
sentiment or emotion, it yet concealed a wealth of the deepest affection
for his weakly sister, of which the younger one had no conception.
And yet, strangely enough, it was to Ned that Nellie Rodman was most
attached; it was to _his_ return that she most looked forward, never
knowing that it was Gerald's money alone that maintained the old family
home in the quiet little New England village in which her simple life
was spent. Little did she think that when money was sent to her by
Gerald, saying it came "from Ned and myself," that Ned had never had a
dollar to send. For he was too careless and too fond of his own pleasure
to ever think of sending her money. "Jerry," he thought, "was a mighty
stingy fellow, and never spent a cent on himself--and could easily send
Nell all she wanted." And yet Gerald Rodman, knowing his brother's weak
and mercurial nature, and knowing that he took no care in the welfare
of any living soul but himself, would have laid his life down for him,
because happy, careless Ned had Nellie's eyes and Nellie's mouth, and in
the tones of his voice he heard hers. So as he sat on the deck, with
his brother's head upon his knees, he swore to "get even" with Martin
Newman, as well as with Captain Lucy and cooper Burr, for as he watched
the pale face of the lad it seemed to him to grow strangely like that of
his far-off sister.

He had just completed sewing up the gaping wound in his brother's
temple, when the cooper came up to the group:

"Here, lay along, you fellows; the carpenter has finished Mr. Newman's
boat, and some of you loafing 'soldiers' have to man her and help Mr.
Brant to tow his whale alongside. Leave that man there, and look spry,
or you'll feel mighty sorry."




III.

As the cooper turned away the younger Rodman, assisted by his brother,
staggered to his feet. The fall from the poop had, in addition to the
cut in his temple, severely injured his right knee, and he begged his
brother to let him lie down again.

"Yes, yes," whispered Gerald Rodman, hurriedly; "lie down, Ned," and
then the lad heard him speaking to Wray in eager, excited tones.

"I'm with you, Jerry," said the young Englishman, quickly, in answer to
something that Rodman had said; "where is he now?"

"In the cabin, getting some Bourbon for Mr. Brant's boat. There is only
the Dago steward with him, and if Porter and Tom Harrod will join us we
shall manage the thing right enough."

"What is the matter, Jerry--what are you talking about?" asked Ned from
where he lay.

"Keep still, Ned, and ask us nothing just now; there's a chance of our
getting clear of this floating hell. I needn't ask _you_ if you'll join
us. Come on, Wray."

The fourth mate and the Portuguese steward were in the main cabin
filling some bottles from a large jar of Bourbon whisky. Their backs
were turned to the door, and both were so intent upon their task that
they neither heard nor saw the four figures steal softly upon them.
Suddenly they were seized from behind by Wray and Gerald Rodman, and
then quickly gagged by Harrod and Porter before either had time to utter
a cry. In a few minutes the four men had armed themselves with cutlasses
from the rack around the mizzen-mast, which came through the cabin at
the for'ard end of the table, Rodman also taking the captain's and chief
mate's loaded revolvers out of their berths.

The fourth mate and steward were then carried into the captain's cabin,
and Gerald Rodman spoke:

"Newman," he said, "we are going to take charge of this ship for a
while. If you make an attempt to give an alarm you are a dead man. Wray,
stand here and run them both through if they make the ghost of a sound."

Again entering the captain's cabin, he returned with two or three
charts, a sextant and the ship's chronometer, which he placed on the
table just as a heavy footfall sounded on the companion steps. It was
the cooper.

"The boat is all ready, Newman," he said, as he entered the somewhat
darkened cabin; "who is going in her?"

"We are," said Rodman, dealing him a blow with the butt of his pistol
and felling him. "Leave him there, Wray--he'll give us no trouble.
Now take every one of those rifles out of the rack and put them on the
table. There's two kegs of powder and a bag of bullets in Mr. Brant's
cabin--get those as well."

This was quickly done, and, calling to the others to follow him, Rodman
sprang up the companion. No one but the man at the wheel was on the
poop, and the leader of the mutineers, looking over the rail, saw that
the boat was alongside with only one hand in her. Besides this man
there were but eight other persons besides the mutineers on the ship,
including the fourth mate, cooper, steward, and carpenter.

Calling the carpenter to him, Rodman covered him with his pistol, and
told him and the rest of the startled men to keep quiet or it would be
worse for them.

"Two of you help my brother into the boat," he ordered. He was at once
obeyed, and Ned Rodman was passed over the side into the hands of the
man in the boat.

"Put out every light on deck and aloft," was his next command, and this
was done by the watch without delay; for there was in Rodman's face such
a look of savage determination that they dared not think of refusing.
Then he ordered them into the sail-locker.

"Now, Mr. Waller," he said, addressing the carpenter, "we don't want to
hurt you and these three men with you. But we are desperate, and bent on
a desperate course. Still, if you don't want to get shot, do as I tell
you. Get into that sail-locker and lie low. Mr. Newman and the cooper
and the steward are already disposed of. And I'm going to put it out of
the power of Captain 'Brute' Lucy to get me and those with me into his
hands again."

"You won't shut us up in the sail-locker and scuttle the ship and let us
drown, will you?" asked the carpenter.

"No; I'm no murderer, unless you make me one. If there is any one I have
a grudge against it is Mr. Newman and the cooper; but I won't do more
to the cooper than I have already done. Still I'm not going to leave the
ship in your hands until I have messed her up a bit. So away with you
into the locker, and let us get to work."

Then, with the man from the boat, the carpenter and his companions were
pushed into the sail-locker and the door securely fastened. Looking down
from the skylight into the cabin Rodman saw that the cooper had not yet
come to, and therefore no danger need be apprehended from him. Sending
Wray below, the rifles, ammunition, and nautical instruments were passed
up on deck and handed down into the boat. Then, leaving Porter on guard
to watch the cooper, Rodman and the others went for'ard with a couple of
axes and slashed away at the standing fore-rigging on both sides; they
then cut half-way through the foremast, so that the slightest puff of
wind, when it came, would send it over the side. Then, going for'ard,
they cut through the head stays.

"That will do," said the boat-steerer, flinging down his axe; and then
walking to the waist he hailed the boat:

"Are you all right, Ned?"

"Yes," answered the youth, "but hurry up, Jerry, I think a breeze is
coming."

Running aft, the elder brother sprang up the poop ladder and looked down
through the skylight into the cabin. "Cut Mr. Newman and the steward
adrift," he said to Wray.

Wray disappeared into Captain Lucy's cabin, and at once liberated the
two men, who followed him out into the main cabin.

"Martin Newman," said Rodman, bending down, "just a word with you. You,
I thought, were a shade better than the rest of the bullying scoundrels
who officer this ship. But now, I find, you are no better than Bully
Lucy and the others. If I did justice to my brother, and _another
person_ I would shoot you, like the cowardly dog you are. But stand up
on that table--and I'll tell you why I don't."

The dark features of the fourth mate blanched to a deathly white,
but not with fear. Standing upon the table he grasped the edge of
the skylight, under the flap of which Gerald Rodman bent his head and
whispered to him:

"Do you know why I don't want to hurt you, Martin Newman? When I came
home last year I found out my sister's love for you; I found your
letters to her, and saw her eating her heart out for you day by day, and
waiting for your return. And because I know that she is a dying woman,
and will die happy in the belief that you love her, I said nothing. What
I have now done will prevent my ever seeing her again, though I would
lay my life down for her. But listen to me. Ned will, must, return to
her, and beware, if ever you accuse him of having taken a hand in this
mutiny----"

The hands of the fourth mate gripped the skylight ledge convulsively,
and his black eyes shone luridly with passion. Then his better nature
asserted itself, and he spoke quietly:

"Jerry, I did not know it was Ned whom I struck to-night. I was not
myself.... I never meant to harm _him_. And for Nell's sake, and yours
and Ned's, give up this madness."

"Too late, too late, Newman. I would rather die to-night than spend
another hour on board this ship. But at least, for Nell's sake, you
and I must part in peace," and the mutineer held out his hand. It was
grasped warmly, and then with a simple "goodbye" Rodman turned away,
walked to the poop ladder and called out:

"Into the boat, men!"

Five minutes later they shoved off from the _Shawnee_, whose lofty spars
and drooping canvas towered darkly up in the starless night. At the
last moment Gerald Rodman had hoisted a light on the mizzen-rigging as a
guide to the four absent boats. As the mutineers pulled quickly away its
rays shone dimly over the barque's deserted decks.

When daylight came the _Shawnee_ was still drifting about on a sea as
smooth as glass, and the four boats reached her just before the dawn.
The boat with the mutineers could not be discerned even from aloft,
and Captain Harvey Lucy, in a state of mind bordering on frenzy, looked
first at his tottering foremast and then at the four whales which had
been towed alongside, waiting to be cut-in. With the rising sun came
another rain-squall, and the foremast went over the side, although
Martin Newman with his men had done their best to save it. But Lucy,
being a man of energy, soon rigged a jury-mast out of its wreck, and set
to work to cut-in his whales. Three days later the _Shawnee_ stood away
for Apia Harbour in Samoa.

"Those fellows have gone to Apia," he said to mate Brant, "and I'll go
there and get them if it takes me a month of Sundays."

But when the _Shawnee_ dropped anchor in the reef-bound harbour, Captain
Lucy found that he had come on a vain quest--the mutineers' boat had not
been seen.

For seven years nothing was ever heard of the missing boat, till one day
a tall, muscular-looking man, in the uniform of a sergeant of the New
South Wales Artillery, came on board the American whaleship _Heloise_,
as she lay in Sydney harbour, refitting. He asked for Captain Newman,
and was shown into the cabin.

The captain of the _Heloise_ was sitting at the cabin table reading a
book, and rose to meet his visitor.

"What can I do for you, sir? Good God! is it you, Gerald Rodman!"

The soldier put out his hand. "Is my sister alive, Newman?"

"She died three years ago in my arms, hoping and praying to the last
that she might see you and Ned before she died. And Ned?"

"Dead, Newman; he and Wray and Porter died of thirst. Harrod and I alone
survived that awful voyage, and reached New Zealand at last. Was Nell
buried with the old folks, Martin?"

"Yes," answered the captain of the _Heloise_, passing his hand quickly
over his eyes, "it was her wish to lie with them. We had only been
married two years."

The sergeant rose, and took Newman's hand in his, "Goodbye, Martin. Some
day I may stand with you beside her grave."

And then, ere the captain of the whaleship could stay him, he went on
deck, descended the gangway, and was rowed ashore to the glittering
lights of the southern city.




A POINT OF THEOLOGY ON MÂDURÔ

The _Palestine_ Tom de Wolf's South Sea trading brig, of Sydney, had
just dropped anchor off a native village on Mâdurô in the North Pacific,
when Macpherson the trader came alongside in his boat and jumped on
board. He was a young but serious-faced man with a red beard, was thirty
years of age, and had achieved no little distinction for having once
attempted to convert Captain "Bully" Hayes, when that irreligious
mariner was suffering from a fractured skull, superinduced by a bullet,
fired at him by a trader whose connubial happiness he had unwarrantably
upset. The natives thought no end of Macpherson, because in his spare
time he taught a class in the Mission Church, and neither drank nor
smoked. This was quite enough to make him famous from one end of
Polynesia to the other; but he bore his honours quietly, the only signs
of superiority he showed over the rest of his fellow traders being
the display on the rough table in his sitting-room of a quantity of
theological literature by the Reverend James MacBain, of Aberdeen. Still
he was not proud, and would lend any of his books or pamphlets to any
white man who visited the island.

He was a fairly prosperous man, worked hard at his trading business,
and, despite his assertions about the fearful future that awaited every
one who had not read the Reverend Mr. MacBain's religious works, was
well-liked. But few white men spent an evening in his house if they
could help it. One reason of this was that whenever a ship touched at
Mâdurô, the Hawaiian native teacher, Lilo, always haunted Mac-pherson's
house, and every trader and trading skipper detested this teacher above
all others. Macpherson liked him and said he was "earnest," the other
white men called him and believed him to be, a smug-faced and sponging
hypocrite.

Well, as I said, Macpherson came on board, and Packenham and Denison,
the supercargo, at once noticed that he looked more than usually solemn.
Instead of, as on former occasions, coming into the brig's trade-room
and picking out his trade goods, he sat down facing the captain and
answered his questions as to the state of business, etc., on the island,
in an awkward, restrained manner.

"What's the matter, Macpherson?" said the captain. "Have you married a
native girl and found out that she is related to any one on the island,
and you haven't house-room enough for 'em all, or what?"

The trader stroked his bushy sandy beard, with a rough brown hand, and
his clear grey eyes looked steadily into those of the captain.

"I'm no the man to marry any native girl, Captain Packenham. When I do
marry any one it will be the girl who promised hersel' to me five years
ago in Aberdeen. But there, I'm no quick to tak' offence at a bit of
fun. And I want ye two tae help me to do a guid deed. I want ye tae come
ashore wi' me at once and try and put some sense into the head of this
obstinate native teacher."

"Why, what has he been doing?"

"Just pairsecuting an auld man of seventy and a wee bit of a child. And
if we canna mak' him tak' a sensible view of things, ye'll do a guid
action by taking the puir things awa' wi' ye to some ither pairt of the
South Seas, where the creatures can at least live."

Then he told his story. Six months before, a German trading vessel
had called at Mâdurô, and landed an old man of seventy and his
grand-daughter--a little girl of ten years of age. To the astonishment
of the people the old man proved to be a native of the island. His name
was Rimé. He had left Mâdurô forty years before for Tahiti as a seaman.
At Tahiti he married, and then for many years worked with other Marshall
Islanders on Antimanao Plantation, where two children were born to
him. The elder of these, when she was fifteen years of age, married a
Frenchman trading in the Paumotu Islands.

The other child, a boy, was drowned at sea. For eight or nine years Rimé
and his Tahitian wife, Tiaro, lived alone on the great plantation; then
Tiaro sickened and died, and Rimé was left by himself. Then one day
came news to him from the distant Paumotus--his daughter and her white
husband had fallen victims to the small-pox, leaving behind them a
little girl. A month later Rimé worked his way in a pearling schooner to
the island where his granddaughter lived, and claimed her. His heart was
empty he said. They would go to Mâdurô, though so many long, long years
had passed since he, then a strong man of thirty, had seen its low line
of palm-clad beach sink beneath the sea-rim; for he longed to hear the
sound of his mother tongue once more. And so the one French priest on
Marutea blessed him and the child--for Rimé had become a Catholic during
his stay in the big plantation--and said that God would be good to them
both in their long journey across the wide Pacific to far-off Mâdurô.

But changes had come to Mâdurô in forty years. When Rimé had sailed away
to seek his fortune in Tahiti he and his people were heathens; when
he returned he found them rigid Protestants of the Boston New England
Cotton-Mather type, to whom the name of "Papist" was an abomination
and a horror. And when Rimé said that he too was a Christian--a
Katoliko--they promptly told him to clear out. He was not an American
Christian anyway, they said, and had no business to come back to Mâdurô.

"And," said Macpherson, "I'll no suffer this--the poor creature an' the
wee lit child canna git a bit to eat but what I gie them. And because I
_do_ gie them something to eat Lilo has turned against me, an' says I'm
no a Christian. So I want ye to come ashore and reason wi' the man. He's
but a bigot, I fear; though his wife is no so hard on the poor man and
the child as he is; but a woman aye has a tender heart for a child. And
yet, ye see, this foolish Rimé will no give in, and says he will die
before he changes his faith at Lilo's bidding. They took awa' his silly
brass cruceefix, and slung it into the lagoon. Then the auld ass made
anither out of a broken canoe paddle, and stickit the thing up in my
cook-shed! And I have no the heart to tell him to put it in the fire
and warm his naked shin bones wi' it. But I think if we all tackle the
native teacher together we may knock some sense into his conceited head,
and make him treat the poor man better. 'Tis verra hard, too, on the
poor auld fellow that these people will not give him back even a bit of
his own land."

Then he went on to say that ever since Rimé had landed he and the child
had been sleeping every night in his (Macpherson's) cooking-shed. The
trader had given him a bundle of mats and free access to a pile of Fiji
yams and a bag of rice, and sometime Louisa, Lilo's Hawaiian wife, would
visit them at night, ostensibly to convert Rimé from the errors of Rome,
but really to leave him a cooked fish or a piece of pork. Most of the
day, however, Rimé was absent, wandering about the beaches with his
grand-daughter. They were afraid to even pass near the village, for
the children threw stones at them, and the men and women cursed them
as Katolikos. Matters had gone on like this till two weeks before
the _Palestine_ arrived, when Lilo and some of his deacons had formed
themselves into a deputation, and visited the trader. It was very wrong
of him, they said, to encourage this wicked old man and his child. And
they wanted him to cease giving them food or shelter--then when the
"Katolikos" found themselves starving they would be glad to give up
the "evil" religion which they had learnt in Tahiti. Then would they be
baptized and food given them by the people of Mâdurô.

Macpherson tried to reason with Lilo. But neither he nor the
white-shirted, but trouserless, deacons would listen to him. And
furthermore, they gave him a warning--if Rimé continued obstinate, they
would hold him (Macpherson) responsible and _tapu_ his store. Rimé did
continue obstinate, and next morning the trader found himself _tabooed_,
which is a mere euphemism for boycotted.

"That's pretty rough on you, Mac," said Packenham.

"'Twill just ruin me, I fear. Ye see there's four other traders on this
island besides me, and all my business has gone to them. But what can
I do? The silly auld fule of a Rimé won't give in, and I canna see him
starve--the damned auld Papist."

*****

At noon, as Packenham, with his supercargo and Macpherson, stepped out
of the trader's dwelling, and walked together to the Mission House, a
native went through the village blowing a conch. Lilo had agreed to meet
the white men and discuss matters with them. Already the big room in the
teacher's house was filled with people, who sat around the walls three
or four deep, talking in whispered tones, and wondering why the white
men troubled so much over a miserable old man and a wretched child, who
were both accursed "Katolikos."

As the captain and his friends entered, Lilo, the teacher, advanced to
meet them. He was a small, slenderly built man, with a skin scarcely
darker than that of an Italian, and very handsome features. After a few
words of effusive welcome, and a particularly sweet smile to Macpherson,
he escorted the white men to their seats--three chairs placed together
at the head of the room.

Presently there was a shuffling of naked feet outside, and five or
six young men entered the house, pushing before them an old man and a
girl--Rimé and his grand-child. In the centre of the room was a small
square mat of coconut leaf--the Marshall Island prisoners' dock. With
limbs trembling with age, Rimé seated himself cross-legged; the child,
kneeling at his back, placed her bony arms around his wrinkled body, and
clasped him tightly; her eyes, big, black, and mournful, filled with
the indifference born of despair. Then, as she saw Macpherson, a faint
semblance of a smile flitted across her sallow face.

Lilo struck his hand upon a little table before which he sat, and
at once the assembly was silent. Then he turned to Packenham and, in
perfect English, pointing to the two figures in the centre of the room,
said--

"That is Rimé and his child. They have given us much trouble, and I and
the deacons of this island do not want trouble. We are Christians, and
will not have any 'Katolikos' here. Mr. Macpherson says we are cruel.
He is wrong. We are just, and this man and this child must give up their
false faith. But because you and Mr. Denison have written me a letter
about this matter I have called the people together so that we may
talk. So, if you please, captain, will you speak, and I will interpret
whatever you say to the people."

"Will he, the damned little sweep?" muttered the supercargo to
Packenham; "tell him that we can talk Mâdurô as well as he can--and
better."

So, much to the teacher's disgust, Packenham answered in the Mâdurô
dialect. "'Twas better," he said, "that they should all talk Mâdurô."
Lilo smiled unpleasantly, and said, "Very well."

Then Packenham, turning to the people, spoke to the point.

"Look into my face, people of Mâdurô, and listen to my words. Long
before the missionaries came to this island I lived among ye for three
years with my wife Nerida. And is there here one man or one woman who
can say that I ever lied to him or her? So this do I say to ye all;
and to thee, Lilo, the teacher of the Word of God, that ye do wrong to
persecute this old man and this child. For is it not true that he hath
land, which ye have denied to him? Is it not true that he is old and
feeble, and his limbs tremble as he walks? Yet ye neither give him food
nor drink, nor yet a mat whereon to lie his head. He is a 'Katoliko,'
ye say? Are there not many thousands of 'Katolikos' in Hawaii, the land
from whence comes Lilo? And I ask of thee, Lilo, do they suffer wrong
from the King and the chiefs of Hawaii because of their faith? So to
thee, Lilo, do I say 'beware.' Thou art but a young and ignorant man,
and were I to tell the white missionaries in Honolulu (who are thy
masters) that this old man and this little child would have died of
hunger but that the heart of one man alone was tender to them, then
wouldst thou hang thy head in shame when the mission ship comes here
next year. For hath not Christ said, 'Blessed are the merciful, for
they shall obtain mercy?' And so I say to ye all, let this old man dwell
among ye in peace, for death is near to him, and shame will be thine if
ye deny to him his right to die on his own land, of which ye have robbed
him."

The teacher sprang to his feet, his dark eyes blazing with passion.

"There shall be no mercy shown to Katolikos; for they are of hell and
the devil and his works!" and from the people there came a deep growl
of approval, which changed into a savage hissing as Macpherson rose and
stretched out his hand.

"Let me speak," he said.

"No," shouted the teacher. "Who are _you?_ You are a bad man, you
are----"

Packenham made two strides over to Lilo and placed his heavy hand on his
shoulder--"Sit down, you damned little psalm-singing kanaka hog, or I'll
knock your eye out. He _shall_ speak."

"Get thee hence, thou shielder of the devil's children," said a young,
fat deacon, walking up to the trader and spitting contemptuously at his
feet. "We want no such white men as thee among us here in Mâdurô." In
an instant Macpherson struck him between the eyes and sent him flying
backwards among his fellow-deacons. Then came an angry roar from the
people.

The trader turned to Packenham with a groan, "I'm a ruined man now,
Captain Packenham, and all through this auld fule of a Papist." Then he
again tried to speak amidst the uproar.

"Sit down, damn you," said Denison, the supercargo, "and don't excite
them any more. They're ready for any mischief now. Oh, you she-devil,"
and he darted into the middle of the room towards Rimé and his
grand-daughter. A stout muscular girl had torn the child's arms from the
old man's waist, and was beating her savagely in the face with clenched
fists. Denison gave her an under-clip on the jaw and sent her down, and
in a few seconds the old man and child were the centre of a struggling
group--the white men hitting out right and left to save them from being
murdered. The teacher's wife, a tall, graceful young woman--with
whom Denison had been exchanging surreptitious glances a few minutes
before--weeping copiously the while, aided them by belabouring the backs
of the women who were endeavouring to get at the prostrate figure of the
little girl. But Packenham, Macpherson, and the supercargo were too much
for the natives, and soon cleared a space around them.

"Take them to the ship, Captain Packenham," said the teacher's wife
pantingly, in English. "These people are mad now. Go--go at once."

Picking up the frail figure of the old man, the captain, followed by
Macpherson and the supercargo, soon gained the boat through a shower
of stones and other missiles. Ten minutes later they were on board the
Palestine.

*****

"What a devil of a row!" said Packenham, as he clinked his glass against
that of Macpherson, who, after the exciting events of the past hour,
had been induced to take a nip to steady his nerves; "you ought to be
d------d well ashamed of yourself, Mac, to be mixed up in a fight over a
Papist. What would Mr. MacBain say, eh?"

"It's a verra bad business for me," said Macpherson ruefully. "Ye'll
have to come back for me next month and tak' me awa' from Mâdurô. I'll
do no more business here, I can see."

"Right you are, Mac," and Packenham grasped his hand. "I _will_ come
back for you, if it takes me a month of Sundays to beat against the
trades. And you're a white man, Mac; and I'll never laugh at MacBain nor
Aberdeen theology any more."

That night, as the captain of the _Palestine_ slept upon the skylight,
old Rimé, who, with the child, lay upon the deck just beneath Packenham,
rose softly to his knees and peered into the white man's face. He was
sleeping soundly. Rimé touched his grandchild with his foot. She awoke,
and together they pressed their lips to the skipper's hand. Then,
without a sound, they stole along the deck, clambered over the brig's
low side, dropped into the water and swam ashore.

When daylight came the _Palestine_ was rolling heavily to a sweeping
westerly swell, with the wind piping hard through her cordage as she
strained at her cable. The absence of old Rimé and the child was not
discovered till coffee time; the mate thought they had gone to sleep in
the hold.

"They've swum ashore in the night, Pack," said the supercargo to
Packenham. "I believe the old fellow will be content to die of
starvation--hallo, here's Mac coming off in his boat!"

In less than ten minutes the trader's boat was close to the ship, and
Macpherson, bringing her up to the wind close under the brig's stern,
hailed Packenham.

"Hae ye seen anything of the old man Rimé?"

"No," answered the captain; "the old fool cleared out last night. Isn't
he on shore?"

"No. And there's a canoe missing from the beach, and I believe the auld
Papist fule has taken the wee bit lassie wi' him, and thinks he can
get to Ponape, whaur there's 'Katolikos' in plenty. And Ponape is sax
hundred miles awa'."

"Well, come aboard and get some breakfast."

"Man, I'm going after the old fule! He's got no sail and canna be twenty
mile awa'. I'll pick him up before he gets to Milli Lagoon, which is
only saxty miles from here."

Packenham swore. "You infernal ass! Are you going to sea in a breeze
like this by yourself? Where's your crew?"

"The deevils wadna' come wi' me to look for a Papist. And I'm not going
to let the auld fule perish."

"Then come alongside and take a couple of our Savage Island boys. I can
spare them."

"No, no, captain. I'm not going tae delay ye when ye're bound to the
eastward and I'm going the ither way. Ye'll find me here safe enough
when ye come back in anither month. And I'll pick up the auld deevil and
the wee bit lassie before mid-day."

And then, with his red beard spreading out across his shoulders,
Macpherson let his boat pay off before the wind. In an hour he was out
of sight.

*****

Three weeks afterwards the _Sadie Perkins_ sperm whaler of New Bedford,
came across a boat, five hundred miles west of Mâdurô. In the stern
sheets lay that which had once been Macpherson, the "auld fule Papist,
and the wee bit lassie."




A MAN OF IMPULSE

Blackett, the new trader at Guadalcanar in the Solomons, was
entertaining a visitor, an old fellow from a station fifty miles
distant, who had sailed over in his cutter to "have a pitch" with
his nearest white neighbour. And the new man--new to this particular
island--made much of his grizzled visitor and listened politely to the
veteran's advice on many subjects, ranging from "doctoring" of perished
tobacco with molasses to the barter of a Tower musket for a "werry nice
gal."

*****

The new trader's house looked "snugger'n anything he'd ever seed," so
the old trader had told him; and Blackett was pleased and very liberal
with the liquor. He had been but a few months on the island, and already
his house was furnished, in a rude fashion, better than that of any
other trader in the region. He was a good host; and the captains of the
Fiji, Queensland, and Samoan "blackbirders" liked to visit him and loll
about the spacious sitting-room and drink his grog and play cards--and
tell him that his wife was "the smartest and prettiest woman in the
group."

Blackett was especially vain of the young Bonin Island half-caste
wife who had followed his varying fortunes from her home in the far
north-west Pacific to the solitary, ghostly outlier of Polynesia--lonely
Easter Island, and thence to and fro amongst a hundred other islands.
He was vain of her beauty--the beauty that had led him to almost abandon
any intention of returning to civilisation; he was vain of the dark,
passionate eyes, the soft, wavy hair, and the proud little mouth
inherited from her Lusitanian father. Of this latter person, however,
neither Blackett nor Cerita, his wife, were over-proud--he was a
notorious old scamp and ex-pirate, even for that part of the Pacific,
and Cerita knew that Blackett had simply bought her from him as he would
buy a boat, or a bolt of canvas.

*****

Blackett, finding it impossible to make old Hutton drunk or get him to
turn in, resigned himself entirely to the old pirate, who, glancing
to the far end of the room, to where Cerita and his own wife, a
tall, lithe-limbed Aoba woman, were lying together on a mat smoking
cigarettes, proceeded to pour out the story of his countless murders and
minor villainies.

Blackett himself was a negatively-moral man. He could shoot a native if
necessity demanded, but would not do so hastily; and the old trader's
brutal delight in recounting his pot-shots only excited a disgust which
soon became visible in his face.

*****

"_That's_ all right, Mr. Blackett," said Hutton, with a hideous grin
distorting his monkeyish visage; "I'm only a-tellin' you of these
here things for your own good,... an' I ain't afeered of no man-o'-war
a-collarin' _me_. This here island is a place where you've got to sleep
with one eye open, an' the moment you sees a nigger lookin' crooked at
you put a lead pill in him--that is, if he's a stranger from somewheres.
An' the more you shoots the better you'll get on with your own nigs;
they likes you more and treats you better."

With a weary gesture, Blackett rose from his seat. "Thank you, Hutton,
for your advice. If I thought a nigger meant to send an arrow or a spear
through me I'd try to get the drop on him first. But I couldn't kill any
one in cold blood on mere suspicion. I could no more do that than--than
you could kill that Aoba wife of yours over there."

Old Hutton rose, too, and put a detaining hand on Blackett. "Look here,
now, an' I suppose you think I'm lyin'. If I thought that that there
Aoba wench was foolin' me in any way--sech as givin' away my tobacco
to a nigger buck, I'd have to wentilate her yaller hide or get laid out
myself."

Blackett shuddered. "I'm going to turn in. Let us have another drink,
Hutton. If the Dutch firm's schooner shows up this month I'll clear out
of this accursed hole. I hate the place, and so does my woman." He
used the term "woman" instead of wife purely out of deference to Island
custom; but Hutton noticed it.

"Ain't she really your wife?" he asked inquisitively.

"No--yes--what the devil does it matter to you?" And Blackett, whose
patience had quite worn out, filled the glasses, and passed one to his
visitor, who uncouthly apologised. Then the two shook hands and laughed.

*****

The night was close and sultry, and Cerita was lying on the cane-framed
bed, fanning herself languidly. The man was leaning, with his face
turned from her, against the open window, and looking out into the
jungle blackness that encompassed the house. He was thinking of Hutton's
query, "Ain't she really your wife?" His wife! No; but she would be yet.
He would leave this infernal island, where one never knew when he might
get a poisoned arrow or spear into him. He was making money here, yes;
but money wasn't worth dying for. And 'Rita was more than money to him.
She had been the best little woman in the world to him--for all her
furious temper.

"Yes, he would leave these blackguardly Solomons, with their hordes of
savage cannibals,... and go back to the eastward again,... and Sydney,
too. He could easily stow her away in some quiet house while he went and
saw his people." And so Blackett thought and smoked away till 'Rita's
voice startled him.

*****

"Give me a match, Harry: I want to smoke. I can't sleep, it's so hot,
and my arm is tired fanning, and the screen is full of mosquitoes. That
devil of a girl--where is she?"

"There!" said Blackett, pointing to beneath the bed, where Europuai, his
wife's attendant, lay rolled up in a mat.

"The black beast!"--and the half-blood rose from the bed, throwing the
mosquito-net angrily aside--"and I thought she was sleeping near the
Aoba woman, the wife of that drunken old Hutton," and, stooping down
so that her black hair fell like a mantle over her bare shoulders, she
seized the short, woolly head of the sleeper and dragged her out.

Blackett laughed. "Easy, 'Rita, easy! You'll frighten her so that she'll
clear out from us. Let her take her mat over there in the corner. Give
the poor devil a chance. She's terrified of old Hutton, so sneaked in
here to hide. She's only a wild bushy"--and he looked compassionately at
the almost nude figure of the girl that his wife had bought from a bush
town for a musket--because she wanted "something to worry," he used
jokingly to say.

The savage creature took the mat sullenly, went to the far end of the
room, and covered herself up again.

"You're too soft with women," said Rita, scornfully.

"I know I am--with you," he answered, good-naturedly. And then the angry
gleam in the black eyes died away, and she laughed merrily.

*****

Two days had passed. Old Hutton had returned to his station, and
Blackett was returning with a boatload of copra from a village across
the bay. Heavy rain-squalls tore down upon the boat at short intervals,
and Blackett, drenched to the skin, began to feel the first deadly
chills and pains of an attack of island fever. Usually light-hearted, he
now felt angry, and savagely cursed at his crew when the heavily-laden
boat touched and ground against the coral knobs that lay scattered about
her course. It was long past midnight when he reached his station, and,
stepping wearily out of the boat, dragged his aching limbs along the
beach. 'Rita had heard the boat, and Blackett could see that a bright
fire was burning in the thatched, open-sided cook-house, and that 'Rita
herself was there, with a number of native children making coffee.

The quickening agonies of fever were fast seizing him, and, entering the
house and throwing himself on a seat, he felt his brain whirling, and
scarcely noticed that Tubariga, the local chief, was bending over him
anxiously. Then 'Rita came with the steaming coffee, and one quick
glance at Blackett's crouched-up figure told her that the dreaded fever
had seized him at last.

'Rita proved herself what Blackett always called her, "one of the
smartest little women going." With Tubariga's help, she carried him
to the bed, and sent out for some women to come and rub and thump his
aching joints while she dosed him with hot rum and coffee. And then
Blackett asked her what she was doing out in the cook-house. Hadn't she
a cook? Then the suppressed rage of the hot-blooded girl broke out in
a flood of tears. Europuai, the wild bush-girl, had been sulky all the
time he was away, and she had given her a little beating with a bamboo.
And then the black devil had run away, and--here the angry beauty wept
again--she ('Rita) had to go out into a filthy cook-shed to boil water
before a lot of man-eating savages! No one would help her, because they
were all such fools that she always lost her temper with them.

*****

Blackett--under the combined influences of rum, strong coffee, fever,
and woman's tears--went into a rage, and glared angrily at the chief,
Tubariga.

"You're a d-------d nice fellow," he said in English; "you get my wife
to pay a good musket for a girl, and then as soon as I am away you let
that girl run back into the bush. You're a bad friend."

Tubariga felt hurt. He prided himself on two things--his knowledge of
English and his friendship for white men. He rose to his feet, grasped
his rifle, and made for the door.

"Here, come back, Tubariga. Perhaps it isn't your fault. Let her stay
away. She's no good, anyway."

Tubariga came back. "Tell me, white man, do you want your servant to
come back?"

"Yes, d---- you!" answered Blackett, who now again was seized with that
hideous brain-whirl that in fever is simple delirium, "bring her back,
alive or dead."

The chief nodded and went out.

*****

Next morning the first fierce violence of the fever had temporarily left
him, and Blackett was lying covered up with rugs, when the grim figure
of Tubariga entered noiselessly, and stole to his side. Motioning the
trader's wife away, Tubariga's savage features relaxed with a pleased
smile.

"Well, Tubariga, how are you?" said Blackett. "'Rita tell me I damn you
too much last night, eh? Never mind, old chap, I was mad about that girl
running away. You can tell her people to keep her--and the musket too.
Rita don't want her any more. Ship come soon, then we go away.'"

Again the pleased smile spread over the chiefs face. Bending over
Blackett he placed his hideous lips, blood-red with the stains of
betel-juice, close to his face, and said with the simple pride of a
child, "_Me pinish him_."

"What?" said Blackett, with a strange feeling at his heart--"What did
you do to that girl, Tubariga?"

Sitting down with his rifle across his knees, the chief told the
conscience-stricken trader that he had followed the girl to a bush
village, where he, Tubariga, as their chief, had demanded her from her
parents. They insisted on her going back, but she whimpered and said
that the white man's wife would beat her. She sprang for the jungle,
and, ere she reached it, a bullet from the chiefs rifle struck her in
the side. And then, with a feeling of horror, Blackett listened to the
rest of the tale--the poor wretch, with her life-blood ebbing fast, was
followed up and a spear thrust through her heart.

*****

He was sitting at the table with his face clasped in his hands when
'Rita came in. She was smoking her inevitable cigarette, and the thin
wreaths of blue smoke curled upwards from her lips as she leant one arm
on the table and caressed Blackett's ice-cold forehead with her shapely
hand. Suddenly she stooped and sought gently to remove his hands from
his face.

"Harry, are you very ill, old fellow? What can I do for you?"

"Do for me?" and the sudden misery that had smitten his heart looked out
from his pallid face,... "give me back the peace of mind that was mine
ten minutes ago. Leave me to die here of fever--for you I have become a
murderer--a man no better than Hutton. The blood of that poor girl
will for ever be between us." And then she saw that tears were falling
through his trembling fingers.

"Harry," she said, "I thought you were more of a man"--and here her
voice softened--"don't grieve over it. It wasn't your fault,... and I
have been a good little girl to you. Don't be miserable because of
such a little thing as that. If Tubariga hadn't killed her, I daresay I
should have done so myself. She was a sulky little wretch."

*****

I know Blackett well. The horror of that day has never entirely left
him. But for that one dark memory he would have married 'Rita--who
would have most probably run a knife into his ribs later on, when the
influence of her beauty had somewhat waned and he began to look at other
women. The fateful impulse of that moment when he told the chief to
bring back the girl dead or alive wrecked and tortured his mind beyond
description. And he can never forget.

His 'Rita and he left the island soon afterwards to wander away back to
Eastern Polynesia, but his continued fits of melancholy annoyed the girl
so much that she one day quarrelled with and left him, and made a fresh
matrimonial engagement with a man less given to mawkish sentiment.




THE TRADER




I.

The evening fires were lighting up the darkness of the coming night,
when Prout, the only white man on the island, left his house on the edge
of the lagoon, and, with his little daughter running by his side, walked
slowly through the village.

As they passed through the now deserted pathways that intersected the
straggling collection of grey, thatched-roofed houses, and Prout's heavy
step crunched into the broken coral, the natives, gathered together for
their evening meal, looked forth, and the brown women called out a word
or two of greeting to the child, and smiled and beckoned her to
leave her father for an instant and take the fruit or piece of cooked
breadfruit that they held out to her with their brown hands. But only
a solemn shake of the little head, and then she and the taciturn,
bronzed-faced man went by, the child's tiny fingers grasping his tanned
and roughened hand as they walked across the narrow island towards the
sound of the muffled thunder of the surf on the outer ocean beach.

*****

Here, with the little one perched beside him and looking wonderingly
into his grave, impassive face, the white man would sit for long hours
staring moodily out upon the tumbling breakers as they reared and fell
upon the black, grim shelves of the reef.

Sometimes, as he sat with his chin resting on his hand, and the red glow
of his pipe sending now and again a fitful gleam of light across the
rugged lines of his face, the girl would get quietly down from the
moss-grown coral boulder on which she rested by his side, and stepping
down to the short, steep beach, play with childish solemnity with such
pebbles and light shells as lay within the reach of her little hands.
Perhaps, if the tide was heavy and at its flood, and a breaker heavier
than the rest breached shorewards in a white wall of seething foam, and
crashed and rattled together the loose coral slabs that marked the line
of high-water mark, the silent, dreaming man would spring to his feet
with a loud warning call. And the little one, answering his deep tones
with her soft, sweet treble, would spring back to her father's side, and
nestling her tender form against his gaunt frame, lay her cheek against
his, and say, in the soft Tokelau tongue, "'Twas a great wave, my
father!"

"Aye," he would answer, as he placed an arm round the child and gazed at
her for a moment, "'twas a great wave truly, _taka taina_,{*} and thou
art so small, that if it but touched thy feet thou wouldst be swept
away like as a leaf in a strong wind. So stay thee here beside me, sweet
one," and again his face would turn seaward, and the silence of the
night, save for the soughing of the wind and the cry of the surf, fall
upon them again.

     *  "Little one of my heart."

Thus the first hours of the island night would pass, till a glare of
light flashed upon the blackness of the sea beyond the snow-line of
surf, as the canoes from Matakatea would round the point, each one with
a flaming torch of dried palm-leaves held high by a brown, tattooed
hand, to dazzle the flying fish that, with wings outspread, floated
motionless upon the surface of the water.

*****

Then, because the child had no playmates, and her little life was almost
as joyless and as solitary as his own, he would wait with her till
the long line of canoes passed by, so that she could see the bronzed,
half-naked figures of the paddlers, and the bright gleam and shimmer of
the fish as they were swept up by the deadly net, and hear the warning
cry from the torch-bearers, as in the depths beneath they saw the black
shadow of a prowling shark rushing to seize the net, or perchance the
outrigger of the canoe, in his cruel, murderous jaws.

Slowly the canoes paddled by, and as they passed, the hum of voices
and laughter and the cheery lilt of island melody died away, and the
paddlers looked shoreward to the motionless figure of Prout, who, with
the child by his side, seemed to heed naught but the wide sweep of ocean
that lay before him.

But though the voices and laughter and snatches of song ceased, many of
the kindly-hearted people would, ere they passed, call out a word or two
of greeting to the white man and his child, and the latter would wave
her hand and smile back, while her father, as if awakened from a dream,
called out, in the island tongue, the customary "May your fishing
to-night be lucky." And then, as the last canoe vanished, and the glare
and the smoke of the torches with it, he, with the little Mercedes by
his side, walked back to his house on the lagoon.

*****

And so, night after night, save in the stormy season of the year, when
the white rain-squalls gathered together on the windward sea-line, and
swept quickly down upon the island and drenched the loose, sandy soil
with pouring showers, the white man had sat with his face turned seaward
to the cloudless horizon of the starlit ocean and his mind dwelling upon
the ever-present memories of the past.

Such, for three years past, ever since he had first landed among the
people of Nukutavau, had been the existence of Prout, the silent,
solitary trader.

*****




II.

Nine years before, Prout, then one of the "smartest" Englishmen in the
Hawaiian Islands, had been manager of the Kalahua sugar plantation on
Maui. Out of his very loneliness in the world--for except his mother,
in a far-away Devonshire village, there was no one in the outside world
that cared aught for him--there grew upon him that quiet, reserved
temperament that led the other white men on the plantation to call him
in kindly jest, "Prout, the Hermit."

But although he never mixed with the men on the Kalahua Estate in the
wild revelries with which they too often sought to break the monotony of
their existence and celebrate a good season, he was by no means a morose
or unsociable man; and Chard, the merry-hearted Belgian sugar-boiler,
often declared that it was Prout alone who kept the estate going and
the native labourers from turning on the white men and cutting their
throats, out of sheer revenge for the brutal treatment they received
from Sherard, the savage, drunken owner of Kalahua.

Between Roden Sherard and Prout there had been always, from the first
day almost of the latter entering upon his duties, a silent, bitter
antagonism. And the reason of it was known only to the two men
themselves.

In those times the native labour for the Hawaiian sugar plantations was
recruited from the islands of the Mid-Pacific, and from the chains of
sandy atolls lying between the Bonins and the Radack Archipelago of the
Marshall Group. On Kalahua there were some three hundred natives, and
within a month of Prout taking charge, he had changed their condition
so much for the better, that not one of the wild-eyed, half-naked beings
who toiled from sunrise to dark but would give him a grateful glance as
he rode through the cane fields. And Sherard, who rode with him, would
see this, and scowl and tell Prout that as soon as his engagement
terminated, he, Sherard, would bring back Fletcher, the former manager,
"a man who would thump a kanaka into a pulp if he dared to look sideways
at him."

"If you are not satisfied with me you can bring him here to-morrow if
you like," Prout had said coldly to him one day. "I've managed bigger
places than this in Demerara, and on no one of them have I ever seen
a nigger struck. But then, you see, in Demerara the planters are
Englishmen, and Englishmen as a rule don't shine at nigger walloping."

Sherard, a black-visaged Marylander, snapped his teeth together and,
smothering his rage, tried to laugh the matter off.

"Well, I suppose you're right, Prout. I know I have got a good man in
you; but at the same time, God never intended these damned saucy niggers
to be coddled and petted."

Prout laughed ironically as he repeated Sherard's words "coddled and
petted!" And then long-suppressed wrath boiled out, and, swinging his
horse's head round, he faced the owner of Kalahua.

"Look here, Sherard, give me the control of these three hundred natives
for the next two seasons and I'll stake my life that they'll do more
work for you than you have ever had done by that brute Fletcher when he
had five hundred here. Do you think that these people _knew_ what was
in store for them when they came here?--that in place of an encouraging
word they would get a threat or a blow? That those of them who have
wives and daughters can forget what has befallen _them?_ Do you think
that I don't know that you speak of me to your friends with contempt as
'a nigger-loving Britisher'? And yet, Sherard, you know well that, were
I to leave Kalahua tomorrow, every native on the estate would leave
too--not for love of me, but to get away from _you_."

Sherard laughed coarsely.

"You've got more in you than I thought, Prout. What you say is true
enough. Let us quit quarrelling. I know you can do more with them than
Abe Fletcher could; and I guess I'm not going to interfere with you."

But, for all that, Prout did not trust Sherard, and he made up his mind
to leave the estate when his two years' engagement came to an end.

*****

"The _Mana_ is in Honolulu with a cargo of Line Island boys, Prout,"
said Sherard to him about a month or two after this; "I wish you would
get away down there, and try to obtain some more hands. You talk the
language like a Line Islander, and will have no trouble in getting all
the men we want."

But when Prout boarded the labour schooner _Mana_ there was not a native
left. The other planters on Oahu had been there before him, and the
master--Captain Courtayne--called him down to have a drink in the cabin.

"You are the new manager on Kalahua, hey? Well, I'm sorry you've had
your trip for nothing; but, at the same time, I'm real glad to see
Sherard left out in the cold. He's a bad man, sir, and although you
might think that because I'm in this trade I'm not particularly soft, I
can tell you that I'd be thundering sorry to see any of the crowd I've
brought up go to him."

"Your feelings do you honour, Captain; but I can assure you that the
Kalahua boys are well treated now," said Prout, as he took the cigar the
seaman handed him.

The quiet manner and truthful look in Prout's face made the master
of the schooner regard him intently for a few moments, then he said
abruptly:

"Do you know Honolulu well?"

Prout did not; his visits there had been few and far between.

"Do you know any decent people here who could take care of my daughter
for me till I come back from my next trip?"

"No, Captain, I do not."

"Take another whisky, sir, and I'll tell you the fix I'm in. You see I'm
new to this business. I had a trading station down on one of the Ellice
Islands where I've lived for the last twenty years. This schooner came
there about six months ago, and the captain died in my house. As the
mate couldn't navigate, and I am an old shell-back, I sold out my
trading station, took charge of her, brought my daughter aboard and
filled the schooner with Line Island labourers."

"Her mother is dead, I suppose?"

Captain Courtayne coloured and shifted about in his seat. "Well, no, not
as far as I know; but, you see, down there in the south-east a man has
to change his wives occasionally. For instance, if you marry a Samoa
girl you must live in Samoa; she won't leave there to go and live on
Nanomea or Vaitupu, where the people have different ideas and customs.
And, as we poor traders have to shift about from one island to another
sometimes, we can't afford to study a woman's whims."

Prout grasped the situation at once. "I see; your daughter, then, is
your child by a former wife?"

"Just so. Her mother was a Hervey Island half-caste whom I married when
I was trading on Manhiki. We drifted apart somehow--perhaps it was my
fault. I was a careless, hard-drinking man in those days. But, here I
am telling you a lot of things that don't interest you, when I ought to
tell you at once what it is I thought you might help me with. You see,
Mr. Prout, my little Marie has lived with me all her life. Since she was
five years old she has never left me for a day, and I've done my best to
educate her. She's as good and true as gold, and this is what troubles
me--I don't want to take her away again in the schooner if I can help
it. Do you think--do you know--of any English or American family here
that would take her to live with them till I return from this voyage?
I'm willing to pay well for her keep."

Prout shook his head. "I should advise you to take her back with you,
Captain. How old is she?"

The captain went to the companion-way and called out:

"Marie."

"Yes, father," answered a girl's soft voice.

"Come below a minute."

Prout heard some one getting out of a hammock that was slung over the
skylight, and presently a small slippered foot touched the first step of
the companion-way; and then a girl, about fifteen or sixteen, came
into the cabin, and bowing to him, seated herself by the captain of the
schooner. Then, as if ashamed of the formal manner of her greeting, she
rose again, and a smile lit up her beautiful face, as she offered her
hand to him.

Prout, one of those men whose inborn respect for women often makes them
appear nervous, constrained, and awkward in their presence, flushed to
the roots of his hair as she let her soft hand touch his.

"That is Marie, sir," and the skipper glanced somewhat proudly at the
graceful, muslin-clad figure of his daughter. "Marie, this gentleman
says he does not know any English or American ladies here."

The sweet red mouth smiled and the dark eyes danced.

"I'm very glad, father; I would rather go away with you to sea in the
_Mana_ than stay in a strange place."

*****

But Marie Courtayne did not go away; for next morning her father,
through Prout, learned that the French Sisters were willing to take her
as a boarder till the schooner returned, and so to them she went, with
her tender mouth twitching, and her eyes striving to keep back the tears
that would come as she bade her father goodbye.

"You'll go and see my little Marie sometimes, I hope, Mr. Prout?" said
Courtayne, as he bade farewell to the manager of Kalahua.

Prout murmured something in reply, and then the captain of the _Mana_
and he parted.

*****

Three months later the American cruiser _Saranac_ brought the news that
she had spoken the labour schooner _Mana_, Captain Courtayne, off the
island of Marakei, in the Gilbert Group, "all well, and wished to be
reported at Honolulu." After that she, her captain and crew, and the two
hundred Kanaka labourers she had on board, were never heard of again.

For nearly a year Prout and Marie Courtayne waited and hoped for some
tidings of the missing ship, but none came. And every now and then, when
business took him to Honolulu, Prout would call at the Mission School
and try to speak hopefully to her.

"He is dead," she would say apathetically, "and I wish I were dead, too.
I think I shall die soon, if I have to live here."

Then Prout, who had grown to love her, one day plucked up courage to
tell her so, and asked her to be his wife.

"Yes," she said simply, "I will be your wife. You are always kind to
me," and for the first time she put her face up to his. He kissed her
gravely, and then, being a straightforward, honourable man, he went to
the Sisters and told them. A week afterward they were married.

When he returned to Kalahua with his wife, Sherard met them on the
verandah of his house, and Prout wondered at the remarkable change in
his manner, for even to women Sherard was coarse and tyrannical.

From the moment he first saw Marie's fresh young beauty Sherard
determined to have a deadly revenge upon her husband. But he went about
his plans cautiously. Only a few days previously he had made a fresh
agreement with Prout to remain for another two years. Before those two
years had expired he meant to put his plan into effect. There was on
the plantation a ruffianly Chileno who, he knew, would dispose of Prout
satisfactorily when asked to do so.

*****

When Marie's child was born, Sherard acted the part of the imperatively
good-natured employer, and told Prout that as soon as his wife was
strong enough, he was to leave the house he then occupied and take up
his quarters permanently in the big house.

"This place of yours will do me, Prout," he said, when his manager
protested; "and your wife's only a delicate little thing. There's all
kinds of fixings and comforts there that she'll appreciate, which
you haven't got here. D------n my thick skull, I might have done this
before."

"Thank you, Sherard," said Prout, with a genuine feeling of pleasure.
"You are very good to us both. But I won't turn you out altogether; you
must remain there too."

Sherard laughed. "Not I. You'll be far happier up there together by
yourselves, like a pair of turtledoves. But I'll always be on hand in
the smoking-room when you want me for a game of cards."

The change was soon made, and Moreno, the Chilian overseer, grinned when
he saw the white-robed figure of the manager's wife lying on one of the
verandah lounges, playing with her child.

"Bueno," he said to Sherard that night, as they drank together, "the
plan works. Make the bird learn to love its pretty nest. _Dios_, when am
I to feel my knife tickling Senor Prout's ribs?"

"At the end of the crushing season, I think," answered Sherard coolly;
"the brat will be old enough to be taken from her by then."

It is a bad thing for a man to "thump" either a Chilian, or a Peruvian,
or a Mexican. And Prout had "thumped" the evil-faced Chileno very badly
one day for beating a native nearly to death. Had he been wiser he would
have taken the little man's knife out of his belt and plunged it home
between his ribs, for a Chileno never forgives a blow with a fist.

*****




III.

"Are you going over to Halaliko to-night, Prout?" asked Sherard, walking
up to where his manager and Marie sat enjoying the cool of the evening.
He threw himself in a cane chair beside them and puffed away at his
cheroot, playing the while with the little Mercedes.

"Yes, I might as well go to-night and see how the Burtons have got on,"
and Prout arose and went to the stables.

Sherard remained chatting with Marie till Prout returned, and then,
raising his hat to her, bade them good-night."

"Don't let Burton entice you to Halaliko, Prout," he said with a laugh;
"he knows that your time here is nearly up."

Prout laughed too. "I don't think that Marie would like me to give up
Kalahua for Halaliko--would you, old girl?"

She shook her head and smiled. "No, indeed, Mr. Sherard. I am too happy
here to ever wish to leave."

*****

Whistling softly to himself, Prout rode along the palm-bordered winding
track. It was not often he was away from Marie, but he meant to take his
time this evening. It was nearly five miles to Burton's plantation at
Halaliko, and half an hour would finish his business there. He knew
that, as soon as he left, Marie would tell the native servant to go to
her bed in the coolie lines, and then she would herself retire; and when
he returned he would find her lying asleep with her baby beside her.

*****

To the right the road wound round a great jagged shoulder of rocky
cliff, and clung to it closely; for on the left there yawned a black
space, the valley of Maunahoehoe, and, as he rode, Prout could see the
glimmer of the natives' fires below--fires that, although they were but
distant a few hundred feet, seemed miles and miles away.

A slight sound that seemed to come from the face of the cliff above him
caused him to look upwards, and the next instant a heavy stone struck
him slantingly on the side of his head. Without a sound he fell to the
ground, staggered to his feet, and then, failing to recover himself,
vanished over the sloping side of the cliff into the valley beneath.

A shadowy, supple figure clambered down from the inky blackness of cliff
that overhung the road, and peered over the valley of Maunahoehoe. It
was Moreno, the Chilian.

"Better than a knife after all; Holy Virgin, he's gone now, and I
forgive him for all the blows he struck me."

*****

Long before daylight, Prout, with his face and shoulders covered with
gory stains, staggered into the native village at Maunahoehoe and asked
the people to lend him a horse to take him back to Kalahua.

When within half a mile of Kalahua, almost fainting from loss of blood
and exhaustion, he pulled up his horse at a hut on the borders of the
estate and got off. There were some five or six natives inside, and
they started up with quick expressions of sympathy when they saw his
condition.

"Give me a weapon, O friends," he said. "Some man hath tried to kill
me."

A short squat native smiled grimly, reached to the rafters of the
dwelling, and took down a heavy carbine, which he loaded and then handed
to the white man.

"'Tis Moreno who hath hurt thee," said the native; "at midnight he rode
by here in hot haste."

With the native supporting him, Prout rode along the road to the Estate
gates.

As he reeled through he heard a faint cry.

In another minute he was on the verandah and looking through the French
lights into Marie's dimly-lighted bedroom. An inarticulate cry of
anguish burst from him. Sherard and his wife were together.

Steadying himself against a post he took aim at the trembling figure of
his wife, and fired. She threw up her arms and fell upon her face, and
then Sherard, pistol in hand, dashed out and met him.

Ere he could draw the trigger, Prout swung the heavy weapon round, and
the stock crashed into the traitor's brain.

"It is the death of a dog," said the native, spurning the body with his
naked foot.

She was dying fast when Prout, with love and hate struggling for mastery
in his frenzied brain, stood over her.

"He took my child away from me," she said.... "He said he would kill her
before me,... and it was to save her. Only for that I would have died
first. Oh, Ned, Ned----"

Then with a look of unutterable love from her fast-dimming eyes, she
closed them in death.

*****

That was why Prout, after two years of madness in a prison, had stepped
on board Hetherington's schooner and asked the captain to take him away
somewhere--he cared not where--so that he could be away from the ken of
civilised and cruel mankind and try and forget the dreadful past.



IV.

They are a merry-hearted, laughter-loving race, the people of
white-beached Nukutavau, with whom the trader lived. To them the
grave-faced, taciturn man, who cared not to listen to their songs or to
watch their wild dances on the moonlit beach--as had been the custom of
those white men who had dwelt on the island before him--was but as one
afflicted with some mental disease, and therefore to be both pitied and
feared. At first, indeed, when he had landed, carrying his child in his
arms, to bargain with Patiaro, the chief, that the people should build
him a house, the women of the island had clustered around him as he
stepped out of the boat, and with smiles upon their faces, extended
their arms to him for the child. But no answering smile lit up the man's
rugged features, though, to avoid the appearance of discourtesy (to
which all island races are so keenly sensitive) he gave the infant into
the keeping of old Malineta, the mother of the chief.

Patiaro, the chief, holding the stranger's right hand in both his own,
looked searchingly into his calm, deep-set eyes with that dignified
curiosity which, while forbidding a native to put a direct question to
an utter stranger, yet asks it by the expression of his face. But Prout,
whose anxious glance followed the movements of the grey-haired mother
of the chief, as she pressed his child to her withered bosom, seemed to
notice not his questioning look.

Following the stranger's gaze, the chief broke the silence:

"'Tis my mother, _ariki papalagi_.{*} who carries thy child--Malineta,
the mother of Patiaro, the chief of Nukutavau, he who now speaks to
thee. And I pray thee have no fear for the little one."

     * White gentleman.

*****

The quiet, dignified courtesy with which the chief addressed him
recalled the white man to himself, and a pleasant smile lit up the
native's features when the stranger answered him in Tokelau--the _lingua
franca_ of the equatorial isles of the Pacific--north and south.

"Nay, I fear not for the child, Patiaro, chief of Nukutavau, but yet it
may not be well for her to be taken to the village awhile; for with
thee and thy people doth it rest whether the child and I remain here,
or return to the ship and seek some other island whereon I may build my
house and live in peace. And I will pay thee that which is fair and just
for house and land."

But in those days, before too much civilisation had brought these simple
people deadly disease, Christianity, and the knowledge of the great Pit
of Fire, the brown men thought much of a white man; and so Patiaro, the
chief, made haste to answer:

"Let the child go with my mother, and tell thou the men in the boat that
everything thou desirest of me and my people to do shall be done. Five
rainy seasons have come and gone since a white man has lived here; so I
pray thee, stay."

The white man inclined his head; then he turned and walked to the boat,
and spoke to the captain of the little vessel which, to bring him to the
island, had dropped her anchor just outside the current-swept passage of
the lagoon.

"I am remaining here, Captain Hetherington. Will you let your men put my
gear out on the beach?"

Hetherington, the skipper, looked at his passenger curiously, and then
answered:

"Cert'nly. But I'm real sorry you are leaving us, I don't want to pry
inter any man's business, and you know these islands as well as I do;
but I guess I wouldn't stay here if I war you. Why, it won't pay a
man to stay and trade on a bit of a place like this," and he cast a
deprecatory look around him.

The trader made him no answer, and the skipper of the schooner, ordering
his crew to take out his passenger's goods and carry them to the
village, stepped ashore, and held out his hand to the chief, whose fine,
expressive features showed some signs of fear that the captain's remarks
were intended to dissuade the stranger from remaining on the island.

*****

Motioning to the white men to follow him, the stalwart young chief led
the way to the _fale kaupale_, or council-house of the village, where
food and young coconuts for drinking were brought in and placed before
them by the young women.

Sitting directly in front of his guests, the chief served them with food
with his own hands, in token of his desire for friendship and to do
them honour, and then quietly withdrew to direct the natives who were
carrying the trader's goods up from the boat to his own house, further
back in the village.

"I would wish ter remark, mister," said the American skipper as he
pulled out his pipe and commenced to fill it, "thet, ez a rule, I
don't run any risk ev bustin' myself with enthoosiastic admiration fer
Britishers in general--principally because they air the supporters of er
low-down, degradin' system ev Government, which hez produced some bloody
wars and sunk my schooner the _Mattie Casey_, with a cargo of phosphates
valued et four thousand dollars."

"It was a heavy loss to you, Captain Hetherington, but you surely do not
dislike all Englishmen because the _Alabama_ sunk your vessel?" said
the trader, with a melancholy smile, whilst his restless eye sought the
village houses to discern the movements of the chief's mother with his
child.

The American pulled his long, straggling beard meditatively. "Wal, I
don't know, they're a darned mean crowd anyway." And then, with a sudden
change of manner, "Say, look here, mister; hev yew finally made up your
mind ter remain on this island among a lot ev outrageous, unclothed,
ondelikit females, whar every prospeck pleases an' on'y man is vile; or
air yew game ter come in pardners with me in the schooner an' run her in
the sugar trade between 'Frisco and Honolulu?"

Prout grasped the old man's hand, but shook his head.

"You are a generous man, Captain Hetherington, but I cannot do it. I am
no seaman, and, what is more to the point, I have no money to put into
the venture."

"Thet's jest it," the American answered quickly, "but yew hev a long
head--fer a Britisher, a darned long head--an' I reckon yew an' me will
pull together bully; so jes' tell the chief here to get the traps back
inter the boat again, an' yew an' me an' little Mercedy will get aboard
agin----"

"No, no, no," and the trader rose to his feet and walked quickly to
and fro--"no, Hetherington; I cannot do as you wish. Here, among these
islands, it is my wish to live; and here, or on such another island as
this, and among such wild, uncivilised beings, must I die."

"So?" and the hard-featured American raised his shaggy eyebrows
interrogatively. "Waal, I reckon yew regulates your own affairs ter
your own fancy; but look here, mister," and the kindly ring in the old
skipper's voice appealed to the man before him--"what about little
Mercedy? Yew ain't agoin' to let thet pore child grow up among naked,
red-skinned savages, hey?"

A deep flush overspread the trader's face, and then it paled again, and
he ceased his hurried, agitated walk.

"Hetherington!... do not, I implore you, say another word to me on the
subject. It is better for me to remain here with my little Mercedes....
So, here, give me that honest hand of yours and leave me.... But, stop,
I forgot," and he thrust his hand into a large canvas pouch that hung
suspended from his shoulder, "I did indeed forget this, Captain; but
forget the kindness that you have shown to me and my child during the
four months I have been with you, I never can."

The Yankee skipper's face was visibly perturbed as he heard the jingle
of money in the canvas pouch, and he worked his jaws violently, while
his heavy, bushy brows met together as if he were in deep study, and
uneasy mutterings escaped from his lips. Suddenly he rose and left his
companion.

As he shambled away to the far end of the council-house, he caught sight
of a number of native women and children advancing towards himself and
his passenger. Foremost among them was the old woman Malineta, her lean
and wrinkled face wreathed in smiles, for the white man's child, whom
she still carried, had placed one arm around her neck. As she drew near
the American, the little one smiled and made as if she wished to go to
him, or to her father who stood near by.

Holding out his arms to the child, the skipper took her from the old
woman, and then he turned to Prout.

"Say, I've jest been reckonin' up an' I make out yew hev been jest four
months aboard o' my hooker thar, an' I reckon thet twenty dollars a
month ain't more'n a fair an' square deal."

Again the red flush mantled to the trader's brow. "No, no, Hetherington.
I am poor, but not so poor that I should insult you by such an
insignificant sum as that. Two hundred and fifty dollars I can give
you easily, and freely and willingly," and advancing to the captain he
offered him a number of twenty-dollar gold pieces.

An angry "Pshaw!" burst from the captain. He thrust the proffered
money aside, and then, with his leathern visage working in strange
contortions, he walked quickly outside, and sitting down upon an old
unused canoe, bent his grizzled head, and strained the child to his
bosom. And presently Prout and the natives heard something very like the
sound of a sob.

Then, as if ashamed of his emotion, he suddenly rose, and kissing the
child tenderly, gave her back to the woman Malineta. Then he turned to
Prout.

"Waal, I guess I'll be goin'.... Naow, jest yew put them air cursed
dollars back again. It's jest like yew darned Britishers, ter want ter
shove money inter a man's hand, jest like ez if he war a nigger, an'
hadn't a red cent ter buy a slice of watermelon with," and then all his
assumed roughness failed him, and his eyes grew misty as he grasped the
Englishman's hand for the last time.

"Thet thar Mercedy.... Why, I hed sich a little mite once...." and he
chewed fiercely at the fresh plug he had thrust into his cheek.

"Dead?" queried Prout, softly.

"Yes; diphthery. Yew see it came about th' way. When I got back ter
Cohoes--thet's whar I belong--after that cussed pirut Semmes sunk my
hooker, an' 'Riar sees me standin' in front ev her without givin' her
any warnin' I was comin', she gets that skeered that she drops kerwallop
on the floor, an' when she come to, an' heerd that the _Mattie Casey_
was gone, waal, thet jest sorter finished her. Waal, she hung on ter
life fur a year or so, kep' getting more powerful weak in the intelleck
every day; an' when she died, my little Hope was on'y four years old.
An' Hope died when I was away servin' in the _Iroquois_ lookin' fur
Semmes,... an' I ain't got no one else to keer fur me naow.... Waal,
goodbye, Prout; I guess I'll beat up ter windward of this grewp, and
then make a bee-line fur Honolulu."

In another minute he had shambled down to the boat, and as the sun sank
below the line of coconuts on the lee side of Nukutavau, the schooner
swept away into the darkness. Then Prout, taking the little girl in his
arms, followed old Malineta to the house of Patiaro the chief, and again
took up the thread of his lonely existence.

Four years had come and gone. In his quiet house, under the shadow of
the ever-rustling palms, Prout lay upon his rough couch of coarse
mats, and little Mercedes stood beside him with her tiny hand upon his
death-dewed forehead.

The missionary ship had just anchored in the lagoon, and Patiaro and his
men had paddled off to her, so that, save for the low murmur of voices
of women and children in the houses near by, the village lay silent.

Weeping softly, the child placed her tender cheek against the rugged
face of the dying man, and whispered:

"What is it, my father, that aileth thee?"

He drew her slender figure to him with his failing hands and kissed her
with pallid lips, and then Prout the trader gave up the battle of life.




MRS. CLINTON




I.

As the sun set blood red, a thick white fog crept westward, and the
miserable fever-stricken wretches that lay gasping and dying on
the decks of the transport _Breckenbridge_ knew that another day of
calm--and horror--waited them with the coming of the dawn on the morrow.

Twenty miles away the dark outline of the Australian shore shone out
green and purple with the dying sunshafts, and then quickly dulled again
to the sombre shades of the coming night and the white mantle of fog.

On the starboard side of the high quarterdeck of the transport the
master stood gazing seaward with a worn and troubled face, and as he
viewed the gathering fog a heavy sigh broke from him.

"God help us!" he muttered, "ninety-six dead already, and as many more
likely to die in another week if this calm keeos up."

A hand was laid on his shoulder, and turning he met the pale face of the
surviving surgeon of the fever-stricken ship.

"Seven more cases, Belton--five prisoners and two marines."

The master of the _Breckenbridge_ buried his face in his hands and
groaned aloud.

"Can nothing be done, doctor? My God! it is terrible to see people
perishing like this before our eyes when help is so near. Look!
over there, only twenty miles away, is Twofold Bay, where there is a
settlement, but I dare not send a boat ashore. There are not ten sound
men in the ship, and if an easterly wind springs up I could not keep my
ship from going ashore."

The young surgeon made no answer for awhile. Ever since the
_Breckenbridge_ had left Rio, one or more of the convicts, seamen, or
military guard had died day after day; and he had striven hard since
the outbreak of the fever to stay its deadly progress. The cause he
knew well: the foul, overcrowded 'tween decks, where four hundred human
beings were confined in a space not fit to hold a hundred, the
vile drinking-water and viler provisions, the want of even a simple
disinfectant to clear the horrible, vitiated atmosphere, and the
passage, protracted long beyond even the usual time in those days, had
been the main causes of their present awful condition.

Presently the surgeon spoke--

"Nothing can be done, Belton."

"How is Lieutenant Clinton, sir?" asked the master, as the surgeon
turned to leave him.

"Dying fast. Another hour or so will see the end."

"And his wife and baby?"

"She bears up well, but her infant cannot possibly live another day in
such weather as this. God help her, poor little woman! Better for her if
she follows husband and child."

"Who is with Mr. Clinton, doctor?" asked the master presently.

"Adair--No. 267. I brought him into the cabin. Indeed, Clinton asked me
to do so. He thinks much of the young fellow, and his conduct ever
since the outbreak occurred deserves recognition. He has rendered
me invaluable assistance with Clinton and the other sick in the main
cabin."

"He's a fine young fellow," said Belton, "and his good example has done
much to keep the others quiet. Do you know, doctor, that at any time
during the last three weeks the ship could have been captured by a dozen
even unarmed men."

"I do know it; but the poor wretches seem never to have thought of
rising."

"What was Adair sent out for?" asked Belton.

"Lunacy; otherwise, patriotism. He's one of a batch of five--the five
best conducted men on the ship--sentenced to end their days in
Botany Bay for participating in an attack on a party of yeomanry at
Bally-somewhere or other in Ireland. There was a band of about fifty,
but these five were the only ones captured--the other forty-five were
most likely informers and led them into the mess."

A hurried footstep sounded near them, and a big man, in a semi-military
costume, presented himself abruptly before them. His dark, coarse race
was flushed with anger, and his manner insolent and aggressive. Not
deigning to notice the presence of the surgeon, he addressed himself to
the master of the transport.

"Mr. Belton, I protest against the presence in the main cabin of a
ruffianly convict. The scoundrel refuses to let me have access to
Lieutenant Clinton. Both on my own account and on that of Mr. Clinton,
who needs my services, I desire that this man be removed immediately."

"What right, sir, have you, a passenger, to protest?" answered Belton
surlily. "Mr. Clinton is dying and Prisoner Adair is nursing him."

"That does not matter to me, I----"

The surgeon stepped in front of the newcomer.

"But it _shall_ matter to you, Mr. Jacob Bolger, Government storekeeper,
jailer, overseer, or commissary's runner, or whatever your position is.
And I shall see that No. 267 suffers no molestation from you."

"Who are you, sir, to threaten me? The Governor shall hear of this when
we arrive at the settlement. A pretty thing that I should be talked to
like this by the ship's doctor!"

"By God, sir, I'll give you something to talk about," and the surgeon's
Welsh blood leapt to his face. Advancing to the break of the poop, he
called--

"Sergeant Matthews!"

The one remaining non-commissioned officer of the diminished
convict-guard at once appeared and saluted.

He was a solemn-faced, taciturn man, devoted to Clinton.

"Mr. Belton," said the doctor, "in the serious illness of Lieutenant
Clinton I now assume charge of the military guard and convicts on
this ship, and as a first step to maintain proper discipline at such a
critical time, I shall confine Mr. Bolger to his cabin. Sergeant, take
him below and lock him in."

Bolger collapsed at once. "I beg your pardon, doctor, for my hastiness.
I did not know.... I was----"

The surgeon cut his apologies short. "Go to your cabin, sir. I shall
not have you locked in, but, by heavens! if you attempt to go into Mr.
Clinton's cabin I'll put you in irons, Government official though you
are. I am well aware that your presence is particularly objectionable to
Mrs. Clinton."

With an evil look Bolger left them, and the surgeon, turning to
Belton, said: "That settles _him_, anyway, for a time. He's a thorough
scoundrel, I believe. Mrs. Clinton has a positive horror of the man; yet
the brute is continually pestering her with offers of his services. Now
I must go below again to poor Clinton."

In the dimly lighted cabin the young officer lay breathing heavily, and
as the doctor softly entered he saw that the time was now very near.
By her husband's side sat Marion Clinton, her loosened wavy brown hair
hiding from view her own face and the dying hand which she held pressed
to her quivering lips. At her feet, on a soft cushion on the floor, lay
her infant, with one thin waxen hand showing out from the light
shawl that covered it; at the further end of the cabin stood a young,
broad-shouldered man in grey convict garb. As the doctor entered he
stood up and saluted.

The sound of the opening door made Clinton turn his face. "Is that you,
Williams?" he said, in slow, laboured tones. "Marion, my girl, bear up.
I know I am going, old fellow. Do what you can for her, Williams. The
Governor will see to her returning to England, but it may be long before
a ship leaves.... Marion!"

"Yes," she answered brokenly.

"Is baby no better?"

"No," she answered with a sob, as she raised her tear-stained face to
Surgeon Williams, who shook his head. "There is no hope for her, Harry."

His hand pressed hers gently. "God help you, dear! Only for that it
would not be so hard to die now; and now I leave you quite alone."

She stooped down and lifted the fragile infant, and Williams and No.
267 turned their faces away for awhile. Presently Clinton called the
surgeon.

"Williams," and his eyes looked wistfully into the doctor's, "do what
you can for her. There is something like a hundred guineas among my
effects--that will help. Thank God, though, she will be a rich woman
when my poor old father dies. I am the only son."

The surgeon bent down and took his hand. "She shall never want a friend
while I live, Clinton, never."

A light of thankfulness flickered in Clinton's eyes, and the pallid lips
moved; and then as wife and friend, each holding a hand, waited for him
to speak, there came the sound of a heavy sob. Convict 267 was kneeling
and praying for the departing soul.

Slowly the minutes passed, the silence broken but by the creaking and
straining of the ship as she rose and fell to the sea, and now and again
the strange, mournful cry of some night-fishing penguin.

"Marion," Clinton said at last, "I would like to speak to Adair before I
die. He has been good to you and to me."

Walking softly in his stockinged feet, Adair advanced close to the bed.

"Give me your hand, Adair. God bless you," he whispered.

"And God bless you, sir, and all here," answered the young Irishman in a
husky, broken voice.

"Hush," said the surgeon warningly, and his eyes sought those of the
watching wife, with a meaning in them that needed no words. Quickly she
passed her arm around Clinton, and let his head lie upon her shoulder.
He sighed heavily and then lay still.

The surgeon touched the kneeling figure of Convict Adair on the arm, and
together they walked softly out of the cabin.

"Come again in an hour, Adair," said Dr. Williams; "you can help me
best. We must bury him by daylight. Meanwhile you can get a little
sleep."

No. 267 clasped his hands tightly together as he looked at the doctor,
and his lips worked and twitched convulsively. Then a wild beseeching
look overspread his face. "For God's sake don't ask me!" he burst out.
"I implore you as man to man to have pity on me. I _cannot_ be here at
daylight!"

"As you please," answered Williams, with a surprised expression; and
then as he went on deck he said to himself, "Some cursed, degrading
Irish superstition, I suppose, about a death at sea."

*****

Slowly the hours crept on. No noise disturbed the watcher by her dead
save the low voices of the watch on deck and the unknown sounds that
one hears at night alone. Prisoner Adair was sitting in the main cabin
within near call of Mrs. Clinton, and, with head upon his knees, seemed
to slumber. Suddenly the loud clamour of five bells as the hour was
struck made him start to his feet and look quickly about him with
nervous apprehension. From the dead officer's state-room a narrow line
of light from beneath the door sent an oblique ray aslant the cabin
floor and crossed the convict's stockinged feet.

For a moment he hesitated; then tapped softly at the door. It opened,
and the pale face of Marion Clinton met his as he stood before her cap
in hand.

"Have you come to take"--the words died away in her throat with a sob.

"No," he answered, "I have but come to ask you to let me say goodbye,
and God keep and prosper you, madam. My time here is short, and you and
your husband have made my bitter lot endurable."

She gave him her hand. He clasped it reverently in his for a moment,
and his face flushed a dusky red. Then he knelt and kissed her child's
little hand.

"Are you leaving the ship? Are we then in port or near it?" she asked.

He looked steadfastly at her for a moment, and then, pushing the door to
behind him, lowered his voice to a whisper.

"Mrs. Clinton, your husband one day told me that he would aid me to
regain my freedom. Will you do as much?"

"Yes," she answered, trembling; "I will. I shall tell the Governor how
you----"

He shook his head. "Not in that way, but now, now."

"How _can_ I help you now?" she asked wonder-ingly.

"Give me Mr. Clinton's pistols. Before daylight four others and myself
mean to escape from the ship. The guard are all too sick to prevent us
even if we are discovered. There is a boat towing astern, lowered
with the intention of sending it ashore to seek assistance. Water and
provisions are in it. But we have no firearms, and if we land on the
coast may meet with savages."

Without a word she put her husband's pistols in his hands, and then gave
him all the ammunition she could find.

"Do not shed blood," she began, when the convict clutched her arm. A
sound as of some one moving came from the next cabin--the one occupied
by Jacob Bolger--and a savage light came into Adair's eyes as he stood
and listened.

"He would give the alarm in a moment if he knew," he muttered.

"Yes," she answered; "he hates you, and I am terrified even to meet his
glance."

But Mr. Jacob Bolger made no further noise; he had heard quite enough,
and at that moment was lying back in his bunk with an exultant smile,
waiting for Adair to leave the cabin.

Then the convict, still crouching on the floor, held out his hand.

"Will you touch my hand once more, Mrs. Clinton?" he said huskily.

She gave it to him unhesitatingly.

"Goodbye, Adair. I pray God all will go well with you."

He bent his face over it and whispered "Goodbye," and then went up on
deck.

*****

As No. 267 stumbled along the main deck he saw that all discipline was
abandoned, and even the for'ard sentry, that for the past week had been
stationed to guard the prisoners when on deck, had left his post.

At the fore-hatch four shadowy forms approached him, and then the five
men whispered together.

"Good," said Adair at last. Then they quickly separated.

*****

Six bells had struck when Jacob Bolger opened his cabin door, peered
cautiously about, and then, stepping quickly to Mrs. Clinton's door,
turned the handle without knocking, and entered.

"Why do you come here, Mr. Bolger?" said Marion Clinton, with a
terrified look in her dark eyes. "Do you not know that my husband is
dead and my child dying?" And, holding the infant in her arms, she
barred a nearer approach.

"I am sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Clinton; but I come as a friend,
first to offer you my poor services in your great affliction, and
secondly--but as a friend still--to warn you of the dangerous step you
have taken in assisting a party of convicts to escape from the ship."

"For Heaven's sake, Mr. Bolger, have some pity on me! My dear husband is
dead, my child has but a few hours--perhaps minutes--to live. Do not add
to my misery."

"I shall not betray _you!_" and he advanced a step nearer to her;
"but it is my duty," and his cunning eyes watched her shrinking figure
keenly, "to prevent these men from escaping." And then he turned as if
to go.

Her courage came back. "Mr. Bolger"--and she placed her hand on his
cuff, shuddering as she did so--"you are not a rich man. Will you--can
I--will a hundred guineas buy your silence? It is all I have. Forget
that which you know. Let these wretched men escape. What harm can it do
you?"

His savage, brutal nature came out, and he laughed coarsely.

"None, but--but you would like to see them get away, would you not?"

"Yes," she answered, looking at him with dulled eyes, "Adair has been
very good to us."

"Well, look here; money cannot buy my silence, but _you_ can. Now do you
know what I mean?"

"No," she answered despairingly. "How should I? What is it you wish me
to do?"

"This"--and he bent his evil-eyed face close to hers--"promise to marry
me three months from now."

She gave a gasping cry, and sank back upon her seat. He followed and
stood over her, and then spoke quickly--

"Ever since I first saw you I have loved you. You are a free woman now,
and I shall have a good position at the settlement."

She made a gesture of horror, and his voice grew savage and threatening.
"And unless you make me that promise I'll give the alarm now, and
Adair and his confederates shall hang together. Come, think, and decide
quickly--their life or death rests in your hands."

For some moments she bent her gaze upon the pinched and sunken features
of her dying child; then she raised her head, and a swift gleam of fire
came into her eyes.

"I will do as you wish. Now go."

Without a word Bolger turned and left the cabin.

As he walked quickly through the main cabin he did not see the tall
figure of Sergeant Matthews standing a few feet aft from Mrs. Clinton's
cabin-door. The moment Bolger disappeared the sergeant tapped and
called--

"Mrs. Clinton!"

A new terror beset her as she recognised the sergeant's voice; but she
bravely stifled it and bade him come in.

The solemn, wooden-faced soldier looked at her steadily for a second or
so, and then, being a man of few words, got through with them as quickly
as possible.

"Beg pardon, madam, doctor sent me with a message to Mr. Bolger, telling
him he was at liberty to leave his cabin; found he was gone; heard
his voice in here; waited to see if could be of any assistance to you,
madam."

There was a kindly ring in his voice which encouraged her.

"Matthews, did you hear what Mr. Bolger was saying?"

The sergeant looked stolidly before him. "I did, madam--part of it."

"Part?" she repeated agitatedly.

"Yes, madam--about Adair and some other men."

She pressed her hand to her throat. Matthews was an old, tried servant
of her husband's in former years. "Close the door!" she said suddenly.

Opening a locker, she took out a leathern-bound writing-desk, unlocked
it, and in a moment or two more turned to the sergeant with a small but
heavy purse in her hand.

"Sergeant," she said quietly; "this money, nearly a hundred guineas, is
for you. I may not live to reach the settlement at Port Jackson. And I
would like to reward you for--for----" The rest died away.

Matthews understood. He took the money, saluted, and with softened tread
left the cabin. He was not a hard man, and had meant to do his duty when
he heard Bolger speak of Adair's intended escape; but a hundred guineas
was a large sum to him.

As the door closed after the sergeant, Marion Clinton, holding the
infant close to her bosom, saw the grey shadow deepen on the pallid
race, as with a gentle tremor of the frail body the child's head fell
back upon her arm.

*****

No one on board heard a soft splashing of the Water as Adair swam to the
boat towing astern and cut the painter where it touched the water-line;
the dense fog hid everything from view. Holding the line in his left
hand he swam silently along, drawing the boat after him, till he reached
the fore-chains. Then four figures clambered noiselessly over the
bulwarks and got into the boat, which was at once pushed off.

Wrapped in the white mantle of fog, they drifted slowly away, watching
with bated breath the misty outlines of the towering spars grow feinter
and fainter, and then vanish altogether, till, although they were but
forty yards away, the position of the _Brekenbridge_ was discernible
only by a dull blurr of sickly light that came from her stern ports.
Then suddenly there came the sound of a splash, followed by tramping of
feet and Captain Belton's hoarse voice.

"Hands to the boat, here! Mrs. Clinton and her baby have fallen
overboard."

Lights appeared on the deck, and then a voice called out, "The boat is
gone, sir!"

"Clear away the starboard-quarter boat, then!" roared Belton; "quick!"

But before the quarter-boat could be lowered, the sound of oars was
heard, a boat dashed up, and a man, leaning over the side, grasped the
drowning woman and lifted her in, her dead baby still clasped tightly in
her arms.

"Have you got her?" called out Williams and Belton together.

"No," came the answer, and those in the boat began rowing again, but
instead of approaching the ship, she seemed to be swallowed up in the
fog, and the _click clack_ of the oars momentarily sounded feinter.

"By heavens, the scoundrels are pulling away!" shouted Belton. "After
them, you fellows in the quarter-boat!"

But the dense, impenetrable mantle of fog made pursuit useless, and the
quarter-boat returned an hour later with an exhausted crew.

At ten o'clock next morning a keen, cold air came from the south-east,
and two days later the _Breckenbridge_ brought her load of misery into
Sydney Cove, and her master reported the escape of Edward Adair, Michael
Terry, William O'Day, Patrick O'Day, and Daniel McCoy, and the death
by drowning of Mrs. Clinton, who, with her baby in her arms, had jumped
overboard on the same night.




II.

Till dawn the convicts urged the boat along through the fog, then they
ceased rowing and ate ravenously of the food in the boat's locker.

Lying upon the sail in the bottom, of the boat, Mrs. Clinton slept. The
night was warm, her wet clothing did her no harm, and her sleep was the
sleep of physical and mental exhaustion. As the rising sun sent its rays
through the now lifting fog, Adair touched the sleeping woman on her
shoulder.

She opened her eyes and looked wildly about her, then at the outline
of a little figure that lay beside her covered with a convict's coarse
jacket, and seizing it in her arms, looked at the five men with eyes of
such maddened terror, they thought her reason was gone.

But rough, unkempt and wild-looking as were Adair's four companions,
they treated her with the tenderest pity, and watched in silent sympathy
the bitter tide of grief that so quickly possessed her. As the sun rose
higher, the glassy water rippled here and there in dark patches, and the
men looked longingly at the sail on which she sat, holding the infant,
but hesitated to disturb her. Away to the westward the dim summits of a
range of mountains showed faintly blue, but of the _Breckenbridge_ there
was no sign, and a grey albatross sailing slowly overhead was their
only companion. Already Adair and the others had cast away their hated
convict garb, and clothed themselves in tattered garments given them by
some of the transport's crew.

Another hour passed, and then helping Mrs. Clinton to a seat in the
stern, they hoisted the mainsail and jib, and headed the boat for the
land, for the breeze was now blowing freshly.

What Adair's intentions were regarding Mrs. Clinton the others did not
ask. Theirs was unquestioning loyalty, and they were ready to follow him
now with the same blind and fateful devotion that had brought them with
him on board the _Breckenbridge_ in manacles.

As the boat sped over the sunlit sea Adair spoke--

"Mrs. Clinton, I shall try to reach a settlement near here. There we may
be able to put you ashore."

She only smiled vacantly, and with a feeling of intense pity Adair saw
her again bend her head and heard her talking and crooning to the dead
child.

"Sure 'tis God's great pity has desthroyed her raison, poor darlin',"
muttered a grey-headed old prisoner named Terry; "lave her alone. We'll
take the babe from her by an' by."

Between the boat and the faint blue outline of the distant land lay the
rounded wooded slopes of Montagu Island, showing a deep depression in
the centre. As the boat sailed round its northern point a small bay
opened out, and here in smooth water they landed without difficulty.
Carrying Mrs. Clinton to a grassy nook under the shade of the cliffs,
she unresistingly allowed old Terry to take the infant from her arms,
and her dulled eyes took no heed of what followed.

Forcing their way through the thick, coarse grass that clothed the
western side of the island, and disturbing countless thousands of
breeding gulls and penguins, Adair and Terry dug a tiny grave on the
summit under a grove of low, wide-branched mimosa trees, and there the
child was buried.

As they were about to descend, the old man gave a shout and pointed
seaward--there, not a mile away, was a large ship, whose many boats
showed her to be a whaler, and quite near the shore a boat was pulling
swiftly in towards the landing-place.

Rushing down to their companions they gave the alarm, and then a hurried
consultation was held.

"We must meet them," said Adair, "we can't hide the boat. If they mean
mischief we can take to the woods."

In another five minutes the newcomers saw the little group and gave a
loud, friendly hail. Stepping out from his companions, who followed him
closely, Adair advanced to meet the strangers.

A young, swarthy-faced man, who steered, jumped out of the boat and at
once addressed him. He listened with interest to Adair's story that they
had escaped from a ship that had gone ashore on the coast some weeks
before, and then said quietly--

"Just so. Well, I'm glad that I can assist you. I've just come from Port
Jackson, and am bound to the East Indies, sperm-whaling. Come aboard,
all of you, and I'll land you at one of the Dutch ports there."

Adair's face paled. Something told him that his story was not believed.
What should he do?

The captain of the whaler beckoned him aside. "Don't be alarmed. I can
guess where you come from. But that doesn't concern me. Now look here.
My ship--the _Manhattan_, of Salem--is a safer place for you than an
open boat, and I'm short-handed and want men. You can all lend a hand
till I land you at Amboyna or Ternate. Is that your wife?"

"Yes."

"Well, what are you going to do--stay here or come aboard?"

"We accept your offer gladly," answered Adair, now convinced of the
American's good intentions.

"Very well; carry your wife down to the boat while my men get some
gulls' eggs."

*****

For two weeks after Mrs. Clinton was carried up the whale-ship's side
she hovered between life and death. Then, very, very slowly, she began
to mend. A month more and then the _Manhattan_ hove-to off the verdant
hills and shining beaches of Rotumah Island.

"You cannot do better than go ashore here," the captain had said to
Adair a few hours before. "I know the natives well. They are a
kind, amiable race of people, and many of the men, having sailed in
whale-ships, can speak English. The women will take good care of Mrs.
Clinton" (Adair had long since told him hers and his own true story);
"have no fear of that. In five months I ought to be back here on my way
to Port Jackson, and I'll give her a passage there. If she remains on
board she will most likely die; the weather is getting hotter every day
as we go north, and she is as weak as an infant still. As for yourself
and old Michael, you will both be safe here on Rotumah. No King's ship
has ever touched here yet; and if one should come the natives will hide
you."

That evening, as the warm-hearted, pitying native women attended to Mrs.
Clinton in the chiefs house, Adair and Terry watched the _Manhattan's_
sails disappear below the horizon.

*****

There for six months they lived, and with returning health and strength
Marion Clinton learned to partly forget her grief, and to take interest
in her strange surroundings. Ever since they had landed Adair and old
Michael Terry had devoted themselves to her, and as the months went by
she grew, if not happy, at least resigned. To the natives, who had never
before had a white woman living among them, she was as a being from
another world, and they were her veriest slaves, happy to obey her
slightest wish. At first she had counted the days as they passed; then,
as the sense of her utter loneliness in the world beyond would come to
her, the thought of Adair and his unswerving care for and devotion to
her would fill her heart with quiet thankfulness. She knew that it
was for her sake alone he had remained on the island, and when the six
months had passed, her woman's heart told her that she cared for him,
and that "goodbye" would be hard to say.

But how much she really did care for him she did not know, till one
day she saw him being carried into the village with a white face and
blood-stained garments. He had been out turtle-fishing, the canoe had
capsized on the reef, and Adair had been picked up insensible by his
native companions, with a broken arm and a deep jagged cut at the back
of his head.

Day by day she watched by his couch of mats, and felt a thrill of joy
when she knew that all danger was past.

One afternoon while Adair, still too weak to walk, lay outside his house
thinking of the soft touch and gentle voice of his nurse, there came a
roar of voices from the village, and a pang shot through his heart--the
_Manhattan_ was back again.

But it was not the _Manhattan_, and ten minutes afterwards four or five
natives, headed by old Terry, white-faced and trembling, came rushing
along the path.

"'Tis a King's ship!" the old man gasped, and then in another minute
Adair was placed on a rude litter and carried into the mountains.

It was indeed a King's ship, bound to Batavia to buy stores for the
starving settlers at Port Jackson, and in want of provisions even for
the ship's company. Almost as soon as she anchored, the natives flocked
off to her with fruit, vegetables, and such poultry as they had to
barter. Among those who landed from the ship was a tall, grave-raced
Sergeant of Marines, who, after buying some pigs and fowls from the
natives on the beach, had set out, stick in hand, for a walk along the
palm-lined shore. At the request of the leading chief, all those who
came ashore carried no weapons, and, indeed, the gentle, timid manner of
the natives soon convinced the white men that there was no need to arm
themselves. A quarter of a mile walk hid the ship from view, and then
Sergeant Matthews, if he did not show it, at least felt surprised, for
suddenly he came face to face with a young, handsome white woman dressed
in a loose jacket and short skirt. Her feet were bare, and in one hand
she carried a rough basket, in the other a heavy three-pronged wooden
crab-spear. He recognised her in a moment, and drawing himself up,
saluted, as if he had seen her but for the first time.

"What do you want?" she asked trembling; "why have you come here--to
look for me?"--and as she drew back a quick anger gave place to fear.

"No, Madam," and the sergeant looked, not at her, but away past her, as
if addressing the trees around him, "I am in charge of the Marine guard
on board the _Scarborough_. Put in here for supplies. Ship bound to
Batavia for stores, under orders of Deputy-Commissary Bolger, who is on
board."

"Ah!" and she shuddered. "Matthews, do not tell him I am here. See, I am
in your power. I implore you to return to the ship and say nothing of my
being here. Go, go, Matthews, and if you have pity in your heart for me
do all you can to prevent any of the ship's company from lingering about
the village! I beg, I pray of you, to ask me no questions, but go, go,
and Heaven reward you!"

The sergeant again saluted, and without another word turned on his heel
and walked leisurely back to the boat.

An hour before sunset, Adair, from his hiding-place in the mountains,
saw the great ship fill her sails and stand away round the northern
point. Terry had left him to watch the movements of the landing party,
and Adair but waited his return. Soon through the growing stillness of
the mountain forest he heard a footfall, and then the woman he loved
stood before him.

"Thank God!" she cried, as she clasped her hands together; "they have
gone."

"Yes," he answered huskily, "but... why have you not gone with them? It
is a King's ship,... and I hoped--oh! why did you stay?"

She raised her dark eyes to his, and answered him with a sob that told
him why.

Sitting beside him with her head on his shoulder, she told him how that
morning she had accompanied a party of native women to a village some
miles distant on a fishing excursion, and knew nothing of the ship till
she was returning and met Sergeant Matthews.

"And now," she said, with a soft laugh, "neither King's ship nor
whale-ship shall ever part us."

*****

Another month went by all too swiftly now for their new-found happiness,
and then the lumbering old _Manhattan_ came at last, and that night her
captain and Adair sat smoking in the latter's thatched hut.

"That," said the American, pointing to a heavy box being borne past
the open door by two natives, "that box is for Mrs. Clinton. I just
ransacked the Dutchmen's stores at Amboyna, and bought all the woman's
gear I could get. How is she? Old Terry says she's doing 'foine.'"

"She is well, thank you," said Adair, with a happy smile, and then
rising he placed his hand on the seaman's shoulder, while his face
reddened and glowed like a boy's.

"Oh, that's it, is it?" said the American with a good-natured laugh.
"Well, I'm right pleased to hear it. Now look here. The _Manhattan_ is
a full ship, and I'm not going to Port Jackson to sell my oil this time.
I'm just going right straight home to Salem. And you and she are coming
with me; and old Parson Barrow is going to marry you in my house; and in
my house you and your wife are going to stay until you settle down and
become a citizen of the best country on the earth."

*****

And the merry chorus of the sailors, as they raised the anchor from its
coral bed, was borne across the bay to old Terry, who sat watching the
ship from the beach. No arguments that Adair and the captain used could
make him change his mind about remaining on the island. He was too old,
he said, to care about going to America, and Rotumah was a "foine place
to die in--'twas so far away from the bloody redcoats."

As he looked at the two figures who stood on the poop waving their hands
to him, his old eyes dimmed and blurred.

"Ma