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Jim Malleson lived on Tarawa, one of the Gilbert Islands, in Equatorial Polynesia. He was a tall, thin, melancholy looking man, with pale blue eyes and a straggling sandy beard that grew upon his long chin in a half-hearted, indefinite sort of way. His trading station was situated at the most northerly point of the whole atoll—a place where the thin strip of low-lying sandy soil that belted the blue waters of Tarawa Lagoon was narrowed down to a few hundred yards in width—barely sufficient, one would imagine, to prevent the thundering breakers that flung themselves against the weather side of the island from hurtling through the thinly-growing coconut and pandanus groves, and pouring over into the calm waters of the inland sea, carrying everything, including Malleson’s ramshackle house, before them. Denison, the supercargo of the Indiana, had, indeed, mentioned the possibility of such an occurrence to Malleson one day, and offered to shift him further down the lagoon, but his offer was declined—he was quite satisfied, he said, to stay where he was and take his chance.

For some unknown reason Malleson, although on perfectly friendly terms with the four or five other white men who lived on Apiang, the nearest island in the Gilbert Group to Tarawa, yet seldom associated with them. He was the only white man on Tarawa, and, although the two islands are not a day’s sail apart, he had never raised energy enough to sail his boat over to Apiang and return the many visits he had had from the traders there. But, in spite of his owl-like solemnity, he was not by any means unsociable, and would occasionally unbend to a certain extent. One curious thing about him was that, although he had now been living alone on Tarawa for two years, he had never been married. Now, for a trader to remain single was, in native eyes, extremely undignified, and not calculated to raise him in public estimation; any white man who could show such a disregard of the conventionalities of native life and custom, necessarily became an object of suspicion to the native mind. However, as he was a quiet, non-interfering man, who quarrelled with no one, conducted himself with the strictest propriety, and refrained from cheating in the pursuit of his business, he gradually begat confidence and respect among the fierce, warlike Tarawans; so much so that at the end of two years he had become the most prosperous trader in the Gilbert Group, and his huge, ill-built storehouse was generally filled to bursting with copra (dried coconut) and sharks’ fins whenever a trading ship entered the lagoon and dropped anchor off his station. So steadily did his business and his reputation for fair dealing increase with the natives, that, after a time, fleets of canoes would visit Tarawa, coming, some from Marakei, fifty miles to the north, and some from the great lagoon island of Apamama, a hundred miles to the south-east, bringing with them their produce of dried coconut to be exchanged with the white man for coloured prints, calicoes, arms, tobacco, and liquor.

The white men living on Apiang and the other atolls in the group could not but experience a feeling of vexation that Malleson, who, as they said, was the laziest man in the South Seas, should divert so much custom and so many dollars from their islands to his. Day after day they would see large sailing canoes filled with dried coconut and other native produce sailing past their very doors bound to Malleson’s place; but being on the whole a decent lot of men, they bore their successful rival no ill-will, accepted matters (after a time) philosophically, and lived in the hopes of Malleson being found cheating by the natives, and either getting himself tabooed from further trading, or being warned off the island by the chiefs.

So one day, after business jealousies had quite subsided, they again manned their boats and visited him, and, knowing that many months had passed since a ship had called at Tarawa, they bore with them the gift of friendship peculiar to the country—some half a dozen or so of Hollands gin—in order to cheer up his lonely existence by endeavouring to make him drunk. But in this they had always failed on previous occasions, for the more liquor he consumed the more melancholy and owl-like of visage he became. They had all also, individually and severally, endeavoured to induce Malleson to give up his single life and permit them or one of the chiefs of Tarawa to find him a suitable wife from among the many hundreds of young marriageable girls on the island. But their kindly intentions proved unavailing, for Malleson distinctly declared his intention of remaining as he was, and put some little warmth into his manner of declaring that rather than have a native wife forced upon him, he would barricade his house.

“I don’t want any native wife, boys,” he would say, solemnly. “I dessay you chaps mean well, an’ wouldn’t see me marry a girl as wasn’t no good, an’ means to try and make me feel more comfortable; but I ain’t agoin’ to do it.”

But a plot against his further celibacy had been formed, not, it must be mentioned, without ulterior views by one of the participants therein, Mr. Andy O’Rourke, a genial, rollicking trader on the island of Apiang. He was agent for a firm trading in opposition to Malleson’s employers, had a large half-caste family, and a very extensive native connection generally, both socially and in business, and for a long time past had cogitated upon the possibility of joining his fortunes with those of his successful rival, to his own particular advantage financially, and that of Malleson from a domestic point of view. In short, he intended to get Malleson married, and had already made up his mind that Tera, his wife’s sister, was eminently calculated to fill the position of Mrs. Jimmy Malleson. But to avoid any suspicion of underhand work he determined to so arrange matters that no one of his fellow-traders should ever suspect that he had any preconceived idea of making Malleson his brother-in-law, and set about his plans in a thoroughly open, genial Irish manner.

He had, therefore, proposed that on the present trip to Malleson’s they should as a matter of conjugal and family duty take their wives, children, and relatives with them.

“We ought to give the women a run over to Malleson’s, boys,” he said, when the trip was first proposed. “It’s the gogo (mutton-bird) season over at Tarawa just now, and the women and children would enjoy themselves fine getting the eggs and birds. You’ll bring your wife, Davy, won’t you? Tom French’s missus is coming, and a couple of his daughters; and my wife wants to bring her sister with her. What d’ye say, boys?”

So over they came, each trader sailing his own boat, and carrying with him his native wife and half-caste family, all bent upon having a thoroughly good time at Tarawa, for the people of the two islands were now at peace. Seated aft in Andy’s boat, between his wife and himself, was the pretty Tera, who had been well tutored by her sister Lebonnai in the part she was to play in captivating the heart of Malleson. And although Tera had frankly admitted that she had looked to get a handsomer and younger husband than the one her brother-in-law designed for her, she was a dutiful girl, and consented to sacrifice herself upon the altar of family affection with resigned and unobtrusive cheerfulness.

As the boats, with their snow-white sails bellying out to the trade-wind, sped along over the long ocean swell, Davy Walsh, whose boat was nearest, called out to Andy (they were all sailing close together)—

“I wonder how old Malleson’s piggy-wiggy is getting on?”

A general laugh followed, for Malleson’s affection for his pig was a source of continual amusement to his fellow-traders.

* * * * *

About a year after he had landed on Tarawa, a passing Puget Sound lumber ship, bound to the Australian colonies, had hove-to off Malleson’s place for an hour or two. He had boarded her, and in exchange for some young coconuts and bananas, the American skipper had presented him with a pig of the male sex, informing him that the animal was of a high lineage in the porcine line. Malleson had been much struck with the promising proportions and haughty but reserved demeanour of the creature as it poked about the deck, and at once conceived the idea of improving the breed of pigs on the island—not, of course, from disinterested motives, but as a means of adding to his income.

As time went on the pig grew and throve amazingly, and the fame of the beast spread throughout the Gilbert Group; and Malleson’s anticipations with regard to his own profit in possessing such an animal were amply verified. Natives from outlying villages, and finally from islands a hundred miles distant, came to look at his pig, and a deputation of leading old men (i.e., the village councillors) from Apiang visited Malleson with the object of conveying the pig, as a friendly loan, to their august master, the King. But to this he would not consent, pointing out politely, but firmly withal, the risks attendant upon carrying such a valuable animal in an open canoe a distance of forty miles; besides that, he had become attached to the creature, he said, and would be lonely without him. The deputation thanked the trader, and withdrew.

* * * * *

As the visitors’ boats sailed across the lagoon, and brought-to in front of Malleson’s dilapidated dwelling, the trader came out of his house, and walked down the beach to meet them; and Andy O’Rourke noted with envy that Malleson’s storehouses, the doors of which were wide open, were full to bursting of copra.

“Come up to the house,” said the melancholy-looking man, shaking hands with them all in a limp sort of manner. “My boys (servants) will bring your traps up out o’ the boats; but”—and here he glanced dejectedly at the women—“I’m afraid that my house is too small to hold you all. Perhaps the women and children wouldn’t mind sleepin’ in my boathouse just for to-night. To-morrow I can get a house run up for ’em.”

“That’s all right, old chap,” said Andy, slapping his solemn-visaged host on the back; “but, if you don’t mind, Lebonnai and her sister will stay with me in your house. You see, Tera—that’s her coming up now—was a bit seasick coming over, and my wife got a touch of the sun; they are both complaining a bit. However, they won’t trouble you much. Just let ’em have a corner to themselves.”

“’Tain’t much of a place for women,” said Malleson, disconsolately, as he looked at his dirty, untidy sitting-room, with its floor covered with ragged, worn-out mats, and then at Lebonnai and Tera, tall, stately, and graceful in their white muslin gowns and broad Panama hats. “You see, I does my own cookin’, and on’y straightens up onst a week or so. But I’ll get some o’ the village women to come in and clean up the place a bit.”

“No, you won’t, old man,” said Andy cheerfully; “my wife has brought plenty of sleeping-mats, and she and Tera—a smart girl is Tera—will soon fix up a place.” Andy now had an opening to let Malleson see what a handy girl Tera was, and what an excellent housewife she would make.

So, while the wily Andy and Tom French, Dave Walsh, and Pedro Calice sat outside with Malleson, and smoked and drank lager beer and gin, pretty Tera, whose mind was full of the possibilities of becoming Mrs. Malleson and pleasing her sister and brother-in-law, hustled her sister about, and set to work. First of all, though, she took off her starched muslin gown, and hung it up carefully, revealing her shapely figure (clothed in but a short skirt of pink print) in the most innocent and natural manner possible. Then for the next ten minutes she and Lebonnai were busily engaged in dragging out the dirty old mats, and replacing them with clean ones brought from the boats, clearing off the awful collection of empty salmon and sardine tins from the soiled table, and touching up the room here and there and everywhere.

“He’s very old-looking, and hath weak, watery eyes,” whispered Tera to her sister, who was carrying out a basket full of débris to throw away on the beach.

“Speak low, thou little fool; he may hear thee. And what if he is old and watery-eyed? Is he not a white man and rich, and with a good character?”

Tera shrugged her smooth, rounded shoulders, and went on sweeping, glancing now and then at the long, awkward figure of her prospective husband.

“Well, old man,” said Davy, addressing his host, “how’s business, and how’s the pig?”

“Come an’ see him,” answered Malleson with unusual promptitude; “he’s lookin’ fine.”

The traders exchanged sly, amused glances, but at once rose and followed him to a little compactly built pig-pen of thick coconut logs, which was sheltered from sun and rain by a wide roof of pandanus thatch. Inside, on a bed of clean grass, lay an enormous black and white boar pig, asleep.

This was “Brian.”

“He don’t like bein’ disturbed too soon after his breakfast,” said Malleson, as the four men bent over the fence and gazed at the recumbent animal; “he gets mad sometimes, an’ don’t eat.”

“Is that so?” said French, with an appearance of deep interest.

“Yes. You see he’s got very reg’lar habits, an’ don’t like bein’ worried after a meal. But any way, as you chaps don’t see him often, I’ll wake him.”

Hoisting one of his long legs over the low coconut fence, the trader got into the pen, and slapping the huge beast gently on the rump, called, “Brian, Brian, get up, old man; it’s on’y me an’ Andy, an’ Tom French an’ Davy Walsh.”

Brian wouldn’t move, but his thick, hideous lip gave a slight quiver.

“He wants a lot o’ coaxin’, don’t he?” said Malleson, with a faint blink of amusement, and then he began to scratch the monster’s back with his forefinger. This partially roused the object of his solicitude, who gave vent to a grunt of enjoyment, and lifting one hind leg slightly, pushed it out astern; then with another and fainter grunt he lay quiet again.

“Won’t he stand up?” queried Andy.

“No, not now. But we’ll come back when it gets a bit cooler. He enjoys the wind when it’s a bit westerly, like it is now, and generally stands up in the corner there to get a sniff—there, d’ye see that little port-hole I’ve cut? Well, he likes looking through that sometimes, watching the village pigs cruisin’ about on the beach. I’ve been givin’ him cooked fish lately. Don’t believe in raw fish for him—heats his blood too much an’ gives him a kind o’ nightmare.”

“Just so,” said Davy, sympathetically; “makes him cry out in his sleep I suppose. Well, he’s looking all right, anyway.”

* * * * *

“Come along the beach for a bit of a stroll,” said Andy O’Rourke to Malleson that night. The other two men had turned in, and Andy had been waiting for a chance to have a quiet talk to his host. As they went out Andy pointed to the recumbent figures of Mrs. Andy and her sister, who were apparently sound asleep at the end of the sitting-room, and said—

“They look all right and comfy, don’t they?”

They did look all right, and even the owl-like, watery-eyed Malleson smiled approvingly. One of Tera’s soft, rounded arms supported her sister’s head, and her face rested against her bosom. As the men’s footsteps disturbed the coral gravel that was spread over the path outside the house, the younger woman pretended to awake, rose, and followed them.

“Anti,” she called in the native language, “tell the white man that if he will give me a piece of soap, Lebonnai and I shall wash his clothes in the morning.” (Result of prompting from Lebonnai aforesaid during the night.)

Of course, Malleson understood the native tongue, and as he walked away with Andy he said that Tera “was a good-hearted girl to trouble about his dirty clothes.”

“She is that. Look here, old man, she’s a regular star of a girl. Now, I ain’t going to beat about the bush. I brought her here thinking you might take a likin’ to her, and marry her. She’ll be a fine wife for you, and make you comfortable. What do you say? She’s willin’ enough, and there ain’t a better-mannered girl anywhere in the Gilbert Group; an’ what’s more, there isn’t any scandal about her.”

Malleson made no reply for a minute or two. Then he began filling his pipe. After he had lighted it he spoke.

“Look here, Andy, I’ll just tell you the whole thing. I’d be willin’ enough, but the fact is I’m a married man. My old woman is livin’ in Auckland. She’s got a rotten temper, an’ to make things worse, she took up with some o’ these here wimmen suffrage wimmen, and used to jaw the head off herself tellin’ me what a degradin’ beast I was to live with. Well, things went on from bad to worse, until one day I seed in the paper as Mrs. James Malleson had said at a meetin’ that she too had an unthinkin’ husband as hadn’t got no intelligence. That just finished me. I cleared out from her, and came down here with Captain Peate to start tradin’. That was two year ago. I send her money every six months by the schooner, but, although I won’t ever go back to her again, I ain’t a-goin’ to marry no native women. It’s bigamy.”

“No, it ain’t. Not down in the islands anyway. Why, it ain’t respectable for a man to be livin’ by himself, as you are. You can marry Tera right enough. Who’s agoin’ to know that you’ve a wife in New Zealand.”

“I would, and Peate would. And besides that I ain’t a-goin’ to do anything like that. My wife’s a holy terror, but, at the same time, I know she’s an honest woman, and I won’t wrong her that way.”

Andy gave a long whistle of astonishment. “Well, just as you like, old man; but you beat anything I ever saw as a trader. You ought to get a billet as a missionary. And do you mean to keep on livin’ like this, all alone?”

“Yes. Why not? I’m all right. I’m doin’ pretty well, and Brian takes up a lot of my time when business is dull. How do you think he’s lookin’?”

* * * * *

A week later pretty, black-browed Tera went away with her sister—still single. As the boats sailed from the white beach Malleson stood in his doorway and waved his hand in farewell.

“She’s a pretty little creatur’,” he said as he watched the boats heeling over to the breeze, “an’ as merry as a lark. I wonder if Brian would ha’ took to her?”

* * * * *

Sometimes the village children would come near to Brian’s sty, and ask Malleson to let them give the creature a young coconut, knowing full well that the pleased trader would reward them individually by a present of a ship biscuit in return. At dusk Malleson, carrying a huge wooden bowl full of tender coconut pulp and milk, would give the pig his last meal for the day, and then stand and lean over the fence and gaze admiringly down, as Brian thrust his round, pink snout into the repast.

Sometimes also Malleson, although naturally a modest man, could not but feel a proud swell of bosom, when, in the bright moonlight nights, he would look and see perhaps thirty or forty natives from the far end of the island, standing around the pig pen, rifles in hand, discussing the magnificent proportions and money value of its slumbering tenant.

* * * * *

A year went by, and then one day the Indiana sailed into the lagoon. The captain and Denison the supercargo soon came ashore and met Malleson standing on the beach.

“How are you, Malleson? Got much for me this trip?”

“About ninety tons of copra, Captain Peate. Did you bring me those two bags of maize for the pig?”

“D— your old pig, man! But of course I’ve brought it. And I’m going to take you back with me this trip.”

“Why?” asked Malleson, wonderingly.

“Because I’ve seen Mrs. Malleson, and had a long yarn with her. Here’s a letter to you from her. The fact is, Malleson, she’s fretting about you, and wants you to come back. She told me it was all her fault, but that if you come back she’ll be a different woman, and leave politics and woman suffrage alone.”

Malleson opened and read his wife’s letter, and then looked with a troubled expression into the captain’s face.

“Well,” he sighed, “I s’pose I must go. I can’t stay away from my lawful wife now she’s goin’ to turn over a new leaf, and quit jawin’ and naggin’. Can you put Brian somewhere below? I wouldn’t let him make the voyage on deck! We might get bad weather on the trip—it’s just comin’ on for the hurricane season now.”

The skipper gazed at Malleson in wrathful astonishment.

“Curse your infernal beast of a pig! I’m not going to have the brute aboard my ship. I’ll buy him from you, if you like, and give him to my Kanaka crew to eat.”

Malleson laughed uneasily. “You’re fond of your joke, Captain. However, we can arrange about him by and by, after the copra is bagged and shipped.”

“Arrange be hanged! D’ye think I’m going to carry a confounded pig as a passenger? Perhaps you’d like to bring him in the cabin? It might be ‘arranged,’ though,” he continued with bitter sarcasm. “Denison and the mate and myself could sleep in the hold—that is, if the pig wouldn’t find the cabin too close for him when we lose the south-east trades.”

Malleson turned away indignantly. He did not see anything to make fun of in his anxiety for Brian. Yet he went off, feeling that Peate would relent before the day was out. But his face fell when, later on in the day, Captain Peate told him plainly that he could not possibly take the pig, not even on deck.

“Sell him to the natives,” suggested Denison, who was standing near.

Malleson gave an indignant reply. He never used bad language, but it was very evident that he was greatly angered at the captain’s refusal to even have a deck house built for the pig’s accommodation. However, in the course of the day he had an interview with the local chief; then he went back to Peate.

“I’ve arranged with the chief about Brian. He’s promised me that when I come back next trip I’ll find Brian all right, and well cared for.”

“When you come back! What in the name of Heaven are you coming back to this wretched place for? The ‘missus’ won’t hear of it.”

“She’ll have to hear of it; and what’s more, if she doesn’t like to come back with me, she can stay behind. I mean to come back, and live here. I’m doin’ pretty well, and don’t see why I should give up my business to please her. I might have got married native fashion, an’ been more comfortable, but wouldn’t do it—it was against my conscience. At the same time, if you’ll change your mind, an’ will take the pig away with me in the Indiana, I might settle down again in New Zealand, an’ try pig-farmin’.”

“Oh, all right; please yourself,” said the skipper, shortly. “I’d take the pig, if I could, but I can’t. We’ve none too much room aboard now, and I can’t build a deck house for such a hulking beast as your cursed old pig.”

Shortly after dawn next morning Malleson was ready. He had spent an hour or so in meditation over the pig pen, fed Brian for the last time, and taken a tender farewell of him. And, as he now stepped out of his house for the last time, he gave the chief a parting injunction.

“See that he eateth nothing but that which is given him by thine own hand, my friend; and that his bed be made with very little, smooth pebbles, covered over with much soft, fine grass; a big stone among them doth both hurt and anger him when he lieth down to sleep.”

Then as Malleson and the captain walked down to the beach, the people stood around, and called out in their guttural tongue: Tíak ápo, Tími (Good-bye, Jimmy); and the trader, with a last look towards the pigsty, stepped into the boat.

Suddenly a hideous sound—a combination of a snort of rage and a squeal of terror—smote upon his ear, and in an instant he had jumped out, and made toward the pig pen. Just as he came in view of the lowly structure he saw a number of native children disappearing round the back of his storehouses, and Teban, the chief, in swift pursuit, shouting out threats of vengeance.

In a few minutes the chief returned and explained matters to the agitated Malleson, who was now in the pen, rubbing the pig’s cheeks, and asking him what was the matter. It seemed that the moment Malleson had got into the boat a rude little boy had thrust a sharpened fish-spear into Brian’s snout to make Brian squeal.

Teban swore by the shades of his father and two uncles to find the culprit and beat him.

Malleson didn’t answer him for awhile. His feelings overpowered him. Presently he got out of the pen and walked down the beach to the boat.

“Come on, man, come on,” called the captain, impatiently, “we’ll never get away at this rate.”

“Look here, captain, I’ve changed my mind about goin’. Sling my traps out again, will you? You can tell the old woman that I was glad to hear from her, an’ if she likes to come down here to me with you next trip, I’ll try and make her comfortable, an’ be a good husban’ to her. . . . But it’s no use, I can see, trusting Brian with these natives. He’s trembling now like a asping leaf. Some d—d boy has just been proddin’ the poor fellow in the nose out o’ pure devilment.”

And then shaking hands with the disgusted skipper, the grief-stricken man hurried back to solace and soothe the angry feelings of his beloved pig.

* * * * *

Malleson is now living in a swell weather-board house at Tarawa, with his lawful wife; and Brian has “took” to Mrs. Malleson.