Читать книгу The Hurricane - James Norman Hall - Страница 4

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This schooner was built just before the war. The people of Manukura took an almost proprietary interest in her, for her frames and knees of tohonu wood were cut out by them to Captain Nagle’s order, and freighted, by cutter, to the shipyard at Tahiti. A remarkable wood, tohonu; it grows only on the Low Islands, and the scent of it when freshly sawn attracts butterflies for miles around. It is proof against dry rot, and grows harder and harder with age. It is twenty-one years since the Katopua was launched, and so far as her frames go, she is good for fifty more. At any rate, she has outlasted her skipper.

Nagle was an Englishman. He came out here in early youth, one of those unusual men who succeed in eradicating all traces of nationality. He spoke French fluently, though with a strong twang of the Midi. His compatriots supposed him an American, and Americans, an Englishman. Hearing his voice on deck, on a dark night, the natives of neighboring groups had more than once mistaken him for a Tuamotu man. His seamanship, more than his appearance or speech, proclaimed his English birth.

He began his career as cook on a brig belonging to the Maison Brander, trading to the west coast of South America, in the days when Chile dollars circulated all through this part of the world. Cook, sailor, quartermaster, mate, captain—he climbed the steps easily. He had resolved to own and operate his own vessel in the Tuamotu, and his schooner, when finally launched, represented the savings of more than twenty-five years at sea.

Like every skipper in these parts, he had a favorite island where he enjoyed a monopoly of trade, and to which he hoped to retire some day. The people of Manukura regarded Captain Nagle as one of themselves. Twice each year, with a regularity that never failed, the Katopua sailed into the lagoon, bringing flour, rice, tobacco, tinned beef, prints, cutlery, and other things for Tavi’s store, and loading the one hundred tons of copra bagged and waiting for him in the sheds by the landing place. Nagle’s memory was remarkable. He knew everyone on the island, children included: what woman was expecting a baby; which child was to be confirmed at the church; what people had relatives on other islands, and the relationship between them. He was given innumerable commissions each time he sailed, and these, no matter how small, he would execute faithfully, without profit to himself. He would match a yard of lace for a grandmother or buy a particular color of ribbon in the Papeete shops for one of the girls. In return for his many services, there was nothing within the people’s power to give that Nagle might not have had for the asking.

It was natural that a Manukura crew should man the schooner. Like all Low Islanders, they made splendid seamen, once they got the hang of the ropes and compass. The best of the lot was Terangi, a lad of sixteen when Nagle took him aboard a few weeks before Germany declared war.

The men of the Tuamotu were not conscripted for service overseas, but the blood of warlike chiefs flowed in Terangi’s veins, and once he had visited Tahiti and seen the drilling and departure of the troops, all the captain’s influence was needed to prevent the lad from volunteering. Young as he was, he was well grown and strong beyond his years; he might have passed anywhere for eighteen or nineteen. The boy was of a type occasionally to be found among the ariki class: thin-lipped and aquiline in feature, and as courageous and trustworthy as he was good-natured.

Nagle had long known Terangi’s mother, Mama Rua, a widow whose other children had scattered to distant islands, which is often the case in the Tuamotu, for the people are careful about inbreeding. He had had many a talk with the slender gray-haired woman and had opened his mind to her as to his hopes for Terangi. He would take the lad to sea, teach him his trade, and turn over the schooner and the business to him when he himself was ready to retire. The boy, of course, was told nothing of all this. Like others, he went to sea when he was old enough, and it struck him as natural that a portion of the ancestral land should be allotted to the captain, who would some day build a house upon it and live there.

The war years passed with only two ripples of excitement: the bombarding of Papeete by the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and the stir caused by Count von Luckner’s raider, the Seeadler. Aside from these not over-serious reminders, the war might have been waged upon another planet. Copra, as you know, is a valuable source of glycerine, and the brisk demand for explosives was good business down here. The captain’s views on war, which were somewhat in advance of his time, he took good care to keep to himself; but since men were fools enough to insist upon slaughtering one another, he saw no reason why George Nagle should stand aside and let others reap a harvest from a sowing which was none of his own.

When the fighting was over and the nations began to contemplate the ruins of the world they had wrecked, Nagle had built up a substantial balance at the Banque de L’Indo-Chine, and Terangi was the Katopua’s mate.

He was twenty-one at that time: a handsome, light-skinned fellow, not tall, but already noted for his activity and strength. When the schooner touched at atolls without passes, where the boats were loaded on the outer reef, he could walk a hundred yards over the rough coral of the shallows with four sixty-kilo bags of copra on his back. Most sailors carry two; three are considered a load for a powerful man. There is no more exhausting, back-breaking work in the world than that of loading copra schooners. Terangi thrived on it, and found time between whiles to become a thorough seaman. He handled the vessel as well as the captain himself. As I have said, he was a modest fellow, without a hint of arrogance in his character, but he had a sense of dignity not to be affronted without risk. It was at this time that he got into trouble that was to have most serious results.

The Katopua had returned to Papeete with a load of copra, and one afternoon when the work for the day was over, Terangi, with two others of Nagle’s men, was sharing a bottle of beer at Duval’s, a place near the waterfront frequented by seamen, planters, and the like. Nagle himself was there at a near-by table and saw what happened. The monthly steamer from Sydney was in port and the bar crowded with the usual customers, together with passengers from the steamer, stretching their legs ashore. Presently a paunchy, red-faced man came in and stood by the door for a moment, looking for a vacant table. He was a good deal the worse for liquor and wanted more. He had a sweaty, boozy face which he mopped with a dirty handkerchief as he glared truculently around the room, as though defying everyone in it to refuse to make a place for him. There were no chairs vacant, but he didn’t mean to lower his sense of his own importance by standing up at the bar. Of a sudden he walked over to the table where Terangi and his friends were sitting and ordered them away from it. His manner said as plainly as words could have done: “I’m white. You’re not. Get out!”

Polynesians are obliging and courteous folk. If the man had asked for a seat with even an approach to decency he would have had a place made for him at once. But he wanted the whole table to himself. Two of the boys got up, but Terangi didn’t move. He paid no attention to the fellow and went on quietly drinking his beer. The Colonial, for so he was, was wild at being so coolly ignored, and by a “nigger” at that, as he called him. He swung his arm at full length and caught Terangi a clap on the face with his beefy paw that nearly knocked him out of his seat.

Terangi sprang to his feet and gave the fellow a blow straight from the shoulder, with the full strength of his powerful right arm, and there was no open hand at the end of it. It was precisely what the animal deserved, and there was no one present who did not think so. Unfortunately for Terangi, the man’s jaw was broken. When he regained consciousness he was taken to the hospital and there proceeded to make no end of a disturbance. He was a British subject. He demanded his rights. Little as he deserved to be, it seems that he was a man of considerable authority at home—a Labourite politician or some such thing. Wireless messages passed back and forth. The British consul had, of course, been called in, and the result was that Terangi was made the victim of political expediency. He was had up for assault and battery, and despite the efforts made in his behalf by Captain Nagle and others, he was given six months in jail.

The captain was hot with anger at the result, but he took good care not to let Terangi see it. He went to visit him in the prison a few days before the schooner sailed, counseling him in a fatherly way, and urging upon him the necessity of taking his punishment quietly and cheerfully. Terangi was too strong, that was all. The next time he hit a man who imposed upon him, he must take care not to break his jaw. Six months would quickly pass. Nagle would explain matters to Marama, the young wife Terangi had married six weeks before, and deliver the little gifts the husband had purchased to take home. Terangi listened and seemed to approve of the well-meant advice, but Nagle was anything but confident of the impression he had made. Knowing the men of the Tuamotu, and Terangi in particular, he had little hope that he would submit to prison discipline.

His forebodings were soon justified. On the day the schooner sailed he learned that Terangi had gotten away the night before. The chief of police with some of his men came to search the schooner as they were about to cast off from the wharf. He was courteous and apologetic about it. It was a natural inference that Terangi might have stowed away on board, though the commissaire knew Captain Nagle well enough to be sure that he would not have connived at such business, and felt pretty certain that the boy would avoid anything that might involve Nagle with the law. After a thorough search of the Katopua he again apologized and went ashore.

That was the first of a long series of escapades. Terangi was caught within a fortnight, for he was still over-trustful of his fellow men. For centuries past there has been no love lost between the Tahitians and the Low Islanders. A pig hunter far up the Punaruu Valley made Terangi welcome in his little camp, fed him, and soon discovered who he was. The hunter invited him down to his house on the beach and betrayed him to the police while he slept. The warden at that time, a thoroughly decent fellow, let him off with fifteen days solitary confinement, the lightest of the disciplinary measures under the circumstances. And he talked to the boy like an uncle, saying precisely what Nagle had said.

Solitary confinement leaves its mark on anyone; to a man of Terangi’s kind it was torture. He endured five days of it before he broke the lock of his cell and escaped to the hills once more. He was caught after a chase of several weeks, and a year was added to his sentence. His first escape had been from the road gang. Breaking jail was an offense of a different category and could not be lightly passed over. When he next escaped he took with him a military rifle from the guardhouse, with a supply of ammunition. Life in the uninhabited interior of Tahiti was not easy. He wanted a weapon for shooting wild pigs, but the authorities, of course, took a different view of his reasons. They believed that he meant to defend himself. He was becoming something of a legendary figure by this time, and now that he was known to be armed, it was easy to fancy him a desperado, a menace on the mountain trails. When he was retaken, five more years were added to his sentence.

There is no need of going into the details of his adventures during this period. It is enough to say that, during the next five years, he escaped eight times. He showed an ingenuity and a fierceness of determination in getting away that were new to the experience of the police. He could be kept in prison only by methods too inhumane to be practised steadily, and the authorities bore in mind the trivial nature of the offense that had brought him there in the first place. Vain attempts were made to cow him by threats. As soon as he was given a measure of freedom within the walls, he would find a means of getting outside them. The Tahitians, although they betrayed him time after time, had a secret admiration for him, and he became a hero to every small boy on the island. The gendarmes who were compelled to hunt him in wild and difficult country saw him in a different light, as did those higher up. He was making a laughingstock of authority. Meanwhile, he had accumulated a total sentence of sixteen years.

Although he felt keenly the injustice of his first imprisonment, he was too much of a man to hoard up bitterness. He knew that his captors were doing no more than their duty and nursed no resentment toward them. But he had to be free, whatever the cost.

On each of Captain Nagle’s infrequent visits to Tahiti, he had gone at once to the jail in the hope of seeing Terangi; but what with escapes to the mountains and the fact that visitors were not permitted to see those in solitary confinement, three years passed without his having so much as a glimpse of the prisoner. Meanwhile, a new warden had arrived from France, one of those just men, as coldly impersonal as the Law itself. At last, more than four years after the affair in Duval’s bar, Nagle learned, at the wharf, that Terangi, after his latest escape, was once more in custody. Nagle went straight to the Governor, over the warden’s head, and was granted permission to see him.

His reception at the prison, under these circumstances, was a chilly one. It was clear from the warden’s manner that there was to be no more nonsense about this Terangi matter; no more making a mock of authority. He took the Governor’s note, glanced at it, bowed coldly, and led the way to Terangi’s cell. There was a new iron-studded door of hardwood, four inches thick, equipped with a formidable series of locks.

The cell was about eight feet square and lighted by a single small window, high in the wall. Terangi was tethered by one leg, the chain attached to his ankle, shackled to a heavy ringbolt set into the floor of stone. He had altered little, outwardly, save that he was now a man, fully matured, but Nagle was conscious of a profound inward change. All the joy of life had gone out of him, and there was a sombre look in his eyes. Nagle scarcely trusted himself to speak; he took Terangi’s hand and held it between his own. The warden stood in the doorway, looking on.

If Terangi was moved, he showed no sign of it. He had himself well in hand. When the silence was broken, he asked for news of his wife and mother, and of the little daughter he had never seen. Nagle pulled himself together and contrived to answer with some show of cheerfulness, but he was soon aware that Terangi was as eager to close the interview as the warden himself. Nagle left the prison in a gloomy frame of mind.

There was a stir on Tahiti when Terangi escaped once more. It happened about three months after Nagle’s visit. The new warden had been over-sanguine about breaking Terangi’s spirit. He kept him in solitary confinement until he seemed thoroughly subdued, and then gave him tastes of liberty when traps were laid: apparent chances to escape which the prisoner was too wary to take advantage of. At last he was permitted to have his hour of exercise without shackles, in the prison yard.

He was enjoying his brief walk up and down the yard late one afternoon when the road gang was brought in. There were two guards inside and two others came in with the prisoners. The gatekeeper had unlocked the heavy door and the last of the prisoners had been checked in when Terangi made his dash. For a moment the guards were numb with astonishment, and five seconds leeway was all that Terangi required. The man at the gate jerked out his revolver and fired as Terangi seized his wrist. The others were coming on the run, afraid to shoot. A heavy blow over the heart knocked the gatekeeper out, and before another shot could be fired, Terangi was outside.

Papeete cemetery lies in a valley on the opposite side of the road a little beyond the prison. He sprinted among the gravestones with half a dozen men in chase, firing as they ran, plunged into the bush at one side of the valley, and was gone. It was a most sensational escape, in broad daylight, but this final break was accompanied by tragedy. When they picked up the gateman he was dead; it seems that he had a weak heart. Once again, Terangi had struck too hard.

Capturing him, after his repeated escapes in the past, had become a kind of grim sport to the police, a game they played with ever-increasing skill, and they had no doubt that they would soon have him in their hands again. Tahiti, as you may know, is made up of a large peninsula and a small one, connected by the low narrow isthmus of Taravao. They hunted him like a hare on Tahiti-Nui, raising the villages with offers of reward. As a matter of policy, for the benefit of the native population, the government let its intentions with respect to the fugitive be known. As soon as he was caught, he was to be sent to the penal colony at Cayenne, in French Guiana, and there would be no more escaping for Terangi, ever.

Keen-eyed men were posted on the ridges, the valleys were scoured by boar hunters with their dogs, and on one occasion, at long range across the valley of Vairaharaha, he bounded through the fern in plain view for more than a hundred yards, under a heavy fire. Slowly and relentlessly he was hunted from one refuge to another and driven toward the Taravao Isthmus. There they made certain of taking him, and a large posse of trackers was stationed to seize him when he attempted to cross to the smaller peninsula. But once more he eluded them. Choosing a black, rainy night, he managed to slip through the chain of pursuers to conceal himself among the wooded ridges and untrodden peaks beyond Teahaupoo, the wildest, most inaccessible region of all Tahiti. But he could flee no farther. He was hemmed in on three sides by the sea, and approaching from the northwest came a small army of pursuers led by the police. It was a hard search but a thorough one; no coign of the rocks was left unexplored. The net was drawn closer and closer, but when at last it was closed at the extremity of the island, the quarry was not in it. Terangi had vanished as though he had melted into the mists that hang over those wild and gloomy mountains. No one had seen him nor had a sign of him been found.