Читать книгу Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas - Lloyd Osbourne - Страница 4

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I

It was two o'clock in the afternoon, and from her uneasy anchorage in the pass the German man-of-war struck the time, four bells. Overhead the sun shone fiercely through a mist of fire; below, the bay gave back a dancing glare; on the outer reef the long breakers foamed and tumbled, white as far as the eye could reach. From his perch beneath the bows of the Northern Light a sailor, paint brush in hand, was slowly wearing out the day—a brown-bearded, straight-nosed, handsome man of thirty, his red shirt open to the waist, his bare arms stained with the drippings of his brush. Astride of his plank, which hung suspended in midair by a block and tackle at either end, the seaman faced the task that seemed to have no end. For a week he had been at it, patch by patch, working his way round the bark, while the bells had struck on the man-of-war and the sun had risen and set.

As he swept his brush across the blistered wall in front of him, he wondered moodily whether fate had nothing more in store for him than this. Was he to finish as he had begun, a common sailor, doing forever what others bade him?—painting other people's ships, pulling other people's ropes, clinging at night on other people's yards to take in other people's sails, facing tempests and squalls, reefs, lee shores, and all the vicissitudes of the deep—for others! He laid down the brush beside him, and in a somber reverie looked toward Apia. His eyes scarcely took in the bigger buildings that were dotted here and there round the circumference of the beach: the stone cathedral, the great yellow warehouses of the Firm, the two hotels, the consulates, churches, and stores. What attracted him, what held him in a sort of spell, were the lesser roofs showing through the green of trees and gardens, the tiny cottages on the outskirts of the town, or others still farther back, scattered and solitary on the wooded hills. Was he, then, never to possess a house of his own nor a yard of earth? Was the sea, the accursed sea, to claim him till he died? What had he done, he asked himself, that others drew all the prizes and left him but the blanks—that they should stay ashore and prosper—that they should marry and have children round them, while he drudged at sea alone? Those traders, clerks, saloon-keepers, those mechanics, carpenters, shipwrights, smiths, and stevedores, how he envied them! envied their houses, their wives, their children, their gardens, their soft and comfortable lives, everything that made them so different from himself; he, the outcast, with no home but his musty bunk; they, the poorest, kings beside him.

It was the sea, he said to himself—the sea, that took all and gave nothing; the sea, mother of all injustice and misery; the sea, whose service was to tie oneself to the devil's tail and whisk forever about the world, sweating in doldrums, freezing in snow squalls, hanging on to lashing yards, blinded, soaked, benumbed, the gale above, death below. And yet even here there were some, no better indeed than he, who grasped the meager prizes that even the sea itself could not withhold; prizes that he could never hope to touch—the command of ships, the right to tread the quarter-deck, the handle to one's name. How did they do it, these favored ones of fortune? How did Hansen, that stinking Dutchman, ever rise to be the master of the Northern Light?—and that swine Bates, the mate, who already had the promise of a ship?—and Knight, the second mate, a boy but twenty-two, yet whose foot was even now on the upward ladder.

"Jack Wilson," said the sailor to himself, "Jack Wilson, you're a fool!"

Having several times delivered himself of this sentiment, always with an increasing heartiness of self-contempt, he slapped on some more paint and began to whistle. But the whistle died away again, for a little house was peeping through the trees at him, and he remembered how he had seen it from the road, embowered in flowers, with the river flowing at its foot, a cool, snug, inviting little house, with green blinds, a pigeon cote, and a flight of steps descending to the bathing pool. How happy, no doubt, that fellar that owned it—a fellar with a regular job; a wife, maybe, and kids to swing in that there contraption under the mango; a fellar, as like as not, no better than himself; and yet——!

"Jack," he said huskily to himself, "how the hell have you missed it all?"

"Women and drink," came the answer. "Women and drink, Jack, my boy."

In the course of his long and wandering life how often had he been paid off; how often had he felt his pockets heavy with the gold so arduously toiled for; how often had he vowed to himself that this time he would keep it! And had he kept it? Never!

There had been windfalls, too; money that had come easily; double handfuls of money that he had tossed in the air like a child, to see it glitter. Sixteen hundred dollars from a lucky whaling cruise; seven hundred dollars, his share for salvaging the derelict steamer Shore Ditch; sixty-six pounds eight and fourpence that the passengers had raised for him when he saved the girl at Durban—that, and a gold medal, and a fancy certificate with the British and American flags intertwined. That medal! It had gone for a round of drinks and five dollars for a wench. And the fancy certificate! Thunder! he had left it on the Huascar when he had taken leg-bail of the Chilanean navy.

"Women and drink, Jack Wilson!"

That's where it has gone, every dollar of it. To the sharks and bloodsuckers of seaport towns; to the tawdry sisterhood that spun their nets for Jack ashore; to those women that wheedled the seaman's last cent, and laughed to see him starving in the streets. It was for these he worked, then! It was for these he was even this minute painting the bloody bark; for rumsellers and harlots! He repeated the words to himself as he looked at his torn nails and blackened hands. For these—by God, for these! He felt within himself the welling of a great resolution, of a great revolt. He would reform. He would save his money. He would live straight. When they were paid off at Portland there should be two hundred dollars coming to him—two hundred dollars, more or less. He would put it in the bank, and get a shakedown in one of them model lodging houses. He would turn in at night with "Jesus, lover of my soul" in worsted work above his blessed head, and in the morning he would plank down his fifteen cents and begin the day with gospel tea. He would be a man! Yes, sirree, a man! Not a hog!

Then in his mind's eye he saw himself rolling down the street, a girl on either arm, the gaslights dancing in his tipsy head. He would meet a shipmate and drop in somewhere for a drink; another shipmate and another drink; and then, the party growing as it went, a general adjournment to one of them hurdy-gurdies. Here they would dance and drink and sing and whoop it up like hell, till—till—Yes, that's what would happen. That's what always happened. Them good resolutions always ended that way—in smoke. He had made them, man and boy, these fourteen years. He would make them, he supposed, until the day he died. And keep them? No; he was a hog; he would go on like a hog; he would die a hog—a durned, low, dirty, contemptible hog!

He spat in the water to emphasize his self-disgust, cursed the infernal sun, and then, dipping into the pot again, continued his job.

Turning round to rest his arms, he perceived, beneath the deep shade of the Matautu shore, the first sign of animation in that sleepy settlement. A crowd of natives were straggling out to a whaleboat that was apparently being made ready for sea. Men and girls were wading to it, with baskets of food, kegs of beef, a tin of biscuit, and a capacious chest. A couple of children bailed frantically in the stern sheets, while a shrill old woman slid over the gunwale with a live pig in her arms. Strange packages of tapa cloth were carried out; bundles of mats, paddles, guns, a tin of kerosene, a huge stone for an anchor, a water demijohn, more pigs, a baby, and a parrakeet in a bamboo cage. These were all thrown in, and stored with noisy good-humor and a dozen different readjustments. The baby, in turn, was given the bow, the stern, the center, as though nothing would satisfy it. A pig broke loose and was hilariously recaptured. A dejected, thin person, somewhat past middle years, in what seemed no costume but his native skin, retired shoreward with the parrakeet. An old chief, his head white with lime, after a prolonged nose-rubbing with those on shore, marched out to the boat, carrying an umbrella above his stately head. There were more farewells in shallow water, more running to and fro; a brief reappearance of the undecided parrakeet. The young men took their places at the thwarts, the old chief settled the tiller on the rudder head, the women, girls, and children crowded in wherever they could, and then, amid shouts and cheers, the paddles dipped and the boat moved slowly seaward.

Wilson watched it all with sullen envy. How was it that these brown savages were free, and he barnacled to a slab-sided bark? Was he not a white man, and their superior? Did he not look down at them from the heights of the world's ruling race, kindly, tolerantly, contemptuously, as one does on children? And yet who had the best of it, by God? Listen to the dip of the paddles; hear the mellow chorus that times the rowers' strokes; not a care on board, not a face that was not smiling! His white superiority! They might have it! His lonely and toiling life! What fool among them would exchange with him? His wages? Look at them! They had none and wanted none; and as like as not they were putting to sea without a dollar among the crowd. Civilization—hell! He would give all his share of it for a place in that there boat, to drive a paddle with the rest of them; to be, what he wished to God he had been born, a durned Kanaka!

The whaleboat drew swiftly toward him as though to go beneath the bark on her way to the pass. The paddles leaped to a rousing song and crashed in unison on the slopping gunwales. Dip, swish, bang! and then the accentuated thunder of forty voices, the men's hoarse and straining, the women's rich, falsetto, and musical. In the stern the old chief swayed with every rush of the boat, one sinewy hand clinched on the tiller, the other enfolding a little child. In the bow a handsome boy stood erect and graceful, throwing a rifle in the air and dancing to the song of his comrades. Dip, swish, bang! On they came with an increasing roar, the white water splashing under their bow.

Wilson dropped his brush and looked on with open mouth. Great Cæsar! he knew that old fellar in the stern. He had smoked pipes with him in the Samoa house by the bridge. And that girl there, who was waving and shaking her hand to him, that was little Fetuao, the daughter, who used to look at him so shyly and laugh when she met his eyes; little Fetuao, that he had given the dominoes to, and that dress from the Dutch firm, and them beads! Fetuao! Wasn't she pretty as she stood there in the boat calling to him; so slim and straight, with her splendid hair flying in the wind, and her brown bosom open to the sun! Pretty! My God, she was a spanking beauty, that girl!

The boat came to a stop beneath him; the paddles backed, and Wilson, with some embarrassment, received the stare of the whole party below.

"Poor white mans work all time!" exclaimed Fetuao, standing on a thwart to raise her head to the level of his foot.

"Like hell!" said Jack.

"Kanaka more better," said the girl.

"A damn sight!" agreed Jack.

"Jack," said Fetuao, "I go home now, and never see you no more. Good-by, Jack!"

She raised her little hand, which the sailor clasped in his big one. Her tender, troubled eyes met his own; her mouth quivered; her fingers tightened on his palm.

"Jack," she said suddenly, "you come along us, Jack."

"Do you mean it, puss?" he said eagerly. "Do you mean it?"

"Oh, Jack, you come, too," she pleaded.

"You come—that's good!" cried the old chief.

Jack, in a dream, looked above him and met the sour glances of Hansen and Bates, whom the noise had brought to the ship's rail; then he looked below into the girlish face upraised to his. For better or worse, his resolution was taken. They might keep his chest; they might keep his wages; their stinking ship might sink or swim for all he cared. They were welcome to what Jack Wilson left behind him, for Jack Wilson at last was FREE! He dropped lightly into the boat beside Fetuao, and with one arm around her naked waist he shouted to the natives to shove off.

"Fo'e!" cried the chief, and the paddles moved again.

Above their heads the astounded captain clutched the arm of the astounded mate, and pointed wildly after the deserter.

"————!" exclaimed Hansen.

"The————————!" roared Bates.

II

Jack landed in Oa Bay, the possessor, except for the clothes upon his back, of nothing but his rugged health, his stout heart, and a determination to make good his footing with his new friends. He remembered drawing apart from the others, as the welcoming throng came down to greet them in the dusk, forlornly struggling with his embarrassment and the penetrating sense of his own helplessness and isolation. Would he ever forget, standing there as he did, unremarked, solitary, shivering in his rags, the soft hand that felt through the darkness for his own, the voice so gentle, low, and sweet that whispered to him, "Come, Jack, you my white mans now!"

This was the beginning of Jack's new life. He became a member of the chief's family, sleeping with the others at night on the outspread mats, and taking his share, by day, of all the work and play of the little Samoan village. He weeded taro, he carried stones for the building of the new church, he helped to lay out nets, he speared fish, he played cricket and ta ti'a. By nature neither an idler nor a shirk, he was consumed, besides, with a desire to repay the kindness and hospitality of his hosts; and the old chief, his friend from the start, now became his captain, to whom he rendered the unquestioning obedience of a seaman. And old Faalelei, whose loose authority was often disregarded by his own subjects, delighted in the possession of this stalwart white, so willing, so eager, so ingenious in the mending of boats and nets—a man to whom the mechanism of a gun had no secrets, and in whose hands a single hatchet became a tool chest.

Living thus among the only mild, courteous, and refined people he had ever known, Jack insensibly altered and improved. His loud voice grew softer, his boisterous laugh less explosive, and his rough ways gave place to a clumsy imitation of Samoan good manners. Little by little the uncouth sailor patterned himself on the model of his new friends, and he, whose every second word had been an oath, whose only repartee a blow, now set himself to learn the most ceremonious language in the world, and the only one, perhaps, in which one cannot swear!

And Fetuao? When he had first taken up his abode in Faalelei's house he had never doubted, seeing the girl's extravagant affection for him, and knowing the laxity of the native people, that it would not be long before he might form with her one of those irregular connections so common in the islands; and, indeed, it grew daily more plain to him that he had but to ask to have. But Jack, not a little to his own astonishment, and stirred by undreamed-of instincts and undreamed-of scruples, put the idea from him with a hesitation he could hardly explain to himself. In his wicked and lawless past he had known every kind of woman but a good woman; he had seen, in a thousand water-side dives, every variety of feminine degradation and feminine shame, and had sounded in his time all the squalid depths of sailor vice. With the memory of these unspeakable contrasts, Fetuao's freshness, purity, and beauty shone with a sort of angelic brightness. No, by God, she should never come to harm through him; and, clenching his huge hands together, he would repeat these words to himself when he sometimes felt his resolution falter. For the sailor, who never until then had known a modest woman, who had starved his whole life long for what his money could never buy, whose heart at thirty was as virgin as a boy's, now found himself moved by a sublime passion for the only creature that had ever loved him.

For she did love him; of that, indeed, he had never the need to reassure himself; and in the knowledge of her love he became, almost in spite of himself, a better man. In her girlish self-abandonment Fetuao lacked the artifices which older women would have used; she never thought to guard herself, or to coquette with him. At night, as they walked hand in hand about the village, or sat close together on some log or boat, she would take his arm and draw it around her; she would lay her head against his breast; she would press herself so close to him that he could hear her beating heart. There was much of the mother in her love for him. He was her great baby, to be caressed, kissed, crooned over, to be petted and encouraged. Her tender laughter was always in his ears; she corrected him as she might a child, with a sweet seriousness, and an implication that his shame was hers whenever he blundered in Samoan etiquette; she prompted him and pushed him through scenes of trying formality, and drilled him assiduously in politeness.

In the moonlight, when they were alone together, she taught him how to receive the 'ava cup; how to spill the libation to the gods; how to invoke a proper blessing on the company. She taught him how to say "O susunga, lau susunga fo'i," on entering a strange house; how to pull the mat over his knee to express his fictitious dependence; how to join in the chorus of "Maliu mai, susu mai" when others entered after him; how, indeed, to comport himself everywhere with the finished courtesy of a Samoan chief.

Thus the bright days passed, and months melted into months, and still Jack remained an inmate of Faalelei's household. At first he had accepted this strange life as a sort of holiday, never doubting but that, in the end, he must turn his back on these pleasant people, and see, from a dizzy yardarm, their exquisite island sink forever behind him. The place thus possessed for him the charm of something he was destined soon to lose, and he clung to it as a man clings to his fading youth, with a sense that it is slipping from him. He sighed as he thought of the forecastle that he knew somewhere awaited him; how he would recall those still nights in Oa when he would be roused by the boatswain's handspike on the hatch, and the hoarse cry of "All hands on deck!"

One day, when he was out in Faalelei's boat, an accident occurred that came very near to being the end of Jack. They were pursuing a school of bonito, and Pulu, the chief's brother, was standing in the bow with a stick of dynamite and was in the nick of letting it fly when it exploded prematurely in his hand. Pulu was killed, the rickety old boat parted and sank, and Jack, with his shoulder laid open to the bone, was towed in by a neighboring canoe, and carried up to the house. They laid him on the floor, pale and groaning, while the children ran out screaming for Fetuao. She came in like a whirlwind, still wet from the river, and threw herself on her knees beside him. With passionate imperiousness she made the rest of the household wait upon her bidding as she busied herself in stanching the flow of blood and in picking the splinters from the wound. Jack knew how wont she was, in common with all Samoans, to shrink from disagreeable sights. It touched him to see how love had conquered her repugnance; nor could he resist a smile when she began to tear her little wardrobe into bandages, those chemises and lavalavas that she used to iron under the trees, and put away with such care into the camphor-wood chest with the bell lock.

For the better part of a fortnight Jack lay where they had placed him on the mats, undergoing, with intermissions of fever and delirium, the tedious stages of convalescence. Fetuao seemed never to leave him, attending to his wants, brushing away the flies, feeding and washing him with an anxious solemnity that at times almost awed the sailor. Her brilliant eyes, as black and limpid as some wild animal's, watched him with an unceasing stare. He often wondered what was passing in her graceful head as he lay looking up at her, too weak to speak, the drowsy hours succeeding one another in an unbroken silence. Once, when he ran his hand over his face and recollected with a pang how old and ugly he must seem to her, she had understood the sigh that expressed his own self-disgust, and had bent over and kissed him on the lips. From that moment his love for her deepened into an emotion transcending anything he had ever felt before. He saw now that to separate himself from her would be to break both their hearts; that, for good or evil, he was hers and she his; that fate had indeed joined them forever.

When at last he grew strong enough to walk, he went with her across to the native pastor's house, where together they stood up before the Rev. Tavita Singua and were married. This was the prelude to another and more binding ceremony before the American Consul in Apia, whither they both went in a canoe borrowed from Faalelei. The official books were withdrawn from the safe and the thirty-six Americans in Samoa were increased by two new names: "Jack Wilson, aged thirty-one, birthplace Bath, Me., occupation seaman, present residence Oa Bay; and Fetuao Wilson, supposed to be seventeen, daughter of Faalelei, chief of Oa Bay, his lawful wife." (See Consular Marriage Record, p. 18.)

As he stood there before the consul, painfully conscious of his bare feet, of his unkempt and ragged appearance, of the contrast between himself and that benignant official, he timidly brought up the subject of the fee. No doubt there is some kind of damage, he said, and might he leave this ring—his mother's wedding ring—in pawn until he might earn a little money and square the matter? The consul took the ring, looked at it a moment without a word, and then in a rough, friendly way seized Fetuao's hand and slipped it on her finger.

"I think it belongs here," he said.

"But the fee," said Jack.

"Oh, damn the fee!" said the consul.

With that he went into an inner office and returned with a sheepish air, as of a man about to do something he was ashamed of.

"Here's ten dollars," he said. "Take it; it's a wedding present, you know. I never married anybody before."

Jack refused the gift a little ungraciously, though his voice trembled in doing so.

"Have a drink, then?" said the consul.

"No, I thank you, sir," Jack blurted out.

Embarrassment in a cloud descended on all three. The consul, like the worthy fellow he was, wished to do something for these waifs, and his eyes roved about the big, hot room in search of he knew not what. Jack and Fetuao, no less ill at ease, stood close together and waited submissively. Finally, noticing the new boat flag lying on his desk, the consul took it up in both his hands. "Wilson," he said oratorically, "this is my flag, and your flag, and it is now Mrs. Wilson's flag, for I've made her as good an American as the pair of us. Take it along with you, and if you have children, bring them up to love and honor Old Glory as we do, and teach them at your knee what it stands for—freedom, justice; and equal rights for every man born under it. And if there should ever be any trouble here—war, riot, or any little unpleasantness—just hoist it above your house, and its bright folds will protect you as though the whole U-nited States army lay in a mighty camp around you!"

Jack took the flag respectfully, much impressed by the consul's speech, and tremendously pleased, besides, that Fetuao should see that an American, even a common, low-down American seaman like himself, counted for something in the official world. Would a Britisher, or one of those stinking Dutchmen, have acted like this consul did? His consul, by God!—and his breast heaved with gratitude and patriotic fervor. Afterwards, when Fetuao and he ate their lunch under a tree, he spread out the consul's gift on the ground beside him, and the words freedom, justice, and equal rights boomed sonorously in his ears. To Fetuao, in her simplicity, the bunting appeared a sort of sanction or certificate of their civil marriage; and when she returned home she explained that it was all settled, the faamasino having written their names in the book and given them the fua Ameleke!

III

Three years passed. Jack rubbed his eyes and wondered what had become of them; and he read the answer to his question in his coffee bushes, now breast high and crimson with fruit, in his trellised vanilla already so exacting and so profitable, in his sturdy breadfruit trees thickening with every rain, in the patches of bananas, taro, yams, 'ava, egg-plant, sweet potatoes, pineapples, and sour-sops that were set out so trimly in the plantation his ax had won from the primeval forest. His house, too, had drawn not a little on his capital—his capital of strength, skill, and perseverance—but he grudged neither time nor labor in making it the best in Oa. For a house is an important matter to a family man, even if it weren't a paying thing like vanillar, nor capable of helping a fellar along like a cow or a boat. It paid you back in its own way—a mighty good way, too—and it grew to be a part of you, like your wife, if you weren't a poor, lone, seafaring slob without one.

Of course, it wasn't much of a house, being a sort of beehive-shaped concern with a thatched roof a foot thick and open all round the sides when the cocoanut curtains was hysted. But when these were pulled down at night, and you were a-setting in one of your own home-made chairs with your wife on your knee, the night breeze rustling overhead and the breakers moaning a mile away on the outer reef, it made you sort of feel like things had come right at last, and that for two cents you'd plank right down on your knees, then and there, and thank God, by God!

All this had not been accomplished without work, but then it was work for himself, and not for others. Jack had never known before what it was to enjoy the fruit of his own labor; he had always been a cog in the blind machinery of other people, exchanging so much toil for so much money. Now that he could see his little plantation grow and prosper beneath his hands, every hour repaid with nature's usury, he began to feel the elation that a man finds in independence. At first Fetuao had entered but half-heartedly into his plans; she would sit on a log and watch him with mirthful wonder as he swung his ax on the land Faalelei had given them; and when, for a spell, he took a place beside her she would tenderly wipe the sweat from his forehead and look at him with perplexity. Work, yes, that, as the preacher said, was the curse of Adam; but this daily persistency was not understandable. Had not Faalelei plenty for them both? And if one taro sufficed, why be at the pains to plant two?

But little by little it began to dawn on her that there was another side to this feverish devotion to work. Jack took a load of yams to Apia, and came back with fifteen silver dollars and a bolt of print for a dress. He went again, and returned with a sewing machine, a pack of cards, and a bottle of trade scent; still another trip, and lo! he towed behind him a fine new boat with Fetuao painted on the stern. Then she at last succumbed to the fascination of the white way. Paga! There were dollars in the ground, and for the asking they could be made to grow. This lesson learned, Fetuao threw off her indifference and became as ardent a planter as her unwearied husband. Lying in his arms at night, her talk ran continually on the theme of which neither ever tired. Not a dollar was earned but was thus laid out in advance, with eager questioning and debate. The cow was bought, the horse, the chickens, the wire for fencing. It was a game in which each played a part with enduring zest; a game with a constant round of prizes and enjoyment; a game in which green nature was the board and every plant and tree a piece. At sundown they knew no pleasure like that of wandering hand in hand through the paths of their little estate, two poetic peasants, filled with love for each other and immeasurably content.

Thus the days passed in increasing satisfaction and prosperity, days so rare in the life of any man when he says to himself, "I am happy." To Jack, these three words, never spoken, but somewhere within him articulate and peremptory, these three words almost overwhelmed him with their significance. He trembled for this treasure, so elusive, so transitory, perhaps, so surely ill deserved; he grew humble with the thought of his own unworthiness, and, though no believer in the ordinary sense, he began to feel the first stirring of religion. When Fetuao, with sweet shame, laid her head against his shoulder and told him of her impending motherhood, he kissed her, comforted her, and then, rising to his feet, he sought the solitude that at such a moment he felt he could not share even with her. In one of the unfrequented corners of the bay, a narrow beach shadowed by the forest and faced by the open sea, he threw himself upon his knees with a passionate thankfulness that seemed to find its expression in this act. Knowing no prayer, addressing no God, he simply gazed above him in the sky, in a rapt, dumb gratitude.

As he walked home he thought of his own parents, long since dead; of their hopes, their cares, their humble unfulfilled ambitions, now dead with them. He perceived himself, now for the first time, a link between the past and the future, the heir of bygone generations, generations that had loved, and suffered, and struggled, to no other end than that he might live—he, and the sister he had neither seen nor heard from in fourteen years. Hell! he ought to write to Amandar. Families oughtn't to drift apart like that. It was a shame, a durned shame, and it came over him with a shock that she, too, might be dead. He took a sheet of paper and a pencil, and with heaving breast and overflowing heart thus broke the silence of those long years:

Oa Bay, Samoa, May 14, 1899.

Dear Sis, You will be surprised to get a letter from me after all this time. I am well and hope you are enjoying a simillar blessing. I am married now and left the sea. I suppose Joe is a man along in middle life now and you a handsome mattron with a family. This is a good country but hot.

Ever your affectionate brother

Jack Wilson.

P.S.—I often think of Pa and Ma and the old days.

Not long after, Jack sailed into Apia with a load of copra and his letter for the outgoing mail. The town was in an uproar, and cracking like the Fourth of July. Jack wondered what in thunder it was about, as he landed at Leicester's wharf and discovered the postmaster lying underneath the post office in a nest of sand bags. Crawling in after the functionary, Jack handed him the letter.

"That's for America," said Jack.

"Five cents," said Leicester.

"What's all this corrobborree?" asked Jack.

"It's war, that's what it is," said Leicester, weighing the letter in a tin scale.

Jack's jaw fell. For a month past he had heard rumors of a native war, but he had resolutely closed his ears to all that Fetuao was so insistent to tell him. It was none of his business, he had said to her uneasily. He wasn't no politician, and all he asked of anybody was to be let alone; and with that he had tried to put the matter by as something imaginary and disquieting, which, if boldly ignored, would disappear of itself.

"Say, Mr. Leicester, what in hell is it about?" he inquired.

"If you went to the bottom of it you would find Dutchmen," said Leicester grimly.

Jack cursed the meddling scoundrels.

"They want Mataafa for king, just because he has a majority of two thousand votes," said Leicester.

"There sounds to be something in that," said Jack faintly.

"Nothing at all!" exclaimed Leicester. "Just speciousness, that's what I call it. The other fellow, Tanumafili, is a nice-appearing boy from the missionary college, and being above wire-pulling and promising everything to everybody, he hasn't any following to speak of. But he's a good, decent Protestant boy, and will make a fine king."

"Oh, ho!" said Jack, beginning to see how the wind lay, "and so the other dodger's a Catholic?"

"A rank, bigoted Catholic," said Leicester hotly. "That's what makes the missionaries so wild against him, and likewise the British and American officials."

"They won't let him be king, then?" asked Jack.

"He's a rebel," said Leicester, "and they've posted proclamations against him on every cocoanut tree around the beach."

"And the natives, they won't let Tanumafili be king neither?" said Jack.

"That's him they're chasing into the sea this minute," explained Leicester.

Jack looked perplexed. "I don't see why the Kanakas shouldn't have the king they fancy," he remarked.

"To hear you talk, one would think you was a bloody Dutchman yourself," said Leicester.

"But the majority—" said Jack, "them two thousand——"

"The Chief Justice ruled them out on a technicality," said Leicester, "and if the Supreme Court ain't right, who is? Do you think he's going to give over this country to a papist? No, the only king here is Tanumafili, and the men-of-war will reinstate him at the muzzle of their guns. Then we'll see who's who in Samoar!"

Jack made his way across the street to the store where he usually sold his copra. Bullets were pattering on the roof, and the trader himself, a portly German in gold spectacles, was palpitating in a bomb-proof.

"I hope Mrs. Meyerfeld is well," said Jack, who in Samoa had grown punctilious.

"Oh, mein Gott!" exclaimed Meyerfeld.

"And the children?—" inquired Jack, "Miss Hilda and Miss Theresa?"

"Oh, mein Gott!" said Meyerfeld.

"I have brought you forty bags of copra," said Jack.

"Oh, mein Gott!" said Meyerfeld.

"Don't you want it, then?" inquired Jack.

"Hear the pullets," quavered Meyerfeld.

"But forty bags," said Jack.

"I've no man, no noding," groaned the trader.

"Gome again negst week. Gome again after de war."

"I'll put it in the shed myself," said Jack.

He went out into the empty street and looked about him. The firing was going on as hotly as ever, but except for a single limp figure, face down in the dust, he failed to see the least sign of the contending parties. From the direction of the Mulivai bridge he heard bursts of cheering, with intermittent lulls and explosions as the battle rolled to and fro. War on so small a scale is startlingly like murder, and Jack shuddered as he went up to the corpse and turned it over. He returned to his boat, and in a fever of activity unloaded his forty bags and trundled them in batches into Meyerfeld's copra shed across the road. It took half a dozen trips of the little flat-car to accomplish this task single-handed, and then there was the further delay in weighing each bag and checking off the contents on a bit of paper. Nor was this all, for he had to make a copy, besides, and tack it on the warehouse door with the inscription, "Taly and find correct John Wilson."

This done, he dropped into his boat and hoisted the sails, weary, heartsick, and anxious for what the future might have in store for him. Passing to leeward of the British man-of-war, he saw her decks swarming with refugees, her crew grouped about the guns, and an officer in the fore-crosstrees sweeping the town with his glass. A gust of wind carried down to him the sound of children crying, and with it an indistinguishable humming, at once menacing and dejected, like the sigh of an impending gale. It echoed in his ears long afterwards, the most poignant note in war, the voice of the herded, helpless multitude.

He reached Oa in the gray of the morning, and the grating of his boat's keel in the sand brought out Fetuao to meet him. She could not restrain her joy at the sight of him, kissing his hands and clinging to him as he took out the sails and oars and carried them up to the house. She never seemed so sweet to him, never so girlish and charming in her fresh young womanhood as in that dawn of his home-coming. To hear her laugh, to see her eyes sparkle, to feel her warm breath against his cheek, all transported him into a state of unreasoning security. Apia and its blood-stained streets faded into the immeasurable distance; the war, and all the attendant horrors that had haunted him, now seemed for a moment too remote to even think of. What had he to fear, here on his own hearthstone, with his dear wife beside him, in another world from that he had so lately quitted? If there was trouble, wouldn't the consuls settle it, them and the treaty officials whose job it was to run the blessed group? He had never been no politician himself, and he wasn't agoing to begin now. Let them worry as was paid to worry.

"Fetuao," he said, "where is the flag the faamasino gave us when we were married in Apia?"

"O i ai pea i le pusa," she returned.

"Get it out, my pigeon," he said, "for I mean to hoist it above the house for a protection. And tell me, Fetuao," he went on, "what before I have never asked thee: on what side are thy people in this misa of Mataafa and Tanumafili?"

"For Mataafa," she returned. "Dost thou think that Samoa wants this untattooed boy from the missionary college? Why else did Faalelei and the young men go last month to Apia to be numbered for Mataafa, the whites promising that he who had most voices should be king? And when all Samoa cried out 'Mataafa!' at the numbering place (all except the little handful of the Tuamasanga), lo! the word was given that Tanumafili was appointed after all, and that the white manner of choice was to be disregarded!"

Jack sighed as he took the flag and went out with it. He realized that his old life was at an end, and that a new one, full of uncertainty and danger, was to date from the time he hoisted this bit of bunting. He trimmed a straight piece of fuafua for a staff, and as he did so he cursed the missionaries for meddlers and the treaty officials for crazy fools. When the flag was at last in place, Fetuao and he drew away to get a better view of it from the beach. Standing there, in silence they watched the vivid colors flaunt and flutter against the wooded hills behind, while Jack, with a seaman's instinctive reverence for the flag, bared his head, and Fetuao clapped her hands with delight.

"Is it not beautiful!—" she cried, "as starry as the nights before we were married, Jack, when we used to walk together, here and there, like uncaring children."

Her husband did not answer; and as she turned and looked up into his face she saw that his eyes were wet with tears.

IV

The two months that followed were the most terrible in the history of Samoa. A handful of exasperated whites—treaty officials, missionaries, and consuls—were determined to foist Tanumafili on the unwilling natives of the group, and backed by three men-of-war, they declared Mataafa a rebel and plunged the country into a disastrous and sanguinary war. England and America, in the person of their respective naval commanders, vied with one another in their self-appointed task; and while the Germans stood aloof, protesting and aghast, our ships ravaged the Samoan coast, burning, bombarding, and destroying with indiscriminate fury. In this savage conflict, so unjust in its inception, so frightful in its effects on an unoffending people, the Samoans showed an extraordinary spirit in defending what all men hold most dear. Driven from the shore by our guns, they massed their warriors behind Apia, and on ground of their own choosing gave obstinate battle to the invaders.

It is not the writer's purpose to follow the varying stages of this ignoble quarrel, in which blood flowed like water in our vain attempts to force the unwilling Samoans to accept a Protestant divinity student for their king. This little war, so remote, so ill understood at home, so brief, violent, and unjust, swept over the islands like a hurricane. Abruptly begun by headstrong naval officers and officials on the spot, it was as abruptly ended by peremptory orders from London and Washington; but the interval (necessarily a long one) before the news could go out and the orders return halfway round the world, was sufficient to reduce Samoa to the verge of ruin.

In such a country, without roads, telegraphs, or newspapers, where rumor passes from mouth to mouth, and facts, in the process, get twisted out of all recognition, war brings with it a period of agonizing ignorance, when anything is told and anything believed. To Jack this waiting became almost intolerable; his suspense, and the uncertainty of those dreadful days, told on him with an augmented force, so that he grew thin and started at a sound. Through an unseen channel the news of fighting persistently trickled into Oa; more battles; more villages bombarded; such an one wounded, such an one killed, with stories of the increasing ruthlessness of the British and Americans. On some days the sound of cannon could be plainly heard from leeward, the signal for the women and children to crowd with their pastor into the church, and for the men—the scanty remnants that still remained—to grasp their rifles and melt into the forest.

But as time passed, and one false alarm was succeeded by another, Jack plucked up a little heart. He began to make allowance for native exaggeration and laughed at his own former fears. If the men-of-war should come to Oa, were they likely to bombard an undefended village full of women and children, or burn, pillage, and destroy as mercilessly as he had been told? Bah! a pack of Kanaka lies, the gradual distortion of the truth as it passed along the line, until one burned house became a hundred and one village the whole coast of Atua! He went back to his neglected plantation, now overgrown with weeds, and set to work again with a determination not to borrow trouble. But, in spite of himself, he would find himself listening for the sound of cannon, laying down his ax or his bush knife in a panic and running back to the shore to make sure that nothing had happened in the hour he had been gone.

It was during one of these mornings in the bush, a morning singularly free of the apprehensions which usually beset him, that Fetuao came rushing through the bananas where he was at work, crying out, "Manuao, manuao!" Together, without exchanging a single word, they flew headlong to the beach, never stopping until they took shelter beneath the eaves of their own house. Yes, there was the man-of-war, a Britisher with yellow funnels, well outside the reef, towing behind her a flotilla of boats chock-a-block with natives. The red head-dresses of their crews showed them to be the followers of Tanumafili, and a couple of unmistakable pith helmets in the stern of the biggest betrayed the presence of directing white men. At the tail of the boats was a large steam launch flying the stars and stripes, the American contribution to the little fleet.

Jack breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of his own flag. Wherever that flew he knew that he and his were safe. By George! everybody in Oa Bay was safe so long as they didn't try to make a fight of it; and he could have laughed to see the terrified women scooting for the church, the children bawling at their heels. The fools, what had they to fear? American officers were not the kind to fire on women and children, nor were they likely to look on mum-chance, and let the lime-juicers do it neither. No, sirree!

The man-of-war slowed down her engines and came almost to a standstill. There was a sudden flash from one of her sponsons, a puff of smoke, and then the roar of a six-inch gun. The shell struck a palm not a hundred yards from where Jack was standing, and with a loud explosion took off the entire top as neatly as though a knife had sliced it.

"Good God!" cried the sailor; and the words were scarcely out of his mouth before he heard the venomous rush of another shell. Jack could not believe his senses. What! no warning, no notice beforehand; not even ten minutes to allow the women and children to get out of danger!

Bang! The church this time! He clutched Fetuao as he saw the shower of cement and rocks, and the frenzied flight of its occupants for safety. If that shell had gone through the window instead of striking the corner——

Bang!

"Run! run!" cried Fetuao, and without even waiting for him to follow or turning round to see that he did so, she darted through the house and disappeared. But Jack, in a white heat of indignation, folded his arms and remained doggedly where he was. Let them shoot, the skunks! Let them shoot, the stinking cowards! This was his house, and he would remain beside it until the crack of doom, shells or no shells. He would stand off them fire-bugs and looters when they landed, and tell them officers what a plain American citizen thought of them. He wasn't afraid of the swine. By God! he would like to boot the raft of them. He shook his fist in their faces, he did; and as for that villainous launch rolling idly in the swell while the big bully fired on the defenseless town, he spat to express his disgust for it.

The bombardment, like a salute, continued with regular intermissions between each gun. The marksmanship was poor, many of the shells falling short or bursting prematurely in midair. Except for the church, which was twice struck, and the chief's house that was set on fire, the damage done was inappreciable; and Jack, whose heart at first had been in his mouth, now grinned with derision as he watched for the recurring flashes.

"The Chilaneans could do better nor you!" he cried.

"Jack," whispered a voice beside him, and there was Fetuao back again in a state of the sweetest contrition and remorse. He took her in his arms and kissed her; and then, like a pair of lovers, they held each other's hands and shrank close together as the shells burst over the village.

The firing lasted for an hour, and then the flotilla of boats, preceded by the American launch, passed in procession through the break in the reef, and headed for Jack's house.

"Oh, it's the flag they see!" cried Fetuao, and she besought Jack, with tears in her eyes, to haul it down.

"Never!" he said, grinding his teeth.

There were some three or four hundred men in the boats, and as they raced in, cheering and yelling at the top of their voices, Jack quailed in spite of himself. But outwardly, at least, he showed no sign of agitation, standing like a rock before his house and facing the storm that was about to burst.

It wasn't for himself that he was afraid, not so long as that puffing-billy of a steamboat held the lead, and the grand old flag streamed out behind her. The jackies would see him through this business, whatever deviltry they might inflict on the rest of the unfortunate village, for blood's thicker than water every time, and Americans stand together all the world over. He wasn't no politician nor side-taker, and it was all the same to him whether he had a missionary king or a benighted papist. All he asked of anybody, by God! was to be let alone, though this broadsiding of defenseless people made him sick at the stummick, it did.

The launch came bumping into shallow water, blowing off clouds of steam as her crew jumped out with their rifles and waded ashore, while the Tanumafili boats, dashing up in quick succession, amid a furious and ever-deepening uproar, discharged in their turn cargo upon cargo of shrieking warriors. In the indescribable commotion that followed there seemed to be no prearranged plan nor any settled order of operation. The Tanus scattered in a dozen noisy parties, looting and burning the houses, barking the breadfruit trees, shooting the pigs and horses, devastating with diabolical thoroughness the inland plantations that sustained the village. The Americans, fearful of ambuscades, stuck to the shore and systematically destroyed the boats, which for a mile or two were drawn up on the edge of the beach. These boats, in a country without roads, are as much a necessity to a man as the house which shelters him. They often represent the hoardings of years, and are not seldom the result of a stern frugality and self-denial; they constitute, indeed, the only wealth of Samoa, and in them is invested the united savings of the whole population. In Oa these boats numbered perhaps a hundred, or a hundred and twenty in all, which, under the direction of a red-faced boatswain with a package of dynamite sticks, were one by one blown to pieces, and the shattered boards drawn into heaps and fired. That day the whole of Oa went up in smoke and flame. Nothing was spared, not even the church, nor the school, nor the pastor's house; not a canoe nor a dugout; not a net, nor a fish trap, nor a float; not a pig, a horse, nor a chicken. The boundary walls, emerging black and desolate above the embers of the village, alone survived the universal waste.

Jack's boat, being the nearest, was the first to be singled out; and as the blue-jackets began to bore it with auger holes in which to place the dynamite, he walked down to the petty officer and roughly bade him leave it alone. "Hold on, there!" he said. "That's my boat!"

The boatswain looked him up and down. "You get out of this!" he said.

Jack twitched the auger from one of the seamen and flung it into the lagoon. Then, seizing a rifle from the heap lying on the ground, he whirled it round his head like a club and advanced furiously on the boatswain, who pulled out a six-shooter and leveled it at his head. Even as he did so, one of the officers came running up, waving his sword and shouting; while Jack, confident that he had nothing now to apprehend, dropped the rifle and turned to meet him. He had scarcely got so far as, "Please, sir, this boat is my property," when a scream from Fetuao warned him that the natives were rushing his house. Abandoning the boat, he ran back to face this new danger, which, of the two, was so infinitely the worse. His first instinct was to snatch a hatchet and kill one of the half-naked plunderers, but Fetuao, catching his hands, held him back, and the impulse passed as he realized his utter helplessness. With smarting eyes and a heart that seemed to burst within his breast, he saw his house gutted of everything—his chests torn open, his tools taken, his wife's poor finery divided, and her twenty-dollar sewing machine the subject of a wrangle that ended in its being smashed under the butt of a gun. It was horrible to look on, impotent and raging, and see the fruit of three years the prey of these yelling savages; to realize that he must begin again from the bottom; that all his labor, and care, and thrift, had gone for nothing. Not daring to leave Fetuao behind, he took her with him and started off to find the officer to whom he had at first complained. His protest had not apparently been very effective, to judge from the torn fragments of the boat now blazing in a bonfire, and he was hardly encouraged to make a second attempt. However, slim as the chance was, it was now the only thing left to do. Surely it was not possible that they would let his house be looted and fired with the others!

The officer, a thin young man with a cigar, was standing in the shade of a palm.

"Mister," said Jack timidly, for somehow all the fight had oozed out of him, "Mister, they're looting my house up there!"

"Well?" said the officer.

"I'm an American," said Jack.

"Well?" said the officer.

Jack regarded him helplessly. "Can't you do nothing for an American?" he asked.

"Not for a damned beach-comber," said the officer, turning on his heel.

Jack did not attempt to follow or to pester him. He knew when he was beat. He sat down on the nearest log, and making room for Fetuao beside him, drew out his pipe, filled it and began to smoke. The girl tried to speak to him, but he would not answer. She whispered to him that their house was burning, and he never even turned his head to look. She took his hand, but he snatched it impatiently away, refusing to be comforted. Thus he remained for hours, sullen and half-stupefied, until the returning Tanus embarked again, and the launch, with jubilant whistles, led the flotilla back to the man-of-war. It was only when the ship was out of sight that Jack rose, stretched himself, and breathed the profound sigh of a man who has endured and has survived the most terrible experience of a lifetime.

With slow steps, and many expressions of anger and resentment, Fetuao and he walked through the village, gazing with bitter curiosity at the ruins that everywhere surrounded them. They made their way to their own little plantation, to find it devastated like the others, the breadfruit trees ringed, the coffee bushes torn up by the roots, the taro, bananas, and vanilla cut to pieces. In the paddock the cow and calf lay dead in a pool of blood; of the dairy, half-set in the stream, nothing remained but some stumps and smoking ashes; under a felled mango tree they saw the protruding hoofs of Fetuao's mare, Afiola.

Returning with a few bananas they managed to find in the plantation, they built a fire and roasted them within a few feet of where, that morning, their house had stood. Though nothing now was left of it but some charred wood, the place was still home to them. As Fetuao moved forlornly about, picking up a few trifles that had been dropped or thrown away by the invaders—a comb, a spool of thread, a flatiron, a book or two with the covers scorched off—she lifted up a grimy rag and tossed it, with a little gesture of disdain, at her husband's feet. He spread it out and saw that it was the consul's flag, the flag he had flown above his house with such confidence in its protection; the flag which, until then, he had always reverenced.

Jack slowly tore it into pieces.

V

Nothing is stranger than the effect of the same misfortune on different natures. To Jack, arrested in the full tide of his petty activities, it was absolutely overwhelming. When everything he possessed was swept away, and with it the routine that for three years had kept him busy and content, he knew not what to do nor which way to turn. Sunk in apathy, he spent whole days in dully mourning for what he had lost. He would have starved had not Fetuao forced him to follow her into the mountains, where, under her direction, he dug tamu and climbed the trees for wild chestnuts; while she, with deft hands and a little tangled bunch of weeds, caught prawns in the pools and streams. At her bidding he made a tiny hut of cocoanut branches, a clumsy canoe good enough to fish with, and nets from the sinnet she taught him how to twist out of cocoanut husks. She even sent him back to work in the plantation, for the bananas at least could be saved, and there was a well of sprouting yams and some tingapula that had somehow escaped destruction. But Jack's spirit was broken; the old incentive was gone; he could not revive the energy, the zest, the interest that before had never failed him. He did what Fetuao bade him and no more, and the days, once so short, seemed now never to end.

One morning early he was awakened by the murmur of voices in the dark, and on going to the door of the hut he was surprised to see Fetuao's brothers, Tua and Anapu, Mele her uncle, Lapongi the orator, and a dozen others, some of them boys not yet tattooed. In answer to his questions Tua told him that a messenger had come for them with orders to at once join the Mataafa forces behind Apia.

"And thou also, Jack," said Lapongi the orator, "for every man now is needed to withstand the fury of the whites."

Jack, as usual, turned to Fetuao.

"We shall both of us go," said she, "I to carry water for the wounded, thou with the muaau, a rock of strength and terror."

Jack made no protest. Hell! what did it matter where they went? Munching the food that was handed him, he looked across the bay, now silvering in the dawn, and wondered whether he was not seeing it for the last time.

It was late at night when they passed the outposts and reached the Mataafa camp, which stood on a high plateau overlooking Apia. Below them the search-lights of the men-of-war moved restlessly about, shining at times with a bewildering brilliancy into their very faces; and from the little war-encompassed capital there rose a distant drumming and bugling as the missionary boy king, unsafe even under the guns of Britain and America, took his precautions against a night attack. After the stillness of Oa there was something confusing in the stir and bustle of Mataafa's big camp—in the constant passing of armed men, the change of guards, and the rousing choruses around the fires. There was, besides, an atmosphere of recklessness and gayety, engendered by excitement, by danger, by the very desperation of their cause, that could not long be resisted by even the most impassive recruit. Jack alone, of his whole party, remained indifferent and unmoved; but his wife, all of the savage in her rising to the surface, grew intoxicated almost to the point of delirium.

Ordinarily so demure and quiet, she became from henceforward a creature of another clay. Whirling her ax and dancing almost naked at the head of the Oa contingent, she led it wherever it was sent, daring bullets and shells with smiling intrepidity. In her wild beauty an artist might have taken her for the spirit of war itself, as she moved undaunted along the firing line, or with biting reproaches drove up skulkers from the rear. Like some untried actress bringing down her house, she was overborne with her own success; and the more she was praised the more extravagantly and unflinchingly she exposed herself. Under the stress of those fierce emotions her character in every way underwent a change for the worse. In war time, death, always in the air, seems to annihilate with its dark shadow all the bonds that bind society together. Life, hitherto so assured, of a sudden becomes the most transient of human gifts, to be enjoyed with a feverish heedlessness before it vanishes forever into the unknown. Thus Fetuao found and accepted a dozen lovers among her men, and while still according her husband the first place, she yet permitted them liberties and familiarities that they were not slow to take advantage of.