Читать книгу The Queen Versus Billy, and Other Stories - Lloyd Osbourne - Страница 5

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HE stood five feet nothing in his naked feet, a muscular, sandy little fellow, with a shock of red hair, a pair of watery blue eyes, and a tawny, sun-burned beard, the colour of fried carrots. I could not see myself that he was beautiful, and might have lived a year with him and never found it out; though he assured me, with a giggle of something like embarrassment, that he was no less a person than the Beautiful Man of Pingalap. Such at least was his name amongst the natives, who had admired him so persistently, and talked of him so much, that even the whites had come to call him by that familiar appellation.

“You see,” he said, in that whining accent which no combination of letters can adequately render, “it tykes a man of a ruddy complexion to please them there Kanakas; and if he gains their respeck and ’as a w’y with him sort of jolly and careless-like, there’s nothing on their blooming island he carn’t have for the arsking.”

I gathered, however, as I talked with him in the shadow of the old boat-house in which we lived together at Ruk like a pair of tramps, that he, Henery Hinton, had not presumed to ask for much in those isles from which he had so recently emerged. Indeed, except for a camphor-wood chest, a nondescript valise of decayed leather, a monkey, a parrot, and a young native lady named Bo, my friend owned no more in the world than the window-curtain pyjamas in which he stood.

“It ain’t much, is it,” he said, with a sigh, “to show for eight long years on the Line? Sixty dollars and w’at you see before you! Though the monkey may be worth a trifle, and a w’aler captain once offered me a mee-lodian for the bird.”

“And the girl?” I asked.

“Who’d tyke her?” he replied, with a drop of his lip. “Did you ever see an uglier piece in all your life?”

“What do you mean to do with her?” I asked, knowing that the firm had promised him a passage to Sydney in the Ransom, and wondering what would become of the unfortunate Bo, whom he was little likely to drag with him to the colonies.

“You don’t think I’m going to desert that girl,” he said truculently, giving me a look of deep suspicion. “My word!” he went on, “after having taught her to byke bread and sew, and regularly broke her in to all kinds of work, it ain’t likely I am going to leave her to be snapped up by the first feller that comes along. The man as gets her will find himself in clover, and might lie in bed all day and never turn his hand to nothink, as I’ve done myself time and time again at Pingalap, while she’d make breakfast and tend the store. It would tyke several years to bring a new girl up to her mark, and then maybe she mightn’t have it in her, after all,—not all of them has,—and so your pains and lickings would be wasted.”

“Lickings!” I said. “Is that the way you taught Bo?”

“I’d like to know any other w’y,” he said. “My word! a man has to master a woman, and there’s no getting around it. With some you can do it with love and kindness, but the most need just the whip and plenty of it. That little Bo, w’y, I’ve held her down and lashed her till my arm was sore, and there ain’t a part of me she hasn’t bit one time and another! Do you see that purple streak on my ear? I thought I was booked for hydrophobiar that morning, for it swelled up awful, and I was that weak with loss of blood that when I laid her head open with a fancy trade lamp I just keeled over in a dead faint. But there was never no nasty malice in Bo, and if we had a turn up now and then, she always played to the rules, and never bit a feller when he was down; and she never hurt me but what she’d cry her eyes out afterwards and sometimes even arsk me to whip her for her wickedness. My word! I’d lay it on to her then, for I could use both hands and had nothing to be afryde of. Of course that was long ago, when she was raw and only half trained like. I don’t recollect having laid my hand to her since the Belle Brandon went ashore on Fourteen Island Group.”

Having gone so deeply into the history of her subjugation, the Beautiful Man could not resist showing me a proof of Bo’s dearly bought docility, and whistled to her to come to him. This she did readily enough, her ugly face wrinkling into smiles at sight of him. She was a wizened little creature, with an expression midway between that of a monkey and a Japanese image. Of all things in the world, Bo’s chief pleasure was in clothes, of which she possessed an inordinate quantity, and it was her custom to make at least three toilets a day. She wore tight-fitting jackets plastered with beadwork like an Indian’s, with embroidered skirts of bright cotton, and she incessantly occupied herself in adding to her stock. Half the day her little claws were busy with needle and beads, covering fresh bodices with barbarous patterns, while the monkey played about her and pilfered her things, and the parrot screamed whole sentences in the Pingalap language.

My own business in the Islands was of a purely scientific description, a learned society having equipped me for two years, with instructions to study the anthropological character of the natives, dip into the botany of Micronesia, and do what I could in its little-known zoölogy. I had meant to go directly to Yap, but in the uncertainties of South Sea travelling I had been landed for a spell on the island of Ruk, from which place I had hope of picking up another vessel before the month was out. Here I had run across the Beautiful Man, himself a bird of passage, waiting for the barque Ransom; and when I learned that Johnson, the firm’s manager, had meant to charge me two dollars and a half a day for the privilege of messing at his table and seeing him get drunk every night, I was glad to chum in with Hinton and share the tumble-down boat-house in which he camped. Here we lived together, the Beautiful Man, Bo, and myself, in a simplicity that would have shamed the Garden of Eden. We slept at night on the musty sails of some forgotten ship, and in the daytime Bo prepared our meals over a driftwood fire. She baked the most excellent bread, and made her own yeast from fermented rice and sugar, which used to blow up periodically, with an explosion like that of a cannon. She also made admirable coffee, and a sort of sugar candy in the frying-pan, as well as griddle-cakes and waffles with the gulls’ eggs we used to gather for ourselves. More than this she did not know, except how to open the can of beef or salmon which was the inevitable accompaniment of all our meals.

We rose at no stated hour in the morning, the sun being our only clock, and, as we read it, a very uncertain one. Hinton and I bathed in the lagoon, where he taught me daily how to dive with the greatest good humour and zeal, roaring with laughter at my failures, and applauding my successes to the skies. He often spoke to me in Pingalap, forgetting for the moment his own mother-tongue, and would wear a hang-dog expression for an hour afterwards, as though in some way he had disgraced himself. On our return to the boat-house we would find breakfast awaiting us, Bo guarding it with a switch from the depredations of the monkey and the parrot. After breakfast, when the Beautiful Man and I would lie against the wall and smoke our pipes, the little savage would wash her dishes, and putting them away in an empty gin-case, would next turn her attention to the pets, cleaning and brushing them with scrupulous care. Then, for another hour, we would see no more of her, while she retired behind a sail to effect fresh combinations of costume, reappearing at last with her hair nicely combed, and her breast dazzling like a robin’s. There was to me something touching in the sight of this little person doing the round of a treadmill she had invented for herself, and spending the bright days in stringing her unending beads. It seemed a shame that she should be abandoned, so forlorn, solitary, and friendless, on the alien shore of Ruk; and the matter weighed on me so much that it often disturbed my dreams and gave rise to an anxiety that I was half ashamed to feel. Several times I spoke to the Beautiful Man on the subject, drawing a little on my imagination in depicting the wretchedness and degradation to which he was meaning to leave poor Bo, who could not fail, circumstanced as she was, to come to a miserable end. He always took my lecture in good part; for, in fairness to the Beautiful Man, I must confess he was the most good-natured creature alive, and used invariably to reply that he would not think of doing such a thing were it not for the pressing needs of his health, which, he assured me with solemnity, was in a bad way. I never could learn the exact nature of his malady, nor persuade him into any recital of his symptoms beyond a vague reference to what he called constitutional decay. Of course, I knew well enough that this was a mere cloak to excuse his conduct to Bo, whom I could see he meant to desert in the most heartless fashion, if in the meantime he failed to sell her to some passing trader. This he was always trying to do, on the sly, for he had enough decency left to screen the business from my view and carry on the negotiations with as much secrecy as he could manage. But the prospective buyer invariably cried off when he was shown the article for sale, however much it was bedizened with beads and shined up with oil, and the matter usually ended in a big drunk at the station, from which the Beautiful Man was more than once dragged insensible by his helpmeet. He even hinted to me that, owing to our long and intimate relations, I might myself become Bo’s proprietor for a merely nominal sum; and when I told him straight out that I had come to the Islands to study, and not to entangle myself in any disreputable connection with a native woman, he begged my pardon very earnestly, and said that he wished to Gord he had been as well guided. But he always had a bargaining look in his eye when I praised Bo’s bread, which indeed was our greatest luxury, or happened to pass my plate for another of her waffles.

“You’re going to miss them things up there,” he would say. “My word, ain’t you going to miss them!”

This remark, incessantly repeated, made such an impression on me that I persuaded Bo to give me some lessons in bread-making, and even extorted from her, for a pound of beads paid in advance, the secret of her dynamitic yeast; so that I, too, started a bomb-shell of my own, and was half-way through a sack of flour before it finally dawned upon me that here was an art that I was incapable of learning. Bread I could certainly make, of a peculiarly stony character, but the trouble (as Hinton said) was the digesting of it afterwards. Nor was I more successful with my waffles, which glued themselves with obstinacy to the iron, like oysters on a rocky bottom, requiring to be detached in shreds by the aid of a knife. My efforts convulsed the Beautiful Man, and were the means of leading him, through his own vainglory and boastfulness, to perpetrate a basaltic lump of his own, the sight of which doubled Bo up with laughter, and caused her to burst out in giggles for a day afterwards. These attempts, of course, only enhanced her own prowess as a cook, and Hinton was never tired of expatiating on the lightness of her loaves and the melting quality of her cakes and waffles, with a glitter in his eye that I knew well how to interpret.

One day my long-overdue ship appeared in sight, and, beating her tedious way up the lagoon, dropped her anchor off the settlement. Captain Mins gave me six hours to get aboard, and promised me, over an introductory glass of square-face in the cabin, a speedy and prosperous run to the westward. My packing was a matter of no difficulty, for I had lived from day to day in the expectancy of a sudden call to start; besides, in a country where pyjamas are the rule and even socks are regarded as something of a superfluity, life reduces itself to first principles and baggage disappears. In half an hour I was ready to shift my things to the ship, only dallying a little longer to say farewell to my friends and take one final glance at the old boat-house. My heart misgave me when I looked, as I thought for the last time, at poor Bo in the midst of her pets, threading beads with the same tireless industry; while the Beautiful Man, at the farther end of the shed, was trying to sell her to a new-comer off the barque, an evil-looking customer they called Billy Jones’s Cousin.

Prompted (I have since supposed) by the devil, I called the little man to where I stood and asked him peremptorily to name his lowest price for Bo. He replied in a brisk, businesslike manner that he couldn’t dream of letting her go for less than a hundred dollars.

“A hundred fiddlesticks!” I exclaimed. “Rather than see her abandoned here to starve, I will take her for my servant and pay her ten dollars a month.”

“Oh, she don’t need no money,” he said. “Just you hug and kiss her a bit, and keep her going with beads and such-like, and she’ll work her hands off to serve you. It’s a mug’s game to give a Kanaka money. W’y, they ain’t no more fit for money than that monkey to navigate a ship.”

“See here, Hinton,” I said, “I have told you before that I did not come up here to start a native establishment—least of all with a woman who looks like Bo. But I’m ready to take her off your hands and pay her good wages, and I don’t think you can be so contemptible as to stand in her light.”

“Oh, I shan’t stand in her blooming light,” he said. “I’d sleep easier to think I had left her in a comfortable home with a perfeck gentleman such as you to tyke care of her. My word, I would, and the thought of it will be a comfort to me in the privations of my humble lot; and I trust you will believe me that it was in no over-reaching spirit that I ventured to nyme my figger for the girl. But I put it to you, as between man and man, won’t you spare me a few dollars as a sort of token of your good will?”

“I’ll give you twenty-five dollars for her,” I said, “and not one penny more.”

“My word,” he said, “you’re getting her cruel cheap!”

“Well, that’s my price,” I said.

“Perhaps you wouldn’t care to give her a half a year’s wages in advance?” he inquired. “A little money in her hand might hearten her up for the parting.”

“Hearten you up, you mean,” I said.

“I never was no haggler,” he said. “She’s yours, Mr. Logan, at twenty-five dollars.”

“You go and talk to her a bit,” I said, “and try to explain things to her, for I tell you I won’t take her at all if she is unwilling.”

It cut me to the heart to watch the poor girl’s face as the Beautiful Man unfolded the plans for her future, and to see the way she looked at me with increasing distress and horror. When she began to cry, I could stand the sight no longer, and hurriedly left the place, feeling myself a thorough-paced scoundrel for my pains. It was only shame that took me back at last, after spending one of the most uncomfortable hours of my life on the beach outside the shed. I found her sitting on her chest, which apparently had been packed in hot haste by the Beautiful Man himself. With the parrot in her lap and the monkey shivering beside her, Bo presented the most woebegone picture. I don’t know whether he had used the strap to her, or whether he had trusted, with apparent success, to the torrents of Pingalap idiom which was still pouring from his lips; but whatever the means he had used, the desired result, at least, had been achieved; for the little creature had been reduced to a stony docility, and, except for an occasional snuffle and an indescribable choking in her throat, she made no sign of rebellion when the Beautiful Man proposed that we should lose no further time in taking her aboard the ship. Between us we lifted the camphor-wood chest and set out together for the pier, Bo bringing up the rear with the monkey and the parrot and a roll of sleeping-mats. If ever I felt a fool and a brute, it was on this melancholy march to the lagoon, and I tingled to the soles of my feet with a sense of my humiliation. My only comfort, besides the support of an agitated conscience, was the intense plainness of my prisoner, whose face, I assured myself, betrayed the singleness and honesty of my intentions.

We put the chest in the corner of the trade-room, and made a little nest for Bo among the mats she had brought with her; and leaving her to tidy up the monkey with my hair-brush, the Beautiful Man and I retreated to the cabin to conclude the terms of our contract. To my surprise, he handed me a sheet of paper, made out in all appearance like any bill for merchandise, and asked me, with the most brazen assurance, to kindly settle it at my convenience. This was what I read:

W. J. Logan, Dr., to Henery Hinton:
1 Young Woman, cut price	$25.00
1 Superior Congo Monkey	7.50
1 Choice Imported Parrot	4.50
1 Chest Fancy Female Wearing Apparel	40.00
7 Extra-size Special Kingsmill Mats	5.00
5 lbs. Best Assorted Beads	2.50
	———
Total	$84.50

I burst out into a roar of laughter, and without any waste of words I told the Beautiful Man that he might carry the lady ashore again and peddle her to some bigger fool than I, for I was clean sick of him and her and the whole business, and though I still felt bound to give the twenty-five dollars I had originally promised, he might go and whistle for one cent more. Then, boiling over at the thought of his greed and heartlessness, I let out at him without restraint, he trying to stem the tide with “Oh, I s’y!” and “My word, Mr. Logan, sir!” until at last I had to pause for mere lack of breath and expletives. He took this opportunity to enter into a prolonged explanation, quavering for my pardon at every second word, while he expatiated on the value of that monkey and the parrot’s really phenomenal knowledge of the Pingalap language. He was willing, seeing that I took the matter in such a w’y, to pass over the girl’s duds (about which there might be some question) and even give w’y about the mats, w’ich, as Gord saw him, had cost eight dollars, Chile money, as he could prove by Captain Coffin of the Cape Horn Pigeon, now w’aling in the Arctic Seas; but as to the parrot and the monkey, he appealed to me, as between man and man, to settle for them out of hand, as they were truly and absolutely his own, and could not be expected to be lumped in with the price of the girl. I grew so sick of the fellow and his whining importunity that I counted out thirty-seven dollars from my bag, and told him to take or leave them and give me a clean receipt. This he did with the greatest good humour, having the audacity to shake my hand at parting, and make a little speech wishing me all manner of prosperity and success.

I noticed, however, that he did not return to the trade-room, but sneaked off the ship without seeing Bo again, and kept well out of sight on shore until the actual moment of our sailing. When I went in to pay a sort of duty call on my prisoner, I found her huddled up on the mats and to all appearance fast asleep; and I was not a little disappointed to find that she had not escaped in the bustle of our departure. Now that I was her master in good earnest and irrevocably bound to her for better or worse, I became a prey to the most dismal misgivings, and cursed the ill-judged benevolence that had led me into such a mess. And as for bread, the very sight of it was enough to plunge me into gloom, and when we sat down that day to lunch I asked the steward, as a favour, to allow me seamen’s biscuit in its stead.

Every few hours I carried food to Bo and tried to make her sit up and eat; but, except for a little water, she permitted nothing to pass her lips, but lay limp and apathetic on the square of matting. The monkey and parrot showed more appetite, and gobbled up whole platefuls of soup and stew and preserved fruit, which at first I left on the floor in the hope that their mistress might be the less shy when my back was turned. Finally I decided to remove the pets altogether, for they were intolerably dirty in their habits, and I could not but think that Bo would be better off without a frowsy parrot roosting in her hair and a monkey biting her in play, especially as she was in the throes of a deathly seasickness and powerless to protect herself. Getting the parrot on deck was a comparatively simple matter, though he squawked a good deal and talked loudly in the Pingalap language. At last I stowed him safely away in a chicken-coop, where I was glad to see him well trounced by some enormous fowls with feathered trousers down their legs. But the monkey was not so lightly ravished from his mistress. He was as strong as a man and extraordinarily vicious; in ten steps I got ten bites, and came on deck with my pyjamas in blood and rags, he screeching like a thousand devils and clawing the air with fury. For the promise of a dollar I managed to unload him on old Louey, one of the sailors of the ship, who volunteered to make a muzzle for the brute, and tie him up until it was ready. But as I was still panting with my exertions, and cursing the foolishness that had ever led me into such a scrape, I heard from behind me a kind of heartbroken wail, and turned to see Bo emerging from the trade-room door. I am ashamed to say I trembled at the sight of her, for I recalled in a flash what the Beautiful Man had said of her temper when aroused, and I thought I should die of mortification were she to attack me now. But, fortunately, such was not her intention, though her face was overcast with reproach and indignation as she unsteadily stepped past me to the coop, where, with a cry, she threw open the door and clasped the parrot in her arms. Even as she did so, the trousered fowls themselves determined to make a break for liberty, and finding the barrier removed, they tumbled out in short order; and the ship happening at that moment to dip to leeward, two of them sailed unhesitatingly overboard and dropped in the white water astern. Subsequently I had the pleasure of paying Captain Mins five dollars for the pair. Bo next started for the monkey, which she took from old Louey’s unresisting hands, and almost cried over it as she unbound the line that held him. Having thus rescued both her pets, she retreated dizzily to the shelter of the trade-room, where I found her, half an hour later, lying in agony on the floor.

We were three days running down to Yap, and arrived there late one afternoon just at the fall of dusk. On going ashore, I had the good fortune to secure a little house which happened to be lying vacant through the death of its last tenant; who, on the principle, I suppose, of letting the tree lie where it falls, had been buried within six feet of my front verandah. The following morning I moved my things into my new quarters, Bo following me obediently ashore in the ship’s boat, seated on the top of her chest. I soon got the trade-room into shape for my work, unpacking my note-books, my little library, my collector guns, my photographic and other apparatus, as well as my big compound microscope with which I meant to perform scientific wonders in a part of the world so remote and so little known. Busy in these preparations, I managed to forget my slave and enjoy a few hours’ unalloyed pleasure. I was brought back to earth, however, by the sound of her sobbing in the next room, where I rushed in to find her weeping on her mats, with her face turned to the wall. I made what shift I could to comfort her, talking to her as I might to a frightened dog, though she paid no more attention to me than she did to the parrot, who had raised its voice in an unending scream. At last, in despair, and at my wits’ end to know what else to do, I put ten dollars in her little claw, and tried to tell her that it was her first month’s wages in advance. This form of consolation, if altogether ineffective in the case of Bo herself, came in capitally to cheer the monkey, whom I heard slinging the money out of the window, a dollar at a time, to the great gratification of a crowd of natives outside.

All that day and all the following night Bo lay supinely on the mats, and hardly deigned to touch more than a few morsels of the food I prepared and brought her. The next morning, finding her still of the same mind, I unpacked my flour and other stores, and ordered her, in a rough voice, to get up and make bread. This she did, in a benumbed sort of fashion, dripping tears into the dough and snuffling every time I looked her way. The bread was all right when it was done, though it stuck in my throat when I reflected on the price I had paid to get it, and wondered how I was going to endure two long years of Bo’s society. After a few weeks of this sort of housekeeping I began almost to wish that I were dead, and the sight of the creature became so intolerable to me that I hated to spend an unnecessary hour within my own house. Instead of improving in health, or spirits, or in any other way, Bo grew daily thinner and more woebegone and started a hacking cough, which, she communicated, in some mysterious manner, to the monkey, so that when one was still the other was in paroxysms, giving me, between them, scarce a moment of peace or sleep. Of course I doctored them both from my medicine-chest, and got the thanks I might reasonably have expected: bites and lacerations from the monkey, and from Bo that expression of hers that seemed to say, “Good God! what are you going to do to me now?” I found it too great a strain to persevere with the bread-making, and soon gave up all thought of turning her to any kind of practical account; for what with her tears, her cough, and her passive resistance to doing anything at all, save to titivate the monkey with my comb and brush and wash him with my sponge, I would rather have lived on squid and cocoanuts than anything of her making. Besides, she really seemed to be threatened with galloping consumption; for in addition to her cough, which grew constantly worse, she had other symptoms which alarmed me. Among my stores were a dozen tins of some mushy invalid food,—“Imperial something,” it was called,—with which I manufactured daily messes for my patient, of the consistency (and flavour) of white paint. If she at least failed to thrive on this, it was otherwise with the monkey and the parrot, who fought over her prostrate body for the stuff, and the former would snatch the cup from his mistress’s very mouth.

I think I could have borne up better under my misfortunes had I not suffered so much from loneliness in that far-off place; for, with the exception of half a dozen sottish traders, and a missionary and his wife named Small, there was not another white on the island to keep me company. The Smalls lived in snug missionary comfort at the other end of the bay, with half a dozen converts to do their work and attend to a nestful of young Smalls; and though they had parted, as it seemed to me, with all the principles of Christianity, they still retained enough religious prejudice to receive me (when I once ventured to make a formal call on them) with the most undisguised rudeness and hostility. Small gave me to understand that I was a sort of moral monster who, with gold and for my own wicked purpose, had parted a wife from her husband. It appeared, according to Mr. Small, that I had blasted two fair young lives, as well as condemned my own soul to everlasting perdition; and he promised the active interference of the next man-of-war. On my attempting to make my position in the matter a little clearer, the reverend gentleman began to take such an offensive tone that it was all I could do to leave his house without giving freer vent to my indignation than words alone sufficed. Indeed, I was angry enough to have kicked him down his own missionary steps, and made him in good earnest the ill-used martyr he pretended to be in his reports home.

With the traders I fared even worse, for the discreditable reports about me had become so well established that I was exposed by them to constant jokes and innuendoes, as well as to a friendliness that was more distasteful than the missionary’s pronounced ill will. It was spread about the beach, and carried thence, I suppose, to every corner of the group, that Bo was a half-white of exquisite beauty, for whose possession I had paid her husband a sum to stagger the imagination, and that, unable to repel my loathsome embraces, she was now taking refuge in a premature death.

I doubt whether there was in the wide Pacific a man so depressed, so absolutely crushed and miserable, as I was during the course of those terrible days on Yap. Had it not been for the shame of the thing, I believe I would have sailed away on the first ship that offered, whatever the port to which she was bound, and would have quitted my unhappy prisoner at any hazard. But, to do me justice, I was incapable of treating any woman so badly, particularly such a sick and helpless creature as Bo was fast becoming. I had now begun, besides, to suspect another name for her complaint, and to see before me a situation more ambiguous and mortifying than any of which I had dreamed. My household was threatened with the advent of another member!

The idea of Bo and I both leaving together never struck my mind until the opportune arrival of the Fleur de Lys, bound for Ruk, suddenly turned my thoughts in a new direction. With feverish haste I calculated the course of the Ransom, the barque in which the Beautiful Man had been promised his passage to Sydney, and it seemed that with any kind of luck I might manage to intercept her in the Fleur de Lys by a good three days. Of course I knew a sailing-ship was ill to count upon, and that a favourable slant might bring her in a week before me or delay her for an indefinite time beyond the date of my arrival; but the chance seemed too good a one to be thrown away, and I lost no time in making my arrangements with Captain Brice of the schooner. When I explained the matter to Bo with signs that she could not misunderstand, she became instantly galvanised into a new creature, and ate a two-pound tin of beef on the strength of the good news.

I never grudged a penny of what it cost me to leave Yap, though I was stuck for three months’ rent by the cormorant who said he owned my house, besides having to pay an extortionate sum to Captain Brice for our joint passage. But what was mere money in comparison to the liberty I saw before me—that life of blissful independence in which there should be no Bo, no dark shadow across my lonely hearth, no sleepless nights and apprehensive days, no monkey, no parrot! I trod the deck of the Fleur de Lys with a light step, and I think Bo and I began to understand each other for the first time. For once she even smiled at me, and insisted on my accepting a beadwork necktie she had embroidered for the monkey. If there was a worm in the bud, a perpetual and benumbing sense of uneasiness that never left me, it was the thought that the Beautiful Man might have slipped away before us; and I never looked over our foaming bows but I wondered whether the Ransom was not as briskly ploughing her way to Sydney, leaving me to face an unspeakable disaster on the shores of Ruk. But it was impossible to be long despondent in that pleasant air, with our little vessel heeling over to the trades and the water gurgling musically beneath our keel. Indeed, I felt my heart grow lighter with every stroke of the bell, with every twist of the patent log; and each day, when our position was pricked out on the chart, I felt a sense of fresh elation as the crosses grew towards Ruk. Nor was Bo a whit behind me in her cheerfulness, for she, too, livened up in the most wonderful manner, playing checkers with the captain, exercising her pets on the open deck, and romping for an hour at a stretch with the kanaka cabin-boy.

By the time we had raised the white beaches of our port, the whole ship’s company, from the captain to the cook, were in the secret of our race, and as eager as I was myself to forestall the Ransom in the lagoon. When we entered the passage and opened out the head-station beyond, there was a regular cheer at the sight of our quest at anchor; for it was by so narrow a margin that I had cut off the Beautiful Man’s retreat, and intercepted the vessel that was to carry him away. Coming up under the Ransom, we made a mooring off her quarter; and among the faces that lined up to stare at us from her decks, I had the satisfaction of recognising the frizzled red beard of our departing friend. On perceiving us, he waved his hand in the jauntiest manner, and replied to Bo’s screams of affection by some words in Pingalap which effectually shut up that little person. She was still crying when we bundled her into the boat, bag and baggage, monkey, parrot, and camphor-wood chest; and pulling over to the barque, we deposited her, with all her possessions, on the disordered quarter-deck of the Ransom. The Beautiful Man sauntered up to us with an affectation of airy indifference, and languidly taking the pipe from his mouth, he had the effrontery to ask me if I, too, were bound for Sydney.

Resisting my first impulse to kick him, I controlled myself sufficiently to say that I was not going to Sydney—telling him at the same time that I washed my hands of Bo, whom I had now the satisfaction of returning to him.

“My word!” he said, “you don’t think I’m going to tyke her?”

“That’s your affair,” said I, moving off.

“Oh, I s’y!” he cried in consternation, attempting, as he spoke, to lay a detaining hand on my sleeve. But I jerked it off, and stopping suddenly in my walk towards the gangway, I gave him such a look that he turned pale and shrank back from me.

“Oh, I s’y!” he faltered, and allowed me to descend in quiet to my boat.

Most of that afternoon I spent in the schooner’s cabin, covertly watching Bo from a port-hole. For hours she remained where I had left her on the quarter-deck, seated imperturbably on her chest, the monkey and parrot on either hand. As for the Beautiful Man, he, like myself, had also disappeared from view, and was doubtless watching the situation from some secure hiding-hole of his own. Bo was again and again accosted by the officers of the ship, who alternately cajoled and threatened her in their fruitless attempts to get her off the vessel. But nothing was achieved until five o’clock, when the captain came off from the station, and, in an off-with-his-head style, commanded the presence of the Beautiful Man. I was too far off, of course, to hear one word that passed between them, but the pantomime needed no explanation, as Hinton cringed and the captain fumed, while Bo looked on like a graven image in a joss-house. In the end Bo was removed bodily from the ship to the shore, and landed, with her things, on the beach, where, until night fell and closed round her, I could see her still roosting on her box. Seriously alarmed, I began to experience the most disquieting fears for the result, especially as I could perceive the Beautiful Man lounging serenely about the barque’s deck, smoking a cigar and spitting light-heartedly over her side. It made me more than uneasy to see him afloat and her ashore; and the barque’s loosened sail lying ready to open to the breeze warned me there was little time to lose. It was some relief to my mind to learn from Captain Brice that the barque was not due to sail before the morrow noon; but even this short respite served to quicken my apprehension when I reflected on my utter powerlessness to interfere. I passed a restless night, revolving a thousand plans to hinder the Beautiful Man’s departure, and rose at dawn in a state of desperation.

The first thing I saw, on going to the galley for my morning cup of coffee, was poor Bo planted on the beach, where, as far as I could see, she must have passed the night, sitting with unshaken determination on her camphor-wood chest. Taking the schooner’s dinghy, I pulled myself over to the Ransom, bent on a fresh scheme to retrieve the situation. The first person I ran across on board was the Beautiful Man himself, who hailed me with the greatest good humour, and asked what the devil had brought me there so early.

“To put you off this ship,” I replied. “When the captain has heard my story, I don’t think you will ever see Sydney, Mr. Beautiful Man.”

“W’y, w’at’s this you have against me?” he asked, with a very creditable show of astonishment.

I pointed to the melancholy spectre on the beach.

“W’at of it?” he said. “She ain’t mine: she’s yours.”

“You wait till I see the captain!” I retorted.

“A fat lot he’ll care,” said Hinton. “The fack is, as between man and man, I don’t mind telling you he’d shake me if he dared, the old hunks; but I’ve got an order for my passage from the owner, and it will be worth his job for him to disregard it. My word! I thought he was going to bounce me last night, for he was tearing up and down here like a royal Bengal tiger in a cage of blue fire, giving me w’at he called a piece of his mind. A dirty low mind it was, too, and I don’t mind who hears me say it. But I stood on my order. I said, ‘Here it is,’ I said, ‘and I beg to inform you that I’m going to syle in this ship to Sydney. Put me ashore if you dare,’ I said.”

At this moment the captain came on deck. He gave a stiff nod in reply to my salutation, and marched past the Beautiful Man without so much as a look.

“That’s a nice sight, sir,” I said, pointing in the direction of Bo.

He gave a snort and muttered something below his breath.

“Is his order good?” I asked.

“Yes, sir,” he replied; “his order is good.”

“See here, Hinton,” I said, “wouldn’t you care to sell it?”

“W’y, w’at are you driving at?” he returned.

“If you’ll take her back,” I said, indicating Bo in the distance, “I’ll buy your passage for what it’s worth.”

“I don’t know as I’d care to sell,” he returned; “leastw’ys, at any figger you’d care to nyme.”

“What would you care to nyme?” I repeated after him, in involuntary mimicry of his whine.

“One hundred dollars,” he replied.

“And for one hundred dollars you will surrender your passage and go back to the girl,” I demanded, “and swear never to leave her again, unless it is on her own island and among her own relations?”

“Oh, come off!” he exclaimed. “Ain’t you blooming well deserting her yourself?”

“If you are not careful I will punch your head,” I said.

“Don’t mind me, sir,” said the captain, significantly, turning an enormous back upon us.

“Is it business you’re talking, or fight?” inquired the Beautiful Man. “You sort of mix a feller up.”

“I tell you I’ll pay you one hundred dollars on those terms,” I said.

“Hand them along, then,” said Hinton. “I tyke you.”

Unbuckling the money-belt I wore round my waist, I called upon the captain to witness the proceedings, and counted out one hundred dollars in gold. Without a word the Beautiful Man resigned his order into my hands and tied up the money in the corner of a dirty handkerchief, looking at me the while with something almost like compunction.

“Would you mind accepting this red pearl?” he said, producing a trumpery pill of a thing that was worth perhaps a dollar. “You might value it for old syke’s syke.”

I was rather disarmed by this gift and took it with a smile, putting in another good word for Bo.

“Might I ask what you are going to do now?” asked the captain, addressing Hinton in a tone that bordered on ferocity.

“W’y, I was just thinking of st’ying to breakfast, sir,” quavered the little man, “and then toddle ashore to my happy home.”

“Get off my ship!” roared the captain. “Get off my ship, you red-headed beach-comber and pirate. Get off before you are kicked off!”

Hinton bolted like a rabbit for the rail, and almost before we could realise what he was about, we saw him leap feet foremost into the lagoon. Blowing and cursing, he rose to the surface, and informed the captain he should hold him personally responsible for his bag, which, it seems, had been left in one of the cabins below.

“Your bag!” cried the captain, going to the open skylight and thundering out: “Steward, bring up that beach-comber’s bag!”

The boy came running up with the valise I remembered so well; it looked even more dilapidated than before, for the thing was patched with canvas in a dozen places, and was wound round and round with a kind of cocoanut string. The captain lifted it in his brawny arms, and aiming it at the Beautiful Man’s head, let it fly straight at him. It just missed Hinton by an inch, and splashed water all over him as he grasped it to his breast. Turning on his back and dragging the spongy thing along with him, as one might the body of a drowning person, he set off most unconcernedly for the shore. In this fashion we saw him strike the beach, and rise up at last with the bag in his hand, not a dozen paces from where Bo was still encamped. We were, unfortunately, at too great a distance to watch their faces or to observe narrowly the greeting that must have passed between them; but the meeting was to all appearance not unfriendly, and I had the satisfaction of seeing them move off together in the direction of the boat-house, lugging the chest and bag between them, as though they were about to resume housekeeping in the old place.

I spent the rest of the morning writing letters to go by the Ransom, which sailed away at noon, homeward bound. I had no heart to go ashore again that day, for the Bo affair stuck in my throat, and the loss of so much money, not to speak of time, made me feel seriously crippled in the plans I had laid out for my future work. I was undecided, besides, whether to remain at Ruk and wait for another ship to the westward, or to stand by the schooner in her cruise through the Kingsmills, remaining over, perhaps, at Butaritari, or at one of the islands towards the south. On talking over the matter with the captain, I found his feelings so far changed towards me that he was eager now to give me a passage at any price; for, as he told me, he had taken a genuine liking to my company, and was desirous of having another face at his lonely table. Accordingly we patched up the matter to our mutual satisfaction, and arranged to sail the next day when the tide turned at ten.

Shortly before this hour, I remembered some improvised tide-gauges I had set on the weather side of the island, and I snatched an opportunity to see them on the very eve, as it was, of the schooner’s sailing. It seemed, however, that I had been too late in going, for not one of them could I find, though I searched up and down the beach for as long a time as I dared to stay.

I was returning leisurely back across the island, when a turn of the path brought me face to face with the Beautiful Man himself, carrying some kind of fish-trap in his hand. I would have walked silently past him, for the very sight of the creature now turned my stomach, had he not, in what proved an evil moment for himself, detained me as I was passing.

“My word!” he said, “that girl is regularly gone on you, she is! W’y, last night, when I told her of the hundred dollars, she was that put out that I heard the teeth snap in her head like that, and I thought she was going to do for me sure, while I lit out in the dark and looked for a club. She’s put by a little present for you before you go,—one of them pearl-shell bonito-hooks, and a string of the last monkey’s teeth,—and she asked me to say she hoped you wouldn’t forget her.”

“I won’t forget her,” I answered pretty quietly. “Nor you either, you little cur.”

“Cur!” he repeated, edging away from me.

I don’t know what possessed me, but the memory of my wrongs, wasted money, lost time, the man’s egregious cynicism and selfishness, suddenly set my long-tried temper flaming, and almost before I knew what I was doing, I had the creature by the throat and was pounding him with all my force against a tree. I was twice his size and twice his strength, but I fought him regardless of all the decencies of personal combat in a lawless and primeval manner, even as one of our hairy ancestors might have revenged himself (after extraordinary provocation) upon another. I shook and kicked him, and I pulled out whole handfuls of frowsy red hair and whisker, and when at last he lay limp before me in the dirt, whimpering aloud for mercy, I beat him for ten minutes with a cocoanut branch that happened, by the best of fortunes, to be at hand. When I at length desisted, it was from no sense of pity for him, but rather in concern for myself and my interrupted voyage. I did turn him over once or twice to assure myself that none of his bones were broken, and that my punishment had not gone too far; and as I did so, he executed some hollow groans, and went through with an admirable stage-play of impending dissolution. I could plainly see that he was shamming, and had an eye to damages and financial consolation, as well as the obvious intention of wringing my bosom with remorse. I left him sitting up in the path, rubbing his fiery curls and surveying the cocoanut branch with which he had made such a painful acquaintance, a figure so mournful, changed, and dejected that Pingalap would scarce have known him for her Beautiful Man.

As I was hurrying down to the beach, I saw the schooner getting under way, and heard the boat’s crew imperiously calling out to me to hasten. I broke into a run, and was almost at the water’s edge when I turned to find Bo panting at my side. I stopped to see what she wanted, and when she forced a little parcel into my pocket I suddenly remembered the present of which Hinton had spoken.

“Good-bye, Bo,” I cried, wringing her little fist in mine. “Many thanks for the fish-hook, which I shall always keep in memory of our travels.”

All the way out to the schooner I seemed to feel the package growing heavier and heavier in my pyjama pocket, and the suspicion more than once crossed my mind that it was no fish-hook at all. Feeling loath to determine the matter before the men, who must needs have seen and wondered at the transaction from the boat, I kept down my curiosity until I could satisfy it more privately on board. Then, as the captain and I were watching the extraordinary antics of the Beautiful Man (who had rushed down to the beach and thrown himself into a native canoe, in the impossible hope of overtaking us, alternately paddling and shaking his fist demoniacally in the air), I drew out the package and cut it open with my knife. In a neat little beadwork bag (which still conserved a lurking scent of monkey), and carefully done up in fibre, like a jewel in cotton wool, I found a shining treasure of gold and silver coin.

One hundred and thirty-seven dollars!

It was Bo’s restitution.