Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas Part 10

One day I got a note from Sasa French that took me up to Malifa at a tearing run. Scanlon, the half-caste policeman, was there, and when I had listened to his story I threw my hat in the air and shouted like a boy, and Sasa and I waltzed up and down the veranda to the petrifaction of two missionary ladies who happened to be pa.s.sing in tow of some square-toes from the Home Society. Sasa and I plumped into a buggy, and with Scanlon on horseback pounding behind us we made all sail for Seumanutafa's. Bidding him follow, we then raced off to Mulinu'u, where, sure enough, we found a young man named Tautala in one of the houses, who brought out the music box and very soon satisfied me as to the truth of what Scanlon had said. Then at a slower pace, so that Tautala might keep up with us, we walked to To'oto'o's house and taxed him with the whole business!

At first he made some show of denying it, but what could he say with Scanlon and Tautala in risen witness against him? He tried to refuse to come with us (which would have spoiled everything), until Scanlon took a hand in the fray and let his imagination run riot about the law, which, as he was the official representative of it and wore a pewter star on his breast, soon settled To'oto'o's half-hearted objections. If anything else were wanted, it was the arrival at this juncture of Seumanutafa at the head of a dozen retainers, who added the finis.h.i.+ng stroke to the little resistance To'oto'o had left. Then we all started off for the Southern Cross Bakery, and, as we walked slowly and naturally, attracted a good deal of attention; and as we told every one we met where we were going to, and why, we grew and grew until, as I looked down the procession, I couldn't see the end of it. The Chief Justice was sucked in. Likewise the President. Marquardt, the chief of police, joined us; Haggard, the land commissioner; some Mormon missionaries; two lay brothers from the school; a lot of pa.s.sengers from the mail boat, with handkerchiefs stuck into their sweaty collars; Captain Hufnagel on horseback, with a small army of Guadalcanaar laborers; half the synod of the Wesleyan church in white _lavalavas_ and hymn-books; a picnic party that had just returned (not wholly sober) from the Papase'ea; blue-jackets from the _Sperber_; blue-jackets from the _Walleroo_; three survivors of the British bark _Windsor Castle_, burned at sea; a German scientist in Jaeger costume, with blue spectacles and a b.u.t.terfly net; six whole boatloads of an _aumoenga_ party from Manu'a; a lot of political prisoners on parole; two lepers, and Charley Taylor!

It was well we had brought Marquardt with us, for he and his police caught the humor of the thing, and on reaching the bakery formed us up in a great hollow square with one side blank for Silver Tongue, who stood and gazed at us transfixed from the shade of his veranda. Then Seumanutafa, Sasa, Scanlon, Tautala, To'oto'o, and I broke ranks and marched up to him.

"Old man," I said, "if you were to think a year you'd never guess what brought us here to-day!"

"It's O's head again," he said, grinding his teeth and casting a vitriolic glance at To'oto'o, "and if there was any law or order in this G.o.dforsaken land"--he looked daggers at the Chief Justice as he said this--"that fellar would have got short jift for murdering my fader-in-law's aunt's son!"

"He didn't murder him," I said.

Silver Tongue's jaw fell. He looked at us quite overcome. For a minute he couldn't say a word.

"Oh, but he deed!" he said at last.

"It was Tautala that killed him," I said, indicating the young man we had brought from Mulinu'u, "and it turns out he sold your relation's head to To'oto'o for seven dollars and a music box." At this, smiling from ear to ear, Tautala held up the music box to public view, and would have set it going had not something fortunately caught in the works.

"It's a lie!" gasped Silver Tongue. "It's a lie!"

"Scanlon himself was at the battle," I went on, "and he saw the whole thing and was a witness to Tautala getting the seven dollars, and he made To'oto'o pony up four dollars more as the price of his own secrecy."

"Four dollars," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Scanlon. "That's right, Captain Brans...o...b...

Four dollars!"

"So, if you are angry with anybody," I said, "you ought to be angry with Tautala. All To'oto'o did was to buy a little cheap notoriety for eleven dollars and a music box."

I never saw a man so stung in all my life as Oppenstedt. The eyes seemed to start from his head, and he glared at To'oto'o as though he could have strangled him. Tautala was quite forgotten in the intensity of his indignation toward Rosalie's uncle. You see, he had been hating To'oto'o ferociously for six months, and couldn't switch off at a moment's notice on an absolute stranger like Tautala. Besides, his hatred for To'oto'o had become a kind of monomania with him, and now here I was telling him what a fool he had made of himself, and proving it with two witnesses and a music box. No wonder that he was staggered.

"Now, old fellow," I said, "we'll call bygones bygones, and maybe you'll let us see a little more of you than we've been doing lately."

"You mean Rosalie, of gourse," he said, snapping the words like a mad dog.

"Yes, Rosalie," I said.

"Gaptain Brans...o...b..," he said, his face convulsed with pa.s.sion, "that gossumate liar and hybocrite has made such a thing impossible. Far rader would I lay me in the grave--far rader would I have wild horses on me trample--than that I should indermarry with a family and bossibly betaint my innocent kinder with the plood of so shogging and unprincibled a liar. A man so lost to shame, so beplunged in cowardice and deceit that he couldn't his own heads cut off, but must buy dem of others, and faunt himself a hero while honest worth ba.s.sed unnoticed and bushed aside."

"It was honest worth that chopped off the head of your father-in-law's aunt's son!" I said.

"Gaptain," he returned, "there are oggasions when in condrast to a liar--to a golossal liar--to one who has made a peeziness of systematic deception--a murderer is a shentlemans!"

"Oh, you villain baker!" cried Sasa, joining in. "You make _tongafiti_.

You never want marry the girl at all. All the time you say something different. Oh, you bad mans, you break girls' hearts--and serve you right somebody cut your head off!"

"Wish they would," I said, out of all patience with the fellow. "First he can't marry Rosalie because her uncle's a murderer. Now he can't marry her because her uncle's a liar. Disprove that, and he'd dig up some fresh objection!"

"I lofe her! I lofe her!" protested Silver Tongue.

"Come, come," I said, "you aren't marrying the girl's adopted uncle."

"A traidor to my family? No, gaptain, dat is what I can never be," said Silver Tongue.

"Traitor--nothing!" I said.

"Oh, the silly baker!" said Sasa.

"He speaks like a delirious person," said Seumanutafa.

"Now about that ham," said the Chief Justice, belligerently coming forward and speaking in rich Swedish accents, "when I send my servant for a ham, Mr. Oppenstedt, I want a good ham--not a great, coa.r.s.e, fat, stinking lump of dog meat----"

"Let's go," I said to Sasa; "Captain Morse is holding back the _Alameda_ for a talk, and I know there's an iced bucket of something in the corner of his cabin."

"Wish the dear old captain would land and punch his head off!" said Sasa vindictively.

"Whose head?" I asked.

"Silver Tongue's," she returned.

Sasa had always plagued me to get up a moonlight sailing party on the _Nukanono_, a little fifteen-ton schooner of mine that plied about the Group. From one reason and another the thing had never come off, though we had talked and arranged it all time and time again. Now that I had remasted her and overhauled her copper and painted her inside and out, the subject had bobbed up again; and as I couldn't make any objection, and as the moon for the first time in seven years had happened to be full at the same moment when the vessel happened to be free, Sasa informed me (in the autocratic manner of lovely woman dealing with an old sea horse) that the invitations were out, the music engaged, and that my part was to plank down fifty dollars, keep my mouth shut, and do what I was told.

I perceived from the beginning that there was something queer about the trip, for Sasa, usually so communicative, could scarcely be induced to speak of it at all; and then when she did it was with such a parade of mystery and reserve that I felt myself completely baffled. However, like the jossers in the poem, it wasn't for me to reason why, and so I obediently ran about the beach, did what I was bidden, and discreetly asked no questions. I confess, though, that on the day itself my curiosity began to reach the breaking point, when I was told, with gentle impressiveness, that I was to remain in my house till the minute of nine forty-five, pull off quietly to the _Nukanono_, board her by the fore chains, and crouch there in the bow till I was told to get up!

It was a glorious moonlight night as I got into Joe's boat and saw the _Nukanono_ across the bay, her loosened sails flapping in the first faint breath of the land breeze, and her booms sparkling from end to end with Chinese lanterns. The water was like black gla.s.s, the outer reefs were silent, and the downpouring air from the mountains was fragrant with _moso'oi_, and so warm and scented against the cheek that I doubt not but what you could have smelled Upolu ninety miles to leeward. As we drew nearer, the sound of girls' laughter, the tuning of musical instruments, the hum and talk and gayety of a large company, floated over to us from the schooner's deck, wonderfully mellowed by the intervening water and (as it seemed to me) softened into a sort of harmony with the night itself.

However, I did not allow these reflections to put me off my duty or make me forgetful of the strict commands I had previously received from Sasa.

I came up softly under the bow of the _Nukanono_, dismissed Joe in a whisper, and climbed silently to my appointed station. I had not been there a minute when I felt Sasa's hand on my shoulder and heard her say softly in my ear, "_Malie_," which in Samoan means good or well done.

Then she slipped away, and I heard her with sweet imperiousness ordering about the crew and bidding them slip the moorings. We had hardly got steerage-way when I heard a commotion aft, a choking, angry voice, that sounded through the hubbub like Silver Tongue's, a quick, fierce, violent struggle, and then suddenly the companion hatch went shut with a bang. Even as it did so the fore-hatch followed with a crash, and everybody began to cheer. From below there rose the sound of thumping, smothered Teutonic protests, and a long, poignant, and unmistakably feminine wail.

"All finish, captain," said Sasa, coming up to me cheerfully.

"Would you mind telling me what it's all about?" I asked.

"Just a little _tongafiti_ to bring loving hearts together," said Sasa.

"They threw Silver Tongue down the after hatchway, while me and the girls we pushed Rosalie down the forehold. There they are, all alone in the dark, with five hours to make it up!"

I could not help laughing at Sasa's plan, especially when under my feet I began to hear more frenzied thumping and more feminine wails. Then I recollected there wasn't five feet of headroom below, and that the place, even with the hatches off, was hot enough to boil water in.

"They'll die down there, Sasa," I said.

"No fear," said Sasa. "Rosalie is half Samoa, and as for Silver Tongue--if he get roast like his own bread n.o.body care a banana."

"But, Sasa--" I protested.

"Now you go flirt with some my girls," she said, "and don't bother your old head about nothings!"

"But, my dear girl--" I protested.