Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas Part 13

Was that all? Well, for a time it was, Coe slipping out at dawn on the ebb with a cargo of Afiola rapscallions he was to drop, one here, one there, all around the Group, we having no further use for them in Puna Punou.

The measles struck us shortly afterwards in a Tahiti bark, and it carried off a sight of people, Afiola included, who was in a sort of armed hiding on the other side of the island. Tweedie, too, who had always been a complaining whelp, started up a cough about this time, and died. Of course, this wasn't right off, but spread over a matter of eighteen months or more, Coe coming and going regular in the _Peep o'

Day_, and Mrs. Tweedie more blooming than ever.

Coe turned up from Sydney, where he had gone for a general refitting and overhaul, just as Mrs. Tweedie was taking her pa.s.sage in the _Olive Branch_, missionary auxiliary barkentine for Honolulu. None of the saints would have a word to say to him, calling him "the man of blood,"

and ordering him off the s.h.i.+p, as he stood his ground and wouldn't budge even when the anchor was apeak and the barkentine under steerage way.

But he kept singing out for her while they tried to hustle him over the side and into his boat, and the more they hustled the louder he shouted, "Mrs. Tweedie! Mrs. Tweedie!" till at last she heard him in her cabin below, and came running up, smiling, and arranging her hair with her hands.

It was a tight place for Coe, having to do his courting while they were moving him on like the police; but, for all that, when he went down the ladder it was with Mrs. Tweedie with him, and they pulled ash.o.r.e and were married by the Kanaka pastor, and went a-honeymooning in the _Peep o' Day_, bringing up in Papiete three weeks later, to buy her some clothes, for every st.i.tch to her name was beating up to Honolulu in the _Olive Branch_.

MR. BOB

Far away in the western Pacific, in that labyrinth of coral reefs and low, palm-rimmed isles floating between the blue of heaven and the deeper blue of sea, known to the pajama-clad, ear-ringed traders as "the Group," and to the outer world as Micronesia--here, one burning morning there arrived a visitor from "Home," who descended, not from some tubby bark or slant-masted schooner, but G.o.dlike from the glorious stars themselves--Christmas Day!

The Rev. Walter Kirke looked out moodily from beneath the eaves of his basket-work house, and his heart sank as he gazed across the sweltering strip of water, twenty miles wide, that divided the island of Apiang from its neighbor, Tarawa. His brother in the Lord across the strait, the perpetually unfortunate t.i.tcombe (the Rev. J. B. Tracy t.i.tcombe, M.A., Cam.), had sent in a proa with a message of such urgency and need that delay, let alone refusal, was utterly out of the question.

"The king has broken all his promises," wrote t.i.tcombe, in a hand illegible from distress and agitation. "He threatens to burn the new church, flog the members, and spear personally the leading lights of our infant congregation. Yesterday, on my remonstrating with him, he gave me twenty-four hours to leave the island, calling me at the same time a sting ray, a detached jellyfish--a white squid, together with some other local expressions of a highly wounding and contemptuous nature. The tiny fold is terrorized, and Thomas Najibika, my deacon and right-hand man, is in hourly apprehension of a ma.s.sacre. My wife and little Kenneth are down with fever, and this, together with my halting knowledge of the native language, has put me at such a disadvantage that I have no alternative but to appeal to you. For Heaven's sake, please come instantly and exert yourself on my behalf, or else we may lose Tarawa for good, and put back the good work by a dozen years."

"We'll have to go, dear," said Kirke to his pretty wife.

"Yes, we'll have to go," she a.s.sented sadly.

She could not help feeling cross with the t.i.tcombes for always muddling things--a little unjustly, perhaps--for her own missionary path had ever been so easy and untroubled. Mrs. Kirke was a woman of marked beauty, whose sweet imperiousness, sympathy, humor, and tact made her the adored of the islanders. She not only spoke native well, but with a zest and sparkle, a silver ripple of irony, ridicule, and good-fellows.h.i.+p that carried everything before it. No kings ever bothered Mrs. Kirke. Even the redoubtable Tembinok, with forty boats full of armed savages, had been stemmed in his Napoleonic career and turned back by her from his projected invasion of Apiang--presenting the missionary's wife, on his departure, with a gold-inlaid Winchester that was the apple of his eye.

"I shall make Karaitch smart for this!" she said vindictively. "I sha'n't let him off with less than twenty tons of copra for my girls'

school; and he'll have to apologize, too, and swear on a shark's head to behave for a year."

"We can't all have such intrepid little wives," said Kirke, putting his arm fondly about her. Experience had shown him that in native questions she was always as good as her word, and it was with a kind of proud humility he conceded her the place he was so much less able himself to fill. He had not the faintest apprehensions about the Tarawa matter. Ada would bring the king to heel in fifteen minutes, and in twenty there would be the dawn of a new peace, with stately apologies, gifts of turtle and bonito hooks, endless and troublesomely idiomatic compliments, and incidentally a little friction with the t.i.tcombes, who would certainly resent being saved so easily.

No, Kirke wasn't afraid of Karaitch. Ada would settle Karaitch out of hand. What he dreaded was that twenty miles of water under the noonday sun, and the problem of Daisy--Daisy, their little girl of eight, who was playing so contentedly on the floor with the presents Santa Claus had just brought her.

"Oh, Walter, I can't let Daisy go again!" cried Mrs. Kirke. "Last time she nearly died in the boat, and you know she wasn't really herself for weeks and weeks afterwards."

Daisy heard her name being spoken, and looked up. Her sleek little head and round brown eyes gave her the look of a baby seal. Such a happy baby seal that morning, with a five-s.h.i.+lling magic lantern, twelve biblical slides, a dolly that could squeak in the most lifelike manner, and a darling little chair!

"But leave her?" questioned Kirke, with a hopeless gesture of his hand.

"And that with the island full of mutineers, and Heaven only knows to-day what deviltry and carousing?"

Mrs. Kirke thought awhile.

"Twenty miles over there--three hours," she said at last; "an hour to straighten out the king--four hours; three back, makes seven. That means being home by sundown. We can trust Nantok all right to take good care of her, and then I'll get Peter to send down an armed guard."

Kirke acquiesced in silence. He was a tall, thin man, not over-clever, whose fervent Christianity was strangely at variance with a const.i.tutional inclination to see the darker side of things. He distrusted Nantok, distrusted the king's guard, felt a profound apprehension of that jeering, boisterous mob of sailors, who pigged together in Rick's old boatshed, and were numerous enough to defy every law of the island. It was terrible to him to leave his little girl in such company. Yet he recalled his last trip across the strait, when she had fainted with the heat--fainted again and again--as they had attempted, with such distress and agony, to screen her from a glare as pitiless as a furnace. He remembered dipping her, naked, all but lifeless, into the milkwarm water, till up from the transparent depths the swift, bluish glimmer of a shark warned him to s.n.a.t.c.h her in.

Remembered the hopelessness of it, the terror, the despair, he himself bending to an oar, and offering every inducement his mind could think of to incite his crew to pull their hearts out. No, all that was a nightmare to look back on--never, never to be repeated.

Daisy was called over and the situation explained to her. Like all only children, living constantly in the society of her parents, and sharing their talk and plans, she was precociously old for her age, and more serious and thoughtful than a little tot ought to be. Though her lower lip trembled, and her eyes flooded with tears, she put on a brave face to it, and protested her willingness to remain with Nantok and be a good little girl.

"And mamma and papa will be back at dusk; and if they are detained, you mustn't be the least bit worried about them; and you'll let Nantok put you to bed at eight; and if you wake up and feel frightened, you are to remember the army outside, guarding you in your sleep like a little princess!"

"And Dod, too," added Daisy piously, though inwardly pleased to have the army as well.

"Oh, my lamb!" cried Mrs. Kirke, clasping her to her breast. "It breaks mamma's heart to leave her little girl on Christmas Day!"

Altogether it was a damp moment in the Kirke family, and even the missionary's eyes were suspiciously moist as he knelt beside his wife and talked hurriedly about the magic lantern, and the dolly, and what a jolly evening they'd all have when they got back from Tarawa.

Preparations were soon made. The whaleboat was got ready, and manned by a stout crew of such recent Christians that the demons of the strait had first to be appeased by two tins of salmon and six biscuit, paid secretly in advance to Nebenua, the devil-priest. Then, when all was ready, even to the breaker of brackish water, a forty-pound tin of biscuit, two hundred fresh nuts, medicine chest, compa.s.s, and five pounds of n.i.g.g.e.rhead tobacco by way of petty cash, the whole expedition was tantalized and held back by the non-arrival of the guard, who were frenziedly searching for their boots. Why the army was so ruthlessly condemned to wear boots, is a question that was often asked and never properly answered. n.o.body else wore boots--not even the king; but the military caste is proverbially dressy, and it is enough to say that the armed forces of Apiang set immense store by their boots.

At last they arrived, boots and all, a straggling, hobbling party of seven, with cartridge belts and rifles. Little Daisy was formally put in their charge; solemn pledges were given and accepted; a keg of beef, to be subsequently presented, was hedged about with innumerable restrictions. That keg--like liberty--was to be at the price of eternal vigilance. And then, when everything had been said, and explained, and threatened, the whaleboat hoisted her anchor--a coral stone--and set a straight course for Tarawa.

It was a long day--a very long day--quite the longest day in Daisy's tiny life. She successively exhausted the magic lantern, the dolly, and the chair. She went out and prattled with the army where they sprawled under the lee of the kitchen, smoking endless _panda.n.u.s_ cigarettes. She helped Nantok prepare lunch--a bowl of chocolate made with condensed milk, and hot b.u.t.tered toast. After lunch she had a nap with Nantok on the mats, and after that again an exciting talk about the great ma.s.sacre on Tapatuea, where all Nantok's people had been killed during that Kanaka Saint Bartholomew's. Then out to the army again, and checkers, which the army played amazingly well, beating her so often that even this pastime palled. Then----

Oh, what a sigh!

The sleek little seal was aweary, aweary. The house was so empty, so still, and there was such a void in that aching baby heart! She went into papa's room and cried on his bed. He would be drowned in the strait; savage old Karaitch would shoot him with a gun; he would be blown out to sea like Mr. Pettibone the beach-comber. The hot tears scalded her cheeks. She had always liked Mr. Pettibone. Papa called him a proff--proff--proff something, but he had always been so jolly, and his red face and funny little blue eyes rose before her out of the mist.

She cried over the lost Pettibone; over Tansy the cat, that had died from eating a lizard; over Nosey, her pet chicken, that Nantok had killed by mistake one night for supper; cried over papa and mamma, far away in the whaler--totaled up all the little sadnesses of her little life, meting out tears to every one. And then, feeling greatly refreshed, she went out on the front porch, and wondered what she should do next.

Down the sh.o.r.e, about a mile away, there were others who found time less heavy on their hands. At the Land We Live In, a one-roomed saloon which catered for a permanent white population of thirteen, and a transient one that varied from a cutter to a full-rigged s.h.i.+p--at the Land We Live In Christmas was being celebrated in a rousing fas.h.i.+on. To begin with, there were the mutineers of the _Lord Dundonald_, twenty-two strong, with plenty of money still to spend. Their revolt against authority had not been without some redeeming features, and an unbiased critic would have found it hard to blame them. After twenty-seven days and nights at the pumps of a four-masted sieve, the Lords had struck in a body, and forced the captain to abandon the s.h.i.+p and set out in three boats for Apiang. Here they double-dyed their crime by compelling the wrathful master to pay them their wages to date, from six hundred and thirty-nine pounds he had taken with him from a vessel he had fondly hoped to pump to China. Captain Latimer, with the three mates, the carpenter, and one of the hands, had sailed away south in the longboat, vowing yardarms and a man-of-war, and when last seen was sinking over the horizon in the direction of the Fiji Islands.

Well, here they all were in the Land We Live In, together with Tom Holderson, Peter Extrum, Eddy Newnes, and Long Joe Kelly, all of Apiang; Papa Benson, of Tarawa; Jones and Peabody, of Big Muggin; and crazy old Jimmy Mathison, of nowhere in particular--unless it were the nearest gin bottle; and it was a rip-roaring Christmas, and no mistake, with bottled beer flowing like water, and songs and choruses and clog dances and hornpipes; and Papa Benson (in earrings and pink pajamas) a-blowing enough wind through his concertina to have sailed a s.h.i.+p. And there were girls, too, seven or eight of them, in bright trade-cotton Mother Hubbards--a bevy of black-eyed little heathen savages, who bore a hand with the trays, and added their saucy laughter to the general gayety, helping out Larry the barkeep as he drew unending corks or stopped to wipe the sweat off his forehead, saying, "Genelmen, the drinks is on Billy," or Tommy, or Long Joe, or whoever it was that was treating.

Suddenly, at the door, which had been kept shut to prevent the natives from a.s.sembling and peering in--suddenly, at the door, there was heard a faint, faint knock. The concertina stopped. Fritz, the Dutchman, said "Hoos.h.!.+" and raised his pipe for silence. The knock was repeated. Quiet descended on the Land We Live In. Larry looked up from his bottles, and in a rough and belligerent voice called out, "Come in!"

The invitation was hesitatingly obeyed, and there stood Daisy Kirke on the threshold, a sweet, faltering figure, with her guard, boots and all, lined up in the roadway. Hardly a soul in the room knew there was a little white girl on the island; and the sight of Daisy, with the red ribbon in her hair, her dimity frock, her long stockings and pinafore, was as startling as it was unexpected.

"Howdy-do, evver'body?" said she.

There was an embarra.s.sed silence.

"I know you better than you do me," went on Daisy confidentially, proving it with her forefinger. "That's Tommy, the cabin boy; and yonder's Mr. Mathison, the beach-comber; and you"--indicating a giant of a man with an aquiline nose and a square-cut beard--"you are Mr. Bob Fletcher, the ringleader!"

A giggle of subdued merriment ran round the room. An instinctive respect kept it within bounds, or perhaps it was Bob Fletcher's fierce and warning look that cowed any incipient rowdyism. The brawny mutineer set her on his knee, and, in a voice harshened by thirty years' service before the mast, asked her deferentially if she fancied a gla.s.s of syrup?

"No, thank you," said Daisy politely; and then, addressing everybody in general, "papa and mamma's gone to Tarawa!"

"Now, if that ain't too bad!" put in Bob sympathetically.

"And so it just occurred to me," went on Daisy, "to do something nice to surprise them when they came back."

A profound silence greeted this remark. The devil's love of holy water is a craving compared to the amount of love lost between a South Sea missionary and the rough white element that mocks his labors at every turn. It was the custom of the Lord Dundonalds, moreover, to hoot the Rev. Walter Kirke whenever they met him. It was a recollection of this that made the present situation so piquant and humorous.

"Besides, it seems too bad," continued Daisy, "that the natives should have such a fuss made over them, while all you white gentlemen are left out in the cold. It must look queer to Dod, and I don't believe He likes it!"

"Everything for the n.i.g.g.e.rs--that's right," muttered Tom Extrum bitterly, "and not even a six-months-old newspaper for the likes of us!"

"You don't look so werry wicked," said Daisy, taking in the room with a comprehensive glance, and putting an arm around Mr. Bob's neck, as though confident of having at least one friend among the company. "I wonder if you wouldn't all like to come along to my house, and play with my magic lantern, and--and--organize a Band of Hope?"