Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas Part 19

"Sure," I says, "but that can stand over till afterwards, Tom."

"Stand over, nothing!" he says, very sharp; and with that we both set off running for my house.

It was a jumpy thing to enter that darkened room, with the feeling you couldn't shake off that Old Dibs was peering in at us, and that every minute we'd hear his footstep, everything laid out just as he had last touched them, and almost warm, even to his slippers and his collar and the old hat against the wall. But it made no more difference to Tom than if it had been his own hat, and he tramped in like a policeman, saying, "Where is it, Bill?"

"In one of them two camphor-wood chests," says I.

He lifted up one of them by the end and let it fall ker-bang!

"Not here," says he.

"Try the other," says I, with a sudden sinking.

He let that crash, too, and turning around, looked me in the face.

"Good G.o.d, Tom!" said I.

"Just what I suspected all along," said Tom, as savage as a tiger. "He's made way with it!"

We didn't stop to speak another word, but rummaged the whole room upside down.

"He's buried it," says Tom, savager than ever, "and what kind of a b.a.s.t.a.r.d was you to let him?"

"It was none of my business," says I.

"None of your business!" he repeated, screaming out at me like a woman--"to have a quarter of a million by the tail and let it go? You might have been slack about your own half, but it was a swine's trick not to keep track of mine!"

"He can't have taken it very far," I said.

"Not far!" yelled Tom, making an insult of every word I said. "Why, what was to prevent him lugging away a little this day and that, till the whole caboodle was sunk in a solid block? What do you suppose he was doing with the lantern, you tom-fool? Planting it, of course--planting every dollar of it, night after night, while you were snoozing in your silly bed."

"If it's anywhere it's in the Kanaka graveyard," says I. "I'll go bail it's within ten feet of where we found his dead body."

"Did you stake the place?" says Tom.

I was ashamed to tell him I hadn't even thought of the money, being struck all of a heap, and always powerful fond of Old Dibs.

"It would serve you right if I made you dig up the whole graveyard, single-handed," said Tom; "and if you had a spark of proper feeling, Bill Hargus, you'd fall on your knees and beg my parding for having acted like such a d.a.m.ned ninny!"

I would have answered him back in his own coin if I hadn't felt so bad about it all, and rattled, besides. I had punched Tom's head often and often, and he had punched mine; but I was staggered by the money being missing, and the loss of it just seemed to swallow up everything else.

Somehow, it had never seemed _my_ money till then, and the more I felt it mine the more galling it was to give it up. Tom relented when he saw how cut up I was, withdrawing all the hard things he had said, and going on the other tack to cheer me up. He said he was just as big an a.s.s as I was, and came out handsome about its being both our fault, and how it didn't matter a hill of beans anyway, for we'd soon get our spades on to it. It stood to reason it couldn't be far away or buried very deep, and a little fossicking with an iron ramrod would feel it out in no time.

Well, we gave Old Dibs a good send off, Tom and me making the coffin, and we buried him in a likely place to windward of the Kanaka graveyard.

Tom wouldn't have him _inside_, for fear the natives might chance on the treasure themselves, and we put a neat fence around the place, with a priming and two coats of white paint, and a natty gate to go in by with bra.s.s hinges. The whole settlement turned out, Iosefo outdoing himself, and the king b.u.t.ting in with an address, and everything s.h.i.+pshape and Bristol fas.h.i.+on, as sailors say. We didn't have no flowers, and the whole business was sort of home-made and amateur, but Sarah made up for the lack of them by pegging out the grave with little poles, and streamers which gave quite a gay look to it, and fluttered in the wind, very pretty to see.

Then Tom and me started in our digging operations on a checkerboard plan, very systematic, with stakes where we left off, working by night so as not to rouse the natives' ill will. Or, I ought to have said, two nights, for I guess we didn't cover up our tracks sufficient, and they got on to it. We discovered this in the form of a depitation of chiefs and elders, who give us warning it had to stop ker-plunk! They said they wouldn't allow their graveyard torn up, and altogether acted very ugly and insulting. Tom and I had to sing small and put in a holiday neither of us wanted, for the Kanakas had the whip hand of us, and I never saw them so roused. Tom at first tried to carry it off with a high hand, informing them that he was a British subjeck, by G.o.d! and was they meaning to interfere with a British subjeck? But I couldn't see how that gave him any right to dig up Kanaka graveyards for money that didn't belong to him, and so I smoothed them down and out-talked Tom, saying it shouldn't happen again, and I was glad they had mentioned it!

We waited a few weeks for the storm to blow over, and then begun again, this time more cautious than before by a darned sight. We thought we were managing beautifully, till the next day, when we went out fis.h.i.+ng in Tom's boat and come back to find both our stations burned to the ground, and all our stuff stacked outside the smoking ruins, higgledy-piggledy!

This was getting it in the neck, and we saw we were beat. We ran up a couple of little shacks and settled down to ordinary trading again, with what good spirits you can imagine. We didn't even dare walk on the weather side of the island, lest they'd carry out their next threat, which was to shoot us; and the only revenge we had was raising prices on them and monkeying with the scales, winning out in both ways. But it was a poor set off to a quarter of a million of cold coin where almost we could lay our hands on it, and if there was in the whole world a human being more blue and miserable than me, it was Tom Riley. Then, to make matters worse, the whole thing was common property now, the Kanakas knowing as much as we did, and more, and the news was pa.s.sed along to every s.h.i.+p that came--all about Old Dibs and the money in the graveyard.

You might be surprised the natives didn't take a leaf out of our book and dig it up for themselves; but you'll never really civilize a Kanaka if you try a thousand years, and they wouldn't have turned up their dead grandmothers and fathers and aunts for all the gold in the Bank of England--being sunk in superst.i.tion and slavishly afraid of spirits and the like.

We had to sit with folded hands and pretend to be pleased, while every s.h.i.+p that called had to take its whack at the graveyard. First it was the _Lorelei_, getting off scot-free with only a taboo; then it was the _Tasmanian_, with a bullet through the captain's leg; then the cutter _Sprite_, with concussion of the brain. I never saw the Kanakas drove so wild, till at last, when there was a s.h.i.+p off the settlement, they'd set an anchor watch on the graveyard and do sentry go with loaded guns.

Then one fine day a French schooner from Tahiti ran in, unloaded sixteen men armed with rifles and carrying pickaxes and spades, who marched across the island singing the "Ma.r.s.eillaise," and proceeded to take up the whole place. The natives rallied with everything they could lay their hands on, from Winchesters to fish spears, and my, if they didn't chase out them Frenchmen at the double! They got away, leaving one dead and carrying three, making a bee line for the beach, the schooner covering their retreat with a blazing Nordenfeldt. They were in such a hurry to be gone that they cut away their moorings with an ax, and I had the privilege, later on, of buying their anchor, second hand, for ten dollars in trade.

The natives got wilder than ever after this, and were almost afraid to die, lest they'd be dug up again and their bones cast to the winds. From being the most orderly island in the Pacific, Manihiki slumped to be the worst; and it got such a name that s.h.i.+ps were scared of coming near it; and once, when Tom and me went out in a whaleboat toward a becalmed German bark, hoping to raise a newspaper or a sack of potatoes, they opened fire on us and lowered two boats to tow away the s.h.i.+p. Tom and me got mixed up in the general opinion of the place, which was stinking bad and what they called a pirates' nest, and an English man-of-war came down special to deport Tom. I never was so glad in my life to be an American, for, though the captain gave Tom what he called the benefit of the doubt, they fined him two hundred and fifty dollars and slanged him like a n.i.g.g.e.r.

The last straw was the visit of a French man-of-war, that opened broadsides on us without warning, and then landed and burned the settlement, including everything me and Tom owned in the world, except the clothes we stood in and the cash we s.n.a.t.c.hed on the run. This was on account of the "outrage" on the Tahiti schooner.

Tom said the island was becoming a regular human pigeon-shoot, and wondered where the lightning would strike next; and we both grew clean sick of it and in a fever to get away. There was not even the temptation of Old Dibs's treasure to keep us now, for the natives all got together and heaped up the graveyard solid with rock to the level of the outside walls, and floored the top with cement six inches deep, putting in a matter of a thousand tons. It was as solid as a fortification, and pounded down, besides, with pounders, like a city street; and if ever there was money in a safe place and likely to stay there undisturbed, I guess it was Old Dibs's.

It was a happy day for Tom and me when the _Flink_ dropped anchor off the settlement, and we patched it up with the captain to give us a pa.s.sage to the Kingsmills, to begin the world again. It had always lain sort of heavy on my wife that we hadn't put up a name over old Dibs's grave, and now that we were going away with that undone she reproached me awful. You see, I had promised her something nice in the marble line from Sydney, and kept putting her off and off in the hope she'd forget it. She had been remarkably fond of the old fellow, as, indeed, so was I, and she said it was a shame to go away forever with this unattended to. I didn't have no time for anything fancy, nor the ability neither, but as the s.h.i.+p lay over for a couple of days I made s.h.i.+ft to please her with a wooden slab. We went over and set it up about an hour before we sailed, and for all I know it may be there yet. Some folks might kick at the inscription, but he had always been mighty good and kind and free-handed to us, and you must take a man as you find him. This was how it run:

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF RUNYON RUFE BANKER AND PHILANTHROPIST ERECTED BY HIS SORROWING FRIENDS

THE LABOR CAPTAIN

It was a wild March day, and the rising wind sang in the rigging of the s.h.i.+ps. The weather horizon, dark and brilliant, in ominous alternations showed a sky of piled-up cloud interspersed with inky patches where squalls were bursting. To leeward, the broad lagoon, stretching for a dozen miles to the tree-topped rim of reef, smoked with the haze of an impending gale. Ash.o.r.e, the palms bent like gra.s.s in the succeeding gusts, and the ocean beaches reverberated with a furious surf. The great atoll of Makin, no higher than a man, no wider than a couple of furlongs, but in circ.u.mference a sinuous giant of ninety miles or more, lay like a snake on the boisterous waters of the equator and defied the sea and storm.

Within the lagoon, and not far off the settlement, two s.h.i.+ps rocked at anchor. One, the _Northern Light_, was a powerful topsail schooner of a hundred tons; straight bowed, low in the water, built on fine lines and yet sparred for safety, the sort of vessel that does well under plain sail, and when pressed can fly. The other, the _Edelweiss_, was a miniature fore and after of about twenty tons, a toy of delicacy and grace, betraying at a glance that she had been designed a yacht, and, in spite of fallen fortunes, was still sailed as one. The man that laid her lee rail under would get danger as well as speed for his pains, and in time would be likely to satisfy a taste for both by making a swift trip to the bottom.

The deck of the _Northern Light_ was empty save for the single tall figure of Gregory Cole, captain and owner, who was leaning over the rail gazing at the _Edelweiss_. He was a man of about thirty, his tanned, handsome face overcast and somber, his eyes, with their characteristic hunted look, fixed in an uneasy stare on his smaller neighbor.

He had never known how pa.s.sionately he had loved Madge Blanchard until he had lost her; until after that wild quarrel on Nonootch, when her father had called him a slaver to his face, and they had parted on either side in anger; until he had beaten up from westward to find her the month-old wife of Joe Horble. Somehow, in the course of those long, miserable months, he had never thought of her marrying; he felt so confident of that fierce love she had so often confessed for him; he had come back repentant, ashamed of the burning offense he had then taken, determined to let bygones be bygones, and to begin, if need be, a new and a more blameless way of life. It was natural for the girl to side with her father; to resent her lover's violence and temper; to show a face as cold as his own when he said he would up anchor and to sea.

Fool that he had been to keep his word! fool that he had been to tear his heart to pieces out of pride! fool that he had been to let it stand between him and the woman he loved! His pride! with Madge now in Joe Horble's arms!

He cursed the fate that had brought him into the same lagoon with the _Edelweiss_; that had laid his s.h.i.+p side by side with Joe's dainty schooner; that shamed and mocked him with the unceasing thought that Madge--his Madge--was aboard of her. He paced up and down the quarter-deck. He had more than a mind to get to sea, but the gloom to windward daunted him, and he ordered out the kedge instead and bade the mate strip the awnings off her. By Jove! if things grew blacker he'd house his topmasts. Then he looked again at the little _Edelweiss_, and tried to keep back the thought of Horble sitting there below with Madge.

He had to see her. He was mad to see her. The thought of her tortured and tempted him without end. Suppose she, too, had learned that love is stronger than oneself; that the mouth can say Yes when the heart within is breaking; that she, like himself, had found the time to repent her folly? Was he the man to leave her thus; to acquiesce tamely in a decision that was doubtless already abhorrent to her; to remain with unlifted hand when she might be on fire for the sign to come to him?

No, by G.o.d! he'd beg her forgiveness and offer her the choice. Yes or No! It was for her to choose.

He jumped into the dinghy and pulled over to the schooner. Small at a distance, she seemed to shrink as he drew near her, so that when he stood up he was surprised to find his head above the rail. So this was Horble, this coa.r.s.e, red-faced trader, with the pug nose, the fat hands, the faded blue eyes that met his own so sourly!

"Captain Horble?" said Gregory Cole.

"Glad to see you aboard," said Horble.

They shook hands and sat side by side on the rail.

"Where's Madge?" said Gregory.

"Mrs. Horble's ash.o.r.e," said the captain.

"I'm afraid I can never call her anything but Madge," said Gregory, detecting the covert reproach in the other's voice.