Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas Part 5

The half-caste brothers fell in joyfully with the suggestion, and their first wild proposals were beaten down to forty dollars a month for custodians.h.i.+p and fifteen dollars for the room and the transport of Satterlee's food from the International Hotel--fifty-five dollars in all. Thirty dollars a month for the hotel raised the grand total to eighty-five dollars. Skiddy wondered ruefully whether Was.h.i.+ngton would ever indorse this arrangement, but in his desperation he couldn't see that he had any other choice. He would simply _make_ Was.h.i.+ngton indorse it. It was with great relief that he saw the captain's departure from a corner of his bedroom window, and felt that, for the moment, at least, he had a welcome respite from all his perplexities.

He put a captain and crew on board the _James H. Peabody_, and packed her back to San Francisco, at the same time apprising the State Department by mail, and begging that a telegraphic answer might be sent him in respect to Satterlee's imprisonment, and the expense it had necessarily entailed. He calculated that the telegram would catch an outgoing man-of-war that was shortly due. The consular salary was two hundred dollars a month, and if the eighty-five dollars for Satterlee was disallowed, the sum was indubitably bound to sink to one hundred and fifteen dollars. Deducting a further fifty, which little Skiddy was in the habit of remitting to his mother, a widow in narrow circ.u.mstances, and behold his income reduced to sixty-five a month! It was hardly surprising, therefore, that Skiddy waited on pins and needles for the Department's reply.

In the course of weeks it came.

_Skiddy U S consul apia samoa satterlee case the department authorizes charge for food, but none for custody or lodging, bronson a.s.sistant secretary._

This was a staggering blow. It definitely placed his salary at ninety-five dollars. He sat down and wrote a stinging letter to the Department, inclosing snapshot pictures of the jail, the prisoners, the huts, and other things that cannot be described here. It evolved an acrimonious reply, in which he was bidden to be more respectful. He was at liberty (the dispatch continued), if he thought it advisable as an act of private charity, to maintain the convict Satterlee in a comfortable cottage, but the Department insisted that it should be at his (Skiddy's) expense. The Department itself advocated the jail. If the situation were as disgraceful as he described it, ought not the onus be put on the Samoan Government, and thus place the Department in a position "to make strong representations through the usual diplomatic channels"?

"But in the meantime what would happen to Satterlee?" returned the consul in official language, across six thousand miles of sea and land.

"You are referred to the previous dispatch," retorted the Department.

"But it will kill him," said Skiddy, again crossing an ocean and a continent.

"If the convict Satterlee should become ill, you are at liberty to send him to the hospital."

"Yes, but there isn't any hospital," said Skiddy.

"The Department cannot withdraw from the position it took up, nor the principle it laid down in Dispatch No. 214 B."

Thus the duel went on, while Skiddy cut down his cigars, sold his riding horse, and generally economized. A regret stole over him that he hadn't sentenced Satterlee to a shorter term, and he looked up the Consular Instructions to see what pardoning powers he possessed. On this point the little book was dumb. Not so the Department, however, to whom a hint on the subject provoked the reply, "that by so doing you would stultify your previous action and impugn the finding of the Consular Court. The Department would view with grave displeasure, etc.----"

Satterlee soon made himself very much at home in the Scanlon prison. His winning personality never showed to better advantage than in those days of his eclipse. He dandled the Scanlon off-spring on his knee; helped the women with their household tasks; played checkers with the burly brothers. He was prodigiously respected. He gathered in the Scanlon hearts, even to uncles and second cousins. You would have taken him for a patriarch in the bosom of a family of which he was the joy and pride.

He received the best half-caste society on his front porch, and dispensed Scanlon hospitality with a lavish hand. These untutored souls had no proper conception of barratry. They couldn't see any crime in running away with a schooner. They pitied the captain as a bold spirit who had met with undeserved misfortunes. The Samoan has ever a sympathetic hand for the fallen mighty, and the hand is never empty of a gift. Bananas, pineapples, _taro_, sugar cane, _palusami_, sucking pigs, chickens, eggs, _valo_--all descended on Satterlee in wholesale lots.

Girls brought him _leis_ of flowers to wear round his neck; anonymous friends stole milk for his refreshment; pigeon hunters, returning singing from the mountains, deferentially laid their best at his feet.

Nothing was too good for this unfortunate chief, who bore himself so n.o.bly, and had a smile and a kind word for even the humblest of his admirers.

On Sundays Skiddy paid the captain a periodical visit. He would bring the latest papers, if there were any, or a novel or two from his scanty stock. Their original friends.h.i.+p had died a violent death, but a new one had gradually risen on the ashes of the old. Skiddy had no more illusions in respect to this romantic-minded humbug and semi-pirate; but the man was likable, tremendously likable, and, in spite of himself, the little consul could not forbear suffering some of the pangs of remorse.

The world was so big, so wide, with such a sufficiency of room for all (even romantic-minded humbugs and semi-pirates), and it was hard that Providence should have singled him out to clip this eagle's wings. There was something, too, very pathetic in Satterlee's contentment. He confided to Skiddy that he had never been so happy. With glistening eyes he would discourse on "these simple people," "these good hearts," "this lovely and uncontaminated paradise, where evil seems never to have set its hand," and expatiate generally on the beauty, charm, and tranquillity of Samoan life. He dreaded the time, he said, when a ruthless civilization would sweep it all away.

Satterlee and he took long walks into the mountains, invariably accompanied by a Scanlon brother to give an official aspect to the excursion. It maintained the fast-disappearing principle that Satterlee was a convict and under vigilant guard. It served to take away the appearance, besides (which they might otherwise have presented), of two friends spending a happy day together in the country. A Scanlon brother stood for the United States Government and the majesty of law, and propriety demanded his presence as peremptorily as a chaperon for a young lady. A Scanlon brother could be useful, too, in climbing cocoanut trees, rubbing sticks together when the matches were lost, and in guiding them to n.o.ble waterfalls far hidden in the forest.

In this manner nearly a whole year pa.s.sed, which, for the little consul, represented an unavoidable monthly outlay of fifty-five dollars. He got somewhat used to it, as everybody gets somewhat used to everything; but he could not resist certain recurring intervals of depression when he contrasted his present circ.u.mstances with his bygone glory. Fifty-five dollars a month made a big hole in a consular income, and he would gaze down that ten-year vista with a sinking heart. But relief was closer at hand than he had ever dared to hope. From the Department? No, but from Satterlee himself.

The news was brought to little Skiddy early one morning. Alfred Scanlon, with an air of gloom, deprecatingly coughed his way into the bedroom, and handed the consul a letter. It was written on pale pink note-paper, of the kind Samoans like best, with two lavender love birds embossed in the corner. It was from Satterlee. The letter ran thus:

DEAR FRIEND: _When this reaches you I shall be far to sea. My excuse for so long subsisting on your bounty must be laid to my ignorance, which was only illuminated two days ago by accident. I had no idea that you were paying for me out of your own private purse, or that my ease and comfort were obtained at so heavy a cost to yourself. Regretfully I bring our pleasant relations to an end, impelled, I a.s.sure you, by the promptings of a heartfelt friends.h.i.+p. I loved the simple people among whom my lot was cast, and looked forward, at the termination of my sentence, to end the balance of my days peacefully among them. The world, seen from so great a distance, and from within so sweet a nest, frightened me, old stager that I am. G.o.d knows, I have never seen but its ugliest side, and return to it with profound depression. Kindly explain my abrupt departure to the Scanlons, and if you would do me a last favor, buy a little rocking-horse that there is at Edward's store, price three dollars, and present it in my name to my infant G.o.ddaughter, Apeli Scanlon. To them all kindly express my warmest and sincerest grat.i.tude; and for yourself, dear friend, the best, the truest, the kindest of men, accept the warm grasp of my hand at parting. Ever yours,_

JOHN SATTERLEE.

"It must have been the Hamburg bark that sailed last night," quavered Scanlon.

Of course, Skiddy blew that Scanlon up. He wiped the floor with him. He roared at him till the great hulking creature shook like jelly, and his round black eyes suffused with tears. He made him sit down then and there, swore him on the consular Bible, and made him dictate a statement, which was signed in the presence of the cook. This accomplished, Alfred was ingloriously dismissed, while the consul went out on the back veranda, and sat there in his pajamas, to think the matter over.

It seemed a pity to rouse the Department. The Department's interest in Satterlee could at no time have been called brisk, and it had now ebbed to a negligible quant.i.ty. But it would be just like the Department to get suddenly galvanized, and hysterically head Satterlee off at Hamburg.

This would mean his ultimate return to Samoa, and a perpetual further outlay of fifty-five dollars from a hard-earned salary. No, he wouldn't worry the Department.... Let sleeping dogs lie. There were better ways of spending fifty-five dollars a month.

That night the consul had champagne at dinner, and drank a silent toast:

"Good luck to him, poor old devil!"

FORTY YEARS BETWEEN

"What am I to enter in the log, sir?" asked Mr. Francis, the first lieutenant.

"There's an old-fas.h.i.+oned word for it," said Captain Hadow grimly.

"Had it been my brother it couldn't have hurt me more," said Mr.

Francis.

"Everybody loved that boy."

"It will break his father's heart, sir."

"A deserter, by G.o.d!"

"He had everything in the world," said Francis, in the tone of a man who himself had fought hard for every step. "He had influence, money of his own, brains, a splendid professional future, everything!"

"All thrown away like that," said Captain Hadow, with a gesture of his hand.

"And the handsomest fellow I believe I ever saw," said Mr. Francis.

"The pick of the basket," agreed Hadow.

"And to think," continued Mr. Francis, "that I must sit down at my desk and write: 'Past Mids.h.i.+pman John de Vigne Garrard, Deserter.'"

The pair were pacing the quarter-deck of H.M.S. _Dauntless_ as she lay at anchor within the reef. It was at Borabora, one of the Society Islands, and the time forty years ago. The wonderful old rock, rising sheer naked and frowning from the bluest water in the world, seemed to those at its foot as though it were holding up the very sky itself.

Precipice upon precipice dizzily scaled the basaltic heights, giving here and there, on little shelves and crannies, a foothold for a vivid vegetation. The peak itself, a landmark at sea for ninety miles around, was half-hidden in the gloom of squalls and scud, and sometimes, for a moment, it would be altogether lost to view in the fierce murkiness of driving rain. Below the mountain, on the flat sh.o.r.e of the lagoon, an uninterrupted belt of palms concealed the little villages of the islanders. Here, in idyllic peace, a population of extraordinary attractiveness, gentleness, and beauty led their life of secluded ease.

Money was all but unknown; food could be had in abundance for the most trifling labor; clothes could be stripped from the bark of trees.

Nature, giving with both hands, was repaid with an usury of poetry and song; and these happy people, children forever at heart, well mannered, gay, and instinct with an untamed n.o.bility, bore themselves with the grace of those whom the G.o.ds loved.

"As like as not he is watching us now from somewhere up there," said the captain, sweeping the summits with his gla.s.s.

"I doubt it, sir," returned Mr. Francis. "It's my conviction he isn't a cable's length behind the village."

"Did you offer the reward?" asked the captain.

The first lieutenant looked embarra.s.sed.

"I told you to offer fifty pounds," said the captain tartly.

"I ventured to raise it to a hundred, sir," said Mr. Francis. "We talked it over in the wardroom, and we thought we wouldn't risk the boy for a matter of a few pounds between us."

"I wonder if the mess would have done the same for _me_?" observed the captain.