Jerry and Skipper shared the long afternoon-watch together, the latter being guilty of recurrent chuckles1 and exclamations2 such as: “Gott-fer-dang, Jerry, believe me, you’re some fighter and all dog”; or, “You’re a proper man’s dog, you are, a lion dog. I bet the lion don’t live that could get your goat.”
And Jerry, understanding none of the words, with the exception of his own name, nevertheless knew that the sounds made by Skipper were broad of praise and warm of love. And when Skipper stooped and rubbed his ears, or received a rose-kiss on extended fingers, or caught him up in his arms, Jerry’s heart was nigh to bursting. For what greater ecstasy3 can be the portion of any creature than that it be loved by a god? This was just precisely4 Jerry’s ecstasy. This was a god, a tangible5, real, three-dimensioned god, who went about and ruled his world in a loin-cloth and on two bare legs, and who loved him with crooning noises in throat and mouth and with two wide-spread arms that folded him in.
At four o’clock, measuring a glance at the afternoon sun and gauging6 the speed of the Arangi through the water in relation to the closeness of Su’u, Van Horn went below and roughly shook the mate awake. Until both returned, Jerry held the deck alone. But for the fact that the white-gods were there below and were certain to be back at any moment, not many moments would Jerry have held the deck, for every lessened7 mile between the return boys and Malaita contributed a rising of their spirits, and under the imminence8 of their old-time independence, Lerumie, as an instance of many of them, with strong gustatory sensations and a positive drooling at the mouth, regarded Jerry in terms of food and vengeance9 that were identical.
Flat-hauled on the crisp breeze, the Arangi closed in rapidly with the land. Jerry peered through the barbed wire, sniffing11 the air, Skipper beside him and giving orders to the mate and helmsman. The heap of trade-boxes was now unlashed, and the boys began opening and shutting them. What gave them particular delight was the ringing of the bell with which each box was equipped and which rang whenever a lid was raised. Their pleasure in the toy-like contrivance was that of children, and each went back again and again to unlock his own box and make the bell ring.
Fifteen of the boys were to be landed at Su’u and with wild gesticulations and cries they began to recognize and point out the infinitesimal details of the landfall of the only spot they had known on earth prior to the day, three years before, when they had been sold into slavery by their fathers, uncles, and chiefs.
A narrow neck of water, scarcely a hundred yards across, gave entrance to a long and tiny bay. The shore was massed with mangroves and dense14, tropical vegetation. There was no sign of houses nor of human occupancy, although Van Horn, staring at the dense jungle so close at hand, knew as a matter of course that scores, and perhaps hundreds, of pairs of human eyes were looking at him.
“Smell ’m, Jerry, smell ’m,” he encouraged.
And Jerry’s hair bristled16 as he barked at the mangrove13 wall, for truly his keen scent17 informed him of lurking18 niggers.
“If I could smell like him,” the captain said to the mate, “there wouldn’t be any risk at all of my ever losing my head.”
But Borckman made no reply and sullenly19 went about his work. There was little wind in the bay, and the Arangi slowly forged in and dropped anchor in thirty fathoms21. So steep was the slope of the harbour bed from the beach that even in such excessive depth the Arangi’s stern swung in within a hundred feet of the mangroves.
Van Horn continued to cast anxious glances at the wooded shore. For Su’u had an evil name. Since the schooner22 Fair Hathaway, recruiting labour for the Queensland plantations23, had been captured by the natives and all hands slain24 fifteen years before, no vessel25, with the exception of the Arangi, had dared to venture into Su’u. And most white men condemned26 Van Horn’s recklessness for so venturing.
Far up the mountains, that towered many thousands of feet into the trade-wind clouds, arose many signal smokes that advertised the coming of the vessel. Far and near, the Arangi’s presence was known; yet from the jungle so near at hand only shrieks27 of parrots and chatterings of cockatoos could be heard.
The whaleboat, manned with six of the boat’s crew, was drawn28 alongside, and the fifteen Su’u boys and their boxes were loaded in. Under the canvas flaps along the thwarts29, ready to hand for the rowers, were laid five of the Lee-Enfields. On deck, another of the boat’s crew, rifle in hand, guarded the remaining weapons. Borckman had brought up his own rifle to be ready for instant use. Van Horn’s rifle lay handy in the stern sheets where he stood near Tambi, who steered30 with a long sweep. Jerry raised a low whine31 and yearned32 over the rail after Skipper, who yielded and lifted him down.
The place of danger was in the boat; for there was little likelihood, at this particular time, of a rising of the return boys on the Arangi. Being of Somo, No-ola, Langa-Langa, and far Malu they were in wholesome33 fear, did they lose the protection of their white masters, of being eaten by the Su’u folk, just as the Su’u boys would have feared being eaten by the Somo and Langa-Langa and No-ola folk.
What increased the danger of the boat was the absence of a covering boat. The invariable custom of the larger recruiting vessels34 was to send two boats on any shore errand. While one landed on the beach, the other lay off a short distance to cover the retreat of the shore party, if trouble broke out. Too small to carry one boat on deck, the Arangi could not conveniently tow two astern; so Van Horn, who was the most daring of the recruiters, lacked this essential safeguard.
Tambi, under Van Horn’s low-uttered commands, steered a parallel course along the shore. Where the mangroves ceased, and where high ground and a beaten runway came down to the water’s edge, Van Horn motioned the rowers to back water and lay on their oars35. High palms and lofty, wide-branched trees rose above the jungle at this spot, and the runway showed like the entrance of a tunnel into the dense, green wall of tropical vegetation.
Van Horn, regarding the shore for some sign of life, lighted a cigar and put one hand to the waist-line of his loin-cloth to reassure37 himself of the presence of the stick of dynamite38 that was tucked between the loin-cloth and his skin. The lighted cigar was for the purpose, if emergency arose, of igniting the fuse of the dynamite. And the fuse was so short, with its end split to accommodate the inserted head of a safety match, that between the time of touching39 it off with the live cigar to the time of the explosion not more than three seconds could elapse. This required quick cool work on Van Horn’s part, in case need arose. In three seconds he would have to light the fuse and throw the sputtering40 stick with directed aim to its objective. However, he did not expect to use it, and had it ready merely as a precautionary measure.
Five minutes passed, and the silence of the shore remained profound. Jerry sniffed42 Skipper’s bare leg as if to assure him that he was beside him no matter what threatened from the hostile silence of the land, then stood up with his forepaws on the gunwale and continued to sniff10 eagerly and audibly, to prick43 his neck hair, and to utter low growls45.
“They’re there, all right,” Skipper confided46 to him; and Jerry, with a sideward glance of smiling eyes, with a bobbing of his tail and a quick love-flattening of his ears, turned his nose shoreward again and resumed his reading of the jungle tale that was wafted47 to him on the light fans of the stifling48 and almost stagnant49 air.
“Hey!” Van Horn suddenly shouted. “Hey, you fella boy stick ’m head out belong you!”
As if in a transformation50 scene, the apparently51 tenantless52 jungle spawned53 into life. On the instant a hundred stark54 savages56 appeared. They broke forth57 everywhere from the vegetation. All were armed, some with Snider rifles and ancient horse pistols, others with bows and arrows, with long throwing spears, with war-clubs, and with long-handled tomahawks. In a flash, one of them leaped into the sunlight in the open space where runway and water met. Save for decorations, he was naked as Adam before the Fall. A solitary58 white feather uprose from his kinky, glossy59, black hair. A polished bodkin of white petrified60 shell, with sharp-pointed ends, thrust through a hole in the partition of his nostrils61, extended five inches across his face. About his neck, from a cord of twisted coconut62 sennit, hung an ivory-white necklace of wild-boar’s tusks63. A garter of white cowrie shells encircled one leg just below the knee. A flaming scarlet64 flower was coquettishly stuck over one ear, and through a hole in the other ear was threaded a pig’s tail so recently severed65 that it still bled.
As this dandy of Melanesia leaped into the sunshine, the Snider rifle in his hands came into position, aimed from his hip66, the generous muzzle67 bearing directly on Van Horn. No less quick was Van Horn. With equal speed he had snatched his rifle and brought it to bear from his hip. So they stood and faced each other, death in their finger-tips, forty feet apart. The million years between barbarism and civilization also yawned between them across that narrow gulf68 of forty feet. The hardest thing for modern, evolved man to do is to forget his ancient training. Easiest of all things is it for him to forget his modernity and slip back across time to the howling ages. A lie in the teeth, a blow in the face, a love-thrust of jealousy69 to the heart, in a fraction of an instant can turn a twentieth-century philosopher into an ape-like arborean pounding his chest, gnashing his teeth, and seeing red.
So Van Horn. But with a difference. He straddled time. He was at one and the same instant all modern, all imminently70 primitive71, capable of fighting in redness of tooth and claw, desirous of remaining modern for as long as he could with his will master the study of ebon black of skin and dazzling white of decoration that confronted him.
A long ten seconds of silence endured. Even Jerry, he knew not why, stilled the growl44 in his throat. Five score of head-hunting cannibals on the fringe of the jungle, fifteen Su’u return blacks in the boat, seven black boat’s crew, and a solitary white man with a cigar in his mouth, a rifle at his hip, and an Irish terrier bristling72 against his bare calf73, kept the solemn pact74 of those ten seconds, and no one of them knew or guessed what the outcome would be.
One of the return boys, in the bow of the whaleboat, made the peace sign with his palm extended outward and weaponless, and began to chirp75 in the unknown Su’u dialect. Van Horn held his aim and waited. The dandy lowered his Snider, and breath came more easily to the chests of all who composed the picture.
“Me good fella boy,” the dandy piped, half bird-like and half elf.
“You big fella fool too much,” Van Horn retorted harshly, dropping his gun into the stern-sheets, motioning to rowers and steersman to turn the boat around, and puffing76 his cigar as carelessly casual as if, the moment before, life and death had not been the debate.
“My word,” he went on with fine irritable77 assumption. “What name you stick ’m gun along me? Me no kai-kai (eat) along you. Me kai-kai along you, stomach belong me walk about. You kai-kai along me, stomach belong you walk about. You no like ’m kai-kai Su’u boy belong along you? Su’u boy belong you all the same brother along you. Long time before, three monsoon78 before, me speak ’m true speak. Me say three monsoon boy come back. My word, three monsoon finish, boy stop along me come back.”
By this time the boat had swung around, reversing bow and stern, Van Horn pivoting79 so as to face the Snider-armed dandy. At another signal from Van Horn the rowers backed water and forced the boat, stern in, up to the solid ground of the runway. And each rower, his oar36 in position in case of attack, privily80 felt under the canvas flap to make sure of the exact location of his concealed81 Lee-Enfield.
“All right boy belong you walk about?” Van Horn queried82 of the dandy, who signified the affirmative in the Solomon Islands fashion by half-closing his eyes and nodding his head upward, in a queer, perky way;
“No kai-kai ’m Su’u fella boy suppose walk about along you?”
“No fear,” the dandy answered. “Suppose ’m Su’u fella boy, all right. Suppose ’m no fella Su’u boy, my word, big trouble. Ishikola, big fella black marster along this place, him talk ’m me talk along you. Him say any amount bad fella boy stop ’m along bush. Him say big fella white marster no walk about. Him say jolly good big fella white marster stop ’m along ship.”
Van Horn nodded in an off-hand way, as if the information were of little value, although he knew that for this time Su’u would furnish him no fresh recruits. One at a time, compelling the others to remain in their places, he directed the return boys astern and ashore83. It was Solomon Islands tactics. Crowding was dangerous. Never could the blacks be risked to confusion in numbers. And Van Horn, smoking his cigar in lordly indifferent fashion, kept his apparently uninterested eyes glued to each boy who made his way aft, box on shoulder, and stepped out on the land. One by one they disappeared into the runway tunnel, and when the last was ashore he ordered the boat back to the ship.
“Nothing doing here this trip,” he told the mate. “We’ll up hook and out in the morning.”
The quick tropic twilight84 swiftly blent day and darkness. Overhead all stars were out. No faintest breath of air moved over the water, and the humid heat beaded the faces and bodies of both men with profuse85 sweat. They ate their deck-spread supper languidly and ever and anon used their forearms to wipe the stinging sweat from their eyes.
“Why a man should come to the Solomons—beastly hole,” the mate complained.
“Or stay on,” the captain rejoined.
“I’m too rotten with fever,” the mate grumbled86. “I’d die if I left. Remember, I tried it two years ago. It takes the cold weather to bring out the fever. I arrived in Sydney on my back. They had to take me to hospital in an ambulance. I got worse and worse. The doctors told me the only thing to do was to head back where I got the fever. If I did I might live a long time. If I hung on in Sydney it meant a quick finish. They packed me on board in another ambulance. And that’s all I saw of Australia for my holiday. I don’t want to stay in the Solomons. It’s plain hell. But I got to, or croak87.”
He rolled, at a rough estimate, thirty grains of quinine in a cigarette paper, regarded the result sourly for a moment, then swallowed it at a ............