Daylight saw the Arangi under way, her sails drooping1 heavily in the dead air while the boat’s crew toiled2 at the oars3 of the whaleboat to tow her out through the narrow entrance. Once, when the ketch, swerved4 by some vagrant5 current, came close to the break of the shore-surf, the blacks on board drew toward one another in apprehension6 akin7 to that of startled sheep in a fold when a wild woods marauder howls outside. Nor was there any need for Van Horn’s shout to the whaleboat: “Washee-washee! Damn your hides!” The boat’s crew lifted themselves clear of the thwarts8 as they threw all their weight into each stroke. They knew what dire9 fate was certain if ever the sea-washed coral rock gripped the Arangi’s keel. And they knew fear precisely10 of the same sort as that of the fear-struck girl below in the lazarette. In the past more than one Langa-Langa and Somo boy had gone to make a Su’u feast day, just as Su’u boys, on occasion, had similarly served feasts at Langa-Langa and at Somo.
“My word,” Tambi, at the wheel, addressed Van Horn as the period of tension passed and the Arangi went clear. “Brother belong my father, long time before he come boat’s crew along this place. Big fella schooner11 brother belong my father he come along. All finish this place Su’u. Brother belong my father Su’u boys kai-kai along him altogether.”
Van Horn recollected12 the Fair Hathaway of fifteen years before, looted and burned by the people of Su’u after all hands had been killed. Truly, the Solomons at this beginning of the twentieth century were savage13, and truly, of the Solomons, this great island of Malaita was savagest of all.
He cast his eyes speculatively14 up the slopes of the island to the seaman’s landmark15, Mount Kolorat, green-forested to its cloud-capped summit four thousand feet in the air. Even as he looked, thin smoke-columns were rising along the slopes and lesser16 peaks, and more were beginning to rise.
“My word,” Tambi grinned. “Plenty boy stop ’m bush lookout17 along you eye belong him.”
Van Horn smiled understandingly. He knew, by the ancient telegraphy of smoke-signalling, the message was being conveyed from village to village and tribe to tribe that a labour-recruiter was on the leeward19 coast.
All morning, under a brisk beam wind which had sprung up with the rising of the sun, the Arangi flew north, her course continuously advertised by the increasing smoke-talk that gossiped along the green summits. At high noon, with Van Horn, ever-attended by Jerry, standing18 for’ard and conning20, the Arangi headed into the wind to thread the passage between two palm-tufted islets. There was need for conning. Coral patches uprose everywhere from the turquoise21 depths, running the gamut22 of green from deepest jade23 to palest tourmaline, over which the sea filtered changing shades, creamed lazily, or burst into white fountains of sun-flashed spray.
The smoke columns along the heights became garrulous24, and long before the Arangi was through the passage the entire leeward coast, from the salt-water men of the shore to the remotest bush villagers, knew that the labour recruiter was going in to Langa-Langa. As the lagoon25, formed by the chain of islets lying off shore, opened out, Jerry began to smell the reef-villages. Canoes, many canoes, urged by paddles or sailed before the wind by the weight of the freshening South East trade on spread fronds26 of coconut27 palms, moved across the smooth surface of the lagoon. Jerry barked intimidatingly28 at those that came closest, bristling29 his neck and making a ferocious30 simulation of an efficient protector of the white god who stood beside him. And after each such warning, he would softly dab31 his cool damp muzzle32 against the sun-heated skin of Skipper’s leg.
Once inside the lagoon, the Arangi filled away with the wind a-beam. At the end of a swift half-mile she rounded to, with head-sails trimming down and with a great flapping of main and mizzen, and dropped anchor in fifty feet of water so clear that every huge fluted33 clamshell was visible on the coral floor. The whaleboat was not necessary to put the Langa-Langa return boys ashore34. Hundreds of canoes lay twenty deep along both sides of the Arangi, and each boy, with his box and bell, was clamoured for by scores of relatives and friends.
In such height of excitement, Van Horn permitted no one on board. Melanesians, unlike cattle, are as prone35 to stampede to attack as to retreat. Two of the boat’s crew stood beside the Lee-Enfields on the skylight. Borckman, with half the boat’s crew, went about the ship’s work. Van Horn, Jerry at his heels, careful that no one should get at his back, superintended the departure of the Langa-Langa returns and kept a vigilant36 eye on the remaining half of the boat’s crew that guarded the barbed-wire rails. And each Somo boy sat on his trade-box to prevent it from being tossed into the waiting canoes by some Langa-Langa boy.
In half an hour the riot departed ashore. Only several canoes lingered, and from one of these Van Horn beckoned37 aboard Nau-hau, the biggest chief of the stronghold of Langa-Langa. Unlike most of the big chiefs, Nau-hau was young, and, unlike most of the Melanesians, he was handsome, even beautiful.
“Hello, King o’ Babylon,” was Van Horn’s greeting, for so he had named him because of fancied Semitic resemblance blended with the crude power that marked his visage and informed his bearing.
Born and trained to nakedness, Nau-hau trod the deck boldly and unashamed. His sole gear of clothing was a length of trunk strap38 buckled39 about his waist. Between this and his bare skin was thrust the naked blade of a ten-inch ripping knife. His sole decoration was a white China soup-plate, perforated and strung on coconut sennit, suspended from about his neck so that it rested flat on his chest and half-concealed the generous swell40 of muscles. It was the greatest of treasures. No man of Malaita he had ever heard of possessed41 an unbroken soup-plate.
Nor was he any more ridiculous because of the soup-plate than was he ludicrous because of his nakedness. He was royal. His father had been a king before him, and he had proved himself greater than his father. Life and death he bore in his hands and head. Often he had exercised it, chirping42 to his subjects in the tongue of Langa-Langa: “Slay here,” and “Slay there”; “Thou shalt die,” and “Thou shalt live.” Because his father, a year abdicated43, had chosen foolishly to interfere44 with his son’s government, he had called two boys and had them twist a cord of coconut around his father’s neck so that thereafter he never breathed again. Because his favourite wife, mother of his eldest45 born, had dared out of silliness of affection to violate one of his kingly tamboos, he had had her killed and had himself selfishly and religiously eaten the last of her even to the marrow46 of her cracked joints47, sharing no morsel48 with his boonest of comrades.
Royal he was, by nature, by training, by deed. He carried himself with consciousness of royalty49. He looked royal—as a magnificent stallion may look royal, as a lion on a painted tawny50 desert may look royal. He was as splendid a brute—an adumbration51 of the splendid human conquerors52 and rulers, higher on the ladder of evolution, who have appeared in other times and places. His pose of body, of chest, of shoulders, of head, was royal. Royal was the heavy-lidded, lazy, insolent53 way he looked out of his eyes.
Royal in courage was he, this moment on the Arangi, despite the fact that he knew he walked on dynamite54. As he had long since bitterly learned, any white man was as much dynamite as was the mysterious death-dealing missile he sometimes employed. When a stripling, he had made one of the canoe force that attacked the sandalwood-cutter that had been even smaller than the Arangi. He had never forgotten that mystery. Two of the three white men he had seen slain55 and their heads removed on deck. The third, still fighting, had but the minute before fled below. Then the cutter, along with all her wealth of hoop-iron, tobacco, knives and calico, had gone up into the air and fallen back into the sea in scattered56 and fragmented nothingness. It had been dynamite—the MYSTERY. And he, who had been hurled57 uninjured through the air by a miracle of fortune, had divined that white men in themselves were truly dynamite, compounded of the same mystery as the substance with which they shot the swift-darting schools of mullet, or blow up, in extremity58, themselves and the ships on which they voyaged the sea from far places. And yet on this unstable59 and death-terrific substance of which he was well aware Van Horn was composed, he trod heavily with his personality, daring, to the verge60 of detonation61, to impact it with his insolence62.
“My word,” he began, “what name you make ’m boy belong me stop along you too much?” Which was a tr............