voices. Had One-Eye understood English he would have been enlightened.
“We’ve got just a little over eight hundred thousand, not counting the
silver,” Grief said. “And that’s about all there is. The bush tribes behind
have most probably got the other two hundred thousand. Return in three
months, and the salt-water crowd will have traded back for it; also they
will be out of tobacco by that time.”
“It would be a sin to buy pennies,” Albright grinned. “It goes against the
thrifty grain of my trader’s soul.”
“There’s a whiff of land-breeze stirring,” Grief said, looking at Pankburn.
“What do you say?”
Pankburn nodded.
“Very well.” Grief measured the faintness and irregularity of the wind
against his cheek. “Mr. Carlsen, heave short, and get off the gaskets. And
stand by with the whaleboats to tow. This breeze is not dependable.”
He picked up a part case of tobacco, containing six or seven hundred
sticks, put it in One-Eye’s hands, and helped that bewildered savage over
the rail. As the foresail went up the mast, a wail of consternation arose
from the canoes lying along the dead-line. And as the anchor broke out
and the Kittiwake’s head paid off in the light breeze, old One-Eye, daring
the rifles levelled on him, paddled alongside and made frantic signs of his
tribe’s willingness to trade pennies for ten sticks.
“Boy!—a drinking nut,” Pankburn called.
“It’s Sydney Heads for you,” Grief said. “And then what?”
A SON OF THE SUN
37
“I’m coming back with you for that two hundred thousand,” Pankburn
answered. “In the meantime I’m going to build an island schooner. Also,
I’m going to call those guardians of mine before the court to show cause
why my father’s money should not be turned over to me. Show cause? I’ll
show them cause why it should.”
He swelled his biceps proudly under the thin sleeve, reached for the two
black stewards, and put them above his head like a pair of dumbbells.
“Come on! Swing out on that fore-boom-tackle!” Carlsen shouted from
aft, where the mainsail was being winged out.
Pankburn dropped the stewards and raced for it, beating a Rapa sailor by
two jumps to the hauling part.
The Devils of Fuatino
(First published as “The Goat Man of Fuatino” in The Saturday Evening
Post, v. 184, June 29, 1911: 12-15, 35-38)
I
Of his many schooners, ketches and cutters that nosed about among the
coral isles of the South Seas, David Grief loved most the Rattler—a yachtlike
schooner of ninety tons with so swift a pair of heels that she had made
herself famous, in the old days, opium- smuggling from San Diego to
Puget Sound, raiding the seal-rookeries of Bering Sea, and running arms
in the Far East. A stench and an abomination to government officials, she
had been the joy of all sailormen, and the pride of the shipwrights who
built her. Even now, after forty years of driving, she was still the same old
Rattler, fore- reaching in the same marvellous manner that compelled
sailors to see in order to believe and that punctuated many an angry
discussion with words and blows on the beaches of all the ports from
Valparaiso to Manila Bay.
On this night, close-hauled, her big mainsail preposterously flattened
down, her luffs pulsing emptily on the lift of each smooth swell, she was
sliding an easy four knots through the water on the veriest whisper of a
breeze. For an hour David Grief had been leaning on the rail at the lee
fore-rigging, gazing overside at the steady phosphorescence of her gait.
The faint back-draught from the headsails fanned his cheek and chest with
A SON OF THE SUN
38
a wine of coolness, and he was in an ecstasy of appreciation of the
schooner’s qualities.
“Eh!—She’s a beauty, Taute, a beauty,” he said to the Kanaka lookout, at
the same time stroking the teak of the rail with an affectionate hand.
“Ay, skipper,” the Kanaka answered in the rich, big-chested tones of
Polynesia. “Thirty years I know ships, but never like this. On Raiatea we
call her Fanauao.”
“The Dayborn,” Grief translated the love-phrase. “Who named her so?”
About to answer, Taute peered ahead with sudden intensity. Grief joined
him in the gaze.
“Land,” said Taute.
“Yes; Fuatino,” Grief agreed, his eyes still fixed on the spot where the
star-luminous horizon was gouged by a blot of blackness. “It’s all right. I’ll
tell the captain.”
The Rattler slid along until the loom of the island could be seen as well as
sensed, until the sleepy roar of breakers and the blatting of goats could be
heard, until the wind, off the land, was flower-drenched with perfume.
“If it wasn’t a crevice, she could run the passage a night like this,” Captain
Glass remarked regretfully, as he watched the wheel lashed hard down by
the steersman.
The Rattler, run off shore a mile, had been hove to to wait until daylight
ere she attempted the perilous entrance to Fuatino. It was a perfect tropic
night, with no hint of rain or squall. For’ard, wherever their tasks left them,
the Raiatea sailors sank down to sleep on deck. Aft, the captain and mate
and Grief spread their beds with similar languid unconcern. They lay on
their blankets, smoking and murmuring sleepy conjectures about Mataara,
the Queen of Fuatino, and about the love affair between her daughter,
Naumoo, and Motuaro.
“They’re certainly a romantic lot,” Brown, the mate, said. “As romantic as
we whites.”
“As romantic as Pilsach,” Grief laughed, “and that is going some. How
long ago was it, Captain, that he jumped you?”
“Eleven years,” Captain Glass grunted resentfully.
A SON OF THE SUN
39
“Tell me about it,” Brown pleaded. “They say he’s never left Fuatino since.
Is that right?”
“Right O,” the captain rumbled. “He’s in love with his wife—the little
hussy! Stole him from me, and as good a sailorman as the trade has ever
seen—if he is a Dutchman.”
“German,” Grief corrected.
“It’s all the same,” was the retort. “The sea was robbed of a good man that
night he went ashore and Notutu took one look at him. I reckon they
looked good to each other. Before you could say skat, she’d put a wreath
of some kind of white flowers on his head, and in five minutes they were
off down the beach, like a couple of kids, holding hands and laughing. I
hope he’s blown that big coral patch out of the channel. I always start a
sheet or two of copper warping past.”
“Go on with the story,” Brown urged.,
“That’s all. He was finished right there. Got married that night. Never
came on board again. I looked him up next day. Found him in a straw
house in the bush, barelegged, a white savage, all mixed up with flowers
and things and playing a guitar. Looked like a bally ass. Told me to send
his things ashore. I told him I’d see him damned first. And that’s all. You’ll
see her to-morrow. They’ve got three kiddies now—wonderful little
rascals. I’ve a phonograph down below for him, and about a million
records.”
“And then you made him trader?” the mate inquired of Grief.
“What else could I do? Fuatino is a love island, and Pilsach is a lover. He
knows the native, too—one of the best traders I’ve got, or ever had. He’s
responsible. You’ll see him to-morrow.”
“Look here, young man,” Captain Glass rumbled threateningly at his mate.
“Are you romantic? Because if you are, on board you stay. Fuatino’s the
island of romantic insanity. Everybody’s in love with somebody. They live
on love. It’s in the milk of the cocoanuts, or the air, or the sea. The history
of the island for the last ten thousand years is nothing but love affairs. I
know. I’ve talked with the old men. And if I catch you starting down the
beach hand in hand—
His sudden cessation caused both the other men to look at him. They
followed his gaze, which passed across them to the main rigging, and saw
what he saw, a brown hand and arm, muscular and wet, being joined from
overside by a second brown hand and arm. A head followed, thatched with
A SON OF THE SUN
40
long elfin locks, and then a face, with roguish black eyes, lined with the
marks of wildwood’s laughter.
“My God!” Brown breathed. “It’s a faun—a sea-faun.”
“It’s the Goat Man,” said Glass.
“It is Mauriri,” said Grief. “He is my own blood brother by sacred plight of
native custom. His name is mine, and mine is his.”
Broad brown shoulders and a magnificent chest rose above the rail, and,
with what seemed effortless ease, the whole grand body followed over the
rail and noiselessly trod the deck. Brown, who might have been other
things than the mate of an island schooner, was enchanted. All that he had
ever gleaned from the books proclaimed indubitably the faun- likeness of