from 150 west longitude to 150 east longitude—as the crow flies the
equivalent to a voyage across the Atlantic. But the Kittiwake did not go as
the crow flies. David Grief’s numerous interests diverted her course many
times. He stopped to take a look-in at uninhabited Rose island with an eye
to colonizing and planting cocoanuts. Next, he paid his respects to Tui
Manua, of Eastern Samoa, and opened an intrigue for a share of the trade
monopoly of that dying king’s three islands. From Apia he carried several
relief agents and a load of trade goods to the Gilberts. He peeped in at
Ontong-Java Atoll, inspected his plantations on Ysabel, and purchased
lands from the salt-water chiefs of northwestern Malaita. And all along
this devious way he made a man of Aloysius Pankburn.
That thirster, though he lived aft, was compelled to do the work of a
common sailor. And not only did he take his wheel and lookout, and heave
on sheets and tackles, but the dirtiest and most arduous tasks were
appointed him. Swung aloft in a bosun’s chair, he scraped the masts and
slushed down. Holystoning the deck or scrubbing it with fresh limes made
his back ache and developed the wasted, flabby muscles. When the
Kittiwake lay at anchor and her copper bottom was scrubbed with
cocoanut husks by the native crew, who dived and did it under water,
Pankburn was sent down on his shift and as many times as any on the
shift.
“Look at yourself,” Grief said. “You are twice. the man you were when
you came on board. You haven’t had one drink, you didn’t die, and the
poison is pretty well worked out of you. It’s the work. It beats trained
nurses and business managers. Here, if you’re thirsty. Clap your lips to
this.”
With several deft strokes of his heavy-backed sheath-knife, Grief clipped a
triangular piece of shell from the end of a husked drinking- cocoanut. The
thin, cool liquid, slightly milky and effervescent, bubbled to the brim.
With a bow, Pankburn took the natural cup, threw his head back, and held
it back till the shell was empty. He drank many of these nuts each day.
The black steward, a New Hebrides boy sixty years of age, and his
A SON OF THE SUN
30
assistant, a Lark Islander of eleven, saw to it that he was continually
supplied.
Pankburn did not object to the hard work. He devoured work, never
shirking and always beating the native sailors in jumping to obey a
command. But his sufferings during the period of driving the alcohol out
of his system were truly heroic. Even when the last shred of the poison
was exuded, the desire, as an obsession, remained in his head. So it was,
when, on his honour, he went ashore at Apia, that he attempted to put the
public houses out of business by drinking up their stocks in trade. And so
it was, at two in the morning, that David Grief found him in front of the
Tivoli, out of which he had been disorderly thrown by Charley Roberts.
Aloysius, as of old, was chanting his sorrows to the stars. Also, and more
concretely, he was punctuating the rhythm with cobbles of coral stone,
which he flung with amazing accuracy through Charley Roberts’s
windows.
David Grief took him away, but not till next morning did he take him in
hand. It was on the deck of the Kittiwake, and there was nothing
kindergarten about it. Grief struck him, with bare knuckles, punched him
and punished him—gave him the worst thrashing he had ever received.
“For the good of your soul, Pankburn,” was the way he emphasized his
blows. “For the good of your mother. For the progeny that will come after.
For the good of the world, and the universe, and the whole race of man yet
to be. And now, to hammer the lesson home, we’ll do it all over again.
That, for the good of your soul; and that, for your mother’s sake; and that,
for the little children, undreamed of and unborn, whose mother you’ll love
for their sakes, and for love’s sake, in the lease of manhood that will be
yours when I am done with you. Come on and take your medicine. I’m not
done with you yet. I’ve only begun. There are many other reasons which I
shall now proceed to expound.”
The brown sailors and the black stewards and cook looked on and grinned.
Far from them was the questioning of any of the mysterious and
incomprehensible ways of white men. As for Carlsen, the mate, he was
grimly in accord with the treatment his employer was administering; while
Albright, the supercargo, merely played with his mustache and smiled.
They were men of the sea. They lived life in the rough. And alcohol, in
themselves as well as in other men, was a problem they had learned to
handle in ways not taught in doctors’ schools.
“Boy! A bucket of fresh water and a towel,” Grief ordered, when he had
finished. “Two buckets and two towels,” he added, as he surveyed his own
hands.
A SON OF THE SUN
31
“You’re a pretty one,”
he said to Pankburn.
“You’ve spoiled
everything. I had the
poison completely out
of you. And now you
are fairly reeking with
it. We’ve got to begin
all over again. Mr.
Albright! You know
that pile of old chain
on the beach at the
boat-landing. Find the
owner, buy it, and
fetch it on board.
There must be a
hundred and fifty
fathoms of it. Pankburn! To-morrow morning you start in pounding the
rust off of it. When you’ve done that, you’ll sandpaper it. Then you’ll paint
it. And nothing else will you do till that chain is as smooth as new.”
Aloysius Pankburn shook his head.
“I quit. Francis Island can go to hell for all of me. I’m done with your
slave-driving. Kindly put me ashore at once. I’m a white man. You can’t
treat me this way.”
“Mr. Carlsen, you will see that Mr. Pankburn remains on board.”
“I’ll have you broken for this!” Aloysius screamed. “You can’t stop me.”
“I can give you another licking,” Grief answered. “And let me tell you one
thing, you besotted whelp, I’ll keep on licking you as long as my knuckles
hold out or until you yearn to hammer chain rust. I’ve taken you in hand,
and I’m going to make a man out of you if I have to kill you to do it. Now
go below and change your clothes. Be ready to turn to with a hammer this
afternoon. Mr. Albright, get that chain aboard pronto. Mr. Carlsen, send
the boats ashore after it. Also, keep your eye on Pankburn. If he shows
signs of keeling over or going into the shakes, give him a nip—a small
one. He may need it after last night.”
V
For the rest of the time the Kittiwake lay in Apia Aloysius Pankburn
pounded chain rust. Ten hours a day he pounded. And on the long stretch
across to the Gilberts he still pounded. Then came the sandpapering. One
A SON OF THE SUN
32
hundred and fifty fathoms is nine hundred feet, and every link of all that
length was smoothed and polished as no link ever was before. And when
the last link had received its second coat of black paint, he declared
himself.
“Come on with more dirty work,” he told Grief. “I’ll overhaul the other
chains if you say so. And you needn’t worry about me any more. I’m not
going to take another drop. I’m going to train up. You got my proud goat
when you beat me, but let me tell you, you only got it temporarily. Train!
I’m going to train till I’m as hard all the way through, and clean all the way
through, as that chain is. And some day, Mister David Grief, somewhere,
somehow, I’m going to be in such shape that I’ll lick you as you licked me.
I’m going to pulp your face till your own niggers won’t know you.”
Grief was jubilant.
“Now you’re talking like a man,” he cried. “The only way you’ll ever lick
me is to become a man. And then, maybe—”
He paused in the hope that the other would catch the suggestion. Aloysius
groped for it, and, abruptly, something akin to illumination shone in his
eyes.
“And then I won’t want to, you mean?”
Grief nodded.
“And that’s the curse of it,” Aloysius lamented. “I really believe I
won’t want to. I see the point. But I’m going to go right on and shape
myself up just the same.”
The warm, sunburn glow in Grief’s face seemed to grow warmer. His hand
went out.
“Pankburn, I love you right now for that.”
Aloysius grasped the hand, and shook his head in sad sincerity.
“Grief,” he mourned, “you’ve got my goat, you’ve got my proud goat, and