beach remained one long palm. At the apex of the wedge stood another.
Darkness was falling as the lanterns were lighted, carried up the two trees,
and made fast.
“That outer lantern is too high.” David Grief studied it critically. “Put it
down about ten feet, Denby.”
VI
The Willi-Waw was tearing through the water with a bone in her teeth, for
the breath of the passing squall was still strong. The blacks were swinging
up the big mainsail, which had been lowered on the run when the puff was
at its height. Jacobsen, superintending the operation, ordered them to
throw the halyards down on deck and stand by, then went for’ard on the
lee-bow and joined Griffiths. Both men stared with wide-strained eyes at
the blank wall of darkness through which they were flying, their ears tense
for the sound of surf on the invisible shore. It was by this sound that they
were for the moment steering.
The wind fell lighter, the scud of clouds thinned and broke, and in the dim
glimmer of starlight loomed the jungle-clad coast. Ahead, and well on the
lee-bow, appeared a jagged rock-point. Both men strained to it.
A SON OF THE SUN
18
“Amboy Point,” Griffiths announced. “Plenty of water close up. Take the
wheel, Jacobsen, till we set a course. Get a move on!”
Running aft, barefooted and barelegged, the rainwater dripping from his
scant clothing, the mate displaced the black at the wheel.
“How’s she heading?” Griffiths called.
“South-a-half-west!”
“Let her come up south-by-west! Got it?”
“Right on it!”
Griffiths considered the changed relation of Amboy Point to the Willi-
Waw’s course.
“And a-half-west!” he cried.
“And a-half-west!” came the answer. “Right on it!”
“Steady! That’ll do!”
“Steady she is!” Jacobsen turned the wheel over to the savage. “You steer
good fella, savve?” he warned. “No good fella, I knock your damn black
head off.”
Again he went for’ard and joined the other, and again the cloud-scud
thickened, the star-glimmer vanished, and the wind rose and screamed in
another squall.
“Watch that mainsail!” Griffiths yelled in the mate’s ear, at the same time
studying the ketch’s behaviour.
Over she pressed, and lee-rail under, while he measured the weight of the
wind and quested its easement. The tepid sea-water, with here and there
tiny globules of phosphorescence, washed about his ankles and knees. The
wind screamed a higher note, and every shroud and stay sharply chorused
an answer as the Willi-Waw pressed farther over and down.
“Down mainsail!” Griffiths yelled, springing to the peak-halyards,
thrusting away the black who held on, and casting off the turn.
Jacobsen, at the throat-halyards, was performing the like office. The big
sail rattled down, and the blacks, with shouts and yells, threw themselves
on the battling canvas. The mate, finding one skulking in the darkness,
A SON OF THE SUN
19
flung his bunched knuckles into the creature’s face and drove him to his
work.
The squall held at its high pitch, and under her small canvas the Willi-Waw
still foamed along. Again the two men stood for’ard and vainly watched in
the horizontal drive of rain.
“We’re all right,” Griffiths said. “This rain won’t last. We can hold this
course till we pick up the lights. Anchor in thirteen fathoms. You’d better
overhaul forty-five on a night like this. After that get the gaskets on the
mainsail. We won’t need it.”
Half an hour afterward his weary eyes were rewarded by a glimpse of two
lights.
“There they are, Jacobsen. I’ll take the wheel. Run down the forestaysail
and stand by to let go. Make the niggers jump.”
Aft, the spokes of the wheel in his hands, Griffiths held the course till the
two lights came in line, when he abruptly altered and headed directly in
for them. He heard the tumble and roar of the surf, but decided it was
farther away—as it should be, at Gabera.
He heard the frightened cry of the mate, and was grinding the wheel down
with all his might, when the Willi-Waw struck. At the same instant her
mainmast crashed over the bow. Five wild minutes followed. All hands
held on while the hull upheaved and smashed down on the brittle coral and
the warm seas swept over them. Grinding and crunching, the Willi-Waw
worked itself clear over the shoal patch and came solidly to rest in the
comparatively smooth and shallow channel beyond.
Griffiths sat down on the edge of the cabin, head bowed on chest, in silent
wrath and bitterness. Once he lifted his face to glare at the two white
lights, one above the other and perfectly in line.
“There they are,” he said. “And this isn’t Gabera. Then what the hell is it?”
Though the surf still roared and across the shoal flung its spray and upper
wash over them, the wind died down and the stars came out. Shoreward
came the sound of oars.
” What have you had?—an earthquake?” Griffiths called out. “The
bottom’s all changed. I’ve anchored here a hundred times in thirteen
fathoms. Is that you, Wilson?”
A SON OF THE SUN
20
A whaleboat came alongside, and a man climbed over the rail. In the faint
light Griffiths found an automatic Colt’s thrust into his face, and, looking
up, saw David Grief.
“No, you never anchored here before,” Grief laughed. “Gabera’s just
around the point, where I’ll be as soon as I’ve collected that little sum of
twelve hundred pounds. We won’t bother for the receipt. I’ve your note
here, and I’ll just return it.”
“You did this!” Griffiths cried, springing to his feet in a sudden gust of
rage. “You faked those leading lights! You’ve wrecked me, and by—”
“Steady! Steady!” Grief’s voice was cool and menacing. “I’ll trouble you
for that twelve hundred, please.”
To Griffiths, a vast impotence seemed to descend upon him. He was
overwhelmed by a profound disgust—disgust for the sunlands and the sunsickness,
for the futility of all his endeavour, for this blue-eyed, goldentinted,
superior man who defeated him on all his ways.
“Jacobsen,” he said, “will you open the cash-box and pay this—this
bloodsucker— twelve hundred pounds?”
The Proud Goat of Aloysius Pankburn
(First published in The Saturday Evening Post, v. 183, June 24, 1911: 5-7,
33-36)
Quick eye that he had for the promise of adventure, prepared always for
the unexpected to leap out at him from behind the nearest cocoanut tree,
nevertheless David Grief received no warning when he laid eyes on
Aloysius Pankburn. It was on the little steamer Berthe. Leaving his
schooner to follow, Grief had taken passage for the short run across from
Raiatea to Papeete. When he first saw Aloysius Pankburn, that somewhat
fuddled gentleman was drinking a lonely cocktail at the tiny bar between
decks next to the barber shop. And when Grief left the barber’s hands half
an hour later Aloysius Pankburn was still hanging over the bar, still
drinking by himself.
Now it is not good for man to drink alone, and Grief threw sharp scrutiny
into his passing glance. He saw a well-built young man of thirty, wellfeatured,
well-dressed, and evidently, in the world’s catalogue, a
A SON OF THE SUN
21
gentleman. But in the faint hint of slovenliness, in the shaking, eager hand
that spilled the liquor, and in the nervous, vacillating eyes, Grief read the
unmistakable marks of the chronic alcoholic.
After dinner he chanced upon Pankburn again. This time it was on deck,
and the young man, clinging to the rail and peering into the distance at the
dim forms of a man and woman in two steamer chairs drawn closely
together, was crying, drunkenly. Grief noted that the man’s arm was
around the woman’s waist. Aloysius Pankburn looked on and cried.
“Nothing to weep about,” Grief said genially.
Pankburn looked at him, and gushed tears of profound self-pity.
“It’s hard,” he sobbed. “Hard. Hard. That man’s my business manager. I
employ him. I pay him a good screw. And that’s how he earns it.”
“In that case, why don’t you put a stop to it?” Grief advised.
“I can’t. She’d shut off my whiskey. She’s my trained nurse.”
“Fire her, then, and drink your head off.”
“I can’t. He’s got all my money. If I did, he wouldn’t give me sixpence to
buy a drink with.”
This woful possibility brought a fresh wash of tears. Grief was interested.
Of all unique situations he could never have imagined such a one as this.
“They were engaged to take care of me,” Pankburn was blubbering, “to
keep me away from the drink. And that’s the way they do it, lollygagging
all about the ship and letting me drink myself to death. It isn’t right, I tell
you. It isn’t right. They were sent along with me for the express purpose of
not letting me drink, and they let me drink to swinishness as long as I
leave them alone. If I complain they threaten not to let me have another