A thousand deaths by Jack London

be sent over to Tulagi, the seat of government, where he would become the

Commissioner’s guest. Captain Malu was responsible for two other suggestions,

which given, he disappears from this narrative. One was to Captain Hansen, the

other to Mr. Harriwell, manager of Reminge Plantation. Both suggestions were

similar in tenor, namely, to give Mr. Bertram Arkwright an insight into the

rawness and redness of life in the Solomons. Also, it is whispered that

Captain Malu mentioned that a case of Scotch would be coincidental with any

particularly gorgeous insight Mr. Arkwright might receive. . . . .

. . . . . . . .

“Yes, Swartz always was too pig-headed. You see, he took four of his boat’s

crew to Tulagi to be flogged–officially, you know–then started back with

them in the whaleboat. It was pretty squally, and the boat capsized just

outside. Swartz was the only one drowned. Of course, it was an accident.”

“Was it? Really?” Bertie asked, only half-interested, staring hard at the

black man at the wheel.

Ugi had dropped astern, and the ARLA was sliding along through a summer sea

toward the wooded ranges of Malaita. The helmsman who so attracted Bertie’s

eyes sported a ten penny nail, stuck skewerwise through his nose. About his

neck was a string of pants buttons. Thrust through holes in his ears were a

can opener, the broken handle of a toothbrush, a clay pipe, the brass wheel of

an alarm clock, and several Winchester rifle cartridges.

On his chest, suspended from around his neck hung the half of a china plate.

Some forty similarly appareled blacks lay about the deck, fifteen of which

were boat’s crew, the remainder being fresh labor recruits.

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61

“Of course it was an accident,” spoke up the ARLA’S mate, Jacobs, a slender,

dark-eyed man who looked more a professor than a sailor. “Johnny Bedip nearly

had the same kind of accident. He was bringing back several from a flogging,

when they capsized him. But he knew how to swim as well as they, and two of

them were drowned. He used a boat stretcher and a revolver. Of course it was

an accident.”

“Quite common, them accidents,” remarked the skipper. “You see that man at the

wheel, Mr. Arkwright? He’s a man eater. Six months ago, he and the rest of the

boat’s crew drowned the then captain of the ARLA. They did it on deck, sir,

right aft there by the mizzen-traveler.”

“The deck was in a shocking state,” said the mate.

“Do I understand–?” Bertie began.

“Yes, just that,” said Captain Hansen. “It was an accidental drowning.”

“But on deck–?”

“Just so. I don’t mind telling you, in confidence, of course, that they used

an axe.”

“This present crew of yours?”

Captain Hansen nodded.

“The other skipper always was too careless,” explained the mate. He but just

turned his back, when they let him have it.”

“We haven’t any show down here,” was the skipper’s complaint. “The government

protects a nigger against a white every time. You can’t shoot first. You’ve

got to give the nigger first shot, or else the government calls it murder and

you go to Fiji. That’s why there’s so many drowning accidents.”

Dinner was called, and Bertie and the skipper went below, leaving the mate to

watch on deck.

“Keep an eye out for that black devil, Auiki,” was the skipper’s parting

caution. “I haven’t liked his looks for several days.”

“Right O,” said the mate.

Dinner was part way along, and the skipper was in the middle of his story of

the cutting out of the Scottish Chiefs.

“Yes,” he was saying, “she was the finest vessel on the coast. But when she

missed stays, and before ever she hit the reef, the canoes started for her.

There were five white men, a crew of twenty Santa Cruz boys and Samoans, and

only the supercargo escaped. Besides, there were sixty recruits. They were all

kai-kai’d. Kai-kai?–oh, I beg your pardon. I mean they were eaten. Then there

was the James Edwards, a dandy-rigged–”

SOUTH SEA TALES

62

But at that moment there was a sharp oath from the mate on deck and a chorus

of savage cries. A revolver went off three times, and then was heard a loud

splash. Captain Hansen had sprung up the companionway on the instant, and

Bertie’s eyes had been fascinated by a glimpse of him drawing his revolver as

he sprang.

Bertie went up more circumspectly, hesitating before he put his head above the

companionway slide. But nothing happened. The mate was shaking with

excitement, his revolver in his hand. Once he startled, and half-jumped

around, as if danger threatened his back.

“One of the natives fell overboard,” he was saying, in a queer tense voice.

“He couldn’t swim.”

“Who was it?” the skipper demanded.

“Auiki,” was the answer.

“But I say, you know, I heard shots,” Bertie said, in trembling eagerness, for

he scented adventure, and adventure that was happily over with.

The mate whirled upon him, snarling:

“It”s a damned lie. There ain’t been a shot fired. The nigger fell overboard.”

Captain Hansen regarded Bertie with unblinking, lack-luster eyes.

“I–I thought–” Bertie was beginning.

“Shots?” said Captain Hansen, dreamily. “Shots? Did you hear any shots, Mr.

Jacobs?”

“Not a shot,” replied Mr. Jacobs.

The skipper looked at his guest triumphantly, and said:

“Evidently an accident. Let us go down, Mr. Arkwright, and finish dinner.”

Bertie slept that night in the captain’s cabin, a tiny stateroom off the main

cabin. The for’ard bulkhead was decorated with a stand of rifles. Over the

bunk were three more rifles. Under the bunk was a big drawer, which, when he

pulled it out, he found filled with ammunition, dynamite, and several boxes of

detonators. He elected to take the settee on the opposite side. Lying

conspicuously on the small table, was the Arla’s log. Bertie did not know

that it had been especially prepared for the occasion by Captain Malu, and he

read therein how on September 21, two boat’s crew had fallen overboard and

been drowned. Bertie read between the lines and knew better. He read how the

Arla’s whale boat had been bushwhacked at Su’u and had lost three men; of how

the skipper discovered the cook stewing human flesh on the galley fire–flesh

purchased by the boat’s crew ashore in Fui; of how an accidental discharge of

dynamite, while signaling, had killed another boat’s crew; of night attacks;

ports fled from between the dawns; attacks by bushmen in mangrove swamps and

SOUTH SEA TALES

63

by fleets of salt-water men in the larger passages. One item that occurred

with monotonous frequency was death by dysentery. He noticed with alarm that

two white men had so died–guests, like himself, on the Arla.

“I say, you know,” Bertie said next day to Captain Hansen. “I’ve been glancing

through your log.”

The skipper displayed quick vexation that the log had been left lying about.

“And all that dysentery, you know, that’s all rot, just like the accidental

drownings,” Bertie continued. “What does dysentery really stand for?”

The skipper openly admired his guest’s acumen, stiffened himself to make

indignant denial, then gracefully surrendered.

“You see, it’s like this, Mr. Arkwright. These islands have got a bad enough

name as it is. It’s getting harder every day to sign on white men. Suppose a

man is killed. The company has to pay through the nose for another man to take

the job. But if the man merely dies of sickness, it’s all right. The new chums

don’t mind disease. What they draw the line at is being murdered. I thought

the skipper of the Arla had died of dysentery when I took his billet. Then it

was too late. I’d signed the contract.”

“Besides,” said Mr. Jacobs, “there’s altogether too many accidental drownings

anyway. It don’t look right. It’s the fault of the government. A white man

hasn’t a chance to defend himself from the niggers.”

“Yes, look at the Princess and that Yankee mate,” the skipper took up the

tale. “She carried five white men besides a government agent. The captain, the

agent, and the supercargo were ashore in the two boats. They were killed to

the last man. The mate and boson, with about fifteen of the crew–Samoans and

Tongans–were on board. A crowd of niggers came off from shore. First thing

the mate knew, the boson and the crew were killed in the first rush. The mate

grabbed three cartridge belts and two Winchesters and skinned up to the

cross-trees. He was the sole survivor, and you can’t blame him for being mad.

He pumped one rifle till it got so hot he couldn’t hold it, then he pumped the

other. The deck was black with niggers. He cleaned them out. He dropped them

as they went over the rail, and he dropped them as fast as they picked up

their paddles. Then they jumped into the water and started to swim for it, and