along this fella place sun he go down?”
“Me b’long Boucher. Too many boy belong along Port Adams stop
along my fella marster. Too much walk about.”
The black drew a scrap of notepaper from under his belt and passed
it over. Sheldon scanned it hurriedly.
“It’s from Boucher,” he explained, “the fellow who took Packard’s
place. Packard was the one I told you about who was killed by his
boat’s-crew. He says the Port Adams crowd is out–fifty of them,
in big canoes–and camping on his beach. They’ve killed half a
dozen of his pigs already, and seem to be looking for trouble. And
he’s afraid they may connect with the fifteen runaways from Lunga.”
“In which case?” she queried.
“In which case Billy Pape will be compelled to send Boucher’s
successor. It’s Pape’s station, you know. I wish I knew what to
do. I don’t like to leave you here alone.”
“Take me along then.”
He smiled and shook his head.
“Then you’d better take my men along,” she advised. “They’re good
shots, and they’re not afraid of anything–except Utami, and he’s
afraid of ghosts.”
The big bell was rung, and fifty black boys carried the whale-boat
down to the water. The regular boat’s-crew manned her, and
Matauare and three other Tahitians, belted with cartridges and
armed with rifles, sat in the stern-sheets where Sheldon stood at
the steering-oar.
“My, I wish I could go with you,” Joan said wistfully, as the boat
shoved off.
Sheldon shook his head.
“I’m as good as a man,” she urged.
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53
“You really are needed here,” he replied.
“There’s that Lunga crowd; they might reach the coast right here,
and with both of us absent rush the plantation. Good-bye. We’ll
get back in the morning some time. It’s only twelve miles.”
When Joan started to return to the house, she was compelled to pass
among the boat-carriers, who lingered on the beach to chatter in
queer, ape-like fashion about the events of the night. They made
way for her, but there came to her, as she was in the midst of
them, a feeling of her own helplessness. There were so many of
them. What was to prevent them from dragging her down if they so
willed? Then she remembered that one cry of hers would fetch Noa
Noah and her remaining sailors, each one of whom was worth a dozen
blacks in a struggle. As she opened the gate, one of the boys
stepped up to her. In the darkness she could not make him out.
“What name?” she asked sharply. “What name belong you?”
“Me Aroa,” he said.
She remembered him as one of the two sick boys she had nursed at
the hospital. The other one had died.
“Me take ‘m plenty fella medicine too much,” Aroa was saying.
“Well, and you all right now,” she answered.
“Me want ‘m tobacco, plenty fella tobacco; me want ‘m calico; me
want ‘m porpoise teeth; me want ‘m one fella belt.”
She looked at him humorously, expecting to see a smile, or at least
a grin, on his face. Instead, his face was expressionless. Save
for a narrow breech-clout, a pair of ear-plugs, and about his kinky
hair a chaplet of white cowrie-shells, he was naked. His body was
fresh-oiled and shiny, and his eyes glistened in the starlight like
some wild animal’s. The rest of the boys had crowded up at his
back in a solid wall. Some one of them giggled, but the remainder
regarded her in morose and intense silence.
“Well?” she said. “What for you want plenty fella things?”
“Me take ‘m medicine,” quoth Aroa. “You pay me.”
And this was a sample of their gratitude, she thought. It looked
as if Sheldon had been right after all. Aroa waited stolidly. A
leaping fish splashed far out on the water. A tiny wavelet
murmured sleepily on the beach. The shadow of a flying-fox drifted
by in velvet silence overhead. A light air fanned coolly on her
cheek; it was the land-breeze beginning to blow.
“You go along quarters,” she said, starting to turn on her heel to
enter the gate.
“You pay me,” said the boy.
“Aroa, you all the same one big fool. I no pay you. Now you go.”
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54
But the black was unmoved. She felt that he was regarding her
almost insolently as he repeated:
“I take ‘m medicine. You pay me. You pay me now.”
Then it was that she lost her temper and cuffed his ears so soundly
as to drive him back among his fellows. But they did not break up.
Another boy stepped forward.
“You pay me,” he said.
His eyes had the querulous, troubled look such as she had noticed
in monkeys; but while he was patently uncomfortable under her
scrutiny, his thick lips were drawn firmly in an effort at sullen
determination.
“What for?” she asked.
“Me Gogoomy,” he said. “Bawo brother belong me.”
Bawo, she remembered, was the sick boy who had died.
“Go on,” she commanded.
“Bawo take ‘m medicine. Bawo finish. Bawo my brother. You pay
me. Father belong me one big fella chief along Port Adams. You
pay me.”
Joan laughed.
“Gogoomy, you just the same as Aroa, one big fool. My word, who
pay me for medicine?”
She dismissed the matter by passing through the gate and closing
it. But Gogoomy pressed up against it and said impudently:
“Father belong me one big fella chief. You no bang ‘m head belong
me. My word, you fright too much.”
“Me fright?” she demanded, while anger tingled all through her.
“Too much fright bang ‘m head belong me,” Gogoomy said proudly.
And then she reached for him across the gate and got him. It was a
sweeping, broad-handed slap, so heavy that he staggered sideways
and nearly fell. He sprang for the gate as if to force it open,
while the crowd surged forward against the fence. Joan thought
rapidly. Her revolver was hanging on the wall of her grass house.
Yet one cry would bring her sailors, and she knew she was safe. So
she did not cry for help. Instead, she whistled for Satan, at the
same time calling him by name. She knew he was shut up in the
living room, but the blacks did not wait to see. They fled with
wild yells through the darkness, followed reluctantly by Gogoomy;
while she entered the bungalow, laughing at first, but finally
vexed to the verge of tears by what had taken place. She had sat
up a whole night with the boy who had died, and yet his brother
ADVENTURE
55
demanded to be paid for his life.
“Ugh! the ungrateful beast!” she muttered, while she debated
whether or not she would confess the incident to Sheldon.
CHAPTER XI–THE PORT ADAMS CROWD
“And so it was all settled easily enough,” Sheldon was saying. He
was on the veranda, drinking coffee. The whale-boat was being
carried into its shed. “Boucher was a bit timid at first to carry
off the situation with a strong hand, but he did very well once we
got started. We made a play at holding a court, and Telepasse, the
old scoundrel, accepted the findings. He’s a Port Adams chief, a
filthy beggar. We fined him ten times the value of the pigs, and
made him move on with his mob. Oh, they’re a sweet lot, I must
say, at least sixty of them, in five big canoes, and out for
trouble. They’ve got a dozen Sniders that ought to be
confiscated.”
“Why didn’t you?” Joan asked.
“And have a row on my hands with the Commissioner? He’s terribly
touchy about his black wards, as he calls them. Well, we started
them along their way, though they went in on the beach to kai-kai
several miles back. They ought to pass here some time to-day.”
Two hours later the canoes arrived. No one saw them come. The
house-boys were busy in the kitchen at their own breakfast. The
plantation hands were similarly occupied in their quarters. Satan
lay sound asleep on his back under the billiard table, in his sleep
brushing at the flies that pestered him. Joan was rummaging in the
store-room, and Sheldon was taking his siesta in a hammock on the
veranda. He awoke gently. In some occult, subtle way a warning
that all was not well had penetrated his sleep and aroused him.
Without moving, he glanced down and saw the ground beneath covered
with armed savages. They were the same ones he had parted with
that morning, though he noted an accession in numbers. There were
men he had not seen before.
He slipped from the hammock and with deliberate slowness sauntered
to the railing, where he yawned sleepily and looked down on them.
It came to him curiously that it was his destiny ever to stand on
this high place, looking down on unending hordes of black trouble
that required control, bullying, and cajolery. But while he